This paper tests the hypothesis that international migration experiences may promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability. In order to examine this question, we use a simple postcard voting experiment designed to capture the population’s desire for...

The decision of whether or not to migrate has far-reaching consequences for the lives of individuals and their families. But the very nature of this choice makes identifying the impacts of migration difficult, since it is hard to measure a credible counterfactual of what the person and their...

Does emigration really drain human capital accumulation in origin countries? This paper explores a unique household survey purposely designed and conducted to answer this research question. We analyze the case of Cape Verde, a country with allegedly the highest 'brain drain' in Africa, despite a...

Die Politik in Deutschland setzt u. a. auf Zuwanderung von Hochqualifizierten aus Drittstaaten zur Schließung von Fachkräftelücken. Das Ziel der Studie ist es, geeignete Instrumente für eine derartige selektive Steuerung der Zuwanderung zu identifizieren. Die Studie untersucht die...

We consider a model of international migration where skills of workers are imperfectly observed by firms in the host country and where information asymmetries are more severe for immigrants than for natives. There are two stages. In the first one, workers in the South decide whether to move and...

We study how international migration changes the private transfers made between households in the migrant sending communities of developing countries. A priori, it is indeterminate whether migration and remittances strengthen or weaken the degree of private transfers in these communities. From a...

We analyze the impact of remittances on the labor supply of men and women in post-conflict Tajikistan. Individuals from remittance-receiving households are less likely to participate in the labor market and supply fewer hours when they do. The results are robust to different measures of...

Donations by migrants to community projects in their home countries (“collective remittances”) help to provide local public goods and may promote economic development. We draw on the literatures on migrant remittances and on philanthropy in general to identify possible motives for collective...

Private transfers between households in developing countries have been extensively studied and shown to be economically important as mechanisms of risk sharing and income redistribution. We argue that migration and remittances have the potential to modify the prevalent transfer behaviour in...

We study how migration from a poor to a rich country affects key economic beliefs, preference parameters, and transnational household decision-making efficiency. Our setting is the migration of Tongans to New Zealand through a migration lottery program. In a ten-year follow-up survey of...