Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality?

Simone Bertoli, Vianney Dequiedt () and Yves Zenou

Journal of Development Economics, 2016, vol. 119, issue C, 100-109

Abstract: Destination countries can adopt selective immigration policies to improve migrants' quality. Screening potential migrants on the basis of observable characteristics also influences their self-selection on unobservables. We propose a model that analyzes the effects of selective immigration policies on migrants' quality, measured by their wages at destination. We show that the prevailing pattern of selection on unobservables influences the effect of an increase in selectivity, which can reduce migrants' quality when migrants are positively self-selected on unobservables. We also demonstrate that, in this case, the quality-maximizing share of educated migrants declines with the scale of migration.

Keywords: Selective policies; Self-selection; Migrants' quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387815001285
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality? (2016)
Working Paper: Can Selective Immigration Policies Reduce Migrants' Quality? (2015)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
Working Paper: Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants’ quality? (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:119:y:2016:i:c:p:100-109

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.11.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().