How Low-skilled Immigration is Changing U.S. Prices and Labor Markets: Three Essays: Dissertation Summary

Authors

Patricia Cortes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Award Type

First Prize

Dissertation Advisor

David Autor

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on the effects of low-skilled immigration on U.S. prices and labor markets. The first essay uses confidential data from the Consumer Price Index to estimate the causal effect of low-skilled immigration on the prices of nontraded goods. The second essay is motivated by the first essay’s finding that low-skilled immigration reduces the prices of services such as housekeeping and babysitting, and explores whether American women have substituted their own time invested in the production of household goods with the purchase of the now cheaper household services, and if, as a consequence, they have increased their labor supply. The third essay formalizes and empirically explores how immigrants’ lack of English skills determines immigration’s impact on the U.S. labor market.

Link to dissertation full text