Giovanni Peri (born September 19, 1969 in Perugia, Italy)[1][2] 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 has challenged and broadened the work of George Borjas, which has argued that immigration has negative economic effects on low educated US workers.
[12] By far, Peri's most prolific field has been the economics of international migration, including through its impact on cultural diversity and task specialization.
[15] With Gianmarco Ottaviano, Peri investigates the relationship between linguistic diversity across U.S. cities and local productivity over 1970-90; together, they find that wages and employment density of U.S.-born workers were systematically higher, all else equal, in cities with higher linguistic diversity, especially for highly educated and for white workers, and that the relationship was strengthened the better non-native speakers were assimilated in terms of language skills and duration of residence.
[16] Further research by Peri and Ottaviano on the value of cultural diversity - this time as proxied by the diversity of countries of birth of U.S. residents - suggests that US-born citizens living in metropolitan areas with increasing shares of foreign-born residents experienced significant growth in wages and housing values.
[30] Further significant studies by Peri include research on human capital externalities, the long-run substitutability between more and less educated workers and the link between regional non-adjustment and fiscal policy: