Measuring the Impact of the Movement of Labour Using a Model of Bilateral Migration Flows

The economics literature increasingly recognizes the importance of migration and its ties with many other aspects of development and policy. Examples include the role of international remittances (Harrison et al 2003) or those immigrant-links underpinning the migration-trade nexus (Gould 1994). More recently Walmsley and Winters (2005) demonstrated utilising their Global Migration model (GMig) that lifting restrictions on the movement of natural persons would significantly increase global welfare with the majority of benefits accruing to developing countries. Although an important result, the lack of bilateral labour migration data forced Walmsley and Winters (2005) to make approximations in important areas and naturally precluded their tracking bilateral migration agreements. In this paper we incorporate bilateral labour flows into the GMig model developed by Walmsley and Winters (2005) to examine the impact of liberalizing the temporary movement of natural persons. Quotas on both skilled and unskilled temporary labour in the developed economies are increased by 3 % of their labour forces. This additiona