Interview with Lant Pritchett on Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility

This would only be true I believe if there were zero incremental migration, that is, if one transferred all and only existing migrants into higher cost legal status and hence reduced demand. But since supply exceeds demand at the rationed price (with border restrictions) this is not going to be true with additional migration.

You are exactly right that it tells an interesting story...but not so obvious that the simple story is true. If one thinks of "A" world (see Bill Easterly's papers) in whcih there is country specific productivity (say, due to institional weaknesses) then capital returns are not in fact higher in poor countries. Today more capital is flowing to and between rich countries than to poor countries. In historical episodes it does appear labor mobility was much more important than capital in equalizing returns.

Exactly, the saying that "there are no guest worker programs" or "nothing is more premanent than a temporary worker" is a canard. IN fact, there are a large number of "guest worker" like programs in operation (e.g. seasonal migration)--its just people often avoid the term or pretend they are something else.

I think the answer is, the citizens of the recipient country. After all, if we believe they have the moral right to deny them entry altogether then I cannot see any objection to allowing them entry on specific conditions (which after all, is the point of every visa).

How to see those rights are observed is an important question, to which I don't know the answer.

One is an information campaign for arriving contract workers to inform them of rights, provide them with contact numbers for a protection, ombudsman, etc.

I think all of this can be financed out of the fees paid for employers (as it is the case with many employer provided protections).

One difficult issue is that enforcement and protection of rights is actually much easier if workers are legal--of whatever temporary status. Once they are forced underground is where the abuses can become truly horrific. To the extend a legalization and regularization of temporary flows can lead to a reduction in illegality and informaliit yprotecting human rights becomes easier.

Wage differentials are easy to show.

There was a recent experience with randomization of access to migration rights of Pacific Islanders to Australia (I believe) by Mckenzie and others which shows the income gains controlling for selection effects of migrants (through randomization of eligibles).

Sometimes workers would move with families, sometimes not, depending on programs.

Excluding from citizenship is not usually problematic (as it is after all the status quo) as there are all kinds of existing visa status which allow families but not citizenship.

There is a tricky issue with America as children born are constitutionally entitled to eventual citizenship--this is intractable. Don't know.

I don't think these are intractable problems. In order to organize a scheme of labor mobility these questions need to be resolved. There are an emormous number of workers moving already--more in the Gulf and Asia (e.g. Singapore) than in OECD but they are there.

In those programs workers are usually recruited by labor brokers who them assume all kinds of responsibilities, including I would suspect what to do in cases of emergencies.

The key question is dividing up the gains from the wage differentials between the moving worker, the labor brokers (if any) in the sending country, the employer in the receiving country and the citizens of the receiving country (e.g. to bear the logistical costs of the visas, regulation, protection of rights, etc.).

I think there is little cooperation today, but cooperation will emerge, for two reasons.

First, the only way to create enforceable agreements (which the rich countries will want) is to get sending country buy-in. In the current situation the sending countries have absolutely no incentive to cooperate in limiting flows. Sooner or later the OECD countries are going to not want to exercise non-cooperative limitation exclusively through border enforcement. I have heard the new French president is already talking about more cooperation between France and the countries in the Mediterranean.

Second, particularly in Europe, I believe the demand is going to be so high that they will feel the need for more workers and they will not want to live (as the USA does) with a massive informal sector and hence they will seek cooperative solutions.

But, in the end rich countries have high wages and exclusive control over access to their labor markets and hence they do hold substantial bargaining power.

Not clear what you mean by "equivalent" income--the whole idea is that the pre (or post) tax wages are several fold different between sending and recieving countries so the net income of movers goes up for the moving worker, even if they pay taxes and recieve limited services (obviously they are not excluded from basic police proteciton etc.)

This question has to be answered tax by tax.

First, they would not be exempt from taxes in the way, say, a diplomat is exempt from taxes--they would have to pay sales taxes and such.

Second, I would think under a program for unskilled labor mobility the income tax issue is not that important as they would often be below the threshold in any case. For instance, in the USA with the Earned Income Tax Credit many workers at low wages actually pay negative taxes (e.g. recieve net subsidies for working).

Third, a big issue is Social Security or pension contributions and health insurance.

The obvious thing is to charge Social Security taxes. One reason is to withhold those and the employer contribution and refund whatever is due (and this needn't be 100 percent of contributions) only as the worker returns. Obviously the higher SS taxes the bigger the return incentive. (This is already the case in at least some countries that SS contributions of foreigners are rebated on departure).

The other obvious one is taxes to fund health insurance, which would have to be charged. Whereas many people worry about the additional health costs if one has a temporary program for prime age workers and charges some usual proportional contribution my guess, without having seen the numbers done, is that it would be self financing (as most costs are for the elderly).

Not really, or more particularly, many of the new theories or programs actually just avoid the big issues and focus on tiny marginal parts of the picture. The only way to end poverty is for incomes in currently poor countries to go way up.

So it depends on what you mean by "new theories"--theories of general economic growth and prosperity or "new theories" of specific interventions aimed at poverty reduction for a given level of income (e.g. currently fashionable CCTs (Conditional Cash Transfers) or microcredit or some such).

There are always "new theories" on the economic growth side, the only problem is that the facts refute the theories faster than we can construct new ones (see the "Lessons ofthe 1990s" book).

On the programmatic intervention side there are also always new theories, but in the end, poverty specific programs in low income environments have almost never been the route of sustained poverty reduction--which isn't to say they cannot help enormously.