a negative equilibrium interest rate the average after tax real interest rate on u s t bills and the average rate of return on long term government bonds ltgb have been negative over the past 75 years is this negative rate an equilibrium phenomenon or simply an empirical fluke we show that a negative equilibrium interest rate is possible and that the wealthier the nation is the more negative the equilibrium interest rate can be this phenomenon results from a positive inflation rate and taxation of nominal profits and it cannot hold in a period of zero inflation or in a period of deflation a positive demand for t bills and for ltgb exists also in a portfolio framework even when these two assets are characterized by a negative expected rate of return and other risky assets are yielding positive expected returns

assimilation to a welfare state labor market performance and use of social benefits by immigrants to finland this paper documents the economic performance of immigrants in a country characterized by an extensive welfare state and a short immigration history upon arrival immigrants to finland have substantially lower employment rates than comparable natives while they experience rapid employment growth only men from oecd countries catch up with natives despite the persisting employment and earnings differences between non oecd immigrants and natives the differences in income transfers disappear in roughly 20 years the immigrant native employment gaps are larger in finland than in australia canada or the us

why males earn more location and training of brazilian schoolteachers the persistence of a substantial differential between the wages of men and women is a continuing source of interest to economists the fact that much of the differential is not easily explained is perplexing to those who believe that labor markets function reasonably well there is a large literature concerned with explaining what appear to be other anomalies of labor markets in poor countries dealing with geographical segmentation the formal versus the informal sector and the public versus the private sector 1 little however has been written on female employment and on male female wage differentials in poor countries in this analysis we examine the income differential between male and female schoolteachers in brazil using information on their income hours of work educational background and other characteristics from a 1 sample of the 1970 brazil census the issues arising from use of income rather than wage are discussed below data on wage rates were not available the income differential is substantial the mean income of female teachers in brazil is less than one half the mean for men we are particularly concerned with isolating the contribution to the differential of two factors often ignored in similar studies the locational distribution of male and female teachers and differences between males and females in job position due to differences in the types of job training they have pursued both factors appear to favor males location because males are more highly concentrated in highincome regions and because interregional income differences in brazil are substantial possibly reflecting geographical segmentation and job position because males are much more likely to hold secondary school positions rather than primary school positions and there is a substantial income premium associated with secondary school positions by restricting our study to one occupation schoolteachers for whom we have extensive education data we can study carefully the effects of

intertemporal market effect on gender earnings differentials lawyers in canada 1970 80 the conventional methodology for decomposition of cross sectional earnings differentials is extended to include a market effect on intertemporal changes in earnings and to analyse the changes in gender differentials over time the integrated cross sectional and intertemporal methodology is illustrated by a decomposition of the change in the earnings differential that occurred during the 1970s between male and female lawyers in canada an unprecedented rate of growth in the supply of lawyers during the 1970s in canada was associated with changes in the gender earnings differential in the legal profession this rapid supply growth had an almost negligible net impact on female earnings but a negative impact of 15 on the male earnings this explains the narrowing of the earnings differential by almost 30 over the decade although three fifths of the gender differential in 1970 and half of the differential in 1980 were attributable to the differences in the characteristics of the two groups these chang

increasing earnings inequality and the gender pay gap in canada prospects for convergence this paper retraces the evolution of canadian women s labour force participation and of the gender earnings ratio across the generations to understand better the prospects for gender convergence in pay using data from the public use labour force surveys lfs and administrative annual earnings data from the longitudinal worker files lwf the paper assesses the role of increasing top earnings inequality in the persistence of the gender pay gap having identified a growing role for the under representation of women among top earners the paper then performs an evaluation and critical analysis of existing gender equality policies centred on horizontal occupational gender segregation and discusses alternative policies for the future

contributions to canadian economic history the last 30 years the cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the us in the 1960s was soon embraced by canadian economic historians many of the important issues surrounding canadian development remained the same the role of resources the place of international trade immigration capital accumulation and interactions with native americans among others but beginning in the 1960s and certainly over the last 30 years economic historians of canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics both theoretical and empirical we highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of canadian history has been changed

immigrants minorities and labor market competition this paper investigates the extent of labor market competition among immigrants minorities and the native population an analysis of 1980 u s census data reveals that immigrants tend to be substitutes for some labor market groups and complements for others the effects of shifts in immigrant supply on the earnings of native born men are however very small on the other hand increases in the supply of immigrants do have a sizable impact on the earnings of immigrants themselves an increase of 10 percent in the supply of immigrants for example reduces the immigrant wage by about 10 percent

immigrant earnings differentials and birth year effects for men in canada post war 1972 this paper investigates immigrant earnings differentials for males in canada and how these earnings have changed over time leading up to 1972 with workers year of birth the paper uses the 1973 job mobility survey which contains a direct measure of work experience reported independent of age thus using age as a birth year index it is found that cross sectional earnings differentials of immigrant men have widened since the later 1960s relative to those of native born workers summary in fre excerpt

immigrant assimilation and welfare participation do immigrants assimilate into or out of welfare this paper analyzes differences in welfare utilization between immigrants and natives in sweden using a large panel data set for the years 1990 to 1996 we find that immigrants use welfare to a greater extent than natives and that differences cannot be explained by observable characteristics welfare participation decreases with time spent in sweden refugees assimilate out of welfare at a faster rate than nonrefugee immigrants but neither group is predicted to reach parity with natives increases in unemployment and immigration as well as the change in the composition of immigrants contributed to the increase in welfare utilization in sweden

credit constraints and the labour supply of immigrant families in canada the hours of work decisions in immigrant and nonimmigrant families are compared using an intertemporal labor supply model estimated over data from the 1981 and 1991 census of canada surveys the family investment hypothesis is evaluated the hypothesis states that the immigrant family is unable to borrow in the first years after migration and that the immigrant wife responds by working longer hours so as to support family consumption and her husband s labor market adjustment the empirical evidence in general supports the hypothesis since credit constraints are found to significantly distort the labor supply decisions of recently arrived immigrant families

the dynamic impact of immigration on natives labor market outcomes evidence from israel abstract this paper studies the short and medium run impact of highly skilled immigrants from the former soviet union to israel on natives wages and employment if immigrants are relatively good substitutes for native workers the impact of immigration will be largest immediately upon the immigrants arrival and may become smaller as the labor market adjusts to the supply shock conversely if immigrants upon arrival are poor substitutes for natives the initial effect of immigration is small and increases over time as immigrants acquire local labor market skills and compete with native workers we empirically examine these alternative hypotheses using data from israel between 1989 and 1999 we find that wages of both men and women are negatively correlated with the fraction of immigrants with little local experience in a labor market segment a 10 percent increase in the share of immigrants lowers natives wages in the short run by 1 3 percent but this effect dissolves after 4 7 years this result is robust to a variety of different segmentations of the labor market to the inclusion of cohort effects and to different dynamic structures in the residual term of the wage equation on the other hand we do not find any effect of immigration on employment neither in the short nor in the medium run

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

immigrant and emigrant earnings a longitudinal study this paper analyzes the relationship between earnings and the extent of assimilation cohort quality change and return migration experienced by the foreign born population the study uses the longitudinal data available in the survey of natural and social scientists and engineers the analysis reveals that there was a sizable decline in the skills of this population over the last two decades in addition the study shows that return migration is more likely among immigrants who did not perform well in the u s labor market

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

life below zero bank lending under negative policy rates we show that negative policy rates affect the supply of bank credit in a novel way banks are reluctant to pass on negative rates to depositors which increases the funding cost of high deposit banks and reduces their net worth relative to low deposit banks as a consequence the introduction of negative policy rates by the european central bank in mid 2014 leads to more risk taking and less lending by euro area banks with a greater reliance on deposit funding our results suggest that negative rates are less accommodative and could pose a risk to financial stability if lending is done by high deposit banks received april 17 2018 editorial decision september 18 2018 by editor philip strahan authors have furnished an internet appendix which is available on the oxford university press web site next to the link to the final published paper online

access to citizenship and the economic assimilation of immigrants immigrants often have lower employment rates and earnings than natives our empirical analysis relies on two reforms generating exogenous variation in the waiting time for citizenship we find that faster access to citizenship improves the economic situation of immigrant women especially their labour market attachment with higher employment rates longer working hours and more stable jobs immigrants also invest more in host country specific skills like language and vocational training faster access to citizenship seems a powerful policy instrument to boost economic integration in countries with traditionally restrictive citizenship policies

new evidence on the economic progress of foreign born men in the 1970s and 1980s this study examines the economic progress of foreign born men in the united states europeans entered the united states with relatively high wages and earned wages comparable to natives over their life course japanese korean and chinese men entered with lower wages but quickly caught up with u s born workers mexicans and central americans entered with low wages and the wage gap between themselves and u s born workers has not shrunk disparities in completed years of education and whether education was received in the united states can explain a large share of the differences in the level of wages for immigrants from some countries it is found that more highly educated men assimilate more quickly the rate of economic progress has not improved for more recent arrivals from any country but this is most problematic among mexicans and central americans because of their relatively low rates of wage growth excerpt

hysteresis and the earnings of immigrants in the united states labour market the paper analyses the role of hysteresis in explaining the slow wage convergence between certain immigrant groups and native workers using the 1990 integrated public use microdata samples ipums the analysis reveals that past earnings history in the country of origin has a relatively smaller effect on post migration earnings when compared to past earnings history in the us in addition the paper suggests that the earnings history in the country of origin is more productive in the us labour market for immigrants from advanced economies as compared to those from less developed countries in particular we find that us labour market does not value the past earnings history of mexican immigrants as high as that of other ethnic groups with similar socioeconomic characteristics across successive cohorts

gender source country characteristics and labor market assimilation among immigrants abstract using 1980 2000 census data to study the impact of source country characteristics on married adult immigrants labor supply assimilation profiles we find that immigrant women from countries with high female labor supply persistently work more than those from low female supply countries while both groups of women work less than comparable natives on arrival women from high female participation countries eventually close the gap with natives entirely and women from low female labor supply countries eliminate most of it men s labor supply is unaffected by source country female participation suggesting that the findings on women reflect notions of gender roles

the risk taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area abstract in this paper we provide evidence for a risk taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area that works through the relaxation of lending standards for borrowers our dataset covers the period 2003q1 2016q2 and includes in addition to the standard variables for real gdp growth inflation and the monetary policy stance indicators of bank lending standards and bank lending margins based on vector autoregressive models with i recursive identification and ii sign restrictions we show that banks react aggressively to an expansionary monetary policy shock by lowering their lending standards the banks efforts to keep their lending margin stable however are not successful as we detect a significant compression we document these findings for the euro area as a whole and for its individual member states in particular banks in the netherlands portugal spain and ireland lowered their lending standards after expansionary monetary policy shocks the compression of the lending margin is most pronounced in the five crisis countries greece ireland italy portugal and spain

instability imprecision and inconsistent use of equilibrium real interest rate estimates abstract the debate on monetary and fiscal policy is heavily influenced by estimates of the equilibrium real interest rate in particular this concerns estimates derived from a simple aggregate demand and phillips curve model with time varying components as proposed by laubach and williams 2003 for example summers 2014a refers to these estimates as important evidence for a secular stagnation and the need for fiscal stimulus yellen 2015 2017 has made use of such estimates in order to explain and justify why the federal reserve has held interest rates so low for so long first we re estimate the united states equilibrium rate with the methodology of laubach and williams 2003 then we build on their approach and an alternative specification to provide new estimates for the united states germany the euro area and japan third we subject these estimates to a battery of sensitivity tests due to the great uncertainty and sensitivity that accompany these equilibrium rate estimates the observed decline in the estimates is not a reliable indicator of a need for expansionary monetary and fiscal policy yet if these estimates are employed to determine the appropriate monetary policy stance such estimates are better used together with the consistent estimate of the level of potential output

on the wage growth of immigrants israel 1990 2000 this paper develops a descriptive methodology for the analysis of wage growth of immigrants that is based on human capital theory the sources of the wage growth are 1 the rise of the return to imported human capital 2 the impact of accumulated experience in the host country and 3 the mobility up the occupational ladder in the host country the model implies a nonlinear wage function that includes interactions between imported skills and local wage growth using data on native israelis and immigrants from the former soviet union of israel we estimate wage equations jointly for the two groups we find that upon arrival immigrants receive non return for imported skills in the ten years following arrival wages of highly skilled immigrants grow at 8 percent a year rising prices of skills occupational transitions accumulated experience in israel and an economy wide rise in wages account for 3 4 1 1 1 5 and 1 5 percent each in the long run the return for schooling converges to 0 027 substantially below the 0 069 return for natives we do not reject the hypothesis that the return for experience converges to that of natives and that immigrants receive a higher return for their unmeasured skills we find that there is some downgrading in the occupational distribution of immigrants relative to that of natives moreover the average wages of immigrants approach but do not converge to the wages of comparable natives the main reason for this is the low return to their imported skills jel j24 j31 j60

explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of canada s immigrant cohorts 1966 2000 abstract using the 1981 1986 1991 1996 and 2001 canadian censuses we explore causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men and women roughly one third of the deterioration is explained by compositional shifts in language ability and region of birth we find no evidence of a decline in the returns to foreign education for either immigrant men or immigrant women but a definite deterioration in the returns to foreign labour market experience most strongly among men from non traditional source countries we can explain roughly two thirds of the male and one half of the female deterioration without any reference to entry labour market conditions when we also account for entry conditions our results suggest canada s immigrants of the late 1990s would otherwise have enjoyed entry earnings equal to or higher than their counterparts of the 1960s

homeownership and economic performance of immigrants in germany this paper investigates the homeownership gap between native and immigrant households in germany paying particular attention to the assimilation process of immigrant households a double cohort model is derived which circumvents the identification problem for separating age period and cohort effects and accounts for differences in the effects the empirical findings suggest that immigrant households are less likely to own their primary residence than comparable native households moreover the duration of residence in germany does not affect the homeownership probability of immigrants indicating that an assimilation process in homeownership between native and immigrant households did not take place this result is largely consistent with the german immigration policy which has focused predominantly on short run economic needs and has neglected long run economic effects of immigration

the gender wage gap in three african countries this study examined the size and determinants of the gender wage gap in ethiopia uganda and the ivory coast the analysis includes decomposition of wage differences and sector decomposition by gender using oaxaca and neumark methods data were obtained from the 1990 survey of adolescent fertility reproductive behavior and employment status of youth in urban ethiopia the 1985 1986 and 1987 ivory coast living standards surveys and the 1992 integrated survey of uganda the samples were restricted to urban population the sample population was aged 15 59 in the ivory coast and uganda and 15 30 years in ethiopia the analysis focused on uncorrected estimates index problems that were encountered in uganda suggest caution in drawing inferences decomposition varied widely across the 3 countries there were substantial gender wage differences in uganda and ethiopia which are attributed to wage generating characteristics neumark interpretations suggest that favoritism of men and discrimination against women were equally important in ethiopia while discrimination against women was key in uganda gaps by sector were wider in the private sector in ethiopia comparable in uganda and wider in the public sector in the ivory coast the processes that accounted for sector wage gaps by gender varied between countries the wage gap appears narrower in descriptive statistics which shows that women were overrepresented in the better paid public sector the gender gaps in ethiopia and ivory coast would be 17 and 20 greater respectively if men and women were equally allocated by sector in uganda sector equity would increase the gap by 5

social security eligibility and the labor supply of older immigrants the employment rate of native born men falls at a much faster rate than that of immigrants as the two groups approach the age of retirement the author draws on u s census data from 1960 2000 to examine how the eligibility requirements for social security benefits affect immigrants decisions to leave the labor market as they near retirement age because a person needs to have worked in the united states for at least ten years to qualify for benefits newly arrived immigrants may not yet have accumulated the requisite employment credits to do this and thus have greater employment rates than other comparably aged persons the probability that an older immigrant is employed falls once the ten year work rule is satisfied the implication of this finding is that immigration may affect the increase in retirement benefits that will inevitably occur as the baby boom generation retires

intermarriage and the labor market outcomes of asian women the impact of intermarriage with natives on labor market outcomes of immigrants is not homogeneous across ethnic groups wages of asian women are compared with non asians both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates of the effects of intermarriage on the wages of asian women are negative and significant non asian women earn a wage premium that becomes insignificant when controls for selection into marriage are introduced one possible explanation for the intermarriage penalty for asians is an income effect of having a high earning native husband intermarriage penalties rise with husband s education assimilation patterns of intermarried asians indicate that they have lower initial wages market hours and employment but exhibit faster rates of growth over their years of stay the results are robust across asian subgroups and husband s ethnicity jel j16 j12 j31 j61

the impact of immigration why do studies reach such different results we classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects and studies in the third group estimate the total effect of immigration on wages we interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable we then relax two key assumptions in this literature allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the downgrading of immigrants downgrading occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with the same observed education and experience levels downgrading means that immigrants receive lower returns to the same measured skills than natives when these skills are acquired in their country of origin we show that heterogeneous labor supply elasticities if ignored may complicate the interpretation of wage estimates and particularly the interpretation of relative wage effects moreover downgrading may lead to biased estimates in those approaches that estimate relative effects of immigration but not in approaches that estimate total effects we conclude that empirical models that estimate total effects not only answer important policy questions but are also more robust to alternative assumptions than models that estimate relative effects

the substitutability of foreign born labour in canadian production circa 1980 the impact of immigrant workers on the employment of canadian born workers is analyzed in 125 canadian industries a translog production function is estimated using data for the year 1980 the estimated cross elasticities suggest no economywide displacement of canadian born workers by immigrants however displacement did occur in a portion of the canadian economy results are compared with a similar u s study

immigrant earnings relative to what the importance of earnings function specification and comparison points immigrant relative earnings estimates are sensitive to the choice of comparison point and the specification of earnings non sample mean comparisons borjas 1985 understate relative earnings simple earnings specifications linear education quadratic experience overstate relative earnings for both poorly and well educated immigrants specifications which ignore omitted variables understate the relative earnings of poorly educated immigrants and overstate those of well educated ones although measures of assimilation and changes in immigrant quality are insensitive to earnings specification they indicate strong earnings growth for post 1964 immigrants an overall decrease in immigrant quality and an increase in mexican immigrant quality

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 minimum wages on immigrants employment and earnings this study examines how minimum wage laws affect the employment and earnings of low skilled immigrants and natives in the u s minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low skilled immigrants than among natives because on average immigrants earn less than natives due to lower levels of education limited english skills and less social capital results based on data from the current population survey for the years 1994 2005 do not indicate that minimum wages have adverse employment effects among adult immigrants or natives who did not complete high school however low skilled immigrants may have been discouraged from settling in states that set wage floors substantially above the federal minimum jel classifications j23 j38 j15

self selection and the earnings of immigrants reply my 1987 paper addresses a central question in the economics of immigration who are the immigrants it has been traditionally assumed that immigrants are positively selected that is immigrants are more skilled on average than the typical person in the source country one contribution of my theoretical analysis was to show that this assumption is not necessarily consistent with wealth maximizing behavior in fact under some conditions the immigrant flow may be negatively selected my original study focused only on the selection bias caused by immigrants endogenously sorting themselves out of the source country s population 2 guillermina jasso and mark rosenzweig point out that i ignored other types of selection biases in both my theoretical development and empirical framework these additional biases are due to 1 the selective emigration of the foreign born in the united states and 2 the fact that my empirical work was limited to immigrants originating in 41 source countries regarding the first of these points jasso and rosenzweig restate the well known fact that emigration or return migration is an important characteristic of the immigrant experience robert warren and jennifer marks peck 1980 for instance estimate that perhaps as many as 30 percent of immigrants leave the united states within a decade or two after their arrival jasso and rosenzweig however do not examine systematically how the selective emigration of the foreign born affects either the theory or the empirical analysis in essence their criticism simply asserts that selective emigration is likely to cause problems my 1987 paper however already made note of that fact p 538 moreover the biases caused by emigration were an integral part of my earlier critique of the econometric methodology used by most studies of immigrant earnings determination borjas 1985 pp 466 67 what is obviously needed is the generalization of both my theoretical and empirical frameworks to account for the emigration of the foreign born such a generalization however is not provided by jasso and rosenzweig and does not yet exist 3 the second point made by jasso and rosenzweig deals with the empirical results presented in my paper because i limited my analysis to immigrants originating in 41 countries the sample is not representative and serious selection biases may be at work obviously it is always better to use a more representative sample in the empirical analysis the data were limited to 41 source countries because i was concerned not only with immigrant wage levels but also with immigrant wage growth as recorded by the 2 10

canadian immigration policy the effectiveness of the point system and other instruments this paper examines the effects of changes in canadian immigration policy on the occupational composition of immigration we focus on 1967 changes that created a regulatory system including the point system that still forms the framework of canadian immigration policy we find that the point system provides some control over occupational composition but that its effectiveness in fine tuning is limited by the large number of other characteristics it seeks to control we also find that entry class and source country composition of inflow have impacts that have swamped the effects of the point system in the last two decades summary in fre

the unemployment experience of male immigrants in england in this paper the unemployment experience of immigrant men in the english labour market is examined using 1993 1994 data from the quarterly labour force survey of the united kingdom hypotheses proposed by chiswick 1982 are investigated for both the claimant count and the ilo measures of unemployment using logistic regression analysis our results show that recent white and nonwhite immigrant men experience much higher levels of unemployment than earlier cohorts for whites this effect is transitory whereas for nonwhites unemployment rates adjust more slowly as the duration of stay increases immigrant unemployment rates also vary considerably with country of birth

why are the relative wages of immigrants declining a distributional approach the authors show that the decline in the relative wages of immigrants in canada is far from homogeneous across the wage distribution the well documented decline in the mean wage gap between immigrants and canadian born workers hides a much larger decline at the low end of the wage distribution while the gap hardly changed at the top end of the distribution using standard ols regressions and unconditional quantile regressions the authors show that both the changes in the mean wage gap and in the gap at different quantiles are well explained by standard factors such as experience education and country of origin of immigrants interestingly an important source of change in the wages of immigrants relative to the canadian born is the aging of the baby boom generation which has resulted in a relative increase in the labor market experience and thus in the wages of canadian born workers relative to immigrants

predictability of output growth and inflation a multi horizon survey approach we develop an unobserved components approach to study surveys of forecasts containing multiple forecast horizons under the assumption that forecasters optimally update their beliefs about past current and future state variables as new information arrives we use our model to extract information on the degree of predictability of the state variable and the importance of measurement errors in the observables empirical estimates of the model are obtained using survey forecasts of annual gdp growth and inflation in the united states with forecast horizons ranging from 1 to 24 months and the model is found to closely match the joint realization of forecast errors at different horizons our empirical results suggest that professional forecasters face severe measurement error problems for gdp growth in real time while this is much less of a problem for inflation moreover inflation exhibits greater persistence and thus is predictable at longer horizons than gdp growth and the persistent component of bot

the value of u s labor market experience in the home country the case of puerto rican return migrants many immigrants to the united states and other industrialized economies eventually return to their home country more than one million foreign born persons left the united states between 1960 and 1970 1 research has documented return migration to israel italy ireland mexico and puerto rico as well as the return of thousands of guest workers from industrialized european economies in the mid seventies 2 however little is known about how the migration experience shapes the earnings profiles of returnees and how the economic standing of returnees compares to that of stayers in the home labor market in this article i analyze the transferability of human capital accumulated abroad by return migrants and the economic assimilation process of returnees i investigate if return migrants can capitalize at home on the years of labor market experience accumulated abroad i also examine whether return migrants assimilate that is if their earnings increase with time spent in the home labor market to evaluate how returnees fare in the home labor market the earnings of returnees are compared to the earnings of stayers one of the findings from the literature of immigration to the united states and other industrialized economies is that immigrants lose human capital on crossing national borders 3 it has also been noted that the earnings of immigrants grow with time spent in the host labor market suggesting that immigrants undergo a process of assimilation 4 most of the research on international return migrants is qualitative in nature and the small sample sizes caution about generalizations a large amount of this research has focused on rural communities the primary concern in the return migration literature has been the effect on local economic development 5

canadian economics research on immigration through the lens of theories of justice we assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy in the process we highlight the contributions of economists working in canada and canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area we identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation more research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker tfw programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems la recherche canadienne en economie de l immigration a travers la lentille des theories de la justice on jauge l etat present des connaissances en economie de l immigration et on examine comment les theories economiques de la connaissance peuvent etre utiles dans la poursuite d un objectif qui serait de mettre en place une politique d immigration juste dans ce processus on souligne les contributions des economistes travaillant au canada a notre comprehension de ce chantier de recherche on identifie certaines zones d ombre comme la recherche pour comprendre les causes sous jacentes aux pauvres rendements de l experience de travail des immigrants en provenance des pays qui ne sont pas des sources d immigration traditionnelles et celle pour comprendre les effets des immigrants sur la stimulation de l innovation il faudra aussi davantage de recherches sur les implications des programmes pour attirer et accueillir les travailleurs etrangers temporairement et sur l importance croissante des employeurs dans les systemes de selection d immigrants

should germany have built a new wall macroeconomic lessons from the 2015 18 refugee wave abstract in 2015 2016 germany experienced a wave of predominantly low skilled refugee immigration we evaluate its macroeconomic and distributional effects using a quantitative overlapping generations model calibrated using german micro data to replicate education and productivity differentials between foreign born and native workers workers are modelled as imperfect substitutes in aggregate production leading to endogenous wage differentials we simulate the dynamic effects of this refugee wave with specific focus on the welfare impact on low skilled natives our results indicate that the small losses this group suffers can be compensated by welfare gains of other parts of the native population

outmigration of u s immigrants a methodology is devised for the empirical analysis of the determinants of outmigration of immigrants in a population empirical studies in this area have been hindered by a lack of longitudinal data on the characteristics of the immigrants this problem is tackled by making use of cross sectional data at two points in time it is applied to the study of male immigrants in the united states it is found that education is positively related to the rate of outmigration for immigrants from canada asia and the pooled sample of immigrants this finding suggests that the cross sectional estimates of the growth in earnings of immigrants in the united states are underestimated for these groups of immigrants

the economic situation of first and second generation immigrants in france germany and the united kingdom a central concern about immigration is the integration into the labour market not only of the first generation but also of subsequent generations little comparative work exists for europe s largest economies france germany and the uk have all become perhaps unwittingly countries with large immigrant populations albeit with very different ethnic compositions today the descendants of these immigrants live and work in their parents destination countries this article presents and discusses comparative evidence on the performance of first and second generation immigrants in these countries in terms of education earnings and employment it is widely believed that many european countries have a serious problem with the integration of immigrants and their children leed 2006 many northern european countries have accumulated sizeable populations of immigrants but the lack of longterm strategies and policies to integrate these into societal structures and the labour market is often cited as one reason for social and economic exclusion of the children of these immigrants in the past decade southern european countries such as spain and italy have experienced similar if not larger immigrations than the large northern european economies france germany and the uk in the late 1950s to early 1970s again it seems that there is little thought devoted to long term strategies for immigrants and their descendants the experience of those countries that had large scale immigration in the last half of the twentieth century should be of importance for devising future immigration and integration policies however there is rather little hard evidence in the literature about the relative position of immigrants and their descendants in these countries in a manner that allows comparisons to be made in this article we aim to provide a comparative study of a number of outcomes education earnings and employment of both first and second generation immigrants of different origins in the three largest european economies france germany and the uk

crossing the border self selection earnings and individual migration decisions many empirical studies on the determinants of international migration flows rely exclusively on macro data and do not account for migrants self selection we analyze a very interesting episode in international migration for which we are able to gather individual level data covering all relevant countries namely the exodus of ecuadorians to spain and the us in the aftermath of the economic collapse of 1999 specifically we produce selection corrected predictions of counterfactual individual earnings and use them to estimate a discrete choice migration equation that allows for correlated errors across destinations and a rich structure of migration costs we find that earnings significantly shape individual migration decisions even in an episode in which ecuadorians mostly chose spain where earnings were lower than in the us and they contribute to explaining the observed composition of migration flows moreover our estimates show that changes in earnings at a particular destination have a larger effect on destination choice conditional on migration than on the scale of migration

why do immigrant workers in australia perform better than those in canada is it the immigrants or their labour markets research comparing the labour market performance of recent cohorts of immigrants to australia and canada points to superior employment and earnings outcomes in australia examining australian and canadian census data between 1986 and 2006 we find that this performance advantage is not driven by differences in broader labour market conditions affecting all new labour market entrants rather the results from comparing immigrants from a common source country either the u k india or china suggest that australian immigrants perform better particularly in average earnings primarily because of a different source country distribution moreover the recent tightening of australian selection policy most notably its use of mandatory pre migration english language testing appears to be having an effect primarily by further shifting the source country distribution of immigrants away from non english speaking source countries rather than in identifying higher quality migrants within source countries pourquoi est ce que les travailleurs immigrants en australie s en tirent mieux que ceux qui choisissent le canada probleme d immigrants ou de marches du travail les recherches comparant la performance des recentes cohortes d immigrants sur le marche du travail en australie et au canada suggerent des resultats superieurs en australie tant pour ce qui est des niveaux d emploi que pour les niveaux de gains d emploi examinant les donnees de recensements au canada et en australie entre 1986 et 2006 on decouvre que cet avantage au niveau de la performance n est pas attribuable a des differences dans les conditions generales du marche du travail affectant tous les nouveaux entrants sur le marche du travail c est plutot qu en comparant les immigrants d une source commune d immigrants u k indes ou chine les resultats suggerent que les immigrants en australie s en tirent mieux en particulier pour ce qui est des gains moyens surtout a cause de la repartition differente des pays d origine de plus le resserrement recent de la politique de selection australienne en particulier son utilisation d un test obligatoire de connaissance de l anglais avant l immigration semble avoir eu pour effet de deplacer la repartition de la source des immigrants de maniere a diminuer l immigration en provenance de pays ou on ne parle pas l anglais plutot que d identifier des immigrants potentiels de plus haute qualite dans les divers pays d origine

monetary policy and bank profitability in a low interest rate environment we analyse the impact of standard and non standard monetary policy on bank profitability we use both proprietary and commercial data on individual euro area bank balance sheets and market prices our results show that a monetary policy easing a decrease in short term interest rates and or a flattening of the yield curve is not associated with lower bank profits once we control for the endogeneity of the policy measures to expected macroeconomic and financial conditions accommodative monetary conditions asymmetrically affect the main components of bank profitability with a positive impact on loan loss provisions and non interest income offsetting the negative one on net interest income a protracted period of low monetary rates has a negative effect on profits that however only materializes after a long time period and is counterbalanced by improved macroeconomic conditions monetary policy easing surprises during the low interest rate period improve bank stock prices and cds

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration mcdowell j m and singell l d jr 1993 an assessment of the human capital content of international migrants an application to us immigration reg studies 27 351 363 numerous studies have examined the flow of international migrants generally these studies measure the extent or magnitude of international migration by use of a simple numerical count this paper extends this analysis by providing a methodology for adding an economic dimension to the measure of the magnitude of international migration an earnings equation approach is used to attach an economic value to immigration applying our methodology to us immigration we find considerable variation across source regions in the value of immigrants moreover we find that simply comparing initial earnings without controlling for differences in the characteristics and migration patterns of immigrants from the various source regions can misrepresent the relative earnings potential or value of migrants mcdowell j m et singell l d jr 1993 un

immigrant wage growth in the united states the role of occupational upgrading immigrants to the united states routinely take jobs below their skill qualifications because of barriers to entering occupations we use a structural model of immigrant job choice to quantify the benefits of potential policies to promote entry into suitable occupations we estimate the model using longitudinal labor market data on immigrants to the united states our counterfactual results show that eliminating barriers to occupational entry would lead to only a small earnings increase for the average immigrant in our sample but a substantial earnings increase for the most highly skilled immigrants

immigrants in the u s labor market 1940 80 this paper explores the extent and causes of the decline in immigrant skills in the united states during the postwar period prior to 1965 immigration to the united states was guided by the national origins quota system this visa allocation system awarded visas to countries based on the representation of the national origin group in the u s population as of 1920 the 1965 amendments abolished the national origins formula thus redistributing visas across source countries and established a system where visas are mainly given to relatives of u s citizens or residents the empirical analysis shows that a single factor the changing national origin mix of the immigrant flow is mainly responsible for the decline in immigrant skills excerpt

immigration policy and employment assimilation in the united states we examine the impact of immigration policy on the employment propensity and assimilation of immigrants using a pooled cross section of the 1994 2004 current population surveys cps the results are generally consistent with positive immigrant employment assimilation a blinder oaxaca style decomposition shows that the foreign born obtain more employment primarily through human capital acquisition and changes in labour market conditions rather than higher returns to observable skills as sometimes seen in wage studies in addition our analysis suggests that immigration policies may influence both labour demand and supply incentives and are associated with structural shifts in the labour market

who is to blame canadian manufacturers and the absence of income per capita convergence no significant convergence between canadian and american income per capita occurred during the first ninety years of the twentieth century this lack of convergence does not appear to have been due to technological dependence input price distortions or diseconomies of scale within the canadian manufacturing sector the evidence presented in this paper is based on total factor productivity measurement statistical testing and counterfactual experimentation using data from national statistical agencies and firm level sources

a note on canadian migration to the united states during the 1980s and 1990s considerable media attention had been directed towards the flow of highly talented canadians to the united states in the 1990s there are firm theoretical reasons however to believe that qualitative differences in migration began as early as the 1980s owing to the widening distribution of earnings and the related increased returns to education in the united states relative to canada both of which could result in qualitative improvements in the migration flow us immigration policy remained essentially unchanged during the 1980s but changed markedly in the 1990s owing to the implementation of the canada us free trade agreement cufta and its successor the north american free trade agreement nafta we use a flexible empirical approach to document these changes in immigrant quality using 1980 1990 and 2000 us census data our results suggest that improvements in canadian immigrant quality occurred during the 1990s but these also happened earlier casting doubt on the hypothesis of improving canadi

productivity of highly skilled immigrants economists in the postwar period larry d singell jr prior work finds declining immigrant quality in the postwar period that is linked to source country and skill composition changes associated with the 1965 immigration act this paper uses a unique panel of foreign and native born american economic association members to show that the highly skilled experienced a similar shift away from european migrants toward those from asia however the findings do not indicate that this change in source country composition has been accompanied by a decline in quality rather the most recent cohorts of foreign born economists appear to be more productive than their native counterparts jel j61 i introduction this article is the first systematic analysis of the attributes and abilities of foreign born u s economists since a descriptive study of the brain drain by grubel and scott 1967 it also provides some of the first formal evidence for the largely theoretical proposition in earlier work by bhagwati and rodriquez 1975 that the united states draws the best skilled workers from abroad however recent immigration literature has not focused on the brain drain but has generated considerable debate concerning whether the 1965 immigration and nationality act has reduced the skill quality of u s immigrants in particular descriptive evidence in borjas 1987 and greenwood 1983 respectively indicates that the 1965 law shifted the composition of u s immigrants toward non european nations and increased the number of low skilled migrants to the united states our article extends this work by examining whether there has been a post 1965 change in the source country mix of ph d economists and whether such chan ges impact the productivity of the foreign born in comparison to their native counterparts most empirical studies of immigrant productivity have focused on earnings early cross sectional studies of immigrant earnings including chiswick 1978a concluded that the age earnings profile of immigrants is steeper than that of comparable native born workers and though initially lower crosses the native profile 10 to 15 years after immigration these results are consistent with the widely held belief that the immigration process self selects the highly motivated and industrious from their respective source countries thus immigrants although they initially enter the united states with relatively low levels of human capital eventually become more productive than their native counterparts more recent work by borjas 1985 1987 has contested these conclusions arguing that it is not possible to separately identify assimilation and cohort effects using a single cross sectional data set in particular the positive correlation between earnings and years since migration in cross sectional data may be due to immigrant assimilation or a cohort effect that arises from the declining skill quality of more recent immigrant groups borjas combines multiple cross sectional data sets to separately identify assimilation and cohort effects and finds evidence indicating that earlier cohorts of immigrants do relatively better than both natives and more recent immigrant cohorts suggesting a decline in immigrant quality although chiswick 1986 challenges the contention of declining immigrant quality and funkhouser and trejo 1995 find evidence that immigrant quality may have increased during the 1980s borjas 1995 contends that the empirical evidence consistently shows that immigrant quality has declined for most of the postwar period however the decline in immigrant quality has not necessarily been found within specific groups of immigrants in particular greenwood and mcdowell 1986 find that the change in skill quality is related to the shift in the source country composition of immigrants away from european nations toward those from asia and latin american after the 1965 immigration act thus explanations for the relatively poor performance of recent immigrants including those in lalonde and topel 1991 1992 and borjas 1992 focus on the post 1965 changes in the incentives to migrate to the united states that have increased the number of low skilled non european immigrants

the employment of low skilled immigrant men in the united states using microdata from the 2000 census we analyze how the employment rates of foreign born and us born men vary with education after a period of adjustment during the first few years upon arrival the overall employment rate of immigrant men quickly approaches that of us natives among those with the lowest education levels immigrants exhibit substantially higher rates of employment than comparable natives this pattern is consistent with a simple theoretical model of migrant selectivity that jointly considers a potential migrant s decisions regarding where to locate and whether to work

exchange rate expectations since the financial crisis performance evaluation and the role of monetary policy and safe haven abstract we analyze and evaluate novel data on exchange rate expectations after the collapse of lehman brothers for more than 60 economies over different horizons at a first stage we establish a potential discrepancy between statistical and economic measures market expectations are superior compared to trend and carry trade strategies based on economic evaluation criteria despite a weak statistical performance we then turn to determinants of both expectations and resulting forecast errors we find that monetary policy effects on expectations are time varying and identify substantial international spillovers over the recent period of unconventional monetary policy our results also indicate that markets have been surprised by monetary policy effects on the exchange rates and point to an unexpected safe haven status of the us dollar after 2009

disability employment and earnings an examination of heterogeneity this article uses information from an ad hoc module on disability in the 2002 uk labour force survey to identify the heterogeneity that exists within the disabled group and examine its impact on labour market outcomes after controlling for a range of personal characteristics the type severity duration and cause of the disability are found to be important determinants of employment but there is less evidence to support the influence of within group heterogeneity on earnings

immigrant participation in the welfare system this paper presents a systematic analysis of immigrant participation in the us welfare system using the 1970 and 1980 us censuses in contrast to the previous studies the researchers focused on changes in welfare use across immigrant cohorts over time for a single immigrant cohort as it assimilates to the us furthermore it develops a theoretical model of the migration decision that explicitly incorporates the income insurance aspect of the us welfare system the analysis revealed that recent immigrant cohorts use the welfare system more intensively than earlier immigrant waves also the immigrant welfare participation was greater the longer an immigrant household had resided in the us and those characteristics of the immigrants country of origin were important determinants of welfare participation in addition the theoretical model of the migration decision which explicitly incorporated the presence of a welfare system in the destination country and this model could account for some of the ways in which source country characteristics were found to affect immigrant welfare participation

the role of the family in immigrants labor market activity an evaluation of alternative explanations comment most research on the labor market outcomes of immigrants has studied the behavior of individuals focusing primarily on the wage assimilation process or the excess returns to experience which immigrants obtain in their destination country s labor market e g barry r chiswick 1978 george j borjas 1985 recently however attention has been directed to analyzing immigrant labor market outcomes in a family context an approach which combines information about an individual s own labor market opportunities and the family context in which labor market decisions take place in a previously published paper in this review michael baker and dwayne benjamin 1997 evaluate alternative explanations for the observed labor supply patterns of canadian immigrants in the 1986 1991 period specifically when immigrant husbands arrive in canada they typically work less than comparable natives however immigrant wives work more than natives other things equal with assimilation the labor supply of immigrant husbands eventually catches up to that of natives while immigrant wives labor supply falls relative to comparable natives and is ultimately overtaken by that of natives the authors take these patterns to be most consistent with a family investment model in this scenario upon arrival husbands invest in their human capital while wives work to provide the family with liquidity during this investment period with increased time in canada husbands labor supply increases rapidly due to their growing skills in the canadian labor market while wives labor supply falls off in part because they originally took dead end jobs upon arrival in order to finance their husbands investments in human capital interestingly while most of the findings reported by baker and benjamin are consistent with the family investment model their estimated wage equations are not although they do not comment on this in discussing the appropriateness of the family investment model specifically they find similar rates of wage assimilation for husbands and wives this finding suggests roughly equal propensities to invest in one s own human capital for both groups this is contrary to the family investment hypothesis and does not match their story of dead end jobs for wives and large human capital investments of their husbands an alternative possible explanation for the patterns observed by baker and benjamin involves a simple price model in which the observed labor supply patterns reflect laborsupply responses to each spouse s wages for example the initially high but eventually falling level of wives labor supply relative to comparable natives could be a response to their husbands initially low but rising wages while this reasoning like the family investment model is broadly consistent with the data the authors conclude that the simple price model cannot be the entire explanation since in order to explain the full labor supply patterns of immigrants it would require unrealistically high labor supply elasticities and further that the assimilation patterns noted above remain even when wages of husband and wife are controlled blau school of industrial and labor relations cornell university 265 ives hall ithaca ny 14853 and nber and cesifo kahn school of industrial and labor relations cornell university 264 ives hall ithaca ny 14853 and cesifo moriarty school of industrial and labor relations cornell university ilr graduate student mailboxes ives hall ithaca ny 14853 souza faculdade de economia administracao e contabilidade university of sao paulo avenida professor luciano gualberto 908 cidade universitaria predio fea 1 sao paulo sp 05508 brazil the authors thank three anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions portions of this paper were written while blau and kahn were visiting scholars at the russell sage foundation to which they are grateful for research support

migration theories and evidence an assessment abstract this paper presents a critical survey of theories of migration their welfare and policy implications and their empirical relevance we also develop some extensions to the theory beginning with the harris and todaro ht model in particular the ht model is extended to examine risk averse behaviour within families where the migration of members of families serves to diversify risk the welfare implications of the individual migration decision and government intervention in the form of employment subsidies are examined recent evidence on international migration is presented it is shown that migration does not flow automatically in response to wage differentials characteristics of migrants and the process of self selection are found to be important determinants of the rate of migration

the earnings of male immigrants in england evidence from the quarterly lfs in this paper we estimate earnings functions for native born and foreign born white and non white males in the english labour market using data from the quarterly labour force survey our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between native born and foreign born males when investigating the labour market experience of ethnic minorities furthermore the earnings performance amongst white immigrants varies considerably

the effect of literacy on immigrant earnings we examine the impact of literacy on immigrant earnings and the sources of lower returns to education and experience among immigrants we find that the native born literacy distribution dominates that for immigrants however the two groups obtain similar returns to literacy skills contrary to discrimination based explanations for immigrant native born earnings differentials among the university educated literacy differences account for about two thirds of the earnings gap however low returns to foreign experience have a larger impact on this differential among the less educated literacy differences and differences in the returns to experience have similar effects on the earnings differential

language training language proficiency and earnings of immigrants in norway this paper uses a simple probit model to determine the impact of language training on the language proficiency of third world immigrant men in norway it also estimates the labour market returns to norwegian language proficiency the results show that immigrants who participate in language training programme are more likely to acquire speaking and reading proficiencies in norwegian language than those who do not contrary to expectation language proficiency has no significant effect on immigrants earnings a probable explanation may be that immigrants need norwegian language proficiency to get into jobs in the norwegian labour market once they are in employment their wages are not necessarily determined by their proficiency in norwegian consistent with the assimilation hypothesis earlier waves of immigrants have higher earnings than do more recent waves and part of the initial earnings deficit experienced by more recent immigrants can be attributed to language deficiency there was no evidence of s

male female wage differentials in taiwan a human capital approach during the past 3 decades male female wage differentials have attracted much attention in all countries for which there are data the usual approach is to decompose gender wage differentials into two parts one attributable to an individual s characteristics holding reward structure constant and the other attributable to a different reward structure holding characteristics constant the latter part is usually defined to represent discrimination using this approach with data from the 1967 survey of economic opportunity ronald oaxaca found 80 of the observed gender wage differential to be ascribed to labor market discrimination mary corcoran and greg j duncan using the panel study of income dynamics which provides detailed work histories found a 56 discrimination figure implying that productivityrelated characteristics accounted for 44 of the observed male female wage differentials because of inherent biases particularly with regard to measuring human capital solomon w polachek proposed an alternative way to determine one s characteristics 2 he measured expected human capital then embedded this measure in a wage regression on pooled male and female data over 90 of the male female earnings gap was explained by gender differences in human capital claudia goldin and polachek applied polachek s technique to the 1980 u s census data and accounted for about 80 of the male female earnings gap

wage mobility of foreign born workers in the united states this paper presents new evidence on whether foreign born workers assimilate while the existing literature focuses on the convergence divergence of average wages this study extends the analysis to the distribution of wages by looking at wage mobility we measure the foreign native gap in year to year transition probabilities from one decile group to another of a wage distribution where the deciles are determined by native samples our results based on the current population survey for 1996 2008 suggest that immigrants in middle and bottom decile groups who are the majority of immigrants tend to fall behind relative to natives in the same decile groups

from farashia to military uniform male female wage differentials in libya introduction discrimination against females has been the subject of hundreds of studies in the west especially in the united states there are only a few studies of note conducted in the less developed world however although the methodology employed in estimating the earnings equations varies from study to study most studies follow a common method of decomposing the earnings differential into a part attributed to different endowments or the explained part and a residual or an unexplained part usually taken to measure discrimination a collection of papers edited by g psacharopoulos and z tzannatos brings to attention the analysis of 15 different latin american countries the unexplained part of the differential in these studies ranges from 22 9 in colombia to 95 in venezuela other studies include that of l christofides and p pashardes who attribute 60 of the male female earnings gap in cyprus to the explained part while b cohen and w house s explained part is 63 for khartoum sudan and m schafgans s is 27 for malaysia in the case of taiwan only 16 of the wage differential is attributed to discrimination while for guinea this percentage is 75 for the public sector and 55 for the self employed sector in three other african countries a significant proportion of the wage gap is unexplained but due to the use of a different methodology it is not strictly comparable with the other studies there are a few other studies in the developing world cited in the work by g r arabsheibani the arab world however has been neglected almost com

an introduction to the economics of immigration in oecd countries the share of the foreign born in oecd countries is increasing and this article summarizes economics research on the effects of immigration in those nations four broad topics are addressed labor market issues fiscal questions the political economy of immigration and productivity international trade extreme concerns about deleterious labour market and fiscal impacts following from new immigrants are not found to be warranted however it is also clear that government policies and practices regarding the selection and integration of new migrants affect labour market fiscal and social cultural outcomes policies that are well informed well crafted and well executed beneficially improve population welfare

immigrant earnings age at immigration matters a correlation between age at immigration and earnings is observed in canadian census data the evidence supports three underlying sources of the effect first work expe rience in the source country yields virtually no return in the host country second the return to education varies with age at immigration and finally an acculturation effect is observed for immigrants who are visible minorities or whose mother tongue is not english further it is found that educational attainment and relatedly earnings vary systematically across age at immigration with those arriving around age 15 to 18 obtaining fewer years of education

immigrants economic assimilation evidence from longitudinal earnings records we examine immigrants earnings trajectories and measure the extent and speed with which they are able to reduce the earnings gap with natives using a dataset that links respondents of the survey

immigrants and the dynamics of high wage jobs the authors exploit immigrant identifiers in the canadian labour force survey lfs and the longitudinal dimension of these data to compare the labor force and job dynamics of immigrants and native born workers they examine the role of job as opposed to worker heterogeneity in driving immigrant wage disparities and investigate how the paths into and out of jobs of varying quality compare between immigrant and native born workers they find that the disparity in immigrant job quality which does not appear to diminish with years since arrival reflects a combination of relatively low transitions into high wage jobs and high transitions out of these jobs the former result appears to be due equally to difficulties obtaining high wage jobs directly out of unemployment and to using low wage jobs as stepping stones the authors find little or no evidence however that immigrant job seekers face barriers to low wage jobs

how much energy do building energy codes save evidence from california houses regulations governing the energy efficiency of new buildings have become a cornerstone of us environmental policy california enacted the first such codes in 1978 and has tightened them every few years since i evaluate the resulting energy savings three ways comparing energy used by houses constructed under different standards controlling for building and occupant characteristics examining how energy use varies with outdoor temperatures and comparing energy used by houses of different vintages in california to that same difference in other states all three approaches yield estimated energy savings significantly short of those projected when the regulations were enacted

is the negative interest rate policy effective abstract this paper examines the effectiveness of the negative interest rate policy conducted by several central banks to stabilize economic growth and inflation expectations through the signaling channel in doing so we assess survey based expectations data for up to 44 economies from 2002 to 2017 and analyze the impact of the adoption of a negative interest rate policy on expectations made by professionals based on a difference in differences approach our main findings are as follows first we show that the introduction of negative policy rates significantly reduces expectations regarding 3 month money market interest rates and also 10 year government bond yields second we also provide evidence for a significantly positive effect of this unconventional monetary policy tool on gdp growth and inflation expectations this implies that the negative interest rate policy appears to be effective in boosting economic growth and overcoming a deflationary spiral consequently the effect of negative nominal interest rates on real interest rate expectations is also negative

backlash the unintended effects of language prohibition in u s schools after world war i do forced assimilation policies always succeed in integrating immigrant groups this article examines how a specific assimilation policy language restrictions in elementary school affects integration and identification with the host country later in life after world war i several u s states barred the german language from their schools affected individuals were less likely to volunteer in world war ii and more likely to marry within their ethnic group and to choose decidedly german names for their offspring rather than facilitating the assimilation of immigrant children the policy instigated a backlash heightening the sense of cultural identity among the minority

the labor market skills of recent male immigrants evidence from the current population survey using data from special supplements to the current population survey cps the authors track the education and hourly earnings of recent male immigrants to the united states in terms of these measures of labor market skills the cps data suggest that immigrants who came in the late 1980s were more skilled than those who arrived earlier in the decade this pattern represents a break from the steady decline in immigrant skill levels observed in 1940 80 census data despite the encouraging trend over the 1980s however the average skills of recent immigrants remain low by historical standards

are refugees different from economic immigrants some empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of immigrant groups in the united states this paper analyzes how the implicit difference in time horizons between refugees and economic immigrants affects subsequent human capital investments and wage assimilation the analysis uses the 1980 and 1990 integrated public use samples of the census to study labor market outcomes of immigrants who arrived in the united states from 1975 to 1980 i find that in 1980 refugee immigrants in this cohort earned 6 less and worked 14 fewer hours than economic immigrants both had approximately the same level of english skills the two immigrant groups had made substantial gains by 1990 however refugees had made greater gains in fact the labor market outcomes of refugee immigrants surpassed those of economic immigrants in 1990 refugees from the 1975 1980 arrival cohort earned 20 more worked 4 more hours and improved their english skills by 11 relative to economic immigrants the higher rates of human capital accumulation for refugee immigrants contribute to these findings

do immigrants and their children free ride more than natives the main goal of this paper is to analyze the differences between immigrant and native households in their volunteer contributions and private transfer behavior as well as their receipt of assistance from nongovernment sources in addition we examine how the immigrant native differences evolve over time as immigrant households accumulate us experience finally we examine the voluntary contribution behavior of second generation immigrants and children in immigrant households to gain insight into the long term impact of immigration we do not find evidence that immigrant households free ride more than native born households first immigrant households when compared to similar native born households are less likely to receive assistance from nongovernment sources second immigrant status has no statistically significant impact on monetary contributions toward public good provision we also find that the immigrant native differences in monetary and time contributions tend to diminish over time as immigrants acquire us experience finally we find no significant differences between the second generation of immigrants and third or higher generations of americans in their voluntary contributions of money and time we obtain similar results for children in immigrant households they are not significantly different from children in native households in their time contribution and in their enrollment in federal meal programs the results are robust to various income and wealth controls do immigrants and their children free ride more than natives

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

job search and immigrant assimilation an earnings frontier approach this study examines labor market assimilation by measuring the information utilized by immigrants during job search assimilation is assumed to occur whenever such information increases with length of residence in the united states and repeated job searches the authors assert that information utilized during job search reduces differentials between actual and potential maximum attainable earnings coauthors are henry w herzog jr richard a hofler and alan m schlottmann copyright 1992 by mit press

the interest rate effects of government bond purchases away from the lower bound abstract i analyze the recent experience of unconventional monetary policy in sweden to study the interest rate transmission mechanisms of government bond purchases when interest rates are away from the lower bound using dynamic term structure models and event study regressions i find that government bond purchases have important portfolio balance and signaling effects the signaling channel operates mainly by lowering short rate expectations in the intermediate segment of the yield curve while the portfolio balance channel is effective in lowering longer maturity term premia in addition i find that target interest rate policy and government bond purchases operate in different segments of the yield curve this suggests that a combination of the two policies can be used to lower interest rates across the whole maturity spectrum making monetary policy more expansionary

ethnic enclaves and immigrant earnings growth the impact of living in an ethnic enclave on earnings growth of immigrants in canada is examined using the 1981 2001 censuses consistent with u s findings enclaves are found to have a negative impact on the earnings growth of male immigrants a negative impact is also found for female immigrants living in an enclave was found to be particularly harmful for individuals immigrating as adults especially for females but did not affect immigrants who arrived at a young age enclaves had a more negative impact on high skilled male immigrants especially if they had received the bulk of their education outside canada enclaves were also found to hinder language skills l impact du fait de vivre dans une enclave ethnique sur la croissance des gains des immigrants au canada est analysea l aide des donnees de recensements de 1981 a 2001 en concordance avec les resultats des etudes americaines on decouvre que les enclaves ont un effet negatif sur la croissance des gains des hommes immigrants il y a aussi un impact negatif sur la croissance des gains des femmes immigrantes vivre dans une enclave est particulierement dommageable pour les personnes qui immigrent au stade adulte et ce particulierement pour les femmes les effets negatifs ne se font pas sentir sur les immigrants qui arrivent en bas ge les enclaves ont un effet davantage negatif pour les hommes immigrants hautement qualifies en particulier s ils ont recu le gros de leur education hors du canada on montre que de vivre en enclaves retarde le developpement d habiletes langagieres