Public goods’ attractiveness and migrations

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a dynamic model of migrations, in which migration is driven by size asymmetries between countries and by the relative preferences of consumers between private consumption and consumption of public goods. The dynamic trajectories heavily depend on the degree of attractiveness for public goods. We show that monotone migrations require sufficiently strong preferences for public goods, and can only be sustained from the small of the large countries. We identify the threshold value of the public goods’ intensity of preferences guaranteeing the survival of the small country. For weaker preference intensities, oscillating migrations may rise, but they finally converge to situation where both countries are of equal sizeMigration; public goods; income tax