We empirically investigate the relationship between a country's economic complexity and the diversity in the birthplaces of its immigrants. Our cross-country analysis suggests that birthplace diversity is strongly and positively associated with economic complexity. This holds particularly for...

How does immigration affect export performance? To answer this question we propose a unified empirical framework allowing to disentangle various mechanisms such as the role of networks in reducing bilateral transaction costs as well as productivity shifts arising from migration-induced knowledge...

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in an another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. Our...

Existing migrant networks play an important role in explaining the size and structure of immigration flows. They affect the net benefits of migration for future migrants by lowering assimilation costs ('self-selection' channel) and increase the probability of potential migrants to obtain a visa...