overeducation regional labor markets and spatial flexibility for most workers access to suitable employment is severely restricted by the fact that they look for jobs in the regional labor market rather than the global one in this paper we analyze how macrolevel opportunities regional market characteristics and microlevel restrictions the extent to which job searchers are restricted to the regional market can help to explain the phenomenon of overeducation we use a two step procedure to control selective access to employment the results show that the size of the labor market is an important factor in avoiding overeducation

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

gender differences in overeducation a test of the theory of differential overqualification there is little question that substantial labormarket differences exist between men and women among the most researched difference is the male female wage gap many different theories are used to explain why men earn more than women one possible reason is based on the limited geographic mobility of married women robert frank 1978 family mobility is a joint decision in which the needs of the husband and wife are balanced to maximize family welfare job motivated relocations are generally made to benefit the primary earner in the family this leads to a constrained job search for the secondary earner as he or she must search for a job in a limited geographic area since the husband is still the primary wage earner in many families the job search of the wife may suffer individuals who are tied to a certain area are labeled tied stayers while secondary earners who move for the benefit of the family are labeled tied movers jacob mincer 1978 the wages of a tied stayer or tied mover may not be substantially lower if the family lives in or moves to a large city if a large labor market has more vacancies the wife may locate a wage offer near the maximum she would find with a nationwide job search however being a tied stayer or tied mover can lower the wife s wage if the family lives in or moves to a small community a small labor market will reduce the likelihood of her finding a job that utilizes her skills as a result she may accept a job for which she is overqualified and thus earn a lower wage this hypothesized relationship between the likelihood of being overqualified and smsa size is termed differential overqualification frank 1978 and haim ofek and yesook merrill 1994 provide support for the theory of differential overqualification by finding that the malefemale wage gap is greater in smaller smsa s while the results are consistent with the existence of differential overqualification they may also result from other situations as well firms in small labor markets may use their monopsony power to keep wages down 2 local demand shocks are found to be a major source of wage variation both across and within local labor markets robert topel 1986 since large labor markets are generally more diversified a demand shock can have a substantial impact on immobile workers in small labor markets another reason for examining differential overqualification involves the assumption that there are more vacancies in large labor markets while there is little doubt that more vacancies exist in large labor markets there are also likely to be more people searching for jobs in large labor markets if the greater number of vacancies is offset by the larger number of searchers it is unclear whether women will be more likely to be overqualified in small labor markets instead of relying on wages to determine if differential overqualification exists we consider an explicit form of overqualification based on education

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

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

why are power couples increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas using the panel study of income dynamics psid we test costa and kahn s colocation hypothesis which predicts that power couples couples in which both spouses have college degrees are more likely to migrate to the largest cities than part power couples or power singles we find no support for this hypothesis instead regression analyses suggest that only the education of the husband and not the joint education profile of the couple affects the propensity to migrate to large metropolitan areas the observed location trends are better explained by higher rates of power couple formation in larger metropolitan areas

housing tenure job mobility and unemployment in the uk this article examines the effects of housing tenure on individuals job and unemployment durations in the uk we examine job to job transitions and transitions from unemployment we take account of whether or not the arrival of a job was synonymous with a non local residential move tenure endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity we find that home ownership is a constraint for the employed and public renting is more of a constraint for the unemployed employed home owners have a lower transition into employment with a distant move and unemployed public renters have a lower probability of gaining employment in more distant labour markets the nature of housing tenure has long been blamed for discouraging spatial mobility and thereby having an impact upon labour market outcomes in the early 1980s in the uk the main culprit was deemed to be local authority housing mccormick 1983 hughes and mccormick 1981 1987 examined the longer distance migration rates of those in local authority housing and found that they had lower longer distance migration rates compared to both owner occupiers and those in private rented accommodation although the latest research suggests that these effects may have lessened hughes and mccormick 2000 the relative immobility of public renters may stem from public housing rents being below market rates the restricted transferability within public housing high waiting lists and security of tenure public renters are then locked in and face higher costs if they accept a job that involves a long distance move more recently the blame has been pinned on private home ownership oswald 1996 1999 in a series of papers using macro time series and cross section data for oecd countries and regions within a number of those countries has argued that home own ership causes unemployment one explanation revolves around the reduced mobility of home owners relative to private renters owing to the costs of buying and selling homes subsequent and arguably more sophisticated micro econometric tests have placed doubt upon the alleged relationship coulson and fisher 2002 for the us find that unemployment duration is shorter for home owners relative to renters though neither is unobserved heterogeneity nor the endogenous nature of housing tenure accounted for van leuvensteijn and koning 2004 do account for the endogeneity of home ownership and find using dutch data that employed home owners are less likely to become unemployed relative to employed renters more recently munch et al 2006a using danish data find shorter unemployment spells amongst home owners compared to renters after controlling for the endogeneity of home ownership

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

canadian imports and exports by origin and destination a semi flexible approach this paper models the geographical composition of canadian foreign trade imports and exports are disaggregated into nine regions that together cover most of the oecd area the author uses both the flexible and the semiflexible versions of the symmetric normalized quadratic functional form the reduction in flexibility allows for large savings in the number of parameters and yet it is not incompatible with the data the author s results suggest that there are significant substitution possibilities in canadian foreign trade and that trade diversion towards the united states and efta is likely to be important in the event of increased e c protectionism

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

the impact of surplus schooling on productivity and earnings this article examines the impact of surplus schooling on individual productivity and earnings it proposes a model that divides workers education into two components education that is required and thus fully utilized in the job and education that exceeds the amount required and thus may be underutilized in the job the model is tested with data from the 1969 1973 and 1977 quality of working life surveys quinn and staines 1979 required schooling for each occupation is derived from estimates by job incumbents and by the dictionary of occupational titles the results show thqt surplus or underutilized education is rewarded at a lower rate than required education with the actual return dependent on the type of job

u s production technology and the effects of imports on the demand for primary factors we employ a unit cost function in the context of the production theory approach to estimate the allen uzawa effect of various categories of imports on u s primary factors to circumvent curvature related problems often associated with similar studies that do not invoke separability we combine the global imposition of concavity with a symmetric normalized quadratic representation of the unit cost function which remains flexible after curvature enforcing reparameterizations challenging conventional wisdom we find that the positive downstream production related employment effects of the majority of imports are significant enough to produce a detectable net increase in labor demand

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

overeducation job mobility and earnings mobility among holders of first degrees abstractovereducation has been researched extensively for nearly three decades but some major issues in regard to it are still topics of ongoing debate by using a panel data that combines a survey of two cohorts of israeli first degree holders and data from administrative sources on jobs and wages we examine the contribution of job turnover cognitive abilities and continuing graduate studies to the likelihood of overeducation and wage dynamics the study produces four main findings first rapid job switching makes a negative contribution to the increase in employee s wage and there is a negative correlation between two variables an employee s tenure and the number of past employers in the years after the completion of degree studies and the probability of being overeducated second the contribution of the individual s cognitive abilities and quantitative reasoning skills to the likelihood of becoming overeducated is negative third the wages of overeducated employees are some 11 lower and ris

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

the role of imports from the newly industrializing countries in u s production this paper examines the relationship among u s imports from the nics imports from developed countries capital and labor in the production of goods for final demand import demand and substitution elasticities are estimated for the period 1960 80 u s imports from the nics are found to be complements with both labor and imports from industrialized countries this indicates that the substitution effect resulting from a reduction in the price of imports from the nics would lead to a net increase in employment multilateral tariff cuts by the united states would increase the demand for nic goods despite a reduction in their preferential tariff margins

a better job thanks to personal networks an evaluation for migrants who arrived in france before age 18 it is more difficult for migrants than natives to find a job in their host country so many of them have to accept at least temporarily a job that is below their level of qualification this repr

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

interregional migration propensity and labour market size in sweden 1970 2001 lundholm e interregional migration propensity and labour market size in sweden 1970 2001 regional studies the tendency in several european countries toward an increase in commuting has sometimes been presented as one possible explanation for why interregional migration propensity has decreased this study is an attempt to investigate the impact of job availability on migration propensity over time other studies have shown that the size of the labour market has an effect on migration propensity the same effect was found in this study however no evidence was found that job availability has become more influential on migration over time the process of extended commuting has thus not made commuting opportunities more important as explanatory factor for interregional migration lundholm e la propension a la migration inter regionale et la taille du marche du travail la suede de 1970 a 2001 regional studies dans plusieurs pays europeens la tendance a l augmentation du nombre des migrations quotidi

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

double penalty in returns to education informality and educational mismatch in the colombian labour market abstractthis article examines the returns to education taking into consideration the existence of educational mismatches in the formal and informal employment of a developing country results show that the returns of surplus required and deficit years of schooling are different in the two sectors moreover they suggest that these returns vary along the wage distribution and that the pattern of variation differs for formal and informal workers in particular informal workers face not only lower returns to their education but suffer a second penalty associated with educational mismatches that puts them at a greater disadvantage compare to their formal counterparts

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

overqualification permanent or transitory this article analyses job mismatches in switzerland based on a subjective measure of overqualification according to job search and job matching theories overqualification is a transitory problem other theories show that overqualification can also be of a permanent nature we test the perpetuity of overeducation using panel data from the first eight waves of the swiss household panel shp covering the period 1999 to 2006 our empirical analysis reveals little evidence for lasting rigidities that would cause permanent job mismatches rather spells of overqualification are relatively short about half of all individuals who were overqualified in a given year had an adequate job match 1 year later while a short duration of overqualification would be consistent with job search and job matching theories our observation that the probability of a job mismatch does not significantly decrease with experience is at odds with these theories our article provides an alternative explanation for this phenomenon

the effect of uncertain educational requirements on education and wages this paper examines the effects of uncertain educational requirements the level of education required to enter an occupation varies with a number of factors workers may be uncertain as to their specific job when selecting an occupation thus they are also uncertain as to how much education they will need we find that occupations with more uncertainty pay males compensating wages however females do not receive compensating wages we also find a negative relationship between uncertain educational requirements and completed schooling for both men and women

engineering and econometric interpretations of energy capital complementarity comment in a recent paper in this review ernst berndt and david wood provide a useful clarification of gross and net complementarity pointing out that energy and capital can be gross substitutes in a production subfunction and yet net complements in the aggregate production function using this theoretical proposition they attempt to reconcile the econometric findings of energy capital complementarity with other studies finding energy capital substitutability their reconciliation rests on the finding that those studies finding energy capital substitutability considered only capital k labor l and energy e by omitting materials m one obtains only a gross elasticity the net elasticity which allows for the additional substitution between the kle aggregate and m can indicate energy capital complementarity in fact klem studies generally find energy and capital complementarity the purpose of this comment is to question whether the net and the gross elasticity distinction provides such a reconciliation among the econometric results i agree that this explanation tends to reduce the disparity between the original berndt wood elasticity estimate and griffin gregory yet three independent sources of evidence suggest that the omission of m is not a sufficient explanation and probably not even a major explanation for the disparity of findings first the difference between the gross elasticity in a kle submodel and the net elasticity in a klem model depends critically on the elasticity of substitution between m and kle let us adopt the berndt wood notation and consider their mathematical example which demonstrates the possibility of gross capital energy substitutability as in the griffin gregory study with net capital energy complementarity

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

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

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

overeducation in the labour market abstract this paper presents a review of the literature on overeducation the paper assesses the consistency of overeducation within the context of a number of theoretical frameworks including human capital theory hct and assignment theory the analysis goes on to discuss the various measurement controversies associated with the study of overeducation in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which the impacts of the phenomenon represent an economic reality as opposed to a statistical artefact after reviewing the literature it is concluded that the impacts of overeducation are likely to be non trivial and that the phenomenon may potentially be costly to individuals and firms as well as the economy more generally the existence of overeducation also raises some doubts with respect to the validity of some of the central assumptions and predictions of hct that are unlikely to be fully explained by gaps in the standard wage equation framework

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

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

overeducation undereducation and the british labour market this paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a british dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed first what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience tenure and training second to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena third what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the us and a number of european countries hold for britain

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

is there a genuine under utilization of skills amongst the over qualified two theories of over qualification are considered namely mismatch whereby workers do not find the most appropriate jobs for their skills because of imperfect information or labour market rigidities and heterogeneous workers whereby individuals with the same qualifications have different actual skill levels so that they can be over qualified in terms of formal qualifications while their skills are actually appropriate for the jobs that they do the evidence suggests that both theories are relevant in certain situations

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

the employment and wage effects of oil price changes a sectoral analysis in this paper we use micro panel data to examine the effects of oil price changes on employment and real wages at the aggregate and industry levels we also measure differences in the employment and wage responses for workers differentiated on the basis of skill level we find that oil price increases result in a substantial decline in real wages for all workers but raise the relative wage of skilled workers the use of panel data econometric techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity is essential to uncover this result which is completely hidden in ols estimates while the short run effect of an oil price increase on aggregate employment is negative the long run effect is in fact positive we find that changes in oil prices induce changes in employment shares and relative wages across industries however we find little evidence that oil price changes cause labor to consistently flow into those sectors with relative wage increases copyright 1996 by mit press

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

the impact of imports on the demand for labor in australia abstract in this paper we examine the impact of imports disaggregated by origin on the australian demand for labor contrary to widely accepted stylized facts we find evidence that imports from east asia and the pacific stimulate labor demand