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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Timothy J. Hatton (University of Essex and Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | Historical experience suggests that when a period of rising immigration is followed by a sudden slump, this can trigger a policy backlash. This has not occurred in the current recession. This paper examines three links in the chain between the slump and immigration policy. First, although immigration flows have responded to the slump, and immigrants have borne more than their share of the burden, this has done little to protect the employment of non-Immigrants. Second, despite the recession for Europe as a whole, attitudes to immigration have not changed very much, and they have been influenced more by fiscal concerns than by rising unemployment. Third, while far right parties have used the recession to renew the political pressure for tougher immigration policies, governments have been constrained by the composition of immigration and by EU regulation. |
| Keywords: | European immigration, Recession, Immigration policy |
| JEL: | F22 F52 J15 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1401&r=mig |
| By: | Susanne Prantl (University of Cologne, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, and Institute for Fiscal Studies, London); Alexandra Spitz-Oener (Humboldt-University Berlin, IAB, CASE and IZA) |
| Abstract: | Does interacting product and labor market regulation alter the impact of immigration on wages of competing native workers? Focusing on the large, sudden and unanticipated wave of migration from East to West Germany after German reunification and allowing for endogenous immigration, we compare native wage reactions across different segments of the West German labor market: one segment without product and labor market regulation, to which standard immigration models best apply, one segment in which product and labor market regulation interact, and one segment covering intermediate groups of workers. We find that the wages of competing native West Germans respond negatively to the large influx of similar East German workers in the segment with almost free firm entry into product markets and weak worker influence on the decision-making of firms. Competing native workers are insulated from such pressure if firm entry regulation interacts with labor market institutions, implying a strong influence of workers on the decision-making of profit-making firms. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Product Market Regulation, Labor Market Regulation |
| JEL: | L50 J61 J3 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2013_22&r=mig |
| By: | Trevor Tombe (University of Calgary); Jennifer Winter |
| Abstract: | Within countries, internal trade is costly and the gains from trade depend on migration and taxes. We measure internal trade costs in Canada, China, and the United States; they are large, especially in poor regions. To investigate their consequences, we develop a model of trade, within-country factor mobility, and taxes and transfers that endogenously generates unbalanced trade and matches trade and income data. Simulations reveal substantial gains from lowering internal trade costs. We cleanly decompose the gains from trade and find tax effects are quantitatively important, amplifying gains in poor regions and diminishing them in rich. |
| Date: | 2013–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clg:wpaper:2013-28&r=mig |
| By: | Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | A central premise of tax scholarship of the last thirty years has been the greater mobility of capital than labour. Recently, scholars such as Edward Kleinbard have recommended that the US adopt a variant of the “dual income tax” model used by the Scandinavian countries, under which income from capital is subject to significantly lower rates than labour income because of its supposedly greater mobility. This article argues that the premise upon which this argument is built is mistaken, because for individual US taxpayers (as opposed to corporations), there are significant limitations on their ability to avoid tax by moving their capital overseas. Moreover, if we focus on those taxpayers that pay the bulk of the income tax (i.e., the upper middle class and the rich), the data suggest that their ability to legally avoid taxation by expatriation is not significantly lower than their ability to evade it by moving capital, and lower income taxpayers are able to avoid both the income tax and the payroll tax (as well as a VAT) by emigration. The article then develops the policy implications, suggesting that (contrary to recent legislative trends) income from labour and capital should be subject to the same tax rates, but that these rates should be congruent with the price the US population is willing to pay for public services. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:btx:wpaper:1318&r=mig |