We relate an observed difference between single men (SM) and single women (SW) in attitudes towards risk to the higher value assigned to social status by SM than by SW. In the marriage market, low status carries a harsher penalty for SM than for SW because when selecting a partner, the social...

We study a policy response to an increase in post-merger social stress. If a merger of groups of people is viewed as a revision of their social space, then the merger alters people's comparators and increases social stress: the social stress of a merged population is greater than the sum of the...

Acknowledging individuals' distaste for low relative income renders trade less appealing when trade is viewed as a technology that integrates economies by merging separate social spheres into one. We define a "trembling trade" as a situation in which gains from trade are overtaken by losses of...

In this paper we study the impact of the international migration of unskilled workers on skill formation and the average skill level in the home country. We analyze what appears to be the least threatening scenario from the point of view of its effect on the supply of skills at home: namely,...

We investigate the impact of the imposition of sanctions for employing illegal migrants on the welfare of native workers. Our analysis is based on the premise that in response to such sanctions, managers in a firm may be reassigned from supervision of production to verification of the legality...

A migration network is modeled as a mutually beneficial cooperative agreement between financially-constrained individuals who seek to finance and expedite their migration. The cooperation agreement creates a network: established migrants contract to support the subsequent migration of others in...

Strong ties with the home country and with the host country can coexist. An altruistic migrant who sends remittances to his family back home assimilates more the more altruistic he is, and also more than a non-remitting migrant.

We demonstrate that a rank-preserving transfer from a richer individual to a poorer individual can exacerbate income inequality (when inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient). This happens when individuals' preferences depend negatively not only on work time (effort) but also on low...

In the model of Stark et al. (1997, 1998), the possibility of employment in a developed country raises the level of human capital acquired by workers in the developing country. We show that this result holds even when workers have the option to save.

We document and suggest a rationale for the durability of seasonal migration from Poland to Germany, a phenomenon persisting for more than a century. We refer to the role of the tradition of engaging in seasonal migration as a force that helped invigorate the process and contribute to its...