Michael Andrew Clemens (born 1972) is an American economist who studies international migration and global economic development. He is a full professor in the Department of Economics at

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is also affiliated with IZA, the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

, and is a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Research

Clemens' recent work focuses on the effects of international migration on people in their countries of destination, on people in their countries of origin, and on migrants themselves. One of his most-cited works on migration is ''Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk'' published in the '' Journal of Economic Perspectives'' in 2011. In this paper, he investigates why economists spend much more time studying the movement of goods and capital and much less time studying the movement of people. He sketches a four-point research agenda on the effects of emigration. He has also studied the effects on the US labor market from the exclusion of Mexican

bracero The Bracero Program (from the Spanish language, Spanish term ''bracero'' , meaning "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms") was a temporary labor initiative between the United States and Mexico that allowed Mexican workers to be empl ...

farmworkers at the end of 1964. Clemens has also written about aid effectiveness, including an article for the ''Journal of Development Effectiveness'': "When does rigorous impact evaluation make a difference? The case of the Millennium Villages." Using a high-profile case, the Millennium Villages Project, an experimental and intensive package intervention to spark economic development in rural Africa, he and his co-authors illustrate the benefits of rigorous impact evaluation by showing the estimates of the project's effects depend heavily in evaluation method. He also wrote Counting Chickens When They Hatch: Timing and the Effects of Aid on Growth for the Royal Economic Society's '' Economic Journal'', examining the cross-country relationship between foreign aid and economic growth.

Initiatives

Clemens conceived the idea of Global Skill Partnerships (GSPs), proposing them for the first time at the Global Economic Symposium in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. GSPs are a novel type of agreement between two countries to regulate the migration of skilled workers between them with benefits shared by both countries, endorsed by 154 countries in the Global Compact for Migration. Following the

2010 Haiti earthquake The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic Moment magnitude scale, magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake that struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest (departm ...

, Clemens led an effort to make Haitians eligible for H-2A and H-2B low-skill temporary work visa program arguing that the economic impact of migration would be far more beneficial than any foreign assistance or aid to the country.

References

External links

George Mason University

Google Scholar profile

The Biggest Idea in Development that No One Really Tried (VIDEO)

5 Questions for Michael Clemens on the Value of US Immigration, by James Pethokoukis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clemens, Michael 1970s births Living people 21st-century American economists American development economists California Institute of Technology alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Harvard University alumni Center for Global Development Migration economists Year of birth missing (living people)