Comment on Gabriel Felbermayr and Wilhelm Kohler

Abstract

Felbermayr and Kohler’s paper is an excellent presentation of a central issue of immigration within the context of the second globalization wave, particularly in OECD countries: its effects on wages and domestic welfare. As noted by the authors, the issue analyzed in the paper is of great interest, not only for theoretical and empirical reasons, but also for policy purposes. They have also methodologically privileged a theoretical perspective under the framework of the general equilibrium, where price adjustment mechanisms play a pivotal role. In my view, the emphasis on theory is quite necessary because, since the time of classical economics, theoretical approaches to immigration have not been developed or have been dismissed in the name of the immobility of factors so convincingly expounded by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. As is well known, the basic assumptions underlying this theory have remained, through various ways, widely accepted up to recent decades.