a panel analysis of job changes and unemployment abstract this paper tests for state dependence in histories of unemployment and job mobility from the first six waves of the german socio economic panel soep transitions between states of employment and unemployment are modelled as outcomes of binomial probit processes which are first and higher order markov the use of simulation estimation allows quite general intertemporal covariance structures in order to capture individual heterogeneity it is investigated how differences in human capital and other personal characteristics and macro or industry determinants such as regional unemployment growth and immigration pressure affect labour mobility

the agrarian barrier to industrial growth it is argued here that in transitional economies industrial growth depends not so much on the size of the agricultural surplus but rather on the rates of productivity growth and population growth in agriculture via their effects on the size of the home market for manufactures in developing this argument estimates of the agricultural surplus and inter sectoral market shares in post restoration japan and post independence india are compared a typology of agrarian systems is then suggested based on how alternative systems influence productivity and population trends in agriculture the typology is illustrated with historical comparisons from europe japan and india

do more jobs in the modern sector increase urban unemployment abstract this note considers the effect of an increase in the rate of urban job creation on migration and urban unemployment the different results obtained when the issue was previously analyzed are reconciled the period of time allowed for adjustment and the specification of the migration function are crucial in explaining the different results

labor market performance as a determinant of migration in a comparison of migrants with nonmigrants both observed and unobservable productivity factors are relevant this paper focuses more on the unobservable factors and their correlation between places of origin and destination a human capital model of migration demonstrates that more productive workers at the origin would choose to migrate only if the correlation between origin and destination factors is strongly positive longitudinal data drawn from the cote d ivoire living standards survey 1985 86 are used to examine the pattern of migration in the light of labor market performance both of wage employees and non farm self employed workers it is found that indeed the more productive workers migrate furthermore the general direction of migration is toward cities the conclusion is therefore that rural areas lose their productive workers and that urban areas may gain in productivity from the geographical shifts in population

information flow expectations and job search rural to urban migration process in india abstract probabilistic migration models assume that search for urban jobs is entirely an urban based activity and that employment in free entry activities is a transitional phase during which migrants are actively searching for formal sector employment this paper tests the empirical validity of these assumptions using data collected by the author in a sample survey in delhi in 1975 76 on 1400 migrants from rural areas the evidence indicates that the migration process postulated in probabilistic models is not realistic in the case of delhi over one half of the sample had moved to delhi after lining up specific jobs a sizeable proportion expected to enter on arrival activities generally considered to be characterized by freedom of entry and the majority of entrants into free entry activities did not search for alternative employment and were engaged in the same activities at the time of the survey

migratory labor and agriculture farm workers are shown to respond strongly to economic incentives to seasonally migrate for work the economic model is specified with separate earnings structures for migratory and nonmigratory work and a reservation wage for migration is specified to reflect the choice between migratory and nonmigratory work the empirical model adjusts for self selectivity in the sample and demonstrates that domestic farm workers sort themselves into migratory and nonmigratory workers in a manner consistent with the theory of comparative advantage implications for immigration and government employment and training programs are considered

internal migration and urban employment in the third world for more than a decade michael todaros model has provided a widely accepted theoretical framework for explaining the massive flows of rural urban migration that are observed in many third world countries this paper however presents data amassed from a wide range of countries to highlight a crucial shortcoming of that model it will be shown that far from being general in nature the todaro approach is limited to explaining the movement of persons possessed of sufficient human capital to qualify them for modern sector employment the present work utilizes the perspective of the urban subsistence sector to develop a model that serves as a useful complement to that of todaro excerpt

urban employment and the labor market in developing nations urban employment in developing countries is actually richer and considerably more diverse and rural urban migration is less ill fated than can be inferred from the literature this paper focuses on 1 urban labor force growth 2 urban labor market structure outcomes and processes and 3 the interplay among economic growth traditional factors and the urban labor market the assumption that urban unemployment is typically high or rising has never been clearly established this review of the functioning of urban labor markets emphasizes 3 points prevailing sectoral aggregations fail as examples of dual labor markets urban wage rigidity is not typical and there are enough indications of a dispersed wage structure tending toward equilibrium the diverse migratory and employment channels and probabilities also suggest decentralized and flexible adjustments rather than a chronically unresponsive unemployment rate these leave us without an economywide theory of urban unemployment but this is not a great loss as more important and troublesome are the pervasive indicators of inequality rents and differential labor utilization and productivity that have no such simple origin and reflect the unequal endowments pockets of privilege and noncompeting traits that are endemic in the social order urbanization is an aspect of economic transformation that involves changes in location and types of economic activity capital widening activities old new input combinations the viability of traditional skills and the economic basis for self employment and entrepreneurship are relatively poorly explained by current models although traditional and modern are seen as opposing factors it is surely a mistake to see the former as extraneous to the process of economic transformation the economic value of traditional skills has been consistently underrated because of an assumption that the urban demand for them is negligible and that the rural labor force is homogenous analyses of urban employment problems in developing countries must embrace 3 neglected but promising directions 1 a focus on the range of capital widening economic activities that cannot be conveniently be classified as either traditional or modern 2 more knowledge about the differentiating elements in the complex traditional sector and 3 more in depth analysis of the microeconomic units that illuminate the choices made by firms and households in a variety of contexts

migration theories and evidence an assessment abstract this paper presents a critical survey of theories of migration their welfare and policy implications and their empirical relevance we also develop some extensions to the theory beginning with the harris and todaro ht model in particular the ht model is extended to examine risk averse behaviour within families where the migration of members of families serves to diversify risk the welfare implications of the individual migration decision and government intervention in the form of employment subsidies are examined recent evidence on international migration is presented it is shown that migration does not flow automatically in response to wage differentials characteristics of migrants and the process of self selection are found to be important determinants of the rate of migration

job search and mobility in developing countries theory and policy implications abstract a labor market model is developed in which the formal sector is characterized by search frictions whereas the informal sector is competitive we show that there exists a unique steady state equilibrium in this dual economy we then consider different policies financed by a tax on firms profits we find that reducing the unemployment benefit or the firms entry cost in the formal sector induces higher job creation and formal employment reduces the size of the informal sector but has an ambiguous effect on wages we also find that an employment wage subsidy policy and a hiring subsidy policy have different implications in particular the former increases the size of the informal sector while the latter decreases it

characteristics of mexican economic growth empirical testing of some latin american structuralist hypotheses abstract this article examines a series of hypotheses about the latin american industrialization process put forward by the structuralist school of thought using mexico as a test case in particular it examines the relationship between the distribution of income and associated patterns of consumption and industrial structure and its implications on demand constraints growth constraints employment constraint and multinational control the results indicate that the modern traditional dichotomy based on durable versus non durable consumer goods is not the best way to examine this relationship since the consumption patterns for durable goods do not show a homogeneous behavior when distribution changes overall it was found that growth and employment constraints and multinational control seem to get more exacerbated under greater inequality with respect to the demand constraints no definite conclusion can be made because of the mentioned heterogeneity in the response of durable goods to changes in distribution and the lack of information on relative excess capacity and or dynamic linkages of the different sectors

food supply and inflation abstract the paper presents an analytic version of the latin american structuralist theory of inflation it emphasizes the difference between the productive sectors of the economy and draws attention to the fact that the inflationary process is closely linked to inconsistent claims for shares in income it describes a keynesian economy with two three sectors real desired wages are rigid money is passive it is shown that the structuralist hypotheses are capable of generating disequilibria that can lead to constantly rising prices without any built in mechanism to offset them steady inflation can only persist if workers allow their real wage to be kept below target as the workers try to catch on the model will blow up an accelerating inflation can be observed in many latin american countries during periods when wage settlements aimed at restoring inflation losses escaped the government control the paper also explores the implications of foreign trade it shows that under structuralist hypotheses external disequilibria cannot be corrected through exchange rate devaluations alone and it examines the stagflationary impacts of an increase in the price of imported intermediates

urban rural structural adjustment urban unemployment with traded and non traded goods abstract this paper extends the harris todaro model to include non traded goods and to analyze structural adjustment in ldcs we assume that the urban region produces two goods a manufactured good and an urban non traded good and the rural region also produces two commodities an agricultural and a rural non traded good our results reveal an asymmetry in the behaviour of the urban and rural regions in response to parametric changes or external shocks the effects of such changes on the endogenous urban variables are completely determinate however the responses of the endogenous variables in the rural region are ambiguous a deterioration in the terms of trade increases the relative price of the urban non traded good and increases its output at the expense of the urban traded good thus structural adjustment in urban and rural areas may be in opposite directions non regional models of structural adjustment ignore the possibility of having opposite effects in the urban and rural areas our results also provide a generalization of the dutch disease type phenomenon to a model with migration and unemployment

regional labor markets and the determinants of wage inequality from 1972 to 1990 the united states experienced the largest increase in wage inequality of any developed country the spread in log wages between the 90th and 10th percentiles of the male wage distribution increased by about 60 points and inequality increased within virtually every demographic or skill category of the labor force see chinhui juhn et al 1993 various explanations have been offered including changes in the relative demand for skill intensive goods international trade immigration of less skilled workers and increased labor force participation of women yet attempts to quantify the relative importance of these factors have not met with much success this leaves skill biased technical change as the residual claimant that rationalizes the data this paper uses regional differences in the evolution of wage inequality to provide new evidence on the determinants of relative wages using a model of factor demand in geographic markets i isolate contributions of i changing skill ratios in the labor force ii increased participation of women iii technical change and iv changes in the industrial composition of labor demand the data indicate that changing skill ratios and women s labor supply have affected the wages of low skilled men in the west the data indicate that increased immigration of less skilled hispanic and asian workers has adversely affected the wages of natives causing a greater increase in inequality there than in any other region of the country i modeling wage inequality in regional markets

terms of trade and domestic distribution export led growth with abundant labour abstract a general equilibrium macro model is constructed to explore effects of export led growth policies on the terms of trade and the domestic distribution of a developing region with abundant labour this region the south trades with another the north they have different technologies and supplies of factors it is shown that under certain conditions of dualism in the production of goods and of abundant labour supply in the south an increase in the volume of exports from the south may bring about a sustained worsening of the south s terms of trade with the north even if this increase in exports is due to a positive shift in demand from the north this change in the terms of trade is accompanied by a sustained loss of purchasing power of wages within the south these results take place in a walrasian stable market when technologies are more homogenous and labour less abundant the results are reversed increased exports will take place together with improvements in terms of trade and a tendency to equalise factor prices between the regions the results argue for coordination of domestic and international policies with special attention to technologies and labour markets

heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution a partial survey heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution are surveyed focusing on major theories and recent contributions first a general framework for examining growth and distribution is discussed in terms of which classical marxian and post keynesian kaleckian and other theories are presented since this framework examines how variables are determined in equilibrium second dynamics behind equilibria are examined focusing on goods market and labor market changes third the framework is extended in a variety of ways to examine additional models addressing productivity growth and technical change money and inflation finance and debt additional distributional considerations multisector issues open economy questions and the environment it is concluded that the literature on heterodox theories of growth and distribution is vibrant large and growing and addresses many issues that are ignored or neglected in orthodox theories including power unemployment and aggregate demand

immigrant earnings relative to what the importance of earnings function specification and comparison points immigrant relative earnings estimates are sensitive to the choice of comparison point and the specification of earnings non sample mean comparisons borjas 1985 understate relative earnings simple earnings specifications linear education quadratic experience overstate relative earnings for both poorly and well educated immigrants specifications which ignore omitted variables understate the relative earnings of poorly educated immigrants and overstate those of well educated ones although measures of assimilation and changes in immigrant quality are insensitive to earnings specification they indicate strong earnings growth for post 1964 immigrants an overall decrease in immigrant quality and an increase in mexican immigrant quality

financial markets the pattern of industrial specialization and comparative advantage evidence from oecd countries due to underlying technological and organizational differences industries differ in their need for external finance since services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries the pattern of industrial specialization should be influenced by the level of financial development among oecd countries we find a strong causal effect of the financial sector on industrial specialization further the financial sector is a source of comparative advantage in a way consistent with the hecksher ohlin vanek model results are also presented on which aspects of financial systems are important for specialization and comparative advantage

terms of trade policy in a model with non produced means of production abstract terms of trade policies between agriculture and industry are analysed in a two sector sraffian model if both sectors use only produced means of production and labor it can be shown that an improvement in agriculture s terms of trade always leads to higher profits in agriculture however when non produced means of production are introduced an exogenous increase in the relative price of agricultural commodities may cause the rate of profit in agriculture to increase remain constant or even decrease two preconditions are identified for the case in which a favorable movement in agriculture s terms of trade decreases that sector s profit rate first at least one quality of competitively priced land must be scarce relative to the total output required second the initial economy wide rate of profit must be positive finally the effect of an input subsidy used in conjunction with terms of trade policy is considered it is shown that under certain conditions reducing the price of production inputs can also cause profits to fall and rents to rise in agriculture

the value of u s labor market experience in the home country the case of puerto rican return migrants many immigrants to the united states and other industrialized economies eventually return to their home country more than one million foreign born persons left the united states between 1960 and 1970 1 research has documented return migration to israel italy ireland mexico and puerto rico as well as the return of thousands of guest workers from industrialized european economies in the mid seventies 2 however little is known about how the migration experience shapes the earnings profiles of returnees and how the economic standing of returnees compares to that of stayers in the home labor market in this article i analyze the transferability of human capital accumulated abroad by return migrants and the economic assimilation process of returnees i investigate if return migrants can capitalize at home on the years of labor market experience accumulated abroad i also examine whether return migrants assimilate that is if their earnings increase with time spent in the home labor market to evaluate how returnees fare in the home labor market the earnings of returnees are compared to the earnings of stayers one of the findings from the literature of immigration to the united states and other industrialized economies is that immigrants lose human capital on crossing national borders 3 it has also been noted that the earnings of immigrants grow with time spent in the host labor market suggesting that immigrants undergo a process of assimilation 4 most of the research on international return migrants is qualitative in nature and the small sample sizes caution about generalizations a large amount of this research has focused on rural communities the primary concern in the return migration literature has been the effect on local economic development 5

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

on the dynamic instability of induced migration unemployment in a dual economy abstract previous attempts to integrate the todarian analysis of rural urban migration with the dual economy growth model have relied upon an essentially static version of the migration hypothesis inappropriate in a growth context in this paper it is shown that when a dynamic version of the hypothesis is used the steady state growth equilibrium whilst characterised by a positive unemployment rate typical of todarian models is unstable these results have policy implications which differ from those presented in the previous literature

finance and trade a cross country empirical analysis on the impact of financial development and asset tangibility on international trade summary this paper investigates the interplay between financial development asset tangibility and international trade using industry level data on firms dependence on external finance and firms asset tangibility for 27 industries in 42 countries we find that economies with higher levels of financial development have higher export shares and trade balance in industries with more intangible assets using the same dataset we also show that the interplay between property rights protection and asset tangibility influences the pattern of trade higher levels of property rights protection lead to higher export shares and trade balance in industries with more intangible assets

immigration from poor to wealthy countries experience of the united states the u s experience with immigration from poor countries is examined using the results of two projects carried out by the national bureau of economic research questions considered include what determines the supply of immigrants how such immigrants fare in the u s job market and how this immigration affects the prospects of native born workers annotation

trade aid and migrations some basic policy issues the link between trade policy and international migration is explored using data from the united states and europe we conclude that restrictive trade policies in industrialised countries have most likely added to migration pressures we then turn to the broader question of the effects of income growth in the sending countries on the propensity to migrate we argue that in relatively poor countries an increase in income will be associated with higher migration flows for middle income countries however income growth will lead to lower migrations in the medium run therefore the relationship between development levels as measured by gdp per capita and the propensity to migrate follows an inverse u pattern econometric analysis of aggregate migration flows from southern europe provides considerable support for such conjecture excerpt

efficiency and distributional implications of global restrictions on labour mobility calculations and policy implications abstract in this paper a procedure for calculating the annual efficiency gains from various alternative changes in existing global immigration restrictions is presented along with an evaluation of impacts of wage rate changes on non migrating labour a simple methodology uses data on u s dollar gnp capita across countries to infer differences in the marginal productivity of labour both between countries and across major world trading areas two key assumptions used are that the worldwide labour supply is fixed and full employment occurs in all regions differences occuring in labour s marginal product across regions are assumed to arise because of barriers to inward mobility of labour in high wage countries when these are removed labour reallocates and efficiency gains occur while the calculations are based on contentious assumptions a striking feature is the size of the annual worldwide gains in some cases annual gains can easily exceed existing worldwide gnp generated in the presence of labour mobility restrictions while all gains do not accrue to ldc s the size of the gains nonetheless suggests that this issue may be much more important to these countries than other issues raised thus far in the north south debate the losses to labour already employed in high wage countries dramatize the incentives for labour unions in the developed world to oppose liberalization

unemployment and the inter regional mobility of labour the relationship between unemployment and interregional labor migration in the united kingdom is explored using data from the labour force survey for 1984 and 1977 the authors conclude that the experience of unemployment increases the likelihood of migration and that households in areas of high unemployment are more likely to move they also find that during periods of higher overall unemployment migration propensities are reduced annotation

rent income distribution and growth in an underdeveloped agrarian economy abstract a model is constructed to examine the determination of income distribution in an underdeveloped agrarian economy such as the indian one in which both rich capitalist farmers and poor subsistence farmers rent in land from landlords it is used to analyse the growth and income distributional consequences of different kinds of institutional and technological changes the possibilities of the growth of capitalism and the impact of industrial expansion

terms of trade and class conflict in a computable general equilibrium model for mexico a computable general equilibrium model for mexico is constructed in which class conflict over the distribution of the surplus is the principal determinant of the terms of trade the model consists of seven social classes and eight productive sectors classes are distinguished as fundamental or subsumed according to whether their incomes are primarily determined by conscious class struggle or by the resulting system of relative prices flexible prices are assumed to clear markets for which non produced means of production such as agricultural land limit supply while output in the remaining sectors is determined by the level of effective demand for the latter sectors two theories of price formation are compared and are seen to differ radically in their implicit conception of the nature of class conflict a keynes kalecki closure is considered in which prices are determined by a fixed mark up on costs this enables capitalists to protect themselves from incursions on the rate of profit due to labou

variable returns to scale urban unemployment and welfare the proposition that free trade is superior to no trade has a classical ancestry adam smith and ricardo were amongst the first proponents of free trade samuelson 26 proved and it is held by economists today that free trade is the optimal policy in the presence of standard paretoconditions it is also generally agreed amongst economists that lower trade intervention is superior to higher trade intervention given competitive conditions in a small country these propositions do not hold however in the presence of factor market imperfections such as wage differentials in a small country and therefore production or wage subsidies improves social welfare the two models which are generally used to investigate the positive as well as normative aspects of trade theory in the presence of unemployment are the uniform real minimum wage model which is based on the assumption of general rigidity of real wage in one or two sectors of production and the sector specific minimum wage model which focuses on the phenomenon of rural urban migration in the face of large scale urban unemployment these two models are commonly utilized by trade theorists to analyze trade and unemployment specifically studies by haberler 13 johnson 16 batra and seth 3 findlay 12 and brecher 6 7 investigate the consequences of rigid factor prices for a small country whereas the normative as well as positive aspects of sector specific unemployment have been explored by harris and todaro 15 bhagwati and srinivasan 4 5 and more recently by batra and naqvi 2 das 10 and kahn 19 it has been correctly observed that the introduction of an exogenously specified real minimum wage among other things generates unorthodox results concerning unemployment and gains from trade a large body of research has also been concerned with the welfare implications of different commercial policies in the context of variable returns to scale kemp and negishi 20 have pointed out the beneficial effects of trade in the presence of variable returns to scale production subsidy and consumption taxes eaton and panagariya 11 have analyzed the question of gains from trade in the presence of variable returns to scale and in the context of pareto welfare criterion whereas choi and yu 8 have examined the welfare implications of tariffs and consumption taxes as well as the welfare rankings of these policies under variable returns to scale while panagariya and succar 25 have modified the necessary and sufficient conditions for stability under increasing returns to scale in urban sector

the performance of immigrants in the canadian labor market in this article we examine the economic assimilation of immigrants to canada we provide new evidence on immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and document an increase in the dispersion of labor market outcomes across immigrants of different vintages over time our results confirm u s evidence of permanent differences across immigrant cohorts what distinguishes the canadian experience is small or negative rates of assimilation for most cohorts over the sample period finally we test the overidentification of the assimilation process specified in previous studies and fail to reject the usual cohort fixed effect specification

the bias due to omitting quality when estimating automobile demand the conclusions of policy oriented market studies often hinge upon the size of an estimated demand elasticity few of the researchers who have estimated such elasticities have utilized a variable designed to measure the subjective concept of quality if quality both significantly affects the demand for a heterogeneous good and is positively correlated with price omitting quality from a demand regression will lead to a downward bias in the estimated price elasticity using levinsohn s 1988 model of the automobile market as a framework this note shows that including quality variables can increase the model s estimated price elasticity by more than 80 percent copyright 1991 by mit press

financial development and international trade is there a link the author explores a possible link between financial development and trade in manufactures his theoretical model focuses on the role of financial intermediaries in facilitating large scale high return projects results show that economies with better developed financial sectors have a comparative advantage in manufacturing industries he provides evidence for this hypothesis first proposed by kletzer and bardhan 1987 using a 30 year panel of data for 65 countries controlling for country specific effects and possible reverse causality he shows that financial development exerts a large causal impact on the level of both exports and the trade balance of manufactured goods

agricultural terms of trade and distributional perversities in a neo ricardian model abstract the comparative static effects of a change in terms of trade for the agricultural sector are examined in a two sector neo ricardian model when wages are held constant and intensive rents are earned by owners of the non produced land resource it is possible for a favorable shift in agriculture s terms of trade to lead to a fall in the rate of profit on circulating capital or a decline in the rental rate on land the conditions causing these perverse profit and rental rate responses are shown to depend on the type of high yielding technology available the relevance of the analysis to policy making and investment in the agriculture sector is discussed

calculating hedonic price indices with unobserved product attributes an application to the uk car market we show that hedonic price indices that omit model specific unobservable product attributes are subject to considerable bias we utilize a complete panel of new car versions marketed in the uk over 1971 98 which incorporates over 100 observable product characteristics sales weighting to capture the distribution of purchases across models and model specific fixed effects to account for unobservable characteristics we find that quality adjusted prices obtained from hedonic regressions that do not account for unobservable characteristics exhibit a severe downward bias we also show that quality adjusted prices exhibit distinct sub market differences having increased in mass production segments and decreased in specialized niches

the finance trade nexus revisited is the global trade slowdown also a financial story abstract this paper studies the role of non linearities in the finance trade nexus while we confirm the positive impact of financial development on the level of trade openness our findings reveal that the marginal effect decreases considerably with the size of the financial sector the study contributes to two different strands of the economic literature first while widely examined in the finance growth nexus literature the discovered non linearities have been neglected so far in studies on the link between finance and trade second the diminishing marginal effect of finance appears to be an important factor in explaining the recent slowdown in global trade growth

a reconsideration of hedonic price indexes with an application to pc s this paper compares hedonic to matched model indexes matched model indexes are averages of the price changes of goods that remain on sampled stores shelves since goods that disappear tend to have falling market values matched model indexes select from the right tail of price changes the bls can construct hedonic indexes that correct for this selection and are justified by standard arguments in an empirical study of pc s hedonics produce sharp price declines while matched model indexes are near zero also though there are modifications to hedonics that seem desirable they are not those in current use

the finance growth nexus in crisis while the literature on the finance growth nexus suggests a positive link between financial development and economic growth another strand of literature highlights the crucial role of credit growth for the occurrence and strength of financial and economic crises in this paper we link the two seemingly contradicting strands of the literature by a strong and robust empirical finding while financial development is indeed positively linked to gdp p c growth in normal non crisis times larger financial sectors lead to significantly worse economic outcomes in the case of a banking crisis

a new database on the structure and development of the financial sector this article introduces a new database of indicators of financial structure and financial development across countries and over time the database is unique in that it combines a wide variety of indicators that measure the size activity and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets it improves on previous efforts by presenting data on the public share of commercial banks introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial institutions and constructing measures of the size of bond and primary equity markets this article introduces a new database the first to provide comprehensive measures of the development structure and performance of the financial sector this database is the first to define and construct indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial intermediaries such as insurance companies pension funds and non deposit money banks it is also the first to include indicators of the size of primary equity markets and primary and secondary bond markets in constructing the database authors carefully deflate measures and match stock and flow variables

urban unemployment and the gains from trade a welfare ranking of alternative commercial policies is constructed for the mobile capital harris todaro economy it is sh own that despite the presence of unemployment most noninterventioni st policies suggested by the competitive model of gains from trade ca rry over to the mobile capital harris todaro economy yet in contradi ction to the competitive model it is shown that all forms of trade i ntervention are not detrimental to welfare only those that reduce th e volume of trade are the export promotion policies so copiously fol lowed by developing countries are vindicated but their import substi tution policies are shown to be without justification copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

self selection and the earnings of immigrants comment in a recent article in this review borias 1987 george borjas uses a standard model of self selection to demonstrate that immigrants in the united states may not necessarily be positively selected as is commonly assumed borjas empirical results based on u s census micro data merged with country of origin characteristics for 41 sending countries however do not provide clear or consistent results with respect to the immigration selection issue although they do confirm earlier findings that the characteristics of the countries of origin of u s immigrants explain a substantial proportion of the differences in their economic status jasso and rosenzweig 1986b the purpose of this note is to show that borjas results are themselves subject to biases due to additional processes of self selection in particular his inconclusive findings with respect to immigration selectivity arise from the use of a choice based sample enlargement of his highly selective sample of countries based on the number of foreign born in the united states yields results that appear to conform much more closely and consistently to conventional wisdom namely that the united states appears to attract those persons with above average skills we also provide evidence that changes in the earnings of aggregate immigrant entry cohorts used by borjas to measure the assimilation of immigrants reflect another evidently important selection process namely selective emigration the effects of country characteristics on the wages of the foreign born at entry immigration selectivity are thus not comparable to the effects of such variables on the changes in the characteristics of an immigrant cohort over time emigration selectivity the effects via immigration self selection of country of origin characteristics on the quality q of immigrants who migrate to a destination country is neatly summarized by borjas in his equation 12 with unobservables determining earnings normally distributed the expected quality of immigrants in the united states is given by

social articulation as a condition for equitable growth abstract a formal model is developed to establish the structural conditions that result in growth being progressive or regressive on the personal distribution of income these conditions include 1 intersectoral investment priorities between wage goods and luxuries and 2 the state of the levels and distribution of incomes which determines the social origin of demand for different sectors of the economy the particular combinations of investment and income structures that result in equalizing social articulation or unequalizing growth social disarticulation are derived we show empirically that the structural conditions that allowed rapid but unequalizing growth in brazil between 1968 and 1977 were those of social disarticulation

a note on social articulation abstract de janvry and sadoulet 1983 present a model of unequalizing growth and the closure rule of the model is discussed in this note it is shown that income distribution in the model is determined by the market clearing mechanism in the wage goods market and how the condition for social articulation is related to the excess demand function on the wage goods market

migration and the public sector a survey charney a h 1993 migration and the public sector a survey reg studies 27 3133 326 a review of the existing literature on human migration reveals relatively few studies that explicitly examine the relationships between public policy decisions and human migration flows the surveyed literature includes studies of national policies such as defence spending migration subsidies and intergovernmental transfers as well as sub national policies such as welfare and unemployment benefits state and local taxes education and other public services suggestions for incorporating public sector information into existing migration analysis frameworks and further areas of research are provided charney a h 1993 la migration et le secteur public une etude reg studies 27 313 326 faire la critique de la documentation disponible sur la migration humaine laisse voir que rares sont les etudes traitant explicitement des rapports entre la politique d etat et les flux migratoires la documentation examinee c

growth distribution and sectoral heterogeneity reading the kaleckians in latin america abstract the aim of this paper is to explore a parallelism between two episodes in the history of economic thought in order to suggest that the interaction between them can contribute to the research on kaleckian growth and distribution models first a brief summary of the theoretical development from steindl s stagnationist claims to the debate about demand regimes is offered then a more detailed account is provided of the latin american debate that began with furtado s stagnationist claims and resulted in the formulation of models of social articulation and disarticulation finally an analytical classification of kaleckian and latin american growth and distribution models is provided indicating the way in which sectoral heterogeneity and demand composition can act as a plausible link between growth and distribution

rural urban migration in economic development abstract this paper provides a review of the theoretical literature on rural urban migration in contemporary ldcs the paper begins with a brief discussion of the lewis model before going on to discuss the todaro and the harris todaro models and the large literature which these models have spawned the question of job search in the context of migration and the role of family members in migration decisions are considered next the paper then takes a closer look at the informal sector and also sets out alternative migration functions to the ones usually employed in the literature the paper concludes with a brief note on some of the important implications arising from our study

hedonic prices for cars an application to the spanish car market 1981 2005 in this article we provide a comparison of different formulations for hedonic regression analysis in order to construct a quality adjusted price index for the spanish car market over the period 1981 to 2005 specifically we address the issue of instability of coefficients over time and propose two alternative estimation procedures based firstly on a moving sample of observations and secondly on a moving average of estimated coefficients in single period equations the statistical tests applied support the proposed methodologies on empirical grounds two conclusions can be emphasized firstly our study concludes that taking quality changes into account car prices in spain deflated by consumer price index cpi declined by 40 between 1981 and 2005 this result is robust to the alternative estimation procedures employed in the study secondly an analysis of convergence shows that for quality adjusted prices a clear trend in convergence emerges between 1986 and 1992 whereas such a trend does n

an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration mcdowell j m and singell l d jr 1993 an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration reg studies 27 351 363 numerous studies have examined the flow of international migrants generally these studies measure the extent or magnitude of international migration by use of a simple numerical count this paper extends this analysis by providing a methodology for adding an economic dimension to the measure of the magnitude of international migration an earnings equation approach is used to attach an economic value to immigration applying our methodology to us immigration we find considerable variation across source regions in the value of immigrants moreover we find that simply comparing initial earnings without controlling for differences in the characteristics and migration patterns of immigrants from the various source regions can misrepresent the relative earnings potential or value of migrants mcdowell j m et singell l d jr 1993 un

migration amongst the batswana the present study undertakes analysis of the effects of employment probabilities and wage alternatives on migration decisions in the context of botswana adopting micro level data both to estimate a multinomial migration function and to develop prediction equations for wages and likelihood of employment data are from the 1978 1979 national migration survey the factors that influence rural batswana adults to remain at home migrate to town on a short or long term basis move to another rural area or emigrate to south africa are examined consideration is given to the effects of employment alternatives on the rate of internal migration and the selectivity of movements with respect to personal household and locational factors excerpt

urban unemployment equilibrium in ldcs a perspective alao n 1985 urban unemployment equilibrium in ldcs a perspective reg studies 19 185 192 this paper describes the main features of the urban labour market in developing countries examines the extent to which the harris todaro model sheds light on the features described and suggests modifications which can be made to this type of model it is suggested that policies which redress the real income distribution in favour of rural areas are to be preferred to wage subsidies and that production subsidies for agriculture would have the most significant impact

what is happening to the impact of financial deepening on economic growth i introduction among the strongest elements of the modern economists canon is that financial sector development has a significant impact on economic growth a generation ago economists like goldsmith 1969 1 and mckinnon 1973 began to draw attention to the benefits of financial structure development and financial liberalization by the early 1990s mckinnon 1991 12 could write with confidence that now however there is widespread agreement that flows of saving and investment should be voluntary and significantly decentralized in an open capital market at close to equilibrium interest rates since the 1990s a burgeoning empirical literature has illustrated the importance of financial sector development for economic growth despite the growing consensus however we find that the link between finance and growth in cross country panel data has weakened considerably over time at the very time that financial sector liberalization spread around the world the influence of financial sector development on economic growth has diminished the seminal empirical work that established the growth finance link is king and levine 1993 which extended the cross country framework introduced in barro 1991 by adding financial variables such as the ratios of liquid liabilities or claims on the private sector to gross domestic product gdp to the standard growth regression they found a robust positive and statistically significant relationship between initial financial conditions and subsequent growth in real per capita incomes for a cross section of about 80 countries in the subsequent decade numerous empirical studies expanded upon this using both cross country and panel data sets for the post 1960 period 2 in this paper we reexamine the core cross country panel result and find that the impact of financial deepening on growth is not as strong with more recent data as it appeared in the original panel studies with data for the period from 1960 to 1989 we consider various explanations for this clear shift first we suggest that financial deepening has a positive effect on growth if not done to excess rapid and excessive deepening as manifested in a credit boom can be problematic even in the most developed markets because it can both weaken the banking system and bring inflationary pressures we test this hypothesis by looking at the finance growth nexus among countries that have or have not experienced financial sector crises we find that once crisis episodes are removed the finance growth relationship remains intact its weakening over time thus seems to be a result of an increased incidence of crises in later years our second and related hypothesis is that the widespread liberalization of financial markets that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s made financial deepening less effective this is reminiscent of robert lucas s 1975 critique of econometric policy evaluation advanced three decades ago policies that have promoted and or forced increases in financial depth over the past two decades may have altered the basic structural relationship between finance and growth this could occur if the observed benefits of financial deepening led many countries to liberalize before the associated legal and regulatory institutions were sufficiently well developed as a consequence the impact of financial deepening on growth would become smaller our evidence does not indicate that recent liberalizations are responsible for the breakdown of the finance growth link however there may be an indirect link as premature financial development can lead to financial crises that have real effects third we examine the role of global equity markets that have grown in importance and prominence in the years over which the finance growth relationship disappeared however we do not find any evidence to suggest that equity market growth has substituted for the role of credit markets and banks in particular

international migration versus foreign investment in the presence of unemployment abstract this paper extends the standard two factor one good model of international factor movements to include unemployment due to a minimum income guarantee within the capital abundant country from this country s perspective we establish important departures from previous full employment results most notably our analysis shows that 1 free factor mobility is worse than no mobility 2 the optimal degree of labour migration is zero and 3 national welfare can always be maximized by an optimal flow of capital the analysis is then extended to examine 1 illegal migration 2 subsidization of employment and 3 alternative views of unemployment

instability in rural urban migration following decades of large scale rural urban migration in developing countries the authors note the recent growth in reverse migration or migration from urban centers to suburban or rural areas which suggests that the labor market adjustment process may be unstable it is our purpose here to investigate the question of stability using some recent developments in nonlinear dynamic analysis and to do so within a framework which closely resembles the original harris todaro model we find that instability is indeed a possibility and that regular or irregular nonperiodic fluctuations can be propagated even in the absence of any exogenous shocks the source of these results is the lag in adjustment on labour markets combined with the nonlinearity of the labour supply function excerpt

international trade and labor migration a theory of the relationship between international trade and labor mobility is developed that takes into account five characteristics of such migration including its temporary nature differences between migrant and native labor the acceptance of unpredictable conditions of employment by migrant labor the ready availability of further labor resources and international capital mobility particular attention is paid to the role of international labor migration in helping to insulate native populations from the rigors of industrial fluctuations and in helping to preserve import competing industries that would have succumbed without the availability of cheap imported labor

skilled unskilled wage inequality and urban unemployment i introduction an extensive body of literature has looked at possible effects of trade liberalization on the labor market in the north the effects on the labor market in the south have not drawn as much attention conventional wisdom associated with the stolper samuelson theorem predicts a gradual reduction of skilled unskilled wage inequality in the south however recent studies on latin american countries exhibit conflicting patterns wood 1997 summarizes the empirical findings citing a series of articles by robbins 1995a 1995b 1996a 1996b that convincingly demonstrate that latin america has experienced an increasing wage gap between the skilled and the unskilled following a more open trade and investment regime while globalization induced changes in production patterns and the consequent increase in the demand for skilled labor relative to unskilled labor has often been cited as the root cause of wage inequality there has been no general agreement over the possible source of such increased demand for skilled labor the debate among economists on this has followed two broad paths one relying on technological changes and the other on trade and investment while technological change may have played a key role in the widening wage gap in the industrialized countries there is strong evidence robbins 1994a 1994b 1995a 1995b 1996a 1996b robbins and zveglich 1995 wood 1997 indicating the dominant influence of trade and investment on wage inequality in the developing economies the implications of a more open trade and investment regime need to be analyzed in terms of frameworks that explicitly take into account the structural features of labor markets in the south one of the key structural differences between the north and the south is that the south experiences a pronounced rural urban migration in the presence of urban unemployment basu 1997 ray 1998 the goal of our paper was to capture this feature within the structure of a simple general equilibrium model in an effort to understand the effect of fragmentation on the skilled unskilled wage differential and employment in the south the rest of the paper is organized as follows the next section places this paper in the context of the relevant literature section iii describes the general equilibrium model with the possibility of fragmentation and unemployment section iv compares and contrasts the impact of trade and endowment on the skilled unskilled wage gap and employment with and without fragmentation section v concludes ii context the motivation of this paper stems from our view that the southern experience does not necessarily contradict conventional wisdom as has been claimed in wood 1997 but points to the need for parsimonious yet meaningful modifications of the structure of general equilibrium models from which the wisdom is derived to properly reflect the salient structural features of the south on the one hand production fragmentation has become an important facet of globalization in modern times 1 sharp declines in transportation and communication costs have encouraged this process of slicing the value chain that is evident in international trade data this has been sustained by various regional integration agreements that have reduced the barriers to international trade and investment as well as important technical innovations in telecommunications and information technology that have facilitated the coordination of international production networks this advanced stage in the international division of the chain of production has brought a fundamental change in the nature of international trade as goods increasingly cross multiple national borders while they are in process several authors such as jones kierzkowski and lurong 2005 wan 2005 long 2005 jones and kierzkowski 1998 jones and marjit 2001 arndt 1998 feenstra 1998 harris 1998 hummels rapoport and yi 1998 feenstra and hanson 1996b and dixit and grossman 1982 have analyzed the role of fragmentation in world trade

immigrants in the u s labor market 1940 80 this paper explores the extent and causes of the decline in immigrant skills in the united states during the postwar period prior to 1965 immigration to the united states was guided by the national origins quota system this visa allocation system awarded visas to countries based on the representation of the national origin group in the u s population as of 1920 the 1965 amendments abolished the national origins formula thus redistributing visas across source countries and established a system where visas are mainly given to relatives of u s citizens or residents the empirical analysis shows that a single factor the changing national origin mix of the immigrant flow is mainly responsible for the decline in immigrant skills excerpt

an east asian model of economic development japan taiwan and south korea the east asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of japan taiwan and korea they are economic characteristics and include 1 high investment ratios 2 small public sectors 3 competitive labor markets 4 export expansion and 5 government intervention in the economy large and efficient investments in human capital and well developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by the three one could add overcrowding high man land ratios and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength it is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development other noneconomic characteristics of the three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance whether the east asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by the three to justify using the same policies that they used applicability of the east asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by the three has been responsible for their economic success 2 aspects of the east asian models policy features are noteworthy 1 the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2 the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth

labor migration in europe experiences from germany after unification abstract this paper examines the effects of diverging economic conditions on labor migration within reunified germany we employ a life cycle model with consumers sovereignty regarding choice of location to derive estimates of labor migration in future periods heterogeneity of individuals is explicitly taken into account by adopting a random utility approach due to insufficient data on east west migration the results are only illustrative and have the character of educated guesstimates within limits our predictions can serve as rough indicators of potential future migration between eastern and western europe

urbanization and international trade in developing countries abstract this study examines the role of the international economic environment on developing countries urbanization process the two sector open economy model proposed suggests that deteriorating terms of trade increasing capital prices and increasing protectionism are factors dictating the pace of urbanization in developing countries

sectoral balance in development a survey abstract this paper surveys the literature on sectoral balance to see how sectoral imbalances can retard economic development it examines definitions of sectors and balance provides background facts theories and planning tools reviews the debate on balanced growth and surveys two sector models of agriculture industry consumption investment and luxury basics interaction the open economy and the role of service nonmarket and unproductive sectors it argues that the examination of important development issues requires multisectoral analysis incorporating the insights of several of these models and that alternative models with different structural characteristics deserve attention

urban unemployment and non immiserizing growth abstract one purpose of this paper is to show that in the harris todaro economy economic expansion can not be immiserizing another purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of economic expansion for urban unemployment as well as sectoral outputs for the case of non neutral technical change finally it is shown that a damaging property of the harris todaro model that capital accumulation causes unemployment to rise whereas labor growth causes it to fall is at least partially rectified by the incorporation of land as a scarce factor in the agricultural sector

optimum taxation and public production in a dynamic harris todaro world abstract this paper examines the steady state dynamics and develops policy rules in a two sector optimum growth model with urban unemployment people migrate from the rural sector to the urban sector in response to a difference between the minimum expected urban wage and the actual rural wage labor in the urban sector is heterogeneous and the skilled labor force owns the capital stock in both sectors as well as the land in the rural sector the government taxes urban wages capital income from both sectors and the income from land and invests in the two sectors

increasing returns and the foundations of unemployment theory current approaches to macroeconomic theory divide roughly into two basic schools of thought one approach typically associated with rational expectations views the economy as basically at or near walrasian market clearing equilibrium in which case it becomes very difficult to explain away convincingly the undeniable persistence at times of involuntary unemployment another approach views the underemployed economy as being in a state of temporary fixed price disequilibrium in which case aside from having to repress suspicions that the essence of effective demand failure might not have to do with prices fixed at wrong values there is a lot of rationalising to be done about why profitable adjustments are so slow this paper argues that something like an internally consistent theory of steady state involuntary unemployment is possible and even plausible the cornerstone of this third approach is increasing returns to scale which blocks unemployed agents from breaking out of a low level equilibrium trap unless there is overall coordination or stimulation a simple model is presented which contains the basic ideas

self selection and the earnings of immigrants reply my 1987 paper addresses a central question in the economics of immigration who are the immigrants it has been traditionally assumed that immigrants are positively selected that is immigrants are more skilled on average than the typical person in the source country one contribution of my theoretical analysis was to show that this assumption is not necessarily consistent with wealth maximizing behavior in fact under some conditions the immigrant flow may be negatively selected my original study focused only on the selection bias caused by immigrants endogenously sorting themselves out of the source country s population 2 guillermina jasso and mark rosenzweig point out that i ignored other types of selection biases in both my theoretical development and empirical framework these additional biases are due to 1 the selective emigration of the foreign born in the united states and 2 the fact that my empirical work was limited to immigrants originating in 41 source countries regarding the first of these points jasso and rosenzweig restate the well known fact that emigration or return migration is an important characteristic of the immigrant experience robert warren and jennifer marks peck 1980 for instance estimate that perhaps as many as 30 percent of immigrants leave the united states within a decade or two after their arrival jasso and rosenzweig however do not examine systematically how the selective emigration of the foreign born affects either the theory or the empirical analysis in essence their criticism simply asserts that selective emigration is likely to cause problems my 1987 paper however already made note of that fact p 538 moreover the biases caused by emigration were an integral part of my earlier critique of the econometric methodology used by most studies of immigrant earnings determination borjas 1985 pp 466 67 what is obviously needed is the generalization of both my theoretical and empirical frameworks to account for the emigration of the foreign born such a generalization however is not provided by jasso and rosenzweig and does not yet exist 3 the second point made by jasso and rosenzweig deals with the empirical results presented in my paper because i limited my analysis to immigrants originating in 41 countries the sample is not representative and serious selection biases may be at work obviously it is always better to use a more representative sample in the empirical analysis the data were limited to 41 source countries because i was concerned not only with immigrant wage levels but also with immigrant wage growth as recorded by the 2 10

rural to urban migration and the shadow wage in ldcs abstract this paper discusses the amount of rural to urban migration which will be forthcoming when a new urban job is created for which an institutionally fixed wage above the market clearing level is offered a simple formula is proposed to estimate migration response it can be used to calculate the shadow wage in cost benefit analysis cba in less developed countries ldcs

sector specific minimum wages economic growth and some policy implications abstract economic growth is introduced in the urban unemployment model of harris and todaro it is shown that in the steady state the optimal savings ratio is greater than the golden rule savings ratio under full employment also the optimal proportion of total investment allocated to the urban sector is not necessarily higher than the optimal proportion under full employment

on the economic analysis of the urban informal sector abstract this paper examines the links and interactions between the formal and the informal sector in developing countries it is argued that both the factor and the product markets show these links based on the assumption that for most products demand consists of a specific and a nonspecific demand the paper presents an analysis of the product and labor markets and discusses the effects of shifts in demand on development strategies it concludes that successful measures have to include the informal as well as the formal sector