A growing number of OECD countries are leaning toward adopting quality-selective immigration policies. The underlying assumption behind such policies is that more skill-selection should raise immigrants' average quality (or education level). This view tends to neglect two important dynamic...

In response to the recent migrant and refugee crisis, rich countries have redoubled policy efforts to deter future immigration from poor countries by addressing the "root causes" of migration. We review existing evidence on the effectiveness of such efforts. First, aid disbursements do not...

This paper investigates through which channels foreign aid impacts migration to donor countries. To disentangle the non-donor-specific channels (development and credit constraint channels) from the donor-specific channels (information and instrumentation channels), we use the fact that...

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...

We examine two impacts of international emigration on the evolution of the institutions in the origin countries. The first impact concerns the influence of emigration per se (i.e. people who left the country can voice more or less from abroad). The second impact relates to the transfer of the...

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...

Ability drain's (AD) impact seems economically significant, with 30% of US Nobel laureates since 1906 being immigrants, and immigrants or their children founding 40% of Fortune 500 companies. Nonetheless, while brain drain (BD) and gain (BG) have been studied extensively, AD has not. I examine...

This contribution investigates the opportunities of migration for developing countries. The benefits of migration for sending countries are often undervalued. But migrants may foster trade, remittances, innovations, investments back home, and even return home at some time with better human...

We consider how the possibility of international migration affects an individual’s educational choices in their home country. Without the opportunity to emigrate abroad people choose their educational investment (and hence their skill level) as we might expect, taking into account the utility...

We examine a little-known restriction on high-skill immigration to the United States, the Exchange Visitor Skills List. This List mandates that to become eligible for long-term status in the U.S., certain high-skill visitors must reside in their home countries for two years after participation...