Role of Provincial Migration and Immigration in Provincial Trade of Canada

Abstract

This study estimates international and provincial migrants’ impact on provincial-level trade using panel data from 1981 to 2016 for Canadian provinces. The estimated results show that migration plays a significant role in determining Canadian provincial-level trade. Although the stock of provincial migrants is smaller than the stock of immigrants in Canadian provinces, the former plays a consistently positive and significant role in provincial-level trade, while the latter is not consistently significant across estimators. This study reaffirms that labour mobility between Canadian provinces helps reduce provincial trade barriers and promote economic development within Canada. Our results are robust to different estimation methods, model specifications, and alternative measures of migrants’ stock in Canadian provinces.