Employment polarization: evidence from regions in Greece

This study first provides evidence compatible with the idea of employment polarization in the Greek labour market since the early 1990s. Then, using an instrumental variables approach, it uncovers the potential role of routine biased technological change in explaining these developments in the employment structure. The empirical results consistently suggest that employment has polarized more into regions with a higher initial routine share. Overall, the impact of technology on the employment rate is negligible, implying that the expansion of non-routine manual employment fully compensates for the destruction of jobs in middling, routine occupations

Native-immigrant wage differentials in Greece: discrimination and assimilation

Abstract: This paper applies the Blinder-Oaxaca methodology in order to decompose the average earnings differentials between Greek workers and different groups of immigrants. We use information about 8,429 individuals of which 1,185 are immigrants. The data are drawn from the Greek Labor Force Survey (2009). The main objective is to explore how much of the differential is explained by differences in observed characteristics. We also investigate the effect that assimilation has on the immigrants’ earnings. Our results provide empirical evidence that the part of the wage gap due to differences in the coefficients is largest for immigrants originating from non-EU countries and negative for those immigrants who terminated education in Greece

The impact of immigration on the greek labor market

This paper applies the “spatial correlations” methodology in order to investigate the impact of immigrants on the labor market performance of natives. We use information on 13 local labor markets for the period 1988-2008. The data are drawn from the Greek Labor Force Survey. We address the endogeneity of immigrants’ location choices by using an instrumental variables methodology. Our results provide empirical evidence that immigrants do not displace the indigenous workers. Also, there is evidence that: (i) medium skilled unemployment declines with immigration and (ii) labor force participation rises due to immigration

Immigration and the economic performance of countries

Using a global dataset of over 100 developed and developing countries, we attempt to identify the nexus between immigration and the economic performance of countries, as proxied by export sophistication. To isolate causal effects, we use instruments obtained from a pseudo-gravity model of bilateral immigration in the spirit of Frankel and Rose (2002). Employing an extensive set of institutional, demographic, climate and disease controls, we find that countries with high immigrant concentrations tend to exhibit lower performance

Native-immigrant wage differentials in Greece: discrimination and assimilation

This paper applies the Blinder-Oaxaca methodology in order to decompose the average earnings differentials between Greek workers and different groups of immigrants. We use information about 8,429 individuals of which 1,185 are immigrants. The data are drawn from the Greek Labor Force Survey (2009). The main objective is to explore how much of the differential is explained by differences in observed characteristics. We also investigate the effect that assimilation has on the immigrants’ earnings. Our results provide empirical evidence that the part of the wage gap due to differences in the coefficients is largest for immigrants originating from non-EU countries and negative for those immigrants who terminated education in Greece. Also, there is evidence that: (i) post-migration human capital is a significant determinant of immigrants earnings and (ii) human capital acquired in the countries of origin is not perfectly transferable

Immigration, Unemployment and Growth: Empirical Evidence from Greece

This paper applies cointegration analysis and Granger non-causality tests in order to identify the direction of causality between migration in Greece and two macroeconomic variables: real per capita GDP and unemployment. We use annual data for the period 1980-2011. The data are drawn from the International Migration Statistics (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund Database (IMF). Our results provide empirical evidence that the growth rates of GDP and unemployment cause migration in Granger’s sense. On the contrary, evidence of reverse causality is not established

Immigration, Unemployment and Growth: Empirical Evidence from Greece

Abstract: This paper applies cointegration analysis and Granger non-causality tests in order to identify the direction of causality between migration in Greece and two macroeconomic variables: GDP and unemployment. We use annual data for the 1980-2011 period. The data are drawn from the International Migration Statistics (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund Database (IMF). Our results provide empirical evidence that the growth rates of GDP and unemployment cause migration in Granger’s sense. On the contrary, evidence of reverse causality is not established

The impact of immigration on the greek labor market

Abstract: This paper applies the “spatial correlations” methodology in order to investigate the impact of immigrants on the unemployment rates of natives. We use information on 13 local labor markets for the 1988-2008 period. The data are drawn from the Greek Labor Force Survey. We address the endogeneity of immigrants’ location choices and measurement error by using an instrumental variables methodology. Our results provide empirical evidence that immigrants do not displace the indigenous workers. Also, there is evidence that: (i) medium skilled unemployment declines with immigration and (ii) labor force participation rises due to immigratio

Immigration and far-right voting: Evidence from Greece

In this paper we analyze the impact of immigration on Greek politics over the 2004-2012 period, exploiting panel data on 51 Greek regional units. We account for potential endogenous clustering of migrants into more “tolerant” regions by using a shift-share imputed instrument, based on their allocation in 1991. Overall, our results are consistent with idea that immigration is positively associated with the vote share of extreme-right parties. This finding appears to be robust to alternative controls, sample restrictions and different estimation methods. We do not find supportive evidence for the conjecture that natives “vote with their feet”, i.e. move away from regions with high immigrant concentrations. We also find that the political success of the far-right comes at the expense of “Leftist” parties. Importantly, concerns on criminality and competition for jobs and public resources appear to drive our findings