opening the black box of agglomeration economies for measuring cities competitiveness through international firm networks the ability of cities to operate in global networks is usually measured according to their central position within multinational firm linkages these measures are often used at the interurban level and neglect the intraurban processes of multiplier effects the present study demonstrates that this affects the measurement of city centrality in business networks intraurban capabilities of interaction are considered in the measurement of interurban indices the study is based on hypothetical networks at a micro level between long range links and it mobilises processes as agglomeration economies social capital developments and transaction costs these processes at the intraurban level strengthen the efficiency of interurban linkages it is suggested that the indices used to measure city centrality should include these local effects applied to a small sample of six firm networks the methodology shows advantages for emerging large metropolises but insufficient local effects for specialised clusters the mu

the welfare effects of illegal immigration abstract this paper extends the work of ethier on illegal immigration by examining the optimal level of enforcement for the labor importing country in a two country model and by considering the effects of allowing capital mobility we derive a formula for the optimal level of enforcement against firms that hire illegal workers and show that the presence of enforcement costs makes the policy less efficient than a wage tax with capital mobility foreign workers gain from an increase in enforcement in the home country because capital is driven out of the home country

optimal immigration education and growth in the long run abstract the paper extends manning s model on education and balanced growth to include labour immigration each immigration unit is assumed to consist of one skilled worker and some unskilled members the optimal immigration policy which maximizes the per capita steady state consumption of the host country is derived we show that optimal immigration policy can reduce the steady state skilled labour ratio more interesting still contrary to the widespread belief that immigration of skilled workers hurts local skilled workers it is the unskilled local workers whose interests are threatened by optimal immigration policy

a general equilibrium model of guest worker migration the source country perspective abstract this paper examines the problem of guest worker migration from an economy populated by identical utility maximizing individuals with finite working lives the decision to migrate the rate of saving while abroad as well as the length of a migrant s stay in the foreign country are all viewed as part of a solution to an intertemporal optimization problem in addition to studying the microeconomic aspects of temporary migration the paper analyses the determinants of the equilibrium flow of migrants the corresponding domestic wage and the level of welfare enjoyed by a typical worker effects of an emigration tax are also investigated

skills and the pattern of migration the role of qualitative and quantitative restrictions on international labor mobility this paper develops a two country model of international migration in an attempt to study the role of both qualitative and quantitative restrictions on international labor mobility individuals are distinguished in terms of their ability and age enabling the model to examine factors which influence the age and skill profile of those who migrate as well as the equilibrium flow of migrants and the pattern of factor rewards in the two economies effects of changes in certain parameters of the model are related to the nature of the immigration policy enforced by the host country the role of emigration restrictions is also considered excerpt

social mobility what is it and why does it matter the definition of social mobility is a matter of debate in the following discussion conceptual issues in the literature on mobility are commented this paper defines social mobility as a situation in which the relative economic status of an agent is not dependent on starting conditions such as parental income or family background analyzing the determinants of mobility involves exploring the channels through which offspring s income is correlated to its parents such as inherited bequest education skills among many others this survey explores in an analytical framework the relation between social mobility and inequality among other important dimensions of income distribution that are jointly determined the focus is on the relevance of social mobility as it affects variables determining welfare and economic efficiency and therefore on policies to promote it

opportunity and social mobility the fact that the children of rich parents have better economic prospects than the children of poor parents unequal opportunity is generally thought to be one of the weak points of modem capitalist societies the ability of the descendants of poor families to eventually become rich and the descendants of rich families to eventually become poor social mobility is commonly considered to be one of the strong points of these societies here i argue that both of these characteristics are in fact necessary implications of an efficient societal arrangement when incentives to work hard must be provided i argue this point using a generational version of the model of phelan and townsend 1991 an infinitely repeated general equilibrium economy with incentive constraints in my model each household s stochastic output is a function of its level of effort since effort is assumed to be costly and privately observed households can shirk higher than minimal effort levels must be induced by making a household s present or future consumption dependent on the household s observed output history a large literature considers models similar to this including green 1987 atkeson and lucas 1992 phelan 1994 1995 wang 1995 hopenhayn and nicolini 1997 khan and ravikumar 2002 the main difference between the economies in that literature and here is that here instead of a household consisting of a single infinitely lived individual a household consists of a sequence of altruistically linked individuals a familial dynasty each of whom lives for one period this difference affects the appropriate societal ranking of allocations when households consist of a single infinitely lived individual allocations can be ranked according to their implied distributions of ex ante lifetime utilities if one allocation delivers a distribution of ex ante utilities dominated by another allocation then the first allocation is inefficient however if a household consists of a sequence of altruistically linked individuals then the appropriate ranking of allocations is no longer obvious how those in the first generation rank allocations will in general differ from how their descendants rank allocations this paper addresses this conflict between generations by ranking allocations according to a rawlsian veil of ignorance criterion rawls 1971 that is here society seeks to maximize the expected dynastic utility utility including altruism toward descendants of an individual who does not know into which generation he will be born and the identity or output levels of his ancestors 1 i argue that this corresponds to a societal ranking which does

return migration human capital accumulation and the brain drain in this paper we present a model that explains migrations as decisions that respond to where human capital can be acquired more efficiently and where the return to human capital is highest the basic framework is a dynamic roy model in which a worker possesses two distinct skills that can be augmented by learning by doing there are different implicit price in different countries and different rates of skill accumulation our analysis contributes to the literature on the selection of immigrants and return migrants by offering a richer framework that may help to accommodate selections of emigrants and return migrants that are not immediately compatible with the one dimensional skill model our analysis has also implications for the debate on brain drain and brain gain in the two skills model presented here return migration can lead to a mitigation of the brain drain or even the creation of a brain gain where those who return bring the home country augmented local skills

the economic effects of immigration a dynamic analysis abstract this paper examines the economic effects of immigration using a neo classical growth model with overlapping dynasties we demonstrate that in contrast to the predictions of the static models often used in the analysis of immigration in a dynamic model with endogenous capital accumulation shifts in factor prices that result from changes in immigration policy will be very modest consequently benefits to natives from immigration are much smaller than previous studies have found and smaller still if labor supply is elastic on the other hand the adverse effects on wages are much smaller as well implying that in a model with only two inputs immigration plays a much smaller role in redistribution from labor to capital than previously thought

illegal aliens unemployment and immigration policy abstract this paper develops a simple two country model of illegal immigration in an attempt to examine the interaction among variables such as the stock of migrant labor the unemployment rates of the two economies and the rate of spending by the host country on the enforcement of its immigration restrictions the focus of the analysis is on the dynamics of immigration policy and on its role in determining the nature of the mechanism by which disturbances to the labor market of one country are transmitted to that of the other in the short run and in the long run

eating the rich vs feeding the poor borrowing constraints and the reluctance to redistribute this paper offers an explanation why most democracies arecharacterized by moderate taxation of wealth although thewealth distribution is persistently skewed to the right wemodel an economy in which agents have to acquire highereducation to qualify for skilled work and in which capitalmarket imperfections prevent poor individuals from making sucha profitable human capital investment if these borrowingconstraints do not bind for members of the middle class theymay rationally reject redistribution although both the currentand the future median of the wealth distribution are below themean

a model of the skill composition of us immigration a human capital model is specified to explain the skill composition of us immigration a unique set of panel data 57 source countries and 15 annual observations and a methodology not previously used to study a demographic phenomenon are employed to estimate the model coefficients on time invariant variables are recovered by means of the hausman taylor instrumental variable procedure which yields considerably different results than the generalized least squares model

the economics of the to and fro migrant some welfare theoretical considerations the effects of international to and fro migration on the economic welfare of the migrants and the nonmigrants in the host and home countries are examined a to and fro migrant is defined as a worker who changes residence from origin to destination without any systematic tendency to remain in any of the two permanently the study is based on the theoretical framework developed by krauss the results indicate that to and fro emigration from a source country to a recipient country increases the economic welfare of the migrants and the nonmigrants residing in the host country but it tends to decrease the welfare of the nonmigrants residing in the source country in general the migration also tends to be pareto optimal from a world point of view excerpt

efficient migration and redistribution abstract it has often been noted that the brain drain may be abetted by highly progressive tax systems in the regions which are likely sources for emigration by those with the most income earning potential this paper presents the case in favour of such policies the underlying assumption here is that there are productivity differences between regions and that emigration of the most skilled workers from less productive regions increases the overall value of national output the problem lies in sharing these gains with the less skilled workers left behind in the low productivity region if national governments can transfer income among regions but if the transfers cannot be targeted to particular individuals then there is a trade off between equity and efficiency generous transfers redistribute the gains but tend to impede efficient migration since prospective migrants will only emigrate if their earnings net of all fiscal transfers and net of migration costs are higher in the destination region greater tax progressivity in the source region helps relax a constraint and make the trade off less difficult

migration of skilled workers policy interaction between host and source countries abstract we examine the interaction between policies of the host and source countries in the context of a model of skilled worker migration the host country aims to provide low cost labor for its employers while also taking into consideration the fiscal burden of providing social services to immigrants it optimizes by setting a time limit on the duration of a guest worker s permit the source country maximizes its net output by optimally choosing the amount of training provided to its citizens some of whom may migrate we solve for the nash and cooperative equilibrium values of the policy instruments

an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration mcdowell j m and singell l d jr 1993 an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration reg studies 27 351 363 numerous studies have examined the flow of international migrants generally these studies measure the extent or magnitude of international migration by use of a simple numerical count this paper extends this analysis by providing a methodology for adding an economic dimension to the measure of the magnitude of international migration an earnings equation approach is used to attach an economic value to immigration applying our methodology to us immigration we find considerable variation across source regions in the value of immigrants moreover we find that simply comparing initial earnings without controlling for differences in the characteristics and migration patterns of immigrants from the various source regions can misrepresent the relative earnings potential or value of migrants mcdowell j m et singell l d jr 1993 un

international trade and labor migration a theory of the relationship between international trade and labor mobility is developed that takes into account five characteristics of such migration including its temporary nature differences between migrant and native labor the acceptance of unpredictable conditions of employment by migrant labor the ready availability of further labor resources and international capital mobility particular attention is paid to the role of international labor migration in helping to insulate native populations from the rigors of industrial fluctuations and in helping to preserve import competing industries that would have succumbed without the availability of cheap imported labor

an economic model of the brain drain asymmetric information in the labor market is discussed as a major cause of the exodus of foreign trained students from developing countries the authors suggest that employers in the country in which the students have been trained have a more accurate judgment of the true productivity of students than have employers in the students native country an illustrative numerical model is developed and its implications are analyzed annotation

tax policy in the presence of emigration recent policy and theoretical discussions of the effects of highly skilled migration from the underdeveloped countries the so called brain drain have focused on a proposal bhagwati 1972 to levy a supplementary income tax on those who migrate the proceeds of such a tax to be transmitted to the developing country of origin or to developing countries en bloc for developmental spending the welfare implications of such a tax were analyzed in an earlier paper of ours bhagwati and hamada 1974 in the context of a model of the country of emigration characterized by sticky wages and harrisstodaro 1971 type of unemployment in subsequent papers the tax has been analyzed also in the context of modified models still incorporating the unemployment phenomena by rodriguez 1975 and mcculloch yellen 1975 2 essentially these models analyze the impact of the income tax on emigrants incomes as arising primarily through the reduced differential