Economic effects of public policies on immigration

My research interests are in public economics, labour economics and applied econometrics. I am interested in international migration and the political economy of public policy choices, and their respective impacts on countries` fiscal performance, income redistribution and other socio-economic outcomes. In recent research I have examined the effect of immigration on income redistribution and public spending in the destination country, both theoretically as well as empirically (Mayr (2003, 2006), Böheim and Mayr (2005)), as well as the role of immigration in sustaining inter-temporal fiscal sustainability (Mayr (2005)). In the following, I shortly describe the relevance of economic migration research and my planned future work on migration. The World Bank`s (2006) Program on International Migration and Development emphasises the importance of migration research: `The migration of workers across international boundaries in search of economic opportunity has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries.` In destination countries, the general question is whether and how public policies on immigration can increase overall welfare. In future work on migration, I want to analyse the effects of immigration policies on 1) the admission and 2) the integration of immigrants on specific socio-economic outcomes. The general question is how successful immigration policies are in achieving their goals in managing migration flows. First, considering immigration policies on admission, I am interested in the size and characteristics of migration flows under different immigration policies. The immigration policy of destination countries has often been neglected as a factor of determining migration flows, but it is crucial, in particular if it is binding, e.g. restricting the number of immigrants that would come in the absence of regulation. Of course, the size and characteristics of illegal flows will represent important unobservable factors here. The effectiveness of the immigration policies with regard to illegal immigration is another important issue that I would like to investigate. Besides, immigration policies do not always exist to deter immigration, but often intend to enhance it for certain groups, for example the highly-skilled. I intend to analyse the effectiveness of point systems in attracting migrants with certain characteristics (younger, more educated, etc). Second, considering immigration policies on integration, I want to determine whether and under which circumstances migrants who have the required characteristics are able to realise the expected gains in the destination countries. For example, even the highly-skilled will only generate part of their potential value added if employed in low-skill jobs. Here, I want to analyse the economic effects of policies like compulsory language courses or rules on the recognition of foreign qualifications.