Essays on Migration and Trade

Abstract

Dissertation Abstract The unifying theme of my dissertation is access to foreign markets, be it through social networks (immigration), or independent NGO-driven initiatives (Fair Trade). In the first paper, "Immigrant Networks, Trade Creation, and Trade Diversion", I derive a simple gravity model with matching and use data on the foreign-born population located in 19 OECD-member countries to estimate the impact of immigrant links on trade. The relative impact on trade of immigrant networks declines with the GDP of source country and is generally smaller than estimates from preceding studies. The theoretical framework explicitly models forgone bilateral trade and shifts in trade flows due to immigrant links. There is some empirical evidence that immigrant networks change trade flows between countries. The net effect on total trade of a 10-percent increase in the overall immigrant stock varies between -0.12 and 1.18 percent for host countries and - 6.99 and 2.58 percent for source countries in the sample. The second essay entitled "Expatriates and Trade" evaluates the contribution to bilateral trade flows of expatriates from the OECD economies living in less developed countries. Similarly to the results of the existing research that focused on immigrants moving in the opposite direction, I find that the...

The unifying theme of my dissertation is access to foreign markets, be it through social networks (immigration), or independent NGO-driven initiatives (Fair Trade). In the first paper, "Immigrant Networks, Trade Creation, and Trade Diversion", I derive a simple gravity model with matching and use data on the foreign-born population located in 19 OECD-member countries to estimate the impact of immigrant links on trade. The relative impact on trade of immigrant networks declines with the GDP of source country and is generally smaller than estimates from preceding studies. The theoretical framework explicitly models forgone bilateral trade and shifts in trade flows due to immigrant links. There is some empirical evidence that immigrant networks change trade flows between countries. The net effect on total trade of a 10-percent increase in the overall immigrant stock varies between -0.12 and 1.18 percent for host countries and -6.99 and 2.58 percent for source countries in the sample. The second essay entitled "Expatriates and Trade" evaluates the contribution to bilateral trade flows of expatriates from the OECD economies living in less developed countries. Similarly to the results of the existing research that focused on immigrants moving in the opposite direction, I find that the expatriates promote trade...