We use databases we have created from the records of New York's Emigrant Savings Bank, founded by pre-Famine Irish immigrants and their children to serve Famine era immigrants, to study the social mobility of bank customers and, by extension, Irish immigrants more generally. We infer that New...

Educational reforms aim to improve education quality and accessibility, creating positive externalities like individual growth and societal benefits. Although the global educational attainment has progressed, disparities still exist. This study applies the four-cell matrix developed by Münich...

The international labour market has not been ?globalised? to the same degree over the last 40 years as have international markets for goods and capital. Immigration policies in developed economies clearly hinder the mobility of labour. But how much difference does it actually make? This paper...

In The Darwin Economy a distinguished behavioral economist, Robert Frank, promises to put Adam Smith's “invisible hand narrative” into “context”. Neglecting history, empirical evidence, original sources, and a voluminous secondary literature, he fails to deliver. Frank predicts that one...

Africa's recent economic performance has been quite impressive. However, strong economic growth has not always corresponded to sufficient poverty reduction, partly because it has failed to generate productive employment. This paper compares the experiences of two fast growing African countries...

In this essay, I argue that the preeminence of Silicon Valley as an incubator of technology companies is attributable to equity compensation. Ronald Gilson, relying on the work of AnnaLee Saxenian and others who have noted the tendency of Silicon Valley employees to job hop, has suggested that...

We use databases we have created from the records of New York's Emigrant Savings Bank, founded by pre-Famine Irish immigrants and their children to serve Famine era immigrants, to study the social mobility of bank customers and, by extension, Irish immigrants more generally. We infer that New...

This chapter in this book addressing inequality identifies elements of the U.S. income tax laws that contribute to that inequality. While the language of the tax laws is neutral and applies identical rules to all, the distribution of tax burdens among the members of the U.S. populace may not...

With emphasis on the US, this chapter explores the role that taxation plays in the movement of people and capital. The chapter addresses the relationship between taxes and retention of capital, including tax incentives for capital investment, shifting tax burdens from capital to labor as...

The international labour market has not been "globalised" to the same degree over the last 40 years as have international markets for goods and capital. Immigration policies in developed economies clearly hinder the mobility of labour. But how much difference does it actually make? This paper...