A market for citizenships: Should citizenship be commodified?

Starting from the assumption that citizenship is valuable private property that would be even more valuable if it were transferable, the paper explores the idea of commodification of citizenship. The paper provides arguments in favor of commodification of citizenship and recommendations to how the market for citizenship should be designed. A market for citizenships could result in an improved matching between employer and employee when citizens swap citizenship with each other. Successful States would issue new citizenships and thus provide the possibility for a greater share of the world population to live and work within the countries with the best institutions. The combined effect would be a higher global productivity. Market prices on citizenships would provide a robust indicator of institutional quality and thus provide politicians with information on voters´ preferences and it would also provide voters with information on the quality of the work of the government. The market value of a tradable citizenship is also found to be a promising candidate as tax base for a redistributive tax on a global level that could address some of the inherit inequality inherit in the current distribution of citizenships.