Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/18981 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 1517
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the impact of emigration on the political choice regarding the size of the welfare state. Mobility has two countervailing effects: the political participation effect and the tax base effect. With emigration, the composition of the constituency changes. This increases the political influence of the less mobile part of the population. The new political majority has to take into account that emigration reduces tax revenues and thereby affects the feasible set of redistribution policies. The interaction of the two effects has so far not been analyzed in isolation. We find that the direction of the total effect of migration depends on the initial income distribution in the economy. Our results also contribute to the empirical debate on the validity of the median-voter approach for explaining the relation between income inequality and redistribution levels.
Subjects: 
migration
redistribution
voting
JEL: 
D31
H50
F22
D72
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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