Trade Policy and Illegal Immigration

Alan Woodland and Chisato Yoshida ()

A chapter in International Trade and Economic Dynamics, 2009, pp 101-119 from Springer

Abstract: We develop a general equilibrium two-country model in which the home and foreign countries trade two final goods and legal immigration is restricted. International trade is distorted via tariffs imposed by both countries. Foreign migrants attempt illegally entry to the home country but face a probability of detection and arrest by border patrol of the home country. The primary concern is with the interaction between tariff policy and illegal immigration. Tariff settings affect the real wages that illegal immigrants can attract and so have an influence on the amount of illegal immigration. Conversely, the existence of illegal immigrants can influence the effectiveness of changes in tariffs. Our analysis attempts to draw out the important interactions between tariff policy and illegal immigration. We establish conditions under which unilateral and bilateral tariff reforms reduce successful illegal immigration, and determine the welfare implications of these policy changes. We conclude that the mutual liberalization of trade does not necessarily reduce successful illegal immigration.

Keywords: European Union; Trade Policy; Welfare Effect; Real Income; Illegal Immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-78676-4_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783540786764

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-78676-4_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().