heterogeneity and the evaluation of efficiency the case of italian universities a random parameters stochastic frontier model is applied to italian data in order to evaluate the cost function and efficiency of higher education institutions the method yields useful information about inter institutional variation in cost structure and technical efficiency returns to scale and scope are evaluated for the typical university and it is found that these returns are almost ubiquitously decreasing a finding with clear policy implications

on the relationship between corruption and migration empirical evidence from a gravity model of migration this paper shows the relationship between corruption and migration in particular countries with much corruption are shown to encourage emigration and discourage immigration because they provide worse and unpredictable economic conditions more insecurity and a lower quality of life this hypothesis is confirmed empirically with a cross sectional dataset with bilateral migration data covering 230 countries well known implications of the gravity model are confirmed here larger populations a common language and a common border increase migration while distance between two countries decreases migration furthermore education gdp per capita inflation in the destination country as well as corruption and education in the origin country can robustly explain migration corruption thus appears to be a push factor of migration

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

the cliometrics of international migration a survey abstract this is a survey of some of the key studies in the literature on international migration in history that may be described as cliometric this literature uses the concepts and approaches of applied economics to investigate a range of historical issues and there are strong parallels with the questions that have been addressed in the literature on contemporary migrations here i focus on the period 1850 1940 and chiefly on migration from europe to the new world the survey is organized around six themes that include the forces driving migration over time and across space the assimilation of migrants and their effects on wages and income distribution in source and destination countries and the evolution of immigration policy although this literature has drawn heavily on the tool kit of applied economists it also provides a wider perspective on many of the issues that concern migration today

a model of u k emigration 1870 1913 this paper develops a simple time series model of emigration and applies it to data for emigration from the united kingdom 1870 1913 the model is derived from a macroeconomic analysis of the migration decision and provides a specific functional form and dynamic structure it encompasses and explains many of the empirical findings of earlier research on the determinants of emigration over this historical period the results support the model strongly in most respects both wage rates and employment rates in the sending and in the receiving countries influenced fluctuations in emigration the short run fluctuations were driven largely by variations in employment rates while the long run level of emigration was determined largely by the relative wage

measuring and explaining cross country immigration policies summary the intensified international migration pressures of the recent decades prompted many developed countries to revise their immigration regulations and increase border controls however the development of these reforms as well as their effectiveness in actually managing immigration flows remain poorly understood the main reason is that migration regulations are hard to quantify which has prevented the construction of a universal measure of migration policy to fill this gap in the literature we construct an indicator of the restrictiveness of immigration entry policy across countries as well as a more comprehensive indicator of migration policy that also accounts for staying requirements and regulations to foster integration specifically we estimate a bayesian state space model to combine all publicly available data sources that are informative on migration policy this methodology allows us to account for measurement errors in the underlying indicators and increases data availability without imputations or other ad hoc manipulations the indexes that we obtain are then used to disentangle the factors determining the toughness of migration regulations our empirical framework accounts for cross country correlation in migration policies and combines elements from the median voter and interest group approach we find strong evidence of spatial correlation in particular in entry restrictiveness yet substantially less in overall immigration policy this suggests that there still remains a substantive national margin in immigration policies in particular in the less visible segments such as staying conditions and integration rights we also find indications of a global trend of increasing restrictiveness in migration entry policy after the financial crisis of 2007 08

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

multiproduct monopoly regulation and firm costs regulation of public utiilties has traditionally been justified on the grounds that firm long run average costs fall with increased output in these industries for this reason it has been argued that cost efficiency dictates that a single firm supply the product ideally regulation of public utilities prevents monopolistic pricing while still permitting the most cost efficient industrial structure a large amount of theoretical and applied research has shown however that regulation in these industries generally does not guarantee that regulated firm costs are held at the lowest possible level for a given amount of output it seems then that regulation results in a tradeoff between cost savings from efficient industrial organization and cost inefficiencies generically known as x inefficiencies in this paper a new dimension of this tradeoff is examined specifically the paper explores whether cost efficiencies that are thought to characterize multiproduct public utilities are offset by increased costs permitted by a lack of inter energy competition in the next section a framework is constructed that is capable of identifying the cost structure for multiproduct firms and its relationship to efficient industrial structure section iii examines the sources of multiproduct economies and diseconomies for regulated multiproduct public utilities the cost structure is then estimated in section iv for single and multiproduct electricity and natural gas utilities section v considers the implications of the empirical analysis

europe s tired poor huddled masses self selection and economic outcomes in the age of mass migration during the age of mass migration 1850 1913 one of the largest migration episodes in history the united states maintained a nearly open border allowing the study of migrant decisions unhindered by entry restrictions we estimate the return to migration while accounting for migrant selection by comparing norway to us migrants with their brothers who stayed in norway in the late nineteenth century we also compare fathers of migrants and nonmigrants by wealth and occupation we find that the return to migration was relatively low 70 percent and that migrants from urban areas were negatively selected from the sending population keep ancient lands your storied pomp cries she with silent lips give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these the homeless tempest tost to me i lift my lamp beside the golden door emma lazarus 1883

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

migration and institutions exit and voice from abroad a rapidly growing body of research examines the relationship between migration and institutions three strands of studies can be distinguished some studies focused on the role of domestic and foreign institutions in the decision to migrate others were interested by the impact of migration on institutional reforms in migrants countries of origin while the effect of migration on destination countries is largely documented recent studies focus on how migrants affect social and informal institutions in the destination countries this survey puts together these three strands of literature with three purposes first we offer a short definition and synthetic typology of institutions which provide a guide to understand several studies summarized and their results second our analysis is presented following the analytic framework exit voice and loyalty of hirschman in order to highlight the brain grain phenomenon for developing countries from an institutional point of view third we review the limited existing work on the very timely topic whether migrants are harmful or not to institutions in the host countries

institutions of higher education as multi product firms economies of scale and scope a multiple output cost function is estimated for institutions of higher education in the united states employing data for 1981 82 the authors flexible fixed cost quadratic function includes three outputs undergraduate teaching graduate teaching and research grants and one input price average faculty salaries results indicate the existence of scope economies at least up to a point for both public and private institutions of higher education ray economies of scale are more pronounced in the private sector and product specific economies of scale are observed only in the public sector for research and graduate teaching copyright 1989 by mit press

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

international migration and the role of institutions we study the determinants of international migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors other than economic and demographic fundamentals we evaluate the impact of political institutions and of those institutions specifically targeted at attracting migrants for a dataset on 19th century migration we find that economic and demographic differentials play a major role but that the quality of institutions also matter we produce evidence that both political and migration institutions represent significant factors of attraction even after controlling for their potential endogeneity through a set of instruments exploiting colonial history and the institutions inherited from the past

did colonization matter for growth an empirical exploration into the historical causes of africa s underdevelopment we investigate the impact of 20th century european colonization on growth we 5nd that colonial heritage as measured by the identity of the metropolitan ruler and by the degree of economic penetration matters for the heterogeneity of growth performances in africa colonial indicators are correlated with economic and sociopolitical variables that are commonly employed to explain growth and there are growth gains from decolonization colonial indicators also add signi5cant explanatory power to worldwide growth regressions and are correlated with the sub saharan africa and the latin america dummies c

market structure in the production of economics ph d s a century ago economics began to develop as a separate and significant part of the curriculum in american colleges and universities along with increased popularity and enrollment came the need for faculty specifically trained in economics a number of american scholars turned to europe germany in particular for their training and brought the german ph d back as a model for graduate education the first economics ph d s earned in this country were awarded by harvard 1875 yale 1877 and johns hopkins 1878 1 these first ph d s were two year degrees by 1900 economists had generally upgraded the ph d to three years beyond the baccalaureate degree consisting of two years of course work and another year for the dissertation graduate classes were taught in seminar format with considerable interaction between professors and students as the production process matured dissertations became longer more sophisticated and more specialized i e they were no longer the mark of a cultured gentleman but the demonstration of a professional skill 15 11 the newly formed american economic association began to keep track of doctoral candidates in economics in 1904 6 in 1904 there were 8 institutions which reported having men working on ph d s and by 1928 that number had increased to 27 2 while the american economic association did not tabulate the output of completed ph d s the national research council has compiled a database containing the number of ph d s by institution by year since 1920 their survey of earned doctorates indicates that 22 ph d s were awarded in economics by 6 different universities in 1920 by 1992 that number had grown to 910 ph d s from 123 different institutions

aggregate unemployment in italy 1960 1983 when compared with other countries experiences the italian performance on the unemployment front is interesting in many respects as indicated in table 1 the italian unemployment rate has been consistently above that of major western countries since the 1960s the differential in unemployment rates tended to decrease between the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s because the initial rise in unemployment following the oil shock was less pronounced in italy than in most other countries since that time the rise in unemployment has been pretty universal and steady but italian unemployment has risen somewhat faster than the average thus the differential with the oecd has grown from 1 percentage point to over 2 by the early 1980s though the eec as a whole has performed even worse in assessing these trends one should keep in mind that unemployment as well as many other italian statistics is subject to an unusual margin of error reflecting in part the large role played by the underground economy furthermore as for other countries the aggregate italian unemployment rate hides substantial differences in unemployment rates for different groups of people in society see section i below though extremely important such

factor endowments inequality and paths of development among new world economies whereas traditional explanations of differences in long run paths of development across the americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth human capital and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time we argue moreover that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments dating back to the era of european colonization we document through comparative studies of suffrage public land and schooling policies systematic patterns by which societies in the americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes and disadvantaging the bulk of the population by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities the clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across new world economies have persisted for centuries but also to the study of processes of long run economic growth past and present

modelling a regional economic system the case of lombardy baussola m 2007 modelling a regional economic system the case of lombardy regional studies 41 19 38 during recent years the demand for quantitative economic investigation to be used for policy analysis has grown rapidly in addition the european economic and monetary integration process has increased the economic impact of regional economies thus calling for analytical instruments aimed at supporting the decision making process a regional econometric model of lombardy s labour market was set up in which both labour demand and supply are endogenously determined and thus unemployment is determined by their interaction therefore labour demand in both the industrial sector and in private services is modelled while labour supply is split into two components that define respectively the participation rate and self employment the model simulations evaluate the response of the regional labour market in comparison with the national one to exogenous shocks depending on shocks in either demand or

subject mix and productivity in portuguese universities abstract recent changes in higher education especially associated with its massification have led to calls for more accountability and to an increasing need to evaluate universities performance however comparing universities with different subject mixes poses some significant problems in this article a linear mixed effect model methodology allowing for random effects at university level is used to measure the productivity of portuguese public universities taking into account their subject composition for a period of five years 1997 2001 the results show that subject mix is an important factor in explaining the variability in productivity between universities however even taking account of subject mix a lot of inefficiency is found in the system and a significant variability in productivity among universities exists

on the political economy of immigration the authors study how immigration policies that impose capital and skill requirements would be determined under majority voting when native agents differ in their wealth holdings and vote to maximize their income the results of the model calculations indicate that the native population will be polarized between those who would like an immigration policy to maximize the domestic capital labor ratio and those who would like an immigration policy that would minimize it

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

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

increasing returns labour utilization and externalities procyclical productivity in the united states and japan this paper investigates procyclical productivity and attempts to discriminate among several competing explanations the study focuses on the united states and japan since the different industrial relations in these two economies serve to cast a sharper light on the procyclical productivity debate labour hoarding evaluated through the introduction of a labour utilization proxy proves to be an important influence the interpretation of the role of external economies remains an open issue

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

economies of scale and scope in flemish secondary schools this study estimates a multiproduct translog cost function for the entire population of 1011 flemish secondary schools in order to determine the degree of ray and product specific dis economies of scale as well as the degree of dis economies of scope three types of schools and seven major study fields can be distinguished student loads in these study fields are used as outputs produced by the schools evidence is found for ray economies of scale for the three types of schools even at output levels of 300 of the actual means although the cost elasticities of six out of seven outputs are close to zero most of the values indicating the degree of product specific economies of scale are negative suggesting diseconomies of scale however this can be explained by the considerable scope effects which are incorporated in the definition of the product specific economies of scale

economies of scale and scope and the economic efficiency of china s agricultural research system this article investigates economies of scale and scope and other potential sources of improvements in the economic efficiency of china s crop breeding an industry at the heart of the nation s food economy using data covering 46 wheatand maize breeding institutes from 1981 to 2000 we estimate cost functions for the production of new varieties at china s wheat and maize breeding institutes our results indicate strong economies of scale along with small to moderate economies of scope related to the joint production of new wheat and maize varieties cost efficiency increases significantly with increases in the breeders educational status and with increases in access to genetic materials from outside the institute

an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations minford p stoney p riley j and webb b 1994 an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations reg studies 28 563 576 the paper estimates an econometric model of merseyside on annual data the model is derived from a heckscher ohlin framework for the traded sector set beside a non traded sector and facing a positively sloped supply curve of manual labour whose reservation wage is set by unemployment benefits with all other factor prices being set exogenously to the region through elastic supply the supply of manual labour responding to traded sector wages set by world market conditions determines the size of the region s output the model s fit over the past is acceptable though data is limited its simulation properties contrasting with those of previous demand driven models imply high returns to policies that reduce local costs such as taxes union mark ups and transport charges minford p stoney p riley j et webb b 1994 un modele econometrique de merseyside

income and democracy existing studies establish a strong cross country correlation between income and democracy but do not control for factors that simultaneously affect both variables we show that controlling for such factors by including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between income per capita and vari ous measures of democracy we present instrumental variables estimates that also show no causal effect of income on democracy the cross country corre lation between income and democracy reflects a positive correlation between changes in income and democracy over the past 500 years this pattern is con sistent with the idea that societies embarked on divergent political economic development paths at certain critical junctures jel d7 e 1