Bulletin n. 3/2008
February 2009
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Schwellnus Cyrille
    The Non-Traded Sector, Lobbying, And The Choice Between The Customs Union And The Common Market
    in Economics and Politics , Volume 20 Issue 3 ,  2008 ,  361 - 390
    This paper models immigration policy as the outcome of political competition between interest groups representing individuals employed in different sectors. In standard positive theory, restrictive immigration policy results from a low-skilled median voter voting against predominantly low-skilled immigration. In the present paper, in contrast, once trade policies are liberalized, restrictive immigration policy results from anti-immigration lobbying by interest groups representing the non-traded sectors. It is shown that this is in line with empirical regularities from recent episodes of restrictive immigration legislation in the European Union. It is further shown that if governments negotiate bilaterally over trade and migration policy regimes, the equilibrium regime depends (i) on the sequencing of the international negotiation process and (ii) on the set of available trade and migration policy regimes. In particular, the most comprehensive and most welfare-beneficial type of liberalization may be rejected only because a less comprehensive type of liberalization is available.
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