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This paper empirically assesses, for the first time, the relationship between immigration and national economic development in both the global North and the global South. A series of panel models demonstrate that immigration exacerbates North-South inequalities through differential effects on average per capita incomes in the global North and global South. Immigration has positive effects on average incomes in both the North and the South, but the effect is larger in the global North. Thus the relationship between immigration and development evinces a Matthew Effect at the world level: by contributing to differential levels of economic development in the North and South, immigration widens international inequalities in the long term, resulting in the accumulation of advantage in the North. The implications of the results are discussed in the context theory and policy on the migration-development nexus.

AbstractWhile economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food‐processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food‐processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico–US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the micro‐level foundations of the globalization–migration nexus.

AbstractThe "globalization of migration" has raised new and important questions about the macrostructural or global determinants of international population movements (Castles and Miller, 2003). Yet there remains a dearth of cross‐national, empirical research in this area (Portes, 1997). In one of the earliest attempts to empirically identify macrostructural determinants of migration, Amankwaa makes an important contribution to the literature (1995). There are, however, some conceptual, analytical, and methodological shortcomings in Amankwaa's analysis of migration. These deficiencies merit comment because Amankwaa's paper could become an increasingly important source of information for public policies and analytical research efforts, particularly as international migration continues to garner increased attention from public policy practitioners and academic researchers. I address key deficiencies in Amankwaa's study and describe a more robust analytical framework and more rigorous methodological techniques for future research inquiries into the relationship between globalization and international migration.

The title of this Note "voodoo economics" is, at its core, an analogy: U.S. campaign-finance regulation operates like a price ceiling in the political money marketplace. Political campaigns are financed through money-for-access transactions and campaign-finance regulation caps the level of exchange. Like any other price ceiling, regulation is both effective and flawed. It suppresses the "price" of political money but inherently falls victim to some market players' avoidance activities. This price-ceiling analogy, among other things, makes apparent that many proposals forwarded by pro-regulation and deregulation advocates cannot solve the United States' century-old campaign-finance riddle. Instead, attention should turn to shaping market forces through expanding the political money supply. Political donation incentive programs in Germany and Canada provide attractive supply-side models for reform in the United States.

The High Plains region of the U.S. is one of the most important agricultural regions in the world. Much agricultural production in this semi-arid region, however, depends on the consumption of nonrenewable groundwater from the High Plains Aquifer. Although the problem has drawn significant attention from policymakers and citizens for over forty years, depletion of the Aquifer has worsened. Why does depletion persist despite widespread and ongoing concern? We explore this conundrum by placing the region into an historical, political-economic context. We focus specifically on the case of Western Kansas, and argue that the contemporary problem is rooted in the ways in which this region was articulated into broader circuits of capital and exchange. Private capital and the state incorporated the region as a source of primary raw materials, mainly agricultural products. Water-dependent agricultural resource extraction opened up a metabolic rift in the hydrological cycle that has only been exacerbated over time through unequal ecological exchange with more politically and economically central places. These structural dynamics associated with political-economic incorporation have impeded efforts to develop more sustainable uses of groundwater consumption in the region.Key words: groundwater management, metabolic rift, High Plains, Kansas

AbstractIn the 1990s, Mexican immigration dispersed spatially, leading to the emergence of many "new destinations," in nonmetropolitan areas of the United States. Previous studies constrain the scope of the analysis to the United States, limiting our understanding of how new destinations are formed. We place new destination formation into a binational context and emphasize the role of supply‐side immigration dynamics. We argue that occupations in Mexico provide ready‐made paths, or "channels," for economic incorporation into the United States and that these channels underlie the formation of many new destinations. Using a unique data set on Mexican migration, we estimate a multivariate model that tests for the presence of occupational channels linking analogous sectors of the U.S. and Mexican economies, focusing especially on the food‐processing sector. The results demonstrate that Mexican migration is strongly channeled along occupational lines. There are occupational channels linking each of the major economic sectors in Mexico and the United States, but the effect of channeling is particularly strong in the food‐processing sector. By empirically identifying the existence of occupational channels, this study uncovers a key explanation of new destination formation in many nonmetropolitan areas.

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