Free to move: beyond the border.

• Author: Watkins, Tate
• Position: Citings - Brief article

ALLOWING JUST 5 percent of people from poor countries to emigrate to wealthier countries may increase global GDP by several trillion dollars a year. That's the conclusion of a paper published in the Summer 2011 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, by Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development and a visiting scholar at New York University, who surveys research on global mobility and finds that the gains from a g percent increase in immigration would exceed the gains from eliminating all government-imposed barriers to the global flow of goods and capital.

One reason a little more immigration adds so much value is...