Using a panel of OECD countries, we show that immigration systematically alters the composition of public spending in the destination country. To mitigate bias from the endogenous sorting of immigrants, we use an IV estimation strategy. The instrument is constructed by estimating a bilateral migration model for 24 destination and 208 source countries. We find that the host country responds to the increase in immigrants by adjusting various expenditures, such as by reallocating resources from social welfare to national defense and public order. Our findings imply that (1) immigration affects policy outcomes in areas with a low ethnic or redistributive dimension and (2) immigration may have an insubstantial effect on the total size of government.

通过经合组织国家小组的研究，我们证明了移民系统地改变了目的地国公共支出的构成。为了减轻来自内源性移民的偏见，我们使用了IV估计策略。该工具是通过估算24个目的地国家和208个来源国的双边移民模型而构建的。我们发现，东道国通过调整各种支出来应对移民的增加，例如通过将资源从社会福利重新分配给国防和公共秩序。我们的发现表明，（1）移民会影响少数族裔或再分配维度较低的地区的政策结果，（2）移民可能对政府的总规模没有实质性影响。