The Global Economic Impact of Open Borders

Abstract

Open borders, in the sense of the abolition of policies restricting migration, would cause billions of people to migrate, and result in almost a doubling of world GDP. Based on a model that stresses human capital as a determinant of the wealth and poverty of nations, but which also has a spatial element and allows total factor productivity to differ across cities, two open borders scenarios are constructed. In the first, "pure market clearing" scenario, world GDP rises 91% as 82% of the world's population migrates, mostly to the West, and the living standards of unskilled workers worldwide rise to 26% of the US level. In the second scenario, with several adjustments made to favor greater realism at the expense of some arbitrariness, world GDP rises 85% as 58% of the world's population migrates, and the living standards of unskilled workers worldwide rise to 31% of the US level.