An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives' wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in...

In the early 1970s, E.F. Schumacher criticised western industrial countries in the face of emerging globalisation by using a term generated by Leopold Kohr: "Small is beautiful." Seen against the progressing enlargement of the EU we need to ask whether and to what extent small is still...