Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
If you’ve followed the news the last few days, you know that there is a migrant caravan approaching the US border, 7000-people strong. But who are these people, why have they left Central America, and what do they want once they cross the border?
On World Refugee Day, we recognise the plight of the 25 million people who have been forced to flee their countries, to stand with them in solidarity and to appreciate the benefits that they have brought, or can bring to many economies. There are numerous studies that demonstrate the various economic benefits that accepting refugees can bring, and one of the most important from the receiving government’s point of view is the potential for refugees to become net fiscal contributors.
Too often, migration debates focus on what the effects of immigration are: Do migrants take jobs and drive down wages of native workers? Are refugees a drain on public services, taking advantage of social welfare? Facing this challenge means asking a different and more fruitful question: how different policy choices can produce positive outcomes and avoid negative ones.
This week, the 5th African Union-EU summit will take place in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, bringing together head of states from Europe and Africa. Given recent events on both continents and the international spotlight on the issue, migration will be a major agenda item. Here, we look at why migration is at a crossroads now and propose channels for legal, managed, mutually beneficial migration in the years to come.
Last week I blogged about a research discovery. An influential study had found that a 1980 wave of Cuban refugees into Miami, known as the Mariel Boatlift, had caused the wages of workers there to fall dramatically. In a new paper co-released by CGD and the National Bureau of Economic Research, my co-author and I revealed that large shifts in the racial composition of the underlying survey data could explain most or all of the same fall in wages. The author of the previous study, George Borjas, raised two substantive questions about our research, which I answer briefly in this post.
Do immigrants from poor countries hurt native workers? A study by an influential immigration economist at Harvard University recently found that a famous flood of Cuban immigrants into Miami dramatically reduced the wages of native workers. But there’s a problem. The Borjas study had a critical flaw that makes the finding spurious.
Kellyanne Conway called him a “man of action” after a whirlwind first week in which President Trump signed 14 Executive Orders and presidential memoranda, covering most of his key campaign issue areas from health to immigration to trade. In a series of blogs, CGD experts have been examining how some of these specific policy intentions could impact development progress. As you would expect from a group of economists, we believe in—and encourage—evidence-based policymaking, and here we look at what the existing evidence and research tell us about how likely these Executive Orders are to achieve the president’s stated goals.
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