@techreport{Dunlevy2001Trade,
abstract = {The belief that immigrants generate beneficial externalities in their host countries, specifically
in the form of an increased opportunity and ability of firms to expand their foreign trade, has
recently been challenged by George Borjas in Heaven?s Door (1999, p. 97) as having no
empirical support. Borjas? assertion ignores several recent papers that provide precisely that
evidence of a powerful pro-trade effect of international migration. Here we extend that body
of evidence by looking to history. We show that immigration, primarily from Europe between
1870 and 1910, had an important pro-trade effect on American exports. Our data set spans
the exports of 44 commodities to 17 countries observed at 5 year intervals. We use a
modified gravity model to examine the migrant stock-export relationship and find that United
States exports to a country were positively related to the size of the migrant stock of
immigrants from that country. The estimated strength of the effect varied across ?Old?
Europe, ?New? Europe, and non-Europe groupings of the trading partner countries. Exports
were also found to have been greater to English-speaking countries, and to countries with
per capita incomes similar to the United States. This relative per capita income effect became
stronger during the latter part of the period, whereas the migrant stock effect diminished after
1885.},
author = {James A. Dunlevy and William K. Hutchinson},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {F22; N71; F16; 330; Ethnic networks; information and trust bridges; gravity model; export promotion; Heckscher-Ohlin model; Linder model; Migranten; Internationale Wanderung; Ethnische Gruppe; Social Capital; Export; Au\ss{}enhandelsgeschichte; Sch\"{a}tzung; USA},
language = {eng},
number = {375},
title = {The Pro-Trade Effect of Immigration on American Exports During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries},
type = {IZA Discussion paper series},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/21235},
year = {2001}
}
