Immigrants’ Wage Performance in a Routine Biased Technological Change Era: France 1994–2012

2019/10/01 by Eva Moreno‐Galbis, Eva Moreno Galbis, Jeremy Tanguy +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

paper · doi:10.1111/irel.12245

openalex publication_date 2019/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Over the period 1994–2012, immigrants’ wage growth in France outperformed that of natives. We investigate to what extent changes in task‐specific returns to skills contributed to this wage dynamics differential through two channels: changes in the valuation of skills (price effect) and occupational sorting (quantity effect). We find that the wage growth premium of immigrants is mainly explained by the progressive reallocation of immigrants toward tasks whose returns increase over time. Immigrants seem to have taken advantage of labor demand restructuring driven by globalization and technological changes.

Citations

• SOME THOUGHTS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF EARNINGS 1
• How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?
• Changes in Relative Wages, 1963-1987: Supply and Demand Factors
• A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity
• Highly Educated Immigrants and Native Occupational Choice
• Changes in Returns to Task-Specific Skills and Gender Wage Gap

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