An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives' wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in...

The global economy has been buffeted by several unprecedented economic events during the past 35 years. We survey the impact of these events on Israel's development, institutions, and economic policies. Israel had a remarkable development during this time, from a low income high-inflation...

We review research on the impact of immigration on income distribution. We discuss routes through which immigration can affect income distribution in the host and source countries, including compositional effects and effects on native incomes. Immigration may affect the composition of skills...

The exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s was a unique event. The immigration wave was distinctive for its large high skilled cohort, and its quick integration into the domestic labor market. Immigration also changed the entire economic landscape: it raised productivity, underpinned by...

This paper uses the mass migration wave to Israel in the 1990s to examine the impact of immigrant concentration in elementary school on the long-term academic outcomes of native students in high school. To identify the causal effect of immigrant children on their peers, we exploit random...

This paper reviews six English-language books on the economy of Israel. Each book was written or edited by Israelis, and each is from a different decade. The earliest book, Don Patinkin%u2019s The Israel Economy: The First Decade, was written in the late 1950s, and the most recent volume, The...

We use a unique sample of Russian immigrants and natives in Israel to examine the return to English knowledge. In cross-section estimates there is a significant return to English knowledge for both immigrants and natives with high levels of education. Language acquisition is an important element...

Motivated by the unique experience of Israel of a supply-side shock of skilled migration, and the concurrent rise in disposable income inequality, this paper develops a model which can explain the mechanism through which a supply-side shock of skilled migration can reshape the political-economy...

The exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s was a unique event. The extraordinary experience of Israel, which has received migrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) at the rate of 17 percent of its population, within a short time, is also relevant for the current debate about migration...

In the early 1990s Israel experienced a large and concentrated surge of immigration from the former Soviet Union. Most Russian immigrants had high education levels relative to the average Israeli. Despite the size and skill mix of the immigration shock, existing research has found little...