A better understanding of the way immigrants affect the economy in the Dominican Republic can help policy makers make the most of immigration. This report finds that the immigration in the Dominican Republic has a varying but limited economic impact. Immigrants seem to displace native-born workers in the labour market by increasing competition, but no effects were found on the labour income of the native-born population. The estimated share of value added generated by immigrants is close to their share of the population. At the same time, immigrants make a positive contribution to the government budget as they pay more in direct taxes and benefit less from public expenditure than the native-born population. Policies aiming to facilitate the integration of immigrants and a better inclusion of immigration into different sectoral policies would further enhance the economic contribution of immigrants in the Dominican Republic.

How Immigrants Contribute to the Dominican Republic's Economy is the result of a project carried out by the OECD Development Centre and the International Labour Organization, with support from the European Union. The project aimed to analyse several economic impacts – on the labour market, economic growth, and public finance – of immigration in ten partner countries: Argentina, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Rwanda, South Africa and Thailand. The empirical evidence stems from a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of secondary and in some cases primary data sources.