March 9, 2008

More economists making fools out of themselves to promote immigration

Economists devote strikingly little attention to immigration, so they tend to be suckers for the occasional study that comes along supporting their prejudices. For example, recent papers by Ottaviano and Peri claiming that lots of immigrants in California made the natives better off got lots of play.

George Borjas of Harvard couldn't replicate their findings, however, and now he's finally figured out why:

The Ottaviano and Peri data ... classify ... high school juniors and seniors as part of the "high school dropout" workforce. Their finding of immigrant-native complementarity disappears if the analysis excludes these high school juniors and seniors.

Things that seem too good to be true usually aren’t.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/10/08, 1:02 AM

    Great post Steve, this is why its so much fun to visit your site.

    The MSM, so fond of deconstructing anything to do with Western culture, will not be rushing to publish Borjas' deconstruction of the Ottaviano and Peri data hitpiece, even though it would fit their template of just mindlessly publishing other people's work instead of doing some research for themselves.

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  2. Anonymous3/10/08, 6:31 AM

    It's all about externalities, and most of the externalities produced by immigrants can't be measured by "economists".

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  3. Anonymous3/10/08, 10:33 AM

    Just in case anyone at this site isn't aware of it, Robert Rector calculates that low-IQ third world minorities extract a net cost to the treasury of $19,588 per household per year:

    The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer
    heritage.org

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  4. Johnson3/10/08, 10:35 AM

    The economists are also not able to account for crime or higher levels of social spending (without corresponding increases in tax revenue). Or, the long term consequences of a 2nd generation of immigrants no longer willing to work 15 hours a day for 4$/hour and resort to crime.

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  5. Anonymous3/10/08, 10:41 AM

    For decades the MSM has been putting the blame for increasing wage inequality on free trade while ignoring the actual cause -- immigration.

    I suspect that the MSM is dominated by open borders protectionists.

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  6. Anonymous3/12/08, 9:16 AM

    Who benefits from all this? Who owns the MSM?

    ReplyDelete

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