Towards a Better System for Immigration Control

We study different methods of immigration control using a simple model of a congested world. Our main comparison involves quota, the predominant instrument of immigration control, and a proposed system of immigration tolls and emigration subsidies. We show that the equilibrium of the proposed system is Pareto superior to the quota system. This is consistent with the tolls and subsidies creating a market for international migrants. When countries are price-takers the market becomes perfect and the exploitation of gains from trade complete. From a normative perspective, an open-borders policy is preferred to both control methods but will meet political opposition because it hurts the residents of the rich country.

Immigration Control and the Welfare State

We examine immigratuon policy and its redistributive effects using a model of a rich country which must spend on border control in order to regulate immigration from a poor country. There are owners and workers in the rich country, and a public sector which makes redistributive transfers from owners to workers. We first consider the case where illegal immigrants have access to the public sector, a situation currently observed in many countries. We show that as border control becomes more expensive inequality in the rich country increases, redistributive transfers may increase or decrease, some immigration is permitted and foreign aid may be used by the rich country in order to reduce the migration pressure along its border with the poor country. Because of nonconvexities, we also show a small decrease in the aversion to collapse of the redistributive public sector. We then consider excluding illegal immigrants from the public sector (eg. Califronia Proposition 187). We find that the possibility of collapse vanishes and that the rich country takes the toughest official stance on migration but does not enforce it with border controls.

Externalities, Indivisibility, Nonreplicability and Agglomeration

While there are many successes for students and teachers to enjoy in modern public …nance there remain some ‘awkward moments’ — moments when, you, the student or the teacher, would prefer to be somewhere other than the classroom. This essay discusses three of these ‘moments’ and suggests ways to diminish their awkwardness.