Task specialization, comparative advantages, and the effects of immigration on wages

Task specialization, comparative advantages, ...
Giovanni Peri, Giovanni Peri
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Last edited by Open Library Bot
December 3, 2010 | History

Task specialization, comparative advantages, and the effects of immigration on wages

Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. Large inflows of less-educated immigrants would reduce wages paid to comparably-educated native-born workers if the two groups compete for similar jobs. In a simple model exploiting comparative advantage, however, we show that if less-educated foreign and native-born workers specialize in performing complementary tasks, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. Using individual data on the task intensity of occupations across US states from 1960-2000, we then demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations that require manual tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and building. Immigration causes natives -- who have a better understanding of local networks, rules, customs, and language -- to pursue jobs requiring interactive tasks such as coordinating, organizing, and communicating. Simulations show that this increased specialization mitigated negative wage consequences of immigration for less-educated native-born workers, especially in states with large immigration flows.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
51

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Book Details


Edition Notes

"September 2007"

Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-32).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).

Published in
Cambridge, Mass
Series
NBER working paper series -- no. 13389., Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13389.

The Physical Object

Pagination
51 p. :
Number of pages
51

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL17635439M
OCLC/WorldCat
173691415

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL5890186W

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