Topics:
Expertise
Migration and development, economic growth, aid effectiveness, economic history
Bio
Michael Clemens is director of migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he studies the economic effects and causes of migration around the world. He has published on migration, development, economic history, and impact evaluation, in peer-reviewed academic journals including the American Economic Review, and his research has been awarded the Royal Economic Society Prize. He also serves as a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, and has served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and World Development. He is the author of the book The Walls of Nations, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Previously, Clemens has been an Affiliated Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at New York University, and a consultant for the World Bank, Bain & Co., the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He has lived and worked in Colombia, Brazil, and Turkey. He received his PhD from the Department of Economics at Harvard University, specializing in economic development, public finance, and economic history.
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More From Michael Clemens
February 1, 2016
Blog Post
The World Bank opened in 1946 to finance a global economy just emerging from colonization and warfare and just embarking on the Cold War. Today the global development landscape is radically different, and capital circles the globe at volumes unthinkable back then. Why keep the World Bank now?
January 25, 2016
Publication
Many developing countries need the World Bank’s capital less and less. What role should the Bank play in the 21st century? This paper argues that many features of the Bank today reflect a new role. That role, resting on the economic theory of bargaining and public good provision, is to reduce extreme poverty. Donor subsidies to the Bank already reflect this role, which implies new ways to structure and evaluate the Bank’s work.
November 20, 2015
Blog Post
In times of fear, men and women of reason have a responsibility to speak about facts.
November 11, 2015
Blog Post
On Thursday, the leaders of 30 African countries signed a European Commission action plan tasking them–in exchange for a $2 billion “emergency trust fund”–to take back economic migrants looking to settle in Europe. If this sum is meant as a bribe, it is a bad deal. With remittances dwarfing foreign aid worldwide ($580 billion versus $135 billion in 2014), migration is a better deal for Africa than aid.
October 2, 2015
Blog Post
Recent research overturns the standard narrative about refugee crises: that addressing them mainly means curtailing the conflict and poverty that “push” migrants away from home and slashing the excessive generosity that “pull” them into other countries. Instead, pragmatic and self-interested policymakers should consider that they often waste resources when trying to reduce push factors, and they can spark an inhumane and inefficient race to the bottom by acting individually to reduce pull factors. Through broad international cooperation to get people out of camps and into the labor force, though, they can transform refugees from a burden into an investment.
Pages
March 30, 2012
Blog Post
January 26, 2009
Blog Post
Eldis, the online aggregator of development policy, practice and research at the
September 20, 2012
Blog Post
Yesterday I discovered a development organization so revolutionary, most people wouldn’t even call it a development o
July 10, 2013
Publication
Labor migration to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has massive effects on the GCC, the countries migrants come from, and the migrants themselves and their families. Yet existing research on the effects of Gulf migration is marked by its extreme scarcity, reliance on descriptive anecdote, and origination outside the Gulf.
May 22, 2014
Blog Post
In a recent study, CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens found that, contrary to popular belief, development in poor countries actually fosters more migration, not less.
March 16, 2004
Publication
This work quantifies how long it has taken countries rich and poor to make the transition towards high enrollments and gender parity. It finds that many countries that have not raised enrollments fast enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals have in fact raised enrollments extraordinarily rapidly by historical standards and deserve celebration rather than condemnation. The very few poor countries that have raised enrollment figures at the rates envisioned by the goals have done so in many cases by accepting dramatic declines in schooling quality, failing large numbers of students, or other practices that cast doubt on the sustainability or exportability of their techniques.
July 30, 2013
Blog Post
In the ongoing debate about immigration reform, pundits and politicians alike have spent both broadcast minutes and c
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