The Causes and the Economic Impact of Immigration: Empirical Evidence for Lithuania

During the last decade,Lithuania, asmost otherpost-soviet countries,demonstrated severely high emigration rates. As a result, the process ofemigration from the country is frequentlyanalysedin empirical studies. Yet, thereisadearth of research on immigrationinLithuania, making it difficult to sayanything about the effects. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap and to examinewhat exactly attracts immigrantsinLithuania and what is the impact that theimmigration flows have on the Lithuanian economy. Two models describing thecauses of immigration were constructed: one–for the situation before thefinancial crisis, another one–after it. In order to determine economic impact ofimmigration on Lithuanian economy some new information was developed, bychecking how (if) the main economic indicators are influenced by the growingextent of immigration