Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
移民与劳动力需求曲线的斜率：区域劳动力市场模型中企业异质性的作用
Immigration and the Slope of the Labour Demand Curve: The Role of Firm Heterogeneity in a Model of Regional Labour Markets
摘要
In this paper, we provide new explanations for the puzzling findings that migrants do not decrease natives’ wages and that skilled immigration can increase them. We develop a model with regional labour markets and heterogeneous firms in which workers of different skill levels are imperfect substitutes, but for a given skill level, natives and migrants are perfect substitutes within a firm. In this setting, a skilled labour supply shock due to immigration induces skill-intensive firms to expand. These across-firm reallocations reduce the within-firm substitution between skilled and unskilled workers, thus limiting relative wage adjustments. When this mechanism is coupled with human capital externalities that are skill-neutral at the firm level but skill-biased on aggregate, the same skilled immigration shock can increase absolute and relative skilled wages. These two mechanisms are quantitatively important: the negative impact of immigration on natives’ wages is reduced by at least one-third when the across-firm reallocation mechanism is at work, and human-capital externalities can revert the sign of this relation.
中文摘要
本文为移民未降低本地劳动者工资以及技术移民反而可能提高其工资这一令人困惑的发现提供了新的解释。我们构建了一个包含区域劳动力市场和异质性企业的模型，其中不同技能水平的劳动者是不完全替代品，但在给定技能水平下，本地劳动者与移民在企业内部是完全替代品。在这一设定下，由移民引起的技术劳动力供给冲击促使技能密集型企业扩张。这些跨企业再配置减少了企业内部技术劳动者与非技术劳动者之间的替代性，从而限制了相对工资调整。当这一机制与企业层面技能中性但总量层面技能偏向的人力资本外部性相结合时，同样的技术移民冲击可以提高技术劳动者的绝对工资和相对工资。这两种机制在数量上具有重要意义：当跨企业再配置机制发挥作用时，移民对本地劳动者工资的负面影响至少减少三分之一，而人力资本外部性可以逆转这一关系的符号。