I document that couples are more likely to migrate if household income is disproportionally due to one partner, and that families react equally strong to a male and female relative earnings advantage. A unitarian model of family migration in which families may discount wives' private gains is...

This paper investigates the economic returns to language skills and bilingualism. The analysis is staged in Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic country with complex ethnic settlement patterns that has switched its official state language from Russian to Kazakh. Using two newly assembled data sets, we...

Women who want to work often face many more hurdles than men. This is true in Tajikistan where there is a large gender gap in labour force participation. We highlight the role of two factors - international migration and education - on the labour force participation decision and its gender gap....

This chapter begins by documenting that temporary migrations are not only very common, but that outmigration of immigrants is selective both in terms of migrants' individual characteristics and their economic outcomes. We then examine the problems that arise when estimating immigrants' earnings...

We use a new dataset on eight Italian cities and a novel identification strategy to analyze the relationship between the employment status of migrants and the percentage of migrants living nearby. Our data contain information at the very local level (i.e. the residential block) and are...

Several post-Soviet states have introduced policies to improve the relative economic, political or social position of formerly disadvantaged populations. Using one example of such policies - 'Kazakhisation' in Kazakhstan - we investigate their impact on the comparative earnings of two directly...

Surveying recently arrived immigrants in countries lacking a population register poses many challenges. We describe our adaptation of Respondent Driven Sampling, a chain-referral technique, to sample migrants from Pakistan and Poland who had arrived in the UK within the previous 18 months....

While there is considerable interest in understanding the climate-migration relationship, particularly in the context of concerns about global climatic change, little is known about underlying mechanisms. We analyze a unique and extensive set of panel data characterizing annual bilateral...

We investigate the effectiveness of Arizona's omnibus immigration law SB1070, which made it a misdemeanor crime for an alien to not carry proper documentation and asked police to determine the immigration status of any person suspected of being an illegal alien during a lawful stop. We find that...

This paper analyses the effect of local crime rates on residents' mental health. Using longitudinal information on individuals' mental well-being, we address the problem of sorting and endogenous moving behaviour. We find that crime causes considerable mental distress for residents, mainly...