bank loan portfolios and the monetary transmission mechanism abstract we study the portfolio behavior of bank loans following a monetary tightening and find that real estate and consumer loans sharply decrease while commercial and industrial c i loans increase these responses are compared with responses following non monetary shocks which also reduce output but keep interest rates roughly unchanged during such a non monetary downturn c i loans sharply decrease while real estate and consumer loans show no substantial response these responses together with the responses of relevant lending rates are hard to reconcile with a decline in the supply of c i bank loans during a monetary downturn as stressed by the bank lending channel several arguments are presented explaining why the supply of c i loans may actually increase after a monetary contraction

unemployment growth and taxation in industrial countries unemployeement and taxes do taxes affect the rate of umemployeement to the layman the upward trend in european unemployment is related to the slowdown of economic growth we argue that the layman s view is correct the increase in european unemployment and the slowdown in economic growth are related because they stem from a common cause an excessively rapid growth in the cost of labour in europe labour costs have gone up for many reasons but one is particularly easy to identify higher taxes on labour if wages are set by strong and decentralized trade unions an increase in labour taxes is shifted onto higher real wages this has two effects first it reduces labour demand and thus creates unemployment secondly as firms substitute capital for labour the marginal product of capital falls over long periods of time this in turn diminishes the incentive to invest and to grow the data strongly support this view according to our estimates the observed rise of 14 percentage points in labour tax rates between 1965 and 1995 in the eu could account for a rise in eu unemployment of roughly 4 percentage points a reduction of the investment share of output of about 3 percentage points and a growth slowdown of about 0 4 percentage points a year francesco daveri and guido tabellini

group loyalty and the taste for redistribution interpersonal preferences preferences that depend on the characteristics of others are typically hard to infer from observable individual behavior as an alternative approach this paper uses survey data to investigate interpersonal preferences i show that self reported attitudes toward welfare spending are determined not only by financial self interest but also by interpersonal preferences these interpersonal preferences are characterized by a negative exposure effect individuals decrease their support for welfare as the welfare recipiency rate in their community rises and racial group loyalty individuals increase their support for welfare spending as the share of local recipients from their own racial group rises these findings help to explain why levels of welfare benefits are relatively low in racially heterogeneous states

who is against immigration a cross country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants abstract this paper empirically analyzes economic and noneconomic determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries the two survey data sets used covering a wide range of developed and developing countries make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country level attributes in particular theory predicts that the correlation between pro immigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it otherwise results based on direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition are consistent with these predictions noneconomic variables also are correlated with immigration attitudes but they don t alter significantly the labor market results

immigration ethnic diversity and political outcomes evidence from denmark i study the impact of immigration and increasing ethnic diversity on political outcomes in immigrant receiving countries focusing on immigration and election outcomes in danish municipalities 1981 2001 a rich set of control variables isolates ethnic diversity eects from those of other immigrant characteristics and a novel iv strategy based on historical housing stock data addresses issues of endogenous location choices of immigrants increases in local ethnic diversity lead to right ward shifts in election outcomes by shifting electoral support away from traditional big government left wing parties and towards anti immigrant nationalist parties in particular these eects appear in both local and national elections

conditional cash transfers and school dropout rates this paper evaluates a united kingdom pilot study designed to test whether a means tested conditional cash transfer paid to 16 to 18 year olds for staying in full time education is an effective way of reducing the proportion of school dropouts the transfer s impact is substantial in the first year full time education participation rates increase by around 4 5 percentage points while the proportion receiving two years of education increases by around 6 7 percentage points those receiving the full payment have the largest initial increase in participation and some evidence is found suggesting that part of the effect can be explained by liquidity constraints

social security and migration with endogenous skill upgrading abstract the aim of the paper is to investigate the joint redistributive effects of migration and pensions and to reassess the sustainability issue raised in the existing economic literature the paper first develops a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of international migration on the labour market the model allows for heterogeneity across native born individuals and for migrants to affect both the wages and the education decision in the recipient country it then explicitly focuses on pensions under alternative migration scenarios the analysis shows that migration causes redistributive effects which increase across group wage inequality however the endogenous educational response by residents partially offsets the redistributive impact of migration while creating additional interest groups migration helps the financial sustainability of the pension scheme but the interaction between migration and pensions causes complex inter and intragenerational redistributive conflicts which are analysed in the paper

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

immigration quotas and skill upgrading a reason why immigration policy is such a contended issue is that often immigrants end up obtaining the right to vote and hence may affect future policies this paper offers a dynamic general equilibrium model of immigration policy in each period a heterogeneously skilled population chooses an immigration policy by majority vote voters anticipate that immigration affects the skill premium and the skill composition of the electorate the main insight is the existence of a trade off between skill complementary immigration and the resulting shift in political power i argue that a reasonably parameterized version of the model is consistent with the main features of us immigration

the welfare state migration and voting rights this paper proposes a political economic analysis of public opinion in european union countries toward migrants from poor countries by focusing on redistributive policy the analysis sheds light on specific determinants of public opinion the theoretical analysis based on the median voter framework shows that one of the key variables affecting public opinion is the voting rights of migrants where migrants do not have the right to vote their presence negatively impacts the poorest natives in countries where migrants enjoy voting rights they are able to vote on redistributive policy therefore the impact of migration on natives welfare is fundamentally different after the theoretical analysis the paper proposes an empirical analysis of europeans attitudes toward non western migrants in european union countries this empirical analysis confirms the decisive impact of migrants voting rights it shows that in eu countries the more educated natives are significantly less favorable to migrants from poor countries when the latter have the right to vote

immigration and electoral support for the far left and the far right immigration has become one of the most divisive political issues in the united states the united kingdom france and several other western countries we estimate the impact of immigration on voting for far left and far right parties in france using panel data on presidential elections from 1988 to 2017 to derive causal estimates we instrument more recent immigration flows by past settlement patterns in 1968 we find that immigration increases support for far right candidates and has no robust effect on far left voting the increased support for far right candidates is driven by low educated immigrants from non western countries

on the ineffectiveness of tax policy in altering long run growth harberger s superneutrality conjecture abstract in 1964 harberger conjectured that although theory predicts that changes in tax rates affect investment and growth in the long run in practice tax policy is an ineffective instrument to influence growth this paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence in favor of this view the growth effects of tax policy in the class of endogenous growth models driven by human capital accumulation are examined and numerical simulations of these models confirm the results harberger predicted cross country panel regressions estimated using a new method for measuring effective tax rates produce significant investment effects from taxes that are consistent with negligible growth effects these results are robust to the introduction of other growth determinants

individual attitudes towards skilled migration an empirical analysis across countries it is commonly argued that skilled immigration benefits the destination country through several channels yet only a limited number of countries report having policies in place aimed at increasing the intake of skilled immigrants why in this paper we analyse the factors that affect a direct measure of individual attitudes towards skilled migration we focus on two main channels the labour market and the welfare state we find that more educated natives are less likely to favour skilled immigration consistent with the labour market channel while richer people are more likely to do so in accordance with the welfare state channel under the tax adjustment model our findings thus suggest that the labour market competition threat perceived by skilled natives in the host countries might be driving the observed cautious policies

the political economy of naturalization this paper presents a political economy model in which self interested natives decide when citizenship and or voting rights should be granted to foreign born workers native voters know that immigrants hold different political preferences and would thus tend to postpone their enfranchisement as much as possible they also consider however that a more restrictive naturalization policy may reduce the gains from immigration we find that the optimal timing of naturalization depends on the quantity quality productivity and preferences of potential immigrants the political composition and the age structure of the native population as well as the sensitivity of migration choices to the citizenship issue

the political economy of immigration in a direct democracy the case of switzerland abstract in this paper we analyze the determination of immigration policy in a direct democracy setting we formulate a model of voting and participation behavior integrating instrumental and expressive motivations the model is estimated using data drawn from a survey carried out after a vote in switzerland in 2000 on a popular initiative proposing to implement immigration restrictions the model enables us to recover estimates of participation costs and preferences towards immigration and analyze how these preferences are translated into actual voting outcomes the results reveal a substantial gap participation bias between attitudes towards immigration in the general population 43 favorable to restrictions and the outcome of the vote 26

does the welfare state affect individual attitudes toward immigrants evidence across countries abstract this paper analyzes welfare state determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries and their interaction with labor market drivers of preferences we consider two mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of immigration under the first model immigration has a larger impact on high income individuals while under the second one low income individuals are those most affected individual attitudes are consistent with the first welfare state model and with labor market determinants in countries where immigration is unskilled income is negatively correlated with pro immigration preferences while skill is positively correlated with them these relationships are reversed in economies characterized by skilled migration

sovereign debt migration pressure and government survival as soon as the sovereign debt crisis began it was widely understood that germany s response would dictate its ultimate resolution whereas the initial round of bailouts stabilized markets and pres

bridging trade theory and labour econometrics the effects of international migration this paper surveys current theoretical and empirical research on international migration with a particular emphasis on the links between trade theory and labour empirics

effective tax rates in macroeconomics cross country estimates of tax rates on factor incomes and consumption abstract this paper proposes a method for computing tax rates using national accounts and revenue statistics using this method we construct time series of tax rates for large industrial countries the method identifies the revenue raised by different taxes at the general government level and defines aggregate measures of the corresponding tax bases this method yields estimates of effective tax rates on factor incomes and consumption consistent with the tax distortions faced by a representative agent in a general equilibrium framework these tax rates compare favorably with existing estimates of marginal tax rates and highlight important international differences in tax policy

loan commitments and optimal monetary policy abstract with loan commitments negotiated in advance the use of tight money to restrain nominal spending has asymmetric effects upon different categories of borrowers this can reduce efficiency even though aggregate demand is stabilized an equilibrium model of financial intermediation with loan commitments is developed and used to analyze the welfare consequences of alternative monetary policies if demand uncertainty relates primarily to the number of borrowers rather than to each one s demand for credit an interest rate smoothing policy is optimal

immigration and the welfare state immigrant participation in means tested entitlement programs this paper documents the extent to which immigrants in the united states over the past 30 years participate in the many programs that make up the welfare state the immigrant native difference in the probability of receiving cash benefits is small but the gap widens once other programs are included in the analysis 21 percent of immigrant households receive some type of assistance as compared with only 14 percent of native households the types of benefits received by earlier immigrants influence the types of benefits received by newly arrived immigrants hence there might be ethnic networks that transmit information about the availability of particular benefits to new immigrants excerpt

individual attitudes towards migration a re examination of the evidence recent economic research has highlighted the importance of labor market and welfarestate mechanisms in the explanation of individual attitudes towards immigration by contrast political scientists argue that attitudes are mostly determined by individual cultural values and beliefs this paper takes a fresh look at this debate and contains the following contributions to the literature first we address the problem that unobserved cultural values and beliefs might be correlated with education a potential source of bias in the estimations second we compile a detailed database on the education levels of immigrants and natives and on the degree of fiscal redistribution in european countries third our econometric estimates rely on a simple structural model taking individual heterogeneity with respect to education explicitly into account the structural model enables us to evaluate quantitatively the importance of the labor market and welfare state channels and of other individual factors such as cultural values and beliefs our results show that the labor market and welfare state mechanisms play a significant role in explaining individual attitudes however the quantitative importance of these two mechanisms turns out to be rather limited compared to other individual factors jel classification f22 j61

mr rossi mr hu and politics the role of immigration in shaping natives voting behavior using italian municipality level data on national elections and iv estimation strategy we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the center right coalition which has a political platform less favorable to immigrants additional findings are i the effect is heterogeneous across municipalities with different sizes ii the gain in votes for the center right coalition corresponds to a loss of votes for the center and center left parties a decrease in voter turnout and a rise in protest votes iii the relationship between immigration and electoral gains percolates to mayoral election at the municipality level iv cultural diversity competition in the labor market and for public services and political competition are the most relevant channels at work

educated preferences explaining attitudes toward immigration in europe recent studies of individual attitudes toward immigration emphasize concerns about labor market competition as a potent source of anti immigrant senti ment in particular among less educated or less skilled citizens who fear being forced to compete for jobs with low skilled immigrants willing to work for much lower wages we examine new data on attitudes toward immigration available from the 2003 european social survey in contrast to predictions based on conventional argu ments about labor market competition which anticipate that individuals will oppose immigration of workers with similar skills to their own but support immigration of workers with different skill levels we find that people with higher levels of educa tion and occupational skills are more likely to favor immigration regardless of the skill attributes of the immigrants in question across europe higher education and higher skills mean more support for all types of immigrants these relationships are almost identical among individuals in the labor force that is those competing for jobs and those not in the labor force contrary to the conventional wisdom then the connection between the education or skill levels of individuals and views about immigration appears to have very little if anything to do with fears about labor market competition this finding is consistent with extensive economic research show ing that the income and employment effects of immigration in european economies are actually very small we find that a large component of the link between educa tion and attitudes toward immigrants is driven by differences among individuals in cultural values and beliefs more educated respondents are significantly less racist and place greater value on cultural diversity than do their counterparts they are also more likely to believe that immigration generates benefits for the host economy as a whole

sustaining fiscal policy through immigration this paper explores the fiscal implications of immigration to the us and argues that immigration policy should be viewed as a vital part of fiscal policy in particular a case is made that skill

immigration integration and support for redistribution in europe immigration poses individual or collective economic risks that might increase citizen support for government redistribution but it can also generate fiscal pressure or undermine social solidarity to diminish such support these offsetting conditions obscure the net effects of immigration for welfare states this article explores whether immigration s effects are mediated by the economic and social integration of immigrants integration can be conceptualized and measured as involving the degree to which immigrants suffer unemployment rates depend on welfare state benefits and harbor social attitudes similarly to the native population such integration may alter how immigration reduces solidarity and imposes fiscal and macroeconomic pressures but does not much alter how immigration spurs economic risks for natives where migrants are more integrated by such measures immigration should have less negative or more positive implications for native support for government redistribution and welfare states than where migrants are less integrated the article explores these arguments using survey data for twenty two european countries between 2002 and 2010 the principal finding is that economic integration more than sociocultural integration softens the tendency of immigration to undermine support for redistributive policies

the effect of low skilled immigration on u s prices evidence from cpi data i exploit the large variation across u s cities and through time in the relative size of the low skilled immigrant population to estimate the causal effect of immigration on prices of nontraded goods and services using an instrumental variables strategy i find that at current immigration levels a 10 percent increase in the share of low skilled immigrants in the labor force decreases the price of immigrant intensive services such as housekeeping and gardening by 2 percent wage equations suggest that lower wages are a likely channel through which these effects take place however wage effects are significantly larger for low skilled immigrants than for low skilled natives implying that the two are imperfect substitutes

systematically biased beliefs about economics robust evidence of judgemental anomalies from the survey of americans and economists on the economy differences between the general public s positive economic views and economists resemble other judgemental anomalies laypeople and experts systematically disagree i analyse this puzzle using data from the survey of americans and economists on the economy the paper first tests and decisively rejects the hypothesis that the differences solely reflect economists self serving bias then it examines whether economists political ideology and party loyalties explain the disagreement if anything this slightly increases their magnitude the effect of economic training clearly falls but remains large after adding education to the set of control variables apparent biases robustness suggests that the anomaly is real

why are people more pro trade than pro migration i analyze individual attitudes towards trade and immigration in comparative terms i find that individuals are on average more pro trade than pro immigration across several countries i identify a key source of this difference the cleavage in trade preferences absent in immigration attitudes between individuals working in traded as opposed to non traded sectors

business loans and the transmission of monetary policy we study the transmission mechanism of monetary policy through business loans and illustrate subtle aspects of its functioning that relate to the contractual characteristics and the borrower lender types of loans we show that the puzzling increase in business loans in response to monetary tightening documented before the great recession is largely driven by drawdowns from existing commitments at large banks spot loans also rise and take a considerable amount of time to adjust banks nonetheless do curtail credit supply by shortening maturities of new loans following the great recession the mechanism has worked differently with loan responses to monetary tightening displaying a significant downward shift

the credit effects of monetary policy evidence using loan commitments in addition to the usual channels monetary policy may affect spending by changing the supply of bank loans and the creditworthiness of borrowers this paper tests for these credit effects using a contractual difference across commercial bank loans the author finds that bank loans not made under a commitment slow after tight policy while loans under commitment accelerate or are unchanged this divergence coincides with reports of tighter credit by lenders and by small firms suggesting the divergence reflects a reduction in the supply of credit to the firms without commitments rather than a reduction in their demand for loans

do concerns about labor market competition shape attitudes toward immigration new evidence abstract are concerns about labor market competition a powerful source of anti immigrant sentiment several prominent studies have examined survey data on voters and concluded that fears about the negative effects of immigration on wages and employment play a major role generating anti immigrant attitudes we examine new data from a targeted survey of u s employees in 12 different industries in contrast with previous studies the findings indicate that fears about labor market competition do not appear to have substantial effects on attitudes toward immigration and preferences with regard to immigration policy among this large and diverse set of voters

tax burden and migration a political economy theory and evidence abstract the extent of taxation and redistribution policy is generally determined as a political economy equilibrium by a balance between those who gain from higher taxes transfers and those who lose the standard theory of the size of government in a representative democracy links the tax burden to measures of the pre tax income inequality we develop in this paper a theory which encompasses the existing literature and provides a complementary channel linking the tax burden in the presence of migration to the fiscal leakage from native born to the migrants in a stylized model of migration and human capital formation we show somewhat against the conventional wisdom that low skill immigration can lead to a lower tax burden and less redistribution than would be the case with no immigration even though migrants naturally join the pro tax transfer coalition data on 11 european countries over the period 1974 1992 are consistent with the implications of the theory a higher share of low education immigrants in the population leads to a lower tax rate on labor income and less generous social transfers

deposit rate ceilings and monetary transmission in the us abstract establishing the existence and nature of changes in the conduct and transmission of monetary policy is key in understanding the remarkable macroeconomic performance of the us since the mid 1980s this paper presents evidence on a phenomenon of disintermediation occurring during the major recessions in the 1960s and 1970s but absent ever since and shows that disintermediation is closely linked to the existence of deposit rate ceilings under regulation q in a monetary dsge model that incorporates deposit rate ceilings as occasionally binding constraints the regulation alters the behavior of money aggregates and exacerbates the drop in economic activity following a monetary tightening the results of a threshold var lend support to the main theoretical predictions of the model

public pensions and voting on immigration in a recent paper scholten and thum 1996 analyze the impact of a pay as you go payg pension system with a fixed replacement ratio on the immigration policy in a democracy we extend the analysis of median voter s choice in two respects first in contrast to scholten and thum 1996 who assume myopic voting behavior our paper considers fully rational agents and provides a solution under this more complex behavioral assumption voting with rational agents yields a more liberal immigration policy than with myopic voters second we examine a different decision structure with a fixed contribution rate to the pension system in this case the majority rule leads to a completely different solution

migration and pension with international capital mobility abstract being relatively low earners migrants are net beneficiaries of the welfare state therefore in a static set up migration may be resisted by the entire native born population however it is shown that in a dynamic set up with a pension system which is an important pillar of any welfare state migration is beneficial to all income high and low and all age old and young groups

who is against a common market this paper develops a theory of the endogenous formation of a common market in a three country two factor political economy model in the status quo home and foreign implement nondiscriminatory policies toward international factor flows in order to maximize the domestic median voter s welfare then the two countries simultaneously hold referenda on a common market initiative leading to the removal of the pre existing policies for factor flows between the member countries while no coordination is imposed on policies vis a vis the rest of the world several interesting results emerge in a common market the returns on factors moving between the members are more likely to increase the larger is the import demand of one country relative to the factor supply of the exporting partner factors that do not relocate are more likely to see their returns decrease when flows are large and import demands are inelastic importantly for the common market to emerge as an equilibrium some factors must continue to experience enhanced protection when the integration process is completed this result highlights the potential tension between social desirability and the political feasibility of the integration process jel f1 f2 p16

growth in transition what we know what we don t and what we should abstract this essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from planned to market economy in central and eastern european and former soviet union countries we first establish stylized facts of the transition so far we then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition discussing explanations for the initial output fall and mediumterm issues such as optimal speed of transition disorganization institutions and sectoral reallocation as source of output dynamics we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts we conclude with suggestions for future research

preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities this paper explores how individual preferences for redistribution depend on future income prospects in addition to estimating the impact of individuals socioeconomic background and of their subjective perceptions of future mobility we employ panel data to construct dobjectivet measures of expected gains and losses from redistribution for different categories of individuals we find that such measures have considerable explanatory power and perform better than dgeneral mobilityt indexes we also find that preferences for redistribution respond to individual beliefs on what determines one s position in the social ladder ceteris paribus people who believe that the american society offers equal opportunities are more averse to redistribution d 2004 published by elsevier b v

bayesian methods for dynamic multivariate models if dynamic multivariate models are to be used to guide decisionmaking it is important that probability assessments of forecasts or policy projections be provided when identified bayesian vector autoregression var models are presented with error bands in the existing literature both conceptual and numerical problems have not been dealt with in an internally consistent way in this paper the authors develop methods to introduce prior information in both reduced form and structural var models without introducing substantial new computational burdens their approach makes it feasible to use a single large dynamic framework for example twenty variable models for tasks of policy projections copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

solving the price puzzle with an alternative indicator of monetary policy we identify the effects of monetary policy shocks on macroeconomic variables in vars using the divisia m4 measure of money as the policy indicator variable we obtain theoretically sensible responses whether or not a commodity price index is included thus we eliminate the well known empirical puzzles from the var by a novel choice in a policy variable rather than the usual attachment of an ad hoc variable

education policy in england the english education system performs well against a number of international benchmarks particularly in terms of school attainment and the performance of the higher education system but there are major issues for policy to contend with including a low staying on rate in post compulsory education a significant gap in attainment between social classes and poor work force skills much recent policy change and the very substantial increases in spending can be seen to flow from these imperatives and from the continued high returns to education in this country this paper concentrates on a few aspects of policy including the central roles of funding systems and public service agreement targets we argue inter alia that there are important policy complementarities and informational and incentive problems that could benefit from further attention and that the low staying on rates after 16 remain one of the key concerns of policy being both symptomatic of problems at earlier ages and a cause of later problems copyright 2004 oxford university press

attitudes toward highly skilled and low skilled immigration evidence from a survey experiment past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti immigrant sentiment among native citizens concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services we provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide u s survey the labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own we find instead that both low skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low skilled immigrants and this preference is not decreasing in natives skill levels the fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low skilled immigration more than poor natives and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure in terms of immigrant access to public services we find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low skilled immigration in general in states with high fiscal exposure poor rich natives are more less opposed to low skilled immigration than they are elsewhere this indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes overall the results suggest that economic self interest at least as currently theorized does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration the results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration

racial prejudice and labour market penalties during economic downturns do economic downturns encourage racist attitudes does this in turn lead to worse labour market outcome for minorities we assess these important questions using british attitude and labour force data the attitude data show that racial prejudice is countercyclical with the effect driven by large increases for high skilled middle aged working men a 1 point increase in unemployment is estimated to increase self reported racial prejudice by 4 points correspondingly the labour force data show that racial employment and wage gaps are counter cyclical with the largest effects also observed for high skilled men especially in the manufacturing and construction industries a 1 point increase in unemployment is estimated to increase the wage gap by 3 these results are entirely consistent with the theoretical literature which proposes that racial prejudice and discrimination are the result of labour market competition among individuals with similar traits and that the effects of this competition are exacerbated during periods of economic downturn

immigration wages and compositional amenities economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade since the two policies have symmetric effects on wages unlike trade however immigration changes the composition of the local population imposing potential externalities on natives while previous studies have focused on fiscal spillovers a broader class of externalities arise because people value the compositional amenities associated with the characteristics of their neighbors and co workers in this paper we present a new method for quantifying the relative importance of these amenities in shaping attitudes toward immigration we use data for 21 countries in the 2002 european social survey which included a series of questions on the economic and social impacts of immigration as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows we find that individual attitudes toward immigration policy reflect a combination of concerns over conventional economic impacts i e on wages and taxes and compositional amenities with substantially more weight on composition effects most of the difference in attitudes to immigration between more and less educated natives is attributable to heightened concerns over compositional amenities among the less educated

what drives u s immigration policy evidence from congressional roll call votes abstract immigration is today one of the most hotly debated policy issues in the united states despite marked divergence of opinion even within political parties several important reforms have been introduced in the post 1965 era the purpose of this paper is to carry out a systematic analysis of the drivers of the voting behavior of us representatives on immigration policy in the period 1970 2006 and in particular to assess the role of economic factors at the district level our findings suggest that representatives from more skilled labor abundant districts are more likely to support an open immigration policy towards the unskilled whereas the opposite is true for representatives from more unskilled labor abundant districts this evidence is robust to the introduction of an array of additional economic and non economic characteristics of the districts and suggests that a simple factor analysis model can go a long way in explaining voting on immigration policy

effect of secondary school fees on educational attainment in this study the heterogeneity of the fee abolition process in west german secondary schools is used to identify the effect of school fees on educational attainment and to obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of upper secondary education the analysis is based on representative individual level data from three annual surveys of the german mikrozensus while coefficients cannot be estimated precisely the results suggest that on average upper secondary school attainment increased by at least 8 percent in response to the fee abolition the educational attainment of females appears to be more price sensitive than that of males