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The 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the EU extended the freedom of movement to workers from the twelve new member states mainly from Central Eastern Europe. This study summarizes and comparatively evaluates what we know about mobility in an enlarged Europe to date. The pre-enlargement fears of free labor mobility proved to be unjustified. No significant detrimental effects on the receiving countries' labor markets have been documented, nor has there been any discernible welfare shopping. Rather, there appear to have been positive effects on EU's productivity. The sending countries face some risks of losing their young and skilled labor force, but free labor mobility has relieved them of some redundant labor and the associated fiscal burden. They have also profited from remittances. Of key importance for the sending countries is to reap the benefits from brain gain and brain circulation in an enlarged EU. For the migrants the benefits in terms of better career prospects have with little doubt exceeded any pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of migration. In conclusion, the freedom of movement in the EU provides for a triple-win situation for the receiving and sending countries as well as for migrants themselves, provided the risks are contained and efficient brain circulation is achieved.

This paper considers two major issues that need to be treated as matters of urgency. First, internal (within country) migrations in the Asian (ACI) region are mostly undocumented and large. It is shown there are significant differences in wages and human development measures to which migrants will respond. Our first (of two) recommendation(s) is the need to collect better information on migration and for wage premiums and discounts to be estimated across sectors and countries. The second major issue is the emerging demographic imbalances in the form of aging, which will give dependency ratios that have never been experienced in all of recorded human existence. This needs urgent attention and the development of appropriate migration policies. Whilst it is possible to share the burdens of ageing and dependency through migration, this will not happen under present arrangements. Migration cannot continue to be treated differently to trade and finance. A framework needs to be developed to provide a coherent set of policies relating to migration and social welfare, within and across countries in the Asian region. Our second recommendation is for the East Asia Summit (ASEAN+10) to set up a high level working group to consider possible future harmonized migration based policies, bringing together relevant economic, political, social and legal issues. This should encompass the recent ASEAN leadership on the rights of migrant workers and labor work programs. It complements the Summit's focus on education and human resource development and heeds the World Economic Forum's call for Asian leadership in enhancing regional connectivity (expanded to include human resources). As we have argued many times in this paper, increasing the mobility of humans is the best way to not only promote economic efficiency, but to provide freedom and significant improvements in their wellbeing and quality of life.

This paper provides a model of nonlinear income taxation in a context of international mobility. We consider two identical countries, in which each government chooses non-cooperatively redistributive taxes. It is shown that when skilled workers can move at low cost, the income taxation does not involve distortions. When the cost to move becomes high for skilled workers, taxation policy is less redistributive but qualitatively similar to the taxation policy in autarky. Moreover, the mobility of the unskilled workers does not affect the income taxation when both countries have Rawlsian objectives.

This paper provides a model of nonlinear income taxation in a context of international mobility. We consider two identical countries, in which each government chooses non-cooperatively redistributive taxes. It is shown that when skilled workers can move at low cost, the income taxation does not involve distortions. When the cost to move becomes high for skilled workers, taxation policy is less redistributive but qualitatively similar to the taxation policy in autarky. Moreover, the mobility of the unskilled workers does not affect the income taxation when both countries have Rawlsian objectives.

This research investigates labor market dynamics in Belgium and the specific role played by labor mobility in the adjustment process following a labor demand shock. It first analyzes the time series characteristics of the Belgian labor market based on a panel of 11 provinces from 2003 to 2015. This analysis allows the building and estimation of a PVAR model to obtain the response of employment, employment rate, and labor force participation rate to a shock in labor demand. The results suggest a minor role played by migration in the first years of the adjustment process, highlighting the difficulties for the EU to be considered an OCA.

Increasing labor mobility has an impact on all redistributive policy measures undertaken by national governments. This paper focuses on intergenerational redistribution, in particular PAYG financed public pension systems, and surveys some of the recent literature on this topic. Two different strands in the literature are covered: In the median-voter framework, policy outcomes depend on both the structure of the population and on the design of the public pension system. In addition, we look at the welfare-theoretical literature which addresses the harmonization of social security policies.

This paper outlines the importance of labor mobility for the improvement in allocating and distributing economic resources. We are faced with an increasing lack of skilled workers and a growing tendency of unemployment amongst the low-skilled. A central political objective for the future will not only be education policy but also the recruitment of high-skilled workers from international and European labor markets. Additional skilled labor increases well-being and reduces inequality. However, internal European barriers to mobility are difficult to break through. An improved transparency of the European labor market, a greater command of languages and a standardization of the social security system can strengthen mobility. The key to mobility is in promoting the integration of international workers in the European migration process, which can be strengthened through circular migration. The European blue card initiative and the opening of labor markets to foreign graduates who have been trained in Europe could set a new course.

This paper outlines the importance of labor mobility for the improvement in allocating and distributing economic resources. We are faced with an increasing lack of skilled workers and a growing tendency of unemployment amongst the low-skilled. A central political objective for the future will not only be education policy but also the recruitment of high-skilled workers from international and European labor markets. Additional skilled labor increases well-being and reduces inequality. However, internal European barriers to mobility are difficult to break through. An improved transparency of the European labor market, a greater command of languages and a standardization of the social security system can strengthen mobility. The key to mobility is in promoting the integration of international workers in the European migration process, which can be strengthened through circular migration. The European blue card initiative and the opening of labor markets to foreign graduates who have been trained in Europe could set a new course.

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property affect the outcome of fiscal policies? In our model, we show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from pursuing independent policies, opening the way to a coordination prob-lem. With symmetric shocks, the federal fiscal policy can improve welfare by playing a coordinating role. With asymmetric shocks, the federal policy allows both countries to reach a higher productive efficiency, provided the federal government is endowed with a federal budget.

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property a¤ect the outcome of fiscal policies? We address this issue with a two country ?two period model, where both asymmetric and symmetric productivity shocks may hit the countries. We show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from pursuing indepen- dent policies, opening the way to a coordination problem between them, which is particularly relevant when the two countries di¤er for their intertemporal preferences. With symmetric shocks, the federal fiscal policy can improve welfare over national policies by playing a coordinating role. With asymmet- ric shocks, the federal fiscal policy allows both countries to reach a higher productive efficiency; to do that, the federal government must be endowed with a federal budget, playing a stronger role than plain coordination between countries.

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative equilibrium differs from that corresponding to a cooperative equilibrium. The results also indicate how a 'global policy maker' must act in order to make the national policy makers replicate the cooperative equilibrium.

Over the past 20 years Ukraine experienced fundamental structural changes due to transition to a market economy and integration with the world. Transition reforms accompanied by the collapse of traditional trade and production links with the other republics of the former USSR and Comecon countries entailed asymmetric effects on regions, reflecting an uneven distribution of winners and losers from transition. Geographical mobility of labor is one of the major mechanisms (alongside with capital mobility, wage and price flexibility, and institutional mechanisms for redistributing income across regions) in facilitating regional adjustment to idiosyncratic shocks. The ability of workers to move freely from one geographical location to another inside the borders of their country, in pursuing the same occupation or changing occupations, is of particular importance for efficient matching of labor demand and supply and reducing structural unemployment. This paper seeks to fill gap in the literature on patterns of internal labor mobility in Ukraine, its main characteristics and potential for reducing persistent regional labor market disparities and imbalances in economic and human development. The next chapters of the paper are organized as follows: second chapter evaluates the magnitude of disparities in regional labor market and socio-economic indicators over time, with a special focus on its potential impact on decision of individuals to migrate to another settlement; third chapter provides an overview of the available data sources on internal labor mobility in Ukraine, quantifies internal migration based on aggregate administrative data, discusses its trends over time and compares it levels to those found in developed and transition economies. Fourth chapter provides multivariate statistical analysis of the determinants of inter-regional migration in 2002-2010 based on administrative region-level data. Fifth chapter summarizes the findings of empirical studies on determinants of the migration decision of Ukrainians. Sixth chapter examines short-term labor migration including everyday commuting in 2005-2010 and measures its covariates using individual-level Labor Force Survey (LFS) data. Seventh chapter summarizes the main findings and concludes.

Globalization involves the international expansion of market relations and the global pursuit of economic liberalism. The essential factor in this process is commodification, including the commodification of human labor. Globalization integrates an increasing proportion of the world population directly into capitalist labor markets and locks national and regional labor markets into an integrated global labor market. We are on the threshold of global initiatives to shift the balance even further, especially regarding the management of global migration flows. The answer cannot be a return to strictly national forms of migration control and should not be a complete capitulation to market-driven regulation of migration. One possible answer is a new, multilateral, democratically screened, global migration regime to set forth and guarantee the general principles governing the regulation of transnational migrations, ensure proper coordination between regional and national migration regimes, and call into existence new institutional forms of transnational democratic governance.

The paper analyzes the impact of skill-biased migration policies under the economics of agglomeration. It therefore develops an agglomeration model with two types of mobile worker who are heterogeneous and differ both within and between skill groups with respect to their migration propensity. On the one hand, the model reveals that the effectiveness of migration policies depends on the level on trade costs. On the other hand, it shows that increasing (reducing) political barriers to migration for one factor of production, reduces (increases) the migration incentive of the other. Consequently, pro-skilled and contra-unskilled migration policies attenuate each other or can even be counterproductive.

China's Hukou system poses severe restrictions on labor mobility. This paper assesses the consequences of relaxing these restrictions for China's internal economic geography. We base our analysis on a new economic geography model. First, we obtain estimates of the important model parameters on the basis of information on 264 of China's prefecture cities over the period 1999-2005. Second, and by using our estimation results as input, we simulate various long-run scenarios of China's internal economic geography that differ in their degree of interregional labor mobility. We find that increased labor mobility will lead to more pronounced core-periphery outcomes. Interestingly, these agglomerations are not necessarily along the coastal regions. Given the increased importance of China's internal market, firms agglomerate in the populous heartland of China. China's internal demand will be the most important determinant of its future economic geography.