policy relevant treatment effects accounting for individual level heterogeneity in the response to treatment is a major development in the econometric literature on program evaluation a substantial body of empirical evidence demonstrates that econometric models fit on individual level data manifest heterogeneity in treatment effects that is present even after conditioning on observables an important distinction is the one between evaluation models where participation in the program being evaluated is based at least in part on unobserved idiosyncratic responses to treatment and models where participation is not based on unobserved idiosyncratic responses this is the distinction between selection on unobservables and selection on observables the validity of entire classes of evaluation estimators hinges on whether or not they allow agents to act on unobserved idiosyncratic responses in a wide variety of applications the available evidence suggests that not only are ex post postenrollment responses heterogeneous but that ex ante decisions to participate in programs are based in part on these heterogeneous responses heckman and vytlacil 2000b 2001

the drivers of international migration to the uk a panel based bayesian model averaging approach a heterogeneous panel based bayesian model averaging approach is used to identify the robust economic and policy drivers of international migration to the uk from 14 different source regions over 1980 2007 around three quarters of the increase in net immigration over the last decade which is particularly pronounced for selected source regions is associated with structural change which may be attributed to uk and foreign immigration policy the remainder of the rise is largely explained by friends and family effects there are considerable uncertainties associated both with the effects of particular economic drivers of immigration and with forecasts of immigration

why don t remittances appear to affect growth although measured remittances by migrant workers have soared in recent years macroeconomic studies have difficulty detecting their effect on economic growth this paper reviews existing explanations for this puzzle and proposes three new ones first it offers evidence that a large majority of the recent rise in measured remittances may be illusory arising from changes in measurement not changes in real financial flows second it shows that even if these increases were correctly measured cross country regressions would have too little power to detect their effects on growth third it points out that the greatest driver of rising remittances is rising migration which has an opportunity cost to economic product at the origin net of that cost there is little reason to expect large growth effects of remittances in the origin economy migration and remittances clearly have first order effects on poverty at the origin on the welfare of migrants and their families and on global gross domestic product but detecting their effects on growth of the origin economy is likely to remain elusive

heterogeneous effects of international migration and remittances on crop income evidence from the kyrgyz republic this paper uses a unique representative household budget survey from the asian development bank to analyze the impact of international migration and remittances on crop income of rural farmers in the kyrgyz republic unlike other studies we allow the impact of remittances to be different for farmers with different land size and test whether reduced labor availability is more relevant for permanent than for seasonal migrants we find that losing family members has a significant negative effect on crop income but only for permanent migrants remittances partially compensate for this but their positive impact decreases with farm size

an empirical analysis of life cycle fertility and female labor supply this paper examines us household fertility and female labor supply over the life cycle using data from the panel study of income dynamics the authors investigate how maternal time inputs and market expenditures on offspring as well as the benefits they yield their parents vary with ages of offspring and influence female labor supply and contraceptive behavior the econometric framework combines a female labor supply model and a contraceptive choice index function it also accounts for the fact that conceptions are not perfectly controllable events using longitudinal data on married couples the authors estimate these equations and test alternative specifications of the technologies governing child care the findings suggest that while parents cannot perfectly control conceptions variations in child care costs do affect life cycle spacing of births furthermore the results demonstrate the gains of modeling the linkages between female labor supply and fertility behavior at the household level authors modified

identifying the response of fertility to financial incentives summary while using financial incentives to increase fertility has become relatively common the effects of such policies are difficult to assess we propose an identification strategy that relies on the fact that the variation in wages induces variation in benefits and tax credits among comparable households we implement our approach by estimating a discrete choice model of female participation and fertility using individual data from the french labor force survey and a detailed representation of the french tax benefit system our results suggest that financial incentives have had a significant effect on fertility decisions in france as an example we simulate the effects of an additional unconditional child credit of 150 euros per month the effects are strongest for the third child copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

fungibility and the impact of development assistance evidence from vietnam s health sector how can the impact of aid be estimated in the presence of fungibility and how far does fungibility reduce its benefits these questions are analyzed in a context where a donor wants to target its efforts on a specific sector and specific geographic areas a traditional differences in differences method comparing the change in outcomes between the target and nontarget areas before and after the project risks misestimating the project s benefits the paper develops an alternative estimation method in which intersectoral fungibility reduces project benefits insofar as government spending has a smaller impact in the sector to which the funds leak than in the target sector while intrasectoral fungibility reduces benefits insofar as the donor is able to leverage productivity increases in government spending in the target areas the methods are applied to two contemporaneous world bank health projects that set out to target assistance on approximately one half of vietnam s provinces aid is not apparently fungible between vietnam s health sector and other sectors but is fungible across provinces within the health sector differences in differences yield an insignificant impact on infant mortality while the use of the new method yields a statistically significant impact of around 4 per 1000 live births the results however are ambiguous on the costs associated with intrasectoral fungibility

the experimental economics experiment in the preface to this text the editors john kagel and alvin roth describe how the various chapter authors all well known in their respective fields were set the task of surveying those areas of their specialism where a concentration of experiments had influenced theoretical development their mission was to both provide a review for non specialists of the relevant theory and how it had been influenced by the experiments completed to date while also offering a survey for specialists that could provide a platform and hints for future research they have produced an outstanding book this reviewer has benefited in both of the above ways as well as from the many references one chapter alone lists over 500

the estimation of wage gains and welfare gains in self selection models the authors modify the basic self sele ction model for the effects ofeducation training unions and other activities on wages by including heterogeneity of rewards to the activity i e diffe rences across individuals in the rate of return to the activity the authors sho w that such heterogeneity creates a new form of selectionbias they provide tes ts for its presence and draw out its implications for the wage and welfare gains to the activity an empirical application provides strong support for such hete rogeneityin one particular training program copyright 1987 by mit press

dynamics of health and labor market risks while there is little doubt that the probability of poor health increases with age and that less healthy people face a more difficult situation on the labor market the precise relationship between facing the risks of health deterioration and labor market instability is not well understood using 12 years of data from the german socio economic panel we study the nature of the relationship between poor health and non employment on a sample of german men aged 30 59 we propose a joint model of health and labor market risks which identifies the mechanism through which poor health contributes to the probability of being jobless and vice versa we find an important role of unobserved heterogeneity and evidence for correlation in the unobservable characteristics determining the two processes the results also show strong persistence in the dynamics of health and labor market risks

media exposure and internal migration evidence from indonesia abstract this paper investigates the impact of television on internal migration in indonesia we exploit the differential introduction of private television throughout the country and the variation in signal reception due to topography to estimate the causal effect of media exposure our estimates reveal important long and short run effects an increase of one standard deviation in the number of private tv channels received in the area of residence as an adolescent reduces future inter provincial migration by 1 7 2 7 percentage points and all migration inter and intra provincial by 3 9 6 8 percentage points short run effects are similar in magnitude we also show that respondents less exposed to private television are more likely to consider themselves among the poorest groups in society as we discuss in a stylized model of migration choice under imperfect information these findings are consistent with indonesian citizens over estimating the net gains from internal migration when access to television is limited

product stereotypes strategy and performance satisfaction the case of chinese exporters does following a product strategy of price leadership result in superior performance satisfaction for chinese exporters does branding products and targeting less developed countries significantly improve chinese exporters satisfaction with export performance results indicate performance satisfaction decreased when chinese firms pursued price leadership product strategies while performance satisfaction increased when chinese exporters used a branding product strategy branding products and targeting other less developed countries with these brands significantly increased performance satisfaction over branding alone

a note on defensive expenditures harmonised law diverse results in the context of many environmental hazards there is scope for self defence by victims multiple equilibria arise in a model of bilateral precaution under a regime of strict but incompletely enforced environmental liability this means that the same system of environmental law instigated in two economies may lead to very different outcomes it impacts upon policy analysis in a variety of ways and provides a channel for cultural factors to matter we explore the positive and normative effects of subsidising self defence

concessions of infrastructure in latin america government led renegotiation this paper analyzes government led renegotiations in infrastructure concession contracts in latin america based on the same sample used in guasch laffont and straub 2003 to examine firm led renegotiations after extending the theoretical framework to a multiple period context in which both pareto improving and rent shifting renegotiations at the initiative of the government can occur we develop an original instrumental variable strategy to address the issue of contract endogeneity and derive empirical results while some of the main insights concerning the importance of having a regulator in place when awarding concessions and the fragility of price cap regulatory schemes are unchanged significant differences arise with respect to the effect of investment and financing as well as the corruption variables we provide evidence that a good regulatory framework is especially important in contexts with weak governance and political opportunism copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

brain drain and human capital formation in developing countries winners and losers using new data on emigration rates by education level we examine the impact of brain drain migration on human capital formation in developing countries we find evidence of a positive effect of skilled migration prospects on gross human capital formation in a cross section of 127 countries for each country of the sample we then estimate the net effect of the brain drain using counterfactual simulations countries combining relatively low levels of human capital and low emigration rates are shown to experience a beneficial brain drain and conversely there are more losers than winners and the former tend to lose relatively more than what the latter gain

an experimental test of trade hysteresis market exit and entry decisions in the presence of sunk costs and exchange rate uncertainty in the 1980s the unresponsiveness of trade flows to exchange rate swings inspired models in which sunk costs in combination with exchange rate instability generate trade hysteresis meaning that temporary exchange rate misalignments have a persistent effect on trade this paper furnishes an empirical complement to the theoretical literature first it describes a computerized experiment in which 100 subjects generated over 1000 decisions on market entry and exit under conditions congruent with a model of trade hysteresis developed by paul krugman secondly these data are used to test the main predictions arising from the model our experiment bears out the main qualitative predictions of krugman s model in particular that firms trading policy is unresponsive to exchange rate movements over a wide range of values moreover in the repeated decision setting of the experiment we find evidence that the stochastic behaviour of subjects entry and exit price decisions tend towards consensus as they gain

a theory of focal points the paper presents a theoretical framework that distinguishes between the strategic structure of a game the existential game and the way the players describe the game to themselves each player works with a private description of the game in which strategies are identified by labels labels are generated by a stochastic labeling procedure each player chooses a decision rule which for each possible private description picks one of the available strategy labels a criterion of collective rationality is applied to choices among decision rules the implications of collective rationality are explored for a range of games with different labeling procedures copyright 1995 by royal economic society

fertility and female employment dynamics in europe the effect of using alternative econometric modeling assumptions we investigate the direct and long run effects of fertility on employment in europe estimating dynamic models of labor supply under different assumptions regarding the exogeneity of fertility and modeling assumptions related to initial conditions unobserved heterogeneity and serial correlation in the error terms we find overall large direct and long run effects of giving birth on employment probabilities and these effects differ considerably across countries we find that within countries the results are sensitive to the statistical assumption made on initial conditions the inclusion of serial correlation and the assumption of strict exogeneity of children however the pattern across countries is robust to these assumptions we show that such patterns are largely consistent with prevailing institutional differences related to the flexibility of the labor markets and family policies copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

life cycle employment and fertility across institutional environments in this paper we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in italy spain and france the pattern of estimated state dependence effects across countries is consistent with aggregate patterns in part time employment and child care availability suggesting that labor market rigidities and lack of child care options are important sources of state dependence simulations of the model reveal that italian and spanish women would substantially increase their participation rates were they to face the french institutional environment

youth migration and labour constraints in african agrarian households using panel data from ethiopia and malawi we investigate how youth migration affects household labour hired labour demand and income and whether these effects vary by migrant sex and destinatio

migration with endogenous moving costs we study a dynamic model of labor migration in which moving costs decrease with the number of migrants already settled in the destination this assumption is supported by sociological studies of migrant networks with endogenous moving costs migration occurs gradually over time once it starts it develops momentum and migratory flows may increase even as wage differentials narrow in addition migration tends to follow geographical channels and low moving cost individuals migrate first these patterns are consistent with historical evidence from the great black migration of 1915 1960 in the united states much of which cannot be reconciled with existing migration models excerpt

bandwagons and the threat of chaos interpersonal effects revisited abstract this paper extends granovetter and soong s work on bandwagons by introducing interpersonal effects at the level of preferences rather than at the level of demand it is found that markets generally will not follow the first order difference equations analyzed by g s because consumers will form expectations based on the market s entire history rather than the last period alone when those expectations are adaptive and the rate of expectations adjustment sufficiently low the threat of unstable and chaotic dynamics is eliminated the paper also describes the efficiency problems generated by interpersonal effects

the economic impact of the famine in the short and long run both short and long term economic consequences of the irish famine of the period 1845 1849 are reviewed the author concludes that the famine completely altered the structure of the irish labor market and that the migration associated with the famine resulted in the integration of ireland with world labor markets and a significant increase in irish wages annotation

effect of certified organic production systems on poverty among smallholder farmers empirical evidence from kenya summary this study evaluates the effect of certified organic production on poverty in smallholder production systems data was collected from cross sectional survey of local market oriented peri urban vegetable and rural honey producers in kenya poverty was measured using the multidimensional poverty methodology and endogenous switching probit model used to assess the effect of certified organic production on multidimensional poverty findings were that certified producers were less likely to be multidimensional poor compared to their counterfactual case of not participating in organic certification schemes additionally noncertified producers would be less likely to be poor if they were to participate in organic certification production

the effect of male migration on employment patterns of women in nepal what is the impact of male migration on the labor market behavior of women in nepal the instrumental variable full information maximum likelihood method is applied to data from the 2004 nepal household survey to account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously affect men s decision to migrate and women s decision to participate in the labor market the results indicate that male migration has a negative impact on the level of the labor market participation by women in the migrant sending household there is evidence of substantial heterogeneity based on both observable and unobservable characteristics in the impact of male migration the findings highlight the important gender dimension of the impact of predominantly male migration on the well being of sending households strategies for economic development in nepal should take into account such gender aspects of the migration dynamics

organizational isomorphism and corruption in financial institutions empirical research in emerging countries the globalizations of capital markets in the last 20 years has led to a historic degree of financial integration in the world it is clear however that globalization is not conducive to a complete homogeneity of financial markets and institutions among others one element of diversity is the importance of the impact of corruption in emerging countries corruption decreases the credibility of financial institutions and markets scandals and unethical behavior in financial institutions erode confidence in such firms relying on neoinstitutional literature this article focuses on the link between corruption and organizational isomorphism in financial institutions in emerging countries therefore our aim is to examine the institutional reasons for corruption in financial institutions in emerging countries our structural equation model is based on empirical research in financial institutions in emerging countries a questionnaire was administrated to 70 top executives of financial institutions in 18 different emerging countries

the economic consequences of unwed motherhood using twin births as a natural experiment social scientists have long concluded that premarital childbearing exacerbates problems of both poverty and family instability out of wedlock and adolescent childbearing may reduce a mothers educational attainment lower the probability of her eventual marriage increase her probability of welfare recipiency and decrease family income the authors use an exogenous fertility event the birth of twins to estimate the economic effects of unplanned births the approach compares the economic outcomes of women experiencing premarital twin first births to those experiencing premarital single first births in the attempt to identify the consequences of an unplanned birth upon womens future fertility and marital decisions education labor force participation labor earnings welfare receipt and poverty status 1970 and 1980 us census micro data are used to identify twin births to unmarried women analysis found large short term effects of unplanned births on labor force participation poverty and welfare recipiency among unwed mothers but not among married mothers furthermore most adverse economic effects of unplanned motherhood dissipate over time for whites but larger and more persistent negative effects weigh upon black unwed mothers

remittances entrepreneurship and employment dynamics over the business cycle abstract we incorporate remittances and micro entrepreneurship self employment into a small open economy business cycle model with capital and labor market frictions countercyclical remittances moderate the decline of households consumption during recessions these remittances also are used to finance the start up costs of microenterprises that bolster households income during economic downturns we show that the positive income effect from countercyclical remittances also leads to a decrease in salaried labor supply which generates offsetting upward pressure on wages during recessions and adversely affects the recovery of the economy consistent with the microeconomic evidence the behavior of remittances decisively affects labor force participation and the composition of employment between non salaried and salaried employment over the business cycle the model delivers labor market and aggregate cyclical dynamics that are consistent with the mexican data including a highly volatile and countercyclical unemployment rate

migration from nicaragua some recent evidence abstract i utilize two unique data sources to examine migration from and remittance flows to the capital city of managua nicaragua approximately 10 12 of the population has emigrated these emigrants tend to be disproportionately of working age better educated and more often white collar workers than nonmigrants in addition emigrants are more likely to come from larger premigration households and higher income households remittance flows to managua are quite large the second largest source of foreign exchange earnings after coffee in addition remittances have a negative income effect on labor force participation and a positive effect on self employment of nonmigrants

does grade retention affect students achievement some evidence from spain grade retention practices are at the forefront of the educational debate in this article we measure the effect of grade retention on spanish students achievement by using data from programme for international student assessment pisa we find that grade retention has a negative impact on educational outcomes but we confirm the importance of endogenous selection which makes observed differences between repeaters and nonrepeaters appear about 14 lower than they actually are the effect on scores of repeating is much smaller 10 of nonrepeaters average than the counterfactual reduction that nonrepeaters would suffer had they been retained as repeaters 24 of their average furthermore those who repeated a grade during primary education suffered more than those who repeated a grade in secondary school although the effect of repeating at both times is as expected larger

network effects and the dynamics of migration and inequality theory and evidence from mexico international migration is costly and initially only the middle class of the wealth distribution may have both the means and incentives to migrate which can increase inequality in the sending community however the migration networks formed lower the costs for future migrants which can in turn lower inequality this paper shows both theoretically and empirically that wealth has a nonlinear effect on migration and then examines the empirical evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship between emigration and inequality in rural sending communities in mexico after instrumenting we find that the overall impact of migration is to reduce inequality across communities with relatively high levels of past migration we also find some suggestive evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship among communities with a wider range of migration experiences

migration and rural welfare the impact of potential policy reforms in europe summary this paper uses an agricultural household model in an imperfect market environment and data from burkina faso to explore the impact of potential immigration policy reforms in europe on the welfare of rural households simulation results demonstrate that in contrast to continental migration increased intercontinental migration has strong positive household welfare effects similarly an increase in the stay abroad of intercontinental migrants impacts positively on welfare of the migrant sending household results of these simulations lend support to the introduction of a tmp which would in addition to facilitating migration control in host economies improve the welfare of sending households by allowing for increased engagement in intercontinental migration the temporary nature of such a program would ensure that dutch disease effects would be mitigated through eventual migrant return

migration networks and microenterprises in mexico are migration networks associated with lower capital costs or the alleviation of capital constraints we examine these questions with data measuring access to remittance flows among small scale entrepreneurs in mexico using a survey of more than 6000 self employed workers and small firm owners located in 44 urban areas of mexico we estimate the impact of attachment to migration networks on the level of capital investment the capital output ratio sales and profits of microenterprises the impact is identified from the geographic pattern of migration from mexico driven by the completion of rail lines in the early 1900s for the full sample of firms we find that migration is associated with higher investment levels and higher profits but not higher sales the strongest effects on investment are in the categories of automobiles tools and inventories when the sample is limited to firms in high capital sectors investment sales and profits all increase with attachment to the migration networks suggesting that attachment to the migration network alleviates capital constraints in those sectors

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

family attachment and the decision to move by race abstract blacks in the united states move less than whites despite having many characteristics that are commonly associated with high geographical mobility such as high unemployment low rate of home ownership low marriage rate and settlement in areas where unemployment is high we find that this puzzle can be explained by the effects of family ties both nuclear and extended families which we proxy using data from the university of michigan s psid the results are robust to different specifications and estimation techniques

threshold models of interpersonal effects in consumer demand abstract whether one buys may be determined in part by how many others have when the correlation is positive we refer to bandwagon effects and when negative reverse bandwagons we construct demand schedules in the presence of such effects and with simple assumptions about supply investigate the existence of and approach to equilibrium stable price quantity equilibria exist but for many plausible parameter values equilibria are asymptotically unstable and system trajectories consist of cycles that can move with slight parameter changes via successive bifurcations into what has been called chaotic dynamics essentially indistinguishable from random noise these conditions occur despite assumptions of erfect information profit maximizing firms and utility maximizing individuals

international migration remittances and household investment evidence from philippine migrants exchange rate shocks how do households respond to overseas members economic shocks overseas filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 asian financial crisis appreciation of a migrant s currency against the philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas the estimated elasticity of philippine peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0 60 positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households child schooling and educational expenditure rise while child labour falls households also work more hours in self employment and become more likely to start relatively capital intensive household enterprises

job recruitment networks and migration to cities in india abstract economists have focused on job search and supply side explanations for network effects in labour transactions this paper develops and tests an alternative explanation for the high prevalence of network based labour market entry in developing countries in our theoretical framework employers use employee networks as screening and incentive mechanisms to improve the quality of recruitment our framework suggests a negative relationship between network use and the skill intensity of jobs a positive association between economic activity and network use and a negative relationship between network use and pro labour legislation furthermore social identity effects are expected to intensify when compared to information sharing and other network mechanisms using data from an all india employment survey we implement a novel empirical strategy to test these relationships and find support for our demand side explanation

vocational training programs and youth labor market outcomes evidence from nepal abstract lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty in response policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in effort to enhance skill formation among the youth using a regression discontinuity design we examine a large youth training intervention in nepal we find twelve months after the start of the training program that the intervention generated an increase in non farm employment of 10 percentage points itt estimates and up to 31 percentage points for program compliers late estimates we also detect sizeable gains in monthly earnings women who start self employment activities inside their homes largely drive these impacts we argue that low baseline educational levels and non farm employment levels and nepal s social and cultural norms towards women drive our large program impacts our results suggest that the program enables otherwise underemployed women to earn an income while staying at home close to household errands and in line with the socio cultural norms that prevent them from taking up employment outside the house

migration remittances and male and female employment patterns little is known about the labor market impacts of workers remittances despite their magnitude in countries with considerable outmigration reports that families receiving international remittances severely curtail their work efforts are fairly common in the popular press e g robert frank 2001 yet we lack rigorous analyses of how male and female labor supplies respond to increases in remittance income to either support or refute these anecdotal observations according to the neoclassical model of labor leisure choice mark r killingsworth 1983 remittances a source of nonlabor income may lift budget constraints raise reservation wages and through an income effect reduce the employment likelihood and hours worked by remittance receiving individuals the receipt of remittances is usually preceded by the out migration of working aged household members however which may induce changes in the labor supply of nonmigrating household members in order to compensate for forgone income or to defray migration related expenses distinguishing the disruptive effect from the income effect of remittance inflows is problematic as most surveys do not contain detailed information on household outmigration and remittance receipt to the extent that these two effects are expected to have opposite impacts on labor supply however we can assess which effect dominates the impact of remittances on the decision to work has been previously examined by edgard rodriguez and erwin r tiongson 2001 in manila and by edward funkhouser 1992 in managua without accounting for the endogeneity of remittances with respect to labor supply they conclude that remittances reduce employment funkhouser also finds that remittances slightly increase self employment while informative these studies focus on the decision to work and do not consider that without altering employment rates remittances may change the hours worked and or the type of work performed in the receiving economy furthermore the impact may be different on male and female labor supplies and responsiveness to remittance income may vary from rural to urban areas using data from mexico a country with a large and growing remittance inflow we address the following questions how does the employment status and hours worked by men and women vary owing to international remittances do male and female labor supplies differ across various types of employment in rural versus urban areas due to higher remittance inflows

the effects of child bearing on married women s labor supply and earnings using twin births as a natural experiment we use exogenous variations in fertility due to twin births to measure the impact of an unplanned child on married women s labor supply and earnings although the overall effects of an unplanned birth on labor supply are small we find significant effects in the years immediately following the unplanned birth especially in 1970 we estimate that declining fertility explains between 6 and 13 percent of the increase in married women s labor supply between 1970 and 1980 twin births are also associated with a substantial short run loss in earnings this effect persists longer than the labor supply effects though it does eventually disappear

the impact of the great migration on mortality of african americans evidence from the deep south the great migration the massive migration of african americans out of the rural south to largely urban locations in the north midwest and west was a landmark event in u s our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of african americans born in the early twentieth century south this inference comes from an analysis that uses proximity of birthplace to railroad lines as an instrument for migration

determinants of bribery in international business the cultural and economic factors corruption perceptions index cpi scores for 47 countries reported by transparency international were used to ascertain determinants of bribe taking in international business two sets of independent variables economic and cultural were used in a multiple regression analysis results indicate that bribe taking was more likely to be prevalent in countries with low per capita income and lower disparities in income distribution cultural factors such as high power distance and high masculinity in a country were also likely to be associated with high level of bribe taking both economic and cultural factors were important explanatory factors of bribery implications of the findings for combating bribery are discussed

emerging technologies and ethics a race to the bottom or the top does national success with an emerging technology require ethical sacrifices this question is considered through the simultaneous consideration of ethics investment and outcomes in the nine jurisdictions that are making the largest investments in nanotechnologies an important emerging technology it is found that while ethical environment has no notable effect on pure and applied research a more positive ethical environment is associated with measures associated with invention and commercialization in summary a race to the top supports invention and commercialization of emerging technologies a critical finding as it suggests that issues such as corruption and regulation could be critical in limiting the extraction of social and economic benefit from emerging technologies like nanotechnologies

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

children and their parents labor supply evidence from exogenous variation in family size although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work family nexus this study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply in the united states instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares ols estimates moreover unlike the ols estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high wage husbands we also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child bearing and husbands labor supply excerpt

the impact of remittances on investment and poverty in ghana summary this paper analyzes the impact of internal remittances from ghana and international remittances from african or other countries on investment and poverty in ghana it has three findings first when compared to what they would have spent without the receipt of remittances households receiving remittances spend less at the margin on food second households receiving remittances spend more at the margin on three investment goods education housing and health third the receipt of remittances greatly reduces likelihood of household poverty these findings support the growing view that remittances can reduce poverty and increase investment in developing countries

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

the spatial mismatch hypothesis what has the evidence shown this paper reviews 20 years worth of empirical evidence on the spatial mismatch hypothesis after briefly surveying the relevant models from urban and labour economics and recent trends in employment and population suburbanisation the empirical evidence on spatial effects is examined this literature includes evidence on the effects of residential segregation residential suburbanisation and employment suburbanisation and direct measures of access such as travel times the most recent evidence suggests that spatial mismatch is relevant for explaining black white employment differences though the magnitudes of these effects remain unclear

seeking asylum in europe seeking asylum in europe over the last three decades the annual number of applications for asylum in the countries of the european union has increased from about 15 000 to more than 300 000 this has sparked a political backlash a revolution in policy a lively academic debate but very little economic analysis although the causes of asylum flows and the effects of policy are much discussed they have rarely been the subject of quantitative analysis this article examines the evolution of asylum flows and asylum policy across the eu since the early 1980s it investigates the effects of war and conflict economic incentives and asylum policies on the total numbers and on the proportions going to the different countries of the eu special attention is given to the growth of policy restrictiveness across the eu and to the harmonization of asylum policies contrary to some views policy has worked to stem the flows but it has been overwhelmed by other forces timothy j hatton

resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of crop management innovation packages in ethiopia crop management innovations are often not discrete fixed stand alone options and their adoption may imply various combinations and adaptations this potentially confounds their impact assessment this article assesses the resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of a crop management package revolving around minimum tillage in maize based farming systems in northwest ethiopia an endogenous switching regression model was applied to plot and household level survey data collected from 290 rural households operating 590 maize plots during the 2012 production year controlling for variations in plot and household characteristics the average effect of minimum tillage package minimum tillage package on maize productivity is 0 44 t ha compared to conventional practice cp adoption of the mtp decreased the average male and female labor use in maize production by 14 4 and 8 2 person days per ha respectively similarly mtp adoption decreased draft power use for land preparation by 13 2 pair of oxen days per ha compared to cp in general there is a considerable short run maize productivity gain and reduction in labor and draft power use under mtp

experimental evidence on the drivers of index based livestock insurance demand in southern ethiopia while index based microinsurance has attracted considerable attention uptake rates have been weak in many low income countries we explore the purchase patterns of index based livestock insurance in southern ethiopia focusing on the role of accurate product comprehension and price we find that randomly distributed learning kits improve subjects knowledge of the products however we do not find strong evidence that the improved knowledge per se causes greater insurance uptake we also find that reduced price due to randomly distributed discount coupons has an immediate positive impact on uptake without dampening subsequent period demand due to reference dependence associated with price anchoring effects

is environmental income reporting evasive in household surveys evidence from rural poor in laos abstract literature has consistently reiterated that the self employed non poor underreport their business income to tax authorities and in household surveys in this work we measure the extent to which poor households engaging in illegal environmental activities underreport income in laos we use a two year panel data and apply the engel curve to detect and estimate the reporting gap we further use a switching probit regression to identify the factors of income underreporting and its impact on income poverty outcomes results show that on an average rural households who earn at least a quarter of their income from the environment underreport by over 50 in household surveys resulting in overestimation of income poverty moreover we find that a perceived threat to food security drives rural poor to engage in illegal environmental extraction

heaven s swing door endogenous skills migration networks and the effectiveness of quality selective immigration policies a growing number of oecd countries are leaning toward the adoption of selective immigration policies which are expected to raise the quality or education level of migrants this view neglects two important dynamic effects the role of migration networks which could reduce the quality of migrants and the responsiveness of education decisions to the prospect of migration we propose a model of self selection into migration with endogenous education choices which predicts that migration networks and the quality of migrants can be positively associated when destination countries adopt sufficiently selective immigration policies empirical evidence presented as background motivation suggests that this is indeed the case

mobility costs frictional unemployment and efficiency with imperfect job information flows it is plausible that the distribution of job offerings becomes more attractive when there are more vacancies and more unemployed with word of mouth communication this condition is derived given this condition steady state equilibrium is not efficient with welfare increased by the introduction of unemployment compensation even though all agents are risk neutral in this way workers become more selective in the jobs they accept

education and civil conflict in nepal between 1996 and 2006 nepal experienced violent civil conflict as a consequence of a maoist insurgency which many argue also brought about an increase in female empowerment this paper exploits variations in exposure to conflict by birth cohort survey date and district to estimate the impact of the insurgency on education outcomes overall conflict intensity measured by conflict casualties is associated with an increase in female educational attainment whereas abductions by maoists which often targeted school children have the reverse effect male schooling tended to increase more rapidly in areas where the fighting was more intense but the estimates are smaller in magnitude and more sensitive to specification than estimates for females similar results are obtained across different specifications and robustness checks indicate that these findings are not due to selective migration

normalized collective corruption in a transitional economy small treasuries in large chinese enterprises small treasuries xiaojinku are off book accounts found in many large enterprises in china for the purpose of rewarding managers and their subordinates building up guanxi personal networks and even financing the business operations of their danwei work units we analyze cests with reference to their antecedents constructs and consequences our analysis indicates that while cests can in some cases help organizations deal with immediate financial problems they have negative impacts on organizational performance in relation to the moral hazard of managers as well as the allocation of organizational resources in respect of sustainability of strategic advantages and growth and mismanagement of organizations because of the involutionary behavior of managers in chinese enterprises we propose that it will require not only organizational controls but also a fundamental change in these managers ideology for solving the problems of cests

profiles of fertility labour supply and wages of married women a complete life cycle model of all the major economic and demographic events in the postwar united states period the trends in fertility and female labour supply stand out as among the most dramatic fertility rates after their depression lows rose unexpectedly after world war ii far more than was anticipated as an adjustment to the war and continued to rise until the late 1950 s and early 1960 s when they again took an unexpected turn downward all the way to today s historical lows female labour force participation rates continuing their historical climb grew throughout the postwar period at an increasing pace by 4 percentage points during the 1950 s by 5 percentage points during the 1960 s and by 8 percentage points during the 1970 s these two trends are of course closely related for most married women have traditionally spent at least some minimal time out of the labour force while caring for their own children thus for example the slower growth rate of labour force participation rates in the 1950 s is probably connected with the higher fertility rates in that period in this paper a complete model of female labour supply and fertility choice is constructed and estimated the model is more complete than previous models in several respects first labour supply and fertility decisions are modelled as completely joint in the same sense as the consumption of two goods is joint second both are modelled as life cycle decisions that is as decisions regarding sequences of labour supply and fertility events rather than levels of the same hence the timing of both is important third the life cycle path of wage rates is made endogenous to the model given a wage function showing the effect of work experience on future wages the path of wages is determined automatically by the chosen path of labour supply which in turn is related to fertility decisions that require some period of non work econometrically the three profiles for labour supply fertility and wages are estimated with a full information maximum likelihood technique that solves several econometric problems such as the problem of heterogeneity of tastes the selectivity problem of missing wage rates for non workers and the problem of simultaneous equations bias the value of constructing a complete model is best seen by briefly reviewing past work in this area the modern literature in the area is based upon the work of becker

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

transition to entrepreneurship from the public sector predispositional and contextual effects studies of career dynamics implicitly claim that government employees are not entrepreneurial utilizing longitudinal data from the u s panel study for income dynamics we investigate the reasons for the low rate of entrepreneurship from the public sector we conjecture that it is due to labor market matching processes and the bureaucratic nature of public organizations and bureaucratization of individuals our life course analysis identifies labor market matching as a major determinant nonentrepreneurial types choose public sector employment we also uncover tenure and context effects which decrease and increase the hazard rate of entrepreneurial exit respectively whereas the former effect points toward adaptation and internal labor market sorting the latter draws attention to exits due to frustration

local and personal networks in employment and the development of labor markets evidence from the cut flower industry in ethiopia summary we examine the roles of local and personal networks in the employment process and the emergence and development of the labor market in ethiopia s growing cut flower industry using primary survey data of 320 workers randomly sampled from all 64 farms we find that workers who were recruited informally using the social ties were paid less than the formally recruited workers at hiring however these workers quickly increased their productivity and the effect of social ties on wages disappeared over time further we find that the development of labor market for this newly emerged industry took place particularly within the industrial cluster

binary choice with binary endogenous regressors in panel data this article considers the estimation of the causal effect of fertility on female labor force participation equations my main concern is to examine two considerations the endogeneity of fertility and the impact of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and for predetermined existing children using psid data a switching binary panel data model that accounts for selectivity bias as well as for other forms of time invariant unobserved heterogeneity is estimated individual effects are allowed to be correlated with the explanatory variables which can be predetermined as opposed to strictly exogenous family sex composition is used as an instrument for exogenous fertility movements the results indicate that exogeneity assumptions of children variables induce a downward bias in absolute value in the estimated negative effect of fertility on participation although the failure to account for unobserved heterogeneity overstates this effect moreover stronger effects of fertility are found when existing c

government intervention perceived benefit and bribery of firms in transitional china this article examines whether 1 government intervention causes bribery or corruption as rent seeking theory suggested 2 a firm s perceived benefit partially mediates the relationship between government intervention and its bribing behavior as rational choice behavior theory suggested and 3 other firms bribing behavior moderates the relationship between government intervention and a firm s perceived benefit our study shows that government intervention causes bribery corruption indeed but it exerts its effect on bribery corruption through the firm s perceived benefit in other words a firm s perceived benefit fully mediates the relationship between government intervention and its bribing behavior we also find that other firms bribery positively moderates the relationship between government intervention and a given firm s bribery this study partly proves that firms are rational actors potential benefit encourages them to practice bribery besides this research also supports the rent seeking view of bribery corruption which argues that government intervention is a source of bribery corruption however we have also identified that only those government interventions that will create rent can cause bribery corruption