We use a version of the Meade model to consider the effects of interdependent import tariffs in the presence illegal immigration. First, we consider the small union case and derive the Nash tariff equilibrium for two potential members of a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA). We analyze...

This paper estimates the causal effect of the prospect of legal status on the employment outcomes of undocumented immigrants. Our identification strategy exploits a natural experiment provided by the 2002 amnesty program in Italy that introduced an exogenous discontinuity in eligibility based on...

This paper studies why illegal immigration is widespread. We develop a political agency model in which a politician decides on an immigration target and its enforcement, facing uncertainty on the supply of migrants. Illegal immigration can arise for two reasons: the policy maker may be unable to...

We build a general equilibrium model in which both illegal immigration and the size of the informal sector are endogenously determined. In this framework, we show that indirect policy measures such as tax reduction and detection of informal activities can be used as substitutes for border...

This paper examines the role of immigrant networks on trade, particularly through the demand effect. First, we examine the effect of immigration on trade when the immigrants consume more of the goods that are abundant in their home country than the natives in a standard Heckscher-Ohlin model and...

This paper highlights that the immigrants' effect on trade is not identical across all types of immigrants but it varies with the immigrants' occupation. Using a sample of 63 U.S. trading partners which are also big immigrant sending countries over the years 1991-2000, this paper finds that the...

This paper unpacks the role of the domestic content of imports as a novel source of policy interdependence along the global supply chain. We show how a rise in local contents embodied in imports can skew national trade policy preferences, and pull upstream and downstream countries in asymmetric...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of refugee migration, with emphasis on the current refugee crisis. After first reviewing the institutional framework laid out by the Geneva Convention for Refugees, we demonstrate that, despite numerous attempts at developing a common European asylum...

Do general amnesty programs lead to reductions in the crime rate among immigrants? We answer this question by exploiting both cross-sectional and time variation in the number of immigrants legalized generated by the enactment of repeated amnesty programs between 1990 and 2005 in Italy. We...

We analyze the effect of immigrants' legal status on their consumption behavior using unique survey data that samples both documented and undocumented immigrants. To address the problem of sorting into legal status, we propose two alternative identification strategies as exogenous source of...