18/2/16: Lack of Support for 'Refugees --> Growth' Link in German Survey

As a separate matter, the same survey of 'some 220' German economists by CESIfo found that...

"A relative majority (40 percent) of participants expects the asylum-seekers to have a negative impact on the country. Only 23 percent see them as benefitting the country. The remainder was undecided. The majority of German economics professors therefore do not share the optimism of the Deutsche Bank’s Chief Economist, David Folkerts-Landau. He described the flood of refugees as Germany’s biggest economic opportunity since its reunification.

The majority of economics professors (56 percent) believes that the minimum wage should be lowered to facilitate the integration of asylum-seekers with poor skills into the German labour market. 37 percent, however, does not support this view. Some economists feel that this could lead to tensions between Germans and new arrivals. “I am no advocate of the minimum wage,” writes Prof. Dr. Erwin Amann of the University of Duisburg-Essen in the survey. “But a reduction in the minimum wage would prompt a debate over German workers being crowded out,” he warns."

So much for that "Keynesian growth stimulus" from immigration, then...