"The conventional wisdom that inflation and unemployment are unrelated in the long-run implies that these phenomena can be analysed by separate branches of economics. The macro literature tries to explain inflation dynamics and estimates the NAIRU. The labour macro literature tries to explain...

This paper examines the interactive effect of distance and trade on international conflict and cooperation. The effect of geographic distance depends on trade, while the effect of trade varies with geographic distance. Trade reduces conflict to a greater extent when dyads are geographically...

In this paper we investigate the causal effect of life expectancy on economic growth by explicitly accounting for the role of the demographic transition. In addition to focusing on issues of empirical identification, this paper emphasizes the role of the econometric specification. We present a...

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The pattern of estimated state dependence effects across countries is...

"According to the "compensation theory", market forces should assure a complete compensation of the initial labour-saving impact of process innovations. In this paper a critique of this approach is proposed through a detailed survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on the subject. The...

International migration is characterized by two puzzling facts: First, only a small share of the population tends to migrate although substantial and persisting income differences across countries exist. Second, net migration rates tend to cease over time despite persisting income differences....

This paper investigates whether at the interaction between family background and school tracking affects human capital accumulation. Our a priori view is that more tracking should reinforce the role of parental privilege, and thereby reduce equality of opportunity. Compared to the current...

Host countries have implemented permanent and guest-worker (GW) immigration programs in recent decades, while the temporary movement of service providers under Mode IV of the GATS is one of the issues being negotiated at the Doha Round of the WTO. Though decisions on what programs to adopt have...

The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This...

Is the brain drain a curse or a boon for developing countries? This paper reviews what is known to date about the magnitude of the brain drain from developing to developed countries, its determinants and the way it affects the well-being of those left behind. First, I present alternative...