An increasing number of regional trade agreements contains provisions that ease access to visas among member countries, which reduces the administrative cost of crossing the border. Combining United Nations data on bilateral stocks of immigrants in the period 1990–2020 with World Bank data on the content of 279 regional trade agreements, this article presents robust evidence of a positive effect of visa provisions in regional trade agreements on bilateral migration: the presence of visa provisions in regional trade agreements increases the bilateral stock of immigrants by 5.8 per cent. This result is robust to an instrumental variable strategy addressing the endogeneity problem. The effect of the inclusion of visa provisions in regional trade agreements is particularly effective among country pairs with different income levels (such as North-South). For this type of country pairs, the presence of visa provisions in regional trade agreements increases the bilateral stock of immigrants by 12.7 per cent. Finally, the article shows that the effectiveness of visa provisions in regional trade agreements reduces with the anti-immigration sentiment of voters in the destination.

中文翻译：

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深度贸易协定和国际移民：签证规定的作用


越来越多的区域贸易协定包含了简化成员国之间签证获取的条款，从而降低了过境的行政成本。本文将联合国关于 1990-2020 年期间双边移民存量的数据与世界银行关于 279 个区域贸易协定内容的数据相结合，提出了强有力的证据，证明区域贸易协定中的签证条款对双边移民产生了积极影响：区域贸易协定中签证条款的增加使双边移民存量增加了 5.8%。这一结果对于解决内生性问题的工具变量策略是稳健的。将签证条款纳入区域贸易协定的效果对于不同收入水平的国家对（例如南北）尤其有效。对于这类国家对来说，区域贸易协定中签证条款的存在使双边移民存量增加了 12.7%。最后，文章表明，区域贸易协定中签证条款的有效性会随着目的地选民的反移民情绪而降低。