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Does immigration lead to a reduction of native wages and employment? : a review of the regional labour market outcomes of migration in Germany and the UK

In this thesis the regional effects of immigration onto native wages and employment in the United Kingdom and in Germany were examined. Using the regional survey data of the British QLFS from 1993-2009, the estimation results confirmed that foreign workers and British are imperfect substitutes. Natives and immigrants with middle education are found to have the highest elasticity of substitution. Unsurprisingly, the largest percentage of foreign population has been found to be in England. In the analysed time of 1993 until 2009, only middle educated British experienced negative earnings and employment effects caused by immigration. Taking the wage and employment impacts for natives of all three skill groups in the four British countries and the UK itself into account, it can be seen that the positive wage effects were numerically larger than the negative employment changes. Applying the individual data of the German SOEP from 1984-2007 (from 1994 including data about East Germany), imperfect substitution between regional Germans and foreigners were determined. Examining several regions of West Germany (North- West and Middle-South-West) in the time frame of 1994-2007, it could be seen that natives with low and middle education gained in their wages but lost in their employment to immigrants of similar education. However, highly skilled German P a g e | 2 citizens were confronted with a wage loss but higher employment. The analysis of the effect of immigration on native wages and employment in East Germany led to interesting results. Low, middle and highly educated East German natives experienced either a minimal wage increase or no wage change. Considering the employment in East Germany, low educated natives saw a small rise in their employment. However, no change could be found in the employment of middle and highly skilled workers in East Germany.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:553829
Date January 2011
CreatorsPocher, Eva
PublisherUniversity of Aberdeen
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=167827

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