The externalities of immigration policies on migration flows: the case of an asylum policy.

This article examines the externalities generated by the bilateral asylum policy known as the "list of safe origin countries," which designates certain countries as safe for their nationals, thereby imposing stricter criteria on asylum seekers from those origins. Using a theoretical migration gravity model adapted to asylum contexts and self-collected monthly data from nineteen OECD destination countries covering 199 origin countries (2000–2017), the study finds that inclusion of an origin country on a destination's safe list reduces asylum applications from that origin to that destination by approximately 29 percent. The authors further simulate a counterfactual scenario where Sweden introduces a safe country list for five Balkan countries, demonstrating that asylum seekers from these targeted origins redirect to alternative destinations, while asylum seekers from untargeted origins increase applications to Sweden, illustrating complex spillover effects across origins and destinations. The framework quantifies both direct and indirect effects of such bilateral policies on asylum flows and can be extended to analyze other migration policies generating cross-country externalities.