Immigration and Economic Freedom: Does Education Matter?

Abstract

This paper builds on Padilla and Cachanosky (2018) and examines if immigrants’ educational attainments matter, particularly for immigrants with low educational attainments, when it comes to test the impact immigrants have on the economic freedom of the US states. Except in the area of government transfers and subsidies, we don’t find any evidence to support such hypothesis. In addition, our results indicate that the economic significance associated with immigrants without a high school diploma’s negative impact on economic freedom score for the area of government transfers and subsidies is likely trivial. Our results are robust to various specifications.

Keywords: Economic Freedom, Education, Immigration, Institutions, State Government

JEL Classification: F22, H70, O43