Estimating the Impact of Immigration in Ireland
Alan Barrett & Adele Bergin
What the paper says
The core objective of this paper is to review the research which has been undertaken on estimating the economic impacts of immigration in Ireland. By way of providing context, the paper begins with an overview of Ireland’s recent experience of immigration and of the research which has been conducted on the associated issues such as the characteristics and experiences of immigrants. As the approach taken to estimating the impacts of immigration is based on simulations using a model of Ireland’s labour market, details of the model are provided. Results from two studies are then presented. One study tended to show unambiguously positive outcomes, such as increased national output and reduced earnings inequality. However, a second study called into question the earlier findings on earnings inequality. While immigrants in Ireland are generally high-skilled, many were found to be working in occupations below their skill levels. Hence, high-skilled immigrants may be competing in the labour market with low-skilled natives. Accounting for this in the simulation exercises showed how immigration may have negatively impacted upon the earnings of low-skilled workers in Ireland.
8 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.74 × 0.4 = 0.30 |
| M · momentum | 0.20 × 0.15 = 0.03 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.