Existing refugees in a destination country from the same source country reduce the uncertainty faced by subsequent asylum migrants since existing refugees can provide information and assistance. We argue that such network effects extend beyond the borders of specific source countries. Potential...

Free international migration has enormous benefits. But many argue that governments can legitimately restrict migration in order to protect the supposed “self-determination” of natives. Some claims of this type are based on group rights theories, which hold that members of a particular...

This paper develops a North-South trade model with heterogeneous labour and horizontally differentiated products and compares the implications of two policies: Southern intellectual property rights (IPRs) and Northern immigration policy that aims to attract Southern talent as means of preempting...

Ballot box voting is often considered the essence of political freedom. But it has two major shortcomings: individual voters have little chance of making a difference, and they also face strong incentives to remain ignorant about the issues at stake. "Voting with your feet," however, avoids both...

We carried out two multinational surveys to analyze aspirations and intentions to emigrate, and how these are linked to each other. One survey covered language course participants in 14 countries, and another students in 6 countries. We identify two groups that have been largely neglected in...

Migration has always been an omnipresent topic in Germany. However, unlike today, in the 19th century the German territory was a country of emigration, not immigration. Using county-level data for the period from 1861 to 1871, this paper examines the determinants of emigration from and...

This paper exploits the exogenous and differential immigrant supply shocks caused by the immigration quota system in the 1920s to identify the causal effects of the immigration restriction on the US manufacturing wages, the Great Migration, and industrial production between 1920 and 1930. I find...

This paper exploits the exogenous and differential immigrant supply shocks caused by the immigration quota system in the 1920s to identify the causal effects of the immigration restriction on the US manufacturing wages, the Great Migration, and industrial production between 1920 and 1930. I find...

Theory suggests that cultural similarity increases migration flows between countries. This paper brings best practices from the trade gravity literature to migration to test this prediction. In my preferred specification, I use lags of time-varying similarity variables in a panel of...

What is the future of international migration flows? The growing availability of bilateral international migration data has resulted in an improved understanding of the determinants of migration flows through the estimation of theory-based gravity models. However, the use of these models as a...