 Love of Variety and ImmigrationThe B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2016, vol. 16, issue 2, 901-930 Abstract: This paper develops a political-economic analysis of immigration in a host country that operates in a direct democracy regime. It shows that, in a monopolistic competitive environment with differentiated capital intensive goods, labor liberalization is more likely to come about in the societies that have more taste for variety. Moreover, in a host country with a strong preference for variety, workers and capital owners may share the same positive stance toward labor liberalization. It follows that the latter is impossible in a perfect competitive environment. Finally, in a dynamic inter-temporal setting with strategic voters, it demonstrates that the median voter is willing to accept fewer immigrants in the first period, in order to preserve her domestic political influence in the next period because of the naturalization of immigrants. In this way, the median voter maximizes her gains from immigration by accepting more immigrants in total. Keywords: immigration; long-run general equilibrium; direct democracy; perfect competition; monopolistic competition; factor price equalization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:16:y:2016:i:2:p:901-930:n:14 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter |
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