Immigration, Unemployment and Growth: Empirical Evidence from Greece

Abstract

Abstract: This paper applies cointegration analysis and Granger non-causality tests in order to identify the direction of causality between migration in Greece and two macroeconomic variables: GDP and unemployment. We use annual data for the 1980-2011 period. The data are drawn from the International Migration Statistics (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund Database (IMF). Our results provide empirical evidence that the growth rates of GDP and unemployment cause migration in Granger’s sense. On the contrary, evidence of reverse causality is not established.