Migration, social standards and replacement incomes : how to protect low-income workers in the industrialized countries against the forces of globalization and market integration

Arbeitspapier

This paper discusses how an industrialized country could defend the wages and social benefits of its unskilled workers against wage competition from immigrants. It shows that fixing social standards harms the workers and that fixing social replacement incomes implies migration into unemployment. Defending wages with replacement incomes brings about first-order efficiency losses that outweigh the budget cost to the government. By contrast, wage subsidies involve much smaller welfare losses. While the exclusion of migrants from a national replacement program does not improve the situation, the (temporary) exclusion of migrants from a national subsidy program makes it possible to avoid a distortion of the migration pattern.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 1265

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs ; International Migration ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Economic Integration
• Thema: migration ; unemployment ; welfare ; Standortwettbewerb ; Sozialstaat ; Internationale Sozialstandards ; Internationale Arbeitsmobilität ; Theorie ; Industriestaaten

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Sinn, Hans-Werner
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2004

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/18903
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ