Why is unemployment higher in some countries than others? Why does it fluctuate between decades? Why are some people at greater risk than others? Layard and Nickell have worked on these issues for thirty years. Their famous model, first published in 1986, is now used throughout the world. It...

This paper focuses on the determinants of self-employment among rural to urban migrants in China. Two self-selection mechanisms are analysed: the first relates to the manner in which migrants choose self-employment or paid work based on the potential gains from either type of employment; the...

The Orange Revolution unveiled significant political and economic tensions between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in Ukraine. Whether this divide was caused by purely ethnic differences or by ethnically segregated reform preferences is unknown. Analysis using unique micro data collected prior to...

While global migration is increasing, internal EU migration flows have remained low. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the determinants and scale of European migration. It surveys previous historical experiences and empirical findings including the recent Eastern enlargements....

The economic literature has largely overlooked the importance of repeat migration. This Paper studies repeat or circular migration as it is manifested by the frequency of exits of migrants living in Germany, and by the number of years away from the host country using count data models. More than...

Standard economic reasoning based on competitive labour markets suggests that migrant inflow will unambiguously lead to allocative gains for the native population of a host country. Even abstracting from the costs of integration, however, this result is not robust when important labour market...

The non-stationarity of many macroeconomic time series has lead to an increased demand for economic models that are able to generate fragile equilibria. For instance, in this literature the natural unemployment rate is allowed to shift over time depending on past unemployment. Actually, many...

The paper investigates the role of human capital for migrants' ethnic ties towards their home and host countries. Pre-migration characteristics dominate ethnic self-identification. Human capital acquired in the host country does not affect the attachment to the receiving country.

While the literature has established that there is substantial and highly selective return migration, the growing importance of repeat migration has been largely ignored. Using Markov chain analysis, this Paper provides a modelling framework for repeated moves of migrants between the host and...

As exemplified in the 1995 Mediterranean Declaration of the European Union, migration has become a major concern for European development policies. By enhancing socio-economic conditions through development cooperation, a reduction of South-North migration flows is envisaged. This new approach...