Wealth and social gains followed, literacy soared, life-expectancy and incomes rose, and gradually Indians started decamping from villages to towns.

ECONOMIST: India

HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers have been decamping to Canary Wharf.

ECONOMIST: Local government

For others, it means decamping to The Carlyle Hotel or East Hampton, where things seem a bit more posh, if not more practical.

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Even within the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also boast a lot of financial muscle, and will not tolerate financial institutions decamping wholesale to the Emirates.

ECONOMIST: Finance in the Gulf

In 1992, a survey of those who had left New York found that fear of crime was easily the most common reason for decamping to the suburbs.

ECONOMIST: Urban sprawl

Melland says Pittsburgh has had to work to keep graduates from top schools like Carnegie Mellon from decamping to other cities, so companies there have hiked pay.

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"We have a lot of fun with it, " said Ms. Batiz, who's been decamping with her husband at the Waldorf. (So I suppose business has to be pretty good.) In fact, she said she got into a conversation on the hotel's taxi line with an elegant woman in a full-length mink who asked her the nature of her company.

WSJ: On the Scent of a Hit