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

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

charitable giving by married couples who decides and why does it matter we examine how charitable giving is influenced by who in the household is primarily responsible for giving decisions looking first at single person households we find men and women to have significantly different tastes for giving setting up a potential conflict for married couples we find that with respect to total giving married households tend to resolve these conflicts largely in favor of the husband s preferences bargaining over charitable giving rather than letting one spouse take charge reduces giving by about six percent when the woman is the decision maker she will still make a significantly different allocation of those charity dollars preferring to give to more charities but to give less to each our results give new insights into both the demographics of charitable giving and the costliness of household bargaining

management ownership and market valuation an empirical analysis we investigate the relationship between management ownership and market valuation of the firm as measured by tobin s q in a 1980 cross section of 371 fortune 500 firms we find evidence of a significant nonmonotonic relationship tobin s q first increases then declines and finally rises slightly as ownership by the board of directors rises for older firms there is evidence that q is lower when the firm is run by a member of the founding family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder

raiders or saviors the evidence on six controversial investors abstract carl icahn irwin jacobs carl lindner david murdock victor posner and the late charles bluhdorn are usually portrayed as corporate raiders the evidence here however shows that between 1977 and 1982 when it was first announced that they had purchased stock in a given firm stock prices on average increased significantly the investors activities in target firms for the two years following the initial stock purchase are likewise inconsistent with raiding we discuss two hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence first these investors improve the management of target firms second they are systematically able to identify under priced stocks

source country social programs and the age composition of legal us immigrants abstract in this study we use the concept of the marginal migrant to develop a theoretical model of the age composition of us immigration two age classes of immigrants are distinguished 20 34 and 50 and over along with sex and entry class numerically restricted numerically exempt annual data 1972 1991 for 109 source countries are pooled and the hausman taylor instrumental variable technique is employed to estimate regressions that satisfy adding up restrictions along with measures of differential economic opportunities migration costs and us institutional controls we incorporate into the analysis a unique set of variables relating to social programs in source countries such programs prove to be significant determinants of the age composition of us immigrants

immigration policy and counterterrorism abstract in a developing country terrorists recruit and allocate their capital skilled labor and unskilled labor between domestic and foreign targets domestic targets require less skilled labor than foreign targets under various strategic scenarios we show how countermeasures against the different terrorist inputs alter the amount and mix of targets as well as how skilled and unskilled immigration quotas by a targeted foreign country affect this mix of attacks we find that increases in skilled labor quotas generally reduce terrorist attacks in the foreign country especially when the terrorists reside in a skill scarce country a number of different strategic scenarios including leader follower are investigated

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

the determinants of international migration unbundling the role of economic political and social institutions international migrants may relocate because of economic political and social factors in their origin or destination countries using global bilateral migration flows from 103 countries over the period 1990 2000 we explore whether emigrants self select based on economic political and social institutions our study adds social dimension as a potential determinant of migration and separates the pull and push effects of political economic and social institutions our results indicate that economic political and social institutions are significant pull factors of migration economic freedom has the most substantial pull effect followed by the political institutions social institutions have the weakest pull effect on migration moreover economic and social institutions are significant push factors of migration while political institutions do not show any push effect furthermore educated migrants are more sensitive to the destination economic political and social institutions than less educated migrants and less educated migrants are more sensitive to the social institutions at the origin

an introduction to the economics of immigration in oecd countries the share of the foreign born in oecd countries is increasing and this article summarizes economics research on the effects of immigration in those nations four broad topics are addressed labor market issues fiscal questions the political economy of immigration and productivity international trade extreme concerns about deleterious labour market and fiscal impacts following from new immigrants are not found to be warranted however it is also clear that government policies and practices regarding the selection and integration of new migrants affect labour market fiscal and social cultural outcomes policies that are well informed well crafted and well executed beneficially improve population welfare

hit and they will run the impact of terrorism on migration abstract we analyze the influence of terrorism on migration for 152 countries during 1976 2000 we find robust evidence that terrorism is among the push factors of skilled migration whereas it is not robustly associated with average migration

regression toward mediocrity in economic stature this paper provides estimates of the correlation in lifetime earnings between fathers and sons intergenerational data from the national longitudinal survey are used earlier studies conducted for the united states report elasticities of children s earnings with respect to parent s earnings of 0 2 or less suggesting extensive integenerational mobility these estimates however are biased downward by error contaminated measures of lifetime economic status estimates presented in this paper correct for the problem of measurement error and find the intergenerational correlation in income to be on the order of 0 4 this suggests considerably less intergenerational mobility than previously believed jel j62

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

integration of the sales force an empirical examination this article develops and tests a model of integration of a marketing function personal selling the model derived from transaction cost analysis as developed principally by williamson is formulated as a logistic function which is estimated with data from the electronic components industry as expected integration is associated with increasing levels of asset specificity difficulty of performance evaluation and the combination of these two factors contrary to the transaction cost model neither frequency of transactions nor interaction of specificity and environmental uncertainty is significantly related to integration the transaction cost model improves significantly upon the fit of a simple model relating integration to company size alone these results suggest that for studying transactions of this kind it is fruitful to view the firm as a governance structure

importing the poor welfare magnetism and cross border welfare migration i test for welfare induced migration by comparing afdc participation in border counties to interior counties in the same state if migration costs are lower for border county residents border counties on the high benefit side of a state border should have higher welfare participation relative to the state s interior counties border counties on the low benefit side should have lower welfare participation relative to the state s interior counties the results obtained using county level data from 1970 90 indicate that having a neighbor with benefits that are 100 lower increases afdc expenditures in border counties by 4 0 6 8 percent relative to interior counties

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

elderly immigrants on welfare the difference between immigrants and natives use of welfare programs in the united states is concentrated among the elderly this paper examines the determinants of immigrants welfare participation decisions to evaluate the consequences of changes in immigration and welfare policy an important finding for immigration policy is that immigrants who arrive after age 55 are significantly more likely to use welfare than the typical immigrant who arrives during prime working years surprisingly this age at arrival effect is not explained by differences in social security benefits between young arrivers and old arrivers the problem of immigrant welfare use is not simply low incomes or poor labor market performance decisions regarding take up of benefits are an important explanation for the effect of age at arrival finally the sharp rise in immigrants use of welfare during the 1980s was due mostly to higher welfare participation rates of new immigrants excerpt

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

an empirical look at franchising as an organizational form franchise contracts are identified as a hybrid form of economic organization motives for the dominance of franchise arrangements are identified by examining the theoretical literature on franchising and related literatures on the theory of the firm firm growth managerial and employee selection a nd brand name capital empirical tests are performed on the incidence of franchise contracts across states for three industries in which f ranchising is prominent and data are readily available the results s uggest that both principal agent incentives and informational incenti ves favor the use of franchise arrangements copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

brain drain in developing countries an original data set on international migration by educational attainment for 1990 and 2000 is used to analyze the determinants of brain drain from developing countries the analysis starts with a simple decomposition of the brain drain in two multiplicative components the degree of openness of sending countries measured by the average emigration rate and the schooling gap measured by the education level of emigrants compared with natives regression models are used to identify the determinants of these components and explain cross country differences in the migration of skilled workers unsurprisingly the brain drain is strong in small countries that are close to major organization for economic co operation and development oecd regions that share colonial links with oecd countries and that send most of their migrants to countries with quality selective immigration programs interestingly the brain drain increases with political instability and the degree of fractionalization at origin and decreases with natives human capital

an empirical study on contractual heterogeneity within the firm the vertical integration franchise contracts mix this paper tests a discrete choice model on the mix of franchised and company owned outlets contractual heterogeneity within the firm this is often explained by the existing literature as due to heterogeneous characteristics of the outlets however correspondence between outlets and contracts characteristics is not often observed in reality an explanation is proposed which suggests that contract mixing is driven by the contractual choice of both principal and agents and that heterogeneous agents will choose contracts that match their characteristics this hypothesis is supported by econometric results based on outlet level microdata collected by means of a survey of uk firms

do immigrants and their children free ride more than natives the main goal of this paper is to analyze the differences between immigrant and native households in their volunteer contributions and private transfer behavior as well as their receipt of assistance from nongovernment sources in addition we examine how the immigrant native differences evolve over time as immigrant households accumulate us experience finally we examine the voluntary contribution behavior of second generation immigrants and children in immigrant households to gain insight into the long term impact of immigration we do not find evidence that immigrant households free ride more than native born households first immigrant households when compared to similar native born households are less likely to receive assistance from nongovernment sources second immigrant status has no statistically significant impact on monetary contributions toward public good provision we also find that the immigrant native differences in monetary and time contributions tend to diminish over time as immigrants acquire us experience finally we find no significant differences between the second generation of immigrants and third or higher generations of americans in their voluntary contributions of money and time we obtain similar results for children in immigrant households they are not significantly different from children in native households in their time contribution and in their enrollment in federal meal programs the results are robust to various income and wealth controls do immigrants and their children free ride more than natives

the choice of organizational form the case of franchising abstract we examine companies that franchise some units and centrally operate own others the agency problems confronting these two organizational forms are analyzed testable hypotheses are developed the empirical results support the notion that owning versus franchising reflects a trade off among agency related problems the cost of monitoring store managers appears to be especially important in the own franchise decision the level of repeat business and initial investment requirements per unit also appear to be important

terrorism and the world economy abstract it has been argued that terrorism should not have a large effect on economic activity because terrorist attacks destroy only a small fraction of the stock of capital of a country see e g becker g murphy k 2001 prosperity will rise out of the ashes wall street journal october 29 2001 in contrast empirical estimates of the consequences of terrorism typically suggest large effects on economic outcomes see e g abadie a gardeazabal j 2003 the economic cost of conflict a case study of the basque country american economic review 93 113 132 the main theme of this article is that mobility of productive capital in an open economy may account for much of the difference between the direct and the equilibrium impact of terrorism we use a simple economic model to show that terrorism may have a large impact on the allocation of productive capital across countries even if it represents a small fraction of the overall economic risk the model emphasizes that in addition to increasing uncertainty terrorism reduces the expected return to investment as a result changes in the intensity of terrorism may cause large movements of capital across countries if the world economy is sufficiently open so international investors are able to diversify other types of country risks using a unique data set on terrorism and other country risks we find that in accordance with the predictions of the model higher levels of terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions even after controlling for other types of country risks on average a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 of gdp the magnitude of the estimated effect is large which suggests that the open economy channel impact of terrorism may be substantial

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

moral hazard competition and contract design empirical evidence from managerial franchised and entrepreneurial businesses in norway agency theory emphasizes the role of ownership control and incentives in encouraging managers to improve efficiency owners often tie managers to contracts that reduce conflict of interest between owners and managers the differences between alternative business ownership structures have been investigated according to theory we expect managers with an outcome dependent dealer contract to be more efficient than managers with a more integrated and less performance based employee dealer contract we also analyse how competitive pressure might reduce the moral hazard problem and therefore affect contract design berle and means the modern corporation and private property macmillan new york 1932 long ago stated that the market mechanism could constrain the agency problem even so this problem has scarcely been investigated empirically this paper also considers the contractual effect of potential monitoring costs education and relationship age in a model tested on data from 175 dealer contracts in a

an empirical analysis of a firm s decision to franchise abstract hypotheses from monitoring and search cost explanations for the existence of franchising are discussed and tested the evidence offers strong support for the search theory somewhat weaker support for the monitoring shirking theory and no support for the monitoring cheating hypothesis

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

demographic and economic pressure on emigration out of africa two of the main forces driving european emigration in the late nineteenth century were real wage gaps between sending and receiving regions and demographic booms in the low wage sending regions our new estimates of net migration for the countries of sub saharan africa show that exactly the same forces driving african across border migration are at work today the results suggest that rapid growth in the cohort of potential young emigrants population pressure on the resource base and slow economic growth are likely to intensify the pressure for migration out of africa and into high wage oecd countries over the next two decades

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate