We explore the implications of migrants' self-selection for the determination of immigration policy in a simple model where incentives and resources to migrate vary with skills. We show how self-selection determines the response of potential migrants to immigration policy changes, which is...

Based on the current European discussion about immigration policy, this paper gives an overview of central economic consequences of immigration for a host country's labor market. The most important theoretical arguments are presented and evaluated against the available empirical evidence. The...

This article seeks to explain the contradiction between the promises of welfare gains derived from the economic models recommending the removal of immigration restrictions and the realities experienced by countries attempting to apply restrictions to immigration flows. A formal model is built in...

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...

This paper presents a model of legal migration of temporary skilled workers from one source country to two host countries, both of which can control their levels of such immigration. Because of complementarities between capital and labor, the return on capital is positively related to the level...

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...

This paper identifies the migration policies that emerge when both the sending country and the receiving country wield power to set migration quotas, when controlling migration is costly, and when the decision how much human capital to acquire depends, among other things, on the migration...

This paper identifies the migration policies that emerge when both the sending country and the receiving country wield power to set migration quotas, when controlling migration is costly, and when the decision how much human capital to acquire depends, among other things, on the migration...

We analyze the effects of governmental redistribution of income on migration patterns,using an Italian administrative dataset that includes information on almost every Italian citizen living abroad. Since Italy takes a middle ground in terms of redistribution, both the welfare-magnet effect from...

Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United...