We ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare. We find that skill-neutral policies are never optimal. An … countries. For intermediate welfare functions that moderately favor the rich however, it is optimal to have no migration at all …

government commitment. We characterize how decreasing migration costs for skilled workers affect the time-consistent policies of … in migration costs is Pareto improving when migration costs are high, but have ambiguous effects when these costs are low …

States aid business and technology exchanges with their home countries, but the overall effect that the migration has on the … home country remains unclear. We know very little about return migration of workers engaged in innovation and …

flows - such as Jamaica or El Salvador - are also better off due to migration, but for a different reason: remittances. The …This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of observed levels of migration using a quantitative multi-sector model … differences, international trade, remittances, and a heterogeneous workforce. We compare welfare under the observed levels of …

By putting together a relatively large data set on bilateral remittances of emigrants, this paper is able to shed light … on the important hypothesis of smoothing. The smoothing hypothesis is that remittances are countercyclical with respect … affirmation of smoothing is important for two reasons. First, it suggests that remittances should be placed on the list of …

. Furthermore, strong migration effects are shown to significantly improve the likely equity consequences of voucher programs …