Reservation wages of first- and second-generation migrants

ABSTRACT

We analyse the reservation wages of first- and second-generation migrants, based on rich survey data of the unemployed in Germany. Our results confirm the hypothesis that reservation wages increase over migrant generations and over time, suggesting that the mobility benefit of immigration may be limited in time.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• unemployment
• job search
• reservation wages

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J15
• J61
• J64

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

This article is a revised and shortened version of IZA Discussion Paper No. 5396. Financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the project ‘Ethnic Diversity and Labor Market Success’ in the DFG-Priority Program ‘Flexibility in Heterogeneous Labor Markets’ is gratefully acknowledged. This study uses the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey as provided by the International Data Service Center (IDSC) of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). This dataset consists of survey information on individuals who entered unemployment between June 2007 and May 2008 in Germany (Arni et al. 2014). We would like to thank Barry R. Chiswick, Martin Guzi, Hani Mansour, Simone Schüller as well as conference and seminar participants in Bonn, Denver CO, Nuremberg and Washington DC for valuable discussions and helpful comments. All remaining errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the project ‘Ethnic Diversity and Labor Market Success’ in the DFG-Priority Program ‘Flexibility in Heterogeneous Labor Markets’ is gratefully acknowledged.