The effects of migration and pollution on cognitive skills in Caribbean economies: a theoretical analysis

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This work examines the interaction between demographic features and environmental constraints in Caribbean small island developing states. Specifically, it aims to clarify human capital dynamics when migration and environmental quality matter. To do so, two main ingredients are introduced in an overlapping generations model: countries may benefit from migration through a <jats:italic>brain gain</jats:italic> or remittances, and production emits pollution that hinders the accumulation of human capital. Two cases emerge from the analysis. In the first case, an environmental policy is sufficient to correct the externality, and migration should stay at a relatively low level. In the second case, if pollution emissions are high relative to the effectiveness of environmental policy, migration leads to an increase in per capita output and human capital. This only happens if the emigration rate is already high, because it leads to a reduction in demographic pressure on the environment.</jats:p>

Introduction: special issue on the environment, resources and pollution – new challenges for economic development

“…The papers include three empirical contributions (Hou et al ., 2020; Martinez and Philips, 2020; Zhang, 2020) and three methodological approaches, the first of which develops innovative theoretical models (Ba et al ., 2020), the second of which illustrates trade-offs between demographic features and environmental constraints (Cassin, 2020) and the last one which improves a widely-used regression technique in economic development and environmental economics (Clootens and Kirat, 2020). The studied geographical areas include a specific application for Caribbean economies (Cassin, 2020) and one for China (Zhang, 2020), and three which cover large country-samples with up to 83 countries (Clootens and Kirat, 2020; Hou et al ., 2020; Martinez and Philips, 2020). This holistic approach with various methodologies facilitates the exchange of ideas between researchers from various sub-disciplines of economics, often in an interdisciplinary approach, and is suitable to improve our understanding of environmental constraints and their effects on economic development.…”