We review the growing literature on the political economy of immigration. First, we discuss the effects of immigration on a wide range of political and social outcomes. The existing evidence suggests that immigrants often, but not always, trigger backlash, increasing support for anti-immigrant...

This paper provides a micro-funded theory of multilateral resistance to migration analyzing how financial constraints determine migration trends. We build a RUM model in which we explicitly introduce the budget constraint in the migration decision: individuals cannot afford migrating to a...

On February 5, 1917, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which included a test for all migrants arriving to the U.S. to prove they were literate. The Literacy Test was one of the first and few times the U.S. used a broad 'skill-based' immigration policy in an attempt to limit...

Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming an increasingly important destination for international migration. The region hosts immigrants from other African countries and from other parts of the world, such as China. Given high poverty levels and weak social security systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, host...

We examine how the large, one-time legalization authorized by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) has affected the scale and character of immigration to the U.S. since the late 1980s. Exploiting cross-country variation in the magnitude of the legalization shock, we find that each IRCA...

Can history shed light on the modern debate about immigration's labor market impact in high wage economies? This paper examines the relationship between migration and capital flows in the age of mass migration before 1914, the so-called first global century. It then assesses the effects of...

Over 12 million persons migrated to Canada or the United States between 1959 and 1981. Beginning in the mid?1960s, the immigration policies of the two countries began to diverge considerably: the United States stressing family reunification and Canada stressing skills. This paper shows that the...

Self-selection plays a dominant role in determining the size and composition of immigrant flows. The United States competes with other potential host countries in the "immigration market". Host countries vary in their "offers" of economic opportunities and also differ in the way they ration...

This paper shows that providing undocumented immigrants with an immigration pardon, or amnesty, increases their economic activity in the form of higher entrepreneurship. Using administrative census data linked to the complete formal business registry, we study a 2018 policy shift in Colombia...

International migration not only enables individuals to earn higher wages but also exposes them to new environments. The norms and values experienced at the destination country could change the behavior of the migrant but also of family members left behind. In this paper we argue that a brain...