That remittances are a stable source of external finance seems to have become the received wisdom. In addition, many studies have found remittances to behave counter-cyclically, increasing during crises and times of hardship for the recipient countries. Are remittances reliable macroeconomic...

Before 1973, the labor market in Europe was tight and immigration from the South (chiefly North Africa and Southern Europe) was encouraged. But with the slowdown in growth in the mid-1970s, the rise in unemployment, and increased economic uncertainty, immigration came to be viewed as a burden by...

Policymakers typically assume that trade liberalization and foreign aid ultimately reduce international migration - that is, that trade and aid are substitutes for migration. In the Heckscher-Ohlin framework, too, trade liberalization (by reducing international price differentials between...

In the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model, trade and migration are substitutes (that is, migration decreases with trade liberalization). The authors add four factors to the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model: labor skill levels (skilled or unskilled), international labor mobility, migration costs, and...

Despite the predictions of standard trade theory, countries in the North are not indifferent about free migration and free trade. Migration has become a major concern in some OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. But is migration really a threat? If free trade...

Labor market integration is typically assumed to improve welfare in the absence of distortions, because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. The author examines this result in a simple general equilibrium model in the presence of a common property resource: social capital....

The author considers the policy options of the West Bank and Gaza with respect to trade and the export of labor services. He concludes that: 1) Nondiscriminatory trade policy is unambiguously superior to a free trade agreement with Israel; 2) The West Bank and Gaza should pursue a...

India's government procures agricultural products such as rice, wheat, and sugar at below-market prices and sells them in both urban and rural ration shops. The rest of such crops is sold in the open market. This creates a two-tier price system for consumers and producers. Many (including...

Regional integration agreements (RIAs) are examples of second best and have an ambiguous impact on welfare, contend the authors. They build a model in which RIAs unambiguously raise welfare by correcting for externalities. It assumes that trade between neighboring countries increases trust...

Knowledge accumulation means either new knowledge (an increase in its quality), greater access to existing knowledge (an increase in its quantity), or both. The authors examine the relative contribution of these two components of knowledge to total factor productivity (TFP) for North-North and...