RESTRICTING EMPLOYMENT OF LOW-PAID IMMIGRANTS: A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM

This paper builds on earlier work that used a general-equilibrium model to show that reducing employment of unauthorized immigrants in the United States through a tighter border-security policy lowers the average income of legal residents. Here we exploit further the detail available in the general-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Contemporary economic policy 2014-07, Vol.32 (3), p.639
Main Authors: Dixon, Peter B, Rimmer, Maureen T, Roberts, Bryan W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Economic policy
Employment
Equilibrium
Function
Immigrants
Immigration policy
National security
Noncitizens
Residents
Studies
Wage & price controls
Wage rates
Welfare
Work
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Summary:This paper builds on earlier work that used a general-equilibrium model to show that reducing employment of unauthorized immigrants in the United States through a tighter border-security policy lowers the average income of legal residents. Here we exploit further the detail available in the general-equilibrium model to look at distributional effects, recognizing that the policy increases wage rates for low-paid legal workers. We assess the social welfare effect on legal workers using a constant elasticity of substitution social welfare function. We contrast our general-equilibrium approach to immigration analysis with the more commonly used partial-equilibrium, econometric approach. [web URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/coep.12008/abstract]
ISSN:1074-3529
1465-7287