PUBLI : Simone Bertoli, Herbert Brücker & Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga, « Do applications respond to changes in asylum policies in European countries », Regional Science and Urban Economics, vol. 93, 2022

Abstract

We analyze the role of origin-desti­na­tion-time specific policy measures in shaping the loca­tion choices of asylum seekers across Euro­pean coun­tries. We esti­mate a gravity equa­tion that reflects the uncer­tainty that asylum seekers face concer­ning the chances of obtai­ning refugee protec­tion, the proces­sing time and the risk of repa­tria­tion. German efforts to expand their proces­sing capa­city are corre­lated with a signi­fi­cant increase in appli­ca­tions from origins with high recog­ni­tion rates, which were mostly diverted away from Sweden. For Syrians, the observed varia­tions in proces­sing times increased appli­ca­tions in Germany by 16.1 percent, and led to a 35.3 percent reduc­tion in Sweden between 2014 and 2015.