Browsing by Subject "Migration Policy"

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    Essays on International Economics and Policy
    (2016-07) Rebessi, Filippo
    My dissertation consists of two chapters, which are both centered on the analysis of international economic policy. In the first chapter, ``Relocation Cost, Time Inconsistency, and the Temptation of Protection", I show that important aspects of agricultural support policy across developed economies emerge as features of the optimal policy of a government with a redistribution motive that lacks the ability to commit to its future policies. I document that, in the data, transfers to the agricultural sector are higher and more persistent over time in countries where the gap in productivity between agriculture and the rest of the economy is larger. This evidence is at odds with the benchmark with commitment, which prescribes a decreasing sequence of transfers to the low productivity sector to provide incentives to relocate. Without commitment, the government has a temptation to redistribute ex post, which depends on the gap in productivity between sectors. When the agricultural productivity gap is large, this temptation is strong, and the commitment outcome cannot be sustained. When the gap is small, the policy without commitment mimics the benchmark with commitment. In a quantitative exercise, I show that the policy without commitment can account for roughly 30% of the cross-sectional variance in the persistence of transfers to the agricultural sector over time. The second chapter, ``Migration and the State", joint with Zachary Mahone, studies the interaction between social insurance and migration policy. Governments in many countries help insure citizens against idiosyncratic risk. There is a long recognized tension between the potential gains from opening borders (increasing economic opportunity) and closing them (supporting state insurance). We develop a game-theoretic model of two countries that strategically interact in setting insurance and migration policies. We ask whether limits on mobility are a natural result of insurance provision, how equilibrium policies depend on the characteristics of the two countries and if these policies are efficient.
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    Sentiment Analysis of Local News Coverage of Immigration By Border and Non-Border Newspapers
    (2025-04-01) Wooldridge, Reid; Myers, C. Daniel
    Many Americans inform their political opinions through media coverage, and local news outlets remain a significant source of such coverage. This paper seeks to investigate the way this coverage differs across local outlets, using immigration as a sample issue due to its varying levels of impact in different areas of the United States. The investigation involved gathering a sample of immigration-related newspaper articles from outlets in southern border states and non-southern border states, then evaluating the directional sentiment of each text through quantitative analysis of the lexicon, using positivity and negativity coding dictionaries. The investigation seeks to determine whether the proximity of a news outlet to the United States-Mexico border has a significant effect on the sentiment of the outlet’s immigration-related articles, and draws conclusions on the potential implications of such sentiment variation, including its potential impact on the political issue opinions of readers.
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    The Impact of Bolsonaro's Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric in Brazil
    (2024-12-03) Cabrelli Rusconi, Isabella
    This research investigates the impact of Jair Bolsonaro's anti-immigrant rhetoric on public attitudes toward immigration in Brazil. Analyzing official speeches, social media activity, newspaper interviews, and scholarly literature, the study uncovers a disparity between Bolsonaro’s limited focus on immigration in official settings and the explicit anti-immigrant sentiments disseminated online. Bolsonaro’s rhetoric, particularly on social media, framed immigrants as threats and rejected international agreements like the UN Global Compact for Migration. This study demonstrates how Bolsonaro's digital discourse significantly influenced societal perceptions, contributing to a heightened rejection of immigrants. These findings underscore the potency of online rhetoric in shaping public narratives and policy debates on immigration in contemporary Brazil.