Are government policies efficient to regulate immigration? Evidence from France

This paper explores the effects of immigration policies on migration inflows from 141 countries to France over the period 1995-2014. The main contribution of the paper holds in the estimates of policies based on the changes of French legislation up to 2014. We adopt a common correlated error model that is consistent under the assumptions of heteroscedasticity and endogeneity due to multilateral resistance. We found that two opposite effects interact: admission policies failed to regulate migration flows whereas, integration policy seems to have been more efficient. In particular, estimates suggest that regulation changes benefited the most to foreign workers rather than other categories. Finally, it appears that asylum inflows do not significantly respond to regulations. The robustness estimates using DEMIG project's data reveal some significant differences in measuring the restriction of policies, that confirm the relevance of our indicators.