Influential empirical work by Rauch and Trindade (REStat, 2002) finds that Chinese ethnic networks of the magnitude observed in Southeast Asia increase bilateral trade by at least 60%. We argue that this estimate is upward biased due to omitted variable bias. Moreover, it is partly related to a...

This paper addresses the question whether the substantial financial flows received by emigration countries in the four decades running up to World War I contributed to domestic financial development in peripheral Europe. We quantify a sizable and significant relation between remittances and...

This paper investigates the contribution of immigration to income and productivity of host countries. Using a dataset constructed from census data and labor force surveys for 20 OECD countries in the period from 1960 to 2005, we explore the information on age and educational attainment of...

We assess whether international remittances affect Colombian household’s expenditure composition and demand of education. We exploit the migratory wave and institutional barriers to migration that occurred during the late 1990s, identifying the effect of remittances on expenditure composition....

This paper employs a systems GMM model using data on 43 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1960 to 2005 to find that natural disasters have a sig-nificant impact on migration from SSA, raising the net out-migration by around 0.37 persons per 1,000. No direct evidence was found that natural...

This working paper examines how U.S. migration management techniques affect the flow of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Mexican migrants’ degree of socio-economic reorientation. The findings support the hypothesis that stricter U.S. border enforcement increases migrants’ detachment...

Two of the most salient trends surrounding the issue of migration and development over the past two decades are the large rise in remittances, and an increased flow of skilled migration. However, recent literature based on cross-country regressions has claimed that more educated migrants remit...

The objective of this paper is to determine whether the participation in social organizations, which are commonly defined as a form of social capital, represents a complement or a substitute with respect to emigration. The nature of the relationship depends on the motivations behind the two...

Migration, both within and beyond borders, has become an increasingly prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily unequal, and that this...

This is a survey of some of the key studies in the literature on international migration in history that may be described as cliometric. This literature uses the concepts and approaches of applied economics to investigate a range of historical issues and there are strong parallels with the...