empathy or antipathy the impact of diversity mixing across ethnic and class lines could potentially either spur understanding or inflame tensions between groups we find that white students at a large state university who were randomly assigned african american roommates in their first year are more likely to endorse affirmative action policies several years later whites who were randomly assigned black roommates are also more likely to say they have more personal contact with and interact more comfortably with members of minority groups whites who were assigned either black or low income roommates are more likely to view a diverse student body as essential for a high quality education students become less supportive of higher taxes for the wealthy when assigned roommates from high income families and they appear more likely to volunteer when assigned roommates from low income families taken together these results suggest that students become more empathetic with the social groups to which their roommates belong

the mass political economy of capital controls this article examines mass public opinion toward international financial market regulations known as capital controls conventional wisdom maintains that most voters do not pay attention to or c

iceland on the rocks the mass political economy of sovereign debt resettlement we undertake an individual level analysis of mass political behavior toward sovereign debt resettlement by leveraging the unique circumstances of a 2011 referendum on debt repayment in iceland this allows us to engage broader questions about mass international political economy against the recent thrust of a growing literature we find evidence of material economic pocketbook effects self interest on voting behavior operating alongside symbolic sociotropic and partisan political logics contrary to expectations these self interest effects are not conditional on voter sophistication we conclude that conventional sampling frames may be inappropriate for understanding contemporary democratic contestation over international economic policy

who is against immigration a cross country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants abstract this paper empirically analyzes economic and noneconomic determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries the two survey data sets used covering a wide range of developed and developing countries make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country level attributes in particular theory predicts that the correlation between pro immigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it otherwise results based on direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition are consistent with these predictions noneconomic variables also are correlated with immigration attitudes but they don t alter significantly the labor market results

immigration ethnic diversity and political outcomes evidence from denmark i study the impact of immigration and increasing ethnic diversity on political outcomes in immigrant receiving countries focusing on immigration and election outcomes in danish municipalities 1981 2001 a rich set of control variables isolates ethnic diversity eects from those of other immigrant characteristics and a novel iv strategy based on historical housing stock data addresses issues of endogenous location choices of immigrants increases in local ethnic diversity lead to right ward shifts in election outcomes by shifting electoral support away from traditional big government left wing parties and towards anti immigrant nationalist parties in particular these eects appear in both local and national elections

the impact of the 1962 repatriates from algeria on the french labor market this paper uses census data to examine the impact on the french labor market of the 900 000 people repatriated from algeria in 1962 repatriates settled in regions culturally and climatically simil

the welfare state migration and voting rights this paper proposes a political economic analysis of public opinion in european union countries toward migrants from poor countries by focusing on redistributive policy the analysis sheds light on specific determinants of public opinion the theoretical analysis based on the median voter framework shows that one of the key variables affecting public opinion is the voting rights of migrants where migrants do not have the right to vote their presence negatively impacts the poorest natives in countries where migrants enjoy voting rights they are able to vote on redistributive policy therefore the impact of migration on natives welfare is fundamentally different after the theoretical analysis the paper proposes an empirical analysis of europeans attitudes toward non western migrants in european union countries this empirical analysis confirms the decisive impact of migrants voting rights it shows that in eu countries the more educated natives are significantly less favorable to migrants from poor countries when the latter have the right to vote

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

does education improve citizenship evidence from the united states and the united kingdom abstract many studies document an association between schooling and civic participation but none credibly investigate causal links we explore the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the united states and the united kingdom we find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the united states but not for the united kingdom our us results approach the uk findings when conditioning on registration possibly indicating that registration rules present a barrier to participation

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

bridging trade theory and labour econometrics the effects of international migration this paper surveys current theoretical and empirical research on international migration with a particular emphasis on the links between trade theory and labour empirics

imf conditionality threat perception and political repression a cross national analysis this article investigates the impact of international monetary fund imf conditionality on political repression conditionality refers to the conditions that borrowing countries must implement bef

individual attitudes towards migration a re examination of the evidence recent economic research has highlighted the importance of labor market and welfarestate mechanisms in the explanation of individual attitudes towards immigration by contrast political scientists argue that attitudes are mostly determined by individual cultural values and beliefs this paper takes a fresh look at this debate and contains the following contributions to the literature first we address the problem that unobserved cultural values and beliefs might be correlated with education a potential source of bias in the estimations second we compile a detailed database on the education levels of immigrants and natives and on the degree of fiscal redistribution in european countries third our econometric estimates rely on a simple structural model taking individual heterogeneity with respect to education explicitly into account the structural model enables us to evaluate quantitatively the importance of the labor market and welfare state channels and of other individual factors such as cultural values and beliefs our results show that the labor market and welfare state mechanisms play a significant role in explaining individual attitudes however the quantitative importance of these two mechanisms turns out to be rather limited compared to other individual factors jel classification f22 j61

educational policies in a long run perspective in this paper we study the effects of educational reforms on school attainment we construct a dataset of relevant reforms that occurred at the national level over the last century and match individual information from 24 european countries to the most likely set up faced when individual educational choices were undertaken our identification strategy relies on temporal and geographical variations in the institutional arrangements controlling for time country fixed effects as well as for country specific time trend by characterizing each group of reforms for their impact on mean years of education educational inequality and intergenerational persistence we show an ideal policy menu which has been available to policymakers we distinguish between groups of policies that are either inclusive or selective depending on their diminishing or augmenting impact on inequality and persistence finally we correlate these reform measures to political coalitions prevailing in parliament finding support for the idea that left wing parties support reforms that are inclusive while right wing parties prefer selective ones michela braga daniele checchi and elena meschi

the causal effect of education on body mass evidence from europe we adopt a multi country setup to show that years of schooling have a causal protective effect on the body mass index of females living in nine european countries no such effect is found for males the protective effect for european females is not negligible but is smaller than one recently found for the united states and stronger among overweight females we discuss possible mechanisms justifying both the protective role of education and the gender difference in this role we argue that the effects of additional schooling on income the probability of employment and the frequency of vigorous physical activities both on and off the job may help explain our results

the fiscal effects of immigration to the uk we investigate the fiscal impact of immigration on the uk economy with a focus on the period since 1995 our findings indicate that when considering the resident immigrant population in each year from 1995 to 2011 immigrants from the european economic area eea have made a positive fiscal contribution even during periods when the uk was running budget deficits while non eea immigrants not dissimilar to natives have made a negative contribution for immigrants that arrived since 2000 contributions have been positive throughout and particularly so for immigrants from eea countries notable is the strong positive contribution made by immigrants from countries that joined the eu in 2004

the effects of imf programs in the third world debate and evidence from latin america abstract this article reviews the debate about the effects of imf sponsored stabilization programs in the third world after examining recent studies by fund economists results of a new study on a latin american country set are presented in this research imf programs are associated with insignificant changes in the current account significant improvements in the overall balance of payments increases in inflation mixed effects on growth and a strong and consistent pattern of reduction in labor share of income the latter result is incorporated into a distribution oriented critique of fund policy

doctors with borders occupational licensing as an implicit barrier to high skill migration research on the political economy of immigration overlooks the specificity of human capital in skilled occupations and its implications for immigration preferences and policymaking conclusions that skilled americans are unconcerned about labor market competition from skilled migrants build on a simple dichotomy between high and low skill migrants in this article we show that natives turn to occupational licensing regulations as occupation specific protectionist barriers to skilled migrant labor competition in practice high skill natives face labor market competition only from those high skill migrants who share their occupation specific skills licensure regulations ostensibly serve the public interest by certifying competence but they can simultaneously be formidable barriers to entry by skilled migrants from a collective action perspective skilled natives can more easily secure sub national occupation specific policies than influence national immigration policy we exploit the unique structure of the american medical profession that allows us to distinguish between public interest and protectionist motives for migrant physician licensure regulations we show that over the 1973 2010 period states with greater physician control over licensure requirements imposed more stringent requirements for migrant physician licensure and as a consequence received fewer new migrant physicians by our estimates over a third of all us states could reduce their physician shortages by at least 10 percent within 5 years just by equalizing migrant and native licensure requirements this article advances research on the political economy of immigration and highlights an overlooked dimension of international economic integration regulatory rent seeking as a barrier to the cross national mobility of human capital and the public policy implications of such barriers

educated preferences explaining attitudes toward immigration in europe recent studies of individual attitudes toward immigration emphasize concerns about labor market competition as a potent source of anti immigrant senti ment in particular among less educated or less skilled citizens who fear being forced to compete for jobs with low skilled immigrants willing to work for much lower wages we examine new data on attitudes toward immigration available from the 2003 european social survey in contrast to predictions based on conventional argu ments about labor market competition which anticipate that individuals will oppose immigration of workers with similar skills to their own but support immigration of workers with different skill levels we find that people with higher levels of educa tion and occupational skills are more likely to favor immigration regardless of the skill attributes of the immigrants in question across europe higher education and higher skills mean more support for all types of immigrants these relationships are almost identical among individuals in the labor force that is those competing for jobs and those not in the labor force contrary to the conventional wisdom then the connection between the education or skill levels of individuals and views about immigration appears to have very little if anything to do with fears about labor market competition this finding is consistent with extensive economic research show ing that the income and employment effects of immigration in european economies are actually very small we find that a large component of the link between educa tion and attitudes toward immigrants is driven by differences among individuals in cultural values and beliefs more educated respondents are significantly less racist and place greater value on cultural diversity than do their counterparts they are also more likely to believe that immigration generates benefits for the host economy as a whole

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

economic stabilization conditionality and political stability imf conditionality is seldom so important that it dominates all other considerations for political stability imf stabilization programs often shift benefits from one group to another they expose elites to charges of selling the sovereignty of their countries the imposition of imf conditions particularly subsidy cuts may lead to sharp outbreaks of civil disorder nonetheless the imf provides resources that make adjustment easier and thus may lessen the chances of political instability for a country imf programs are seldom implemented fully as negotiated and the penalties for partial compliance are not great debtor countries have more flexibility in imposing austerity measures and the economic constraints are less binding than often assumed the very availability of alternatives to imf programs results in internal divisions because some favor debt repudiation and others oppose it groups now contend over solutions to the debt problems of their countries

the fiscal impact of immigration on the advanced economies this paper is concerned with the advanced economies it begins with a discussion of the demo graphic issues that have played such a large role in the debate on immigration this is followed by a section on the main problems involved in estimating the fiscal impact of immigration and then a summary of the international evidence on this topic mostly from europe and america separate sections on the uk and on low fertility countries follow the main conclusions are as follows highly skilled migrants normally make a large fiscal contribution whereas unskilled migrants are likely to impose a net cost on native taxpayers if they settle in the receiving country however even unskilled migrants may be net contributors if they eventually depart and make few claims on government expenditure while in the country most empirical studies find that the fiscal contribution of the immigrant population as a whole is quite small the positive contribution of some migrants is largely or wholly offset by the negative contribution of others this finding holds across a variety of countries and methodologies estimates of the net fiscal contribution of immigration normally lie within the range 1 per cent of gdp there are a few exceptions but these refer to countries experiencing demographic collapse and they are based on unrealistic assumptions about the inter generational allocation of future taxes and government expenditure with more realistic assumptions the overall fiscal benefit of immigration is quite small even in these countries these findings suggest that in general there is no strong fiscal case for or against sustained large scale immigration the desirability or otherwise of large scale immigration should be decided on other grounds

gains from trade inefficiency of government programs and the net economic effects of trading a great deal has been written on the inefficiencies of government farm programs and associated welfare effects e g just hueth and schmitz 1982 gardner 1983 1987 schmitz sigurdson and doering 1986 schmitz 1988 however common measures of inefficiency and distributional impact have not addressed the following question how are gains from trade and the inefficiencies of government programs related from a policy perspective knowing the trade impacts of government programs is at least as important as knowing the inefficiency effects for example is it possible for gains from trade to outweigh farm program inefficiencies alternatively could it be that negative trade impacts combined with farm program inefficiencies create situations in which no trade would be preferred to trade under existing government policy distortions in this paper we establish the link between classic gains from trade and the inefficiency of distortionary government programs using this framework we show both theoretically and empirically that the net economic effects of trading can be negative i e no trade would be preferred to trade under distortions we show that

gender differences in educational attainment evidence on the role of tracking from a finnish quasi experiment this paper studies the relationship between the timing of tracking of pupils into vocational and academic secondary education and gender differences in educational attainment and income we argue that in a system that streams students into vocational and academic tracks relatively late age 15 16 girls are more likely to choose the academic track than boys because of gender differences in the timing of puberty we exploit the finnish comprehensive school reform of the 1970 s to analyze this hypothesis this reform postponed the tracking of students from the age of 10 11 to 15 16 and was adopted gradually by municipalities so that we can observe members of the same cohorts in both systems we find that the postponement of the tracking age increased gender differences in the probability of choosing the academic secondary education and in the probability of continuing into academic tertiary education the reform had particularily negative effects on boys from non academic family backgrounds finally the reform decreased the gender wage gap in adult income by four percentage points

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

discrimination and assimilation at school abstract i present a theory of assimilation among students of two different backgrounds with unequal status students with a disadvantaged background face an incentive to assimilate into the more advantaged group the advantaged group chooses the cost of assimilation strategically to screen those who seek to assimilate in equilibrium only the most skilled disadvantaged students assimilate this theory provides a novel explanation of the acting white problem acting white refers to a social phenomenon in which students from disadvantaged ethnicities suffer social sanctions if they obtain good grades these sanctions raise the cost of acquiring the skills that make it easier to assimilate disadvantaged students with low ability impose these sanctions in order to induce their more able co ethnics to stay in the disadvantaged group

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

political repression and economic doctrines the case of argentina recent studies linking political repression to free market economic policy have failed to explain fully the relationship to uncover important theoretical linkages this article will examine the principles behind policy and argue that increases in governments use of force are principally a function of 1 shifts in economic stabilization doctrines from structuralist to orthodox which are prompted by severe economic crises and 2 strengthened alliances between ruling elites and international financial institutions partial to orthodox deflationary strategies multiple regression analysis on time series data from argentina over a 23 year period provides a strong statistical confirmation for these suppositions even when holding constant for particular regime types a historical narrative has been provided to buttress these results by establishing the precise timing and sequence of events that precipitated the use of coercion by state leaders

do concerns about labor market competition shape attitudes toward immigration new evidence abstract are concerns about labor market competition a powerful source of anti immigrant sentiment several prominent studies have examined survey data on voters and concluded that fears about the negative effects of immigration on wages and employment play a major role generating anti immigrant attitudes we examine new data from a targeted survey of u s employees in 12 different industries in contrast with previous studies the findings indicate that fears about labor market competition do not appear to have substantial effects on attitudes toward immigration and preferences with regard to immigration policy among this large and diverse set of voters

is extending compulsory schooling alone enough to raise earnings evidence from french and british compulsory schooling laws in this paper i compare two reforms that raised the minimum school leaving age to 16 in france 1967 and in england and wales 1972 using a regression discontinuity design i find that while the reform in england and wales led to a 6 7 percent increase in hourly wages per additional year of compulsory schooling the impact of the change to french law was close to zero the results suggest that the major difference between the two reforms was that the fraction of individuals holding no qualifications dropped sharply after the introduction of the new minimum school leaving age in england and wales whereas it remained unchanged in france

impact of the 2014 suspension agreement on sugar between the united states and mexico in december 2014 the u s and mexico agreed to a suspension agreement that set a 22 25 cwt import price floor on u s sugar imports from mexico a partial equilibrium trade model was developed to estimate the economic impact the agreement would have had if it had been in effect from 2008 to 2014 in years when the price floor would have been binding on average u s producers would have gained 138 million and mexican producers would have lost 218 million however total mexican welfare would have actually increased by 11 5 million furthermore the average price floor that would have maximized total mexican welfare over that period is 22 76 cwt also under certain supply and demand elasticity conditions the average price floor that would have maximized joint u s and mexican producer welfare over that period is 21 91 cwt the latter two estimates are both close to the actual price floor agreed to in the 2014 suspension agreement

who supports global economic engagement the sources of preferences in american foreign economic policy in this article we bring together opposing international relations theories to better understand u s foreign policy in particular foreign trade and aid using votes in the u s house of representatives from 1979 2004 we explore different theoretical predictions about preferences for foreign economic policy we assess the impact of domestic factors namely political economy and ideological preferences versus foreign policy pressures our three main results highlight the differential effect of these factors in the two issue areas first aid preferences are as affected by domestic political economy factors as are trade preferences second trade preferences but not economic aid ones are shaped by the president s foreign policy concerns for economic aid domestic political economy factors matter more than foreign policy ones third aid preferences are shaped more by ideological factors than are trade ones but ideology plays a different substantive role in each different constituencies support aid and trade this finding has implications for foreign policy substitutability the internationalist coalition in u s foreign policy statist theories of foreign policy and the connection between public opinion and legislative voting

the expansion and convergence of compulsory schooling in western europe 1950 2000 this paper examines the expansion of compulsory schooling in fifteen western european countries over 1950 2000 we show that a convergence process has occurred across these countries since 1950 we argue that the major driver of this phenomenon is the existence of decreasing aggregate returns to education that have limited the extension of compulsory schooling then we test whether convergence holds when confronted with other explanations described in the literature conditional convergence does hold and we find that openness has been another significant determinant of compulsory years of schooling reflecting the need of a skilled labour force in an increasingly globalized world

changes in compulsory schooling education and the distribution of wages in europe using data from 12 european countries and the variation across countries and over time in the changes of minimum school leaving age we study the effects of the quantity of education on the distribution of earnings we find that compulsory school reforms significantly affect educational attainment especially among individuals belonging to the lowest quantiles of the distribution of ability there is also evidence that additional education reduces conditional wage inequality and that education and ability are substitutes in the earnings function

wish you were here quasi experimental evidence on the effect of education on self reported attitude toward immigrants abstract we use european social survey and labour force survey data from 2002 to 2012 to estimate the causal effect of years of education on european natives opinion toward immigration by exploiting the exogenous discontinuity generated by reforms in compulsory education in europe in the 1940s through the 1990s our findings show that higher levels of education lead to a more positive reported attitude toward immigrants we also investigate the mechanisms behind the effect of education on reported attitudes by evaluating both economic and non economic channels we find that higher levels of education place individuals in occupations that are less exposed to the negative effects of migration although not in sectors occupations where the share of migrants is necessarily smaller suggesting that migrants and low educated natives may be complementary rather than substitutes in the labour market in addition education alters values and the cognitive assessment of the role of immigration in host societies with a positive effect on reported attitude toward diversity and on the assessment of immigration s role in host countries our findings suggest that education as a policy instrument can increase social cohesion in societies that are subject to large immigration flows

domestic farm policy and the gains from trade this paper assesses the extent to which the gains from agricultural trade are influenced by both u s domestic policy and tariff and nontariff trade barriers it shows theoretically that the volume of trade can be substantial but the gains nonexistent empirical results along with rent seeking arguments support the no gains from trade hypothesis

tackling the european migration problem this paper will begin by examining the historical pattern of migration and the empirical dimension of western europes migration problem a next step examines the labor market issues and impacts on natives as western europe perceives them the paper concludes with a discussion of policy issues and options excerpt

is the new immigration really so bad this article reviews the recent evidence on us immigration focusing on two key questions 1 does immigration reduce the labour market opportunities of less skilled natives 2 have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 immigration reform act been successfully assimilated overall evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant on the question of assimilation the success of the us born children of immigrants is a key yardstick by this metric post 1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives

immigration to the land of redistribution negative perceptions about migrants in europe are driven by concerns that foreigners abuse welfare paradoxically instruments of social inclusion are becoming weapons of mass exclusion we compare evidence on welfare access and the net fiscal position of migrants with perceptions based on a largely unexploited database eu silc we find no evidence that legal migrants notably skilled migrants are net recipients of transfers from the state however there is evidence of residual dependency on non contributory transfers and self selection of unskilled migrants in the countries with the most generous welfare states alternative strategies to unbundle migration from welfare access are discussed

attitudes toward highly skilled and low skilled immigration evidence from a survey experiment past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti immigrant sentiment among native citizens concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services we provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide u s survey the labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own we find instead that both low skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low skilled immigrants and this preference is not decreasing in natives skill levels the fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low skilled immigration more than poor natives and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure in terms of immigrant access to public services we find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low skilled immigration in general in states with high fiscal exposure poor rich natives are more less opposed to low skilled immigration than they are elsewhere this indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes overall the results suggest that economic self interest at least as currently theorized does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration the results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration

estimating average and local average treatment effects of education when compulsory schooling laws really matter the change to the minimum school leaving age in the united kingdom from 14 to 15 had a powerful and immediate effect that redirected almost half the population of 14 year olds in the mid twentieth century to stay in school for one more year the magnitude of this impact provides a rare opportunity to a estimate local average treatment effects late of high school that come close to population average treatment effects ate and b estimate returns to education using a regression discontinuity design instead of previous estimates that rely on difference in differences methodology or relatively weak instruments comparing late estimates for the united states and canada where very few students were affected by compulsory school laws to the united kingdom estimates provides a test as to whether instrumental variables iv returns to schooling often exceed ordinary least squares ols because gains are high only for small and peculiar groups among the more general population i find instead that the benefits from compulsory schooling are very large whether these laws have an impact on a majority or minority of those exposed

immigration wages and compositional amenities economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade since the two policies have symmetric effects on wages unlike trade however immigration changes the composition of the local population imposing potential externalities on natives while previous studies have focused on fiscal spillovers a broader class of externalities arise because people value the compositional amenities associated with the characteristics of their neighbors and co workers in this paper we present a new method for quantifying the relative importance of these amenities in shaping attitudes toward immigration we use data for 21 countries in the 2002 european social survey which included a series of questions on the economic and social impacts of immigration as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows we find that individual attitudes toward immigration policy reflect a combination of concerns over conventional economic impacts i e on wages and taxes and compositional amenities with substantially more weight on composition effects most of the difference in attitudes to immigration between more and less educated natives is attributable to heightened concerns over compositional amenities among the less educated

positive versus normative economics what s the connection evidence from the survey of americans and economists on the economy and the general social survey previous research suggests that positive and normative beliefs about economics are largely unrelated using questions from two national surveys this study finds that a the underlying determinants of positive and normative beliefs are strikingly similar b education is by far the strongest overall determinant of both positive and normative beliefs and c the variables known to push positive beliefs in the same direction as formal economic training education male gender income growth and job security also push normative beliefs in the same direction these results strongly suggest that the positive normative connection has been underestimated

forced to be rich returns to compulsory schooling in britain do students benefit from compulsory schooling in an important article oreopoulos 2006 studied the 1947 british compulsory schooling law change and found large returns to schooling of about 15 using the general household survey ghs re analysing this dataset we find much smaller returns of about 3 on average with no evidence of any positive return for women and a return for men of 4 7 additionally we utilise the new earnings survey panel data set nespd that has earnings information superior to that in the ghs and find similar estimates zero returns for women and returns of 3 to 4 for men