occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

financial contagion and the wealth effect an experimental study abstract we design a laboratory experiment to test the importance of wealth as a channel for financial contagion across markets with unrelated fundamentals in a sequential global game we analyze the decisions of a group of investors that hold assets in two markets we consider two treatments that vary the level of diversification of these assets across markets in both treatments we find evidence of financial contagion when investors have completely diversified portfolios we provide evidence of contagion due to a wealth effect for certain ranges of fundamentals we show that a decrease in wealth from the investment in the first market makes withdrawals more likely in the second thereby increasing the probability of a crisis when portfolio diversification is small then social imitation is relevant in explaining contagion

assessing interactions among education social insurance and labor market policies in morocco this paper develops a general equilibrium model to assess the impact that integrated reforms of macroeconomic education and social protection policies can have on employment the model presents three innovations first it formalizes the production of skills in the economy by following sex age cohorts through the various levels of the education and training systems given dropout and repetition rates second it incorporates a module that projects social insurance expenditures as a function of the demographic structure of the country and the rules of the pension system finally it develops a very detailed description of the labor market where informality reflects strategic decisions by workers and not necessarily exclusion the model is applied to morocco the results of various simulations illustrate the importance of coordinating macro education and social protection policies in order to achieve meaningful effects on employment levels in particular the author show that isolated interventions to improve the internal efficiency of the education system can aggravate the unemployment problem that subsidies to investments are more efficient in sectors intensive in skilled labor and that not controlling the growth of pension expenditures and the tax wedge can depress employment in the formal sector

group lending repayment incentives and social collateral abstract in this paper we investigate the impact on repayment rates of lending to groups which are made jointly liable for repayment this type of scheme especially in the guise of the grameen bank in bangladesh has received increasing attention we set up and analyze the repayment game which group lending gives rise to our analysis suggests that such schemes have both positive and negative effects on repayment rates the positive effect is that successful group members may have an incentive to repay the loans of group members whose projects have yielded insufficient return to make repayment worthwhile the negative effect arises when the whole group defaults even when some members would have repaid under individual lending we also show how group lending may harness social collateral which serves to mitigate its negative effect

financial contagion in the laboratory does network structure matter we explore the role of interbank network structure and premature liquidation costs for the likelihood of financial contagions in a laboratory experiment we consider complete versus incomplete networks of banks linked together by interbank deposits and we further vary premature liquidation costs subjects play the role of depositors deciding whether or not to withdraw funds from their interconnected bank we find that when liquidation costs are high a complete network structure is significantly less vulnerable to financial contagions than an incomplete network structure however when liquidation costs are low network structure is less important for the frequency of financial contagions

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

cyclical quality adjustment in the labor market 1 introductionthe u s unemployment rate fell to very low levels during the 1990s even more impressively the unemployment rate for minorities and less educated individuals fell disproportionately convergence of relative unemployment rates in expansions and divergence in recessions has been a feature of the u s economy over the last 30 years there are many possible reasons for this feature for example if the costs of hiring and firing less skilled labor are low one would expect these individuals to have very procyclical employment in this paper i explore an alternative model when there is an excess supply of labor high skilled people take jobs that would normally be occupied by less skilled people in expansions the process reverses with less skilled workers getting access to jobs that they would normally not attain i refer to this process as cyclical quality adjustment reder 1955 p 834 was one of the first to discuss how hiring standards adjust to business cycle conditions quality variations in labor markets arise through upgrading and downgrading of members of the labor force relative to the jobs they are to fill when applicants become scarce employers tend to lower the minimum standards upon which they insist as a condition for hiring a worker to fill a particular job and vice versa when applicants become plentiful since then many papers have developed this idea theoretically and many economic commentators appear to share this view of the labor market for example the economic report of the president states that a strong labor market is particularly important to less advantaged groups in the labor market such as workers with less education younger workers racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants when employers find it hard to fill vacancies they are more willing to hire and train workers whom they might pass over when they have fewer openings and an abundance of applicants council of economic advisors 1999 p 103 likewise the expansion during the 1990s spawned many newspaper articles about the improvement in the types of jobs available to less skilled applicants however there is little systematic empirical work about changes in job assignment in the united states over the business cycle the empirical work in this paper seeks to redress this situation cyclical assignment changes are important for many reasons as mentioned earlier job upgrading is a potential explanation for the greater cyclical variation of employment experienced by less skilled workers it is well known that the unemployment rates of less skilled individuals and minorities are more countercyclical relative to more skilled individuals clark and summers 1981 kydland 1984 keane and prasad 1993 hoynes 1999 the standard explanation for this effect is that low ability workers are more likely to be laid off in downturns because training and hiring costs are lower for these workers no commensurate attention has been paid to the issue of how the decision of who to hire changes over the business cycle however assignment models present a natural explanation for the greater procyclicality of employment of the less skilled both the adjustment cost hypothesis and the upgrading hypothesis imply that less skilled workers will have more procyclical employment empirically they are distinguishable because the upgrading explanation implies that jobs obtained by comparable workers should vary systematically over the cycle the adjustment cost hypothesis relates to the composition of those whose jobs are terminated second these mechanisms suggest a reason why wages are particularly procyclical for job changers recent studies using panel data have indicated that the wages of job starters are much more procyclical than the wages of workers who do not change jobs researchers have suggested various explanations for this result beaudry and dinardo 1991 and macleod and malcomson 1993 present contracting models in which the wages of job starters depend on the state of the labor market when they join the firm

the labour market impact of immigration in the first part of this paper we present a stylized model of the labour market impact of immigra tion we then discuss mechanisms through which an economy can adjust to immigration changes in factor prices output mix and production technology in the second part we explain the problems of empirically estimating how immigration affects labour market outcomes of the resident population and review some strategies to address these we then summarize some recent empirical studies for the uk and other countries we conclude with an outlook on what we believe are important avenues for future research

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

credit as insurance in agrarian economies abstract this paper examines consumption credit as an insurance mechanism in agrarian economies it explains the more rapid adoption of new technology in the green revolution by large farmers who had greater access to consumption credit the paper also demonstrates how the emergence and expansion of consumption credit markets by mitigating the need for hoarding in order to meet consumption contingencies enhances growth by encouraging investment

are there dynamic gains from a poor area development program poor area development programs in which the government transfers extra resources to unusually poor areas have been widely used to fight poverty there has been some research on such programs but little is known about their impact on household living standards over time the authors address the issue for a sizable poor area development program in rural china china s program had a significant impact on rural living standards in the targeted areas of the sample the consumption growth model suggests that households living in the targeted areas had a higher rate of consumption growth than one would have otherwise expected nonetheless the authors found that while the gains in growth were enough to prevent an absolute decline in average living standards they were not enough to reverse the strong underlying divergent tendencies in the rural economy

how to measure labour market effects of immigration a review abstract this paper surveys available empirical evidence on labour market effects of immigration many different approaches have been used already to try to find out whether immigration hurts the labour market opportunities of natives no doubt new approaches will follow in the future as globalization will keep the migration issue on the agenda this literature review discusses the different approaches concentrating on both the methodology and the results at the end it tries to summarize available evidence

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

individual attitudes towards skilled migration an empirical analysis across countries it is commonly argued that skilled immigration benefits the destination country through several channels yet only a limited number of countries report having policies in place aimed at increasing the intake of skilled immigrants why in this paper we analyse the factors that affect a direct measure of individual attitudes towards skilled migration we focus on two main channels the labour market and the welfare state we find that more educated natives are less likely to favour skilled immigration consistent with the labour market channel while richer people are more likely to do so in accordance with the welfare state channel under the tax adjustment model our findings thus suggest that the labour market competition threat perceived by skilled natives in the host countries might be driving the observed cautious policies

credit market access and profitability in tunisian agriculture this work develops an econometric model that links credit access with agricultural profitability and investment using data collected from rural tunisia this work provides direct estimates of credit access and its effects econometric estimates are run for agricultural investment and profitability as a function of credit access the investigation of credit access and its effect suggests that the presence of credit market constraints does impinge significantly on farm profitability but not on investments

the rural non farm economy prospects for growth and poverty reduction summary policy makers have high expectations for the rural non farm economy rnfe given high income shares growing employment and frequently low capital requirements they see the rnfe as a potential pathway out of poverty for their rural poor yet available evidence suggests that pro poor rural non farm growth does not occur automatically for the poor to benefit from rural non farm growth policy makers must stimulate buoyant rural economies with robust non farm income growth not simply low productivity employment moreover the poor must gain access to growing market niches fluid labor markets provide one important bridge linking the rural poor to growing non farm opportunities

an experiment on the causes of bank run contagions abstract to understand the mechanisms behind bank run contagions we conduct bank run experiments in a modified diamond dybvig setup with two banks left and right the banks liquidity levels are either linked or independent left bank depositors see their bank s liquidity level before deciding right bank depositors only see left bank withdrawals before deciding we find that left bank depositors actions significantly affect right bank depositors behavior even when liquidities are independent furthermore a panic may be a one way street an increase in left bank withdrawals can cause a panic run on the right bank but a decrease does not calm depositors

who is credit constrained in the u s economy an important assumption of the life cycle model of consumption is the postulate of perfect capital markets this hypothesis has recently been challenged by substantial empirical evidence hall and mishkin 1982 using the panel study of income dynamics estimate that 20 percent of united states families are liquidity constrained mariger 1986 derives a life cycle model with endogenous liquidity constraints and using a cross section estimates this fraction to be 19 4 percent hubbard and judd 1986 simulate a model with a constraint on net worth which shows that with reasonable assumptions about preferences 19 0 percent of united states consumers are liquidity constrained the emerging consensus points therefore to a fraction of approximately 20 percent of the population behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with the pure life cycle model in addition hayashi 1985 and zeldes 1989 investigate the correlation among consumption wealth and income for various population groups and infer that liquidity constraints are more important for younger families with low levels of wealth and saving the main limitation of these studies is that in their data sets constrained consumers are not observable and have to be identified via indirect evidence thus there is as yet little firm evidence about the characteristics of the consumers who are likely to be credit constrained this paper adopts an approach that differs from previous tests for liquidity constraints because it makes use of data where constrained consumers are observable and explicitly links their existence to credit market imperfections and personal characteristics the data drawn from the 1983 survey of consumer finances scf and described in section ii provide information on individuals whose request for credit has been rejected by financial intermediaries in section iii a model is developed in which consumers and lenders behavior jointly determines the probability that a consumer is rationed in the credit market this probability is then

asset smoothing consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints abstract a growing literature asks whether low wealth agents can accumulate assets over time or whether they are trapped in poverty this paper develops a stochastic dynamic programming model with endogenous asset price risk to explore savings and portfolio decisions in a resource poor environment characterized by risk and subsistence constraints optimal portfolio strategies are found to bifurcate despite divisible assets and fully rational agents wealthier agents acquire a higher yielding portfolio and pursue conventional consumption smoothing poorer agents acquire a less remunerative portfolio and pursue asset smoothing rather than consumption smoothing asset based risk coping thus results in positive correlation between initial wealth and portfolio rate of return

empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture a methodological survey empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years the aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature furthermore the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings six approaches are distinguished measurement of loan transaction costs analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept analysis of spill over effects with regard to secondary credit sources econometric household modeling and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions an explicit comparison with a first best solution is impossible in the first three approaches since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers access to credit based on qualitative or quantitative indicators the fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory the fourth approach takes an intermediate position since spill over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source the approaches are fairly data demanding in general usually requiring specific data on loan transactions even so most approaches are applicable to cross sectional household data with the exception of the first all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing

how has microcredit supported agriculture evidence using panel data from bangladesh improving agricultural productivity has received a greater attention in recent years amid concerns about rising food insecurity population pressures and climate change many believe that better access to institutional credit spanning microcredit as well as commercial and agricultural banks can help rural households smooth risks and access inputs and other technology to modernize agriculture and improve farm nonfarm linkages we use recently augmented household panel data spanning over 20 years in bangladesh to examine the effects of rural credit expansion both microcredit and formal bank channels on outcomes for agricultural households we find that microcredit has benefited households with lower landownings raising agricultural income from activities such as livestock rearing that require less land as well as nonfarm income diversification for all households but with the strongest effect for landless or near landless households we do not find effects of microcredit on crop income but do however find that reported supply side credit constraints significantly lower crop income borrowing by both men and women has contributed to nonfarm income growth for marginal farmers but only men s borrowing has contributed to nonfarm income growth among higher landowning groups

bank runs as coordination failures an experimental study we use experimental methods to investigate what factors contribute to breakdowns in coordination among a bank s depositors subjects in our experiment decide whether to leave their money deposited in a bank or withdraw it early a bank run occurs when there are too many early withdrawals we explore the effects of adding uncertainty about fundamental withdrawal demand and of changing the number of opportunities subjects have to withdraw our results show that i bank runs are rare when fundamental withdrawal demand is known but occur frequently when it is stochastic and ii subjects are more likely to withdraw when given multiple opportunities to do so than when presented with a single decision for the multiple opportunity case we evaluate individual withdrawal decisions according to a set of simple cutoff rules we find that the cutoff rule corresponding to the payoff dominant equilibrium of the game which involves bayesian updating of probabilities explains subject behavior better than other rules

credit programmes for the poor and seasonality in rural bangladesh this article examines the effect of group based credit used to finance self employment by landless households in bangladesh on the seasonal pattern of household consumption and male and female labour supply this credit can help smooth seasonal consumption by financing new productive activities whose income flows and time demands do not seasonally covary with the income generated by existing agricultural activities the results based upon 1991 92 survey data strongly suggest that an important motivation for credit programme participation is the need to smooth the seasonal pattern of consumption and male labour supply it is only the extent of lean season consumption poverty that selects household into these programmes in addition the largest female and male effects of credit on household consumption are during the lean season

collateral free lending with risk contingent credit for agricultural development indemnifying loans against pulse crop price risk in india this article addresses the problem of collateral free lending in the context of agricultural development we investigate a viable alternative to traditional credit products through the development of risk contingent credit for operating loans and farm mortgages and apply the concept to agricultural loans for pulse crops in india risk contingent credit mitigates business and financial risk by reducing debt obligations depending on the embedded commodity options whose payoffs are linked with commodity price fluctuations we analyze daily commodity spot prices for pulse crops in india and show how risk contingent structured financial instruments can be priced in practice

experiments with network formation abstract we examine how groups of agents form trading networks in the presence of idiosyncratic risk and the possibility of contagion specifically four agents play a two stage finite repeated game in the first stage the network structure is endogenously determined through a non cooperative proposal game in the second stage agents play multiple rounds of a coordination game against all of their chosen neighbors after the realization of a payoff relevant shock while parsimonious our four agent environment is rich enough to capture all of the important interaction structures in the networks literature bilateral marriage local interaction star and uniform matching consistent with our theory marriage networks are the most frequent and stable network structures in our experiments we find that payoff efficiency is around 90 percent of the ex ante payoff dominant strategies and the distribution of network structures is significantly different from that which would result from random play

migration and labour markets in oecd countries a panel cointegration approach this article examines the interaction between immigration and the host labour market of 14 organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries using nonstationary panel data methodology we estimate a trivariate vector error correction model vecm and derive causality tests to simultaneously assess the long and short term macroeconomic impact of newcomers on wages and unemployment levels in the host country the results suggest that an increase of migrants is likely to increase wages in the destination countries in the short run but to increase them in the long run there is no evidence of adverse effects on unemployment due to immigration in short and long term except for anglo saxon countries in the short term our findings also show that immigration is conditioned by levels of unemployment and wages especially in anglo saxon countries

low and high skill migration flows free mobility versus other determinants we investigate what economic factors drive international migration of workers to france and how their influence varies across different skill levels under restrictive policies and through time as free mobility is implemented we find that neither incentives nor policy parameters are similar across skill levels migration drivers such as a network of compatriots and relative incomes influence the movement of low skill workers high skill individuals however move only according to financial opportunities be they standard of living or returns to skill within a class we conclude that competition for high skill workers among organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries requires more than free mobility to successfully attract high skill migrants even for a developed country such as france

isolating the network effect of immigrants on trade within the migration trade nexus literature this paper proposes a more carefully defined measure of migration business networks and quantifies its impact on bilateral trade using cross sectional data and controlling for the overall bilateral stock of migrants the share of migrants employed in managerial business related occupations has a strong additional effect on trade those immigrants should be the ones directly involved in the diffusion and transmission of information relevant for companies trading with other countries their presence is found to increase the volume of trade especially of imports beyond the already known effect of immigrants or highly educated immigrants when we control for the presence of highly educated immigrants the share of immigrants in business network occupations shows a particularly large effect on trade in differentiated goods we also find that highly educated individuals in business related occupations are those contributing to stimulate import and export by the largest margin business network effects seem particularly important in stimulating exports to culturally different countries such as those with different language and legal origin

effects of innovation on employment a dynamic panel analysis abstract this paper estimates the effect of innovation on employment at the firm level our uniquely long innovation panel data set of german manufacturing firms covers more than 20 years and allows us to use various innovation measures we can distinguish between product and process innovations as well as between innovation input and innovation output measures using dynamic panel gmm system estimation we find positive effects of innovation on employment this is true for innovation input as well as for innovation output variables innovations show their positive effect on employment with a time lag and process innovations have higher effects than product innovations

identifying earnings assimilation of immigrants under changing macroeconomic conditions failure to account for differences between immigrants and natives in their responsiveness to changes in macroeconomic conditions may bias estimates of assimilation effects on immigrant earnings using norwegian register data from 1980 to 1996 we first establish that earnings of immigrants from non oecd countries exhibit greater sensitivity to local unemployment than do earnings of natives the empirical analysis further reveals that standard methods of estimation which fail to consider differential immigrant and native responsiveness understate earnings growth and overstate cohort differentials among non oecd immigrants these biases are attributable to trends in macroeconomic conditions over the sample period

hroot hamburg registration and organization online tool abstract hroot hamburg registration and organization online tool is a web based software designed for managing participants of economic experiments this package provides important features to assure a randomized invitation process based on a filtered pre specified subject pool and a complete documentation of the selection procedure for potential participants of an experiment

the relationship between credit and productivity in chinese agriculture a microeconomic model of disequilibrium credit is an important element in agricultural production systems it allows producers to satisfy the cash needs induced by the production cycle which characterizes agriculture preparation planting cultivation and harvesting of the crops are typically done over a period of several months in which very little cash revenue is earned while expenditures on materials purchased inputs and consumption must be made in cash cash income is received a short time after the harvest in the absence of credit markets farmers would have to maintain cash reserves so as to facilitate production and consumption in the next cycle the availability of credit allows both greater consumption and greater purchased input use and thus increases welfare of the farmers

employment wages and the economic cycle differences between immigrants and natives in this paper we analyse differences in the cyclical pattern of employment and wages of immigrants and natives for two large immigrant receiving countries germany and the uk we show that despite large differences in their immigrant populations there are similar and significant differences in cyclical responses between immigrants and natives in both countries even conditional on education age and location we decompose changes in outcomes into a secular trend and a business cycle component we find significantly larger unemployment responses to economic shocks for low skilled workers relative to high skilled workers and for immigrants relative to natives within the same skill group there is little evidence for differential wage responses to economic shocks we offer three explanations for these findings an equilibrium search model where immigrants experience higher job separation rates a model of dual labour markets and differences in the complementarity of immigrants and natives to capital

risk credit constraints and financial efficiency in peruvian agriculture abstract based on a panel data set we use a two stage analysis to evaluate the effects of access to formal credit on financial efficiency of farms in northern peru the first stage uses non parametric data envelope analysis to estimate farm specific measures of financial efficiency 28 per cent of farmers are financially inefficient and credit constraints reduce profits of these farmers by an average of between 17 and 27 per cent the second stage uses tobit regression to evaluate the determinants of financial inefficiency the results point to uninsured risk as a key determinant of financial inefficiency and suggest that policies to strengthen agricultural insurance markets would likely pay large dividends in rural peru

direct elicitation of credit constraints conceptual and practical issues with an application to peruvian agriculture abstract this article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints we begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms quantity rationing transaction cost rationing and risk rationing each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical analyses of credit market performance we outline a survey strategy to directly elicit households status as unconstrained or constrained in the credit market and if constrained to further identify which of the three nonprice rationing mechanisms is at play we discuss several practical issues that arise due to the use of a combination of factual and interpretative survey questions finally using a farm level data set from peru we illustrate how the methodology can be used to estimate the impacts of credit constraints

the global economic crisis and the effect of immigrant workers on native born employment in europe the debate regarding the economic effects of employing immigrants has attracted renewed interest in european countries since the economic crisis we provide an approximation of the labour market effects of immigrant workers in four european countries during the global economic crisis after briefly analysing native and foreign born worker conditions for the most recent period our analysis focuses on the correlation between the stock of immigrant workers and the number of native labour market workers across several segments of the labour market using a simple model approach using eurostat and lfs labour force survey data we estimate a structural dynamic model using the generalised method of moments gmm to examine adjustment dynamics in the labour market and labour market segment and worker educational levels countries of origin and genders overall the empirical results suggest that immigrant labour force effects on native born worker employment rates have been persistent and but weak throughout the business cycle these effects are globally positive and immigrant origins do not appear to change the nature of their impact we offer some explanations for these findings related to dual labour markets and to differences in levels of substitution among native and immigrant workers

the labor market impact of immigration in western germany in the 1990 s in this article we estimate the wage and employment effects of recent immigration in western germany using administrative data for the period 1987 2001 and a labor market equilibrium model we find that the substantial immigration of the 1990s had very little adverse effects on native wages and on their employment levels instead it had a sizeable adverse employment effect on previous immigrants as well as a small adverse effect on their wages these asymmetric results are partly driven by a higher degree of substitution between old and new immigrants in the labor market and in part by the rigidity of wages in less than flexible labor markets in a simple counter factual experiment we show that in a world of perfect wage flexibility and no unemployment insurance the wage bill loss of old immigrants would be much smaller

mexican immigrant employment outcomes over the business cycle the united states is beginning to emerge from the deepest downturn the country has experienced since the great depression as of october 2009 the number of unemployed persons had risen by 8 2 million since the great recession began in december 2007 all demographic groups have experienced job losses but some groups have been more adversely affected than others repeating the pattern of most previous downturns the recession s impact has been worst for low education and minority workers one group that has been particularly hard hit is mexican immigrants data from the current population survey indicate that between the first quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009 the unemployment rate among mexican immigrants rose from 4 2 percent to 11 3 percent and their employment rate dropped by 5 percentage points in contrast during that period the unemployment rate among non hispanic white natives rose from 3 7 percent to 7 8 percent and their employment rate fell by 2 6 percentage points mexican immigrants tend to be particularly vulnerable to economic downturns because of their relatively low skill levels they make up one fourth of all workers who do not have a high school diploma or equivalent and over one half of workers who have completed at most eighth grade when the economy slows employers look to shed their least productive employees first employers tend to invest less in training low skilled workers and therefore have less

how infrastructure and financial institutions affect rural income and poverty evidence from bangladesh the mechanisms by which the poor benefit from economic growth remain a topic of debate in development literature we address this issue in the context of rural bangladesh using a pooled dataset of three household panels between 1991 2001 expansion of irrigation paved roads electricity and access to formal and informal credit have through different veins led to higher rural farm and non farm incomes accounting for exogenous local agroclimatic endowments that explain a large part of the variation in the growth of infrastructure and credit programmes however this has not translated into substantial reductions in poverty for the poorest households

peer monitoring and credit markets a major problem for institutional lenders is ensuring that borrowers exercise prudence in the use of the funds so that the likelihood of repayment is enhanced one partial solution is peer monitoring having neighbors who are in a good position to monitor the borrower be required to pay a penalty if the borrower goes bankrupt peer monitoring is largely responsible for the successful financial performance of the grameen bank of bangladesh and of similar group lending programs elsewhere but peer monitoring has a cost it transfers risk from the bank which is in a better position to bear risk to the cosigner in a simple model of peer monitoring in a competitive credit market this article demonstrates that the transfer of risk leads to an improvement in borrowers welfare

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

experimental evidence of bank runs as pure coordination failures abstract we investigate how coordination requirement measured by the coordination parameter affects the occurrence of miscoordination based bank runs in controlled laboratory environments we identify an indeterminacy region of the coordination parameter such that games with the parameter within the region have varying coordination outcomes and exhibit persistent path dependence experimental economies with the parameter above below the region stay close or converge to the run non run equilibrium switches between the two equilibria occur even with fixed economic fundamentals the experimental results are well accounted for by a version of the evolutionary algorithm that uses experimentation rates estimated from the experimental data

on the effects of deposit insurance and observability on bank runs an experimental study we study the effects of deposit insurance and observability of previous actions on the emergence of bank runs by means of a controlled laboratory experiment we consider three depositors in the line of a bank who decide between withdrawing or keeping their money deposited we have three treatments with different levels of deposit insurance which reflect the losses a depositor may incur in the case of a bank run we find that different levels of deposit insurance and the possibility of observing other depositors actions affect the likelihood of bank runs when decisions are not observable higher levels of deposit insurance decrease the probability of bank runs when decisions are observable this need not to be the case these results suggest that i observability might be considered as a partial substitute of deposit insurance and ii the optimal deposit insurance should take into account the degree of observability

geographic poverty traps a micro model of consumption growth in rural china how important are neighbourhood endowments of physical and human capital in explaining diverging fortunes over time for otherwise identical households in a developing rural economy to answer this question we develop an estimable micro model of consumption growth allowing for constraints on factor mobility and externalities whereby geographic capital can influence the productivity of a household s own capital our statistical test has considerable power in detecting geographic effects given that we control for latent heterogeneity in measured consumption growth rates at the micro level we find robust evidence of geographic poverty traps in farm household panel data from post reform rural china our results strengthen the equity and efficiency case for public investment in lagging poor areas in this setting copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

a theory of trickle down growth and development this paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets and it analyses the trickle down effect of capital accumulation moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities three main conclusions are obtained from this model first when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution second even though the trickle down mechanism can lead to a unique steady state distribution under laissez faire there is room for government intervention in particular redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle down process third the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them in other words this model can generate a kuznets curve

an experimental exploration of self fulfilling banking panics their occurrence persistence and prevention this article tests the possibility and the degree of persistence of self fulfilling banking panics through an experimental protocol panics are proved to be persistent phenomena that are difficult to prevent however it seems possible to curb them through a learning effect caused by a temporary but sufficient suspension of the deposit availability combined with a narrow banking solution which makes banks more liquid additionally panic prevention requires a full deposit coverage to be effective this suggests that the moral hazard issue should not be tackled through a lower deposit coverage especially in emerging countries banking systems where depositors are likely to lose confidence

measuring international skilled migration a new database controlling for age of entry recent data on international migration of skilled workers define skilled migrants by education level without distinguishing whether they acquired their education in the home or the host country this article uses immigrants age of entry as a proxy for where they acquired their education data on age of entry are available from a subset of receiving countries that together represent 77 percent of total skilled immigration to countries of the oecd organization for economic co operation and development using these data and a simple gravity model to estimate the age of entry structure of the remaining 23 percent alternative brain drain measures are proposed that exclude immigrants who arrived before ages 12 18 and 22

liquidity requirements and the interbank loan market an experimental investigation abstract we develop a stylized interbank market environment and use it to evaluate with experimental methods the effects of liquidity requirements baseline and liquidity regulated regimes are analyzed in a simple shock environment which features a single idiosyncratic shock and in a compound shock environment in which the idiosyncratic shock is followed by a randomly occurring second stage shock interbank trading of the illiquid asset follows each shock in the simple shock environment we find that liquidity regulations reduce the incidence of bankruptcies but at a large loss of investment efficiency in the compound shock environment liquidity regulations not only impose a loss of investment efficiency but also fail to reduce bankruptcies

immigration and inequality immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand low skilled workers nevertheless there is controversy over the appropriate theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect and over the precise magnitudes involved this paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality focusing on evidence from cross city comparisons in the u s while some researchers have claimed that a cross city research design is inherently flawed i argue that the evidence from cross city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time series data in particular cross city and aggregate time series comparisons provide support for three key conclusions 1 workers with below high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education 2 high school equivalent and college equivalent workers are imperfect substitutes with an elasticity of substitution on the order of 2 3 within education groups immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes together these results imply that the average impacts of recent immigrant inflows on the relative wages of u s natives are small the effects on overall wage inequality including natives and immigrants are larger reflecting the concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual inequality among immigrants than natives even so immigration accounts for a small share 5 of the increase in u s wage inequality between 1980 and 2000