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TIME, SPACE, AND SKILLS IN DESIGNING MIGRATION POLICY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2018

Michał Burzyński
Michał Burzyński*
Affiliation:
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
*
Address corrrespondence to: Michał Burzyński, CREA University of Luxembourg, 162A, avenue de la Faiencerie, L-1511 Luxembourg; e-mail: michal.burzynski@uni.lu.
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Abstract

This paper proposes a multi-country model of international migration in which college-educated workers choose destination countries, preferred types of visas, and the optimal durations of stay. In this framework, I investigate the global implications of further development of the European Union (EU) program of preferential temporary visas for the highly skilled immigrants and compare them to the effects of income tax allowances for medium-term, college-educated, foreign workers. The two counterfactuals indicate a significant rise in the yearly inflows and total stocks of college-educated immigrants into the EU. The outcomes of the former policy are driven by a “visa-substitution” effect within the group of current migrants, while the latter scenario results in an increase in the pool of international migrants. Both policies induce a “destination–substitution” effect: losses of skilled migrants by non-EU states, which is reinforced by multilateral resistance to migration that is micro-founded in the model.

Keywords

Migration policytemporary migrationdiscrete choice modelH-1B visasF22J61
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 355 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2018 

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Footnotes

I want to thank Frédéric Docquier, Slobodan Djajić, Simone Bertoli, David de la Croix, Joel Machado, Krzysztof Malaga, Fabio Mariani, as well as Bastien Chabé-Ferret, Florian Mayneris, and other attendants of Macrolunch seminar in IRES, UCL for many accurate and constructive comments.

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