Gaetano Basso, Giovanni Peri, and Ahmed Rahman find that immigrants to the United States improve the economic lot of native-born Americans. (HT David Levey) Here’s the abstract:
The US and Europe have both seen wage polarisation in the last three decades, in parallel with increasing technical automation. This column analyses the impact of immigration on this wage divergence via its effect on the labour supply side. It finds that immigration partially reverses natives’ polarisation of employment opportunities and wages by expanding aggregate demand and allowing natives to move to better paying occupations. Policies to reduce low-skilled migration with the aim of favouring native middle-class labour market opportunities may in fact do the opposite.
Amanda Little is rationally optimistic about the consequences of AI robots. (HT Walter Grinder)
Kevin Williamson remembers Martin Luther King, Jr.
Truly excellent news! Liberty Fund’s new edition, edited by Jerry Jordan, of Armen Alchian’s and William Allen’s great textbook, University Economics, will soon be available. (HT Jon Murphy) I recommend this book to everyone. And to every economist: I regard a close study of this book to be indispensable.
