In this note we compare the laissez-faire steady-state solution in the Howitt and Aghion (1998) model to the social optimum. The analysis offers several new insights in comparison to the welfare analysis in Aghion and Howitt (1992). We find various new distortions between private and optimal...

Trust in the citizens of a potential partner country may affect the decision to trade with or to migrate to a foreign country. This paper employs panel data to examine the causal impact of such bilateral trust on international trade and migration patterns. We apply instrumental variables (IV)...

Empirical research on the determinants of international migration including the LDCs has so far neglected one important issue: the complex relationship of development and migration. Since the beginning of the 1990s several arguments have been discussed which hint at the possibility that progress...

Irregular migrants from Africa and the Middle East flow into Europe along land and sea routes under the control of human smugglers. The demise of the Gaddafi regime in 2011 marked the opening of the Central Mediterranean Route for irregular border - crossing between Libya and Italy. This...

Acquiring information about destinations can be costly for migrants. We model information frictions in the rational inattention framework and obtain a closed-form expression for a migration gravity equation that we bring to the data. The model predicts that ows from countries with a higher cost...

This paper considers a three-overlapping-generations model of endogenous growth wherein human capital is the engine of growth. It first contrasts the laissez-faire and the optimal solutions. Three possible accumulation regimes are distinguished. Then it discusses a standard set of tax-transfer...

The optimal mix of growth policies is derived within a comprehensive endogenous growth model. The analysis captures important elements of the tax-transfer system and takes into account transitional dynamics. Currently, for calculating corporate taxable income US firms are allowed to deduct...

Channeling human resources into the right occupations has historically been a key to economic prosperity. Occupational choices are not only driven by the material rewards associated with the various occupations, but also by the esteem that they confer. We propose a model of endogenous growth in...