Reforms that keep you at home: The effects of economic transition on migration

Theory asserts that individuals’ migration decisions depend more on their expectations about future income levels than on their current income levels. We find that the implementation of market-oriented reforms in post-communist countries, by forming positive economic prospects, has reduced emigration as predicted by theory. Our estimates show that migration flows are highly responsive to reforms supporting private enterprises and financial services, which provide individuals with strong signals about their future prospects. We show that reforms that improve the management of infrastructure services have no link with migration patterns, which may be an important lesson for government policy.     

Poverty: A Concept that is Both Absolute and Relative Because Human Beings are at Once Individual and Social

If we confine attention to the inner dynamics of advanced monopoly capitalism, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the prospect … would be the spread of increasingly severe psychic disorders leading to the impairment and eventual breakdown of the system's ability to function even on its own terms — Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy Pareto optimality is faint praise indeed — A. K. Sen