This paper investigates the role of family ties for international return migration decisions. The presence of children in the household affects return propensities of couples in different ways. Results suggest that schooling considerations as well as factors related to cultural identity play a...

In the process of European integration, regions close to a border are especially affected by labour market liberalisation. Using data from the IAB employment subsample (IABS) and the employment register (BeH) for the period before and after the opening of the border (1980-2001) I shed light on...

Spain has become a country of immigration very fast and in an unusual way. At the beginning of the year 2000, foreigners represented barely 2% of the total population, a figure which rose to 12% and exceeded 5.7 million in 2012. Considering its population size, Spain was the country which...

We analyze the impact of obtaining a residence permit on foreign workers' labor market and residential attachment. To overcome the usually severe selection issues, we exploit a unique migration lottery that randomly assigns access to residence permits for workers with an employment contract in...

This paper analyses the impact of refugee movements on emergency and development aid allocation decisions of bilateral donors in a political economic framework. We investigate two alternative hypotheses about donor motivations: first, an altruistic burden-sharing policy towards recipient...

Human trafficking is a humanitarian problem of global scale, but quantitative research on the issue barely exists. This paper is a first attempt to explore the economic drivers of human trafficking and migrant exploitation using micro data. We argue that migration pressure combined with informal...

Optimal integration policies should take the language skills of arriving migrants into account. However, little is known about the determinants of these skills, because most survey-based studies cannot distinguish between language learning before and after migration. We present a new dataset...

Immigration is a major challenge and opportunity for rich Western countries. Integration of immigrants is a two-way process, the success of which depends both on immigrants and on natives. We provide new evidence on the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration, using data from...

This paper uses Danish full population register data from 1995 to 2001 to analyze self-selection of migrants from Denmark. We find that Danish emigrants are more educated and have higher pre-emigration earnings than non-migrants. The earnings of emigrants are not higher only on average, but the...

We investigate international migration choices of high-skilled individuals and measure migrant selection using predicted earnings. High-skilled migrants select to destinations as predicted by Borjas' (1987) model of migration choices. Migrants to less equal countries are positively selected,...