DescriptionThis dissertation focuses on the importance of return migration for the sending and the receiving economies. Although an extensive literature has analyzed immigration, much less is known about the immigrants who choose to leave the host country and to return to their home country. Who are these returnees? What is the impact of this outflow of migrants on the host country labor market equilibrium? Using a dataset constructed from the Annual Reports of the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Chapter 2 studies the outflow of migrants from the U.S. between 1908 and 1957, and the impact of international labor movements on the U.S. labor market. Between 1900 and 1930 the outmigrants were primarily low skilled workers, although in the subsequent decades the outmigrants are progressively drawn from skilled occupations. This outflow is counter-cyclical, and partially reduces the labor market impact of the inflow of migrants. The third chapter analyzes the importance of self-selectivity in return migration from both the host country and the source country perspective. I study the nature of the selection process in return migration and in labor force participation of persons born in Puerto Rico (source economy) who return from the U.S. mainland (destination economy). Return migrants are negatively selected both in terms of observable and unobservable traits. Therefore, selective return migration persistently causes an underestimation of the wage process of the stayers in the U.S. The findings suggest that Puerto Ricans are able to sort across alternative locations based on their comparative advantage in each market. The fourth chapter studies the return choice of a cross-section of Mexican immigrants. In particular, it asks what would the immigrant wage distribution be in the absence of return migration. The overarching problem of this chapter is the development of a consistent estimator for this wage distribution. A semiparametric procedure is proposed. Mexican returnees are found to be middle to high wage earners, and return seem therefore to happen once individuals have reached their desired goals in the host country. In the absence of return migration the immigrant-native wage gap would be closing.