Journal of Economic Literature
ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)
Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas: A Review Essay
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 54,
no. 4, December 2016
(pp. 1333–49)
Abstract
We review Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas, published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. The book is written as a graduate-level textbook, and summarizes and updates many of Borjas's important contributions to the field over the past thirty years. A key message of the book is that immigration poses significant costs to many members of the host-country labor market. Though the theoretical and econometric approaches presented in the book will be very useful for students and specialists in the field, we argue that the book presents a one-sided view of immigration, with little or no attention to the growing body of work that offers a more nuanced picture of how immigrants fit into the host-country market and affect native workers.Citation
Card, David, and Giovanni Peri. 2016. "Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas: A Review Essay." Journal of Economic Literature, 54 (4): 1333–49. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20151248Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- A22 Economic Education and Teaching of Economics: Undergraduate
- J11 Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- J61 Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
- R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics