Date of Award
December 2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Economics
Committee Member
Scott R Templeton
Committee Member
Devon Gorry
Committee Member
Michael D Makowsky
Abstract
The issue of whether immigration can adversely impact the earnings of domestic workers in the receiving region is a hotly contested one, even amongst economists. In this paper, I analyze the effects Vietnamese refugees had on wages in nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area in the first half of the 1980s. I exploit the existence of exogenous variation in Vietnamese refugee settlements across the San Francisco Bay Area counties and use a difference-in-difference design with continuous treatment to obtain my results. I find the arrival of Vietnamese refugees has a statistically significant positive effect on wages. Increased consumption, productivity, and specialization and the existence of government assistance programs all likely play roles in the manifestation of positive effects on wages due to the arrival of immigrants.
Recommended Citation
Celis Villagrana, Francisco Daniel, "The Effect of Vietnamese Refugees on Wages in the San Francisco Bay Area" (2021). All Theses. 3644.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/3644