Immigration Policy with Partisan Parties

27 Pages Posted: 11 Oct 2009

See all articles by Humberto Llavador

Humberto Llavador

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences

Angel Solano-García

Universidad de Granada

Date Written: August 12, 2009

Abstract

This paper analyzes the political economy of immigration when the salient electoral issue is the level of immigrants and the relevant immigration policy is the expenditure in immigration control. We consider that immigration affects voters’ welfare through economic and non economic factors. We model political competition à la Wittman with the ideology of parties endogenously determined at equilibrium. Numerical simulations provide the levels of immigration proposed by the two parties and the composition of parties’ constituencies. At equilibrium, parties propose different levels of immigration, located to the left and to the right of the median voter’s ideal point. We find that improvements in the efficacy of immigration control increases the probability of victory of the party proposing a tighter immigration policy and decreases the disparity in parties’ policy proposals.

Keywords: immigration, ideological parties, unskilled and skilled labor

JEL Classification: J61, F22, D72

Suggested Citation

Llavador, Humberto and Solano-García, Angel, Immigration Policy with Partisan Parties (August 12, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1485370 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1485370

Humberto Llavador (Contact Author)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences ( email )

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
Barcelona, 08005
Spain
(34) 93 542 23 81 (Phone)
(34) 93 542 17 46 (Fax)

Angel Solano-García

Universidad de Granada ( email )

Granada, E-18071
Spain

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
39
Abstract Views
1,201
PlumX Metrics