The Influence of Corruption and Language on the Protrade Effect of Immigrants: Evidence from the American States

Abstract

The protrade effect of immigrants on the bilateral export performance of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia with respect to 87 foreign countries is studied. This effect, which posits that a greater number of immigrants in a host location leads to increased trade between the host and the immigrants' origin country, has been supported in a number of studies. Here, we extend this approach and find that the immigrant effect is greater when the origin country's political system is more corrupt and less important when Spanish or English is the language of the origin country. State-level export data averaged over the 1990-1992 period are used. © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Heterogeneous effect of ethnic networks on international trade of Thailand: The role of family ties and ethnic diversity

“…In addition, we also control for the effect of institutional environment. This is in line with Dunlevy (2006), in which corruption is examined as the only institutional factor affecting bilateral trade. Apart from corruption, we also include additional institutional factors such as origin of legal system, extent of marketing and English language as control variables.…”

“…Other studies have focused on trade flows between a single English speaking country, such as the US or the UK, and origin countries of different ethnicities, with most results confirming the positive trade effect of ethnic networks (Bardhan & Guhathakurta, 2004;Dunlevy, 2006).…”

“…Dunlevy (2006) is by far the only study that has attempted to disentangle the heterogeneous effect of ethnic networks. Employing export data for fifty US states with eighty-seven foreign countries averaged over the period 1990 to 1992, Dunlevy (2006) found that the trade effect of the various ethnicities is stronger when the origin country's political system is more corrupt, and less important when Spanish or…”

The pro-trade effect of the brain drain: Sorting out confounding factors

“…So far, empirical gravity studies have typically focused on a single anchor country, see the survey of Wagner et al (2002). Dunlevy (2006) and Bandyopadhyay et al (2008) document a pro-trade effect of migration on the exports of US states. Kugler and Rapoport (2007) analyze how emigration into the US fosters capital formation; Docquier and Lodigiani (2006) extend this exercise to a cross-section of host countries.…”

Does Immigration Stimulate Foreign Trade? Evidence from Sweden

“…Girma and Yu (2002) demonstrated a positive link between exports and immigration from countries outside the former British Empire, although no significant link could be demonstrated for migration within the former Empire. Further evidence of a positive migrant impact on trade was provided by Herander and Saavedra (2005), Bandyopadhyay et al (2006), Dunlevy (2006) and Jansen and Piermartini (2009). However, the estimated effect varies in different studies: from around 0.1% to 3.5% increased trade as a result of a 10% increase in the total migrant stock in the country concerned.…”