Emigration first increases before decreasing with economic development. This bell-shaped relationship between emigration and development was first hypothesized by the theory of the mobility transition (Zelinsky, 1971). Although several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the upward segment...

Discussions of high-skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries, which ignore movements to and between developing countries. This paper presents, for the first time, a global overview of human capital mobility through bilateral migration stocks by...

In this paper, we simulate the labor market effects of net immigration and emigration during the 1990's in all OECD countries. To accomplish this, we are the first to employ a comprehensive database of migrant stocks, grouped by education level and country of origin/destination, for the years...

We exploit the designs of two separate U.S. refugee dispersal policies to provide causal evidence that refugees foster outward FDI to their countries of origin. Drawing upon aggregated individual-level refugee and project-level FDI data, we first leverage the quasi-random distribution of...

Populous communities often prefer more government involvement than less populous communities, but does community size per se affect citizens' preferences for government? Endogeneity commonly prevents testing for causal effects because (i) people can select into communities while (ii) government...

The global distribution of talent is highly skewed and the resources available to countries to develop and utilize their best and brightest vary substantially. The migration of skilled workers across countries tilts the deck even further. Using newly available data, we first review the landscape...

This paper sheds light on the apparent paradox, wherein populations adversely affected by climatic conditions fail to migrate as much as would otherwise be expected. Drawing on Hirschman's treatise on Exit, Voice and Loyalty, we develop a simple model, which highlights the theoretical case for a...

We provide evidence for the causal pro-trade effect of migrants and in doing so establish an important link between migrant networks and long-run economic development. To this end, we exploit a unique event in human history, i.e. the exodus of the Vietnamese Boat People to the US. This episode...

Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given gravity, a town nearer to the homelands can be expected to receive a larger inflow of people...

We revisit the role of Capital Fundamentalism, in the context of the Government of Indonesia's Inpres Desa Tertinggal (IDT or Left Behind Village) Program, which injected capital into poor village economies. We evaluate the impact of the program on village welfare and structural transformation...