From skittishly PC to oblivious to PC

Well if Claudia Goldin (see ideological academics) fears to go where her data takes her, then Garrett Jones just marches in, treading on all sorts of sensitivities. From Do Immigrants Import Their Economic Destiny? by Garrett Jones.

I think his argument is reasonably robust but his conclusions are troublesome in a fashion and while he has great particular data for the constituent elements of his argument, some the measurement mechanisms are, I suspect, a little shakier than he acknowledges.

Garrett's opening questions:

Why do some countries have relatively liberal, pro-market institutions while others are plagued by corruption, statism, and incompetence? Three lines of research point the way to a substantial answer:

The Deep Roots literature on how ancestry predicts modern economic development,

The Attitude Migration literature, which shows that migrants tend to bring a lot of their worldview with them when they move from one country to another,

The New Voters-New Policies literature, which shows that expanding the franchise to new voters really does change the nature of government.

Together, these three data-driven literatures suggest that if you want to predict how a nation’s economic rules and norms are likely to change over the next few decades, you’ll want to keep an eye on where that country’s recent immigrants hail from.

His findings from reviewing the literature are:

The Deep Roots literature which shows that in the long run, migration deeply shapes a nation’s level of pro-market institutions, and that a nation’s ancestry-adjusted SAT score (States, Agriculture, Technology) is a good predictor of prosperity.

The Attitude Migration literature, which shows that migrants bring a substantial portion of their attitudes toward markets, trust, and social safety nets with them from their home country.

The New Voters = New Policies literature, which shows that governments really do change when new voters show up, and that the changes start to show up in just a few years.

I don't think Jones is wrong per se but this research goes against very strong ideological and commercial interests who are dedicated to open borders.

There is a very narrow aspect of this argument that is going within the US right now. Red states who have economies and social systems strongly attuned to age of Enlightenment precepts such as rule of law, property rights, natural rights (freedom of speech, etc.) and Blue states such as California, New York, etc. which are much more inclined towards state control over behaviors and regulatory control over the economy. The red states tend to be high growth and attract internal migration and blue states tend to be low growth and suffer population losses. The fear of red states is that migrants from these blue states will bring their cultural orientations towards regulation, centralized political power, high taxation, etc. to the red states which might undermine the very policies which created red state success in the first place. It is the New Voters = New Policies literature based on internal migration. And there is reasonable evidence that indeed, red states with high blue state in-migration do over time begin shifting to the blue state model/policies with attendant slowdowns in growth.

Anyway, the essay is explosive and interesting.