Assessing the Effectiveness of Pay-to-Go Policies: Evidence from Spain’s Voluntary Return Program¹

Abstract

Pay-to-go programs are incentive-based policies implemented by immigrant-receiving nations with the intention of enticing migrants home. Spain introduced such a program following its recent economic downturn. We assess its effectiveness using a difference-in-differences methodology. We test if the policy lowered the unemployment likelihood of eligible migrants by comparing changes in their propensity to be unemployed from before to after program implementation to changes experienced by similar non-eligible migrants. The Spanish pay-to-go policy did not entice immigrants to return home, except among Latin Americans, who enjoyed statistically and economically significant reductions in their unemployment likelihood following program implementation.

Can we get them moving? The impact of mobility assistance on cross‐country migration of young adults in Europe

“…the economic benefits of migration increase in case of migration subsidies, which sheds light on the role of economic factors for migration decisions). Overall, previous research in this field reveals a non-negligible impact of policies and regulations on migration flows that often goes in the intended direction (Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, 2018;Brekke et al, 2017;Ortega & Peri, 2013;Tatsiramos, 2009). At the same time, certain regulations and initiatives have either weak or no impact (Cerna, 2014;Hummel, 2016) or even unintended and undesirable (paradox) side effects (de Haas et al, 2019).…”

“…Assirelli et al, 2019;Borjas, 1989;Burkert et al, 2008;Flahaux & Vezzoli, 2018;Herman, 2006;Hoffmann-Nowotny, 1981;Hooghe et al, 2008;Serbeh & Adjei, 2020;Steiner, 2019). Second, they add to the more policy-oriented literature on the impact of legal regulations and targeted policy programmes and initiatives aimed at consciously regulating migration flows (Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, 2018;Bissat, 2013;Brekke et al, 2017;Cerna, 2014;Emilsson, 2016;Flahaux, 2017;Koslowski, 2014). Moreover, it extends the debate on public policies aimed at fighting youth unemployment by pointing to a fairly new and as yet underexplored approach which shifts the discussion on youth unemployment to a European level (Cahuc et al, 2013;Caliendo & Schmidl, 2016).…”