Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Policy in OECD Countries

Timothy Hatton

American Economic Review, 2016, vol. 106, issue 5, 441-45

Abstract: Refugees and asylum seekers are only a small proportion of the 60 million forcibly displaced persons. But those seeking asylum in the developed world have received much of the attention as western governments have struggled to develop a policy response. An analysis of asylum applications by origin and destination indicates that these flows are largely driven by political terror and human rights abuses. Poor economic conditions in origin countries and tough asylum policies in destination countries matter too. In the light of the findings I suggest that greater coordination among OECD countries could improve the lot of those fleeing from persecution but even this would make only modest inroads into the sum of human misery that displaced people exemplify.

JEL-codes: F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161062
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161062 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/10605/P2016_1062_data.zip (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10605/P2016_1062_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:5:p:441-45

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().