Immigration and international prices

Abstract

This paper considers the relation between immigration and prices in a number of countries across the world over the period from 1990 to 2006. Immigration is shown to have a negative impact on international relative prices. A 10% increase in the share of immigrant workers in total employment decreases the prices of final products by as much as 3%. Our results suggest that the tendency of this factor of production to relocate to relatively expensive high-wage countries exerts downward pressure on prices of tradeables and non-tradeables there relative to other locations. The effect of immigration on prices is more evident for goods consumed by immigrants as compared to goods produced by immigrants. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.