The effect of immigration along the distribution of wages

This paper analyses the effect immigration has on wages of native workers. Unlike most previous work, we estimate wage effects along the distribution of wages. We derive a flexible empirical strategy that does not rely on pre-allocating immigrants to particular skill groups. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that immigrants downgrade considerably upon arrival. As for the effects on native wages, we find that immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution, but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage distribution. The overall wage effect of immigration is slightly positive. The positive wage effects we find are, although modest, too large to be explained by an immigration surplus. We suggest alternative explanations, based on the idea that immigrants are paid less than the value of what they contribute to production, generating therefore a surplus, and we assess the magnitude of these effects

Cittadini senza diritti: abitare e lavorare a Milano da clandestini

Lo scopo di questo rapporto è di presentare le principali caratteristiche socio-demografiche dell’utenza Naga (Associazione Volontaria di Assistenza SocioSanitaria e per i Diritti di Stranieri e Nomadi Onlus), che costituisce una delle più grandi banche dati sull’immigrazione irregolare. A tal fine analizzeremo i dati contenuti nelle cartelle mediche del Naga per i pazienti che sono stati registrati tra il gennaio 2000 e il dicembre 2006, soffermandoci sulla loro nazionalità, genere, situazione familiare, anzianità migratoria, livello di istruzione, condizione lavorativa e situazione abitativa. Dall’analisi emerge un quadro delle caratteristiche e delle condizioni dei migranti privi di permesso di soggiorno del tutto diverso da quello spesso proposto nel dibattito politico e mediatico italiano. Gli immigrati irregolari sono giovani giunti di recente in Italia, ma hanno livelli di istruzione e tassi di occupazione che eguagliano – se non addirittura superano – quelli della popolazione residente in Italia. Le loro condizioni socioabitative, invece, sono assolutamente critiche e lontanissime dagli standard italiani

Evaluating the Labour Market Integration of New Immigrants in the UK

This article analyses the labour market integration of newly arrived immigrants in the UK labour market, based on data from the UK Labour Force Survey. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom since 2000 and distinguish different cohorts based on the year of their arrival in the country. We examine the extent to which these new arrivals were able to enter work and move up into skilled jobs, and analyse the sectors of the economy that have proved most amenable to this progression. The analysis indicates that these new arrivals fared relatively well in the workforce. In part as a result of their relative youth and high education levels, many new arrivals (especially those from the European Union and in particular the EU10 countries) moved straight into work

Migration and public finances in the EU

We provide novel and comprehensive evidence on the net fiscal contributions of natives and migrants to the governmental budgets of EU countries. We account for income taxes and cash benefits, along with indirect taxes and in-kind benefits, which are often missing in standard datasets. We find that on average, migrants were net contributors to public finances over the period of 2014–2018 in the EU and, moreover, that they contribute approximately €1.5 thousand more per capita each year than natives. We also show that this difference is partly due to the selection on characteristics that make migrants net fiscal contributors, such as demographic factors and employment probability

The Costs, Quality, and Scalability of Blended Learning in Postgraduate Management Education

With its combination of online and face-to-face interaction, blended learning is increasingly being employed in postgraduate education. To date, most empirical research on the topic has focused on the design and relative effectiveness of online versus in-person learning. Meanwhile, any exploration of the costs of its delivery has often been neglected. In this study, we propose a framework to assess the costs and cost-effectiveness of alternative designs of blended postgraduate programs, and then empirically apply it to an innovative blended Master of Business Administration (MBA) course as compared with similar MBAs taught at the same institution, with the differences lying in their proportions of online content and the intensity of their use. We applied the Community of Inquiry framework to show that the program with the most intensive use of online learning is also the most effective in terms of student cognitive gain. However, it is not the most cost-effective when compared to other, less online-intensive alternatives. We also found that this result depends on the scalability constraints imposed by the design of the programs. The implications of the scalability versus the quality versus the costs of blended education are then discussed

Inequities in immigrants’ access to health care services : disentangling potential barriers

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess whether immigrants suffer from unequal access to health care services, that add to prevailing socioeconomic barriers to care. Design/methodology/approach: Using a uniquely rich Italian health survey, the authors estimate the correlation between immigrant status and the probability of accessing health services, conditional on a rich set of individual and territorial characteristics. Findings: Results show that foreigners are more likely to contact emergency services and less likely to visit specialist doctors and use preventive care. Similar results hold for second-generation immigrants. Originality/value: The authors discuss the sources of observed inequities and suggest tentative policy implications to promote equal access