Can Selective Immigration Policies Reduce Migrants' Quality?

Simone Bertoli, Vianney Dequiedt () and Yves Zenou

No 9538, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Destination countries can adopt selective immigration policies to improve migrants' quality. Screening potential migrants on the basis of observable characteristics also influences their self-selection on unobservables. We propose a model that analyzes the effects of selective immigration policies on migrants' quality, measured by their wages at destination. We show that the prevailing pattern of selection on unobservables influences the effect of an increase in selectivity, which can reduce migrants' quality when migrants are positively self-selected on unobservables. We also demonstrate that, in this case, the quality-maximizing share of educated migrants declines with the scale of migration.

Keywords: selective policies; self-selection; migrants' quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Development Economics, 2016, 119, 100-109

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9538.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality? (2016)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality? (2016)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
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:dp9538

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 ().