Download PDF - Vox

Rethinking Global Economic Governance in Light of the Crisisparticular, representatives of districts with relatively more highly skilled labour aremore likely to support liberalising unskilled migration as well as trade with labourabundantcountries. Party affiliation has instead opposite effects – Democrats are morelikely to support liberal immigration policies but to oppose trade liberalisation.Voting differences between the two issues are also driven by districts’ characteristicsthat affect decisions on immigration policy but do not influence the voting behaviouron trade.• We find that the higher the fiscal burden of immigrants for a constituency, the lesslikely the representative of the constituency is to support liberal migration policies.This is in line with previous studies showing that one of the reasons for the oppositionto immigration is the concern that admitting low-skilled foreigners raises the net taxburden on US natives (Hanson, Scheve and Slaugther 2007, Facchini and Steinhardt2011).• Districts’ ethnic composition also affects voting behaviour on immigration reforms– support for these reforms increases with the share of foreign-born citizens in aconstituency.This finding confirms the importance of network effects, which has been emphasised inrecent studies (e.g. Munshi 2003).Our study can help to explain the gap between the global regulation of labour migrationand that of trade flows. In line with standard international trade models, our empiricalanalysis suggests that trade and migration have parallel impacts on factor markets.However, the flow of human beings has political, cultural, social, and economic effectsthat clearly differ from those from the flow of goods. These effects can explain whylegislators are more likely to support opening barriers to goods than to people.138