National institutions and the fiscal effects of EU migrants

Abstract

This paper analyses whether and how the fiscal effects of EU migrants vary across European countries with different institutional regimes. In public debates on free movement, it is often claimed that different national institutions, especially welfare states and labour market regulations, lead to variations in the fiscal impacts of EU migrants across European countries. There are also some theoretical reasons why one might expect this to be the case, although the multidimensionality of national institutional configurations makes it difficult to formulate strong theoretical expectations. This paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first cross-country empirical analysis of these issues. Distinguishing between five different institutional regimes covering 29 countries, our analysis of the links between national institutions and the fiscal effects of EU migrants is made possible by a unique new data set on the fiscal effects of EU migrants across almost all EEA countries (Nyman and Ahlskog 2018).