Immigration - Trade Nexus : the Case of the EU

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Bearing in mind the intensification of international migration flows nowadays, this study contributes to the discussion on the reciprocity of international migration flows and the links between international migration and other aspects of globalization, namely international trade in goods. The empirical findings of the study concerning immigration and trade of the EU contribute to the notion of international migration and international trade being complementary phenomena.
The EU was chosen as a focus of this research, as in the last decades the region has been at the heart of immigration processes as well as policy developments. Besides, most of the previous studies on the relationship between migration and trade having been conducted on a single country basis, this study contributes to the literature by examining all the EU countries over the lengthy period of time.
Regression analysis of the gravity model of trade augmented with immigration variables that encompassed the countries of EU and their trading partners for the years 2000 to 2012 showed that immigration to the EU tends to have a trade-creating effect. All the models used in this study (OLS for pooled data, OLS for panel data with fixed and random effects, Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Estimation) showed consistent results (with all the variables being statistically significant). However, PPML estimation was chosen as the least biased and more efficient estimator.
According to the findings, the trade-creating effect of immigration tends to be stronger for import from a migrant-sending country to a migrant receiving country, than for the export from the receiving to the sending country. This can be explained by the combination of network and preference effects.
The immigration elasticity of trade turned out to be higher for the EU-EU trade than for the EU-non-EU one. Liberalized movement of people had a bigger beneficial effect on intra-regional trade.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• List of tables ii
• List of figures iii
• I. INTRODUCTION 1
• II. CURRENT TRENDS 6
• 1. Global trends in international migration 6
• 2. European Union as a migration destination 10
• 3. EU trade: main tendencies 22
• III. INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND TRADE: THEORY 28
• 1. From substitutes to complementaries 28
• 2. Causal links between migration and trade augmentation 30
• IV. TRADE-CREATING EFFECT OF MIGRATION: PREVIOUS STUDIES REVIEW 32
• 1. Conventional methodological approach 32
• 2. Mixed evidence on trade-creating effect of immigration 33
• 3. Studies focusing on the EU 36
• V. IMMIGRATION AND TRADE NEXUS IN THE EU: GRAVITY MODEL 38
• 1. Hypotheses 38
• 2. Gravity model used in this study 39
• 3. Data and data preparation 43
• 4. Preliminary data analysis 45
• 5. Methodology 48
• 6. Findings and interpretation 54
• 7. Limitations of this study 61
• VI. CONCLUSIONS 63
• VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 65
• VIII. APPENDIX 71