International Migration and Development
A decade ago, trade and investment liberalization dominated the global economic policy agenda. The World Trade Organization (WTO) had recently been created, the United States, Mexico and Canada were implementing North American Free Trade Agreement...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/425311468162835765/International-migration-and-development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28016 |
| Summary: | A decade ago, trade and investment
liberalization dominated the global economic policy agenda.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) had recently been
created, the United States, Mexico and Canada were
implementing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
and much of Southeast Asia and South America were near the
peak of an economic boom that was driven in part by greater
openness to inflows of foreign capital. In bilateral and
multilateral discussions of economic integration, global
migration was often missing from the docket entirely. The
growth in labor flows from low-income to high-income
countries has not been greeted with universal enthusiasm,
either by policy makers or academics. In theory,
international migration increases economic efficiency by
shifting labor from low-productivity to high-productivity
environments. As workers move from Central America to the
United States, North Africa to Europe, or Southeast Asia to
Australia, the global labor supply shifts from labor
abundant to labor-scarce economies, compressing
international differences in factor prices and raising
global gross domestic product (GDP). Migrants enjoy large
income gains family members at home share in these gains
through remittances, and non-migrating workers in the
sending country enjoy higher wages thanks to a drop in local
labor supply (Aydemir and Borjas, 2007). |
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