Migrant Networks: Empirical Implications for the Italian Bilateral Trade

Abstract

A significant number of empirical studies, focusing on different countries, have found a positive link between migration and trade. This paper studies the relationship between emigration, immigration and trade using Italian data. The sample regards 51 foreign trading partners and spans from 1990 to 2005. The results suggest that networks of Italian emigrants in foreign countries boost bilateral trade. The effects of immigrants are weak on exports and negative on imports. Results do not change when cultural and institutional dissimilarities between countries are considered.International migration, Italian bilateral trade,

Bridging Trade Theory and Labour Econometrics: The Effects of International Migration*

“…, 2009); Switzerland (Kandogan, 2009; Tai, 2009); Germany (Bruder, 2004); Denmark (White, 2007a); France (Briant et al ., 2009); Spain (Blanes‐Cristóbal, 2004, 2005, 2008); Greece (Piperakis et al. , 2003); Italy (Murat and Pistoresi, 2009); the EU 15 (Parsons, 2005); Australia (White and Tadesse, 2007); New Zealand (Bryant et al ., 2004) and Malaysia (Hong and Santhapparaj, 2006). 24 Very broadly, and with very few exceptions, these papers consistently find significant positive effects of immigration on trade – whether measured as imports or exports.…”

“…23 Building on Gould's original work, a sizable literature of gravity-based estimates of the effect of migration on trade has developed. The single most studied reference country is the US (Dunlevy and Hutchinson, 1999;Hutchinson and Dunlevy, 2001;Co et al, 2004;Herander and Saavedra, 2005;Mundra, 2005;Dunlevy, 2006;Millimet and Osang, 2007;Bandyopadhyay et al, 2008;White, 2008, 2010;White, 2007bWhite, , 2009Tadesse, 2008a, 2008b;Jansen and Piermartini, 2009); however, there are also analyses featuring Canada (Helliwell, 1997;Head and Ries, 1998;Ching and Chen, 2000;Wagner et al, 2002;Jiang, 2007;Partridge and Furtan, 2008); the UK (Girma and Yu, 2002;Ghatak et al, 2009); Switzerland (Kandogan, 2009;Tai, 2009); Germany (Bruder, 2004); Denmark (White, 2007a); France (Briant et al, 2009);Spain (Blanes-Cristóbal, 2004; Greece (Piperakis et al, 2003); Italy (Murat and Pistoresi, 2009); the EU 15 (Parsons, 2005); Australia (White and Tadesse, 2007); New Zealand (Bryant et al, 2004) and Malaysia (Hong and Santhapparaj, 2006). 24 Very broadly, and with very few exceptions, these papers consistently find significant positive effects of immigration on trade -whether measured as imports or exports.…”

Emigrant Effects on Trade: Re-examining the Immigrant-trade Link from the Home Country Perspective

“…Typically employing immigration data for a single host country, these studies estimate the impact of the size of immigrant populations on bilateral trade flows between the host country and home countries of the various immigrant groups. On the other hand, only a small number of studies [Ehrlich and Bacarreza, 2006;Murat and Pistoresi, 2009a] undertake similar exercise from the standpoint of a home country -that is, how the size of a home country's emigrant flows to multiple host countries impacts the volume of trade between the home and hosts.…”

The Role of Migration in the Variety and Quality of Trade: Evidence from Germany

“…In the range of these empirical contributions, most scholars have centred on a single country and the effects of immigration on trade between the analysed country and its trading partners. Several works belong to this group: Head and Ries (1998) and Partridge and Furtan (2008) focus on Canada; Dunlevy and Hutchinson (1999), Jansen and Piermartini (2009) Murat andPistoresi (2009) andParsons (2012) represent an exception. Indeed, these authors investigate simultaneously the effects of both immigration and emigration on trade, pointing out that the absence of one of them leads to overestimate the relevance of the other.…”