brain drain remittances and fertility this paper analyzes the effects of skilled migration and remittances on fertility decisions at origin we develop an overlapping generations model which accounts for endogenous fertility and education parents choose the number of children they want to raise and decide upon how many children obtain higher education only high skilled individuals migrate with a certain probability and remit to their parents we find that an increase in the probability to emigrate leads both high and low skilled parents to send more children to obtain higher education however the effect on the number of children is ambiguous in a further analysis we calibrate the model to match different characteristics of a developing economy when the destination country relaxes the immigration restrictions more high skilled individuals leave the origin country the result is that at origin increased high skilled emigration reduces fertility and fosters human capital accumulation

specific experience household structure and intergenerational transfers farm family land and labor arrangements in developing countries data from indian rural household survey was used to test th hypothesis that the coexistence in traditional rural societies of extended intergenerational families infrequent land sales and high reliance on family members as farm laborers is the result of the economic advantages which accrue from the knowledge gained by farming a particular ploy of land over a long period of time the land specific experience of elderly members of a intergenerational household who farmed the land as a child and then as an adult are expecially critical in adverse weather years most previous investigators attributed the existence of multigenerational households the use of family members rather than hired laboreds and the infrequency of land sales to deficiencies in the market i e labor market imperfections and an absence of capital insurance and asset markets in the present investigations these same characteristics are viewed as having an economic advantages a model for estimating the contribution of the experience of the elderly household members to agricultural profits was developed and applied to data from a 3 year panel study of 2900 indian rural farm households the data was collected between 1968 71 by the national council of applied economic research the survey collected information on farm profits farm inputs demographic characteristics and the effects of weather conditions on profits a major limitation of the study was a lack of information on the duration of land ownership age of household members was substituted as a proxy for duration of ownership findings were consistent withe the hypothesis in poor agricultural years gross returns for households which contained an elderly household member were greater than the gross returns for comparable households which did not contain an elderly member the economic advantages of specific knowledge embodied in the experienced elderly farmer were comparable to the economic advantages which accrued to households whose members were more educated the hypothesis cannot fully explain the existence of intergenerational families since there is a relatively large proportion of such families among nonfarm families in many countries including india findings suggest that intergenerational families may provide for more occupational diversity and thereby reduce income risks the specific experience hypothesis has policy implications if technological changes are introduced the value of specific experience may be lost and the frequency of intergenerational households may decline the hypothesis may also explain why farmers are reluctant to agree to land redistribution and consolidation schemes this reluctance may disappear after sufficient technological change has occurred

the determinants of migrant remittances this article explores the factors that account for variation in remittance flows why do some immigrants send much more money to their country of origin than others this is a question that in the aggregate has implications for national economies and migration related policy the analysis departs from the classic studies of remittances and considers how the context of contemporary migration in europe is likely to affect remittance patterns possible influences on remittance sending are disaggregated into nine domains and each is discussed with reference to theoretical arguments and empirical findings the temporal aspects of remittance sending are discussed separately the final section of the article considers implications of the micro level analysis for aggregate remittance flows and policy it is argued that the focus on altruism versus self interest in the literature has partly diverted attention from explaining the actual variation that is important in a policy perspective

boom and bust cycles external imbalances and the real exchange rate when the current account balance and net capital outflows do not exactly offset each other international payment flows arise payment flows into a country push the real exchange rate up payment outflows push it down this article uses a model of optimal consumption and portfolio choice to determine the factors that drive international payment flows during boom and bust cycles it shows that during such episodes capital inflows first exceed the deficit on current account strengthening the currency later on when the return on domestic capital reverts to its normal level the current account recovers yet the overall decline of the net foreign asset position provokes a fall of the real exchange rate even below its initial level case studies of countries experiencing rapid economic expansions followed by economic and financial meltdowns confirm the article s theoretical predictions

immigration and structural change evidence from post war germany does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high productivity sectors this paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic germans from eastern europe to west germany after world war ii as a natural experiment to study this question a simple two sector model of the economy in which moving costs prevent the marginal product of labor to be equalized across sectors predicts that immigration boosts output per worker by expanding the high productivity sector but decreases output per worker within a sector using german district level data from before and after the war we find strong empirical support for these predictions

the economics of forced migration abstract this article reviews the economics literature on the impacts of forced migration the literature is divided into two parts impacts on forced migrants and impacts on host communities studies exploring the impact of forced migration due to wwii suggest that the long term impact is often positive the literature for developing countries suggests that there are serious consequences of forced migration for those forced to migrate these consequences range from worse labour market outcomes to less consumption smoothing the impact on host communities seems to be mixed and there are winners and losers the article provides suggestions for future research

lending booms latin america and the world recent theories of crisis put lending booms at the root of financial collapses yet lending booms may be a natural consequence of economic development and fluctuations so are lending booms dangerous in this paper we investigate empirically this question using a broad sample of lending boom episodes over 40 years with a special eye for latin america our results indicate that 1 lending booms are often associated with i a domestic investment boom ii an increase in domestic interest rates iii a worsening of the current account iv a declines in reserves v a real appreciation vi a decline in output growth 2 typical lending booms do not increase substantially the vulnerability of the banking sector or the balance of payments comparing latin america and the rest of the world we find that latin america lending booms make the economy considerably more volatile and vulnerable to financial and balance of payment crisis

vulnerability of victims of civil conflicts empirical evidence for the displaced population in colombia summary internal conflicts and the forced displacement often caused by such conflicts impose a heavy burden on the civilian population and greatly damage a community s overall welfare the present study employs a household level survey administered to 2 322 colombian displaced households to estimate changes in household welfare after displacement and to assess aggregate consumption levels in destination sites we also assess whether households are able to smooth consumption and we analyze the strategies they are compelled to adopt in order to cope our results indicate that victims of civil conflict face difficulties in generating income are unable to rely on usual risk sharing mechanisms and are forced to draw upon costly coping strategies in order to smooth consumption the vulnerability of displaced households and the possibility of falling into poverty traps highlight the need to design and implement specific policies for victims of internal conflict in order to cope with the displacement shock

the impact of internal displacement on destination communities evidence from the colombian conflict abstract more than ten percent of the population of colombia has been forced to migrate due to civil war this study employs an enclave iv strategy which exploits social distance between origin and destination locations as well as conflict induced migration to estimate the impact that the arrival of displaced individuals has on the wages of local residents i compare the effects on four different subgroups of the population partitioned by skill low skilled versus high skilled and by gender the analysis suggests that a conflict induced increase in population leads to a short run negative impact on wages but that subsequent out migration from receiving municipalities helps to mitigate these effects though the impact tends to dissipate over time it persists for low skilled women suggesting that this group is particularly vulnerable to the arrival of forced migrants

risk pooling between households and risk coping measures in developing countries evidence from rural bangladesh abstract using data from rural bangladesh i test whether income risks are pooled among villagers between neighboring households and between related households living in different villages i find evidence that risks to food consumption are pooled between neighboring households and between related households but not among villagers as for nonfood consumption i find little evidence of risk pooling except between unrelated neighboring households i also find that while households belonging to a neighborhood network do not take any special measures during an economic hardship those not belonging to any such network try to smooth consumption by selling off livestock and other assets and by getting interest free loans negative income shocks are found to have little effect on labor supply or private transfers

the current account in the macroeconomic adjustment process macroeconomic adjustments to changes in the economic environment are to a large extent conditioned by the intertemporal choices of economic agents when agents face an intertemporal budget constraint a decision to alter current indebtedness implies changes in future consumption possibilities and will be based on expectations of the entire future path of key variables and not only current variables a formal model to show how today s current account is a function of both current and future economic variables is presented the determination of the current account under classical assumptions of market clearing and continuous full employment is emphasized

u s real exchange rate fluctuations and relative price fluctuations abstract traditional theory attributes fluctuations in real exchange rates to changes in the relative price of nontraded goods this paper studies the relation between the united states bilateral real exchange rate and the associated bilateral relative price of nontraded goods for five of its most important trade relationships we find that this relation depends crucially on the choice of price series used to measure relative prices and on the choice of trade partner the relation is stronger when we measure relative prices using producer prices rather than consumer prices the relation is stronger the more important is the trade relationship between the united states and a trade partner even in cases where there is a strong relation between the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontraded goods however a large fraction of real exchange rate fluctuations is due to deviations from the law of one price for traded goods

agricultural outputs and conflict displacement evidence from a policy intervention in rwanda abstract in 1997 rwanda introduced a resettlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts i exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict induced displacement and the resettlement policy on household agricultural output and on skill spillover mechanisms between returnees and stayers i find that returns to on farm labor are higher for returnees relative to stayers although the evidence suggests that the policy contributed little additional effect to this differential more speculatively these differentials suggest that upon return from conflict induced exile returnees are more motivated to increase their economic performance

assessing the direct and spillover effects of shocks to refugee remittances abstract we examine the impact of exogenously shutting down remittances to kakuma refugee camp in northern kenya during 2015 we find that the remittance shutdown did not reduce refugee consumption on average however it did decrease consumption of households that previously received remittances through the networks that were closed while simultaneously increasing consumption for those who continued to receive remittances through other mechanisms the shutdown also resulted in decreases in the probability of consuming a variety of goods by the host population particularly those with livelihoods linked to the refugee camp these findings underscore the tight links between refugee camps and surrounding communities and are a testament to the multiplier effects of remittances

currency fluctuations in the post bretton woods era the international monetary landscape that has emerged since the felling of bretton woods is characterized by a hybrid exchange rate system that lies somewhere between the textbook polar cases of a gold standard and a pure float this system has relatively flexible exchange rates between major countries active central bank intervention in the market for the major currencies and predominantly fixed exchange rates relative to the dollar or to some basket of currencies for less developed countries and newly industrializing nations the majority of research on currency markets since the early 1970s has focused on the characteristics of flexible exchange rates under this hybrid regime my thesis is that this research has been unsuccessful the proportion of monthly or quarterly exchange rate changes that current models can explain is essentially zero even after the fact forecasts that use actual values instead of forecasted values of the explanatory variables cannot explain major currency movements over the post bretton woods era this result is quite surprising since exchange rate changes would be entirely unpredictable only in very special cases of the theoretical models discussed as the discussion below will argue it is not a general implication of market efficiency that exchange rates follow a random walk process 1

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

extended families and child well being studies of household behavior have established the distribution of resources among household members predicts spending and savings patterns however there is a paucity of evidence on the relationship between the well being of individual family members and the distribution of resources within an extended family including non co resident family members given the central role the family plays in many models of economic behavior this is an important gap in the literature using rich longitudinal survey data from the indonesia family life survey ifls evidence is presented on the relationship between three measures of health and education related human capital of children and the distribution of resources among extended family members ifls is ideally suited for this research since the survey collects detailed information about income and wealth from both coresident and non co resident family members the empirical model is founded on a natural extension of the collective model of household decision making chiappori 1988 1992 to the extended family the model is particularly appealing in this context because it places few restrictions on preferences of individual family members and does not specify a specific bargaining mechanism that underlies negotiations the collective model yields empirical tests of whether the behavior of family members is pareto efficient a special case of the model allows all family members to be completely altruistic which is observationally equivalent to a unitary model of family behavior that special case is rejected by the data however the restrictions of the efficient model are not rejected indicating that non co resident family members are able to co ordinate allocation decisions with respect to child human capital investments in such a way as to make no family member better off without another member being worse off

optimal sequencing of credible reforms with uncertain outcomes abstract we study a two period representative agent economy in which economic liberalization is modeled as adding a positive random variable to the marginal product of capital we show liberalization always raises the expected utility of agents agents may respond to this by increasing consumption in the first period consequently consumption in the second period is sometimes smaller than the in the first depending on the realization of the random variable this tail may cause the government to reject liberalization of declining gdp enters negatively in the government s objectives we apply these results to the chilean experience of the 1980s

displaced populations humanitarian assistance and hosts a framework for analyzing impacts on semi urban households summary this paper presents a framework for understanding the impacts of civil war displaced populations and humanitarian assistance on host populations in semi urban areas our model shows that under conditions of conflict where populations flow from rural to urban areas and food aid follows changes in food housing and labor markets result in changes to local prices which will potentially impoverish consumers but provide earning opportunities for property owners and suppliers of non tradable goods and that the price dynamics are likely to induce significant land use change we combine satellite price aid delivery and population inflow data with qualitative interviews from nyala darfur the data confirm the hypotheses and the paper discusses possible policy responses

currency crashes in emerging markets an empirical treatment we use a panel of annual data for over 100 developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes we define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation we examine the composition of the debt as well as its level and a variety of other macroeconomic factors external and foreign crashes tend to occur when output growth is low the growth of domestic credit is high and the level of foreign interest rates are high a low ratio of fdi to debt is consistently associated with a high likelihood of a crash

civil conflict and forced migration the micro determinants and welfare losses of displacement in colombia summary forced displacement in colombia has soared due to the escalating internal conflict the purpose of this paper is twofold first to identify adequate instruments for addressing the problem of displacement by estimating its determinants and comparing these findings with the standard migration literature second to estimate its welfare losses thus providing evidence as to whether the response to this problem has been proportional to its size we find that the welfare losses caused by displacement are 37 of the net present value of rural lifetime aggregate consumption our empirical findings also show that a violent environment modifies the net benefits of migration

a gravity model of remittance determinants evidence from latin america and the caribbean abstracta gravity model of remittance determinants evidence from latin america and the caribbean regional studies this paper constructs a microeconomic model of the motivation for remittances and uses it to explore the macroeconomic determinants in addition a new measure of bilateral remittances is used to estimate a gravity model of remittances for 27 latin american and caribbean countries and 18 industrialized countries the results suggest remittances are motivated by a combination of altruism and self interest both of which are encapsulated by economic and non economic variables

financial flows financial crises and global imbalances abstract in this lecture i document the proliferation of gross international asset and liability positions and discuss some consequences for individual countries external adjustment processes and for global financial stability in light of the rapid growth of gross global financial flows and the serious risks associated with them one might wonder about the continuing relevance of the net financial flow measured by the current account balance i argue that global current account imbalances remain an essential target for policy scrutiny for financial as well as macroeconomic reasons nonetheless it is critically important for policymakers to monitor as well the rapidly evolving structure of global gross assets and liabilities

volatile capital flows and financial integration the role of moral hazard abstract we study a model in which income and capital flows between countries are jointly determined in a world economy with integrated financial markets in a setting that combines risky entrepreneurial activity with moral hazard we find that a shift from autarky to financial integration leads to boom bust cycles in capital flows output and consumption moral hazard causes cycles because financial intermediaries incentivize effort by insisting entrepreneurs take an equity share in their own projects the size of this stake rises with wealth discouraging entrepreneurship and inhibiting capital formation the reverse is true when wealth falls generating cycles

the impact of forced displacement on host communities a review of the empirical literature in economics the paper reviews 49 empirical studies that estimate the impact of forced displacement on host communities a review of the empirical models used by these studies and a meta analysis of 762 separate results collected from them are the main contributions of the paper coverage extends to 17 major forced displacement crises that occurred between 1922 and 2015 to host countries at different levels of economic development and different types of forced migrants the focus is on outcomes related to household well being prices employment and wages all studies can be classified as ex post quasi natural experiments the analysis on empirical modeling shows a preference for partial equilibrium modeling differences in differences evaluation methods and cross section econometrics with all these choices largely dependent on the type of data available the meta analysis on household well being shows that between 45 and 52 percent of the results are positive and significant indicating a net improvement in household well being an additional 34 to 42 percent of the results are found to be nonsignificant and 6 to 20 percent show a decrease in household well being the analyses on employment and wages show positive and significant improvements for 12 to 20 percent of the results nonsignificant results in 63 percent of the cases and negative and significant results for 22 to 25 percent of the results negative results on employment and wages relate to young and informal workers in middle income countries the results on prices show asymmetric behavior across types of products overall the probability of having a negative outcome for host communities in the consumer and labor markets is below 20 percent

motives for private transfers over the life cycle an analytical framework and evidence for peru abstract this paper tests for the motives for private income transfers we consider two motives altruism and exchange the question of private transfer motives is important because such motivation can influence the effects of public income transfers on the distribution of income using a household survey for peru we find that transfer amounts received increase with recipient pre transfer income which contradicts a key prediction of the strong form of the altruism hypothesis but is consistent with exchange we also find that capital market imperfections are likely to be an important cause of private transfers and that social security benefits crowd out the incidence of private transfers

remittances and the brain drain revisited the microdata show that more educated migrants remit more two of the most salient trends in migration and development over the last two decades are the large rise in remittances and in the flow of skilled migrants however recent literature based on cross country regressions has claimed that more educated migrants remit less leading to concerns that further increases in skilled migration will impede remittance growth micro data from surveys of immigrants in 11 major destination countries are used to revisit the relationship between education and remitting behavior the data show a mixed pattern between education and the likelihood of remitting and a strong positive relationship between education and amount remitted intensive margin conditional on remitting at all extensive margin combining these intensive and extensive margins yields an overall positive effect of education on the amount remitted for the pooled sample with heterogeneous results across destinations the micro data allow investigation of why the more educated remit more showing that the higher income earned by migrants rather than family characteristics explains much of the higher remittances migration brain drain and education

on migration and risk in ldcs the authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural urban migration in developing countries this hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk averse small farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio an additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level annotation

the management nexus of imperfect duty kantian views of virtuous relations reasoned discourse and due diligence a nexus of imperfect duty defined as positive commitments that have practical limits describes business behavior toward building affable and virtuous relations maintaining reasoned social discourse and performing the due diligence necessary for making knowledgeable business decisions a theory of the development and extent of the limits of these imperfect managerial duties is presented here a theory that in part explains the activities and personnel included under the firm s umbrella as a result the nexus of imperfect duty is shown to complement the perfect duty based nexus of contracts theory of the firm the existence of flexible trade offs involving these duties trade offs limited by contractual arrangements whether explicit or implicit is shown to be one of the advantages of imperfect duty for developing business relations

the labor market impacts of forced migration during the 1990s the kagera region of tanzania experienced a forced migration shock a series of geographical barriers led to a higher concentration of forced migrants in some parts of the region relative to others resulting in a natural experiment using panel data pre and post forced migration shock we find that greater exposure to the refugee shock resulted in tanzanians having a lower likelihood of working outside the household as employees however employees more affected by the shock had a higher probability of being in professional occupations and being part of a pensions program

are refugees different from economic immigrants some empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of immigrant groups in the united states this paper analyzes how the implicit difference in time horizons between refugees and economic immigrants affects subsequent human capital investments and wage assimilation the analysis uses the 1980 and 1990 integrated public use samples of the census to study labor market outcomes of immigrants who arrived in the united states from 1975 to 1980 i find that in 1980 refugee immigrants in this cohort earned 6 less and worked 14 fewer hours than economic immigrants both had approximately the same level of english skills the two immigrant groups had made substantial gains by 1990 however refugees had made greater gains in fact the labor market outcomes of refugee immigrants surpassed those of economic immigrants in 1990 refugees from the 1975 1980 arrival cohort earned 20 more worked 4 more hours and improved their english skills by 11 relative to economic immigrants the higher rates of human capital accumulation for refugee immigrants contribute to these findings

why stakeholder and stockholder theories are not necessarily contradictory a knightian insight the normative foundations of the investor centered model of corporate governance represented in mainstream economics by the nexus of contracts view of the firm have come under attack mainly by proponents of normative stakeholder theory we argue that the nexusof contracts view is static and limited due to its assumption of price output certainty we attempt a synthesis of the nexus of contracts and the knightian views which provides novel insights into the normative adequacy of the investor centered firm implications for scholarship and management practice follow from our discussion

forced displacement and technology adoption an empirical analysis based on agricultural households in bosnia and herzegovina we use the bosnian living standards measurement study lsms survey to show that conflict induced displacement of agricultural households dramatically affects the adoption of new technologies in agriculture we exploit the heterogeneity in the level of violence in the pre war location to account for selection bias this natural experiment seems to be a source of exogenous variation in our case because violence aims at ethnic cleansing without economic consideration we find that the displaced are less likely than stayers to adopt fertiliser and pesticide

economic consequences of forced displacement abstractover 42 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their communities though little is known about the impact of this movement on livelihoods i use a panel data set and exploit a geographic discontinuity to explore the effects of displacement in uganda i find that displaced households experience a significant initial decrease in consumption two years after households returned home displaced households still lag behind however households in the top quartiles of pre displacement assets have recovered some of their consumption though with significantly reduced education and wealth levels there is likely little or no recovery for the poorest households

displacement due to violence in colombia a household level analysis abstract civil wars and ethnic conflicts have resulted in an estimated number of approximately 35 million refugees and internally displaced persons worldwide understanding the determinants of forced migration is an important prerequisite for the definition of appropriate policies of prevention assistance and relocation we develop a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of displacement decisions at the household level while similarities to conventional migration theories exist there are also important differences implied by the presence of violent conflict for example risk aversion and lack of information may hamper conventional migration but enhance displacement factors such as landholdings and social capital at the place of origin may not only reduce displacement in the conventional sense of raising opportunity costs but may also spur displacement indirectly by increasing the household s likelihood of becoming the victim of direct threats for the case of colombia we conduct an econom

rational and self fulfilling balance of payments crises speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes occur ifasset price paths are to be free of abnormal profit opportunities suchattacks are fully rational as they reflect the market s response to aregime breakdown that is inevitable the authors shows that under someexpectations about policy balance of payments crises can also be purely self fulfilling events in such cases even a permanently viableregime may collapse and the economy will possess multiple equilibriacorresponding to different subjective assessments of the probability ofa crisis the behavior of the domestic interest rate will naturally reflect the possibility of a speculative attack copyright 1986 by american economic association

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

current accounts in debtor and creditor countries the authors reexamine a classic question in international economics what is the current account response to a transitory income shock such as a temporary improvement in the terms of trade a transfer from abroad or unusually high production to answer this question they construct a world equilibrium model in which productivity varies across countries and international borrowing and lending take place to exploit good investment opportunities despite its conventional ingredients the model generates the novel prediction that favorable income shocks lead to current account deficits in debtor countries and current account surpluses in creditor countries evidence from thirteen oecd countries broadly supports this theoretical prediction

shareholder theory and kant s duty of beneficence this article draws on the moral philosophy of immanuel kant to explore whether a corporate duty of beneficence to non shareholders is consistent with the orthodox shareholder theory of the firm it examines the ethical framework of milton friedman s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well being of non shareholders as a corporate objective the article examines kant s distinction between duties of right and duties of virtue the latter including the duty of beneficence and investigates their consistency with the shareholder theory the article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non shareholders furthermore shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm s activities on non shareholding stakeholders

capital inflows and asset prices evidence from emerging asia abstract the withdrawal of foreign capital from emerging countries at the height of the recent financial crisis and its quick return sparked a debate about the impact of capital flow surges on asset markets this paper addresses the response of property prices to an inflow of foreign capital for that purpose we estimate a panel var on a set of asian emerging market economies for which the waves of inflows were particularly pronounced and identify capital inflow shocks based on sign restrictions our results suggest that capital inflow shocks have a significant effect on the appreciation of house prices and equity prices capital inflow shocks account for roughly twice the portion of overall house price changes they explain in oecd countries we also address cross country differences in the house price responses to shocks which are most likely due to differences in the monetary policy response to capital inflows

collapsing exchange rate regimes some linear examples abstract we construct a pair of linear examples to study the collapse time of a fixed exchange rate regime the first example is a perfect foresight continuous time model which allows calculation of the exact collapse time and the tracking of reserves the second example is a discrete time stochastic model which yields an endogenous probability distribution over the collapse time and produces a forward discount of the exchange rate

conflict displacement and labor market outcomes in post war bosnia and herzegovina abstract the war in bosnia and herzegovina of the early nineties displaced 1 3 million people this study uses longitudinal data to document the effects of this displacement on labor market outcomes to account for endogeneity in displacement i exploit the fact that the level of violence affected the decision to leave and that pre war economic performance is orthogonal to local violence levels i find that displaced bosnians are less likely to be working relative to the people who stayed displaced men experience higher unemployment levels and displaced women are more likely to drop out of the labor force

accounting for u s real exchange rate changes this study measures the proportion of u s real exchange rate movements that can be accounted for by movements in the relative prices of nontraded goods the decomposition is done at all possible h

aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies as a violation of their moral duty to obey the law a kantian rationale managers of multinational companies often favour an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws the public and media debate whether such aggressive behaviour is immoral aggressive tax avoidance is a subset of the aggressive legal interpretations potentially observable in all fields which places little weight on the will of a democratically legitimized legislation a thorough ethical analysis based on the deontological approach of kant demonstrates that aggressive tax avoidance as a special case of operating on the edge of legal boundaries is potentially immoral applying the kantian contradiction of conception or will test shows that this maxim might not be conceived or willed as a general law of nature if all natural or legal persons aggressively interpret laws on all subjects and in every imaginable situation then central principles of the system of law we all rely upon would be severely compromised therefore aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies may violate the managers moral duty to obey not only the letter but also the intention or spirit of the law the validity of the argumentation depends critically on the formulation and interpretation of the respective maxims and on assumptions about the legal system preserving central elements of kantian philosophy the article demonstrates the complexity of a philosophical argumentation which tries to justify the moral intuitions that underpin the common negative evaluation of aggressive legal strategies in business

returning home after civil war food security and nutrition among burundian households abstractthis paper investigates the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households hhs using the 2006 core welfare indicator survey for burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non displaced neighbours we test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning home we use log linear as well as propensity score matching and an instrumental variable approach to control for self selection bias we find that the individuals and hhs who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier on average the formerly displaced have 5 per cent lower food expenses and 6 per cent lower calorie intake moreover we find evidence in favour of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affects hh welfare results are robust after controlling for self selection bias de

remittance behaviour of forced migrants in post apartheid south africa this paper looks at the determinants of south south remittances an original dataset of african migrants living in johannesburg is used as south africa attracts both economic and forced migrants we focus on the impact of the reason of emigration violence versus economic concerns on migrants remittance behaviour on the extensive margin the results show that leaving a home country for reasons of violence decreases the probability of remitting to the home country on the intensive margin transferred amounts do not differ according to whether the migrant was forced to migrate or not when the migrant has decided to remit it is more his her current conditions in the host country and traditional factors income education sex etc that determine the amounts transferred our results are robust when restricting the definition of forced migration

a social contract account for csr as an extended model of corporate governance i rational bargaining and justification this essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of corporate social responsibility csr meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm it focuses on justification according to the contractarian point of view leaving compliance and implementation problems to a related article sacconi 2004b forthcoming in the journal of business ethics it begins by providing a definition of csr as an extended model of corporate governance based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm s stakeholders then by establishing the basic context of incompleteness of contracts and abuse of authority it analyses how the extended view of corporate governance arises directly from criticism of the contemporary neo institutional economic theory of the firm thereafter an application of the theory of bargaining games is used to deduce the structure of a multi stakeholder firm on the basis of the idea of a constitutional contract which satisfies basic requirements of impartial justification and accordance with intuitions of social justice this is a sequential model of constitutional bargaining whereby a constitution is first chosen and then a post constitutional coalition game is played on the basis of the unique solution given to each step in the bargaining model the quest for a prescriptive theory of governance and strategic management is accomplished so that i am able to define an objective function for the firm consistent with the idea of csr finally a contractarian potential explanation for the emergence of the multi fiduciary firm is provided

evaluating stakeholder theory this paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics it addresses the suitability and viability of the theory rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based respectively on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them the conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two