Redistributive policy with labour mobility across countries

It is generally believed that international labour mobility lowers the level of redistribution each country wishes to undertake. This paper considers a model with two countries where each government redistributes income between two types of individuals. Using a general equilibrium model it is shown that there are situations where the level of redistribution in one of the two countries is in fact higher than in the absence of individual mobility. This higher level of redistribution is explained by the migration induced changes in the structure of the population in both countries, namely by the increase in the proportion of high income individuals in the country that may experience excessive redistribution.