About this Book

Much like other political issues, immigration is ultimately a debate about how to divide the economic pie - it is an issue of allocation. "The Economics of Immigration: Allocating Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" examines the allocation mechanisms relevant to immigration and evaluates how those mechanisms affect natives and immigrants in both the short run and long run. The text begins by introducing students to the relevant economic theory and tools students need to master in order to read and understand empirical papers on this subject. Several big immigration issues are addressed in this text, including: "Why migrate?"; "Who migrates?"; and "What do immigrants do to the economy?." Although the United States is the primary focus thanks to an abundance of available data, a healthy supply of immigrants, and a robust immigration debate, many of the lessons of this text can be applied anywhere labor mobility is studied.
David Bernotas received a Bachelor s degree in economics and mathematics at Macalester College and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since then, he has held positions at the University of Georgia and the University of California, San Diego. Outside of immigration issues, his research interests are environmental economics and auctions theory. "