Over the years, there emerged two key policy differences between Europe and America, both welfare and migration-states. The former has more generous welfare state and more liberal migration policies than the latter. In this paper we attempt to provide a political-economy explanation for these...

This paper provides overview of recent work on migration and welfare state tax policies: 1. I survey the literature on the tax burden of migration. 2. I empirically identify the differential effect of the generosity of the welfare state on the skill composition of immigrants across the two...

The paper analyzes the effect of the generosity of the welfare state on the skill composition of immigrants. We develop a parsimonious model in which the effect of an increase in the generosity (and taxes) of the welfare state on the skill composition of immigrants under free migration is...

Skilled migrants typically contribute to the welfare state more than they draw in benefits from it. The opposite holds for unskilled migrants. This suggests that a host country is likely to boost (respectively, curtail) its welfare system when absorbing high-skill (respectively, low-skill)...