Large numbers of doctors, engineers, and other skilled workers from developing counties choose to move to other countries. Do their choices threaten development? The answer appears so obvious that their movement is most commonly known by the pejorative term “brain drain”. This paper...

Conditional Cash Transfers are increasingly used by development aid agencies to reduce the incentives for migration from low-income countries. The evidence to date suggests that such transfers typically increase the rate of migration when they are conditional on investment, such as investment in...

Very few labor-based pathways for regular migration are available for people in Northern Central America, often called the 'Northern Triangle' of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This note briefly summarizes the state of labor-based migration channels in the region. It then argues that...

The past several decades have witnessed a rebirth of global labor mobility. Workers have begun to move between countries at rates not seen since before World War One. During the same period, economists' study of international migration has been framed by a particular textbook model of location...

Labor markets in developing countries are subject to a high degree of frictions. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which students learned how to use simple mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class. Overall,...

The most basic economic theory suggests that rising incomes in developing countries will deter emigration from those countries, an idea that captivates policymakers in international aid and trade diplomacy. A lengthy literature and recent data suggest something quite different: that over the...

This paper critiques the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research. The study singles out a core assumption underlying much of the recent literature, calling it the Lump of Learning model of...

Immigration officials in rich countries are being asked to become overseas development officials, charged with preventing skilled workers from leaving poor countries, where their skills are needed. Some advocates urge restrictions or taxes on the emigration of doctors and engineers from...

Theory suggests that groups historically subject to discrimination, such as Jews, could exhibit traditionally high investment in education because discrimination spurred exit facilitated by human capital. Theory moreover suggests that if exit is uncertain, it could induce investment in skill...

We report a small-sample, preliminary evaluation of the economic impact of temporary overseas work by Haitian agricultural workers. This work occurs in the USA in the context of a pilot program designed as a form of post-disaster development assistance to Haiti. We find that the effects of...