This paper analyzes the role of ethnic communities in shaping the recent immigration boom to Spain. We find that ethnic communities exerted a strong positive effect on the scale and a strong negative effect on the skill structure of this immigration. Unlike previous studies, we explicitly...

A migration network is modeled as a mutually beneficial cooperative agreement between financially-constrained individuals who seek to finance and expedite their migration. The cooperation agreement creates a network: established migrants contract to support the subsequent migration of others in...

In Germany, immigrant unemployment is not only higher than native unemployment; italso reacts more to changes in the situation on the labor market. Decomposing the gapbetween native and immigrant unemployment into a baseline and a labor-marketsituation component, I find that the unemployment...

Seasonal migration is an ever more important phenomenon worldwide, but has received little attention in empirical research. This paper investigates the choice of seasonal versus longer-term migration on a household level. We use data from Moldova, a country that is witnessing a massive...

This dissertation takes a welfare perspective to analyze how rural households in developing countries manage risks ex-ante and cope with shocks ex-post. The first part looks at risk-coping strategies and analyzes the socio-economic consequences of AIDS-related mortality in rural sub-Saharan...

This paper uses an untapped dataset on Swiss immigration and a novel instrumental variable to test three channels through which migrants promote trade. The main finding is that migrant networks are an effective substitute for formal institutions in facilitating trade. The effect takes place...

The most commonly used model of labor market incorporation among immigrants in the United States analyzes their earnings largely as a function of human capital variables such as education, language competence, age, length of residence and employment experience in the receiving country. However,...

We introduce the idea that informational cascades can explain the observed regularity that emigrants from the same locations also tend to choose the same foreign locations. Thus informational cascades generate herd behavior. Herd behavior is compared with the network externalities explanation of...

Gender-specific determinants of remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In 2007, about 7.3 million foreigners were living in Germany. While the total number of foreigners has decreased over the last decade, female migration to Germany has increased....