Switzerland has experienced a substantial influx of immigrants over the 50 years since World War II, to the extent that it now has one of the highest share of foreigners in population among OECD countries. This paper analyses Switzerland’s experience of migration, centring on two main issues:...

The paper evaluates the potential gains from labour immigration for the European Union. After a review of the East-West migration problem and recent western migration policies, governmentally controlled labour immigration is studied in a framework with unions, unemployment and heterogenous...

Mobility of workers involves flows of labour, human capital and other production factors and thus contributes to a more efficient allocation of resources. Besides these effects on allocative efficiency, migrant flows affect relative wages and also change the international and national...

The numbers of migrants from the accessions countries have clearly increased since the enlargement of the EU in 2004. Following enlargement, the net inflow of EU8 immigrants has become 2.5 times larger than the four-year period before enlargement. Poles constitute the largest immigrant group...

This paper analyzes the effects of income taxation on the international migration and earnings of top earners using a Danish preferential foreigner tax scheme and population-wide Danish administrative data. This scheme, introduced in 1991, allows new immigrants with high earnings to be taxed at...

Recent studies have shown that there are significant earnings differentials between immigrants and natives in Switzerland. The goal of this paper is to determine whether these differences can be attributed to diverging socio-economic endowments or to discrimination. We use the well-known...

Determinants of national policies towards immigration are analysed in the context of an economy open to international trade. Arguments for the existence of an ‘immigration surplus’ are reviewed and followed by an interpretative survey of the principal contributions of the political economy...

This paper empirically analyzes both economic and non-economic determinants of attitudes towards immigrants, within and across countries. The two individual-level survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects...

This is a survey of some of the key studies in the literature on international migration in history that may be described as cliometric. This literature uses the concepts and approaches of applied economics to investigate a range of historical issues and there are strong parallels with the...

The ‘fractal’ nature of the rise in earnings dispersion is one of its key features and remains a puzzle. This paper offers a new perspective on the causes of changes in earnings dispersion, focusing on the role of labour reallocation. Once we drop the assumption that all firms pay a given...