Immigration as a Trade Facilitator: A Review and New Insights

Resumen

Este artículo utiliza una muestra global de 196 países que comercian con 30 países de la OCDE para estimar los efectos de corto y largo plazo de la inmigración sobre los flujos de exportación e importación. Metodológicamente, se emplea un modelo gravitacional del comercio, aumentado con los stocks bilaterales de inmigración, aplicado a datos de panel que cubren el período entre 1995 y 2023. La principal innovación del estudio reside en la utilización de avances recientes en la estimación del modelo gravitacional, orientados a controlar no solo la heterogeneidad bilateral invariable en el tiempo, sino también las resistencias multilaterales. La estrategia empírica principal consiste en un enfoque de función de control para abordar la endogeneidad de la variable migración. En la primera etapa, se estima un modelo bilateral de migración que incorpora, como instrumentos externos, un proxy de políticas de regularización migratoria, interactuado con el stock inicial de migrantes, y la tasa de migración de los países de la región de origen. En la segunda etapa, se estima la ecuación principal —un modelo gravitacional del vínculo entre migración y comercio— incluyendo el residuo obtenido en la primera etapa. Los resultados muestran, de forma consistente, efectos estadísticamente significativos de la migración sobre las importaciones, mientras que los efectos sobre las exportaciones son de menor magnitud y solo estadísticamente significativos en el largo plazo.

Palabras clave:

migración, comercio internacional, regularización, inmigrantes indocumentados, efecto llamada, modelo de gravedad, enfoque de función de control

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