credit constraints and the phenomenon of child labor abstract this paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model where inefficient child labor arises due to credit constraints it derives a positive relationship between inequality in the distribution of income and the incidence of child labor looking at policy implications it shows how trade sanctions against countries using child labor may fail to reduce the incidence of child labor it discusses some alternative policies to reduce the incidence of child labor

black unemployment and infotainment i introduction why has the black unemployment rate in the united states been more than twice that of whites over the past three decades from 1972 to 2002 the average black unemployment rate was 12 4 while the average unemployment rate for whites was 5 5 figure 1 gilman 1965 arrow 1972a 1972b shulman 1987 and darity and mason 1998 represent just a few scholars who have sought to explain this conundrum using a discrimination framework this article builds on those earlier efforts but refocuses the explanation onto indirect cultural social phenomena that motivate discrimination it is hypothesized that media forms that reflect information and entertainment infotainment and highly visible social phenomena interact to produce negative consumption externalities and decreased demand for black labor this hypothesis is consistent with loury s 1998 call for the use of social phenomena to explain economic outcomes the underlying demand side hypothesis is tested using single equation regression models to determine whether variables representing infotainment and social phenomena explain the black white unemployment rate gap and the black unemployment rate in addition the statistical analysis includes tests for causal and cointegration relationships and simultaneous equation systems to identify the path by which these social phenomena affect economic outcomes section ii of this article establishes a theoretical framework as a prelude to the analysis and defines the infotainment and social phenomena that are hypothesized to contribute significantly to black employment outcomes sections iii and iv present variable consistent analytical models and the results respectively section v provides conclusions ii theoretical framework loury 1998 called on economists to look beyond what happens within markets p 117 when examining the topic of racial or gender discrimination this article s key thrust is consistent with darity mason and stewart 2006 in that nonblacks may justify their decision to operate as racialists when they observe blacks through infotainment in stereotypical and antisocial roles further darity mason and stewart 2006 argue that nonblacks may justify the us versus them mentality that is intrinsic to acts of employment discrimination in a split labor market paradigm darity 1989 the latter of course increases the black white unemployment rate gap and the black unemployment rate figure 1 omitted the black white unemployment rate gap and the black unemployment rate could be viewed through one or all three discrimination theory lenses that loury 1998 discussed taste statistics and market in effect this article has implications for all three theories because the econometric models that are presented permit a discriminator to be interpreted as discriminating based on one or all three motivations an employer who decides to engage in employment discrimination against a black applicant may be motivated by a taste derived from infotainment by a statistical framework based on signals observed through infotainment or by broad market conditions learned while consuming infotainment similarly a discriminator s decision could be based on knowledge or perception of blacks involvement in crime especially drug related crimes human immunodeficiency virus hiv acquired immunodeficiency syndrome aids hip hop culture or on perceived differences between blacks and unauthorized immigrants this knowledge is likely to be obtained through consumption of infotainment television movies newspaper popular periodicals and the internet are the primary media genres that embody the information and entertainment characteristics that constitute infotainment how can infotainment sources contribute to black unemployment this can be accomplished by imprinting adverse images of blacks on the minds of hiring officials

precautionary saving in the small and in the large the theory of precautionary saving is shown to be isomorphic to the arrow pratt theory of risk aversion making possible the application of a large body of knowledge about risk aversion to precautionary saving and more generally to the theory of optimal choice under risk in particular a measure of the strength of the precautionary saving motive analogous to the arrow pratt measure of risk aversion is used to establish a number of new propositions about precautionary saving and to give a new interpretation of the dreze modigliani substitution effect copyright 1990 by the econometric society

proper risk aversion on introduit et on etudie une condition comportementale significative sur les fonctions d utilite pour les richesses qui signifie qu une loterie indesirable ne peut jamais etre rendue desirable par la presence d une loterie indesirable independante

standard risk aversion this paper introduces the concept of standard risk aversion a von neumann morgenstern utility function has standard risk aversion if any risk makes a small reduction in wealth more painful in the sense of an increased reduction in expected utility also makes any undesirable independent risk more painful it is shown that given monotonicity and concavity the combination of decreasing absolute risk aversion and decreasing absolute prudence is necessary and sufficient for standard risk aversion standard risk aversion is shown to imply not only pratt and zeckhauser s proper risk aversion individually undesirable independent risks always being jointly undesirable but also that being forced to face an undesirable risk reduces the optimal investment in a risky security with and independent return similar results are established for the effect of broad class of increases in one risk on the desirability of or optimal investment in a second independent risk

human capital and inequality dynamics the role of education technology the paper offers a unified way to examine several puzzles on inequality dynamics it focuses on differences in the education technology and their effects on income distributions our overlapping generations economy has the following features 1 consumers are heterogenous with respect to ability and parental human capital and 2 intergenerational transfers take place via parental direct investment in education and public education financed by taxes possibly with a level determined by majority voting we explore several variations in the production of human capital some attributed to home education and others related to public education and indicate how various changes in education technologies affect the intragenerational income inequality along the equilibrium path

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

the employment effects of wage discrimination against black men when labor supply curves are upward sloping wage discrimination against black men reduces not only their relative wages but also their relative employment rates using data from the 1984 survey o

media exposure and internal migration evidence from indonesia abstract this paper investigates the impact of television on internal migration in indonesia we exploit the differential introduction of private television throughout the country and the variation in signal reception due to topography to estimate the causal effect of media exposure our estimates reveal important long and short run effects an increase of one standard deviation in the number of private tv channels received in the area of residence as an adolescent reduces future inter provincial migration by 1 7 2 7 percentage points and all migration inter and intra provincial by 3 9 6 8 percentage points short run effects are similar in magnitude we also show that respondents less exposed to private television are more likely to consider themselves among the poorest groups in society as we discuss in a stylized model of migration choice under imperfect information these findings are consistent with indonesian citizens over estimating the net gains from internal migration when access to television is limited

return and dynamics the path of labor migration when workers differ in their skills and information is asymmetric an implementation of the theory of labor migration under asymmetric information shows that return migration arises from the reinstatement of informational symmetry which induces low skill workers who are no longer pooled with high skill workers to return when workers in an occupation constitute more than two skill levels say four without loss of generality the following patterns emerge migration is sequential that is it proceeds in waves each wave breaks into workers who return and workers who stay within waves the returning migrants are the low skill workers the average skill level of migrants is rising in the order of their wave excerpt

race and human capital while human capital has been used with some success to analyze recent changes in racial income differences scholars have repeatedly pointed to a major empirical problem that appears to severely limit the historical relevanlce and scope of skill based theories as applied to racial questions the challenge they raise is legitimate put simply if measured skill disparities between the races narrowed throughout the twentieth century why did income ratios first begin to converge in the 1960 s in this paper i address this question relying on some unexploited census data by race on education literacy occupations and income using these data that begin with the 1890 census i present new estimates of agespecific relative income positions of black men for all postslavery birth cohorts in addition to reconciling the apparently inconsistent skill and income series these income ratios offer a very different historical record than many economists believe to have been the case to cite a prominent example gunnar myrdal s classic work 1944 saw the economic position of his contemporary black america not only as dismal but made even more so by its sense of hopelessness given the absence of any hint of progress or change while myrdal s pessimism is understandable it appears that even in his day seeds had long been sown that were already permanently altering and improving the relative economic status of black men

savings remittances and return migration abstract using a vast west german data set the paper shows that savings and remittances of migrants can be well explained by remigration plans and economic as well as demographic variables however the planned future duration of residence in germany has a negative and significant effect only on remittances

a theory of remittances as an implicit family loan arrangement abstract the idea of an implicit and informal loan agreement between family members to explain migrants remittances is not new but its implications have not been fully explored in the theoretical literature many empirically testable propositions may be derived from this hypothesis when trying to explain why emigrants remit what the time profile of remittances is how it depends on the intent to stay on the expected length of stay and on interest rates what use people make of remittances and how the home family consumption behavior is affected by the economic prospects in the receiving country furthermore this theory yields many interesting policy prescriptions for less developed countries wishing to maximize the remittance flow from emigrants

abstinence from child labor and profit seeking abstract opponents of child labor suggest that demand driven mechanisms can eliminate such practices if consumers prefer adult labor products they suggest that labeling will drive out child labor products i show that under bertrand competition even with complete information this is unlikely when products are differentiated only by labor type such a scheme requires at least three firms and child labor costs at least as large as adult labor costs with additional lines of differentiation child labor is eliminated only when the adult labor costs are smaller thus while labeling may reduce child labor it is unlikely to eliminate it

the dynamics of migration in the presence of chains abstract the experience of several host countries shows that small initial inflows of migrants have a perpetuating effect on further migration from the same country of origin this paper studies the interplay of factors that determine the transitional dynamics of migration flows in the presence of social relationships between migrants we fully specify and formally solve a stochastic two country model of chain migration with one sending and one receiving country in which initial immigration patterns matter for future immigration patterns numerical calculations illustrate the crucial role of the wage elasticity of labor demand in counteracting the potential explosiveness of chain migration

migrants savings the probability of return migration and migrants performance this paper highlights a difference between migrants and the native born namely a positive probability of return migration the analysis demonstrates that this probability results in migrants saving more than comparable native born this differential may explain why even if all workers are perfectly homogeneous in skills migrants often outperform the native born in the receiving economy excerpt

stability chaos and multiple attractors a single agent makes a difference abstract this paper provides an example in which a slight behavioral heterogeneity may fundamentally change the dynamical properties of a nonlinear cobweb market with a quadratic cost function and an isoelastic demand function we consider two types of producers cautious adapters and naive optimizers in a market of naive optimizers a single cautious adapter stabilizes the otherwise exploding market in a market of cautious adapters a single naive optimizer may destabilize the market without him there exists at most one periodic attractor in the market but with him there may appear many and even infinitely many coexisting periodic attractors

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

wealth taxation and economic growth abstract this paper investigates the effect of wealth taxation on economic growth using an endogenous growth model with the altruistic bequest motive we introduce intragenerational productivity differentials of human capital formation resulting in differences of growth rates among individuals the economy is divided into two groups those who leave bequests to physical capital investment and those who leave bequests to human capital investment an increase in taxes on life cycle savings will reduce the intragenerational growth differences while the effect of taxation on bequests wage income or consumption on intragenerational growth differences is ambiguous

ranking income distributions a large variety of policy questions involve choices between social states and a consequent ordering of the feasible alternatives when these social states are related to the levels of welfare experienced by individuals or households two central issues stand out in determining the relative desirability of different social outcomes one of these is the essentially positive exercise of achieving comparability between households with different characteristics such as composition or preferences operating in different environments for example facing different price structures the other concerns the normative judgments implicit in the evaluation of alternative allocations of resourcesthe emphasis placed on inequality between households and the extent to which greater inequality can be compensated by higher average living standards this paper focuses on the second of these issues and in doing so we abstract from the problem of household comparability by considering a population of n households identical in all respects except for their incomes the question of ordering social states then becomes one of ranking income distributions over a group of anonymous households or individuals borrowing the usual assumptions imposed on consumer preferences we may suppose that a social ordering of income distributions can be represented by a welfare function 2

social status and economic performance a survey abstract this survey combines ideas and results from sociology and economics recognizing that economic decisions are often shaped by social concerns and influences based on the sociological literature we define social status and describe its measurement we then describe the role of social status in economic analysis of saving and consumption wages and economic growth we review recent work on status determination in equilibrium including evolutionary models we conclude with some remarks on the need for further interaction between sociology and economics

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

the check in the mail household characteristics and migrant remittance from the us to mexico we develop a household model of migrant remittance that supports testable hypotheses about the effect of migrant income family composition and distribution transaction costs associated with remittance mode income and residence security and other household characteristics on remittance levels and frequency we test these hypotheses using survey data on individual mexican migrants in the united states the results are broadly consistent with our hypotheses

education economic growth and measured income inequality in this paper education simultaneously affects growth and income inequality more education does not necessarily decrease inequality when the latter is assessed by the lorenz dominance criterion increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality when measured by the gini coefficient there is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality the model identifies regimes of this relationship which depend crucially on the production and schooling technology conventional growth regressions with human capital and inequality as regressors may miss the richness of the underlying nonlinearities but viewed as approximations may still provide important information on the nonlinear relationship between growth and education

a sequential study of migration and job search this paper designs a multiarmed bandit mab sequential model for the analysis of the migration job search process the implications either are compatible with well known migration behavior or when novel are also plausible for example regions with large wage variability attract migrants and regions with large nonpecuniary returns increase both in migration and out migration a major advantage of this approach is the relative ease with which martingale estimators can be derived from the martingale structure of the model these martingale methods are exemplified for the return migration phenomenon

determinants of workers remittances an empirical investigation for a panel of eleven developing asian economies we explore the key motives of migrant workers remittances from abroad for 11 major asian migrant sending countries using panel regressions we find that relative higher growth rate interest rate and capital market returns of home over the host investment financial deepening at home have significant impact on remittance inflows into asia along with higher per capita incomes and international crude oil prices with incorporation of per capita incomes and lagged impact of remittances we observe an emergence of consumption motives to remit therefore we conclude that both investment and altruistic motives are the driving forces for remittances inflows into the asian economies

estimating remittance functions for pacific island migrants there is concern that pacific island economies dependent on remittances of migrants will endure foreign exchange shortages and declining living standards as remittance levels drop due to lower migration rates and the belief that migrants willingness to remit decreases over time the empirical validity of the remittance decay hypothesis has never been tested from survey data on tongan and western samoan migrants in sydney this paper estimates remittance functions using tobit regression analysis it is found that the remittance decay hypothesis has no empirical validity and migrants are motivated by factors other than altruistic family support including asset accumulation and investment back home c 1997 elsevier science ltd

remittances and vulnerability in developing countries this paper examines how international remittances are affected by structural characteristics macroeconomic conditions and adverse shocks in recipient economies we exploit a novel rich panel data set covering bilateral remittances from 103 italian provinces to seventy nine developing countries over the period 2005 2011 we find that remittances are negatively correlated with the business cycle in recipient countries and in particular increase in response to adverse exogenous shocks such as large terms of trade declines this effect is stronger where the migrant communities have a larger share of newly arrived migrants finally we show that recipient country financial development is negatively associated with remittances suggesting that remittances help alleviate credit constraints

a general equilibrium model of guest worker migration the source country perspective abstract this paper examines the problem of guest worker migration from an economy populated by identical utility maximizing individuals with finite working lives the decision to migrate the rate of saving while abroad as well as the length of a migrant s stay in the foreign country are all viewed as part of a solution to an intertemporal optimization problem in addition to studying the microeconomic aspects of temporary migration the paper analyses the determinants of the equilibrium flow of migrants the corresponding domestic wage and the level of welfare enjoyed by a typical worker effects of an emigration tax are also investigated

explaining the racial unemployment gap race region and the employment status of men 1940 although the substantial and persistent gap between the unemployment rates of african americans and whites in the united states first emerged in aggregate statistics covering the 1940s and 1950s disaggregation reveals that the gap already existed in urban areas before 1940 using individual level data on male workers from the 1940 census the author analyzes the causes of the unemployment gap he finds that racial differences in measured human capital and other characteristics can explain all of the racial gap in the south but less than half of the gap in the north this result contrasts with results from studies of wages which have found a larger racial residual in the south than in the north

the roles of destination gender and household composition in explaining remittances an analysis for the dominican sierra two non exclusive hypotheses about what motivates remittances sent by dominican migrants to their rural parents in the sierra are tested a an insurance contract taken by parents with their migrant children and b an investment by migrants in potential bequests results show that the relative importance of these two motives to remit is affected by destination us vs cities in the dominican republic gender and household composition the insurance function is mainly fulfilled by female migrants to the us only when a male is the sole migrant in his household does he play the role of insurer investment by contrast is pursued by both males and females but only among those migrating to the us d 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

determinants of credit rationing a study of informal lenders and formal credit groups in madagascar abstract previous research on the determinants of credit rationing focused exclusively on the behavior of formal lenders who contract directly with an individual borrower based on survey data from madagascar this paper presents an analysis of credit rationing by informal lenders and by members of community based groups that allocate formal group loans among themselves the results show that group members are able to obtain and to use locally available information about the applicant s creditworthiness in much the same way as informal lenders do both types of lenders use the applicant s debt servicing obligations and income as the main criteria for credit rationing this paper therefore empirically confirms theoretical arguments that community based groups have an information advantage over distant formal bank agents

a gravity model of remittance determinants evidence from latin america and the caribbean abstracta gravity model of remittance determinants evidence from latin america and the caribbean regional studies this paper constructs a microeconomic model of the motivation for remittances and uses it to explore the macroeconomic determinants in addition a new measure of bilateral remittances is used to estimate a gravity model of remittances for 27 latin american and caribbean countries and 18 industrialized countries the results suggest remittances are motivated by a combination of altruism and self interest both of which are encapsulated by economic and non economic variables

wealth inequality educational environment and school enrolment evidence from mexico using data from the extended section of the 2010 mexican census 2 9 million households we study how school enrolment is associated with wealth inequality and with the educational environment the child is exposed to at the household and municipal levels we provide robust evidence of wealth inequality as a negative predictor of school enrolment for children in primary secondary and high school age ranges while a positive role is played by the educational environment through the introduction of interaction terms we account for how economic and educational variables are intertwined at both the household and the municipal level and we are able to illustrate the considerable heterogeneity in the role of adult education for households at different standards of living

international migration with heterogeneous agents theory and evidence for germany 1967 2009 temporary migration though empirically relevant is often ignored in formal models this paper proposes a migration model with heterogeneous agents and persistent cross country income differentials that features temporary migration in equilibrium there exists a positive relation between the stock of migrants and the income differential while the net migration flow becomes zero consequently existing empirical migration models estimating net migration flows instead of stocks may be misspecified this suspicion appears to be confirmed by our investigation of the cointegration relationships of german migration stocks and flows since 1967 we find that i panel unit root tests reject the hypothesis that migration flows and the explanatory variables are integrated of the same order while migration stocks and the explanatory variables are all i 1 variables and ii the hypothesis of cointegration cannot be rejected for the stock model

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

harnessing the diaspora dual citizenship migrant return remittances political rights provided to immigrants by host countries have received much attention in the literature less attention however has been paid to the extension of extraterritorial rights by home countries in this article i focus on a common type of right provided by home countries to their expatriates the right of dual citizenship dual citizenship rights i argue help home countries leverage the financial and human resources of their diasporas encouraging both remittances and return migration i test this argument using migrant surveys performed in six host countries and find that migrants from homelands that extend dual citizenship are more likely to both remit and express a desire to return home the micro finding regarding remittances is confirmed using aggregate panel data for a large sample of homelands over the period 1980 2009 the results point to the importance of political rights and policies as extended by the migrant s homeland

the role of the target saving motive in guest worker migration a theoretical study the return migration decision is modeled as a decision problem under uncertainty in each period the guest worker has to decide whether to return home and to invest the capital in a small business or to stay in the host country and earn money as a worker for at least one further period it is shown that the properties of the optimal saving and return migration strategies can be elegantly derived by formulating the migrant s decision problem as a stopped markovian decision process this framework provides a lot of interesting testable hypotheses concerning remigration behaviour of a target saver

income inequality human capital accumulation and economic performance we show that greater income equality implies higher human capital accumulation and economic performance in an overlapping generations model with heterogeneity in income and talent given liquidity constraints and declining marginal utility individuals with a given level of talent receive education if their initial income is higher than a threshold level and the threshold is lower for more talented individuals assuming the more talented create more human capital when educated greater initial income equality for one generation then imply not only higher aggregate human capital accumulated by that generation but an improvement in all subsequent generations initial income distributions

sustainable development in pacific micro economies abstract this paper argues that the central economic problem for a number of very small pacific island economies is the preservation and enhancement of their status as rentier societies and the relatively high living standards vis a vis other developing countries which go with the status the thrust of most development planning in the region with its focus on sustainable expansion of productive activity is misdirected in these small countries it is not productive activity but rent entitlements which must be sustained and reproduced over time aid philately and migrant remittances are not merely supplements to local incomes they are the foundations of the modern economy insofar as conventional development projects crowd out aid and remittance entitlements their impact is immiserizing criticism is offered of a recent argument for returning to sustainable subsistence economies

international migration imperfect information and brain drain we consider a model of international migration where skills of workers are imperfectly observed by firms in the host country and where information asymmetries are more severe for immigrants than f

motives to remit evidence from tracked internal migrants in ethiopia summary remittances are used by households for insurance investment and income flows from internal migrants are relatively understudied in africa where migrants are less likely to remit to their origin households we use a unique matched migrant sample to study what drives the low remittance rates in ethiopia descriptive statistics suggest remitters are positively selected in terms of wealth characteristics compared with the average tracked migrant limited skill transferability and liquidity largely explain low remittance rates in ethiopia migrants are additionally motivated to remit as a form of self insurance against own shocks to income and to protect their family s productive assets

will skill based immigration policies lead to lower remittances an analysis of the relations between education sponsorship and remittances as more and more developed countries adopt policies that favour highly educated immigrants the impact of such policies on developing countries remains unclear some researchers have argued that mi

migrants intentions to return home and capital transfers a study of tongans and samoans in australia this article examines the attributes of migrants from the pacific island states of tonga and samoa living in australia to assess the extent to which return migrants could contribute to the human and physical capital stock of the migrant sending countries it also examines the impact of intention to return on remittances and asset accumulation the study finds that very few migrants plan to return home and very little evidence that those who plan to return embody significant human capital education experience and skills intention to return may be important nevertheless since those who plan to return remit significantly more than those that do not and also accumulate far more physical capital at home than those that do not intend to return

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

racial wage gaps and differences in human capital this paper uses the cotton neumark decomposition methodology and 1990 cps data to investigate the relative importance of labour market structure and human capital in explaining the white male asian white male black white male hispanic wage gaps we find that labour market structure is more important than human capital in explaining the white minority wage gaps moreover most of the labour market structural effects are due to differential returns to white structural characteristics our result is robust to the specification of human capital our results contradict the results of research that indicate that the white minority wage gaps can be explained solely by differences in the endowment of human capital our results have implications for narrowing the wage gaps between whites and racial minorities

inducing human capital formation migration as a substitute for subsidies abstract when productivity is fostered by an individual s own human capital as well as by the economy wide average level of human capital individuals under invest in human capital the provision of subsidies for the formation of human capital conditional on the subsidy being self financed by tax revenues can bring the economy to its socially optimal level of human capital yet a strictly positive probability of migration to a richer country by raising both the level of human capital formed by optimizing individuals in the home country and the average level of human capital of non migrants in the country can enhance welfare and nudge the economy toward the social optimum indeed under a well controlled restrictive migration policy the welfare of all workers is higher than in the absence of this policy

rent emigration and unemployment in small islands the mirab model and the french overseas departments and territories abstract many small island economies depend heavily on rents coming from the outside international aid from foreign or metropolitan governments remittances from emigrants or fishing rights some small islands have massive emigration and almost no unemployment while others have no emigration or even immigration sometimes with high unemployment the four sector economic model proposed here tries to explain such differences in migration behavior and unemployment rates for islands with unlimited legal emigration outlets

diaspora growth and aggregate remittances an inverted u relationship this paper presents a model in which remittances stem from a decision made jointly by a family coalition of multiple migrants and non migrants allowing two alternative interpretations migrants a

subjectively assessed welfare and international remittances evidence from tonga using data from a customised household survey in tonga we assess the responsiveness of migrants remittances to perceived needs of recipients we extend a mixed motives model incorporating subjectively assessed recipient welfare we find evidence supportive of altruism for households below a subjective threshold implying that remittances provide important social protection for the poor we also find a positive relationship for those above the threshold implying that welfare improvements in migrant sending countries could increase or decrease remittance flows depending on pre transfer welfare level the effects of remittances on poverty alleviation and income distribution are hence more complex and ambiguous than previous studies suggest

discrimination human capital and black white unemployment evidence from cities neither human capital theory nor the declining discrimination hypothesis can account for the failure of the black white employment gap to fall along with the wage gap however the weakness of the labor market since 1970 suggests that sustained employment discrimination in the context of restrictions on compensatory wage discrimination can explain these trends this hypothesis is assessed with a cross sectional model employing 1980 census summary data on smsas the innovative feature of this model is the use of complaints of job discrimination received by the equal employment opportunity commission as proxies for actual discrimination results support the contention that the forms of discrimination have undergone a compositional shift and that employment discrimination reduces the probability of black employment