Quite often, migrants appear to exert little effort to absorb the mainstream culture and to learn the language of their host society, even though the economic returns (increased productivity and enhanced earnings) to assimilation are high. We show that when interpersonal comparisons affect...

Extending both the "harmful brain drain" literature and the "beneficial brain gain" literature, this paper analyzes both the negative and the positive impact of migration by skilled individuals in a unified framework. The paper extends the received literature on the "harmful brain drain" by...

Drawing on the literature of occupational status and social distance, a theory is developed of labor migration that is prompted by a desire to avoid “social humiliation.” A closed-economy general equilibrium model that incorporates occupational status and examines the interaction between the...

A framework that yields different possible patterns of migration as optimal solutions to a simple utility maximization problem is presented and explored. It is shown that seasonal migration arises as an optimal endogenous response to a comparison of costs (of living and of separation) and...

This paper synthesizes and extends recent research on "The New Economics of the Brain Drain." In a unified framework, the paper shows that while recently identified adverse repercussions of the brain drain exacerbate the long-recognized negative impacts of the brain drain, longer-term...

A new general-equilibrium model that links together rural-to-urban migration, the externality effect of the average level of human capital, and agglomeration economies shows that in developing countries, unrestricted rural-to-urban migration reduces the average income of both rural and urban...

This paper provides a novel explanation of "educated unemployment," which is a salient feature of the labor markets in a number of developing countries. In a simple job-search framework we show that "educated unemployment" is caused by the perspective of international migration, that is, by the...

This paper develops a model of voluntary migration into degrading work. The essence of the model is a tension between two “bads:” that which arises from being relatively deprived at home, and that which arises from engaging in humiliating work away from home. Balancing between these two...

An increase in the probability of work abroad, where the returns to schooling are higher than at home, induces more individuals in a developing country to acquire education, which leads to an increase in the supply of educated workers in the domestic labor market. Where there is a sticky...