Offshoring, Automation, Low-Skilled Immigration, and Labor Market Polarization

We show that the observed polarization of employment toward the high- and low-skill occupations disappears when only native workers are considered. Instead, low-skilled immigration explains employment growth at the low tail of the skill distribution. Moreover, while employment rose, wages remained subdued in low-skill occupations. A data-disciplined structural model accounts for this evidence: Offshoring and automation negatively affect middle-skill occupations but enhance employment and wages for the high-skilled. Low-skill employment is sheltered from offshoring and automation, as it consists of manual, non-tradable services. However, low-skilled immigration depresses low-skill wages and encourages native workers to move into skilled occupations through training. (JEL F16, J24, J31, J61, M53)

The Calcutta Chromosome: An Acknowledgement of Indigenous Caliber and Extrapolation upon the History of Malaria Parasite Discovery

Amitav Ghosh novel The Calcutta Chromosome: a Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery is considered, - an outstanding literary work in which the writer reveals a discourse of science versus counter-science from the earlier world of social, cultural and ethnical history of Indian subcontinent. India is home to the oldest continuous civilization, nevertheless, the long invasive rule of the Mughals and the Britishers has framed minds to undervalue the indigenous knowledge, practices, customs and discourses. Amitav Ghosh novel denies the Western supremacy in every field and puts a question mark in the invention of Anopheles maculipennis as the cause of malaria. Dr. Ronald Ross received the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discovery of malaria parasite but Ami- tav Ghosh supports the contribution of Indian assistants Mangala and Laakhan who were not acknowledged by the British researchers. The novel reflects a postcolonial approach to interpret Western scientific mechanism, posits the question to unethical exploitation of native workers by the English and gives voice to the traditional knowledge of the subalterns. An integral part of Ghoshs approach in this novel is to illuminate the richness of ideas and complexity of Indigenous life, and to create a place where aboriginals are acknowledged for their remarkable contributions.

Shoring up economic refugees: Venezuelan migrants in the Ecuadoran labor market

Ecuador became the third largest receiver of the 4.3 million Venezuelans who left their country in the last five years, hosting around 10 per cent of them. Little is known about the characteristics of these migrants and their labor market outcomes. This article fills this gap by analyzing a new large survey (EPEC). On average, Venezuelan workers are highly skilled and have high rates of employment, compared with Ecuadorans. However, their employment is of much lower quality, characterized by low wages, and high rates of informality and temporality. Venezuelans have experienced significant occupational downgrading, relative to their employment prior to emigration. As a result, despite their high educational attainment, Venezuelans primarily compete for jobs with the least skilled and more economically vulnerable Ecuadoran workers. Our simulations suggest that measures that allow Venezuelans to obtain employment that matches their skills, such as facilitating the conversion of education credentials, would increase Ecuador’s GDP between 1.6 and 1.9 per cent and alleviate the pressure on disadvantaged native workers. We also show that providing work permits to Venezuelan workers would substantially reduce their rates of informality and increase their average earnings.

Immigration and the Future of the Welfare State in Europe

We analyze the effect of immigration on attitudes toward income redistribution in twenty-eight European countries over the period 2002 to 2012, before the “refugee crisis.” We find that native workers lower their support for redistribution if the share of immigration in their country is high. This effect is larger for individuals who hold negative views regarding immigration but is smaller when immigrants are culturally closer to natives and come from richer-origin countries. The effect also varies with native workers’ and immigrants’ education: more educated natives support more redistribution if immigrants are also relatively educated. Overall, our results show that the negative effect of immigration on attitudes toward redistribution is relatively small and is counterbalanced among skilled natives by positive second-order effects for the quality and diversity of immigration.

On the Implications of Culture Shock on Immigrant Workers and their Workloads

Given the increased proportion of foreign workers within the American workforce over the past few years, one must consider the ways in which disparities still exist between them and native workers, and how to eliminate these disparities in order to allow for more economically efficient job performance. Culture shock is one of the key factors that has caused work disparities between foreign workers and native workers, especially due to the increases in fatigue, stress, and fear of obtaining permanent residency. This paper suggests that culture shock is largely responsible for increased work overload in foreign workers, and argues that numerous vicious cycles associated with it, such as sparks of tiredness and insecurity, eventually cause repeated instances of work stress that contribute to greater inefficiency over time, which can be solved by being more aware of possible acclimation programs that help workers become more accustomed to their new environments.

Regional labour market effects of immigration on low-skilled workers: the case of Sweden 1990–2003

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of immigration on the labour market outcomes of low-educated natives (i.e. residents without a university diploma). Using the labour market competition theory, which argues that the labour market effects of natives depend on the skill set of immigrants, the paper addresses whether immigrants are complementary to or substitutes for native workers.Design/methodology/approachLongitudinal matched employer–employee data on Sweden are used to estimate how low-educated natives, in regions experiencing the greatest influx of refugees from the Balkan wars, responded to this supply shock with regard to real wages, employment and job mobility between 1990 and 2003.FindingsFirst, the analysis shows that low-educated native workers respond to the arrival of immigrants with an increase in real wages. Second, although employment prospects in general worsened for low-skilled workers in most regions, this is not attributable to the regions experiencing the largest supply shock. Third, there are indications that low-skilled natives in immigration-rich regions are more likely to change workplace, particularly in combination with moving upwards in the wage distribution.Originality/valueRather than seeing an emergence of the commonly perceived displacement mechanism when an economy is subject to a supply shock, the regional findings suggest that high inflows of immigrants tend to induce a mechanism that pulls native workers upwards in the wage distribution. This is important, as the proportion of immigrants is seldom evenly distributed within a nation.