This paper has two goals: first to describe a theoretical model which derives relationships among migration decisions explicitly from utility maximization under uncertainty; and second, to examine why nations vary in their internal migration. To explain variation in internal migration, we...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a...

We develop a stylized EU-type model of a union consisting of rich, capital-abundant and high productivity countries, and poor, capital-scarce and low productivity countries. We address two main issues: the efficiency of tax competition and the effect of factor mobility on the size of the welfare...

Recent studies find that observational returns to rural-urban migration are near zero in three developing countries. We revisit this result using panel tracking surveys from six countries, finding higher returns on average. We then interpret these returns in a multi-region Roy model with...

There is a long-standing debate among academics about the effect of immigration on native internal migration decisions. If immigrants displace natives this may indicate a direct cost of immigration in the form of decreased employment opportunity for native workers. Moreover, displacement would...

We follow the careers 1981-2004 of 5401 star scientists listed in ISI HighlyCitedSM as most highly cited by their peers. Their number in a US region or a top-25 science and technology (S&T) country significantly increases the probability of firm entry in the S&T field in which they are working....

The paper first extends and reconciles recent estimates of the strikingly large effect of national borders on trade patterns. Estimates comparing trade among Canadian provinces with that between Canadian provinces and U.S. states show interprovincial trade in 1988-90 to have been more than...

Within the conceptual framework of the Roy model, this paper provides an empirical analysis of internal migration flows using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. The theoretical approach highlights regional differences in the returns to skills: regions that pay higher returns...