Over the last decades, the United States has become increasingly integrated in the world economy. Very low trade barriers and comparatively liberal migration policies have made these developments possible. What drove US congressmen to support the recent wave of globalization? While much of the...

Immigration is today one of the most hotly debated policy issues in the United States. Despite marked divergence of opinion even within political parties, several important reforms have been introduced in the post 1965 era. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a systematic analysis of the...

The paper analyzes whether citizenship acquisition affects the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. The study uses actual micro data from the IAB employment sample, which covers more than 80% of the whole labor force in Germany. The econometric analysis is carried out using both...

Does policymakers’ horizon affect their willingness to support economic reforms? Voting in the U.S. Congress provides an ideal setting to address this question. Differences between the House and Senate, in which members serve two-year and six-year mandates respectively, allow to examine the...

Empirical evidence suggests that sectoral export growth decreases exporters’ survival probability, whereas non-exporters are unaffected. Models with firm heterogeneity in total factor productivity predict the opposite. To solve this puzzle, we develop a two-factor framework where firms differ...

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...

The number of preferential trade agreements has greatly increased over the past two decades, yet most existing bilateral arrangements take the form of free trade areas, and less than ten percent can be considered to be fully °edged customs unions. This paper develops a political economy model...

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...