This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of refugee migration, with emphasis on the current refugee crisis. After first reviewing the institutional framework laid out by the Geneva Convention for Refugees, we demonstrate that, despite numerous attempts at developing a common European asylum...

In this paper, we show that the wage assimilation of immigrants is the result of the intricate interplay between individual skill accumulation and dynamic equilibrium effects in the labor market. When immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes, increasing immigrant inflows widen the wage...

In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany’s foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a dataset that comprises the entire flow of...

In this paper, we study the development and underlying drivers of skill premiums in Germany between 1980 and 2008. We show that the significant increase in the medium to low skill wage premiums since the late 1980s was almost exclusively concentrated among the group of workers aged 30 or below....

This paper studies the effect of coworker-based networks on individual labour market outcomes. I analyse how the provision of labour market relevant information by former coworkers affects the employment probabilities and, if hired, the wages of male workers who have previously become unemployed...

In this paper, we show that the wage assimilation of immigrants is the result of the intricate interplay between individual skill accumulation and dynamic equilibrium effects in the labor market. When immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes, increasing immigrant inflows widen the wage...

We develop a general model of legal and illegal immigration to understand the basic tradeoffs faced by a government in the decision to implement an immigration amnesty in the presence of a selective immigration policy. We show that two channels play an important role: an amnesty is more likely...

Existing evidence on peer effects in a work environment stems from either laboratory experiments or from real-word studies referring to a specific firm or specific occupation. Yet, it is unclear to what extent these findings apply to the labor market in general. In this paper, therefore, we...

This chapter begins by documenting that temporary migrations are not only very common, but that outmigration of immigrants is selective both in terms of migrants' individual characteristics and their economic outcomes. We then examine the problems that arise when estimating immigrants' earnings...

We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of labor supply, fertility and savings, incorporating occupational choices, with specific wage paths and skill atrophy that vary over the career. This allows us to understand the trade-off between occupational choice and desired fertility, as well as the...