UP Links 05 December 2012

Canada’s provincial-nominee program is humane, efficient and economically rational — everything that U.S. immigration policy should be but isn’t. If the U.S. doesn’t reverse course, it might lose out in the global competition for skilled labor and never solve its problem with low-skilled undocumented workers.

Economic growth alone will not deliver enough jobs because some of the sectors that contribute most to growth, notably mining and oil and gas, are capital-intensive and don’t create much employment. Although these sectors have generated about one quarter of Africa’s growth over the past decade, they directly employ less than 1% of Africans.

Among land use regulations, Washington, D.C.’s 1910 Height of Buildings Act holds a special place in the minds of urban economists. The Act, imposed by Congress, limits all building heights in the District of Columbia based on the width of the street they are on, with caps set at 90 feet, 130 feet, and in a very few places, 160 feet, depending in which part of the city you find yourself.

As D.C’s economy has boomed in recent years, the Height Act has helped make it one of the most expensive cities in this country. Office space in downtown D.C. is more expensive than in New York’s financial district, and 850 square-foot apartments in Anacostia, one of the cheapest areas in the city, now rent for $1300 a month.

In the first section Michael talks about the impact of migration on migrants themselves, and how micro-data has been used to expose a significant inequality of opportunity based on location, explaining more about a person’s income than everything else put together… In the second part Michael responds to various criticisms of migration from a receiving country perspective, focusing on the costs and benefits of the economic, communal and cultural effects of migration, and the need for a managed transition to minimise costs and maximise benefits. In the third part Michael talks about the impact of migration from the perspective of the migrants’ countries of origin.