Controlling Illegal Immigration: Border Control vs. Domestic Enforcement

This paper presents a two-country general equilibrium model where international mobility of labor is prohibited. Illegal immigration nevertheless occurs. The probability of success at illegal immigration depends on resources allocated to border control and domestic enforcements. We examine the effects of switching resources form border control to domestic enforcement on illegal immigration and on welfare levels. We characterize the allocation of resources between the two methods of immigration control, that minimizes illegal immigration, and find that, starting from this allocation, moving resources from border control to domestic enforcement is unambiguously welfare improving for the destination country.

     

Work Effort, Moderation in Expulsion, and Illegal Migration

Illegal migrants supply a valuable productive input: effort. But their status as illegals means that these migrants face a strictly positive probability of expulsion. A return to their country of origin entails reduced earnings when the wage at origin is lower than the wage at destination. This prospect induces illegal migrants to exert more work effort than comparable workers who face no such prospect. The lower the probable, alternative earnings, the harsher the penalty that illegal migrants will be subjected to upon their return, for a given probability of expulsion, and the higher the level of effort they will exert at destination. While the home‐country wage that awaits the illegal migrants upon their return is exogenous to the host country, the probability of their return is not. Given the home‐country wage, a higher probability of expulsion will induce illegal migrants to supply more effort. Hence, different combinations of probabilities of expulsion and home‐country wages yield the same level of effort. Thus, variation in the extent to which receiving countries undertake measures aimed at apprehending and expelling illegal migrants can be attributed not to characteristics of the illegal migrants themselves but to a feature that pertains to the illegal migrants’ country of origin.     

Property Rights,Public Enforcement,and Growth

We study the link between public enforcement of property rights, innovation investments, and economic growth in an endogenous growth framework with an expanding set of product varieties. We find that a government can assure positive equilibrium growth through public employment in the enforcement of property rights, if the economic environment is sufficiently favorable to growth and/or if public enforcement is sufficiently effective. However, in terms of welfare, an equilibrium path without property‐rights protection and growth might be preferable. In this case, the enforcement of property rights involves too much reallocation of labor from production and research towards the public sector.     

Border Enforcement and Selection of Mexican Immigrants in the United States

Abstract

Since 1986, the United States has made considerable efforts to curb undocumented immigration across the US–Mexico border, resulting in an increase in migration costs for undocumented immigrants from Mexico and placing a particularly heavy burden on undocumented immigrant women. Using data from the 1990, 2000 Decennial Census and the 2006–8 American Community Survey, this study finds three effects of rising migration costs for immigrants from Mexico: (1) A decrease in the relative flow of older and highly educated undocumented immigrant women relative to men; (2) An increase in the skill composition of immigrant women relative to men; and (3) An increase, due to stronger positive selection, in the average earnings of those groups most affected by increased migration costs, particularly women. This research has important implications in light of the barriers and increasing dangers that women across the globe may face when migrating.     

Cross‐Border Intellectual Property Rights: Contract Enforcement and Absorptive Capacity

This article studies the cross‐border protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) as an outcome of a contract obtained through a Nash bargaining process between an innovative North and an imitative South. The level of disclosure required in such contract is higher, the more capable is the South in copying if bargaining breaks down. This raises questions about the suitability of universal IPR standards through a single contract. The threat of a penalty in case of non‐compliance can, however, reduce the outside option of more advanced countries and make a stricter IPR regime enforceable by harmonizing their interests with relatively less developed nations.     

Growth,Migration and Poverty: Some Corrections and Critical Comments

Journal of Quantitative Economics -     

Producing Sicily as Europe: Migration,Colonialism and the Making of the Mediterranean Border between Italy and Tunisia

This article studies the relationship between the production of the Mediterranean border between Italy and Tunisia, and Italy’s internal geographies of uneven development, commonly known as the 'Southern Question’. Through a study of contemporary Tunisian migration to Sicily in relation to turn of the 20th century Sicilian southward migration to French Protectorate Tunisia, it claims that Sicilians were made into Italians and Europeans through their relationship with Tunisians, and that Sicily was produced as Europe through the progressive demarcation and fortification of the Mediterranean border. Drawing on literature on colonial socio-spatial differentiation, internal colonialism and postcolonial analyses of migration to Europe, this article reframes current debates around the ‘integration’ of migrants as part of longer-term questions around the incorporation of ‘difference’ into the body-politic of the nation—questions that were historically posed in relation to colonial subjects and populations of metropolitan peripheries. Thus, the article considers current debates around the incorporation of migrants as part of a longer-term process of definition of the ‘civilizational’ boundaries of Europe.     

Illegal aliens,unemployment and immigration policy

"This paper develops a simple two-country model of illegal immigration in an attempt to examine the interaction among variables such as the stock of migrant labor, the unemployment rates of the two economies, and the rate of spending by the host country on the enforcement of its immigration restrictions. The focus of the analysis is on the dynamics of immigration policy and on its role in determining the nature of the mechanism by which disturbances to the labor market of one country are transmitted to that of the other in the short run and in the long run."     

Patent Enforcement, Innovation and Welfare

This paper analyzes how the Southern patent enforcement affects the Northern firm's choice of licensing, subsidiary production or exports for serving the Southern market, and the innovation rate in the North and ultimately the welfare in the South. We show that for imperfect patent enforcement, licensing contract leads to more innovation in the North relative to subsidiary or exports. When both subsidiary and exports are very costly options, no patent enforcement in the South is best for the South. However, when either subsidiary operation or exports can be organized cheaply, the Southern government chooses some positive degree of patent enforcement. We also establish that strengthening of patent enforcement in the South may lead to more licensing and less subsidiary operations or exports.     

分权、外部性与边界效应

分权创造竞争激励的同时也带来了协调不足的问题。当经济活动存在正外部性,地方政府会策略性地减少辖区边界上的公共投资,产生区域发展中的边界效应。本文构建了存在外部性的政府投资模型来说明边界效应的产生机制,并从三方面给出经验证据:第一,利用县级经济统计和夜间灯光数据,在控制影响本地生产率的因素后,发现省份边界县的经济产出显著低于其他县,即存在区域经济发展的省界效应。第二,由省政府主导投资的交通设施存在显著的省界效应,这种效应并不存在于由中央政府主导投资的交通设施。第三,基于夜间灯光亮度的微观地理数据,利用撤县设区的政策实验和双重差分模型,发现地级市政府统筹权力的加强显著提高了原市辖区与被撤并县交界处的经济活动水平,即降低了区县边界效应。本文的结果表明,在保证地方政府竞争激励的前提下,建立政府间协调和利益共享机制,对于实现区域协调发展战略至关重要。     

Migration, unemployment and discrimination

This paper uses a dynamic efficiency-wage model to analyze the consequences of immigration for a small country when there is discrimination against immigrants in a dual labor market with unemployment. Discrimination is of the type ‘equal pay for equal work, but unequal work’ which is characteristic of economies with ‘guest-worker’ systems. The model exhibits three regimes for rising immigration levels. Immigration is most beneficial for natives in the intermediate regime. An analysis of regime switches shows that changes attributable to ‘globalization’ and technical progress are consistent with growing opposition to immigration.     

Credence Goods,Efficient Labelling Policies,and Regulatory Enforcement

We analyse the optimality of information revelation of hidden attributes of “credence goods” via alternative labelling procedures. When consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for the hidden attribute, producers can either self-label their products, or have them certified by a third party. The government can impose self or third party labelling requirements on either the “green” or the “brown” producers. Our benchmark model develops a condition that links the optimal imposition of third party labelling to the relative market share of each type of the good under complete information. We extend our analysis to incorporate asymmetric information and cheating by the producers. When corrupt producers can affix spurious labels, the government needs to supplement the labelling policy with costly monitoring activities. We find that mandatory self-labelling schemes generally dominate mandatory third party labelling, unless the “market share effect” greatly exceeds the “incentive-to-cheat effect”.      

农村劳动力流动、人力资本积累与中国经济增长的源泉

中国近30年来的经济增长与伴随着工业化、城市化的农村劳动力流动存在内在的联系.在农村劳动力流动过程中,"农民工"通过"干中学"积累了知识,并在流动中使之产生了溢出效应,同时农民在社区中积累的社会资本在流动过程中依托特有的流动方式得以延伸,降低了农民获取工作的信息成本与在城市生存的交易费用."农民工"的非正规学习及其知识普及所导致的人力资本水平提高,成为中国近30年以来经济增长的源泉.     

Migration,growth, distribution and welfare

In this note we argue that the inverted U curve of inequality is a technical derivative of the attributes of the conventional indices of inequality; that these indices are inadequate measures of the change in welfare associated with the typical distributional consequences of rural-to-urban migration; and that an explicit welfare judgment with respect to this process should and can be made.     

Migration,Unemployment, and Skill Downgrading

In this paper, we analyze the labor market impacts of immigration under flexible and rigid labor market regimes. A general equilibrium framework is developed, accounting for skill heterogeneity and labor market frictions, where unemployed medium‐skilled manufacturing workers are downgraded into low‐skilled service jobs, while low‐skilled service workers might end up unemployed. The analytical analysis shows that medium‐skill immigration decreases low‐skilled unemployment under the flexible regime, indicating a complementarity effect, while the rigid regime induces a substitution effect, leading to low‐skilled unemployment. Moreover, it leads to wage polarization. In a numerical analysis, the economic effects of different migration scenarios are quantified.     

Migration,Transfers and Child Labor

We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children's working hours. Analysis using Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data on the Kagera region in Tanzania lend support to the hypothesis that both emigration and remittances reduce child labor.     

National Borders, Trade and Migration

The paper confirms a strikingly large effect of national borders on trade patterns. Estimates comparing trade among Canadian provinces with that between Canadian provinces and US states show interprovincial trade in 1988–90 to have been more than 20 times as dense as that between provinces and states, with some evidence of a downward trend since, owing to the post-FTA growth in trade between Canada and the USA. Using approximate data for the volumes and distances of internal trade in OECD countries, the 1988–92 border effect for unrelated OECD countries is estimated to exceed 12. Estimates from a census-based gravity model of interprovincial and international migration show a much higher border effect for migration than for trade, with interprovincial migration among the Anglophone provinces almost 100 times as dense as that from US states to Canadian provinces.     

Migration,trade and spillover effects

This paper identifies a new channel through which migrants can affect the import demand of goods in the host country. In migrating from origin to destination country, migrants observe a change in the price of the bundle of consumable goods. In particular, the migration decision can imply a reduction in the price of imported goods for the consumption bundle of migrants: emigration towards less (tariff) protected countries allows the consumption of products that were prohibitively protected in the origin countries of migrants. To test this channel we estimate the import demand effect of migrant groups coming from third high (tariff) protected countries. Our empirical results strongly confirm this channel and suggest a new perspective about how migration can affect welfare and trade in destination countries.     

金融契约执行效率、企业进入与产品市场竞争

供给侧改革的核心之一是引导企业有序进入新行业,金融契约执行效率的高低会影响企业外部融资成本和进入决策,进而决定市场竞争程度。本文将不完全契约机制和古诺竞争引入动态一般均衡框架,从理论上阐释了金融契约执行效率对企业进入和市场竞争的影响机制。此外,本文使用1998—2007年中国制造业企业的微观数据对理论结果进行了实证检验,回归结果表明:金融契约执行效率越高的地区,企业进入激励越强、市场竞争越充分;从地区角度看,中部地区对金融契约执行效率的变动相对敏感;从行业角度看,技术密集型行业对金融契约执行效率的变动相对不敏感。