EconTech

Tyler Cowen argues that most anti-trade positions are driven by xenophobia. Dani Rodrik argues that differing rule-sets (labor laws and such) are a serious source of concern. Tyler and his co-blogger Alex respond. All of those posts are worth reading.
In my mind, this is definitely not an either-or situation. I hope that before I die [...]

Swedes start to question refugee policy
Nader will not give his real name but he does not hide why he chose Sweden as a refuge after Islamic gunmen threatened to murder him unless he fled Mosul in northern Iraq.
“Sweden is the only country that accepts immigrants and gives them permission to bring their families,” says [...]

His writing very rarely holds much sway for me. His values have him point out things that sometimes do not get mentioned by other economists who blog on immigration. Very often, he is right, or at least has strong evidence that he is right, on the questions of fact. But I just don’t care. I [...]

I like the vision here. America was once an “open club” (well, depending on where you were from, but even then, a lot of immigrant groups were eventually accepted) but now we’ve become a this-is-our-country-get-out-beware-of-dogINS club. I like the older version a lot more, despite the domestic flaws:
Imagine there’s no country….
This blog is a comment [...]

Not much to add here. Economic forces are powerful indeed, and the drive for the ‘American Dream’ has never been particularly bounded by borders. People will move to where there is economic opportunity. If that is here; so be it. If it can be brought to them, all the better. [Why better? Transaction costs.] And [...]

The words we use influence people and often reveal our biases and may be even engender a previously non-existing bias into our brain. Hence, the reason I use the term undocumented migrant as opposed to illegal immigrant. It is because we are debating the line in the law, so referring to the legal status of [...]