Autor: Romero Maria Noelia
Institución: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Año: 2022
JEL: J6, R1
Resumen:
This paper studies the impact of the recent inflow of Venezuelans on Peruvian labor market outcomes. I address the endogenous decision of location using the spatial variation of Venezuelan distribution across districts in Lima and Callao in 2007 to predict the inflow of immigrants from 2016 to 2018. Although this instrument using geographic variation in 2007 has a low F-statistic, it addresses potential selection in trends. I find no evidence of the effect of Venezuelan workers on Peruvian employment and wages. I can rule out the effect of a 1-percentage-point (pp) increase in the share of Venezuelans beyond -0.02 and 0.03 pp on employment and -0.11 and 0.12 pp on weekly wages. These ranges of the effect of immigration include the positive impact on natives’ employment and the negative effect on wages found in previous studies of Venezuelan immigration in Latin America. I also find no evidence of the inflow of Venezuelans on the labor outcomes by low- and high skills (defined by the educational attainment of high-school completion) within both the formal and informal sectors. These results suggest that Lima-Callao absorbs the 16% increase in the labor supply, and Peruvians and Venezuelans are close to imperfect substitute inputs.