Based on a welfare-maximization model of skilled migration where education generates a positive externality, this paper examines whether the early view regarding brain drain's (BD) negative impact on source countries and the Bhagwati tax (BT) associated with it, is compatible with the recent...

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic family model with human capital. We show how a government can improve the trade-off between equality and incentives by changing the amount of observable human capital. We provide an intuitive decomposition for the wedge between human-capital...

This paper examines the economic foundations of three criteria used for evaluating the costs and benefits of social programs. Some criteria do not consider the scale of programs or address the costs associated with programs that expand or contract the total government budget. A recent addition...

This chapter presents an economic approach to character and personality traits with an application to the study of virtue. Economists interpret psychological traits, including character traits and virtue, as strategies that shape responses to situations (actions) determined by underlying...

This paper considers the problem of making inferences about the effects of a program on multiple outcomes when the assignment of treatment status is imperfectly randomized. By imperfect randomization we mean that treatment status is reassigned after an initial randomization on the basis of...

Many developing countries depend crucially on open-access renewable natural resources (NR). Trade is generally viewed as hurting the long-term health of NR in commodity-exporting countries. I examine whether trade might be beneficial in the case of population growth. Dynamic general equilibrium...