The Political Economy of Migration Policies in Oil-rich Gulf Countries

Halvor Mehlum and Gry Østenstad ()
Additional contact information
Gry Østenstad: Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo, Postal: Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway

No 18/2013, Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the political economy of migration policies in oil-rich Gulf countries focusing on two policy dimensions: a) the number of migrants allowed into the country and b) the assimilation of migrants, where less assimilated migrants on short-term contracts remit more. We develop a two goods macro model with traded and non-traded goods. The migration of guest workers leads to a wage drop hurting citizen workers, while capitalists and oil rent earners benefit. When foreign exchange is remitted out of the economy, the real exchange rate depreciates. The remittance outflow benefits oil rent earners while capitalists and workers lose. Hence the three classes of domestic agents have diverging interests with regard to their preferred policy mix. The results are important for understanding the changes in migration policy in the Gulf, in particular in relation to the sharing of oil rents and on the political influence of the working class and the capitalists.

Keywords: Migration; Natural Resources; Gulf countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 O15 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-05-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-ene, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/research/unpubl ... 013/memo-18-2013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The political economy of migration policies in oil-rich Gulf countries (2016)
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:hhs:osloec:2013_018

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mari Strønstad Øverås ().