Managing Migration through Conflicting Policies: an Option-theory Perspective

We try to determine whether it is better for a government to tighten or relax limits for immigrants in order to control migration inflows. To this end, we use a real option approach to migration choice that assumes that the decision to migrate can be described as an irreversible investment decision. Our results show that promoting uncertainty over migration limit may improve the government's control on migration inflows (quotas). In particular, we show that if the government controls the information related to the immigration stock it may delay the mass entry of immigrants, maintaining the required stock in the long run and controlling the flows in the short run.