Restricting immigration to young and skilled immigrants using a point system, as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, succeeds in selecting economically desirable immigrants and provides orderly management of population growth. But the point system cannot fix short-term skilled labor...

Conventional wisdom and prevailing economic theory hold that the new owners of a privatized firm will cut jobs and wages. But this ignores the possibility that new owners will expand the firm's scale, with potentially positive effects on employment, wages, and productivity. Evidence generally...

Return migration can have multiple benefits. It allows migrants who have accumulated savings abroad to ease credit constraints at home and set up a business. Also, emigrants from developing countries who have invested in their human capital may earn higher wages when they return. However,...

Many industrial countries are replacing conventional power plants with renewable energy sources. Green energy policies might affect employment in different ways. A policy shift toward a low-carbon green economy may create new and additional "green jobs" in renewable energy sources and...

Persistent unemployment after recessions and the policies required to bring it down are the subject of an ongoing debate. One view suggests there are fundamental changes in the labor market that imply a long-term higher rate of unemployment, requiring the implementation of structural policy...

While women’s labor force participation tends to increase with economic development, the relationship is not straightforward or consistent at the country level. There is considerably more variation across developing countries in labor force participation by women than by men. This...

The German model of co-determination (Mitbestimmung) with works councils, in which workers are involved in the management of a company, was a role model for other countries for many years. However, since the 1990s the appeal of works councils has been declining, to the extent that now even...

The majority of immigrants stay only temporarily in the host country. When many migrations are temporary, it is important to know who leaves and who stays, and why. The key questions for the host country are whether immigrants are net contributors to the welfare system and whether migrants...