IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7843.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Immigration and the Informal Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Bosch, Mariano

    (Inter-American Development Bank)

  • Farré, Lídia

    (University of Barcelona)

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between immigration and the size of the informal or underground economy. Using regional variation for the Spanish provinces we find that the massive immigration wave between 2000 and 2009 is highly correlated to the share of unregistered employment, a proxy for the size of the underground or informal labor market. We estimate that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of immigrants in a region generates between a 3 and 8 percentage points increase in unregistered employment. We also find that the controversial regularization of illegal aliens conducted in 2005 substantially reduced the number of illegal workers but did not affect the relationship between immigration and informality.

Suggested Citation

  • Bosch, Mariano & Farré, Lídia, 2013. "Immigration and the Informal Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 7843, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7843
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp7843.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David, 2001. "Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 22-64, January.
    2. Raquel Carrasco & Juan Ramón García & Ana Carolina Ortega, "undated". "The Effect of Immigration on the Employment Opportunities of Native-Born Workers: Some Evidence for Spain," Working Papers 2004-17, FEDEA.
    3. Dominik Enste & Friedrich Schneider, 2002. "Hiding in the Shadows; The Growth of the Underground Economy," IMF Economic Issues 30, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Mr. Friedrich Schneider & Dominik Enste, 2002. "Hiding in the Shadows: The Growth of the Underground Economy," IMF Economic Issues 2002/001, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Migration and democracy
      by nawmsayn in ZeeConomics on 2014-03-06 02:44:19

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carmen UZLAU & Mariana BALAN & Corina-Maria ENE, 2017. "Labour Market Vulnerabilities In Romania During The Post- Crisis Period," Internal Auditing and Risk Management, Athenaeum University of Bucharest, vol. 46(2), pages 12-27, June.
    2. Hasan Yuksel, 2021. "An Investigation on the Link between International Labor Migration and Undocumented Employment: Evidence from Turkish Cinema," Journal of Economy Culture and Society, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 64(64), pages 21-46, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lemos, Sara & Portes, Jonathan, 2008. "New Labour? The Impact of Migration from Central and Eastern European Countries on the UK Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 3756, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Bentolila, Samuel & Dolado, Juan J. & Jimeno, Juan F., 2008. "Does immigration affect the Phillips curve? Some evidence for Spain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1398-1423, November.
    3. Massomeh Hajilee & Farhang Niroomand & Linda A. Hayes, 2023. "The relationship between interest rate volatility and the shadow economy in OECD countries: An asymmetric analysis," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 539-566, September.
    4. Mara, Eugenia-Ramona, 2011. "Causes and consequences of underground economy," MPRA Paper 36438, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2011.
    5. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Sara De la Rica, 2010. "Immigrants’ responsiveness to labor market conditions and their impact on regional employment disparities: evidence from Spain," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 387-407, September.
    6. Monica Violeta Achim & Sorin Nicolae Borlea & Lucian Vasile Găban & Alin Adrian Mihăilă, 2019. "The Shadow Economy and Culture: Evidence in European Countries," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 352-374, September.
    7. Pasovic Edin & Efendic Adnan S., 2018. "Informal Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina – An Empirical Investigation," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 112-125, December.
    8. Feige, Edgar L., 2015. "Reflections on the meaning and measurement of Unobserved Economies: What do we really know about the “Shadow Economy”?," MPRA Paper 68466, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Elijah, Obayelu Abiodun & Uffort, Larry, 2007. "Comparative Analysis of the Relationship Between Poverty and Underground economy in the Highly developed, Transition and Developing Countries," MPRA Paper 2054, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Gordon H. Hanson, 2009. "The Economic Consequences of the International Migration of Labor," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 179-208, May.
    11. Yi-Xun Pang & Sin-Huei Ng & Wei-Theng Lau, 2022. "Digital Cashless Payments and Economic Growth: Evidence from CPMI Countries," Capital Markets Review, Malaysian Finance Association, vol. 30(2), pages 63-89.
    12. de la Rica, Sara & Glitz, Albrecht & Ortega, Francesc, 2013. "Immigration in Europe: Trends, Policies and Empirical Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 7778, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Martins, Pedro S. & Piracha, Matloob & Varejão, José, 2018. "Do immigrants displace native workers? Evidence from matched panel data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 216-222.
    14. Libertad González & Francesc Ortega, 2008. "How Do Very Open Economies Absorb Large Immigration Flows? Recent Evidence from Spanish Regions," Economic Reports 06-08, FEDEA.
    15. Ibragimov Marat & Jovlon Karimov & Elena Permyakova, 2013. "Unemployment and output dynamics in CIS countries: Okun's law revisited," EERC Working Paper Series 13/04e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    16. Simonetta Longhi & Peter Nijkamp & Jacques Poot, 2009. "The Impact of Immigration on the Employment of Natives in Regional Labour Markets: A Meta-Analysis," Chapters, in: Jacques Poot & Brigitte Waldorf & Leo van Wissen (ed.), Migration and Human Capital, chapter 9, pages 173-194, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Fredström, Ashkan & Peltonen, Juhana & Wincent, Joakim, 2021. "A country-level institutional perspective on entrepreneurship productivity: The effects of informal economy and regulation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(5).
    18. Jean, Sébastien & Jiménez, Miguel, 2011. "The unemployment impact of immigration in OECD countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 241-256, June.
    19. Sintayehu Tulu Wondimu & Mathewos Woldemariam Birru, 2020. "Determinants Of Informal Economy Estimation In Ethiopia: Multiple-Indicators, Multiple-Causes (Mimic) Approach," Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 9(2), pages 65-86.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    immigration; informal economy; amnesty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp7843. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.