Over the past 3 decades, high-skill migrants from Asia—especially India and China—have transformed the US economy, fueling innovation, tech, higher ed, and healthcare growth, from Gaurav Khanna www.nber.org/papers/w34449

CfP🗣️: 7th edition of the Workshop on the Economics and Politics of Migration. 28-29 May 2026, in Rome! Organised by CEPR/King's College/EBRD/Sapienza Keynotes are Paolo Pinotti (Bocconi) and Vicky Fouka (Stanford). Submit your papers: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Deadline 23 Jan. 🤓🔥🍕🍝🍷

New from me: An interactive data visualization showing billionaire migration: paths from birthplace to most recent residence for > 3,100 of the world’s richest individuals. Most importantly, fun to play around with; also, useful for thinking about q's re: elites and comparative wealth ineq. 1/5

BÆM is back! Submit your paper and join us for the 3rd Bristol Applied Economics Meetings. Three workshops with a fantastic lineup of invited speakers: Development Economics, 5-6 May Economics of Migration, 6-7 May Fairness in the Economy, 8 May Calls for papers👇https://www.baem.info/

The economic effects of international students go far beyond their tuition dollars. Many stay, innovate, & shape the productivity of the entire economy. My co-authors & I estimate the impact of US international student exclusion policy in this new paper commissioned by the @nationalacademies.org.

Great news on @malengo.org: With a new large investment from The Shapiro Foundation (theshapirofoundation.org), we'll be able to bring several hundred vocational training and university students from Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda to Europe over the coming years! More here: malengo.org/malengo-secu...

In today's blog, I discuss 3 ways for international migration to be part of a structural transformation policy: 1) as an industry itself; 2) training people abroad in the skills to develop a new industry at home; and 3) through immigration (eg Start-up Chile) blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Very useful summary by @mclem.org of the evidence on skilled migration and the likely impact of Trump's H1B visa fee. www.piie.com/blogs/realti...

Great new blog post by @lgilbert.co about @malengo.org's Uganda–Germany university program! www.laurenpolicy.com/p/what-happe...

📢 New publication out! We introduce the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey — a high-quality, longitudinal household panel on refugee integration in Germany. Combining rich survey data with administrative linkages. 📰 doi.org/10.1093/esr/... @iabnews.bsky.social @bamf.de @diw.de

Free Primary Education is widely seen as a tool to promote long-term growth, but in a new working paper (🚨), @eleonoraguarnieri.bsky.social, Helmut Rainer and I show that the effects are more immediate and wide-reaching, with FPE leading to reduced fertility and greater female empowerment.

✨Did markets make Americans more cooperative❓🔍 ✅YES‼️ Between 1850 and 1920, the US became the largest and most integrated economy in the world 📶🌎 We show that this shift didn’t just move goods and affect prices—it fundamentally changed culture and behavior 🧵 👇 1/17

🆕 Why ‘Brain Drain’ is an incomplete story of migration 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, @catiabatista.bsky.social (@novafrica.bsky.social) & Caroline Theoharides (Amherst College) discuss the channels through which emigration can benefit origin countries: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...

"The human niche began to expand substantially ~70ka, driven by increased use of diverse habitats, from forests to deserts. Humans dispersing out of Africa after 50ka had distinct ecological flexibility as they encountered climatically challenging habitats." New from @elliescerri.bsky.social & co.👇🧪

How does high-skilled emigration affect countries of origin? I summarize our recent Science paper, &draw out lessons from where we need nuance (not all high-skilled is the same, & most studies lump together), what we don't know (especially how to do better policy) blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

How does high-skilled emigration affect countries of origin? "The weight of the evidence suggests that migration opportunities often increase human capital stock in origin countries and produce downstream beneficial effects." I love Figure 3, which summarizes the mechanisms.

Fascinating latest model of Homo sapiens evolution within Africa. Interesting finding that cultural innovation was accelerated by both population size increases, but also recombination across partially isolated regions (e.g. Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa)

Our scholars in Kenya are getting ready to start nursing training in Germany, supported by #Malengo. They've learned German & now seek forward-thinking employers. Know a clinic or healthcare provider hiring? Let us know! 📷 www.malengo.org #Nursing #TVET #Migration

Cross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔 By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2 www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...

Reviewing the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences, from Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini https://www.nber.org/papers/w33786

When ethnic groups within countries become more culturally distant from those holding power in the central government, their likelihood of rebelling increases significantly. We spoke with @eleonoraguarnieri.bsky.social of @bristoluni.bsky.social about why such conflicts arise. #econsky

Day 3 of the 2025 Bristol Applied Economics Meetings (BÆM)! After two fantastic days on development economics, we continue with the meeting on “Gender, Diversity, and Human Capital”. Stay tuned for some excellent papers!

Welcome to the 2025 Bristol Applied Economics Meetings (BÆM)! We’re kicking off with Development Economics. We have an exciting lineup of speakers, incl. @saralowes.bsky.social as keynote and Devesh Rustagi & @deanyang.bsky.social as invited speakers. Stay tuned for one key takeaway per talk!

For German and French speakers interested in animal culture, this doco will be well worth 43 mins of your time. For everyone else, great tits solving puzzle boxes speak for themselves 🐦🧩🧠@lucymaplin.bsky.social @mchimento.bsky.social www.arte.tv/de/videos/11...

The UCSD backstory podcast interviews me about doing applied methods work in development, whether there are private returns from producing public goods, how to select research problems, what a grad student could do in their second year summer, and more... open.spotify.com/episode/2i70...

Pleased to see our work published: The Ties That Bind: Computational, Cross-cultural Analyses of Knots Reveal Their Cultural Evolutionary History and Significance We analysed knots across 12,000 years and 82 societies. Time to tie a thread 🧵 about why knots matter. doi.org/10.1017/S095...

Over a century ago, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox refugees reshaped Greece. While initially lagging, they outperformed natives in education, favoring transferable degrees over local fields, from Michalopoulos, Murard, Papaioannou, and Sakalli https://www.nber.org/papers/w33586

Very happy that this is out now! We find that railroad construction led to more separatism in Europe, showing strong opposition to modernization and state building among minorities. @robertovalli.bsky.social with a summary thread below👇

The Review of International Organizations invites papers using geocoded data on foreign aid for a special issue “Analyzing Global Development with the Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD).” See godad.me, godad.uni-goettingen.de/uploads/RIO_...

Scott's Mixtape podcast is like no other: it’s 100% focused on the backstory behind the research. Neat idea and super fun for his guests!

📣Last call for BÆM 2025! 💥Development Economics (May 6-7), Keynote: @saralowes.bsky.social (UCSD) 💥Gender, Diversity, and Human Capital (May 8-9) Keynote: Michèle Tertilt (Mannheim). Submissions close tomorrow, 28th Feb! More info 👇 bsky.app/profile/paul...

In @nature.com we show that humans lived in rainforests ~150,000 years ago – over double the previous oldest estimate. Their presence in West Africa’s rainforests demonstrates the spread of early humans and places ecological diversity at the heart of our species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks to @kensycoop.bsky.social for this great interview about my book. We cover domestication syndrome, plasticity-led evolution, soft inheritance, animal traditions, how culture shapes evolution, and more. Kensy also does a wonderful production job, turning me into a coherent speaker! Thank you

"Methodology, like sex, is better demonstrated than discussed, though often better anticipated than experienced" has to be one of the best sentences ever to appear in the AER.

2/ First-generation immigrants tend to have lower incomes than locals, but their children often move up the economic ladder. In most countries, second-gen income gaps shrink – sometimes disappearing altogether. Daughters of immigrants do particularly well in most destinations.

Two weeks left to submit your papers to the BÆM development workshop in Bristol! 👉https://www.baem.info/

A summary of our work on Enemies of the People. Sadly it's also now a warning about what might happen in the US...

Its been great to work with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social on the 3rd edition of our book "Sense and Nonsense. Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour". Thanks to Sarah Hrdy for this nice endorsement. Get a 30% discount with code ASPROMP8 at shorturl.at/mmMID @oxfordunipress.bsky.social

USAID being unlawfully dismantled. DOGE member has closed HQ. New tranche of workers cut off email. Staff tell me, "It is frightening being inside USAID right now. Our checks and balances failed. Congress has abdicated its responsibilities.” And Sec. Rubio has abdicated his.

Migration as an escape valve from Malthusian dynamics after the discovery of the New World! #MarginalRevolution - Societies with high fertility or late transition: larger diasporas! - Opening of valve (steamship) contributed to transition to modern growth! 👉 www.guillaumeblanc.com/files/theme/...

One month to go! Join us for the Bristol Applied Economics Meeting (BÆM) on Gender, Diversity and Human Capital, 8-9 May! 📢 Keynote by Michele Tertilt (U Mannheim) 📅 Submission deadline: Feb 28. 👉Details at baem.info

Looking forward to teaching at this fantastic Summer School on the Political Economy of Immigration at the University of Barcelona! Spread the word and join us for insightful discussions and new perspectives. 👇

🚨 New Working Paper 🚨 w/ @pdavidboll.bsky.social and @jvoth.bsky.social Do you run regressions on spatial data? Then keep reading! We present a guide and Stata package for methods by Müller and Watson (2024 ECTA) to deal with Spatial Unit Roots in Regressions. Link in 🧵 (1/n)

Keep your papers coming and join us for the Bristol Applied Economics Meeting (BÆM) on Development Economics, May 6-7! 📢 Invited talks by the brilliant @saralowes.bsky.social, Devesh Rustagi & @deanyang.bsky.social 📅 Submission deadline: Feb 28. Details here👉http://baem.info

I've missed y'all. Here's to a bluer sky on this side of the internet.

Are you looking for researchers working on the economics of migration? Check out this fantastic starter pack put together by @steinhardt.bsky.social.