With Spring semester officially in the books, I'm working through numerous backlogs of email, notes, stuff to read, etc. I came across an interesting paper by Francesca Mazzolari and David Neumark in which they look at how immigration affects the composition of what we consume (gated). I haven't read the full paper, but here's the abstract:

We study potential economic benefits of immigration stemming from two factors: first, that immigrants bring not only their labor supply with them, but also their consumption demands; and second, that immigrants may have a comparative advantage in the production of ethnic goods. Using data on the universe of business establishments located in California between 1992 and 2002 matched with Census of Population data, we find some evidence that immigrant inflows boost employment in the retail sector, which is non-traded and a non-intensive user of immigrant labor. We find that immigration is associated with fewer stand-alone retail stores, and a greater number of large and in particular big-box retailers – evidence that likely contradicts a diversity-enhancing effect of immigration. On the other hand, focusing more sharply on the restaurant sector, for which we can better identify the types of products consumed by customers, the evidence indicates that immigration is associated with increased ethnic diversity of restaurants.

It reminds me of a question I ask in econ 101 to discuss how conventional measures of standards of living understate real improvements: "how many of you like Thai food?" Most hands go up. We then get to talk about how access to good ethnic food is a new phenomenon for a lot of people. I look forward to reading the entire paper and incorporating it into my notes for next semester.

Addendum: here are some related armchair prognostications from Mike Hammock. Mike points out something I didn't think about: cheaper information via the internet, Google, Facebook, iPhones, Blackberries, etc. will reduce the relative strength of chain restaurants and increase the relative strength of independent restaurants.

Addendum 2: in the spirit of our posts, we've decided to go to India Palace for lunch.