empathy conditioned conservation walking in the shoes of others as a conservation farmer conservation tillage on farms can improve downstream water quality using a dual interests theoretical framework guided by the metaeconomics approach this paper examines the role of self interest and shared other interest in the conservation tillage adoption decision the data is from a 2007 survey of farmers in the blue river tuttle creek watershed of nebraska and kansas logit models show that farmers who temper their pursuit of self interest with shared other interest reflecting empathy sympathy are more likely to adopt conservation tillage habit and control also play a role farmers pursue a joint and interdependent own interest and not only self interest as presumed in microeconomics

agent heterogeneity in adoption of anaerobic digestion technology integrating economic diffusion and behavioral innovation theories anaerobic digestion technology addresses environmental issues of waste disposal and greenhouse gas emission reduction this paper examines attitudes toward adoption of this conservation technology on dairy farms to specify an appropriate dependent variable without a large number of adopters an ordered probit model is constructed the empirical analysis uses data from a 2006 survey of pacific northwest dairy farms aggregate variables are constructed based on behavioral economics and conservation adoption literature variables include private and social costs social motives capacity innovation receptivity and opportunity costs most of which are found to be highly related to the decision to seriously consider adoption

history path dependence and development evidence from colonial railroads settlers and cities in kenya little is known about the extent and forces of path dependence in developing countries colonial era railroad construction in kenya provides a natural experiment to study the emergence and persistence of spatial equilibrium data spanning over one century shows that railroads determined the location of european settlers asian traders and the main cities at independence europeans then left asians departed and railroads declined in the immediate post independence period constituting local shocks to physical and human capital yet the colonial cities persisted we test four explanations for path dependence based on institutional persistence technological change sunk investments and spatial coordination failures

is a policy of free movement of workers sustainable this paper studies the costs and benets of the adoption of the policy of free movement for workers for the countries to agree on uncontrolled movement of workers the short run costs must be outweighed by the long term benets that result from better labor market exibility and income smoothing we show that such policies are less likely to be adopted when workers are impatient and less risk averse workers when production technologies display decreasing returns and when countries trade a share of their products

foreign know how firm control and the income of developing countries nber working paper seriesforeign know how firm control and the income of developingcountriesariel bursteinalexander monge naranjoworking paper 13073http www nber org papers w13073national bureau of economic research1050 massachusetts avenuecambridge ma 02138may 2007we thank manuel amador pol antras andy atkeson wilbur john coleman pete klenow eva nagypal giorgio primiceri andres rodriguez clare esteban rossi hansberg martin schneider aleh tsyvinski and seminar participants in various places for useful comments and suggestions gilberto arce providedsuperb research assistance the views expressed herein are those of the author s and do not necessarilyreflect the views of the national bureau of economic research 2007 by ariel burstein and alexander monge naranjo all rights reserved short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including notice is given to the source

the cyclical and secular behaviour of the labour input comparing efficiency units and hours worked summary a monthly labour input series designed to correct for the fact that all hours worked are not of the same quality is constructed and its properties compared with unadjusted hours worked this efficiency units series is constructed from bls data on hours worked and earnings by age and sex the cyclical fluctuations displayed by the efficiency units series are smaller on average than those displayed by hours worked although the difference is not large however the secular behaviour of the series is quite different hours worked per capita displays a significant positive trend while efficiency units per capita does not

brain drain informality and inequality a search and matching model for sub saharan africa abstract this paper revisits the effect of brain drain on development and inequality using a two sector model with formal and informal labor markets contrary to existing studies we use a search and matching setting that allows to endogenize the employment structure and the wage differentials between different skill groups in the same sector and between workers with identical skills employed in different sectors theoretically the brain drain induces ambiguous welfare effects for those left behind as the potential loss gain depends on the parameters of the model we thus parameterize our model on 33 sub saharan african countries and produce comparative results for each of them we find that skilled emigration induces heterogeneous welfare losses for the low skilled population the size of these losses varies between 0 2 and 8 and is influenced by the parameters of the production and education technologies the results are fairly robust to identifying assumptions to the inclusion of technological externalities and to the endogenization of training decisions

the new economic case for migration restrictions an assessment abstract migration barriers tend to reduce global production by impeding efficient spatial reallocation of labor recent research argues for a countervailing effect of barriers tending to raise global production by preventing the spread of impoverishing institutions from poor to rich countries while evidence of this mechanism is scarce it is theoretically plausible at high migration rates we propose and calibrate a simple model of dynamically efficient migration when migrants spread economic institutions between countries the net effect of migration depends on three parameters transmission the degree to which origin country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants assimilation the degree to which migrants productivity determinants become like natives over time in the host country and congestion the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks on current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxation of current restrictions

productivity differences and the dynamic effects of labor movements barriers to labor mobility across countries coexist with substantial differences in living standards largely attributable to productivity differences a growth model with endogenous labor movements is used to assess the effects on output capital accumulation and welfare of removing barriers to labor mobility the model is parameterized so that it is consistent with evidence on historical labor movements and is applied to two cases the enlargement of the european union and the hypothetical creation of a common labor market in the north america the main finding is that there are large resulting gains in terms of output and welfare

temporary emigration and welfare the case of low skilled labor this article studies the implications of temporary emigration for the welfare of a source country the framework is one of general equilibrium where the economy s stocks of both capital and labor are endogenously determined by the saving and migration decisions of optimizing agents simulations of the model suggest that for realistic values of the parameters welfare of nonmigrants of the source country is maximized when the migrants are employed abroad for a period in the range of roughly 8 12 years the ideal duration is found to be an increasing function of the international wage differential migration costs and the degree to which the rights of migrants are protected in the host country

migration and sovereign default risk abstract during sovereign debt crises countries experience persistent economic declines spiking spreads and outflows of capital and workers to account for these salient features we develop a sovereign default model with migration and capital accumulation the model has a two way feedback default risk lowers workers welfare and induces emigration which in turn intensifies default risk by lowering tax base and investment compared with a no migration model our model produces higher default risk lower investment and a more profound and prolonged recession we find that migration accounts for almost all of the lack of recovery in gdp during the recent spanish debt crisis

immigration remittances and business cycles we use data on border enforcement and macroeconomic indicators from the united states and mexico to estimate a two country business cycle model of labor migration and remittances the model matches the cyclical dynamics of labor migration to the united states and documents how remittances to mexico serve an insurance role to smooth consumption across the border during expansions in the destination economy immigration increases with the expected stream of future wage gains but it is dampened by a sunk migration cost that reflects the intensity of border enforcement during recessions established migrants are deterred from returning to their country of origin which places an additional downward pressure on the wage of native unskilled workers thus migration barriers reduce the ability of the stock of immigrant labor to adjust during the cycle enhancing the volatility of unskilled wages and remittances we quantify the welfare implications of various immigration policies for the destination economy

towards a centerpiece for ecological economics this paper offers a hypothesis with cognitive claims for a social theory that is relevant for ecological economics as background a fable has ego metaphorically viewed as a horse driven to problematic extremes with the solution becoming an integration and balance of means with the other horse empathy the ego n empathy hypothesis starting with a new root metaphor which is extended with a pre analytic vision the main support for the cognitive claims is with a mathematical model and a metaeconomic analysis armed with both scope and precision along with an assortment of corroborative evidence from different disciplines the paper provides support for establishing a new center cognitive claims have ego and empathy apart giving value and possibilities and together as ego empathy giving an emergent value possibility this possibility suggests a rallying point for transdisciplinary work and a theoretical centerpiece for ecological economics suited as such the economic ego of homo economicus is distinguished from the political ego of sacro egoismo corroboration with adam smith s moral philosophy political economy is highlighted the individual person of an empirical ethics stemming from both self interest and fellow feeling is resurrected to support the hypothesis awareness emerges like a complementary consciousness an added value strikingly similar to smith s impartial spectator empirical demonstration concludes this integration of interests with a metaeconomic analysis for the case of soil and water conservation policy in the north american farming population taken together the root metaphor with reasonable scope and precision corroboration and demonstration help to structure the ego n empathy hypothesis d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

walk in my shoes nudging for empathy conservation abstract the traditional policy approaches to encourage conservation including offering monetary incentives and direct regulation may lead to unintended consequences which may undermine their effectiveness in this paper we experimentally test the effectiveness of complementing financial nudging incentives with nudging for empathy our framed experiment models a situation in which an upstream farmer influences the water quality downstream by choosing the level of conservation financial nudging is represented by a crop insurance subsidy conditional on conservation compliance consistent with the 2014 farm bill policy empathy nudging is represented by a downstream water user sending a message to the upstream farmer encouraging the latter to walk in the shoes take the perspective of the former we found that empathy nudging can counteract the elimination of financial incentives however it is less effective than financial nudging empathy nudging coupled with financial incentives has a synergic effect and conservation increased significantly compared to using one of the nudges alone furthermore the combination of empathy and financial nudging was particularly effective in low initial conservation cases we argue that policy makers and the public should encourage empathy conservation and that the environmental policy narrative should appeal to empathy and call for farmers to join the cause for conservation and environmental protection

brain drain in globalization a general equilibrium analysis from the sending countries perspective according to the economic literature high skilled emigration may either harm or bene t developing economies recent research highlighted several positive and negative channels through which the brain drain operates this paper aims at evaluating the relative magnitudes of various brain drain channels and quantifying their global impact on migrants sending countries for this purpose we develop a 10 region general equilibrium model of the world economy characterized by overlapping generations dynamics our ndings suggest that the short run impact of brain drain on resident human capital is extremely crucial as it affects not only the number of high skilled workers available to domestic production but also the sending economy s capacity to innovate adopt modern technologies this latter effect is particularly important in globalization where capital investments are made in places with high production ef ciencies hence despite positive feedback effects those countries facing prevalent high skilled emigration are the most candid victims to brain drain

markets externalities and the dynamic gains of openness inflows of foreign knowledge can be the key for developing countries to catch up with the world technology frontier in this paper i construct a simple tractable model to analyze a the incentives of foreign firms to bring their know how to a developing country and b the incentives of domestic firms to invest in their own know how the model embeds the two mechanisms typically considered separately in the literature for the diffusion of knowledge externalities and markets the relative preponderance of these mechanisms significantly changes the dynamic implications of openness notably openness allows developing countries to fully catch up only when market transactions fully dominate the diffusion of ideas while externalities can also push domestic firms to upgrade their productivity the equilibrium exposure to ideas in the country is always below the frontier and asymptotically the country would remain importing foreign know how however in general the dynamic gains of openness are substantial

the economic effects of immigration a dynamic analysis abstract this paper examines the economic effects of immigration using a neo classical growth model with overlapping dynasties we demonstrate that in contrast to the predictions of the static models often used in the analysis of immigration in a dynamic model with endogenous capital accumulation shifts in factor prices that result from changes in immigration policy will be very modest consequently benefits to natives from immigration are much smaller than previous studies have found and smaller still if labor supply is elastic on the other hand the adverse effects on wages are much smaller as well implying that in a model with only two inputs immigration plays a much smaller role in redistribution from labor to capital than previously thought

spatiotemporal analysis of ethanol market penetration abstract consumption of ethanol in the united states has increased rapidly over the last few years fueled by both higher crude oil prices and generous public support measures for renewable fuels the contribution of ethanol to the transport energy mix varies markedly by state heterogeneity in ethanol adoption and market development is investigated using a hierarchical spatiotemporal model a bayesian markov chain monte carlo method is employed for estimation of the proposed flexible model structure besides spatial dependence among neighboring states differential inclusion rates of ethanol are found to be largely determined by national and state level biofuel incentive policies relative gasoline prices feedstock availability household median income mtbe bans and density of fuel retail infrastructure our findings imply that increasing renewable fuel support as well as investing in extending the transportation and fuel retail infrastructure can result in higher ethanol consumption

efficiency gains from liberalizing labor mobility in this paper we quantify the effect of a complete liberalization of cross border migration on the world gdp and its distribution across regions we build a general equilibrium model endogenizing bilateral migration and income disparities between and within countries our calibration strategy uses data on effective and potential migration to identify total migration costs and visa costs by education level data on potential migration reveal that the number of people in the world who have a desire to migrate is around 400 million this number is much smaller than that predicted in previous studies and reflects the existence of high incompressible migration costs in our benchmark framework liberalizing migration increases the world gdp by 11 5 12 5 percent in the medium term our robustness analysis reveals that the gains are always limited in the range of 7 0 percent with schooling externalities to 17 9 percent if network effects are accounted for

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 earnings of mexican immigrants in the united states abstract this paper documents the trends in the earnings of mexican immigrants during the 1970 1990 period the empirical evidence indicates that there has been a decline in the relative wage of successive mexican immigrant waves in the past three decades and that little wage convergence occurs between the typical mexican immigrant and the typical native worker the data also suggest that the increasing importance of mexican immigration is partly responsible for the deterioration in relative skills observed in the aggregate immigrant population but that there has also been a decline in relative skills even among non mexican immigrants

how important is human capital for development evidence from immigrant earnings this paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross country income differences it exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human capital endowments these estimates suggest that human and physical capital account for only a fraction of cross country income differences for countries below 40 of the us output per worker less than half of the output gap relative to the us is attributed to human and physical capital

international remittances migration and primary commodities this paper documents the global crude oil market as a key driver of international migration and remittances structural estimation documents that crude oil supply and demand shocks induce sizeable remittances flows the sign and magnitude of remitter outflows differ across countries and structural shocks a multilateral global general equilibrium model is used to show how oil exporting remitters generate international remittance and migration spillovers from crude oil price movements remittees economic outcomes from remittances and migration channels are found to be dominated by terms of trade channels for shocks to the global market for crude oil due to this studies of remittance flows need to account for the source of the commodity price movement if using the correlation between remittee real gdp and remittance inflows

will farmers trade profits for stewardship heterogeneous motivations for farm practice selection we investigate the trade off agricultural producers face between profits and stewardly activities when selecting farm practices instead of the profit maximization framework we model producer behavior in an expanded utility framework built on production technology and including two utility components self and social interests the framework introduces inherent heterogeneity and social environmental motivations into farmer behavior based on this model we hypothesize that there are farmers that are willing to forego some profit to engage in stewardly farm practices with an empirical study we provide evidence that some farmers are willing to make this sacrifice results are consistent with the multi utility hypothesis

the u s westward expansion the u s economic development in the 19th century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the west this article presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving these phenomena the conclusion is that the decrease in transportation costs induced the westward migration whereas population growth was responsible for the investment in productive land

human capital and development accounting new evidence from wage gains at migration we use new data on the pre and postmigration wages of immigrants to the united states to measure wage gains at migration the average immigrant from a middle income or poor country increases their wage by a factor of two to three upon migration this wage gain is small relative to the underlying gap in gdp per worker in a development accounting framework this finding implies that switching countries accounts for 40 of cross country income differences while human capital accounts for 60 wage gains decline with education consistent with imperfect substitution between skill types we augment our analysis to allow for this possibility and bound the human capital share in development accounting to between one half and two thirds we also provide results on the importance of premigration sector of employment assimilation and skill transfer

skill transferability migration and development evidence from population resettlement in indonesia we use a natural experiment in indonesia to provide causal evidence on the role of location specific human capital and skill transferability in shaping the spatial distribution of productivity from 1979 1988 the transmigration program relocated two million migrants from rural java and bali to new rural settlements in the outer islands villages assigned migrants from regions with more similar agroclimatic endowments exhibit higher rice productivity and nighttime light intensity one to two decades later we find some evidence of migrants adaptation to agroclimatic change overall our results suggest that regional productivity differences may overstate the potential gains from migration