Sale of visas: a smuggler's final song?

Emmanuelle Auriol () and Alice Mesnard
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Emmanuelle Auriol: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Alice Mesnard: CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, City University London

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Abstract: Is there a way of eliminating human smuggling? We set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would-be migrants. A visa-selling policy may be successful at eliminating smugglers by eroding their profits but it also increases immigration. In contrast, repression decreases migration but fuels cartelized smugglers. To overcome this trade-off we show that legalisation through selling visas in combination with repression can be used to weaken human smuggling while controlling migration flows. Our results highlight the complementarities between repression and selling visas and call into question current policies.

Keywords: Migration; Human smuggling; Market structure; Legalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05086408v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Economica, 2016, 83 (332), pp.646-678. ⟨10.1111/ecca.12204⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05086408

DOI: 10.1111/ecca.12204

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