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In this review, we explore "economic imperialism," a concept that captures the phenomenon of a single discipline's power over so many facets of social life and policy--including education. Through a systematic search, we examine how economic imperialism has been conceptualized and applied across fields. We uncovered three key, interconnected elements of economic imperialism that hold relevance for education research. First, economics has colonized other disciplines, narrowing the lens through which policymakers have designed education reforms. Second, an overreliance on economic rationales for human behavior neglects other explanations. Third, a focus on economic outcomes of education has subjugated other important aims of education. We share implications for researchers to use economic theory in ways that are interdisciplinary but not imperialist.

"Is geographical migration a consequence of the end of unemployment or does it help in finding a job? This question is approached within the general framework of human capital theory.... A model is introduced in the form of a system of two simultaneous equations with qualitative endogenous variables. The test is based on a 1993 survey of 1,176 young rural people of seven areas of France. A main finding is that migrations of young rural people are essentially the result of professional preoccupations. However, migration is not a factor which always helps in finding a job, when people are unemployed. When a young person has a good initial training, he or she has to migrate (and leave a rural area) to get a job. Yet, migration does not seem to be necessary for less trained people.", (excerpt)

"A new approach to migration in developing countries is used in this paper, which integrates into the migration process the experiences of moving to cities, working in urban areas, and returning to the countryside. As a result, rural labor migration is directly linked to rural development through remittances, as well as through physical and human capital brought back by return migrants. Migration information is mainly drawn from China's 1995 1% National Population Survey.... It has been found that patterns of temporary migration are mainly shaped by the magnetic force of the growth-pole region. Job opportunities created there in labor-intensive industries have attracted large numbers of migrants, first from the surrounding rural areas and then from the peripheral regions, enhancing migration propensity in both areas.", (excerpt)

"This article provides direct evidence about educational attainments of new arrivals in Canada over the period 1956 to 1994.... Immigrant data are also compared with the educational attainment of the Canadian-born population in corresponding periods.... Results show that, in the total immigrant inflows of any subperiod since 1956, the percentages of those with high school education or less have been declining and have been lower than those for the Canadian-born population, while the percentages of those with university degrees have been rising and have been higher than those for the Canadian-born population.", (excerpt)

"This paper examines the implications of unemployment resulting from efficiency wages for international factor movements in a standard Heckscher-Ohlin model where the relative size of the endowments of skilled and unskilled workers and the efficiency wage induced unemployment level in the unskilled labour market are simultaneously determined given the population, supply of capital and its distribution in the economy.... It is shown that the optimum labour inflow in the market with domestic distortion and the optimum capital inflow are always positive because they reduce the severity of distortion by raising employment and income for the residents. The income and employment of foreigners also increase. Under this situation the optimum labour or capital outflow on the other hand is always zero. These conclusions directly contradict the result obtained for international factor movements in the presence of exogenously determined unemployment.", (excerpt)

"In this article a theoretical model is developed that views undocumented border crossing as a well-defined social process influenced by the quantity and quality of human and social capital that migrants bring with them to the border, and constrained by the intensity and nature of U.S. enforcement efforts. Detailed histories of border crossing from undocumented migrants originating in 34 Mexican communities are employed to estimate equations corresponding to this model.... As people gain experience in border crossing, they rely less on the assistance of others and more on abilities honed on earlier trips, thus substituting migration-specific human capital for general social capital.... On all trips, the intensity of the U.S. enforcement effort has little effect on the likelihood of arrest, but INS involvement in drug enforcement sharply lowers the odds of apprehension.", (excerpt)

"Estimated returns to schooling investments can be misleading if migration causes significant shifts in population distribution across time. Data gathered in rural Philippine communities show that the more educated and experienced individuals are more likely to outmigrate, causing a sample selection bias in the estimation of wage equations. The observed wages were then lower than the conditional population mean of an entire cohort residing originally in the area. Controlling for self-selection, the wage returns to schooling and experience were higher, Finally, the sample selectivity variable accounts substantially for the difference in the wages of men and women.", (excerpt)

"This profile of 20,000 British and Irish assisted migrants [to Australia after 1841], based on individual-level data, establishes their age, sex, religious, educational and occupational characteristics. Their composition differed markedly from the existing colonial population and other migrant flows at the time. They reflected the recruiting methods of the time as well as the changing migration propensities in the British Isles. The migrants were better human capital than was acknowledged at the time. They constituted a new start in Australian demographic development.", (excerpt)

"We propose a model to capture the escape from the Malthusian trap in the longrun. Our aim is to emphasize the key role of endogenous technological progress--as initiated by population growth and education--for longrun economic development. In addition we stress the importance to consider the level of fertility and mortality as the determinants of economic development and not only the rate of population growth. In particular, we may observe different economic growth rates in countries with the same rate of population growth, but differing levels of birth and death rates.", (excerpt)

"This paper analyzes the welfare effects of immigration and its subsequent effect on ethnic diversity in a model featuring human capital spillovers which depend on the degree of ethnic heterogeneity, variation rates of time preference across individuals and endogenous levels of immigration and assimilation. In the model, an increase in ethnic diversity reduces the spillovers effect for the majority. Nonetheless, immigration can be welfare improving for the majority ethnic group even if it increases the degree of diversity as long as it raises the average human capital level and/or growth rate by increasing the proportion of people with low rates of time preference.", (excerpt)

"The humanitarian policy that the Canadian government implemented in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown changed a migration system primarily based on personal networks into a brain drain. Post-Tiananmen mainland Chinese immigrants (MCIs) were better educated than those arriving in Canada previously. Among the post-Tiananmen MCIs, those who landed under the policy were better educated than those landing in other categories. The analysis suggests that post-Tiananmen MCIs represented a brain-drain rather than a refugee flow, that the humanitarian policy implicitly contained ideological and human capital concerns in addition to humanitarian concerns, and that Canada benefited from the policy by obtaining human capital as well as satisfying its humanitarian obligations and ideological aspirations.", (excerpt)

"Technological and structural changes in the Australian economy have led to a decline in unskilled and semi-skilled employment and this has had a marked effect on labor market opportunities for immigrants.... This paper reviews the labor market experience of humanitarian program arrivals and considers the policy implications of high levels of unemployment among this group. It is suggested that humanitarian obligations do not end with entry to Australia, and it is in the interests of the receiving society and humanitarian program arrivals for greater public investment in skills development to help improve labor market outcomes among this group.", (excerpt)

"In this paper we investigate what affects school attendance and child labour in an LDC, using data for Zambia.... The empirical analysis suggests that both economic and sociological variables are important determinants for the choice between school attendance and child labour. In particular, we find some support for the hypothesis that poverty forces households to keep their children away from school.", (excerpt)

"By analysing how unauthorized Mexicans compare with seven other ethno-racial groups in Los Angeles County, separately and collectively, by educational attainment and time spent in the U.S., we find that unauthorized Mexicans had relatively fewer years of formal education (either in the U.S. or in Mexico) and had been in the U.S. a relatively fewer number of years than in-migrants of other ethno-racial backgrounds in 1990. These findings are then used as proxies to compare the human capital endowments of different ethno-racial groups. We next estimate the number of unauthorized Mexicans by occupation, industry and class of worker, and compare these distributions with the total labour force and with the other ethno-racial groups in Los Angeles County.... Results show that amounts of human capital are positively related to the kinds of occupations filled." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA), (excerpt)

"Although the determinants of teenager participation in the labour market have been studied previously (both in the United States and the United Kingdom), there remain a number of neglected questions. We address some of these in this paper, basing our analysis on data taken from the UK National Child Development Study. We first examine how teenagers divide their time between working and studying. We further analyse what explains teenage wages and labour supply. We utilize a rich set of variables describing parental background, as well as parents' labour force status and draw on information on physical stature to explain variations in wages.", (excerpt)

"We study human capital depletion and formation in an economy open to out-migration, as opposed to an economy which is closed. Under the assumption of asymmetric information, the enlarged opportunities and the associated different structure of incentives can give rise to a brain gain in conjunction with a brain drain. Migration by high-skill members of its workforce notwithstanding, the home country can end up with a higher average level of human capital per worker.", (excerpt)

"Various hypotheses have been put forward in recent years concerning the contribution of human capital to economic growth. This paper argues that school enrolment rates--by far the most commonly used human capital measure in growth regressions attempting to test these hypotheses--conflate human capital stock and accumulation effects and lead to misinterpretations of the role of labour force growth. An alternative education-related human capital measure is constructed which is capable of distinguishing between stocks and flows. Applying this measure to samples of developed and less developed countries during the 1960-85 period suggests not only that there are important growth effects associated both with 'initial' stocks of, and subsequent growth in, human capital, but also that this new measure out-performs the simple school enrolment rates used in previous analyses.", (excerpt)

"This study examines similarities and differences in the determinants of stability for first marriages and remarriages. Focusing primarily on the role of investments in marriage-specific human capital, the paper develops several hypotheses about the effects of children from the current marriage, children from previous unions, and home-production skills. The empirical results, based on white and black respondents from the 1982 [U.S.] National Survey of Family Growth, are generally consistent with the hypotheses and underscore the importance of marriage-specific human capital as a determinant of union stability.", (excerpt)

"Children claim a large part of the parents' potential resources, particularly their time. Direct time costs arise through the time spent out of the labour force while the children are small, indirect costs are the result of lower investment into human capital. It is demonstrated in this paper that the average opportunity costs of children of lower educated mothers [in the Netherlands] can be higher than those of higher educated mothers.", (excerpt)

"Expenditures on human capital determinants in Kenya are analyzed using microdata. Specific expenditures on food, schooling, and medical care provide evidence of human capital formation activities of households. The analysis is focused on expenditure and distributional effects of household composition dimensions. To determine empirical magnitudes of the effects, a flexible form of a household expenditure function is estimated. The results of the analysis show that gender and age composition are important determinants of the level and distribution of human capital investments in a household. In addition, household budget allocation favors boys over girls for secondary school education. The policies implied by the findings are discussed.", (excerpt)

"A tax-transfer system deals with redistribution a PAYGmong generations and corrective taxation a PAYGt the same time. Since such a policy is a government's task, we take a normative approach and pose the question: Which tax-transfer system should a government apply to maximize social welfare? The framework we consider allows for endogenous demographic aspects...: first, fertility has a great impact on a PAYG [pay-as-you-go] financed pension insurance; and second, through education human capital is accumulated.... We analyzed the optimal extent of a public pension scheme in the presence of external effects of fertility and education on the net domestic product." Pension schemes in Germany and the United States are compared., (excerpt)

"In this paper, we formulate a statistical model of dynamic intrafamily investment behavior incorporating endowment heterogeneity and heritability. We use the model's estimates to evaluate alternative estimation procedures that have exploited family and kinship data to obtain estimates of the determinants of human capital." The sequential decision-making framework developed is applied to data on birthweight and gestation of children born to mothers surveyed in the U.S. National Survey of Labor Market Experience youth cohort. "The empirical results imply that the least restrictive statistical formulation, consistent with dynamic behavior and heterogeneity among siblings, fits the data best. All of the estimation procedures that control for a family-specific endowment indicate, however, that the biological effect of having a birth at younger ages is to marginally increase birthweight and to increase fetal growth.", (excerpt)

This paper analyzes the impact of internal migration on earnings within the human capital model framework. Since migrants constitute a non-random sample of population, the endogenous nature of migration decision warrants necessary correction for the selectivity bias in their earnings function. The Mincer-type earnings model is thus augmented to determine the extent of this bias. Besides estimating the standard Mincerian earnings model, the paper also attempts to verify the learn-as-you-go proposition by introducing migration duration variables in the earnings model. Based on the household level Population, Labor Force, and Migration (1979-80) survey data, the analysis yields the following important conclusions: (i) the data allowed a meaningful estimation of Mincerian earnings function for migrants and non-migrants; (ii) the level of schooling was one of the important determinants of the distribution of income both for migrants and nonmigrants--the four categorical variables of education were in general statistically significant with expected signs, implying that the hypothesis of a positive relationship between income and education was accepted; (iii) the rates of return to education improved systematically with higher levels of education, thus confirming the notion that education serves as a signalling device; (iv) the age-income profile was almost linear for migrants but showed concavity for nonmigrants; (v) the presence of sample-selection was observed for migrants; and (vi) even after controlling for the influence of personal characteristics, i.e., education and experience, the long-standing migrants earned relatively more at the destination than the more recent migrants.

"Earnings differentials between married and unmarried [U.S.] men have been declining since the late 1960s. We consider two possible explanations for this decline: changes in the nature of selection into marriage; and changes in role specialization within marriage. Our analysis of changes in marriage differentials within cohorts supports only a small contribution of changes in selection. There is some evidence that differences in human-capital investment between married and unmarried men have fallen over time, but this effect has apparently been largely offset by increases in the return to that human capital." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America., (excerpt)

"This paper examines the impact of immigrants on the income of various groups of resident workers in the United States and Europe. Our approach features the use of a production technology incorporating education, experience, and unskilled labor as inputs.... We find that in both United States and European production, education, unskilled labor and experience are complementary inputs. Based on these results, simulations of the impact of immigration on residents are carried out. The absolute magnitude of these effects is found to be very small.", (excerpt)

"This paper investigates the hypothesis that ethnicity has spillover effects on the human capital accumulation process. It extends previous research by documenting the extent to which the relative importance of parental inputs and ethnic spillovers in the intergenerational transmission of skills differs both within and across immigrant and U.S.-born ethnic groups. Using data drawn from the General Social Surveys, the study documents that the second and third generations (i.e., the children and grandchildren of immigrants) experience relatively more rapid economic advancement than do other generations, and that ethnic spillovers play a stronger role in households which are at the extremes of the skill distribution.", (excerpt)

"South Africa has experienced a significant continuous outflow of professional and technical skills in recent decades. The international marketability of such skills has encouraged a 'brain drain' phenomenon of the type which is common from other developing countries.... The most popular destinations are the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. This paper examines aspects of the phenomenon, with particular reference to the South African community now domiciled in Australia.", (excerpt)

"This paper examines the economic policy implications of international migration and human capital accumulation within a dynamic general equilibrium model. Each country produces by means of physical and human capital of two types (skilled and unskilled labour). Along optimal growth paths in a world of diverging population growth rates immigration can only be beneficial when the free rider effect (i.e., not paying for training costs) exceeds the capital dilution effect of an increase in population growth. Under quite general conditions the optimal immigration rate is zero.", (excerpt)

"With the availability of Population, Labour Force, and Migration (PLM) Survey data, this paper attempts to develop a model of internal [labor] migration in Pakistan.... Keeping in line with the literature, three types of variables have been identified as the possible determinants of migration. These variables relate to the possession of human capital, commitment to job and place of residence, and cost-related factors. After controlling for other variables, it was observed that, in general, migrants were selective especially in terms of age, education, and choice of occupation. These findings are consistent with the evidence from other developing countries.", (excerpt)

"This article examines the processes involved in the acquisition and transfer of human capital by Filipino overseas workers.... In the four major occupational groupings (seamen, production/construction workers, domestic helpers and entertainers), little homeward transmission of human capital has been identified.... Because of the high rate of unemployment in the economy, the outflow of workers has had no observable impact on domestic wage rates.", (excerpt)

"The relationships between trade, remittances from overseas workers and the domestic economy are examined for their implications for labor and trade policy [in the Philippines].... The limited use of remittances for real reproductive investments at the household level is associated with length of migration, reliance on overseas workers as a source of foreign exchange, and a failure to correct the structural imbalances of the economy.", (excerpt)

"Using 1940 to 1980 census data, this study investigates the effect of immigration on the earnings of U.S. born citizens. A modified version of human capital, and the equilibrium model provide the theoretical framework. Results show that when we look at cross-sections, for every decade studied, except 1940, immigration had positive effects on the earnings of native born Americans. After controlling for possible simultaneity bias, and using panel regression analysis, the author found different results. Although not completely eliminated, the impact of immigration was substantially reduced.", (excerpt)

"After summarizing the major features of the ASEAN labor market and patterns of labor migration in Asia, the article describes the origins and current status of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and its main mechanism, the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme." Possible trends in the migration of skilled and professional Philippine workers throughout the Asia-Pacific region are discussed., (excerpt)

"The present paper shows that in the case of temporary migration the optimal investment into country specific human capital should be lower than in the case of permanent migration. Investments may not be sufficient to allow migrants' earnings to catch up with those of native workers." Earnings profiles of temporary migrants in West Germany are analyzed and compared with those of permanent migrants in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Data concern the 1980s., (excerpt)

"This article addresses three questions: (1) Is the high rate of emigration of labor from the Philippines related to the country's trade policy? (2) Why have migration and accompanying remittances not made much of an impact on the growth and structure of the Philippine economy? (3) Would economic growth and structural change eventually curtail labor emigration? The Philippines' history of labor export and its economic development are contrasted with those of Asian NIEs [newly industrialized economies] which have adopted liberal trade regimes.", (excerpt)