Analysis of the Economic Impacts of Immigration in the United States

23 pagesIn this paper, I attempt to establish a causal relationship between immigration and local economic outputs. My estimation sample consists of national data on each of education attainment, wages, and native employment, organized by state. The sample also contains state- and national-level data on other macroeconomic factors including population, unemployment, Consumer Price Index, and a construction of remittances, that I believe impact the economic outputs. Estimation reveals positive effects of immigration on educational attainment and wages, and an ambiguous effect of immigration on native employment. I then discuss potential theoretical economic explanations for my estimation results, ranging from simple uncorrected endogeneity to labor supply and demand interactions, and a complementarity effect leading to labor specialization among immigrants. In sum, my data shows immigration having positive or neutral impacts on each of the economic outputs listed above. In many cases, I find these impacts can be explained by conventional economic theory rather than issues with the data or estimation methodology used