SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Immigration and trade: is there a link? Evidence from Australia

Abu Siddique

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between immigration and trade flows in Australia over the period of 1961 to 2001 by employing a revised gravity model. The relationship between these two factors is attributed to immigrants’ better knowledge of their home markets, and their preference for some goods produced in their home markets because of cultural or other reasons. Additional factors such as distance travelled by immigrants and language spoken, i.e. whether it is the same language spoken in the destination country, provide some advantage to trade, facilitating and increasing it once they are in Australia. The theoretical foundation and the empirical evidence of links between trade and immigration, changes in volume and direction of Australian trade and change in volume and sources of migration during the last 40 years of the twentieth century, motivated the author to take the initiative for this study.

Speaker Biography

Dr Abu Siddique is an Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Western Australia. He is a development economist and has extensively published in international journals such as Journal of Development Studies, Environment International, International Journal of Social Economics, South Asia, and The Asia Pacific Economic Journal. He has also authored and edited numerous books including International Migration into the 21st Century (Edward Elgar). He was Director of the Trade, Migration and Development Research Centre at the University of Western Australia from 1995 to 2009. He is a frequent contributor to local, national and international seminars and conferences and has published over sixty seven publications in various forms over the years.