Michael Clemens on the Trillion-Dollar Question of Immigration

On this episode, Nathan Goodman is joined by Michael Clemens to discuss why immigration policy matters not just for migrants themselves but for broader economic growth. Drawing on his influential work, including “Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” (JEP, 2011) and “The Place Premium: Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers” (REStat, 2019), Clemens explains how even modest liberalization of migration can create enormous gains, why exchange is positive-sum, and how complementary skills across the workforce drive production. Together they assess the claim that immigration undermines culture and institutions and revisit historical panics ranging from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Dillingham Commission.

Dr. Michael Clemens is a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He helped build the research program on international migration at the Center for Global Development.

Show Notes:

• Samuel Bazzi, et al., “The Confederate Diaspora” (NBER, 2025)
• Timur Kuran’s book, Freedoms Delayed: Political Legacies of Islamic Law in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
• Chloe N. East, et al., “The Labor Market Effects of Immigration Enforcement” (Journal of Labor Economics, 2023)
• Mexican Migration project