329 records from EconBiz based on author Name

1. The effect of lawful crossing on unlawful crossing at the US southwest border

2. Partial legalization and parallel markets : the effect of lawful crossing on unlawful crossing at the US Southwest border

Legal and illegal markets often coexist. In theory, marginal legalization can either substitute for the remaining parallel market, or complement it via scale effects. I study migrants crossing without prior authorization at the US southwest border, where large-scale unlawful crossing coexists with substantial, varying, and policy-constrained lawful crossing. I test whether lawful and unlawful crossing are gross substitutes or complements, using lag-augmented local projections to analyze a monthly time-series on the full universe of 10,658,497 inadmissible migrants encountered from October 2011 through July 2023. Expanded lawful crossings cause reduced unlawful crossings, an effect that grows over time and reaches elasticity -0.3 after approximately 10 months. That is, in this case, expanded activity on the lawful market substitutes for the parallel market, even net of scale effects. This deterrent effect explains approximately 9 percent of the overall variance in unlawful crossings. In an ancillary finding, I fail to reject a null effect of depenalizing unlawful crossings on future attempted unlawful crossings.

3. Migration or stagnation: aging and economic growth in Korea today, the world tomorrow

4. Expelling excellence : exchange visitor restrictions on high-skill migrants in the United States

We examine a little-known restriction on high-skill immigration to the United States, the Exchange Visitor Skills List. This List mandates that to become eligible for long-term status in the U.S., certain high-skill visitors must reside in their home countries for two years after participation in the Exchange Visitor Program on a J-1 visa. While well-intended to prevent draining developing nations of needed skills, today the Skills List in practice is outdated and misdirected. It is outdated because it fails to reflect modern economic research on the complex effects of skilled migration on overseas development. It is misdirected because, as we show, the stringency of the List bears an erratic and even counterproductive relationship to the development level of the targeted countries. The List is also opaque: there have been no public estimates of exactly how many high-skill visitors are subject to the list. We provide the first such estimates. Over the last decade, an average of between 35,000 and 44,000 high-skill visitors per year have been covered by the home residency requirement via the Skills List. Despite the stated purpose of the List, these restrictions fall more heavily on relatively advanced economies than on the poorest countries. We describe how a proposed revision to the List can address all three of these concerns, balancing the national interest with evidence-based support for overseas development.

5. Partial legalization and parallel markets : the effect of lawful crossing on unlawful crossing at the US Southwest Border

Legal and illegal markets often coexist. In theory, marginal legalization can either substitute for the remaining parallel market, or complement it via scale effects. I study migrants crossing without prior authorization at the US southwest border, where large-scale unlawful crossing coexists with substantial, varying, and policy-constrained lawful crossing. I test whether lawful and unlawful crossing are gross substitutes or complements, using lag-augmented local projections to analyze a monthly time-series on the full universe of 10,658,497 inadmissible migrants encountered from October 2011 through July 2023. Expanded lawful crossings cause reduced unlawful crossings, an effect that grows over time and reaches elasticity -0.3 after approximately 10 months. That is, in this case, expanded activity on the lawful market substitutes for the parallel market, even net of scale effects. This deterrent effect explains approximately 9 percent of the overall variance in unlawful crossings. In an ancillary finding, I fail to reject a null effect of depenalizing unlawful crossings on future attempted unlawful crossings.

6. The effect of low-skill immigration restrictions on US firms and workers : evidence from a randomized lottery

7. The fiscal effect of immigration : reducing bias in influential estimates

8. Labour mobility with vocational skill : Australian demand and Pacific supply

9. Migration on the rise, a paradigm in decline : the last half-century of global mobility

10. Migration on the rise, a paradigm in decline : the last half-century of global mobility

The past several decades have witnessed a rebirth of global labor mobility. Workers have begun to move between countries at rates not seen since before World War One. During the same period, economists' study of international migration has been framed by a particular textbook model of location choice. This paper reviews the evidence on the economic causes and effects of global migration during the past half century. That evidence falsifies most of the core predictions of the old model. The economics of migration will regain vitality and relevance by discarding and replacing its outworn paradigm.