Does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high-productivity sectors? This paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II as a natural experiment to study this question. A simple two-sector model of the economy, in which moving...

This paper examines how immigrants’ optimal migration duration in the host country responds to the purchasing power parity (ppp) and relative wages between the host and source countries. A theoretical model of joint migration duration and saving decisions reveals that the optimal migration...

Demographic factors in migrant-sending countries can influence international migration flows. But when migrants move across borders, they can also influence the pace of demographic transition in their countries of origin. This is because migrants, who predominantly move on a temporary basis,...

The majority of immigrants stay only temporarily in the host country. When many migrations are temporary, it is important to know who leaves and who stays, and why. The key questions for the host country are whether immigrants are net contributors to the welfare system and whether migrants...

The Irish labour market is exceptionally open to international migration flows, thus making labour supply highly responsive to changes in cyclical conditions. Immigration provides the skills that the Irish economy needs. The crisis triggered a sharp reversal in migration flows, with immigration...

Immigration has long been a hotly debated issue. The core of this debate is immigrants' impact on local job markets. Some people insist that instead of creating more jobs, immigrants actually take away more jobs thus decrease the living standard of natives. Others argue that the presence of...

Studies for major immigrant-receiving countries provide evidence on the comparative economic performance of immigrant classes (skill-, kinship-, and humanitarian-based). Developed countries are increasingly competing for high-skilled immigrants, who perform better in the labor market. However,...

Immigrants contribute to the economic development of the host country, but they earn less at entry and it takes many years for them to achieve parity of income. For some immigrant groups, the wage gap never closes. There is a wide variation across countries in the entry wage gap and the speed of...

This chapter summarizes the main trends, policies, and empirical evidence regarding immigration in Europe. We start by providing descriptive evidence on long-term immigration trends and current characteristics of the immigrant populations in various important European destination countries and...