Welfare Leakage and Immigration Policy

This paper analyzes the interaction between the welfare stateand immigration policy. We establish a negative relationshipbetween the number of dependents and the extent of the welfarestate due to the leakage of benefits. We also explain the determinationof immigration policy as the outcome of a lobbying game betweendomestic interest groups and the government. Our results indicatethat there is evidence for welfare leakage and for lobbyingas a determinant of immigration policy. In our baseline specification,a 10 percentage points increase in the share of dependents leadsto a 7–10 percentage point decrease in the labor tax rate.Furthermore, an increase by 10 percentage points in union densityleads to a decrease of one percentage point in the share ofimmigrants in the population. In the context of EU enlargementand the ensuing migration flows, our model predicts a reductionin the size of the welfare state in the old member countries.(JEL H5, J1, J61)     

Dualistic Discourse and Immigration Policy

Abstract:

The central question in immigration policy is whether to support less immigration through more “restrictive” laws and procedures or whether to support more immigration through a “relaxation” of existing laws. Recently, however, a second debate has arisen on one side of this debate regarding the appropriate types of arguments that may be used to support “restrictive” immigration. Ross Douthat refers to this dispute as the “race versus economics” question: using “race-based” arguments is not legitimate; while an “economic” or a “fact-based” argument is regarded as legitimate. We argue that this distinction in anti-immigration rhetoric is more apparent than real. Using the two most common historical “tropes” in immigration policy, “criminal” and “worker,” we find that racist, anti-ethnic, and classist assumptions pervade U.S. immigration law and policy and have been far more influential in formulating actual policy than either economic or “fact-based” analysis. The central problem with restrictive immigration policy is that its primary purpose is to determine who is eligible to be an American, and who is not; in other words, immigration policy is, by its fundamental intent, invidious. The question is whether it is possible to exclude individuals on these “legitimate” grounds without relying on “illegitimate” invidious distinctions?     

Congestion and Optimal Immigration Policy

This paper presents a model to explain the stylized fact that many countries have a low ratio of migrants in their population while some countries have a high ratio of migrants. Immigration improves the income of the domestic residents, but migrants also increase the congestion of public services. If migrants are unskilled and therefore pay low taxes, and the government does not limit access to these services, then the welfare of the domestic residents decreases with the number of migrants. Visa auctions can lower the cost of immigration control and substitute legal migrants for illegal migrants. If the government decides to limit the access of migrants to public services, immigration control becomes unnecessary and the optimal number of migrants can be very large.     

United States Immigration Policy: The 1965 Act and its Consequences

The United States Immigration Act of 1965 was followed by a steep upward trend in total immigration, and by a dramatic shift in the source‐country composition away from Europe and towards Asia and Latin America. In this paper I ask if and how the 1965 Act generated these unanticipated consequences. The result was partly because of the pre‐existing legislation and partly because of the admission of immigrants outside the terms of the Act. However, much of it was a result of the Act itself, and specifically because of family reunification effects that were larger, the poorer the source country.     

Immigration Policy and Highly Skilled Workers: The Case of Japan

Concerned about shortages of highly skilled workers, especially those with international specialties, Japan adjusted its immigration policy in 1990. The government made it easier for skilled foreign specialists to work in Japan. In the wake of the policy adjustment, this study examines whether there have been changes in inflows of skilled foreigners. Though Japan is still wary of immigration and official policy remains comparatively strict, it is clear that skilled professionals are entering Japan in larger numbers.     

Industrial Policy and the East German Productivity Puzzle

Catching-up of East German productivity to West German levels has completely faded out since the mid-1990s. The remaining productivity gap cannot be attributed to an inferior capital endowment or qualification deficiencies of the East German labor force. Instead, it appears to be the result of an inappropriate design of industrial policy which concentrated on the subsidization of physical capital and largely ignored the advance of human capital- and service-intensive industrial structures. East Germany will have to face another wave of painful structural adjustment when capital-intensive industries are no longer protected from competition by public subsidies.     

生态移民政策的影响分析

新中国成立以来,政府为了消减贫困,实施了种种反贫困政策。虽然这些反贫困政策取得了很大成果,但目前我国仍存在大量的贫困人口,并且这些贫困人口主要集中在生态环境恶劣的西部地区。贫困人口的这种分布特征,加大了反贫困政策的实施难度。一直以来,反贫困政策的目标都是单独的一个目标,即减少贫困人口,改善贫困人口的条件。2000年,国家为了消减贫困,也为了改善环境,开始实施生态移民政策,这标志着反贫困政策的巨大转变,即从单独实施反贫困政策转变为把反贫困政策和环境政策结合为一体,同时解决所面临的问题。文章依据调查获得的数据,分析生态移民政策对移民和环境的影响,探究生态移民政策在实施过程的所存在的问题。     

Aging,Factor Returns,and Immigration Policy

Immigration has various economic and non‐economic effects on the destination country's inhabitants. In this paper, we focus on the impact of immigration on factor returns and analyze how aging affects immigration policy, employing a dynamic political‐economy model of representative democracy. Aging, that is, a decline in the growth rate of the native population, has an expansionary effect on immigration in this framework. This immigration effect may even overcompensate the initial contraction of the labor force. We show that the immigration rate in the representative democracy equilibrium exceeds the immigration rate that would maximize welfare of current and future generations, and we also discuss the influence of social security on immigration policy.     

Immigration Policy and Self‐Selecting Migrants

I build a simple model of self‐selection into migration and immigration policy determination. I first show that the effect of any immigration policy can be decomposed into a size and a composition effect. I then explore how the optimal policy may change once the latter effect is considered.     

股权溢价之谜

作为金融市场上的异象之一,股权溢价之谜自被提出之时就引起了金融经济学术界的广泛关注,大量的研究人员试 图以不同的方式对传统模型进行修正来解释股权溢价之谜。本文将试图从古典经济学和行为金融学两个方面对理论学界对 股权溢价之谜的解释进行综述。     

The German Savings Puzzle

Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high and remain positive until old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the “German savings puzzle”? We provide a complicated answer that combines historical facts with capital market imperfections, housing, tax and pension policies. The first part of the paper describes how German households save, based on a synthetic panel of four cross sections of the German Income and Expenditure Survey (“Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben”) collected between 1978 and 1993. The second part links saving behaviour with public policy, notably tax and pension policy.     

Modelling the Role of Government Policy in Post-War Australian Immigration*

The authors develop and estimate a model of post-war Australian migration which highlights an endogenous treatment of government policy and includes three equations explaining the emigration rate, the Government's Immigration Programme rate, and the immigration rate. The model permits the separate identification of long-run population growth influences vis-à-vis short-run economic considerations in explaining migration. Short-run labour market conditions are found to be more important in explaining government behaviour than are long-run population considerations. Immigrant behaviour appears to be affected by both short-run and long-run influences. Very little unexplained variation remains in the estimated regressions.     

What a Difference Immigration Policy Makes: A Comparison of PISA Scores in Europe and Traditional Countries of Immigration

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the importance of different immigration policies associated with corresponding migration backgrounds, command of national languages and intergenerational mobility, for the PISA school performance of teenagers living in European countries (France, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden) and traditional countries of immigration (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US). Econometric results show that the influence of the socioeconomic background of parents differs strongly across nations, with the highest impact found for Germany, the UK and US, whereas intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is less likely in Scandinavian countries and in Canada. Moreover, for all countries our estimations imply that for students with a migration background a key for catching up is the language spoken at home. We conclude that educational policy should focus on integration of immigrant children in schools and preschools, with particular emphasis on language skills at the early stage of childhood.     

The Optimum Currency Area Puzzle

The theory of optimum currency areas, suggesting the redrawing of currency areas across countries or splitting of national money into several currencies, is at odds with the one-money-one-country pattern that has dominated monetary history for 26 centuries. This paper puts forward an equilibrium approach which, by stressing the influence of the border effect on intranational adjustment, solves the puzzle and analyzes the closely related issue of the viability of monetary unions and regional specialization.     

广西库区移民土地淹没长期补偿政策研究

1986年以来,我国水库移民安置普遍实行“前期补偿、后期扶持”的政策,随着社会经济的发展,其弊端日益凸现,需要研究出新的更适应实际情况的方法和政策。近年来,广西在水库移民安置方面,坚持从实际出发,总结经验,开动脑筋,集思广益,创造性地实施淹没土地的长期补偿政策,走出了水库移民安置经济补偿的新路子。     

Immigration Policy,Self‐selection,and the Quality of Immigrants*

This paper investigates the effects of immigration quotas on the average quality of immigrants by developing a human capital migration model where efficiency in migration depends on skills and emigration rates are higher among skilled workers. Studying the joint determination of the domestic level of wages and immigrants' self‐selection, we find a negative relationship between the wage level and the percentage of educated workers among immigrants, which results in a nonstandard downward‐sloping labor supply. In our framework, a higher quota increases the skill mix of immigrants through its negative effect on wages and raises aggregate national income.