The effect of the influx of foreign labour in Malaysia by augmented MRW model

Abstract

There are pros and cons in hiring foreign labour on the economy. The influx of foreign labour is a common phenomenon, but when their involvement is unlimited it will be one serious issue. Malaysia is one of the developing countries where industrial and construction sectors are in need of labour and this has opened up opportunities for foreign labour. Their inflow into Malaysia is increasing every year and this has caused problems such as time-consuming construction due to low-skilled labour and crime problems caused by problematic labour. We augmented Mankiw-Romer-Weil model by isolating the foreign labour element in human capital to find the effect of the influx of foreign labour in Malaysian economic growth. The results from our model show that the employment of foreign labour increases the rate of human capital but decreases the rate of physical capital. Therefore, the level of the production function also decreases.