A guest-worker program can be a very flexible and convenient way of meeting labor shortages in a host country, assuming that the migrants obey the rules. This paper investigates the conditions under which guest workers have sufficient incentives for voluntary return to their country of origin...

The majority of immigrants stay only temporarily in the host country. When many migrations are temporary, it is important to know who leaves and who stays, and why. The key questions for the host country are whether immigrants are net contributors to the welfare system and whether migrants...

Countries with strict immigration policies often resort to deportation measures to reduce their stocks of illegal immigrants. Many of their undocumented foreign workers, however, are not deported but rather choose to return home voluntarily. This paper studies the optimizing behavior of...

In the popular immigration narrative, migrants leave one country and establish themselves permanently in another, creating a "brain drain" in the sending country. In reality, migration is typically temporary: Workers migrate, find employment, and then return home or move on, often multiple...

This paper examines the impact of unemployment on out-migration by distinguishing between return and onward migration and controlling for total earnings. We use Timing-of-Events models and control for the endogeneity of total earnings, unemployment and out-migration using administrative data...