RAPOPORT Hillel

No summary available.

We use a multilevel approach to investigate whether a general and robust relationship between weather shocks and (internal and international) migration intentions can be uncovered in Western African countries. We combine individual survey data with measures of localized weather shocks for thirteen countries over the 2008-2016 period. A meta-analysis on results from about 51,000 regressions is conducted to identify the specification of weather anomalies that maximizes the goodness of fit of our empirical model. We then use this best specification to document heterogeneous mobility responses to weather shocks. We find that variability in SPEI/rainfall is associated with changing intentions to move locally or internationally in a few countries only. However, the significance, sign and magnitude of the effect are far from being robust and consistent across countries. These differences might be due to imperfections in the data or to differences in long-term climate conditions and adaptation capabilities. They may also suggest that credit constraints are internalized differently in different settings, or that moving internally is not a relevant option as weather conditions are spatially correlated while moving abroad is an option of last resort. Although our multilevel approach allows us to connect migration intentions with the timing and spatial dimension of weather shocks, identifying a common specification that governs weather-driven mobility decisions is a very difficult, if not impossible, task, even for countries belonging to the same region. Our findings also call for extreme caution before generalizing results from specific case-studies.

No summary available.

No summary available.

We investigate the impact of intra-regional migration on wage inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). We exploit unique data from a unified labour force household survey which covers natives and migrants in the seven economic capital cities of that region. We first estimate the counterfactual wage distributions of UEMOA migrants in absence of migration to evaluate the compositional effect of migration (i.e., when wages are treated as exogenous). We find that regional migration increases average wages by 1.8% and generates a decrease in inequality that ranges between −1.5% (for the Gini index) and −4.5% (for the interquartile ratio). This is essentially driven by a reduction in inequality between capital cities, while the effect of migration on within-capital cities inequality is heterogeneous across countries and remains small overall. Second, when accounting for possible general equilibrium effects of migration on stayers’ wages (i.e., when wages are treated as endogenous), we find similar to stronger effects on inequality, albeit with a smaller increase in the average wage.

We investigate the relationship between the presence of migrant inventors and the dynamics of innovation in the migrants’ receiving countries. We find that countries are 25 to 60% more likely to gain advantage in patenting in certain technologies given a twofold increase in the number of foreign inventors from other nations that specialize in those same technologies. For the average country in our sample, this number corresponds to only 25 inventors and a standard deviation of 135. We deal with endogeneity concerns by using historical migration networks to instrument for stocks of migrant inventors. Our results generalize the evidence of previous studies that show how migrant inventors “import” knowledge from their home countries, which translates into higher patenting in the receiving countries. We interpret these results as tangible evidence of migrants facilitating the technology-specific diffusion of knowledge across nations.

This dissertation uses quasi-natural, historical, and contemporary experiences to causally address broad questions at the frontier of the fields of development and political economy. In particular, it examines the long-term effects of out-migration, the formation of political identities and preferences, and the long-term impacts of school segregation. The first chapter examines the consequences of emigration on human capital accumulation, using the Galician diaspora formed in the early 20th century as a laboratory. Drawing on data spanning more than a hundred years, it provides the first evidence of a positive impact of emigration on communities of origin over several generations. The second chapter examines whether sports-related emotional shocks can influence identity and political preferences. Focusing on Catalonia and Football Club Barcelona (FCB) as a context, I empirically show that FCB's performance is directly related to feelings of Catalan identity and support for secession. Furthermore, I explore the mechanisms underlying this link and its possible implications for electoral outcomes. The third chapter takes advantage of a major reform during the Pinochet dictatorship, which introduced a school voucher system, to analyze the long-term effects of school segregation on subjective well-being. The results show that the reform had unintended consequences, harming children from poor families who now, more than 30 years later, show significantly lower levels of subjective well-being.

The share of the foreign‐born population in member countries of the OECD is increasing, and this article summarizes economics research on the effects of immigration in those nations. Four broad topics are addressed: labour market issues, fiscal questions, the political economy of immigration, and productivity and international trade. Extreme concerns about deleterious labour market and fiscal impacts following from new immigrants are not found to be warranted. However, it is also clear that government policies and practices regarding the selection and integration of new migrants affect labour market, fiscal, social and cultural outcomes. Policies that are well informed, well crafted and well executed beneficially improve population welfare.

No summary available.

We empirically investigate the relationship between a country’s economic complexity and the diversity in the birthplaces of its immigrants. Our cross-country analysis suggests that countries with higher birthplace diversity by one standard deviation are more economically complex by 0.1 to 0.18 standard deviations above the mean. This holds particularly for diversity among highly educated migrants and for countries at intermediate levels of economic complexity. We address endogeneity concerns by instrumenting diversity through predicted stocks from a pseudo-gravity model as well as from a standard shift-share approach. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that birthplace diversity boosts economic complexity by increasing the diversification of the host country’s export basket.

This paper exploits the non-linearity in the level of minimum wages across U.S. States created by the coexistence of federal and state regulations to investigate the labor market effects of immigration. We find that the impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native workers within a given state-skill cell is more negative in States with low minimum wages and for workers with low education and experience. That is, the minimum wage tends to protect native workers from competition induced by low-skill immigration. The results are robust to instrumenting immigration and state effective minimum wages, and to implementing a difference-in-differences approach comparing States where effective minimum wages are fully determined by the federal minimum wage to States where this is never the case.

No summary available.

This review article surveys the recent economic literature on diaspora networks, globalization, and development. Diasporas are shown to contribute to the economic and cultural integration of source (i.e., developing) countries into the global economy. I first review the effect of diaspora networks on core globalization outcomes such as trade, foreign investments, and the diffusion of knowledge and technology across borders. I then turn to the cultural and political sway of the diaspora, investigating the impact of emigration on the formation of political attitudes, fertility behavior, and other aspects of culture in the home country.

We examine the impact of language training on the economic integration of immigrants in France. The assignment to this training, offered by the French Ministry of the Interior, depends mainly on a precise rule: the training is provided if the test score of an initial language exam is below a certain threshold. This eligibility rule creates a discontinuity in the relation between the test result and the variables of interest, which is used to estimate the causal effect of language training, through the method of Regression Discontinuity Design. We find that the number of assigned hours of training significantly increases labor force participation of the treated individuals. The language classes appear to have a larger effect for individuals with higher levels of education, while there is no robust differential effect by type of migration, gender or age. Our estimated coefficients are remarkably similar when we rely on local linear regressions using the optimal bandwidth with few observations around the threshold and when we control parametrically for a polynomial of the forcing variable and use the whole estimation sample. We conclude with a discussion of the candidate mechanisms for the improved labor market participation of immigrants.

No summary available.

The first chapter analyzes the impact of a relatively large and homogeneous influx of Polish immigrants on the United Kingdom and what effect this shock had on the 2016 Brexit vote. I find that Polish immigration to the UK increased the Brexit vote but not enough to explain the decision to leave the European Union. In order to obtain exogenous variation in the distribution of Polish immigrants I rely on the development of migrant networks close to the wartime resettlement camps created for Polish soldiers after World War II whose location I collect from national archives. In the second chapter I use the dismantling of illegal migrant camps near Calais and the subsequent distribution of migrants to study the impact of exposure to few migrants over a short period of time. I find that exposure to few migrants reduces the National Front vote (the French far-right party) but that this effect dissipates if large groups of migrants are relocated. In this case, contact as well as the relative size of the group play an important role in the reaction of natives to migrants. In the last chapter I analyze the impact of the refugee crisis on political demand and supply in Italy. I show that the opening of small migrant reception centers in Italy has reduced the far-right vote, hate crimes against immigrants as well as increased the vote for left-wing parties. The effects come mainly from municipalities that are less connected to the internet.

This thesis examines the interaction between migration and productivity from different perspectives across three countries and time periods. Specifically, I study the labor market mobility benefits of migrants during economic downturns, the productivity gains from migrant mobility during a country's post-war reconstruction, and the gains associated with higher population concentration in large urban areas. I address these topics both theoretically and empirically, using rich confidential social security data from Spain, Germany, and Turkey, using various panel data techniques as well as historical instruments to estimate causal relationships. The results of these studies address many issues that are of interest to both academia and policymakers, but about which little is yet known. This dissertation aims to contribute to improving our knowledge on issues that will remain relevant in the near future.

No summary available.

We explore various means of quantifying integration using two of the D4R Challenge datasets. We propose various integration indices and discuss their output. We combine the data from the D4R Challenge with data from the GDELT Project and with data on transactions on the housing market in Turkey. We also describe research directions to be undertaken in the future using the D4R data.

No summary available.

We analyze the effect of immigration on attitudes to redistribution in Europe. Using data for 28 European countries from the European Social Survey, we .nd that native workers lower their support for redistribution if the share of immigration in their country is high. This effect is larger for individuals who hold negative views regarding immigration but is smaller when immigrants are culturally closer to natives and come from richer origin countries. The effect also varies with native workers’ and immigrants’ education. In particular, more educated natives (in terms of formal education but also job-specic human capital and ocupation task skill intensity) support more redistribution if immigrants are also relatively educated. To address endogeneity concerns, we restrict identification to within country and within country-occupation variation and also instrument immigration using a gravity model. Overall, our results show that the negative .First-order effect of immigration on attitudes to redistribution is relatively small and counterbalanced among skilled natives by positive second-order effects for the quality and diversity of immigration.

This article benefited from helpful comments at various stages from Martin Abel, Sam Asher, Simone Bertoli, Sebastian Bustos, Michael Clemens, Michele Coscia, Ricardo Hausmann, Elhanan Helpman, Bill Kerr, Michael Kremer, Anna Maria Mayda, Frank Neffke, Paul Novosad, Nathan Nunn, Sandra Poncet, Maurice Schiff, Biagio Speciale, Ernesto Stein, Rodrigo Wagner, Muhammed Yildirim and participants at the 7th International Conference on Migration and Development at Oxford University and at seminars at Harvard Economics Department, Harvard Kennedy School, Paris School of Economics, Inter‐American Development Bank, Georgetown University Economics Department, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees for their suggestions. All errors are our own. Rapoport acknowledges support from the program Investissements d'Avenir (ANR‐10‐LABX‐93).

No summary available.

This paper offers an explanation for the convergence of fertility rates across French départements in the second half of the nineteenth century that emphasises the diffusion of information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French départements for 1861‐1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest that the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of cultural and economic information pertaining to low‐fertility behaviour by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris.

This dissertation consists of three essays on education and social cohesion in developing countries, specifically Egypt and Indonesia. The first chapter analyzes household behaviors in Egypt, including investment for education and health, following the 2011 revolution, which we interpret here as an unstable environment. To study the effects of the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution, we combine the representative household survey with a unique statistical record of all people arrested, injured, or killed during political protests in the country. Our results show that households significantly adapt their behavior in an unstable political context. The second chapter analyzes the impact of earthquakes on education and health measures for children in Indonesia. We find that children's education and health outcomes are negatively affected when a household experiences an earthquake, with some heterogeneity by child age and gender. The third chapter analyzes the effects of ethnic favoritism in the allocation of government transfers to households following a natural disaster. The results suggest that although all households in a village are affected, the households most likely to receive government transfers are those that share the same ethnicity as the community leader. My findings also show that in villages where ethnic favoritism is prevalent, trust between ethnic groups decreased between 2007 and 2014.

No summary available.

The back cover states: "Since the end of the Trente Glorieuses and despite its tradition of asylum and welcome, France has seen immigration as an essentially harmful phenomenon that had to be limited by restrictive policies. These restrictions have prevented the use of labor immigration, thus creating a vicious circle where low diversity, low qualification and low "quantity" of immigration reinforce each other.

No summary available.

When trade (the international transfer of goods and services), international capital flows (foreign direct investment/FDI, financial flows) and migration (the international mobility of people) grow in parallel at an accelerated pace, this is called 'globalisation'.

No summary available.

We investigate the welfare implications of two pre-crisis immigration waves (1991–2000 and 2001–2010) and of the post-crisis wave (2011–2015) for OECD native citizens. To do so, we develop a general equilibrium model that accounts for the main channels of transmission of immigration shocks – the employment and wage effects, the fiscal effect and the market size effect – and for the interactions between them. We parameterize our model for 20 selected OECD member states. We find that the three waves induce positive effects on the real income of natives. however, the size of these gains varies considerably across countries and across skill groups. In relative terms, the post-crisis wave induces smaller welfare gains compared to the previous ones. This is due to the changing origin mix of immigrants, which translates into lower levels of human capital and smaller fiscal gains. With a few exceptions, differences across cohorts explain a tiny fraction of the highly persistent, cross-country heterogeneity in the economic benefits from immigration.

This thesis deals with different themes in the field of international economics and macroeconomics. The research developed in this thesis studies the impact of shocks of various kinds on international migration flows, international trade and productivity growth. The first chapter focuses on the evolution of migration flows in response to cyclical shocks. The estimation of the model from the data allows us to conclude that both structural and cyclical shocks influence migration flows. A 10 percent increase in the destination country's wage would lead to an increase in migration flows to that destination country of nearly 8 percent, all else being equal. The second chapter studies the extent to which financial shocks affect the level of firms' exports, with a particular focus on firms that export to distant destinations. We find that firms that face financial frictions export between 4% and 10% less than those that do not. Our results also show that among exporters facing financial frictions, those that export to distant destinations reduce their exports even more. In chapter three, we study how financial frictions can lead to distortions in resource allocation. Our results suggest that in financially developed countries, capital does not necessarily improve the efficient allocation of labor across firms.

No summary available.

The subject of international migration has recently received unprecedented attention in both public opinion and the media. However, if the debate on the effects of international migration seems more topical than ever, it has already attracted the attention of economists for several decades. The present thesis thus fits into the economic literature on the effects of international migration by proposing three empirical essays on the implications of human mobility, both for migrants, natives in their host country and their relatives left behind in their country of origin. Chapter 2 empirically revisits the impact of multiculturalism (measured by an index of diversity within the migrant group and by contamination effects) on the macroeconomic performance of American states over the period 1960-2010. We distinguish the effects of multiculturalism by levels of education, controlling for standard variables in the growth literature as well as for unobserved heterogeneity and controlling for migrants' legal status as well as their age of entry into the United States. In order to identify a causal effect, we compare several different identification strategies from the existing literature. Our results converge on a robust positive and significant effect of diversity among tertiary graduates on GDP per capita. No effect of diversity for lower levels of education, or spillover effects are found. Chapter 3 adds to the literature on the determinants of migrants' labor market performance in their host country. We examine whether or not the attitude of natives affects the unemployment durations of migrants in Germany. Using individual-level panel data (GSOEP) over the period 1984-2012 and a duration model, we find that lower levels of native trust in residents of a given country (measured using Eurobarometers surveys) are associated with longer unemployment durations for migrants from that country. Our results highlight the fact that different groups of immigrants face different obstacles to labor market integration depending on their origin.Chapter 4 seeks to understand whether or not international migrants contribute to technological progress in developing countries by inducing a transfer of productive knowledge from their host country to their country of origin. Using an indicator for each country's level of productive knowledge (CIS) and bilateral stocks of migrants to 20 OECD countries, we show that international migration is an important channel for technology transmission.

No summary available.

No summary available.

No summary available.

Migration facilitates the flow of information between countries, thereby reducing informational frictions that potentially hamper cross-country financial flows. Using a gravity model, migration is found to be highly correlated with financial flows from the migrant’s host country to her home country. The correlation is strongest where information problems are more acute (e.g., between culturally more distant countries), for asset types that are more informational sensitive, and for the type of migrants that are most able to enhance the flow of information on their home countries, namely, skilled migrants. These differential effects are interpreted as evidence for the role of migration in reducing information frictions between countries.

We propose an index of population diversity based on people’s birthplaces and decompose it into a size (share of immigrants) and a variety (diversity of immigrants) component. We show that birthplace diversity is largely uncorrelated with ethnic, linguistic or genetic diversity and that the diversity of immigrants relates positively to measures of economic prosperity. This holds especially for skilled immigrants in richer countries at intermediate levels of cultural proximity. We address endogeneity by specifying a pseudo-gravity model predicting the size and diversity of immigration. The results are robust across specifications and suggestive of skill-complementarities between immigrants and native workers.

France experienced the demographic transition before richer and more educated countries. This paper offers a novel explanation for this puzzle that emphasizes the diffusion of culture and information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French regions for 1861-1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of low-fertility norms by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris.

This paper introduces a method and preliminary findings from a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on the selection of that data for nine countries between 1999 and 2008, we challenge the idea that any one country is systematically the most or least restrictive toward admissions. The data also reveal trends toward more complex and, often, more restrictive regulation since the 1990s, as well as differential treatment of groups, such as lower requirements for highly skilled than low-skilled labor migrants. These patterns illustrate the IMPALA data and methods but are also of intrinsic importance to understanding immigration regulation.

No summary available.

No summary available.

France experienced the demographic transition before richer and more educated countries. This paper offers a novel explanation for this puzzle that emphasizes the diffusion of culture and information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French regions for 1861-1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of low-fertility norms by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris.

International migration is an important determinant of institutions, not considered so far in the development literature. Using cross-sectional and panel estimation for a large sample of developing countries, we find that openness to emigration has a positive effect on home-country institutional development (as measured by standard democracy indices). The results are robust to a wide range of specifications and identification methods. Remarkably, the cross-sectional estimates are fully in line with the implied long-run relationship from dynamic panel regressions.

No summary available.

The Syrian Civil War gave rise to the largest refugee flight reaching Europe since the Yugoslavian wars in the 1990s. The crisis evidenced the deficiencies of the European Union Asylum Policy, which struggled both to offer solutions to Syrian refugees and to efficiently allocate costs across Member States. We draw on previous theoretical work to simulate how a system of tradable refugee-admission quotas coupled with a matching mechanism assigning refugees to their preferred destinations and destinations to their preferred types of refugees would give more flexibility to Member States while respecting refugee rights and preferences.

This article presents the methods and preliminary findings from IMPALA, a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on a selection of data for six pilot countries between 1990 and 2008, we document the variation of immigration policies across countries and over time. We focus on three specific dimensions: the number of entry tracks for economic workers. the measurement and role of bilateral agreements that complement unilateral immigration policies, and aggregation procedures that allow for gauging the stringency of immigration regulations comparatively.

The gravity model has provided a tractable empirical framework to account for bilateral flows not only of manufactured goods, as in the case of merchandise trade, but also of financial flows. In particular, recent literature has emphasized the role of information costs in preventing larger diversification of financial investments. This paper investigates the role of migration in alleviating information imperfections between home and host countries. We show that the impact of migration on financial flows is strongest where information problems are more acute (that is, for more informational sensitive investments, between culturally more distant countries, and when the source country of migrants is a developing country) and for the type of migrants that are most able to enhance the flow of information on their home country, namely, skilled migrants. We interpret these differential effects as additional evidence pointing to the role of information in generating home-bias and as new evidence of the role of migration in reducing information frictions between countries.

This article provides a critical review of the recent literature on the links between migration and institutions in the context of developing countries. There are many channels through which migration affects the democratization of countries of origin. Their effect can be positive or negative depending on who the migrants are, where they go, and how migration affects educational and occupational choices. For the sake of simplicity, I separate here the different existing channels between those that fall under traditional political economy approaches (rent-seeking/avoidance models, competition between jurisdictions, Laffer effects due to education, occupation, and location choices) and lead to supply-side adjustment, and those that fall under the diffusion of democracy and induce changes on the preference and demand side. The political economy literature is theoretically very rich but empirically rather poor. The opposite is true for the literature on the cultural diffusion of democracy, which is presented in an ad hoc manner on the theoretical level but is gradually enriched by a growing number of case studies. Analyses of inter-country comparisons focus on the overall effect of migration on institutions. While they generally highlight a positive effect of international migration on the institutional development of countries of origin, they do not identify the exact channels through which these effects are obtained.

First published online: 9 March 2015According to recent UN projections, more than 50 per cent of the growth in world population over the next half century will be due to population growth in Africa. Given this, any policy that influences African demography will have a significant impact on the world distribution of income. In this study, we discuss the potential for migration policies to affect fertility and education decisions, and hence, population growth in Africa. We present the results from different scenarios for more or less restrictive/selective migration policies and derive their implications for the evolution of world inequality.

Research on migration and development has recently changed, in two ways. First, it has grown sharply in volume, emerging as a proper subfield. Second, while it once embraced principally rural–urban migration and international remittances, migration and development research has broadened to consider a range of international development processes. These include human capital investment, global diaspora networks, circular or temporary migration, and the transfer of technology and cultural norms. For this special issue, we present a selection of frontier migration-and-development research that instantiates these trends.

A growing number of OECD countries are leaning toward the adoption of selective immigration policies, which are expected to raise the quality (or education level) of migrants. This view neglects two important dynamic effects: the role of migration networks, which could reduce the quality of migrants, and the responsiveness of education decisions to the prospect of migration. We propose a model of self-selection into migration with endogenous education choices, which predicts that migration networks and the quality of migrants can be positively associated when destination countries adopt sufficiently selective immigration policies. Empirical evidence, presented as background motivation, suggests that this is indeed the case.

No summary available.

Academics and policy makers require a better understanding of the variation of policies that regulate global migration, asylum and immigrant naturalization. At present, however, there is no comprehensive cross-national, time-series database of such policies, rendering the analysis of policy trends across and within these areas difficult at best. Several new immigration databases and indices have been developed in recent years. However, there is no consensus on how best to conceptualize, measure and aggregate migration policy indicators to allow for meaningful comparisons through time and across space. This article discusses these methodological challenges and introduces practical solutions that involve historical, multi-dimensional, disaggregated and transparent conceptualizing, measuring and compiling of cross-national immigration policies. Such an approach informs the International Migration Policy and Law Analysis (IMPALA) database.

International migration is maybe the single most effective way to alleviate global poverty. When a given host country allows more immigrants in, this creates costs and benefits for that particular country as well as a positive externality for individuals and governments who care about world poverty. Host countries quite often restrict immigration due to its important social and political costs, however these costs are never measured and made comparable across countries. In this paper we first show theoretically that tradable immigration quotas (TIQs) can reveal countries' comparative advantages in hosting immigrants and -- once coupled with a matching mechanism taking migrants' preferences over destinations and countries' preferences over migrants' types into account -- allow for exploiting them efficiently. We then discuss three potential applications: a market for the resettlement of international refugees, a market for the resettlement of migrants displaced by climate change, and the creation of an OECD poverty-reduction visa program adapted from the US green card lottery.

he current EU Asylum policy is widely seen as ineffective and unfair. We propose an EU-wide market for tradable quotas on both refugees and asylum-seekers coupled with a matching mechanism linking countries' and migrants' preferences. We show that the proposed system can go a long way towards addressing the shortcomings of the existing system. We illustrate this claim using the recent problems regarding relocation faced by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) in Malta.

This dissertation focuses on measuring and analyzing the effects of diversity related to the places (countries) of birth of a population. We show that "birthplace diversity" is a new dimension of population diversity, that it is conceptually and statistically distinct from ethnolinguistic or genetic diversity, and that, unlike the latter, it is positively correlated with long-term productivity. This effect is stronger for skilled immigrants in rich countries. We also show that the productive effect of diversity is larger for immigrants who are culturally close to the host country's natives - but not too close - and who come from richer countries. Again, let's look at the relationship between birthplace diversity and attitudes toward immigration. We use the World Values Survey for 72 countries and show that skilled natives increase their support for immigration when the diversity of skilled immigrants is high. The results are robust to the use of the European Social Survey. Finally, we analyze the relationship between birthplace diversity and attitudes toward redistribution in Europe. Using data from 29 European countries, we find that natives tend to reduce their support for redistribution policies when immigration is high. Moreover, this effect varies along the skill distribution of natives and converges to zero for the educated. It is furthermore robust to the use of more precise measures of skill levels in the labor market.

The current European Union (EU) asylum policy is widely seen as ineffective and unfair. We propose an EU-wide market for tradable quotas on both refugees and asylum seekers coupled with a matching mechanism linking countries’ and migrants’ preferences. We show that the proposed system can go a long way towards addressing the shortcomings of the current system. We illustrate this claim using the recent problems regarding relocation faced by the European Relocation from Malta program.

No summary available.

No summary available.

Migration contributes to the circulation of goods, knowledge, and ideas. Using community and individual-level data from Moldova, we show that the emigration wave that started in the late 1990s strongly affected electoral outcomes and political preferences in Moldova during the following decade, eventually contributing to the fall of the last Communist government in Europe. Our results are suggestive of information transmission and cultural diffusion channels. Identification relies on the quasiexperimental context and on the differential effects arising from the fact that emigration was directed both to more democratic Western Europe and to less democratic Russia.

Research on migration and development has recently changed, in two ways. First, it has grown sharply in volume, emerging as a proper subfield. Second, while it once embraced principally rural-urban migration and international remittances, migration and development research has broadened to consider a range of international development processes. These include human capital investment, global diaspora networks, circular or temporary migration, and the transfer of technology and cultural norms. For this special issue, we present a selection of frontier migration-and-development research that instantiates these trends.

First published online: 27 November 2014A growing number of OECD countries are leaning toward the adoption of selective immigration policies, which are expected to raise the quality (or education level) of migrants. This view neglects two important dynamic effects: the role of migration networks, which could reduce the quality of migrants, and the responsiveness of education decisions to the prospect of migration. We propose a model of self-selection into migration with endogenous education choices, which predicts that migration networks and the quality of migrants can be positively associated when destination countries adopt sufficiently selective immigration policies. Empirical evidence, presented as background motivation, suggests that this is indeed the case.

No summary available.

No summary available.

This thesis develops and uses a new panel database compiling stocks and rates of emigration to the 6 main OECD receiving countries, by level of education for 172 countries of origin, between 1975 and 2000. Using this new database, we show that skilled migration has indeed increased over the last 30 years, but that this phenomenon is part of a global increase in mobility and a general increase in skill levels. This database also allows us to observe that, contrary to what is emphasized in the traditional literature, significant inequalities in migrants' countries of origin generate an increase in skilled emigration relative to unskilled emigration. Moreover, this basis allows us to demonstrate that a gain from emigration is possible in the poorest countries of origin, provided that skilled emigration rates are not too high. From this point of view, the projections of "brain drain" rates by 2050 show us that an increase in "selected" immigration policies in the main European receiving countries could be extremely harmful for the migrants' sending countries.

No summary available.