That remittances are a stable source of external finance seems to have become the received wisdom. In addition, many studies have found remittances to behave counter-cyclically, increasing during crises and times of hardship for the recipient countries. Are remittances reliable macroeconomic...

Ability drain's (AD) impact seems economically significant, with 30% of US Nobel laureates since 1906 being immigrants, and immigrants or their children founding 40% of Fortune 500 companies. Nonetheless, while brain drain (BD) and gain (BG) have been studied extensively, AD has not. I examine...

This paper examines the US gun-related murder (GM) rate and places it in an international perspective. The data show that the US GM rate is 27 times the average rate for 22 other developed countries (ODC). Its gun ownership rate is 5.4 times that of ODC and the murder rate per gun is 5 times...

A number of developed countries have implemented guest-worker programs in recent decades. Its basic feature is the temporary presence of the foreign guest-workers. The problem with such programs is that there is little to prevent these guest-workers from entering the illegal job market and...

"A number of studies have examined the implications of preference interdependence. This paper models utility as depending on other people's consumption levels and shows that welfare declines with inequality, equilibrium inequality is inefficient, and the optimal intervention leads to a more...

Based on static partial equilibrium analysis, the "new brain drain" literature argues that, by raising the return to education, a brain drain generates a brain gain that is, under certain conditions, larger than the brain drain itself, and that such a net brain gain results in an increase in...