HDRO Conference Room
20 April 2009
Time: 1.00- 2.00 p.m.
Topic
Immigration to the UK has risen in the past 10 years and has had a measurable effect on the supply of different types of labour. But, existing studies of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers in the UK (e.g. Dustmann, Fabbri and Preston, 2005) have failed to find any significant effect. This is something of a puzzle since Card and Lemieux, (2001) have shown that changes in the relative supply of educated natives do seem to have measurable effects on the wage structure. This paper offers a resolution of this puzzle – natives and immigrants are imperfect substitutes, so that an increase in immigration reduces the wages of immigrants relative to natives. We show this using a pooled time series of British cross-sectional micro data of observations on male wages and employment from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. This lack of substitution also means that there is little discernable effect of increased immigration on the wages of native-born workers.
About the Speaker
Marco Manacorda (Ph.D. UCL, 2000) is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Economics at Queen Mary, University of London and a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics. He is a recipient of the Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellowship in the Social Sciences (2002-2005). He is also a CEPR Research Affiliate in the Public Policy and Labor Economics Programmes, and a Research Fellow at IZA (Bonn), CESIFO (University of Munich) and CHILD (University of Turin). Over the years, he has hold short term visiting positions in a number of European and American universities as well as in the Research Department of the World Bank.
Marco's research focuses on how incentives are shaped by Public Policies, with the ultimate aim of uncovering the micro-determinants of individual behavior. His research so far has analyzed topics such as Wage Institutions, Schooling and Child Labor, Migration and Family Formation, Social Protection and Welfare, Unemployment and Wage Inequality, in both Developed and Developing countries. His work appears - among other outlets - in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association.
Marco Manacorda currently advises the Uruguayan government on the evaluation of the PANES (Plan de Atencion Nacional a la Emergencia Social). His research has been featured - among others - in The Guardian, The Independent, TIME, the Daily Telegraph, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, Metro. He is also an occasional TV and radio commentator.
To attend
The seminar takes place in the HDRO Conference Room, 304 East 45th Street, FF building 12th Floor. For more information, and to organize a building pass, please contact melissa.hernandez@undp.org
Coffee and light refreshments will be available. Please feel free to forward this invitation to interested colleagues.
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