Immigrant settlement patterns in Canada : does elasticity of substitution between immigrants and native-born workers matter?

Abstract

Although the number of immigrants coming to Canada has been steady in the past two decades, their location distribution is uneven across provinces. The proportion of immigrants in each province varies from 29 percent of the total population to as low as 2.4 percent. This paper will explore the effects that elasticity of substitution has on immigrant settlement patterns. This paper adds an alternative approach to the reasoning behind the disproportionate immigrant settlement. Using a constant elasticity of substitution model and information from the 2016 Census we find that the elasticity of substitution does show similar trends to the proportion of immigrants in a population.