Economics serving society
Menu
Home > Economics for everybody > Archives > In the news > H. d’Albis - Macroeconomic evidence suggests that asylum seekers are not a (...)

H. d’Albis - Macroeconomic evidence suggests that asylum seekers are not a “burden” for Western European countries (June 2018)

JPEG - 139.1 kb

June 20, 2018 - Hippolyte d’Albis (1), Ekrame Boubtane (2) and Dramane Coulibaly (3) have published in Science Advances the article "Macroeconomic evidence suggests that asylum seekers are not a “burden” for Western European countries".
These authors rely on an empirical methodology to evaluate the economic and fiscal effects of inflows of asylum seekers, between 1985 and 2015, into 15 Western European countries. Their conclusion is that this inflow does not deteriorate host countries’ economic performance or fiscal balance. The main reason is that "the increase in public spending induced by asylum seekers is more than compensated for by an increase in tax revenues net of transfers". Going one step further, they conclude that "as asylum seekers become permanent residents, their macroeconomic impacts become positive".

(1) PSE Associate Professor, Directeur de recherche au CNRS
(2) Associate Professor at Université de Clermont-Auvergne, CERDI researcher, PSE invited economist in 2018
(3) Maître de Conférences Université Paris Nanterre, Affiliated researcher at EconomiX

National and International press review