LAW & ECONOMICS WORKSHOP SERIES
presents
Joel Trachtman
Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
The International Law and Economics of Labor Migration
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
4:10 – 5.45
Solarium (room FA2) - Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
This article analyzes the economic and political contexts of liberalization of national rules of migration and citizenship through international legal agreements. There are great welfare gains to be achieved by liberalizing international labor migration, but states acting unilaterally are stuck in an inefficient political equilibrium that prevents them from collectively realizing these gains. This article reviews wealthy and poor state domestic political economy of immigration and emigration, respectively, identifying the constituencies within each type of state that are benefited and harmed by migration. Based on this review, finding that wealthy states have weak unilateral incentives to welcome low-skilled migrants, this article evaluates proposals of migration fees, reduced social welfare rights, and diverse reciprocity as instruments to induce liberalization. International law provides mechanisms by which one state may reciprocally induce another to take the former state’s interests into account in decision-making. Therefore, international legal commitments are one important mechanism that can allow states, through the exchange or pooling of authority implicit in international law, to achieve these welfare gains.
Joel P. Trachtman is Professor of International Law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Recent books include "The Future of International Law: Global Government" (Cambridge 2013), "The Tools of Argument" (Createspace 2013)," The International Law of Economic Migration: Toward the Fourth Freedom" (Upjohn Institute 2009); "Ruling the World: Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance" (Cambridge 2009); "Developing Countries in the WTO Legal System" (Oxford 2009); and "The Economic Structure of International Law" (Harvard 2008). Prof. Trachtman has served as a member of the Boards of the American Journal of International law, the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and the Singapore Yearbook of International Law. He has consulted for a number of governments and international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the OECD. From 1998 to 2001, he was Academic Dean of The Fletcher School, and during 2000 and 2001, he served as Dean ad interim. He has been a visiting professor at Basel, Hamburg, Harvard, and Hong Kong. He graduated in 1980 from Harvard Law School, where he served as editor in chief of the Harvard International Law Journal, and practiced in New York and Hong Kong for 9 years before entering academia.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
