Institutions and Visa Regimes

Project leader

Leonid Polishchuk, Professor

Project participants

Koen Schoors (Gent University)

Alexander Yarkin, Junior Researcher, Higher School of Economics, Moscow

Project period

September 2014 – May 2016

Project description

Visa barriers between countries depend on the quality of formal and informal institutions. We show, theoretically and empirically, that when nations improve the quality of their “institutions-services”, measured e.g. by government effectiveness, visa barriers for citizens of those nations get lower. However, an improvement of “institutions-rules”, such as protection of property rights, makes visa barriers higher due to externalities inherent to international travel. We also demonstrate that formal and informal institutions complement each other in their impact on visa regimes.