Hippolyte d’Albis, Ekrame Boubtane & Dramane Coulibaly, « Immigration and public finances in OECD countries », Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control, 2019, n°99

This paper shows that the macroe­co­nomic and fiscal conse­quences of inter­na­tional migra­tion are posi­tive for OECD coun­tries, and suggests that inter­na­tional migra­tion produces a demo­gra­phic divi­dend by increa­sing the share of the work­force within the popu­la­tion. The esti­ma­tion of a struc­tural vector auto­re­gres­sive model on a panel of 19 OECD coun­tries over the period 1980–2015 reveals that a migra­tion shock increases GDP per capita through a posi­tive effect on both the ratio of working-age to total popu­la­tion and the employ­ment rate. Inter­na­tional migra­tion also improves the fiscal balance by redu­cing the per capita trans­fers paid by the govern­ment and per capita old-age public spen­ding. To ratio­na­lize these findings, an original theo­re­tical frame­work is deve­loped. This frame­work high­lights the roles of both the demo­gra­phic struc­ture and inter­ge­ne­ra­tional public trans­fers and shows that migra­tion is bene­fi­cial to host econo­mies charac­te­rized by aging popu­la­tions and large public sectors.