A Dual Policy Paradox: Why Have Trade and Immigration Policies Always Differed in Labor-Scarce Economies

Timothy Hatton and Jeffrey Williamson ()

No 11866, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Today's labor-scarce economies have open trade and closed immigration policies, while a century ago they had just the opposite, open immigration and closed trade policies. Why the inverse policy correlation, and why has it persisted for almost two centuries? This paper seeks answers to this dual policy paradox by exploring the fundamentals which have influenced the evolution of policy: the decline in the costs of migration and its impact on immigrant selectivity, a secular switch in the net fiscal impact of trade relative to immigration, and changes in the median voter. The paper also offers explanations for the between-country variance in voter anti-trade and anti-migration attitude, and links this to the fundamentals pushing policy.

JEL-codes: F22 J1 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-int and nep-pol
Note: DAE ITI LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published as Hatton, T., K. O’Rourke and A. Taylor (eds.). THE NEW COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC HISTORY. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11866.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Dual Policy Paradox: Why Have Trade and Immigration Policies Always Differed in Labour-Scarce Economies? (2006)
Working Paper: A Dual Policy Paradox: Why Have Trade and Immigration Policies Always Differed in Labor-Scarce Economies? (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11866

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11866

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().