immigration and house prices in the uk this article studies the effect of immigration on house prices in the uk it finds that immigration has a negative effect on house prices and presents evidence that this negative effect is due to the mobility response of the native population natives respond to immigration by moving to different areas and those who leave are at the top of the wage distribution this generates a negative income effect on housing demand and pushes down house prices the negative effect of immigration on house prices is driven by local areas where immigrants have lower education

the effect of immigration along the distribution of wages this paper analyses the effect immigration has on wages of native workers unlike most previous work we estimate wage effects along the distribution of wages we derive a flexible empirical strategy that does not rely on pre allocating immigrants to particular skill groups in our empirical analysis we demonstrate that immigrants downgrade considerably upon arrival as for the effects on native wages we find that immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage distribution the overall wage effect of immigration is slightly positive the positive wage effects we find are although modest too large to be explained by an immigration surplus we suggest alternative explanations based on the idea that immigrants are paid less than the value of what they contribute to production generating therefore a surplus and we assess the magnitude of these effects

effects of immigration on house prices in canada from the turn of the present century until late 2008 house prices in some developed countries including canada rose sharply compared to the increases in their per capita incomes some in the public circles of these countries argue that immigration fueled this rise each year canada admits about 225 000 immigrants but information on the effect of immigration on house prices in this country is lacking our extensive econometric analysis based on panel data at census division levels obtained from the 1996 2001 and 2006 population censuses indicates a statistically significant but small effect of immigration on prices of privately owned dwellings in canada an out migration of the native born from the areas where new immigrants settle or an increased supply of housing due to expectations of higher demand in those areas may have caused this result

immigration and house prices under various labour market structures in england and wales this article estimates the impact of immigration on local house prices under various local labour market structures in england and wales typically for the nation as a whole newly arriving immigr

lobbying political competition and local land supply recent evidence from spain abstract we analyze whether local land supply is influenced by the degree of political competition and interpret the findings as indications of the influence wielded by land developer lobbies we use a new database including both political and land supply data for more than 2 000 spanish municipalities for the period 2003 2007 in spain land use policies are largely a local responsibility with municipalities needing periodically to pass comprehensive land use plans the main policy variable in these plans and the one analyzed here is the amount of land classified for potential development we measure local political competition as the margin of victory of the incumbent government this variable is however potentially endogenous since not only do votes affect policy but also policy is expected to affect votes to deal with this problem we instrument this variable using the votes at the first national legislative elections following the re establishment of democracy and votes actually obtained regionally at the same type of election the results indicate that stiffer political competition does indeed reduce the amount of new land designated for development this effect is found to be most marked in suburbs in towns with a high percentage of commuters and homeowners and in municipalities governed by the left

re evaluating the impact of immigration on the u s rental housing market abstract previous studies provide evidence that immigration increases housing prices and rents to deal with endogenous location choices of immigrants these studies often use a shift share instrumental variable approach this approach however fails to adequately account for the natural attraction of immigrants to cities with thriving economies high immigration cities provide more economic opportunities and thus exhibit persistently rising housing prices and rents this paper improves upon the traditional empirical approach by explicitly controlling for initial city characteristics that lead to both increases in immigration and the evolution of rents results suggest that after controlling for endogenous sorting of immigrants the positive effect of immigration on rents is attenuated while the impact of immigrant inflows is smaller an extension of the main results suggests the effects of immigration on rents remains larger than that of native inflows

immigration and housing rents in american cities is there a local economic impact of immigration immigration pushes up rents and housing values in us destination cities the positive association of rent growth and immigrant inflows is pervasive in time series for all metropolitan areas i use instrumental variables based on a shift share of national levels of immigration into metropolitan areas an immigration inflow equal to 1 of a city s population is associated with increases in average rents and housing values of about 1 the results suggest an economic impact that is an order of magnitude bigger than that found in labor markets

bankruptcy prediction using terminal failure processes abstract traditional bankruptcy prediction models designed using classification or regression techniques achieve short term performances 1 year that are fairly good but that often worsen when the prediction horizon exceeds 1 year we show how to improve the performance of such models beyond 1 year using models that take into account the evolution of firm s financial health over a short period of time for this purpose we design models that fit the underlying failure process of different groups of firms our results demonstrate that such models lead to better prediction accuracy at a 3 year horizon than that achieved with common models

the pot rush is legalized marijuana a positive local amenity this paper examines the amenity value of legalized marijuana by analyzing the impact of marijuana legalization on migration to colorado colorado is the pioneering state in this area having legalized medical marijuana in 2000 and recreational marijuana in 2012 we test whether potential migrants to colorado view legalized marijuana as a positive or negative local amenity we use the synthetic control methodology to examine in and out migration to from colorado versus migration to from counterfactual versions of colorado that have not legalized marijuana we find strong evidence that potential migrants view legalized marijuana as a positive amenity with in migration significantly higher in colorado compared with synthetic colorado after the writing of the ogden memo in 2009 that effectively allowed state laws already in place to be activated and additionally after marijuana was legalized in 2013 for recreational use when we employ permutation methods to assess the statistical likelihood of our results given our sample we find that colorado is a clear and significant outlier we find no evidence for changes in out migration from colorado suggesting that marijuana legalization did not change the equilibrium for individuals already living in the state jel i18 r23 k42 c22

illegal immigration border enforcement and relative wages evidence from apprehensions at the u s mexico border we examine illegal immigration in the united states from mexico over the period 1976 1995 one challenge is that we do not observe the number of individuals that attempt to enter the united states illegally we only observe the number of individuals apprehended attempting to cross the u s mexico border illegally based on a simple migration model we postulate the existence of an apprehensions function which expresses apprehensions at the border as a function of illegal attempts to cross the border and u s border enforcement effort we find that a 10 decrease in the mexican real wage leads to a 7 5 to 8 8 increase in apprehensions at the border excerpt

the effect of immigration on productivity evidence from us states abstract in this paper we analyze the long run impact of immigration on employment productivity and its skill bias we use the existence of immigrant communities across u s states before 1960 and the distance from the mexican border as instruments for immigration flows we find no evidence that immigrants crowded out employment at the same time we find that immigration had a strong positive association with total factor productivity and a negative association with the high skill bias of production technologies the results are consistent with the idea that immigrants promoted efficient task specialization thus increasing tfp and also promoted the adoption of unskilled efficient technologies

reversal of migration flows a fresh look at the german reunification we investigate the dynamic effects of interregional labor market integration on migration flows capital formation and the price for housing services the co evolution of these variables depends on initial conditions at the time of labor market integration in an initially capital poor economy there may be a reversal of migration flows during the transition to the steady state while housing costs are increasing over time although capital may accumulate while labor emigrates early in the transition the causal effect of immigration on capital investments and housing costs is positive we present new data on the evolution of net migration flows and rental rates for housing in east germany after 1990 our results are consistent with the presented evidence in the reverse migration scenario

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

unexpected guests the impact of internal displacement inflows on rental prices in colombian host cities abstract we study the causal impact of internally displaced people idp inflows on rental prices in colombian host cities following an instrumental variables approach we find that as idp inflows increase low income rental prices increase and high income rental prices decrease we provide empirical evidence on two potential mechanisms for these findings excess demand for low income housing puts upwards pressure on rental prices increasing supply of high income housing coupled with rising homicide rates put downwards pressure on rental prices

debt covenant violations and managers accounting responses abstract this paper examines accounting changes costs of default and accounting based covenants violated by 130 firms reporting violations in annual reports i find that managers of firms approaching default respond with income increasing accounting changes and that the default costs imposed by lenders and the accounting flexibility available to managers are important determinants of managers accounting responses i also document that private lending agreements are the first violated that net worth and working capital restrictions are the most frequently violated restrictions and that in 52 percent of the cases lenders require concessions from borrowers to resolve default

effects of trade unions on the earnings differential between males and females canadian evidence this paper examines whether trade unions have affected the earnings gap between male and female workers in canada based on a sample of 4 093 individuals derived from the survey of union membership the results of regression analysis suggest that unions have increased the relative earnings of male workers even after the difference in the level of unionization between males and females is accounted for the results also indicate that the relative wage effect differs substantially between the public and private sectors

timing is everything short run population impacts of immigration in us cities abstract we provide the first analysis of the short run causal impact of immigrant inflows on native populations at the local labor market level using published statistics from the american community surveys of 2000 2010 we examine how immigrant inflow shocks to a metropolitan area affect native populations we find that immigrant inflows are associated with increases in local native populations on an annual basis but that these ols estimates are generally upward biased our iv results are purged of this bias but we still find that an additional immigrant increases the low skill native population by 0 4 0 7 in the concurrent period to explain this result we show that immigrant inflows lead to declines in outflows of low skill natives from affected msas this is most pronounced in msas from which relocation is arguably more costly which may disproportionately affect the low skilled we find short run responses among high skill natives that are consistent with displacement the decline in high skilled native populations is driven by high skilled immigrant inflows and high skilled outflows increase from affected msas we show that these short run changes are obscured in specifications using longer run population changes and conclude that the short run impact of immigrants on native populations differs markedly from their longer run impact

estimating the effects of unions on wage inequality in a panel data model with comparative advantage and nonrandom selection this article considers the estimation of the structure of wages in union and nonunion sectors it proposes an estimator that extends standard panel data techniques to the case in which the return to the permanent component of the error term is differently rewarded in the two sectors the econometric model is used to estimate the effect of unions on both the level and the variance of wages in canada the findings indicate that unions increase the average wage of workers and compress the returns to observable measures of skill and to a time invariant unobservable measure of skill

the impact of income inequality on rental affordability an empirical study in large american metropolitan areas american metropolitan areas have experienced rising income inequality and worsening rental affordability in the past few decades has the rise of inequality caused worsening rental affordability t

crime in europe and the united states dissecting the reversal of misfortunes contrary to common perceptions today both property and violent crimes with the exception of homicides are more widespread in europe than in the united states while the opposite was true thirty years ago we label this fact as the reversal of misfortunes we investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes incarceration abortion unemployment and immigration on crime for this we use time series data 1970 2008 from seven european countries and the united states we find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in europe our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether such a policy would also be efficient from a cost benefit point of view we leave this to future research paolo buonanno francesco drago roberto galbiati and giulio zanella

the effect of low skilled immigration on u s prices evidence from cpi data i exploit the large variation across u s cities and through time in the relative size of the low skilled immigrant population to estimate the causal effect of immigration on prices of nontraded goods and services using an instrumental variables strategy i find that at current immigration levels a 10 percent increase in the share of low skilled immigrants in the labor force decreases the price of immigrant intensive services such as housekeeping and gardening by 2 percent wage equations suggest that lower wages are a likely channel through which these effects take place however wage effects are significantly larger for low skilled immigrants than for low skilled natives implying that the two are imperfect substitutes

ethnic enclaves and the economic success of immigrants evidence from a natural experiment recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic enclaves within metropolitan areas the economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue we use an immigrant policy initiative in sweden when government authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way that may be considered exogenous this policy initiative provides a unique natural experiment which allows us to estimate the causal effect on labor market outcomes of living in enclaves we find substantive evidence of sorting across locations when sorting is taken into account living in enclaves improves labor market outcomes for instance the earnings gain associated with a standard deviation increase in ethnic concentration is in the order of four to five percent

bankruptcy theory development and classification via genetic programming abstract bankruptcy is a highly significant worldwide problem with high social costs traditional bankruptcy risk models have been criticized for falling short with respect to bankruptcy theory building due to either modeling assumptions or model complexity genetic programming minimizes the amount of a priori structure that is associated with traditional functional forms and statistical selection procedures but still produces easily understandable and implementable models genetic programming was used to analyze 28 potential bankruptcy variables found to be significant in multiple prior research studies including 10 fraud risk factors data was taken from a sample of 422 bankrupt and non bankrupt norwegian companies for the period 1993 1998 six variables were determined to be significant a genetic programming model was developed for the six variables from an expanded sample of 1136 bankrupt and non bankrupt norwegian companies the model was 81 accurate on a validation sample slightly better than prior genetic programming research on us public companies and statistically significantly better than the 77 accuracy of a traditional logit model developed using the same variables and data the most significant variable in the final model was the prior auditor opinion thus validating the information value of the auditor s report the model provides insight into the complex interaction of bankruptcy related factors especially the effect of company size the results suggest that accounting information including the auditor s evaluation of it is more important for larger than smaller firms it also suggests that for small firms the most important information is liquidity and non accounting information the genetic programming model relationships developed in this study also support prior bankruptcy research including the finding that company size decreases bankruptcy risk when profits are positive it also confirms that very high profit levels are associated with increased bankruptcy risk even for large companies an association that may be reflecting the potential for management to be cooking the books

room in the kitchen for the melting pot immigration and rental prices this paper studies the response of housing markets to immigration shocks following card 1990 i examine the changes in rental prices in miami and three comparison groups after the mariel boatlift this exogenous immigration shock added an extra 9 to miami s renter population in 1980 i find that rents increased from 8 to 11 more in miami than in the comparison groups between 1979 and 1981 by 1983 the rent differential was still 7 rental units of higher quality were not affected by the immigration shock units occupied by low income hispanic residents in 1979 experienced an extra 8 differential hike with respect to other low income units relative housing prices moved in the opposite direction from rents in the short run

immigration and wages evidence from construction to identify relative wage impacts of immigration we make use of certification and licensing requirements in the norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects for low and semi skilled workers effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade finally we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment

canadian union nonunion wage differentials using extensive canadian longitudinal data from the years 1969 71 the authors estimate union nonunion wage differentials of 12 14 percent for 1969 and 13 16 percent for 1970 these estimates are not adjusted for selectivity because three different tests to identify selectivity yield no evidence of selectivity bias the authors argue that although testing for selectivity is often essential selectivity adjustments have resulted in greatly inflated estimates of union nonunion wage differentials in some studies and should therefore be used with caution

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

the effect of immigration on native self employment we examine the impact of immigration on self employed natives in a new general equilibrium model of self employment and wage salary work a range of plausible parameter values implies small negative effects of immigration on native self employment rates and earnings using 1980 and 1990 census microdata we then examine the relationship between changes in immigration and native self employment rates and earnings across 132 of the largest u s metropolitan areas we find evidence suggesting that self employed immigrants displace self employed natives but do not have a negative effect on native self employment earnings the effects are much larger than those predicted by the theoretical model

an income strategy approach to the positive theory of accounting standard setting choice abstract this paper is designed to provide additional evidence on the positive theory of accounting policy choice by combining individual accounting principles into firm income strategies these strategies were the dependent variable in a probit analysis where the independent variables were size management compensation industry concentration ratio systematic risk capital intensity and the total debt to total asset ratio the results indicate that four of these factors size management compensation concentration ratio and the total debt to total asset ratio have a significant association with the choice of a firm s income strategy this test provides strong evidence consistent with the positive theory of accounting standard setting choice we also present evidence that smaller firms and or firms in less concentrated industries do not appear to make accounting policy choice decisions that are consistent with this theory

construction elasticities and land availability a two stage least squares model of housing supply using the variable elasticity approach this paper uses data at english local authority district level to construct a simultaneous equation model of housing construction that compares elasticities of supply between two cross sectional periods 1988 boom and 1992 slump using the variable elasticity approach econometric issues raised by earlier supply studies are discussed and tested for the paper also discusses the rationale for and tests the existence of a backward bending supply relationship and finds that supply is concave in both periods and bends backwards during the boom evidence of a structural break between boom and bust is found producing average price elasticities of supply noticeably smaller in the boom 0 58 than in the slump 1 03 with considerable variation across disticts land supply elasticities are found to be more stable over time and marginally greater in the boom 0 75 than in the slump 0 71 the paper also calculates second partial derivatives based on the whole demand supply system to obtain estimates

recent immigration and economic outcomes in rural america this paper assessed how recent immigrant flows have affected non metropolitan county labor market outcomes over the 2000 2005 period we find the largest impact to be increased net out migration of natives in the more remote rural counties dramatically less out migration of natives occurred in manufacturing dependent counties which also experienced reduced employment rates suggesting greater job queuing immigration was positively associated with net migration in persistently high poverty counties given the general absence of statistically significant adverse impacts on other labor market outcomes in these counties it is possible that immigration helps to revitalize persistently high poverty counties although point estimates suggested out migration may have been insufficient to equalize real wages

the effect of unionization on the gender earnings gap in canada 1971 1981 the male female earnings differential in canada is investigated with particular attention to the effect of trade unions on the gender earnings gap an augmented version of the human capital theory based earnings equation is used as the empirical framework of the study gender specific earnings equations are estimated using cross sectional aggregate data for metropolitan cities and regions in canada for 1971 and 1981 the empirical results for 1971 indicate that unionization increases the annual earnings of males more than of females whereas the 1981 results indicate that trade unions decrease the male female earnings gap however the latter evidence is not statistically significant the study suggests that the increase in female participation in trade unions was an important factor in reducing the gender earnings gap over the period 1971 1981

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

the effect of immigration on wages exploiting exogenous variation at the national level this paper estimates the effect of immigration on native wages at the national level taking into account the endogenous allocation of immigrants across skill cells time varying exogenous variation across skill cells for a given country is provided by interactions of push factors distance and skill cell dummies distance mitigates the effect of push factors more severely for less educated and middle experienced because the analysis focuses on the united states and canada i propose a two stage approach sub sample 2sls that estimates the first stage regression with an augmented sample of destination countries and the second stage equation with the restricted sub sample of interest i derive asymptotic results for this estimator and suggest several applications beyond the current one the empirical analysis indicates a substantial bias in estimated ols wage elasticities to immigration sub sample 2sls estimates average 1 2 and are very stable to the use of alternative instruments

commuting migration housing and labour markets complex interactions commuting migration housing and labour markets are important for the overall economy and for the everyday life of many people commuting makes up a large part of all journeys world wide and many resourcedemanding transport investment projects are initiated to cope with this type of travelling in a range of countries increasing flows of national and international migration are central determinants of demographic developments in industrialised countries the working age population or those aspiring to be part of the economically active population constitute a large proportion of the total population consequently income earned through working represents a major component of total earnings in these economies cahuc and zylberberg 2004 in order to obtain an efficient labour market workers should locate and relocate to where the relevant jobs are to be found from an economic point of view commuting and migration are essential elements for obtaining a well functioning labour market fischer et al 1996 lux and sunega 2012 zabel 2012 finally housing is a basic good and for many people rents or loan repayments make up a relatively large proportion of their overall budget oecd 2011 moreover housing represents a dominating element of homeowners wealth or equity due to its central role during the financial and economic crisis starting around 2007 it has become clear that housing prices are important for the development of the overall economy in many countries for example muellbauer and murphy 2008 zabel 2012 housing and labour markets are linked in many ways when explaining these links it is useful to start with some of the distinguished features of housing markets as already mentioned houses frequently constitute a major part of households wealth moreover earned income from employment is a major

supply constraints and housing market dynamics abstract although the volatility of house prices is often ascribed to demand side factors constraints on housing supply have important and little studied implications for housing dynamics i illustrate the strong relationship between the volatility of house prices and the regulation of new housing supply i then employ a dynamic structural model of housing investment to investigate the mechanisms underlying this relationship i find that supply constraints increase volatility through two channels first regulation lowers the elasticity of new housing supply by increasing lags in the permit process and adding to the cost of supplying new houses on the margin second geographic limitations on the area available for building houses such as steep slopes and water bodies lead to less investment on average relative to the size of the existing housing stock leaving less scope for the supply response to attenuate the effects of a demand shock my estimates and simulations confirm that regulation and geographic constraints play critical and complementary roles in decreasing the responsiveness of investment to demand shocks which in turn amplifies house price volatility

pricing for the clean air evidence from chinese housing market abstract air pollution is widely believed to cause healthy risks and influence nations economic dimensions this paper investigates the impact of air pollution on housing prices in china s 286 prefectural level cities during 2005 2013 to address the endogeneity problem of pm2 5 concentrations in our regression we propose an instrument variable strategy based on ventilation coefficient the estimation results suggest that a 10 increase in pm2 5 concentrations causes a 2 4 reduction in local housing prices air pollution also hinders the progress of urbanization limits cities human capital formation and changes people s expectations of housing prices that we interpret as three potential mechanisms behind our main findings

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

corporate governance and default prediction a reality test default prediction has commanded the attention of researchers for at least 50 years this paper addresses several testable hypotheses regarding the relations between corporate governance and defaul