Mauro Lanati

Do High-Skill Immigrants trigger High-Quality Trade?

This paper investigates the links between product quality and the pro-trade effect of ethnic networks using a large panel on bilateral stocks of immigrants with information for 19 OECD destination countries and 177 origin countries. In line with the approach of Rauch and Trindade, we classify traded goods according to their quality level and separately estimate pro-trade elasticity of ethnic networks for each subgroup. We allow for heterogeneity of immigrants according to both the level of per capita income of their country of origin and their education level. Our findings suggest that the trend of the pro-trade effect of immigrants over quality seems to be driven by the North–South specialisation across varieties for both supply and demand. Indeed, ethnic networks mostly facilitate imports of those varieties for which their countries of origin have a comparative advantage; as for exports, ethnic networks are more effective in promoting exports to their homeland of those varieties for which there is relatively higher demand. We show that the same trend applies to products characterised by the same degree of differentiation according to the classification proposed by Rauch and – given their lower liquidity constraints and advantages in human capital – we find a greater impact of high-skilled migrants consistent across all quality levels.

Asymmetric cultural proximity and greenfield FDI

This paper investigates the role of asymmetric cultural proximity (CP) on greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI). We build a conceptual framework that explicitly accounts for cultural attractiveness as an asymmetric dimension within a broad notion of CP. We revisit the existing supply/origin-side theories of bilateral FDI to derive a gravity equation suited for testing the impact of (i) the attractiveness of destinations culture for citizens in the origin country, and (ii) the attractiveness of origins culture for individuals in the destination economy. While the role of the former direction of CP is well understood in the literature, we propose new mechanisms to rationalize that of the latter. We use exports and imports of cultural goods to proxy for the two directions of asymmetric and time-dependent CP in the same empirical specification. The econometric analysis confirms a positive role of asymmetric CP as a determinant of Greenfield FDI. Moreover, it suggests a stronger investment effect of the origins culture attractiveness for the destination country. Finally, it provides support for the mechanisms proposed in the theoretical discussion.

The import of 'cultural goods' and emigration : an unexplored relation

The paper examines the effect of the import of cultural goods as defined by UNESCO (2009): cultural heritage, performance, visual arts, books, audio-visual material and design on emigration decisions. The import of cultural goods, by affecting individual preferences, reduces the cost of any migration move and favors outflows towards exporting countries. A gravity model for 33 OECD destination countries and 184 sending ones has been estimated for the period 2009-2013. The issue of identification and endogeneity has been addressed through the inclusion of a comprehensive set of fixed effects and by instrumenting cultural imports with past flows and an imputed share of cultural imports a la Card (2001). The positive relationship is robust across different classifications for cultural goods, areas of destination and alternative econometric techniques.

The indirect pro-trade effects of Indian ethnic networks

DEMO: India-EU MaP - Developing Evidence based Management and Operations in India-EU Migration and Partnership

The sectoral pro-trade effects of ethnic networks within a Ricardian model of trade

This paper investigates the trade migration link within a Ricardian model` a la Eaton and Kortum (2002) and it quantifies the pro-trade effects of immigrants for 18 manufactur- ing sectors in a sample of 19 OECD countries. The results are robust across different econometric specifications and they indicate pulp, paper, paper products, printing and publishing as the sector where immigration has the greatest impact on trade. The analy- sis shows that accounting for ethnic networks in the trade share equation has important implications for the estimation of trade cost elasticity parameter across all manufacturing sectors. By following a two-step approach to estimate trade cost elasticity at sector level where q is proportional to the effect of wages on exporter fixed effects, I find that in total manufacturing q decreases by 1.03 when ethnic networks are included among the determinants of trade. This drop of trade cost elasticity approximately corresponds - on average - to a welfare gain of 4.16% of national income.