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Does Immigration Raise Blue and White Collar Wages of Natives? The Case of Italy
Author(s) -
Staffolani Stefano,
Valentini Enzo
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
labour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1467-9914
pISSN - 1121-7081
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9914.2010.00491.x
Subject(s) - immigration , economics , wage , native born , labour economics , collar , blue collar , white (mutation) , empirical evidence , demographic economics , real wages , political science , chemistry , philosophy , finance , epistemology , law , gene , biochemistry
This paper analyses both theoretically and empirically the effects of immigration on the wage rate of native workers. There is rare evidence in empirical literature that immigration generates a fall in the wages of manual workers. By hypothesizing an economic system where advanced firms buy an intermediate good from traditional firms, which employ manual workers in both clean and dirty tasks, the latter being more disliked by native workers, we present a theoretical model that justifies these results. We conclude that native skilled wages always increase whereas native unskilled wages can both increase or decrease with immigration. An empirical analysis of the Italian labour market follows, showing that native workers' wages always rise with immigration.