A controversial issue in the US is how to reduce the number of illegal immigrants and what effect this would have on the US economy. To answer this question we set up a two-country model with search in labor markets and featuring legal and illegal immigrants among the low skilled. We calibrate...

We set up a search and matching model with a private and a public sector to understand the effects of employment and wage policies in the public sector on unemployment and education decisions. The effects on the educational composition of the labor force depend crucially on the structure of the...

We set up a model with search and matching frictions to understand the effects of employment and wage policies, as well as nepotism in hiring in the public sector, on unemployment and rent seeking. Conditional on inefficiently high public-sector wages, more nepotism in public-sector hiring...

We analyze whether second generation immigrants have different political preferences relative to observationally identical host country's citizens. Using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017 we characterize each vote on a left-right scale using...

The standard empirical analysis of immigration, based on a simple labor demand and labor supply framework, has emphasized the negative impact of foreign born workers on the average wage of U.S.-born workers (particularly of those without a high school degree). A precise assessment of the average...

In an interesting and influential paper Robert Lucas (1993) considering the experience of East Asian small economies, suggests that 'on the job' learning could be the principal engine of their miraculous growth in the last 20 years. In this paper I develop an overlapping generation model where...

The importance of innovation for the economic performance of industrialized countries has been largely stressed recently by the theoretical and empirical literature. Moreover the intensity of knowledge externalities in generating innovation, is the key parameter in determining sustained growth...

The diffusion of knowledge in the world generates positive externalities if knowledge flows increase the productivity of R&D. Our work analyzes knowledge diffusion and knowledge externalities in generating innovation and in determining productivity. We first estimate the determinants of...

Young highly educated workers developed in the 70's and 80's a preference for working in larger cities. As a consequence highly educated young workers in 1990 were over-represented in cities, in spite of the lower wage premium they earned for working in crowded metropolitan areas if compared to...