A World Without Borders Makes Economic Sense

Many of the world’s economies are still suffering due to the global economic crisis, and policymakers search for an elusive magic bullet. Michael A Clemens, writing for the Guardian, offers one possibility: increasing international migration. He describes the manmade barriers to economic mobility as the “single-biggest drag on the beleaguered economy,” and claims that even minor relaxation of these barriers would create more wealth than the total removal of barriers to trade and the movement of capital. Describing migration as the “world’s greatest arbitrage opportunity,” Clemens explains how a worker’s economic productivity is largely a function of location rather than skill, offering the example of a taxi driver’s earnings in Addis Ababa versus New York City. To encourage prosperity, he urges a review of migration policies and proposals – such as bilateral guest-worker agreements or tradable immigration quotas – to allow the reality of the ever-globalizing economy to trump out-dated notions of the nation-state. –YaleGlobal