Immigration and Economic Freedom of the US States: Does the Institutional Quality of Immigrants’ Origin Countries Matter?

Abstract

When people immigrate to the United States from countries with less economic freedom, they do not dampen economic freedom in their destination states. We use the Economic Freedom of North America report to rate the economic freedom of US states, and we group immigrants by how far below the United States their origin countries score in the Economic Freedom of the World report. Our major finding holds true even when states receive immigrants from countries with far less economic freedom. Most relationships between immigration and the US states’ economic freedom scores are neither statistically nor economically significant. Our results are robust to various specifications.

Keywords: Economic Freedom, Immigration, Institutions, State Government

JEL Classification: F22, H70, O43