This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

Low-skilled workers do not fare well in today’s skill intensive economy and their opportunitiescontinue to diminish. Given that individuals in this challenging skill segment of the workforceare more likely to have poor experiences in the labor market, and hence incur greater publicexpenses, it...

Few researchers have examined the nature and determinants of earnings differentials amongreligious groups, and none has been undertaken in the context of conflict-prone multireligioussocieties like the one in India. We address this lacuna in the literature by examiningthe differences in the...

This study develops and estimates a model of the naturalization process in the US. The model is based on both the characteristics of immigrants and features of their countries of origin. The empirical analysis is based on the 2000 US Census...

A century ago, Thorstein Veblen introduced socially contingent con-sumption into the economic literature. This paper complements the scarceempirical literature by testing his conjecture on South African householddata and nds that Black and Coloured households spend relatively moreon visible...

We use Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian LFS data (2002-2007) complemented with severalother surveys to compare the profile of Baltic temporary workers abroad before and after EUaccession with that of stayers and return migrants. Determinants of migration and return, aswell as selection issues...

We exploit a universe dataset of state school students in England with linkedtest score records to document the evolution of attainment through school fordifferent ethnic groups. The analysis yields a number of striking findings. First,we show that, controlling for personal characteristics, all...

We document ethnic segregation in secondary schools in England in 2001 inorder to contribute to the debate on the degree of ethnic group social integration.We use indices of dissimilarity and isolation to compare the patterns ofsegregation across nine ethnic groups. We find that levels of ethnic...

This paper analyses the economic disadvantage experienced by disabled personsof working-age using data from the British Household Panel Survey. We arguethat there are three sources of disadvantage among disabled persons: preexistingdisadvantage among those who become disabled (a ‘selection’...

This paper investigates the overlap between work and labour market status andidentifies those groups at risks of poverty and social exclusion in the labourmarket. A particular attention is devoted to the working poor and precariousworkers. This analysis is undertaken using the Kyrgyz Poverty...