The destination decision of political migrants

This paper deals with the destination decision of political migrants who, in spite of having strong cultural, ideological and religious ties to a particular potential destination, choose to emigrate elsewhere. The model presented characterizes the migrants, who have a choice of two possible destinations, by two properties, skill level and financial resources, and identifies those that move to each destination. The paper examines various immigration-encouraging policies and shows that although all of them will increase immigration, in some cases the economic quality of the new immigrants will rise and in some it will fall. This paper includes general evidence on the present immigration to Israel and some suggestions for empirical tests.Supported by the Schnitzer Foundation for Research on the Israeli Society and Economy.We would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments which simplified the presentation.     

The Jewish-Palestinian Encounter in a Time of Crisis

For over two decades the School for Peace at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam has been bringing together Jews and Arabs for dialogue workshops. This article examines the unique approach that the School for Peace has developed over the years in the light of existing theory in the field and of existing research in the field of social identity construction and majority-minority relations. The article then shows how processes that take place in our encounter workshops may even shed light on the Jewish-Palestinian conflict from 1948 until today. Understanding these processes is essential to any attempt at building a more humane society based on equality and justice between the two peoples.     

SALES AND COLLUSION IN A MARKET WITH STORAGE

Sales are a widespread and well‐known phenomenon documented in several product markets. This paper presents a novel rationale for sales that does not rely on consumer heterogeneity, or on any form of randomness to explain such periodic price fluctuations. The analysis is carried out in the context of a simple repeated price competition model, and establishes that firms must periodically reduce prices in order to sustain collusion when goods are storable and the market is large. The largest equilibrium profits are characterized at any market size. A trade‐off between the size of the industry and its profits arises. Sales foster collusion, by magnifying the inter‐temporal links in consumers' decisions.     

The role of marriage in immigrants’ human capital investment under liquidity constraints

This paper presents a two-period human capital investment model, which is used to study the optimal investment decisions of credit-constrained married immigrants relative to single immigrants and native couples facing a perfect capital market. The model predicts that: (1) The comparative advantage in investment in local skills of one of the spouses may emerge from his/her higher growth rate of imported human capital. (2) The optimal investment of each spouse is non-increasing in the level of imported human capital of the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment, while it is non-decreasing in the level of imported human capital of the other spouse. (3) When two immigrants get married, the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment invests more than when he/she was single whereas the other spouse invests less.

On the surge of altruism

To date, many arguments to explain altruistic behavior were based on `kin selection'. This note shows that evolution can sustain altruism even if the players are not necessarily genetically linked. Depending on the payoff parameters in a prisoner's dilemma game, there can be four distinct types of equilibria, for each of them the proportion of altruists in the population is described. The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for valuable comments. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

How to partly bounce back the struggle against illegal immigration to the source countries

Recent models on the dynamics of immigration control claim that tightening internal borders may trigger the formation of networks supporting clandestine foreign workers. This may, in turn, increase the overall stock of illegal immigrants in the economy. One possible solution to this threatening situation might be to partly bounce back the struggle against illegal immigration to the source countries. This paper suggests that under certain conditions, the receiving country should direct some of the resources earmarked for coping with the problem of the illegal flow of workers to financially supporting the source countries, allowing them to compete among themselves for such aid. This support would be allocated according to the relative effort made by each source country in curbing illegal immigration, thereby motivating them to moderate the phenomenon. The model is also applicable to other fields of negative externalities, such as the smuggling of drugs and weapons, terrorism, and pollution.

Migration and the dialogue of multiple identifications: Kurdish migrants in the tourist industry of Istanbul

This article examines the cultural dilemmas proceeding from the multiple identifications of Kurdish migrants working in the multicultural environment of Istanbul’s tourist industry. Since identifications invariably multiply when migrants enter multicultural environments, the question emerges how migrants cope with increasing identifications? How are multiple identifications related within the self? In this article, these questions are addressed, first, by analysing how Kurds explain ethnic stereotypes of themselves with reference to migration from the region of origin. Furthermore, conflicts and ambiguities between identifications as individual migrant and identifications as family member are investigated. Third, identifications of the ‘villager’ versus the ‘urbanite’ are reviewed, while, finally, the role of ‘learning’ in the migration process for Kurdish identifications will be highlighted. Dialogical self theory is used to situate the analysis of cultural dilemmas and contradictions of Kurdish migrants in Istanbul within the broader study of multiple identifications of migrants in multicultural societies.