credible commitment and success with public enterprise reform abstract this paper studies why some efforts at public enterprise reform fail and why others succeed economic reforms are intended to increase efficiency and thus help sustain long term growth yet many governments have had difficulty sustaining the reforms they initiated and have reintroduced rigid controls over markets and enterprises this is because either in the process of implementation the government discovers that the costs of carrying the reform further are greater than the expected efficiency gains or the public is skeptical that the new policies can be sustained and does not take the actions necessary for the gains to be realized this paper develops a new institutionalist framework and employs various measures of policy commitment and net gain from continued reform to analyze these issues the paper suggests ways in which the potential success or failure of a reform can be assessed with implications for the steps that reformers might take to increase the chances of success

a brain gain with a brain drain abstract we study human capital depletion and formation in an economy open to out migration as opposed to an economy which is closed under the assumption of asymmetric information the enlarged opportunities and the associated different structure of incentives can give rise to a brain gain in conjunction with a brain drain migration by high skill members of its workforce notwithstanding the home country can end up with a higher average level of human capital per worker

migration diversity and economic growth when migrants move from one country to another they carry a new range of skills and perspectives which nurture technological innovation and stimulate economic growth at the same time increased heterogeneity may undermine social cohesion create coordination and communication barriers and adversely affect economic development in this article we investigate the extent to which cultural diversity affects economic growth and whether this relation depends on the level of development of a country we use novel data on bilateral migration stocks that is the number of people living and working outside the countries of their birth over the period 1960 2010 and compute indices of fractionalization and polarization in so doing we explore the effect of immigration on development through its effect on the composition of the destination country we find that overall both indices have a distinct positive impact on real gdp per capita and that the effect of diversity seems to be more consistent in developing countries

migration regional equilibrium and the estimation of compensating differentials in this study we have developed an improved model of net migration that encompasses both equilibrium and disequilibrium components instrumental variables fixed effects estimates of the model with time series data for 51 areas in the united states over the period 1971 1988 support the importance of both equilibrium and disequilibrium factors in migration excerpt

why are power couples increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas using the panel study of income dynamics psid we test costa and kahn s colocation hypothesis which predicts that power couples couples in which both spouses have college degrees are more likely to migrate to the largest cities than part power couples or power singles we find no support for this hypothesis instead regression analyses suggest that only the education of the husband and not the joint education profile of the couple affects the propensity to migrate to large metropolitan areas the observed location trends are better explained by higher rates of power couple formation in larger metropolitan areas

transferable lessons re examining the institutional prerequisites of east asian economic policies competing theories of east asian economic policy share the assumption that a highly capable coherent economic bureaucracy closely connected to but still independent of the business community has been an essential institutional prerequisite for successful policy formation and implementation in east asia these institutional prerequisites were constructed in a variety of concrete forms with great difficulty and imperfect results as long as the idea of transferable lessons is understood as an invitation to indigenous innovation that takes advantage of the underlying analytical logic of east asian institutions other countries can reap important benefits from east asia s experience

a global assessment of human capital mobility the role of non oecd destinations discussions of high skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries which ignore movements to and between developing countries this paper presents for the first time a global overview of human capital mobility through bilateral migration stocks by gender and education in 1990 and 2000 and calculation of nuanced brain drain indicators building on newly collated data the paper uses a novel estimation procedure based on a pseudo gravity model then identifies key determinants of international migration and subsequently uses estimated parameters to impute missing data non oecd destinations account for one third of skilled migration while oecd destinations are declining in relative importance

the short run dynamics of inter state migration a space time economic adjustment model of in migration to fast growing states ballard k p and clark g l 1981 the short run dynamics of inter state migration a space time economic adjustment model of in migration to fast growing states reg studies 15 213 228 interregional migration is analyzed with respect to its short run responsiveness to economic fluctuations and its efficiency as a spatial labour market allocation mechanism using a space time analytical framework in migration to four fast growing states of the united states is analyzed over the period 1958 1975 it is shown via a time series model employing a koyck distributed lag methodology that short run in migration is in fact responsive to economic fluctuations both employment and turnover variables figure prominently in this regard by a cross sectional analysis it is also shown that in migrants to fast growing states do not necessarily come from depressed or low growth regions thus interregional migration may not be an efficient allocator of labour across the aggregate spatial system in the short or long

outmigration and the depressed area problemt t he post war emergence of full employment and the attendant rise in prosperity levels in most western countries have highlighted the existence of the less fortunate regions the so called depressed areas these depressed areas are characterized by persistently high rates of unemployment or in the case of many rural depressed areas high rates of underemployment furthermore such areas commonly possess in varying degrees one or more of the following characteristics a narrow range of economic activities declining basic industries unskilled or unadaptable labor forces and decayed or inefficient infrastructures depressed areas owe their origins generally to downward structural and or cyclical trends in the national economy as well as to problems associated with their location vis a vis centers of population and growth areas within the country concerned in the absence of any public policy it can be expected that with increasing national economic development the condition of depressed areas will become relatively worse according to various criteria which may be applied growth rates per capita income unemployment differentials the founders of the european economic community recognized this tendency and tried to make provision for it through various supra national agencies among them the european social fund given this trend toward polarization in levels of economic development between areas two broad approaches to the solution of the problems of the depressed area are possible the first involves the encouragement of new economic activity i e the policy of bringing work to the workers the second approach which can be described as a market adjustment involves the movement of workers out

migration and development research is moving far beyond remittances research on migration and development has recently changed in two ways first it has grown sharply in volume emerging as a proper subfield second while it once embraced principally rural urban migration and international remittances migration and development research has broadened to consider a range of international development processes these include human capital investment global diaspora networks circular or temporary migration and the transfer of technology and cultural norms for this special issue we present a selection of frontier migration and development research that instantiates these trends

migration and institutions exit and voice from abroad a rapidly growing body of research examines the relationship between migration and institutions three strands of studies can be distinguished some studies focused on the role of domestic and foreign institutions in the decision to migrate others were interested by the impact of migration on institutional reforms in migrants countries of origin while the effect of migration on destination countries is largely documented recent studies focus on how migrants affect social and informal institutions in the destination countries this survey puts together these three strands of literature with three purposes first we offer a short definition and synthetic typology of institutions which provide a guide to understand several studies summarized and their results second our analysis is presented following the analytic framework exit voice and loyalty of hirschman in order to highlight the brain grain phenomenon for developing countries from an institutional point of view third we review the limited existing work on the very timely topic whether migrants are harmful or not to institutions in the host countries

international migration transfers of norms and home country fertility this paper examines the relationship between international migration and source country fertility the impact of international migration on source country fertility may have a number of causes including a transfer of destination countries fertility norms and an incentive to acquire more education it provides provide a rigorous test of the diffusion on of fertility norms using original and detailed data on migration the results provide evidence of a significant transfer of fertility norms from migrants to their country of origin a one percent decrease in the fertility norm to which migrants are exposed reduces home country fertility by about 0 3 percent for origin countries

understanding the effects of homeownership and regional unemployment levels on internal migration during the economic crisis in spain the spanish labour market is characterised by high levels of unemployment which have increased during the global economic crisis spain is also a country which is characterised by a very high percentage of homeownership with more than 83 of households being owner occupiers both regional levels of unemployment and homeownership are known to be important factors influencing the spatial mobility decisions of households but little is known about how these factors influenced mobility during the recent economic crisis this paper uses rich individual level microdata from the last two spanish censuses 2001 and 2011 to study the effect of homeownership and regional unemployment levels on both short and long distance mobility our finding suggest that the role influence and interconnection of unemployment and homeownership in mobility decision have changed in the last decade

a reconsideration of import substitution this paper studies the origins of an import substitution strategy of development summarizes the consequences of that strategy and reviews the problems that led to its failure the fundamental difficulty was its discouragement of the indigenous social learning necessary for sustained independent development the emergence of an outward oriented minimal government strategy is due to the success of korea and taiwan this strategy fails to recognize that social learning requires a strong role for national agents and that this role can be penalized by undue openness an effective strategy must protect and induce domestic learning without penalizing exporting

does the chinese diaspora speed up growth in host countries summary we compiled a new enhanced data set on the population share of overseas chinese covering 147 countries over the period 1970 2010 linking the migration and economic growth literature this article attempts to estimate the impact of the chinese diaspora on economic growth in host countries regression results from both barro type and dynamic panel data models suggest that a country s initial relative endowment with overseas chinese is positively related to subsequent growth results are robust to a number of sensitivity tests the effect is transmitted via increased trade openness enhanced investment and general tfp effects

can a brain drain be good for growth in the source economy this paper analyzes the interaction between income distribution human capital accumulation and migration it shows that when migration is not a certainty a brain drain may increase average productivity and equality in the source economy even though average productivity is a positive function of past average levels of human capital in an economy it is also shown how the temporary possibility of emigration may permanently increase the average level of productivity of an economy

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

new estimates of quality of life in urban areas implicit markets capture compensation for intraurban and interregional differe nces in amenities and yield differences in housing prices and wages these pecuniary differences become preference based weights in a qual ity of life index hedonic equations are estimated using microdata fr om the 1980 census and assembled county based amenity data on climati c environmental and urban conditions ranking of 253 urban counties reveals substantial variation within as well as among the 185 urba n areas the quality of life differences across counties within one s msa is almost one half of the difference between the top and bottom ranked counties in the nation copyright 1988 by american economic association

mobility housing and labour markets in times of economic crises this special issue addresses the effects of the most recent financial and economic crisis starting in 2007 on mobility housing and labour markets in order to learn some lessons for the future t

globalization brain drain and development this paper reviews four decades of economics research on the brain drain with a focus on recent contributions and on development issues we first assess the magnitude intensity and determinants of the brain drain showing that brain drain or high skill migration is becoming a dominant pattern of international migration and a major aspect of globalization we then use a stylized growth model to analyze the various channels through which a brain drain affects the sending countries and review the evidence on these channels the recent empirical literature shows that high skill emigration need not deplete a country s human capital stock and can generate positive network externalities three case studies are also considered the african medical brain drain the exodus of european scientists to the united states and the role of the indian diaspora in the development of india s information technology sector we conclude with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for education immigration and international taxation policies in a global context

bringing it all back home return migration and fertility choices summary return migration exerts a wide ranging influence upon the countries of origin of the migrants we analyze whether returnees adjust their fertility choices to the norms that prevail in their previous countries of destination using egyptian household level data egyptian men migrate predominantly toward other arab countries characterized by a higher number of children per woman relying on a two step instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity of the migration decisions we show that return migration has a positive and significant influence on marital childbearing

the asian debt and development crisis of 1997 causes and consequences abstract interpretations of the asian crisis have coalesced around two rival stories the death throes of asian state capitalism story about internal real economy causes and the panic triggering debt deflation in a basically sound but under regulated system story that gives more role to external and financial system causes the paper presents the stories and assesses the evidence the evidence in particular the chronology of the crisis supports the second rather better than the first the paper discusses the interests driving capital account liberalization without a framework of regulation the single most irresponsible act of public authorities in the whole crisis us and uk financial firms allied with their treasuries and with the imf the wto and the oecd saw themselves at a chronic disadvantage in the asian system of long term relationships and patient capital this alliance supported by segments of asian political and financial elites achieved dramatic domestic financial sector liberalization and capital account opening in asia over the 1990s setting up the conditions for crisis paradoxically the crisis may be looked back upon not as the triumph of benign globalization and neoliberal economic doctrine but as the beginning of its end

the effect of skilled emigration on real exchange rates through the wage channel abstract building on an analytical model we provide cross country empirical evidence that net skilled emigration appreciates bilateral real exchange rates through the wage channel in source countries chains of causality in the presence of the law of one price run through the spending effect and the resource allocation effect analogous to the remittance based dutch disease effect a pricing to market model allows pass through for both traded and nontraded prices when the law of one price is violated the skilled emigration elasticity of real exchange rate is estimated to be in the range of between 0 6 and 0 8 with internal prices playing a dominant role alternative model specifications show robust outcomes

overshooting the savings target temporary migration investment in housing and development summary there are two seemingly competing branches of the literature on saving and duration of stay decisions of temporary migrants one relies on the target saving explanation and the other on utility maximization over a life cycle we attempt to reconcile the two approaches within a framework where a migrant has a well defined savings target in planning to purchase a new home at origin but also chooses the time of return and the consumption path to maximize lifetime utility our analysis highlights the role of property investment and savings repatriation in the relationship between temporary migration and development

savings investment and the corporation in the east asian miracle abstract the east asian countries have achieved a spectacular average rate of economic growth over the last 30 to 40 years with very substantial diversification and economic development korea for example managed to transform itself from being a largely agricultural society in 1960 to the point where it became the third country after the us and japan to export 256 k memory chips developed by its own firms it is no exaggeration to say that the post wwii development of east asia including japan is the most successful story of sustained economic growth in the history of mankind how does one account for this extraordinary economic success

quality of the business environment versus quality of life do firms and households like the same cities this paper develops a new measure of the quality of business environment that complements existing measures of the quality of life an annual panel of these measures is constructed and analyzed for 37 cities from 1977 to 1995 findings indicate that many cities attractive to firms are unattractive to households and vice versa in addition the size of a city s workforce increases with improvements in the quality of the business environment in contrast cities most likely to be dominated by retirees are those that are less attractive to firms additional specifications support theoretical arguments that retirees are drawn to cities in which local attributes are capitalized into lower wages rather than higher rents

credibility and reputation building in the developmental state a model with east asian applications abstract we use a game theoretic model to analyze the role of credibility reputation and investment coordination in a developmental state our model focuses on why a soft state serving narrow social groups so often obtains in less developed countries and under what conditions a hard or developmental state can emerge the model highlights the dilemma that although state and private sector alike may want economic growth both must simultaneously invest to achieve it but the equilibrium outcome analogous to the prisoner s dilemma is investment by neither even when initial conditions are favorable and a state is potentially developmental with the genuine capability to elicit private sector investment this may not materialize and an equilibrium of low or no investment will prevail to avoid this deadlock and foster growth the successful developmental state must demonstrate commitment by promoting its developmental credentials through a process of reputation building a consequent incentive to act tough together with seeming advantages of authoritarianism in implementing the developmental state may help to explain why it is often associated with an authoritarian political system

the migration of technical workers using panel data on the danish population we estimated the revealed preferences of scientists and engineers for the places in which they choose to work our results indicate that these technical workers exhibit substantial sensitivity to differences in wages but that they have even stronger preferences for living close to family and friends the magnitude of these preferences moreover suggests that the greater geographic mobility of scientists and engineers relative to the population as a whole stems from more pronounced variation across regions in the wages that they can expect these results remain robust to estimation on a sample of individuals who must select new places of work for reasons unrelated to their preferences those who had been employed at establishments that discontinued operations

eight questions about brain drain high skilled emigration is an emotive issue that in popular discourse is often referred to as brain drain conjuring images of extremely negative impacts on developing countries recent discussions of brain gain diaspora effects and other advantages of migration have been used to argue against this but much of the discussion has been absent of evidence this paper builds upon a new wave of empirical research to answer eight key questions underlying much of the brain drain debate 1 what is brain drain 2 why should economists care about it 3 is brain drain increasing 4 is there a positive relationship between skilled and unskilled migration 5 what makes brain drain more likely 6 does brain gain exist 7 do high skilled workers remit invest and share knowledge back home and 8 what do we know about the fiscal and production externalities of brain drain

the making of economic policy a transaction cost politics perspective economic policymaking as a political process the normative approach to policy analysis the positive view of political economy a synthesis the policy process in real time a theme transaction costs the transaction cost politics framework political outcomes and economic efficiency transaction cost analysis in politics mechanisms to cope with transaction costs in politics national differences two case studies to illustrate transaction cost politics tax and expenditure reform in the united states the gatt and national trade politics some reflections and suggestions some lessons for the policy process the role of the economist concluding comments appendix multiprincipal multitask agencies

immobility and insecure labour markets an active response to precarious employment this article explores how people experience and respond to a post industrial labour market context through residential im mobility focusing on places that are represented through a range of offic

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

the developmental state government and singapore s economic development since 1960 abstract government interventionism is widely acknowledged to characterize less developed countries but consensus is lacking as to whether it promotes economic development and if so how the present article analyzes the nature of government involvement in the singapore model of economic development and emergence of a developmental state closely associated with this model it compares singapore s experience with south korea s and taiwan s where government also contributed to development success and with other asian countries where government failed to play a strong developmental role

the successful developmental state where does it come from abstract in this paper it is taken for granted that the state has played an important role in the industrialization of east asia accepting this the purpose of the paper is to determine why government policy was so effective in these countries while failing to a great extent in much of the rest of the developing world the key seems to reside in the ability of the state to discipline firms which in turn is dependent upon the credibility of government policy the latter depends on a large number of variables this paper argues that a crucial factor is the size of the domestic market for manufactured goods

local amenities and life cycle migration do people move for jobs or fun abstract do households move for jobs or fun and where do they go when they move we address these questions using the 1970 2000 us census based on a panel of quality of life and business environment measures households prefer msas in warm coastal areas and non metropolitan locations while firms prefer large growing cities in addition cities with improving business environments acquire increasing shares of workers especially workers with high levels of human capital cities with improving consumer amenities become relatively more populated by retirees further analysis of individual level migration decisions indicates that regardless of marital status young highly educated households tend to move towards places with higher quality business environments this tendency is especially pronounced among highly educated couples who are more subject to job market co location problems in contrast regardless of education couples near retirement tend to move away from places with favorable business environments and towards places with highly valued consumer amenities these patterns help explain why areas unattractive to both households and business have struggled as with upstate new york while the sun belt and other regions are thriving