Giovanni Peri (born September 19, 1969 in Perugia, Italy) is an Italian-born American economist who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Global Migration Center. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the co-editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of the European Economic Association. He is known for his research on the economic impact of immigration to the United States. He has also researched the economic determinants of international migrations and the Economic impact of immigration in several European Countries. He has challenged and broadened the work of George Borjas, which has argued that immigration has negative economic effects on low educated US workers.
Research
Giovanni Peri's research interests focus on labour economics, with a focus on regional and urban economics as well as on international migration. According to IDEAS/RePEc, he belongs to the 1% of most cited economists. In his research, Peri has frequently collaborated with Gianmarco Ottaviano, Chad Sparber and Francesc Ortega.
Research on innovation
An early area of Peri's research has been the economics of innovation over time and across space. Together with Laura Bottazzi, he finds only small and very localized innovation spillovers in Europe and estimates that, while doubling R&D spending in a region would raise innovation there by 80-90%, it the effect within a 300 km radius would raise the output of new ideas only by 2-3%. Relatedly, Peri estimates that, on average, only 20% of knowledge in 1975-96 was learned outside the region of origin, and only 9% was learned outside the country of origin, with two notable exceptions: the knowledge in the computer sector and the knowledge generated by technological leaders, both of which flow much farther, especially compared to trade flows. Finally, again with Bottazzi, Peri shows that, in the long run, internationally generated knowledge is an important driver of innovation in a country, with e.g. a 1% positive shock to the log of R&D in the U.S. increasing knowledge creation in other countries by, on average, 0.35% over the next decade.
Research on immigration
By far, Peri's most prolific field has been the economics of international migration, including through its impact on cultural diversity and task specialization. Exploring the causes and effects of international migrations to OECD countries in 1980-2005, Peri and Francesc Ortega find that bilateral migration flows are increasing in the income gap between origin and destination but decrease when destination countries adopt stricter immigration laws. Moreover, they also find that - on average - immigration increases the total GDP of the destination country in the short run one-for-one, without crowding-out of natives or effect on average wages and average income pr person. More recently, in work with Frédéric Docquier and Caglar Ozden, Peri investigated the labour market effects of migration flows in OECD countries during the 1990s, finding a positive effect of immigration on the wages of less educated natives and no effect on average native wages, while emigration decreased the wages of less educated native workers and increased inequality within countries.
Research on immigration to the U.S.