Prof. Christian Dustmann Expounds New Methodology of Migration Economics
May 28-2024
On May 21, 2004, Prof. Christian Dustmann delivered an academic speech and conducted academic exchanges on migration economics at Chengze Garden, National School of Development.
Christian Dustmann is Professor of Economics at University College London (UCL), Honorary Professor at Humboldt University Berlin, Director of the Rockwool Foundation Berlin Institute for the Economy and the Future of Work (RFBerlin), and founding Director of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM). He served as President of the Asian and Australasian Society of Labor Economics, which he co-founded. He has also served as President of the European Association of Labor Economists (EALE) and the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE). Prof. Dustmann is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the German Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Europe, and the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE). In 2020, Prof. Dustmann received the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Prize from the German National Academy of Sciences. He focuses his research on labor economics, working in areas such as migration, the economics of education, the economics of crime, social networks, technology, income mobility, wage dynamics, and inequality.
In his speech, Prof. Dustmann introduced new research methods for migration economics, which were based on the main conclusion of his 2017 paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) and its extensions. He pointed out that the impact of migrants on the welfare of local residents is an issue of wide concern, and the research of traditional labor economics tends to argue that the impact is mostly exerted through an increase in local labor supply on wages and job levels. However, divergences in methodologies and parameter definitions lead to inconsistency in conclusions, which in turn makes a consensus out of reach.
Prof. Dustmann criticized the cross-sectional study commonly used in traditional research and proposed a new analytical framework. What should be done, he said, is to link migrants’ impact and the potential composition of local labor force, and to distinguish between local workers who stay in the labor force before and after the arrival of migrants, those who newly join the labor market, and those who withdraw from the labor market. As such, migrants’ overall impact can be unpacked to identify distinct conductive paths. Applying this method hinges on utilizing individual tracking data. Prof. Dustmann adopted Germany’s same-day commute policy for Czech workers as a natural experiment to analyze Czech migrants’ impact on local employment and wages in Germany’s border areas. The results showed that such a methodology can provide richer and more accurate information on migration’s effect on local salaries, employment, and career advancement.
The lecture was part of a series of academic events celebrating the 30th anniversary of the NSD. It was hosted by Prof. Zhang Dandan, Deputy Dean of the NSD, and attended by Prof. Lei Xiaoyan, Direct of NSD Academic Committee, and other scholars. They had profound exchanges with Prof. Dustmann after the speech.
