It is commonly argued that skilled immigration benefits the destination country through several channels. Yet, only a small group of countries reports to have policies in place aimed at increasing the intake of skilled immigrants. Why? In this paper we analyze the factors that affect a direct...

In this paper we focus on the changes in internal migration flows triggered by China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). We use a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We relate changes in internal...

Illegal immigration has been the focus of much debate in receiving countries, but little is known about what drives individual attitudes towards illegal immigrants. To study this question, we use the CCES survey, which was carried out in 2006 in the United States. We find evidence that – in...

Using census data for 1996, 2001, and 2007; we study the labor market effect of immigration to South Africa. The paper contributes to a small but growing literature on the impact of South-South migration by looking at one of the most attractive destinations for migrant workers in Sub-Saharan Africa....

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration in South Africa using the 1996, 2001 and 2007 rounds of the World Value Survey. The main question we want to answer is whether South African public opinion on migration is affected by the potential...

The Most-Favored Nation (MFN) clause has long been suspected of creating a free rider problem in multilateral trade negotiations. To address this issue, we model multilateral negotiations as a mechanism design problem with voluntary participation. We show that an optimal mechanism induces only...

In the literature on the economics of international trade institutions, a key question is whether or not terms-of-trade effects drive international trade agreements. Recent empirical work addressing terms-of-trade effects has been restricted to non-WTO countries or accession countries, which...

In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favor more open migration policies. Next we...

South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North-North and North-South micro-level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South-South trade...

Using census data for 1996, 2001 and 2007, we study the labor market effect of immigration in South Africa. In this period the share of foreign born over the total population has grown by almost fifty percent, and both the characteristics and geographical distribution of immigrants show...