Matthew Doyle, Mikal Skuterud, Christopher Worswick
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
If immigration can benefit the Canadian economy, but must be limited to realize the benefit, what is the optimal level? The Canadian government is increasing immigration rates to levels not reached since the 1920s in the hope of addressing labour shortages and sluggish economic growth. We argue that economic immigration in the Canadian context should aim to raise GDP per capita in the population, including the newcomers, and examine the potential for increases in Canadian immigration rates to achieve this objective. Our analysis suggests that Canada is not well positioned to leverage heightened immigration to increase GDP per capita owing primarily to weak capital investment and quantity–quality tradeoffs in immigrant selection. We propose a policy rule for defining the optimal level of economic immigration.
期刊介绍:
The Canadian Journal of Economics (CJE) is the journal of the Canadian Economics Association (CEA) and is the primary academic economics journal based in Canada. The editors seek to maintain and enhance the position of the CJE as a major, internationally recognized journal and are very receptive to high-quality papers on any economics topic from any source. In addition, the editors recognize the Journal"s role as an important outlet for high-quality empirical papers about the Canadian economy and about Canadian policy issues.