infonet-economy

We study the interaction between the optimal immigration policy of a host country and education policy of a source country in a model of international migration of skilled workers. Acquisition of human capital is driven by the academic and career opportunities at home and abroad. Greater opportunities to migrate are found to increase the source country's net stock of human…

This paper develops a model with sequential production stages and international trade frictions that permits an analysis of how decreases in trade costs shape the interdependence between countries, with special focus on the joining and industrialization pattern of developing countries into the global value chains (GVCs). I show that in a two-country setting, a decrease in trade costs…

Guest-worker programs have been providing rapidly growing economies with millions of temporary foreign workers over the last couple of decades. With the duration of stay strictly limited by program rules in most of the host countries and wages paid to guest workers often set at sub-market levels, many of the migrants choose to overstay and seek employment in the underground economy.…

This paper shows that debt crises do not always have a fiscal nature and suggests that fiscal retrenchment may not be the optimal response to a crisis that did not originate from irresponsible fiscal policies. The paper starts by discussing the origin of debt crises and the unexplained part of public debt and for avoiding debt explosions linked to financial crises or poor debt…

Understanding the institutional features that can improve learning outcomes and reduce inequality is a top priority for international and development organizations around the world. Economists appear to have a good case for support to non-governmental alternatives as suppliers of schooling. However, unlike other policy domains, freer international trade or privatization, economists…

It is well established that private information is critical to our understanding of asset prices. In this paper we argue that it also affects international capital flows and use a simple two-country DSGE model to illustrate its impact. We show that private information (i) increases the volatility of both net and gross capital flows, (ii) leads to a high correlation between capital…

We examine the case of payback killings and similar retributive sanctions in the context of a transplant regime such as that existing in Papua New Guinea. This is a post-colonial regime with multiple overlaid legal systems, with significant negative interaction existing between the different regimes. We explain how multiple regimes can co-exist in the context of negative…

Modern agriculture relies on a small number of highly productive crops and the continued expansion of agricultural land area has led to a significant loss of biodiversity. In this paper we consider the macroeconomic consequences of a continued expansion of modern agriculture from the perspective of agricultural productivity and food production: as the genetic material supporting…