Reform of the EU Sugar Regime: Impacts on Sugar Production in Ireland

4. Methodology

To do this, the paper uses time-series cross-section of aggregated data for
20 OECD countries for the period 1985 to 1999 collected from UNHCR,
OECD and the U.S. Committee for Refugees.²⁰ This quantitative analysis
allows the testing of hypotheses regarding the existence and relative
strength of the different potential pull-factors. In doing so, the paper will
control for particular country and time effects such as differences in
reception capacity and fluctuations of the absolute number of asylum
applications over time.

Dependent Variable

When looking at the issue of asylum from an international 'burden-
sharing' perspective, it is more interesting to focus on the number of
relative asylum applications (i.e. applications per capita) across time and
place, than on the absolute numbers of applications which has tended to
dominate the public debate on asylum. Relative figures are the crucial
reference figures if states want to check the success of failure of their
attempt to achieve a more equitable distribution of burdens as a result of
international co-operation. Also, it is also hardly surprising (nor
objectionable) that in absolute terms, larger countries will tend to attract
more inward migration than smaller countries. This paper therefore seeks
to explain the number ofasylum-applications in each country and for each
year ofthe data set, relative to the population ofeach ofthese countries
while controlling for variations in the number oftotal applications and
overallpopulation growth across all the OECD countries included in the

²⁰ Due to missing data, the US, Canada and Australia have as yet not been able to be
added to the data-set. However, they are expected to be included for the final version of
this paper.

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