Abstract
This study contributes to the literature on destination-country consequences of international migration, with investigations on the effects of immigration from new EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries on the economies of old EU member states during the years 1995–2010. Using a rich international migration dataset and an empirical model accounting for the endogeneity of migration flows, we find positive and significant effects of post-enlargement migration flows from new EU member states on old member states’ GDP, GDP per capita, and employment rate, and a negative effect on output per worker. We also find small, but statistically significant negative effects of migration from Eastern Partnership countries on receiving countries’ GDP, GDP per capita, employment rate, and capital stock, but a positive significant effect on capital-to-labor ratio. These results mark an economic success of the EU’s eastern enlargements and free movement of workers in an enlarged EU.
Highlights
Europe has always been a hub of international migration
The analysis is based on a rich dataset of immigration flows and stocks of foreigners, which has been collected by writing to selected national statistical offices, in 42 destination countries from virtually all source countries from around the globe for the years 1980–2010.8 We comparatively evaluate the effects of post-enlargement intra-EU mobility as well as immigration from the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries on a subsample consisting of EU destination countries
We report each model estimated by the OLS method with country fixed effects (FE) and by the instrumental variable technique with country fixed effects (2SLS-FE), which accounts for possible endogeneity of migration flows
Summary
Europe has always been a hub of international migration. In 2010, almost seven out of a hundred EU residents were born outside the EU, and an additional three were born in a different member state than the current state of residence. The 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the European Union and the extension of the EU’s internal market, including the freedom of movement of workers, to the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe changed the migration landscape in Europe tremendously. The 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the European Union and the extension of the EU’s internal market, including the freedom of movement of workers, to the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe changed the migration landscape in Europe tremendously These enlargements abolished the barriers that precluded east–west migration flows during the Cold War, and created an internal labor market for the total population of about half a billion people, cross-cutting boundaries of member states with disparate level of economic development, wages, unemployment rates, and labor market institutions.. These enlargements abolished the barriers that precluded east–west migration flows during the Cold War, and created an internal labor market for the total population of about half a billion people, cross-cutting boundaries of member states with disparate level of economic development, wages, unemployment rates, and labor market institutions.3 These differences lead to significant migration flows mainly (but not exclusively) in the east–west direction. These new migrant flows have not been unanimously welcome in the receiving countries, and immigration from Central and Eastern Europe was one of the pivotal arguments in the debate about UK’s leaving the European Union, commonly known as ‘‘Brexit’’
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