Aid, trade and migration: How do bilateral flows interact?

Audrey Menard and Aurore Gary
Additional contact information
Audrey Menard: Nantes Univ - Nantes Université
Aurore Gary: Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper takes as its point of departure the European Commission's position, set out in 2005, which laid clear emphasis on aid and trade as tools for controlling immigration. We attempt to subject this position to empirical investigation. We exploit data on bilateral aid, trade and migration flows between developed and developing countries, for the period 2000–10, adopting an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue due to potential simultaneity bias. Our results establish that increasing aid and trade with developing countries is likely to fail to contain immigration, at least in the short run. The pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that promoting development in migrant-sending countries, or cooperating with such countries to control migration outflows, is not sufficient to lessen immigration. Increasing visa restrictions and controls at borders is generally controversial; still, the results imply that policymakers cannot attain their short-term immigration goals with the so-called smart solutions of aid and trade.

Keywords: Migration; Trade; Unemployment; Aid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in The World Economy, 2018, 41 (2), pp.431-456. ⟨10.1111/twec.12550⟩

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:hal:journl:hal-04033832

DOI: 10.1111/twec.12550

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().