In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open migration policies. Next we investigate the determinants of voters' preferences towards immigration from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Our analysis supports the role played by economic channels (labour market, welfare state, efficiency gains) using both the 1995 and 2003 rounds of the ISSP survey. The second part of the paper examines how attitudes translate into a migration policy outcome. We consider two alternative political-economy frameworks: the median voter and the interest groups model. On the one hand, the restrictive policies in place across destination countries and the very low fractions of voters favouring immigration are consistent with the median voter framework. At the same time, given the extent of individual-level opposition to immigration that appears in the data, it is somewhat puzzling, in a median-voter perspective, that migration flows take place at all. Interest-groups dynamics have the potential to explain this puzzle. We find evidence from regression analysis supporting both political-economy frameworks.
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
3512.
Length: 2008 pages Date of creation: May 2008 Date of revision: Publication status: published in: Economic Policy, No. 56, October 2008, 651 - 713 Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3512
Find related papers by JEL classification: F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Maurice Obstfeld & Alan M. Taylor, 2003.
"Globalization and Capital Markets,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Globalization in Historical Perspective, pages 121-188
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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