Immigrants, firms and productivity: evidence from Italy

Abstract

The recent positive immigration trend, that has characterized Europe over the last three decades, has generated an ongoing debate on the role played by immigrants on many aspects of the labour markets. We fill a gap in the literature by offering the first evidence for Italy, on the relationship between immigration from extra EU and labour productivity. We take advantage of a rich and unique firm level data from the Rilevazione Imprese e Lavoro (RIL) conducted by Inapp in 2007, 2010 and 2015 on a representative sample of Italian firms.