The asylum seekers who choose the level of investment in the host-country-specific human capital, and the government of the host country that chooses the probability of naturalization are modeled as optimizing economic agents in a setting not of their choosing.

Under a deadweight loss of tax and transfer, there is tension between the optimal policy choices of a Rawlsian social planner and a utilitarian social planner. However, when with a weight greater than a certain critical value the individuals’ utility functions incorporate distaste for low...

In the model of Stark et al. (1997, 1998), the possibility of employment in a developed country raises the level of human capital acquired by workers in the developing country. We show that this result holds even when workers have the option to save.

The long run effect of migration solely by unskilled workers is that skilled workers in the home country acquire additional human capital yet their share in the country’s workforce falls. Consequently, the country’s average level of human capital is lowered.

In response to the imposition of steep enough sanctions for employing illegal migrants, the firm reassigns managers from supervision of production to verification of the legality of its workforce. This impedes production efficiency, reduces wages, and hurts the native workers.

A utilitarian social planner who maximizes social welfare assigns the available income to those who are most efficient in converting income into utility. However, when individuals are concerned about their income falling behind the incomes of others, the optimal income distribution under...

I study the integration of regions in the form of a merger of populations, which I interpret as a revision of people’s social space and their comparison set; I illustrate the way in which a merger can aggravate social distress; and I consider policy responses. Specifically, I view the merger...

Strong ties with the home country and with the host country can coexist. An altruistic migrant who sends remittances to his family back home assimilates more the more altruistic he is, and also more than a non-remitting migrant.

Recent research shows that the merger of economies increases aggregate stress. This paper shows that there is no income distribution policy which will ensure that the wellbeing of the individuals belonging to merging economies does not fall below their pre-merger level.