 The rhetoric of closed borders: Quotas, lax enforcement and illegal immigrationGiovanni Facchini and Cecilia Testa Journal of International Economics, 2021, vol. 129, issue C Abstract: Governments do not always enforce their laws, even when they have the means of doing so, and lax enforcement is common in the domain of immigration policy. To explain this paradox we develop a political agency model where gains from migration are unevenly distributed, and an elected government chooses both quotas and their enforcement. We show that distributional concerns can have perverse effects on migration policy since a utilitarian government may set a quota to appease the electorate, but then strategically under-invest in its enforcement. Under-investment is more likely, the larger the preference gap between median and average voter, and the higher the likelihood of a populist challenger gaining office. Our analysis also indicates that redistributive taxation reducing the share of enforcement cost borne by the median voter exacerbates the problem, whereas a compensatory tax rebate financed through a tax on profits from migration alleviates the conflict of interest, thus reducing illegal immigration. Keywords: Political economy; Inequality; Populism; Immigration policy (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:eee:inecon:v:129:y:2021:i:c:s0022199620301306 DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103415 Access Statistics for this article Journal of International Economics is currently edited by Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier and RodrÃguez-Clare, Andrés More articles in Journal of International Economics from Elsevier |
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