The Common European Asylum System calls for increased coordination of the European Union (EU) countries' policies towards asylum seekers and refugees. In this paper, we provide a formal analysis of the effects of coordination, explicitly modelling the democratic process through which policy is determined. In a symmetric, two-country citizen-candidate setup, in which accepting asylum seekers in one country generates a cross-border externality in the other, we show that coordination is desirable. Internalizing the externality leads to a welfare improvement over the non-cooperative outcome. However, contrary to suggestions by many observers, we show that allowing for cross-country transfers in the cooperative outcome leads to a welfare inferior outcome because the possibility of compensation exacerbates strategic delegation effects.
CITATION STYLE
Facchini, G., Lorz, O., & Willmann, G. (2006). Asylum seekers in Europe: The warm glow of a hot potato. Journal of Population Economics, 19(2), 411–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-005-0059-2
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