A large proportion of internationally traded goods are subject to labor standards and this proportion is on a continuing rise. Such developments created a hot debate about the impact of labor standards on trade, but there has been no clear international consensus on the net costs and benefits...

Illegal migrants supply a valuable productive input: effort. But their status as illegals means that these migrants face a strictly positive probability of expulsion. A return to their country of origin entails reduced earnings when the wage at origin is lower than the wage at destination. This...

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...

This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual's want of social status. For a given level of a population?s wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of...

While many empirical studies show that participation in rural labor markets is an important household livelihood strategy, data on Tanzania show that the participation in the rural labor markets is still relatively low. This study examines the factors behind the development of village labor...

Fragile states are characterised by a great potential for crisis that endangers human security and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is increasingly being recognized that external actors should stay involved, either directly or indirectly; at the same time, though,...

This paper aims to deliver empirical evidence on the links between production efficiency, biodiversity, and resource management by analysing a case study on small-scale tobacco production in the Miombo woodlands in Tanzania. The subsistence nature of tobacco production in Tanzania suggests that...

Evidence is presented in support of the brain gain view that the likelihood of migrating to a destination wherein the returns to human capital (schooling) are high creates incentives to acquire human capital in migrant-sending areas. In Mexico, even though internal migrants are more educated...

We generalize endogenous growth models, which often assume a closed-economy, toallow for international borrowing and lending. We incorporate a prominent feature of globalfinancial markets, that the marginal cost of borrowing facing a small open economy is dependent on the country risk as...