IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/37226.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the detrimental impact of visa restrictions on bilateral trade and foreign direct investment

Author

Listed:
  • Neumayer, Eric

Abstract

This article estimates the effect of visa restrictions on bilateral trade flows and foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks. By raising the costs of travel and deterring some visitors, visa restrictions hamper personal contact across borders, which is detrimental to trade and FDI. Employing a standard gravity-type model in a global dyadic country sample, I estimate that if one country unilaterally requires a visa from nationals of the other country with no reciprocal restriction in place by the partner country, this lowers bilateral trade and FDI by up to 19 and 25 per cent, respectively. If both countries require a visa from nationals of the other country, the effect on trade is larger, but less than double, at up to 28 per cent, while the effect on FDI is essentially the same as for unilateral restrictions. With such substantial negative effects, it is at least questionable whether many of the existing visa restrictions would pass a cost-benefit test.

Suggested Citation

  • Neumayer, Eric, 2011. "On the detrimental impact of visa restrictions on bilateral trade and foreign direct investment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37226, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:37226
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/37226/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Veysel Avsar, 2020. "Travel Visas and Trade Finance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(1), pages 567-573.
    2. Chi, Pei-Yu & Lee, Kuei-Chun & Chang, Kuo-I, 2022. "Causal effect of tourist visa exemption schemes on international tourist arrivals," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 427-449.
    3. KOMORIYA Yoshimasa, 2014. "How the Movement of Natural Persons Agreement Could Fuel FTAs," Discussion papers 14041, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    4. Camila Gracheva & Leonid Polishchuk & Koen Schoors & Alexander Yarkin, 2015. "Institutions and Visa Regimes," HSE Working papers WP BRP 114/EC/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. Natalia Kapelko & Natalya Volchkova, 2013. "Export costs of visa restrictions," Working Papers w0195, New Economic School (NES).
    6. Michael Beenstock & Daniel Felsenstein & Ziv Rubin, 2015. "Visa waivers, multilateral resistance and international tourism: some evidence from Israel," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 357-371, November.
    7. Mustafa Kahveci, 2019. "From Spring to Winter? An Analysis of "Arab Spring" Impacts on Turkey and Mena Region Foreign Trade with Gravity Approach," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 9(12), pages 1320-1334, December.
    8. Tien Duc Pham & Son Nghiem & Larry Dwyer, 2018. "The economic impacts of a changing visa fee for Chinese tourists to Australia," Tourism Economics, , vol. 24(1), pages 109-126, February.
    9. Orazbayev, Sultan, 2017. "International knowledge flows and the administrative barriers to mobility," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1655-1665.
    10. Umana-Dajud, Camilo, 2019. "Do visas hinder international trade in goods?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 106-126.
    11. Arif, Imran, 2019. "How Tall Are the Paper Walls? Barriers to International Mobility and Technology Diusion," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 49(2), October.
    12. Andrés Artal-Tur & Vicente J. Pallardó-López & Francisco Requena-Silvente, 2016. "Examining the impact of visa restrictions on international tourist flows using panel data," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 43(2 Year 20), pages 265-279, December.
    13. Tekleselassie, Tsegay Gebrekidan, 2016. "Three essays on the impact of institutions and policies on socio-economic outcomes," Economics PhD Theses 1316, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    14. Volker Nitsch, 2019. "Passport, please! Travels, travails and trade," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(15), pages 1274-1278, September.
    15. Tsui, Wai Hong Kan & Fung, Michael Ka Yiu, 2016. "Analysing passenger network changes: The case of Hong Kong," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-11.
    16. Daniel Felsenstein & Michael Beenstock & Ziv Rubin, 2015. "Visa Waivers, Multilateral Resistance and International Tourism: Some Evidence from Israel," ERSA conference papers ersa15p187, European Regional Science Association.
    17. Robert A. Lawson & Saurav Roychoudhury, 2016. "Do travel visa requirements impede tourist travel?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 40(4), pages 817-828, October.
    18. Wai Hong Kan Tsui & Faruk Balli & David Tat Wei Tan & Oscar Lau & Mudassar Hasan, 2018. "New Zealand business tourism," Tourism Economics, , vol. 24(4), pages 386-417, June.
    19. Camilo Umana Dajud, 2016. "Do Visas Hinder International Trade in Goods?," Working Papers 2016-30, CEPII research center.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade; investment; visa; gravity; travel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:37226. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.