This paper investigates the economic consequences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China to the United States. The Act reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels residing in the U.S. It also reduced the labor supply and the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in western states until at least 1940.
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- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- We thank Ran Abramitzky, Michela Giorcelli, Claudia Goldin, Walker Hanlon, Larry Katz and Nathan Nunn for their insights; the participants at Stanford Economic History Seminar, Columbia N.T. Wang Lecture, Northwestern Economic History Lunch, Tsinghua University Applied Seminar for many useful comments; and the discussants and participants at the Yale Economic Growth Center 2022 conferences on “Empire, Migration, and Development”, NBER Summer Institute DAE (2023) and Economic Growth (2022) workshops, 2024 ASSA Annual Meeting, and IOG Spring 2024 Conference for helpful suggestions. We are grateful to Angelo Azzolini, Vasu Chaudhary, Marta Leva, Emanuele Licari, Ludovica Mosillo and Nicole Saito for excellent research assistance. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3386/w33019
- Pages
- 63
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- Introduction 3
- Historical Background 8
- Chinese Immigration 8
- The Chinese Exclusion Act 9
- Other Immigrants and Restrictions 11
- Conceptual Framework 11
- Data 12
- Main Results 15
- Baseline Specification 15
- Labor Supply 16
- Skilled Labor 18
- Manufacturing 19
- Dynamic Estimates 20
- Reallocation 21
- “Placebo” Experiment 23
- Additional Robustness Checks 24
- Additional Controls 24
- Alternative Measures of Chinese Share 25
- Alternative Sample Restrictions 26
- Random Inference 26
- Mechanisms 26
- Migration Costs 26
- Worker Complementarity 28
- Local Consumption and Tradable Goods 29
- Conclusion 30
- References 30
- Summary Statistics 47
- Manufacturing Data 48
- Climate Distance 48
- Tradable Sectors 49
