| Abstract: |
People flows refers to the movement of people across international borders in
the form of immigration, international student flows, business travel, and
tourism. Despite its peripheral status in debates over globalization, the
movement of people from low income to high income countries is fundamental in
global economic development, with consequences for factor endowments, trade
patterns, and transfer of technology. In part because people flows are smaller
than trade and capital flows, the dispersion of pay for similarly skilled
workers around the world exceeds the dispersion of the prices of goods and
cost of capital. This suggests that policies that give workers in developing
countries greater access to advanced country labor markets could raise global
economic well-being considerably. The economic problem is that immigrants
rather than citizens of immigrant-receiving countries benefit most from
immigration. The paper considers "radically economic policies" such as
auctioning immigration visas or charging sizeable fees and spending the funds
on current residents to increase the economic incentive for advanced countries
to accept greater immigration. |