Temporary Migration, Remittances and Agriculture
Abstract
Discussions within the World Trade Organization on the temporary movement of labour across borders have met with limited success, in spite of the potential benefits to both home and destination countries. Developed countries have been reluctant to allow increased immigration because of concerns about the social and economic impacts of integrating foreign workers. Recently available bilateral data on current migration flows, differences in wages and remittances makes it possible to estimate the potential impacts of temporary migration on wages and national income. Using a general equilibrium model that separates skilled and unskilled labour, we show that a three per cent increase in the labour force due to increased migration would increase national income in Australia and New Zealand by an estimated US$5 billion annually. Remittances sent abroad would amount to an additional US$750 million. Most developing country regions would benefit. More specifically, allowing in 10,000 temporary unskilled workers to work in the agricultural sector in Australia generates estimated welfare gains of US$100 million.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in its series 2010 Conference (54th), February 10-12, 2010, Adelaide, Australia with number 59174.Length:
Date of creation: 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ags:aare10:59174
Contact details of provider:
Postal: AARES Central Office Manager, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, Canberra ACT 0200
Phone: 0409 032 338
Email:
Web page: http://www4.agr.gc.ca
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Migration; trade; GATS mode 4; International Development; F13; Q17;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
- Q17 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agriculture in International Trade
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-05-22 (All new papers)
- NEP-LAB-2010-05-22 (Labour Economics)
- NEP-MIG-2010-05-22 (Economics of Human Migration)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aare10:59174For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

