There are two seemingly competing branches of the literature on saving and duration-of-stay decisions of temporary migrants. One relies on the target-saving explanation and the other on utility maximization over a life cycle. We attempt to reconcile the two approaches within a framework where a...

A guest-worker program can be a very flexible and convenient way of meeting labor shortages in a host country, assuming that the migrants obey the rules. This paper investigates the conditions under which guest workers have sufficient incentives for voluntary return to their country of origin...

Numerous studies suggest that illegal immigration in the form of bonded labor is becoming an increasingly important phenomenon. This paper develops a model of optimizing behavior of undocumented immigrants who are employed in the host country as bonded laborers while repaying their debts to...

We examine the interaction between policies of the host and source countries in the context of a model of skilled-worker migration. The host country aims to provide low-cost labor for its employers while also taking into consideration the fiscal burden of providing social services to immigrants....

Liquidity constraints represent a major obstacle for potential migrants trying to meet the high cost of undocumented international migration. Some cover it by borrowing from a smuggling organization with a commitment to repay the loan by working in the destination country as bonded laborers....

We analyze an endogenously growing economy in which production generates greenhouse gas emissions leading to global temperature increase. Global warming causes stochastic climate shocks, modeled by the Poisson process, which destroy part of the economy's capital stock. Part of the output may be...

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. We present a stochastic model of a growing economy where natural disasters are multiple and random, with damages driven by the economy’s polluting activity. We provide a...

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change.  One of the biggest challenges for economic modeling is the inherent uncertainty of climate events, which crucially affects consumption, investment, and abatement decisions.  We...

Savings of guest workers as well as of undocumented migrants represent important inflows of foreign exchange for some developing countries. This paper compares the saving behavior of these two types of migrants, assuming that the former are authorized to work abroad for a specific period of...

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. One of the biggest challenges for economic modeling is the inherent uncertainty of climate events, which crucially affects consumption, investment, and abatement decisions. We...