The naturalization of asylum seekers is modeled as an economic problem. In choosing their level of investment in host-country-specific human capital, asylum seekers take into consideration the probability of their being naturalized. The government of the host country chooses the probability of...

We incorporate the concept of social identity into a stylized model of occupational choice and analyze whether an individual's identity affects his or her decision to become an entrepreneur. We argue that an entrepreneurial identity results from an individual's socialization. This could be...

This paper provides a novel explanation of 'educated unemployment,' which is a salient feature of the labor markets in a number of developing countries. In a simple job-search framework we show that 'educated unemployment' is caused by the perspective of international migration, that is, by the...

Quite often, migrants appear to exert little effort to absorb the mainstream culture and to learn the language of their host society, even though the economic returns (increased productivity and enhanced earnings) to assimilation are high. We show that when interpersonal comparisons affect...

We consider the case in which the opening up of an economy to migration results in departure of skilled workers. We point out that while the possibility of migration changes the set of employment opportunities, it also affects the structure of incentives: Higher returns to skills in the foreign...

When productivity is fostered by an individual's own human capital as well as by the economy-wide average level of human capital, individuals under-invest in human capital. The provision of subsidies for the formation of human capital, conditional on the subsidy being self-financed by tax...

Although the phenomenon of refugee flows is not devoid of economic connotations, it has so far been investigated primarily by political scientists and sociologists. The analytical tools of economic inquiry have not yet been applied to this subject, although it stands to reason that such a study...

We propose a new microeconomic explanation for the divergent experiences of economies in forming human capital. We suggest that the positive effect of a longer life expectancy on human capital formation arises from two separate effects: a life-expectancy effect and a prolonged intergenerational...

An increase in the probability of work abroad, where the returns to schooling are higher than at home, induces more individuals in a developing country to acquire education, which leads to an increase in the supply of educated workers in the domestic labor market. Where there is a sticky...

In this paper we study the impact of the international migration of unskilled workers on skill formation and the average skill level in the home country. We analyze what appears to be the least threatening scenario from the point of view of its effect on the supply of skills at home: namely,...