sale of visas a smuggler s final song is there a way of eliminating human smuggling we set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would be migrants a visa selling policy may be successful at eliminating human smugglers by eroding their profits but it necessarily increases immigration in contrast re enforced repression decreases migration but uses the help of cartelized smugglers to overcome this trade off we study how legalisation and repression can be combined to eliminate human smuggling while controlling migration flows this policy mix also has the advantage that the funds raised by visa sales can be used to finance additional investments in border and internal controls employer sanctions and deportations simulations of the policy implications highlight the complementarities between repression and legalisation and call into question the current policies

strategic amnesty and credible immigration reform why do countries that impose employer sanctions to deter the illegal entry of foreign workers nevertheless grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in this article i provide a positive theory of amnesty provision in a model where the constrained optimal immigration reform involving the joint use of employer sanctions and border interdictions is time inconsistent in particular my framework demonstrates that host countries of immigration can enhance the credibility of their immigration reforms by binding their own hands and strategically granting a socially excessive amount of amnesty to illegal workers

alcohol consumption during prohibition we estimate the consumption of alcohol during prohibition using mortality mental health and crime statistics we find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of prohibition to approximately 30 percent of its pre prohibition level during the next several years however alcohol consumption increased sharply to about 60 70 percent of its pre prohibition level the level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after prohibition as during the latter part of prohibition although consumption increased to approximately its pre prohibition level during the subsequent decade this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

effects of enforcement on illegal markets evidence from migrant smuggling along the southwestern border abstract the paper analyzes the effects of tighter border control on the illegal crossing market between mexico and the united states combining panel data on illegal migrants with enforcement statistics the effects of enforcement are found to be moderate prices of border smugglers coyotes increased by only 17 while the demand for smugglers has remained unchanged enforcement has however shifted illegal migrants to remote crossing places border crossing is now more time intensive with higher prices for coyotes and risk of death this geographic substitution raised migration costs by 140 more than twice the effect of enforcement on smuggling prices

cronyism a cross cultural analysis the devastating economic effects of the asian financial crisis and us corporate scandals have underscored the need to strengthen corporate governance provisions although cronyism has been suggested as a leading cause of the two crises it has received little attention from scholars in this paper we analyze the concept of cronyism and argue that it comes in various guises arising from different motivational bases and power dependence relations we distinguish cronyism from related constructs and posit that it is a form of corruption with different dynamics from other forms we advance propositions on its likelihood of occurrence across cultures and develop a typology of cronyist exchanges

a cross cultural study of guanxi and auditor independence in two economies evidence from china and the united states abstractthis study examines the impact of guanxi on auditor independence in china and the u s using panel data from 2012 2015 surveys fixed effects regression models are used to analyse survey data with observations drawn from a total of 1076 big 4 and 1044 non big 4 auditor years for chinese auditors and 1168 big 4 and 1140 non big 4 auditor years for the u s auditors the results indicate that guanxi with clients has a negative influence on perceptions of auditor independence for chinese auditors but not for the u s auditors according to our findings both groups agree that imposing regulations code has a positive influence on perceptions of auditor independence gender has no influence on the perceived independence of either group after controlling for social desirability bias our results remain robust sensitivity analysis further increases the robustness of the findings our results provide empirical support for public interest theory and pose implications for western multinational compani

illegal immigration border enforcement and relative wages evidence from apprehensions at the u s mexico border we examine illegal immigration in the united states from mexico over the period 1976 1995 one challenge is that we do not observe the number of individuals that attempt to enter the united states illegally we only observe the number of individuals apprehended attempting to cross the u s mexico border illegally based on a simple migration model we postulate the existence of an apprehensions function which expresses apprehensions at the border as a function of illegal attempts to cross the border and u s border enforcement effort we find that a 10 decrease in the mexican real wage leads to a 7 5 to 8 8 increase in apprehensions at the border excerpt

financial globalization and real regionalization over the period 1972 1986 the correlations of gdp employment and investment between the united states and an aggregate of europe canada and japan were respectively 0 76 0 66 and 0 63 for the period 1986 to 2000 the same correlations were much lower 0 26 0 03 and 0 07 real regionalization at the same time u s international asset trade has significantly increased for example between 1972 and 1999 united states gross fdi and equity assets in the same group of countries rose from 4 to 23 percent of the u s capital stock financial globalization we argue that these two trends are intimately related we document that the correlation of real shocks between the u s and the rest of the world has declined we then present a model in which international financial market integration occurs endogenously in response to less correlated shocks financial integration further reduces the international correlations in gdp and factor supplies we find that both less correlated shocks and endogenous financial market development are needed to account for all the changes in the international business cycle

what can explain the apparent lack of international consumption risk sharing recent research in international business cycles finds that international consumption comovements do not match the risk sharing predictions of standard complete markets models in this paper i ask whether two different types of explanations can help explain this result 1 nonseparabilities between tradables and nontradable leisure or goods and 2 the effects of capital market restrictions on consumption risk sharing i find that risk sharing cannot be resolved by either explanation alone however when i allow for both nonseparabilities and certain market restrictions risk sharing among unrestricted countries cannot be rejected this evidence suggests that a combination of these two effects may be necessary to explain consumption risk sharing across countries

some essentials of a workable guest worker program a guest worker program provides an appealing way of addressing labor shortages in an advanced country it requires however that foreign workers are willing to return home when their work permit expires i examine how immigration policies enforcement measures and opportunities available in various markets at home and abroad affect the behavior of program participants welfare of a migrant who obeys the rules of the program is compared with that of workers who choose other options in order to define the conditions under which temporary migration is attractive to potential migrants and at the same time consistent with voluntary return

liquidity constrained migrants liquidity constraints represent a major obstacle for potential migrants trying to meet the high cost of undocumented international migration some cover it by borrowing from a smuggling organization with a commitment to repay the loan by working in the destination country as bonded laborers this paper compares alternative ways of financing migration and shows that debt bondage is optimal only if the international wage differential is sufficiently large in relation to migration costs tougher border controls as well as internal enforcement measures can be expected to reduce the incidence of debt bonded relative to self financed migration although they may not necessarily lower the overall inflow of illegal aliens

immigration reform the effects of employer sanctions and legalization on wages the immigration reform and control act of 1986 irca represents an attempt to use labor market regulation to control illegal migration into the united states by imposing fines on employers who hire unauthorized workers sanctions lower wages directly because they act as a tax on hiring additional workers in addition irca legalized many longtime illegal aliens legalization affects wages by changing the relative supply of authorized and unauthorized workers this study estimates irca s impact on wages of manufacturing production workers in metropolitan areas and finds small but statistically significant effects sanctions lower wages while legalization raises them

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

people flows in globalization the policy debate over globalization in the past decade has largely bypassed the international mobility of labor restrict trade and cries of protectionism resound suggest linking labor standards to trade and it s protectionism in disguise limit capital flows and the international monetary fund is on your back but restrict people flows that s just an accepted exercise of national sovereignty during the last few decades when most countries reduced barriers to trade in goods and services and liberalized financial capital markets most also sought to limit immigration in this essay i examine what we know about the causes and consequences of immigration i argue that people flows are fundamental to creating a global economy and that the interplay among immigration capital and trade is essential to understanding the way globalization affects economies i consider ways to reduce barriers to immigration that could improve the well being of workers around the world

income maximization and the selection and sorting of international migrants abstract two prominent features of international labor movements are that the more educated are more likely to emigrate positive selection and more educated migrants are more likely to settle in destination countries with high rewards to skill positive sorting using data on emigrant stocks by schooling level and source country in oecd destinations we find that a simple model of income maximization can account for both phenomena results on selection show that migrants for a source destination pair are more educated relative to non migrants the larger is the absolute skill related difference in earnings between the destination country and the source results on sorting indicate that the relative stock of more educated migrants in a destination is increasing in the absolute earnings difference between high and low skilled workers we use our framework to compare alternative specifications of international migration estimate the magnitude of migration costs by source destination pair and assess the contribution of wage differences to how migrants sort themselves across destination countries

who leaves deciphering immigrant self selection from a developing country abstract using a novel data set from a developing country the federated states of micronesia fsm i analyze an emigration flow to the united states that has no legal barriers to entry and contains detailed information on the immigrant at home and in the united states i find that highly educated workers relative to the home country average have the highest likelihood of migrating from the fsm to the united states i also compare the premigration wages for the migrants and an observationally equivalent matched nonmigrant group and find that there is a positive and statistically significant difference between the two groups indicating that immigrants are also positively selected on unobserved characteristics the observed selection is consistent with the relatively large differences in home country and destination skill prices at the highest skill levels information on the immigrants characteristics before migration is central to my analysis of determining the nature of immigrant self selection on

passenger shipping cartels and their effect on trans atlantic migration abstract we investigate the impact of passenger shipping cartels on trans atlantic migration during the early twentieth century we assemble from primary sources a detailed database of passenger flows and cartel operations and show that cartel operation reduced migratory flows by approximately 20 to 25 further we show that there was no strong intertemporal substitution in migration to north america at least in the short run and therefore that the effects of cartel operation were not undone by later migration lastly we find that cartel operation had no appreciable effect on the variability of migration flows providing evidence against the notion that unfettered competition was destabilizing to turn of the century transportation markets

coming out of the shadows learning about legal status and wages from the legalized population the 1986 immigration reform and control act irca granted amnesty to approximately 1 7 million long term unauthorized workers in an effort to bring them out of the shadows and improve their labor market opportunities an analysis of wages using panel data for a sample of legalized men provides evidence that wage determinants are structurally different after amnesty for them but not for the comparison group as measured during the same time periods the wage penalty for being unauthorized is estimated to range from 14 to 24 the wage benefit of legalization under irca was approximately 6

what s driving mexico u s migration a theoretical empirical and policy analysis using data gathered in 25 mexican communities the authors link individual acts of migration to 41 theoretically defined individual household community and macroeconomic level predictors the indicators vary through time to yield a discrete time event history analysis over the past 25 years probabilities of first repeat and return migration have been linked more to the forces identified by social capital theory and the new economics of migration than to the cost benefit calculations assumed by the neoclassical model the authors find that mexico u s migration stems from three mutually reinforcing processes social capital formation human capital formation and market consolidation

risk preference immigration policy and illegal immigration abstract the paper analyzes the effects of government policy upon illegal immigration the model used as a vehicle for this analysis is an extension of ethier s one small country model of illegal immigration to a two country context we distinguish between the cases of capital immobility and free capital mobility and consider illegal immigration when there are border patrols by the government and when there are internal enforcement procedures in effect unlike previous researchers who have assumed risk neutrality we examine the impacts of government policy when prospective illegal immigrants exhibit risk averse and risk loving behavior the relaxation of the risk neutrality assumption leads to the possibility of multiple and unstable equilibria moreover attitudes to risk and the probability of detection are shown to have implications for some equilibrium responses to tighter surveillance

face and favor the chinese power game western research on interpersonal behavior patterns and rules of exchange needs to move beyond the assumption of isolated individuals socialized to make rational decisions on the basis of self inte

why don t we observe improvements in consumption smoothing as countries get more financially integrated bridging theory and empirics abstract this study provides suggestive theoretical and empirical evidence that the productivity shock correlation between a country and the rest of the world may help explain why we do not observe more consumption smoothing as countries have become more financially liberalized

measuring international skilled migration a new database controlling for age of entry recent data on international migration of skilled workers define skilled migrants by education level without distinguishing whether they acquired their education in the home or the host country this article uses immigrants age of entry as a proxy for where they acquired their education data on age of entry are available from a subset of receiving countries that together represent 77 percent of total skilled immigration to countries of the oecd organization for economic co operation and development using these data and a simple gravity model to estimate the age of entry structure of the remaining 23 percent alternative brain drain measures are proposed that exclude immigrants who arrived before ages 12 18 and 22

migrant smuggling when exploitation is private information this study contributes to the small theoretical literature on human smuggling by assuming for the first time asymmetric information in analysis the assumption raises the possibility of an adverse selection equilibrium where only exploitative smugglers are employed at a low fee even though migrants are willing to pay non exploitative smugglers a high fee more important i find that improved inland apprehension of migrants may increase the incidence of migrant exploitation while failing to decrease smuggling attempts furthermore improved border apprehension of migrants and smugglers may not affect the market at all contrebande d immigrants quand l information a propos de l exploitation est privee cette etude contribue au corpus restreint de litterature theorique sur la contrebande d immigrants en developpant une analyse pour le cas ou il y a information asymetrique le postulat souleve la possibilite d un equilibre de selection adverse ou les contrebandiers sont engages a un taux de remuneration faible meme si les immigrants sont prets a payer des frais eleves a des contrebandiers qui ne sont pas des exploiteurs plus important un mecanisme ameliore d interception des immigrants illegaux a la frontiere peut accroitre l incidence de l exploitation des immigrants sans diminuer les tentatives de contrebande de plus un mecanisme ameliore d interception des immigrants et des contrebandiers a la frontiere peut fort bien ne pas affecter ce marche du tout

international migration self selection and the distribution of wages evidence from mexico and the united states we use the 1990 and 2000 mexican and u s population censuses to test borjas s negative selection hypothesis that the less skilled are those most likely to migrate from countries with high skill premia earnings inequality to countries with low skill premia earnings inequality we find that mexican immigrants in the united states are more educated than nonmigrants in mexico and were mexican immigrants to be paid according to current skill prices in mexico they would be concentrated in the middle of mexico s wage distribution these results are inconsistent with the negative selection hypothesis and instead suggest that there is intermediate selection of immigrants from mexico