Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Parsons, Christopher; Vezina, Pierre-Louis
• 署名单位: University of Western Australia; University of London; King's College London
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12457
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: F210-F234
• 关键词: INTERNATIONAL-TRADE; UNITED-STATES; IMPACT; immigration; MARKET; FLOWS; LABOR

摘要

We exploit a unique event in human history, the exodus of the Vietnamese Boat People to the US, to provide evidence for the causal pro-trade effect of migrants. This episode represents an ideal natural experiment as the large immigration shock, the first wave of which comprised refugees exogenously allocated across the US, occurred over a 20-year period during which time the US imposed a complete trade embargo on Vietnam. Following the lifting of trade restrictions in 1994, US exports to Vietnam grew most in US states with larger Vietnamese populations, themselves the result of larger refugee inflows 20years earlier.