IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v168y2024ics0014292124001430.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of immigration in a deep recession

Author

Listed:
  • Gálvez-Iniesta, Ismael

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of pre-Great Recession immigrant inflows on the labour market during a recession. It develops a random search model of the labour market featuring vacancy persistence, endogenous return migration, and wage rigidity. Consistent with the Spanish data, some immigrants in the model leave the country during the recession, freeing up jobs for natives. Yet, differences in match-quality draws between immigrants and natives also impact firms’ job creation decisions. The return-migration channel positively affects natives, while job creation effects are negative in the calibrated Spanish economy. I find that immigrants mitigate the impact of the recession and enhance natives’ welfare. During the recession, the native unemployment rate would have been 2 percentage points higher in the absence of the pre-crisis immigration boom. Return migration plays a key role, with short- and medium-run impacts on the native unemployment rate 6 times larger than all other channels combined.

Suggested Citation

  • Gálvez-Iniesta, Ismael, 2024. "The role of immigration in a deep recession," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:168:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124001430
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104814
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292124001430
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104814?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigration; Labour market; Search; Vacancy persistence; Unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:168:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124001430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.