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The Economic Performance of Immigrants: a Theory of Assortative Matching
Author(s) -
Hendricks Lutz
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2354.00116
Subject(s) - immigration , earnings , matching (statistics) , economics , imperfect , wage , perfect information , cluster (spacecraft) , demographic economics , range (aeronautics) , econometrics , labour economics , microeconomics , geography , computer science , statistics , mathematics , archaeology , linguistics , philosophy , accounting , programming language , materials science , composite material
The economic performance of U.S. immigrants differs substantially from that of natives in ways that pose difficulties for standard theories of migration. In particular, immigrants cluster geographically and are often employed together. Immigrant earnings differ by origin and time spent in the United States, even after controlling for education and experience. A large fraction of immigrants eventually returns home, even to low‐wage countries. This article offers a theory of international migration based on assortative matching under imperfect information that accounts for a broad range of these empirical regularities.