Politicians and Preferences of the Voter Majority: Does Gender Matter?

Does the gender of political representatives affect the extent to which they adhere to the voter majority's preferences? By matching individual male and female representatives' votes on legislative proposals with real referendum outcomes on the same issues, we obtain a direct measure of divergence. We find that female and male representatives adhere equally close to the majority's preferences if party affiliations are taken into account. This suggests that observed gender differences with respect to the national majority of voters may be reduced to an ideological left–right dimension.     

Not just a work permit: EU citizenship and the consumption behaviour of documented and undocumented immigrants

This paper explores the impact of the 2007 European Union enlargement on the consumption behaviour of immigrant households. Using data from a unique Italian survey and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the enlargement induced a significant consumption increase for the immigrant households from new member states both in the short and in the medium run. This enlargement effect cannot be attributed to the mere legalization as it concerns both undocumented and documented immigrants, albeit through different channels. Detailed information on immigrants’ legal status (undocumented/documented) and sector of employment (informal/formal) allows us to shed light on the exact mechanisms. Following the enlargement, previously undocumented immigrants experienced an increase in the labour income by moving from the informal towards the formal economy, whereas immigrants who were already working legally in Italy benefited from the increased probability of getting a permanent contract. Enhanced employment stability in turn reduced the uncertainty about future labour income leading to an increase in documented immigrants’ consumption expenditure.     

Solving the Misesian migration conundrum

This paper reviews Ludwig Von Mises’ concerns surrounding unrestricted immigration and relates them to the current debate surrounding immigrants’ impact on destination countries’ institutions. It then outlines a policy of generally unrestricted immigration with selective restrictions that addresses Mises’ concerns and concerns about destination country institutions, while still achieving the majority of the economic gains that unrestricted immigration is forecast to achieve.

     

ARE DISAGREEMENTS AMONG MALE AND FEMALE ECONOMISTS MARGINAL AT BEST?: A SURVEY OF AEA MEMBERS AND THEIR VIEWS ON ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC POLICY

The authors survey economists in the United States holding membership in the American Economic Association (AEA) to determine if there are significant differences in views between male and female economists on important policy issues. Controlling for place of current employment (academic institution with graduate program, academic institution—undergraduate only, government, for‐profit institution) and decade of PhD, the authors find many areas in which economists agree. However, important differences exist in the views of male and female economists on issues including the minimum wage, views on labor standards, health insurance, and especially on explanations for the gender wage gap and issues of equal opportunity in the labor market and the economics profession itself. These results lend support to the notion that gender diversity in policy‐making circles may be an important aspect in broadening the menu of public policy choices. (JEL A11, J78, A14)     

EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION MANDATES AND THE LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES OF LIKELY UNAUTHORIZED AND NATIVE WORKERS

As recent efforts to reform immigration policy at the federal level have failed, states have started to take immigration matters into their own hands and researchers have been paying closer attention to state dynamics surrounding immigration policy. Yet, to this date, there is not a clear understanding of the consequences of enforcing E‐Verify on likely unauthorized immigrants or on natives across the United States. This study aims to fill in that gap by analyzing the impact that the enactment of various types of E‐Verify mandates may have on the employment and wages of these groups. We find that the enactment of employment verification mandates reduces the employment likelihood of likely unauthorized workers. Additionally, it raises the hourly wages of likely unauthorized women. None of these impacts are observed among a similarly skilled sample of naturalized Hispanic immigrants. Finally, the enactment of E‐Verify mandates appears to raise the employment likelihood of alike non‐Hispanic natives, while raising the hourly wage of native‐born male employees, alluding to the potential substitutability of unauthorized immigrants and non‐Hispanic natives. (JEL J2, J3, J6)     

Controlling Illegal Immigration: On the Scope for Cooperation with a Transit Country

We consider the implications of cooperation with respect to immigration control between a final‐destination country (D) and its poorer neighbor (T). Assuming that the latter serves as a transit country for undocumented immigrants, a key question is how much aid should D provide to T for the purpose of strengthening its immigration controls. The problem for T is to determine what proportion of aid to use strictly for immigration control rather than trying to meet other border‐security objectives. We examine the Nash equilibrium values of the policy instruments of both countries and compare them with those which are optimal when international cooperation on immigration control extends to maximization of joint welfare. We also consider a two‐stage game in which D first decides on how much aid to transfer to T, with the latter subsequently choosing how to use it.     

ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF IMMIGRATION AND INCOME REDISTRIBUTION*

In this article, we analyze an economy in which agents vote over immigration policy and redistributive tax policy. We show that natives' preferences over immigration are influenced by the prospect that immigrants will be voting over future tax policy. We also show that changes in the degree of international capital mobility, the distribution of initial capital among natives, the wealth or poverty of the immigrant pool, and the future voting rights and entitlements of immigrants can have dramatic effects on equilibrium immigration and tax policies. Finally, we provide some empirical support for the model's predictions.     

More than Additions to Population: The Economic and Fiscal Impact of Immigration

In the conceptual framework of the Intergenerational Reports, immigration features as an exogenous input into the size of the population and its composition by age and sex. There are good reasons for believing that immigration has sizeable endogenous components, that attributes other than age and sex distinguish immigrants from the native‐born, as well as from each other, and that these features are of significant economic and fiscal import. Last, it is suggested that, in the context of an ageing population, we may learn much about the effectiveness of different policy responses in achieving fiscal sustainability—as well as immigration policy—through a dynamic life cycle accounting approach.     

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.     

EFFECTS OF IMMIGRANTS ON THE 1980–1990 U.S. WAGE EXPERIENCE

This paper questions the claim that U.S. immigration should be reduced because the economy can no longer absorb immigrants as it has in the past. Analysis of male hourly wages shows that the effect of immigration on wages did not change between 1980 and 1990. Further, immigration had no negative effects on wages in 1980 or 1990. These results suggest that the capacity of the labor market to absorb immigrants has not been reduced. Additional analysis shows that, controlling for personal characteristics, the hourly wages of the average native and immigrant worker in areas of high and medium immigration relative to areas of low immigration increased between 1980 and 1990. However, Latino immigrants are affected negatively by immigration.     

Financing public goods and attitudes toward immigration

We study a model where individuals choose both the level of provision of a public good and the quota of low-skilled immigrants that are allowed into the country. Individuals can supplement the public good in the private market. Immigrants affect natives through three channels: (i) the labor market; (ii) tax collection; (iii) the quality of the public good. We find that the higher the political weight of the rich (highly skilled) is, the less tolerant the poor and the middle-class are toward immigration and the more demanding they are toward increasing public spending. The rich are the most favorable to immigration. As they have more weight, the political outcome is closer to their preferences and further from the preferences of the other groups. We use data from the European Social Survey to test the implications of our model.     

International immigration and economic welfare in an efficiency wage model: The co-existence case of both legal and illegal foreign workers

Abstract. In the developed countries some native workers are unemployed while there exist illegal unskilled (legal skilled) foreign workers who are complementary to (substitutable for) natives and their wages are usually lower than (equal to) that of natives. Reflecting this situation, we introduce two types of immigrant in an efficiency wage model. It is shown that domestic government should exclude illegal foreign workers but welcome legal ones if the total number of illegal immigrants is small enough and well controlled. On the other hand, legal immigration should be restricted if the flood of illegal immigration is out of control.     

Preaching to the choir: A response to Kaplow and Shavell's Fairness Versus Welfare

This note is a critical response to Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell's recent treatise on law and economics, Fairness Versus Welfare, in which they argue that legal decision-making should be conducted with the sole goal of welfare-maximization. After a brief summary of the book, this paper focuses on three primary problems with its contents and approach. First, the tautological nature of the authors' argument, which they acknowledge but downplay is discussed. Second, it is argued that while the authors give lip-service to 'tastes for fairness,' they refuse to acknowledge the implications of such preferences for their conclusions and then minimize their possible importance. Finally, this paper addresses what is possibly the most disappointing aspect of this work: the arrogance, condescension, and intolerance displayed throughout the book toward those with dissenting views.     

U.S. IMMIGRATION REFORM: POLICY ISSUES AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

In recent years, legal U. S. immigration has approached historically high levels, and illegal immigration has been thought to be high and perhaps rising. Consequently, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy proposed sweeping changes in the nation's immigration laws. During 1984, both the Senate and House passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli Bill). This bill subsequently died in the conference committee that was established to reconcile differences between the bill's two versions. The proposed act has three major provisions: (1) control of illegal immigration, (2) legalization of alienstatus, and (3) reform of legal immigration. Both the House and Senate versions would maintain the present orientation of U.S. immigration policy toward family reunification, but the Senate proposed significant changes in legal immigration restrictions that would shift policy slightly more toward labor considerations. These proposed changes were eliminated in the compromise made in the conference committee. Employer sanctions and legalization of illegal aliens were left as the two most prominent alterations to existing policy. During 1985, the 99th Congress is likely to reconsider the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, perhaps in a streamlined version which emphasizes employer sanctions, legalization, and a substantial increase in border enforcement.     

A PATHWAY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP? EVIDENCE FROM THE IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986

The impact of legal status on economic outcomes has been well documented in the literature with most research focused on labor market outcomes such as wages and occupational mobility. In this paper, I utilize the exogenous variation created the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 to estimate the effect of amnesty polices on homeownership among undocumented immigrants. Using a regression discontinuity framework, the results suggest that the IRCA increased homeownership rates of eligible immigrants by around 4 percentage points relative to ineligible immigrants. Moreover, an extension to the main analysis suggests that immigrants ineligible for the IRCA adjusted their household formation by increasing the rates of coresidency. (JEL J61, R23, R31)     

The political economy of naturalization

This paper presents a political economy model in which self‐interested natives decide when citizenship and/or voting rights should be granted to foreign‐born workers. Native voters know that immigrants hold different ‘political’ preferences and would thus tend to postpone their enfranchisement as much as possible. They also consider, however, that a more restrictive naturalization policy may reduce the gains from immigration. We find that the optimal timing of naturalization depends on the quantity, quality (productivity), and preferences of potential immigrants, the political composition and the age structure of the native population, as well as the sensitivity of migration choices to the citizenship issue.     

Immigration and the Trade of Provinces

A link between immigration, imports, and exports has been found by a number of papers that have used the gravity equation to analyze bilateral trade patterns. We discuss what this research implies about the mechanisms through which immigrants expand trade and identify strengths and weakness of the various approaches. This paper also contributes to this literature by estimating immigrant effects for Canada using cross‐province variation in international trade and immigration patterns. We derive an alternative functional form capturing the relationship between immigration and trade based on the proposition that immigrants use their connections and superior 'market intelligence' to exploit trade opportunities that non‐immigrants do not access. We find that the average new immigrant expands exports to his/her native country by $312 and expands imports by $944.     

Computerization and immigration: Theory and evidence from the United States

Recent technological changes have been characterized as “routine-substituting” because they reduce demand for routine tasks and increase demand for analytical and service tasks. Little is known about how these changes have impacted immigration, or task specialization between immigrants and native-born individuals. In this paper, we show that such technological progress has attracted immigrants who increasingly specialize in manual-service occupations. We also suggest that openness to immigration attenuated the job and wage polarization faced by native-born from technological changes. We explain these facts with a model of technological progress and endogenous immigration. Simulations show that unskilled immigration attenuates the drop in routine employment proceeding from technological change, enhances skill upgrading for native-born and raises economy-wide productivity and welfare.     

A theory of permissible illegal immigration

In many countries laws are not enforced against visibly present illegal immigrants. The visibly present illegal immigrants also tend to be concentrated in particular sectors. We explain such permissible illegal immigration in an endogenous-policy model where selective sector-specific illegality transforms illegal immigrants from non-sectorally specialized to sector-specific factors of production. Under initial conditions where no immigrants are present, the median voter opposes immigration. When, however, a population of illegal immigrants has accumulated, ongoing illegal immigration becomes an endogenous equilibrium policy, at the same time that a majority of voters opposes legal immigration and opposes amnesty that would legalize the immigrants' presence. We also establish a basis for domestic voters preferring that illegal immigrants be employed in service rather than traded-goods sectors.     

A theory of gender differences in parental altruism

Abstract.  We offer a theory of gender differences in parental altruism based on the asymmetry that female fertility is constrained but male fertility is relatively unconstrained. Modelling human preferences as having been shaped during the Pleistocene, we derive evolutionarily stable, co‐evolved male and female preferences for altruism towards one's children. We demonstrate that there would be gender differences in parental altruism that depend on the relative abundance or scarcity of resources and the importance and substitutability of parental inputs in promoting the survival of offspring. The results point to greater altruism in females, under plausible conditions. JEL Classification: D64, J16, P46