Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2003

Thesis Director

Minh Q. Dao

Abstract

Immigrants play an important role in affecting bilateral trade. Immigrant links to the home country include knowledge of home country markets, language, preferences, and business contacts.

This paper investigates the link between immigration and trade using United States trade data. It analyzes the original study by Gould and the reduced trading partners' study, compares two different time period, and analyzes the role of new variables in the trade equation. The results of this study are divided into three sections.

The first section of this study which compares Gould's original study to the modified Gould's study reveals that immigrants influence loses its significance when the sample size decreases.

The second section compares the immigrants' effect for the two different time period. Immigrant information variable is found to have minimal significance for the 1970 - 1986 time period but are found to affect exports in the 1987 - 1999 time period. Contrary to previous studies, immigrant information variable does not facilitate exports but reduce it.

In the final section, Distance and English-Language variable are included in the study. Empirical results suggest that Distance affect import flows but have no effect on export flows. English-Language is found to be statistically insignificant in the model.

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