Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return) have been hard to reconcile with micro evidence on the private return to schooling. We present a simple explanation combining two ideas: imperfect substitution and endogenous skill-biased technological progress and use cross-country...

This paper aims to provide a conceptual and operational context for analysing regional inequalities. It does so by utilizing a 'search & matching' framework. The model, developed in this paper, maps the way in which individuals are distributed according to: 1) the abilities of individuals to...

This paper examines the effects of a massive salt iodization program on human capital formation of school-aged children in China. Exploiting province and time variation, we find a strong positive impact on cognition for girls and no effects for boys. For non-cognitive skills, we find the...

Why do people leave high-income countries with extensive welfare states? This article will examine what underlies the emigration intentions of native-born inhabitants of one industrialized country in particular: the Netherlands. To understand emigration from high-income countries we focus not...

Concentration of immigrants and its associated externalities have become an important topic in contemporary international migration research, both from a methodological as well as an empirical perspective. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to provide an overview of that part...

We study the impact of a policy change in the Netherlands that reduced preferential tax treatment duration for high-skilled migrants arriving from specific countries in certain years. Utilizing comprehensive tax and population data, we document substantial tax-induced emigration responses,...

Ethnicity has become an increasingly important factor in neighborhood formation in many developed economies. We specify a gravity model for neighborhoods to assess the role of ethnicity in intra-urban residential relocations. Migration patterns of different ethnic groups are hypothesized to...

What drives stated preferences about the number of foreigners? Is it self-interest as stressed by the political economy of immigration? Does social interaction affect this preference or is the immigration preference completely in line with the preference for the aggregate population size? In...

In our increasingly interconnected and open world, international migration is becoming an important socio-economic phenomenon for many countries. Since the early 1980s, many studies have been undertaken of the impact of immigration on host labour markets. Borjas (2003) noted that the estimated...

Immigration is a phenomenon of growing significance in many countries. Increasing social tensions are leading to political pressure to limit a further influx of foreign-born persons on the grounds that the absorption capacity of host countries has been exceeded and social cohesion threatened....