Title:Immigration and Labor Market Dynamics

Speaker:Jiaming Mao, Xiamen University

Host:Associate professor, RIEM, SWUFE

Time:14:00-15:30, Dec. 2, Friday

Venue:Yide building H503, Liulin Campus

Abstract: This paper studies labor market response to immigration by estimating a structural dynamic general equilibrium model of the U.S. labor market and using the estimated model to analyze the effects of alternative immigration policies. The model features a multi-sector economy with heterogenous native and immigrant workers. Labor supply is endogenous and workers self-select into their sector and occupation of employment subject to costly mobility. Our empirical approach allows for unobserved heterogeneity and a general substitution pattern among worker alternatives. We show how to tractably uncover model parameters without explicitly modeling the evolution of market-level state variables. The model is fit to the U.S. Current Population Survey. Using the estimated model, we simulate the labor market consequences of various immigration policy experiments and calculate the resulting welfare gains and losses to different types of workers.