This paper examines how immigrants’ optimal migration duration in the host country responds to the purchasing power parity (ppp) and relative wages between the host and source countries. A theoretical model of joint migration duration and saving decisions reveals that the optimal migration...

Migration is often viewed as an investment decision. Temporary migrants can be expected to invest less in accumulating human capital specific to the host country. Instead, they work more hours in order to accumulate savings and invest in financial capital that can be transferred back to their...

We evaluate the individual employment effects of four types of short-term training for immigrants and natives in the German welfare system and identify differences in the effects determined by unobservable factors. Based on comprehensive and unique administrative data, we apply propensity score...

Very little is understood about how immigrants affect the happiness, or subjective well-being of natives. We use the European Social Survey to analyze the effects of aggregate immigration flows on the subjective well-being of native-born populations in a panel of 26 countries between 2002 and...

By examining the preferences over migration destinations of those revealing a desire to permanently leave their country, this paper provides new evidence on the relevance of subjective measures for cross country comparisons. While hard statistics such as GDP per capita and unemployment rates are...

We present a basic theoretical framework of ethnic identity, i.e., the level of immigrant's commitment to his or her host society as well as the immigrant's commitment to his or her home society. Our model can explain the emerging empirical literature which studies the effect of the immigrants'...

Motivations for migrants to return clearly change with integration, but the time-changing aspect of return migration has received little attention in the literature. This paper studies how migrants' preferences for the home country change with intermarriage, i.e., marriage to a spouse from the...

This paper investigates whether immigrants adapt to the attitudes of the majority population in the host country by focusing on the effect of ethnic persistence and assimilation on individual risk proclivity. Employing information from a unique representative German survey, we find that...

Spouse's relative labor supply and the degree of specialization in intermarriage might differ from that in immigrant and native marriage for several reasons. Intermarried couples may specialize less due to smaller comparative advantages resulting from positive assortative mating by education,...