Immigration and manufacturing in Italy: evidence from the 2000s

This paper tests for the effect of an increase in the migration rate on manufacturing firms’ performance at the local level. The model is estimated for the Italian economy during the recent years of rapid and varied migration. We construct measures for both a representative province-sector firm and a representative province firm and estimate the impact of migrants on high- and low-tech sectors by also considering migrants heterogeneity (in terms of the characteristics of origin nationalities) in order to approximate the effect of high- and low-skill migrants. Migrants’ presence positively affects firm’s performance: a doubling of the migration ratio to provincial population raises sales per worker by 8–9 % on average. However, this increase is unevenly distributed and favors low-tech versus high-tech sectors. On the labor supply side, low-skill (primary-educated) migrants have a higher effect on firms’ performance than high-skill (tertiary-educated) migrants.