Immigration economics: A review

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Authors:

David Card, UC Berkeley and NBER
Giovanni Peri, UC Davis and NBER

Abstract:

We review Immigration Economics (IE) 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’ important contributions to the field over the past 30 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 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.