Tradable Immigration Quotas

Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga and Hillel Rapoport ()

No 5765, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: International migration is maybe the single most effective way to alleviate poverty at a global level. When a given host country allows more immigrants in, this creates costs and benefits for that particular country as well as a positive externality for all those (individuals and governments) who care about world poverty. This implies that the existing international migration regime is inefficient as it fails to internalize such externality. In addition, host countries quite often restrict immigration due to its apparently unbearable social and political costs. However these costs are never measured and made comparable across countries. In this paper we first discuss theoretically how tradable immigration quotas (TIQs) can reveal information on such costs and, once coupled with a matching mechanism taking into account migrants’ preferences, generate substantial welfare gains for all the parties involved. We then propose two potential applications: a market for the resettlement of international (e.g., climate change) refugees, and an extension of the US diversity lottery to a larger set of host countries and other immigration targets. Both applications are seen as possible precursors to a full implementation of a TIQs system.

Keywords: international public goods; immigration; immigration policy; tradable quotas; refugees; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F5 H87 I3 K33 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - Published in: Journal of Public Economics, 2014, 115, 94-108

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5765.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Tradable immigration quotas (2014)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2013)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2011)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2011)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2011)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2011)
Working Paper: Tradable Immigration Quotas (2011)
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:iza:izadps:dp5765

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().