This paper makes two contributions to the literature on the determinants of international migration flows. First, we compile a new dataset on annual bilateral migration flows covering 15 OECD destination countries and 120 sending countries for the period 1980-2006. We also collect data on...

Over the years, there emerged two key policy differences between Europe and America, both welfare and migration-states. The former has more generous welfare state and more liberal migration policies than the latter. In this paper we attempt to provide a political-economy explanation for these...

In 2004, the European Union admitted 10 new countries, and wages in these countries were generally well below the levels in the existing member countries. Citizens of these newly-admitted countries were subsequently free to take jobs anywhere in the EU, and many did so. In 2015, a large number...

This paper discusses a possible solution to the double problem that faces European governments in dealing with the future of Social Security pensions. Like other governments around the world, they must deal with the rising cost of pensions that will result from the increasing life expectancy of...

Natives benefit from immigration mainly because of production complementarities between immigrant workers and other factors of production, and these benefits are larger when immigrants are sufficiently `different' from the stock of native productive inputs. The available evidence suggests that...

During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), the US maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work on this era finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but experienced rapid convergence over time. In...

Can history shed light on the modern debate about immigration%u2019s labor market impact in high wage economies? This paper examines the relationship between migration and capital flows in the age of mass migration before 1914, the so-called first global century. It then assesses the effects of...

In this paper we analyze the economic effects of different immigration policies using a model that incorporates economic and policy features crucial to understanding the migrant flows into the US. We differentiate among the most relevant channels of immigration to the US: family-based,...

Whether immigrants advance in labor markets relative to natives is a fundamental question in immigration economics. It is difficult to answer this question for the Age of Mass Migration, when US immigration was at its peak. New datasets of linked census records show that immigrants experienced...

We examine illegal immigration in the United States from Mexico over the period 1976-1995. One challenge is that we do not observe the number of individuals that attempt to enter the United States illegally; we only observe the number of individuals apprehended attempting to cross the...