The literature, starting with Chiswick (1977, 1978) to Gang and Zimmermann (2000), more recently, focuses on the economic achievements and performance of first- and second-generation migrants. This paper presents a three-generation migrant analysis, comparing relative economic performance of...

International donors usually have particular goals they want to achieve with their foreign aid, for example, poverty alleviation. In the international aid story lobbying by potential recipient groups attempting to capture the donor’s support play a potentially important role for...

We argue that a purpose of foreign aid is to whet the appetite of the recipient in order to bring about a long term commitment to what the donor perceives as a need, but which the recipient may rank lower down on his list of undertakings, or may be sufficiently resource constrained as to be...

This paper analyzes the decentralization of decision-making in aid-giving in a theoretical rent-seeking framework. In this analysis the root donor establishes a necessary criterion for potential recipients: good governance. The potential recipients compete in hierarchal contests for funds. The...

This paper presents a first attempt at understanding some of the many issues involved in the granting of an amnesty to illegal immigrants. We consider government behavior with respect to allocations on limiting infiltration (border control) and apprehending infiltrators (internal control) and...

This paper examines the disincentive effects of perceived underpayment on individuals’ exerted effort and promotion. To this end we develop a theoretical framework and obtain empirical evidence by analysing British academia data. We find that, tenured academics will tend to invest less effort...

We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects. Leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable...

By the well established tournament literature, incomplete information regarding the employees’ productivity is essential for the rationalization of (efficiency-enhancing) tournaments. In this paper we propose an alternative rationalization of tournaments focusing on a fully informed principal...

This paper looks at the situation of legal immigrants who employ illegal immigrants to provide them with various services. This enables the legal immigrants to allocate more time to other work, thereby increasing their earnings. Illegal immigrants employed by legal immigrants may specialize in...

Governments do not have perfect information regarding the priorities and the needs of different groups in the economy. This lack of knowledge opens the door for different groups to lobby the government in order to receive the government’s support. We set up a model of hierarchical contests and...