Special and Differential Treatment in the WTO: Why, When and How?

This paper analyses to which extent domestic institutions affect trade flows. We use two complementary approaches, one focusing on the size of total trade flows and one focusing on bilateral trade patterns (gravity equation). Besides, we control for two other domestic policy variables: trade policy and domestic infrastructure. We find that the quality of institutions has a positive and significant impact on a country's level of openness. Domestic tariffs have no statistically significant impact on their own, but do affect total trade flows when combined with good institutions. Domestic institutions also have a positive and significant impact on bilateral trade flows, but the parameter of our institution variables is reduced by almost a half and may turn insignificant when the quality of domestic infrastructure is included in the regression

High-Skilled Migration in Times of Global Economic Crisis

We introduce two pioneering databases in order to analyze the implications of the Global Economic Crisis on international migration. The first details inflows of migrant workers of 185 nationalities to 10 OECD destinations, disaggregated by skill level (highly skilled and otherwise), between 2000 and 2012. The second comprises immigration policies implemented by 19 OECD countries between 2000 and 2012. We distinguish between six skill-selective admission policies, six post-entry policy instruments and three bilateral agreements. Subsequently we present preliminary analysis of these data against the backdrop of the Global Economic Crisis. The Global Economic Crisis negatively affected annual inflows of both highly and other skilled migrants between 2007 and 2009, although they resumed their upward trend thereafter. The starkest trends in policy terms include: the emergence and rapid diffusion of student job seeker visas, the relative stability in the prevalence of skill selective policies in the wake of the Global Economic Crisis, a greater use of financial incentives to attract high-skilled workers and increased employer transferability for migrants at destination

When Drains and Gains Coincide: Migration and International Football Performance

We analyze the effects of football player migration to foreign leagues on the perfirmance of their home country national teams. We provide a theoretical model predicting a positive effect of migration on international football perfirmance due to superior skills acquired by players choosing to migrate to foreign leagues. We test this prediction using recent cross country data on international football perfirmance. In order to accurately measure the effect of skill acquisitions by migrating players, we construct a weighted migration index that takes into account the quality of the foreign league and the division in which national team players are employed. We find strong and robust support for the prediction that migration of players to foreign leagues improves international football perfirmance of their home countries