The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces...

Recent theoretical work on economic geography emphasizes the interplay of transport costs and plant-level increasing returns. In these models, the spatial distribution of demand is a key determinant of economic outcomes. In one strand, it is argued that higher demand gives rise to a more than...

The design of optimal immigration policy, particularly in the face of the spiraling demand for highly skilled workers, such as IT workers and engineers, is a topical issue in the policy debate as well as the economic literature. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from firm-level data...

This Paper studies the dynamic impact of mass migration from the Former Soviet Union to Israel on natives’ labour market outcomes. Specifically, we attempt to distinguish between the short-run and long-run effects of immigrants on natives’ wages and employment. The transition of immigrants...

We return to a familiar topic in international trade, comparative advantage, introducing it into a model of economic geography. We provide a clear counterexample to the familiar result that trade liberalization leads to increased industrial concentration. Instead, lower trade costs may lead to a...

In models of economic geography, plant-level scale economies and trade costs create incentives for spatial agglomeration of production into a manufacturing core and agricultural periphery, creating regional income differentials. We examine tax competition between national governments to...

This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of observed levels of migration using a quantitative multi-sector model of the world economy calibrated to aggregate and firm-level data. Our framework features cross-country labor productivity difference, international trade, remittances, and a...

We examine the consequences of increased economic integration between nations within a region. We adopt Krugman’s economic-geography model in which demand linkages can generate agglomeration of manufacturing activity. Manufacturing labour is assumed to be imperfectly mobile between countries....

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

The numbers of migrants from the accessions countries have clearly increased since the enlargement of the EU in 2004. Following enlargement, the net inflow of EU8 immigrants has become 2.5 times larger than the four-year period before enlargement. Poles constitute the largest immigrant group...