The World Economy - Special Issue: International Migration and Inequality Across Countries

In a world of increasingly porous boundaries, millions of workers seek to reduce the gap between their position and that of people in wealthier places. The increasing availability of new databases on the size and structure of these migration flows has enabled economists and demographers to better characterize the global patterns of human migration, and to better understand its impact on the world economy. Given the growing interest for these questions and their vital implications for development, FERDI and IRES co-organized an international conference on "International labor mobility and inequality across nations." The event was held at CERDI, University of Auvergne, in Clermont-Ferrand in January 2014. The conference included 5 keynote lectures, 23 selected contributions, and a dinner speech by Paul Collier on his book Exodus. Last April, about two years after the event, the five keynote contributions, together with the best unsolicited paper presented at the conference, got published in a special issue of The World Economy.The six articles shed light on the effects of international migration on the geographic distribution of human capital and its implications for the world economy. The special issue provides an interesting mix of descriptive facts, empirical investigations, and numerical experiments. It identifies statistical regularities in international migration, discusses the advantages and dangers of using new bilateral databases, investigates the link between migration patterns and remittances, explores the consequences of the increased competition for talents, or examines the effects of rich countries’ immigration policies on fertility and education decisions in Africa. Original findings are provided on the effects of migration policies and future population changes on global inequality.The articles contained in the special issue on The World Economy have already found a good echo in the literature, as they have received a total of 58 citations on Google Scholar in the limited time elapsed since its publication.Online Library website  : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/twec.2016.39.issue-4/issuetoc