Occupation-specific immigration quotas in political equilibrium

Karin Mayr-Dorn

Vienna Economics Papers from University of Vienna, Department of Economics

Abstract: Immigration policies are generally protectionist, yet positive immigration quotas often exist for workers in specific occupations where the native labor supply is scarce. This paper determines occupation-specific immigration quotas in a political economy framework with endogenous prices and compares them to the social optimum. It shows that positive quotas for specific occupations can be the political outcome, even when total welfare effects of immigration are negative. Two of the main findings are that the (unique) voting outcome on immigration quotas is i) positive, if workers are immobile across occupations, and ii) negative (positive) for occupations where the native labor supply is sufficiently large (small), if workers are mobile across occupations.

JEL-codes: D72 F22 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papersecon.univie.ac.at/RePEc/vie/viennp/vie1207.pdf (application/pdf)

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:vie:viennp:vie1207

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Vienna Economics Papers from University of Vienna, Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paper Administrator ().