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Is Selling Immigration Rights Politically Sustainable?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

Bertrand Crettez
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Summary

This paper relies on Benhabib (1996)’s immigration model to analyze the political sustainability of selling immigration permits, an idea proposed by Gary Becker. To simplify the analysis, we focus on the effects of immigration flows on input prices. We find that immigration quotas almost always generate the highest capital-labor ratio (and thus the highest wage rate). We also provide an example in which immigration permits generate the lowest value of the capital-labor ratio when permits sales are wasted. Under this last assumption, we show that if the wealth of the median voter is low enough, immigration quotas will be chosen over immigration permits. If the median voter's wealth is high, then the issue of majority voting will be the system which delivers the lowest capital-labor ratio.

Cet article utilise le modèle d'immigration de Benhabib (1996) pour savoir si la vente de permis d'immigrer, une idée due à Gary Becjer, est politiquement possible. Pour simplifier l'analyse, nous nous ne prenons en considération que les effets de flux migratoires sur les prix des facteurs de production. Nous montrons que les quotas d'immigration engendrent presque toujours le plus haut ratio capital-travail (et donc la plus haute valeur des salaires). Nous proposons également un exemple où, sous l'hypothèse que le revenu de la vente des permis n'est pas réinvesti, la vente de permis d'immigrer permet de réaliser la plus petite valeur du ratio capital-travail.

Sous cette hypothèse, si la richesse de l'électeur médian est assez faible, le résultat des élections sera tel que les quotas d'immigration seront toujours préférés à la vente de permis d'immigrer. Si la richesse de l'électeur médian est au contraire plutôt élevée, alors le système qui sera choisi par une majorité d'électeurs est celui qui permet de réaliser le plus bas niveau de stock de capital par tête.

Keywords

Immigration quotasimmigration permitsrights to immigratequotas d'immigrationpermis d'immigrerdroits à immigrerF22J18F22J18
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 33 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 2011 

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Footnotes

*

Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris II, Laboratoire d'Économie du Droit, ERMES EAC 4441 CNRS, 26 rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques, 75005, Paris. Phone: (33) 01 44 41 89 61 Email: bertrand.crettez@me.com.

I am grateful to Susan Crettez and Jean-Pierre Vidal for very helpful comments on a previous version of this work. I also thank two anonymous referees for stimulating remarks.

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