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

sheepskin effects in the returns to education some previous discussions have dismissed screening theories of education partly on the ground that diploma years of education do not confer especially large earnings gains similarly most empirical research on earnings functions has assumed an absence of sheepskin effects we report evidence however of substantial and statistically significant sheepskin effects although this suggests that the previous dismissals of the screening hypothesis were premature our evidence of sheepskin effects is amenable to nonscreening interpretations also according to screening theories of education individuals with more schooling tend to earn more not because or at least not solely because schooling makes them more productive but rather because it credentiates them as more productive a frequently cited article by layard and psacharopoulos 1974 however dismissed the importance of the screening hypothesis on the grounds that several of its refutable predictions were not supported by available evidence one of these was the sheepskin prediction that wages will rise faster with extra years of education when the extra year also conveys a certificate after surveying a number of studies layard and psacharopoulous henceforth lp concluded that rates of return to dropouts are as high as to those who complete a course which refutes the sheepskin version of the screening hypothesis since publication of the lp paper an undergraduate labor economics textbook has cited lp s analysis of sheepskin effects as telling criticism of the screening hypothesis a prominent proponent of the screening hypothesis riley 1979 has accepted lp s summary of the empirical evidence but responded that some versions of the screening hypothesis do not imply sheepskin effects in the meantime the ongoing flood of empirical research on earnings functions typically has continued to treat the natural logarithm of the wage rate as a linear or occasionally quadratic function of years of education with no allowance for discontinuities in diploma years 2 the estimated rates of return used by lp were based on data that did not disaggregate dropouts earnings by how many years of school they had completed lp acknowledged we would have preferred to show the earnings gain associated with each year of the course including the year when it was successfully completed this note presents a reanalysis of sheepskin effects based on the type of data lp wished they had the results contain very strong evidence of sheepskin effects after all the next section describes our analysis and the following section summarizes and discusses our

the long term effects of forcible assimilation policy the case of indian boarding schools for decades in north america and australia indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools these schools had the stated goal of cultural assimilation and are perceived as educational failures i offer the first causal evidence on the long run effects of these schools i identify these effects using the interaction of changes in canadian national policy and regional variation in the power of the catholic church i find that the average boarding school had substantial effects on both cultural and economic assimilation however i find suggestive evidence this is not true for highly abusive schools

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

job market signalling stereotype threat and counter stereotypical behaviour i introduce stereotype threat in a multiple productivity signalling model existence of multiple self fulfilling stereotypes which can generate statistical discrimination is more likely if there is less variance in the ability distribution a low endogenously correct stereotype about a group forces higher ability group members to choose a higher productivity and a higher separating signal thereby engaging in counter stereotypical behaviour this counter stereotypical behaviour causes the remaining partially pooling group to have lower average productivity reinforcing the negative stereotype the co existence of stereotype threat and counter stereotypical behaviour can explain the simultaneity of lower wages and higher education attainment in a group facing labour market discrimination resume signaux sur le marche du travail menace de stereotype et comportement contre stereotype l auteur introduit une menace de stereotype dans un modele de signalisation des multiples productivites l existence de multiples stereotypes porteurs d autorealisation qui peuvent engendrer la discrimination statistique est davantage vraisemblable s il y a moins de variance dans la repartition des habiletes un stereotype depreciatif endogenement correct a propos d un groupe force les membres du groupe a hautes habiletes a choisir des signaux de haute productivite et qui les separent grandement et donc a s engager dans des comportements contre stereotypiques ce comportement contre stereotypique entraine une productivite moyenne plus faible pour le reste du groupe partiellement agrege ce qui renforce le stereotype negatif la coexistence de menace de stereotype et de comportement contre stereotypique peut expliquer la simultaneite de salaires plus bas et de statut educationnel plus eleve dans un groupe faisant face a la discrimination dans le marche du travail

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

new silicon valleys or a new species commoditization of knowledge work and the rise of knowledge services clusters this paper explores knowledge services clusters kscs as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster in particular in developing countries kscs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring and data from the offshoring research network orn major properties and contingencies of ksc growth are discussed and compared with both high tech clusters and low cost manufacturing clusters special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on ksc growth it is proposed that kscs attract most client projects if service commoditization is medium whereas higher or lower commoditization either increases global competitive pressure or lowers demand and economies of scale and scope ksc attractiveness is further related to the perceived availability of skills at relatively low costs and cluster connectedness with client economies through corporate networks and professional communities findings not only advance current debates on clusters global services sourcing and the geography of knowledge production but also have important policy implications

technical efficiency unions and decentralized labor contracts abstract this paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency using a large sample of italian manufacturing firms we apply the data envelopment analysis and its robust version based on bootstrap theory to get reliable estimates of technical efficiency at the firm level in a standard first stage we devote particular attention to the specific technology adopted by distinguishing 20 different sector frontiers as well as to the presence of outliers the obtained efficiency scores are analyzed in a second stage applying a truncated regression model estimated via maximum likelihood following the simar and wilson 2007 2011 methodology our results highlight that the presence of workplace unionization decreases the level of technical efficiency while aspects limiting the unions power such as a strong exposure to international markets high debt levels or the prevalence of flexible assets partially reduce the negative effect however when firms adopt decentralized labor contracts agreements the effect on efficiency is positive and partially compensates the negative unions effect

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

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

on the contribution of labelled certified emission reductions to sustainable development a multi criteria evaluation of cdm projects abstract the clean development mechanism cdm has a twofold objective to offset greenhouse gas emissions and to contribute to sustainable development in the host country the contribution to the latter objective seems marginal in most cdm activities also cdm activities are unevenly spread among developing countries in response to these concerns initiatives with the objective of promoting cdm projects with broad local sustainable development dividends have been launched such as the gold standard and the community development carbon fund the gold standard label rewards best practice cdm projects while the community development carbon fund focuses on promoting cdm activities in underprivileged communities using a multi criteria method the potential contribution to local sustainable development of those cdm projects with particular attributes is compared with ordinary ones this evaluation suggests that labelled cdm activities tend to slightly outperform comparable projects although not unequivocally

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

intermarriage and the economic assimilation of immigrants this article investigates the assimilation role of intermarriage between immigrants and natives intermarried immigrants earn significantly higher incomes than endogamously married immigrants even after we take account of human capital endowments and endogeneity of intermarriage the premium does not appear to be a reward for unobservable individual characteristics natives who intermarry do not receive this premium nor do immigrants who intermarry into another ethnic group the premium is mainly attributable to a faster speed of assimilation rather than any difference in labor market quality between intermarried and nonintermarried immigrants at the point of arrival

education and ethnicity in canada an intergenerational perspective ethnic and intergenerational aspects of human capital investment are explored levels of and cross sectional returns to education across ethnic groups in canada are estimated and large differences observed for men a positive correlation exists between ethnic group average years of education and its return we also find large negative correlations between ethnic group average educational outcomes and the previous generation s fertility suggesting a role for home production as a complement to formal education and supporting models of child quantity quality trade offs very slow intergenerational convergence in ethnic group level educational and labor market outcomes is also observed

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

technological change occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes implications for earnings and income inequality in canada the earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to canada are analyzed the growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education controlling for education we find a pronounced cross arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements the immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall canadian earnings inequality resume changement technique t ches occupationnelles et resultats declinants pour les immigrants implications pour l inegalite des gains et des revenus au canada les auteurs analysent les gains et les prerequis des t ches occupationnelles des immigrants les niveaux d education croissants des immigrants dans les annees 1990 n ont pas entraine une grande amelioration dans les gains comme on aurait pu s y attendre si l informatisation accrue et les changements techniques qui s ensuivent ont entraine un rendement croissant sur des habiletes cognitives non routinieres et un rendement salarial plus grand sur l education universitaire normalisant pour le niveau d education on decouvre un declin entre cohortes dans les gains qui coincide avec un declin dans ce que reclament les t ches en termes d habiletes cognitives et un accroissement de ce que reclament les occupations manuelles l effet de ces changements sur les gains des immigrants n a eu qu un faible impact sur l inegalite des gains au canada

brain waste educated immigrants in the u s labor market the authors investigate the occupational placement of immigrants in the u s labor market using census data they find striking differences among highly educated immigrants from different countries even after they control for individuals age experience and level of education with some exceptions educated immigrants from latin american and eastern european countries are more likely to end up in unskilled jobs than immigrants from asia and industrial countries a large part of the variation can be explained by attributes of the country of origin that influence the quality of human capital such as expenditure on tertiary education and the use of english as a medium of instruction performance is adversely affected by military conflict at home which may weaken institutions that create human capital and lower the threshold quality of immigrants the selection effects of u s immigration policy also play an important role in explaining cross country variation the observed under placement of educated migrants might be alleviated if home and host countries cooperate by sharing information on labor market conditions and work toward the recognition of qualifications

the changing labor market position of canadian immigrants this paper uses pooled 1971 1981 and 1986 canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which 1 the earnings of canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable canadian born individuals and 2 immigrants earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the canadian born variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed the results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the canadian labour market than earlier ones an apparent consequence of recent changes in canadian immigration policy labour market discrimination against visible minorities and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s summary in fre excerpt

immigrant language fluency in the low skilled labor market using longitudinal linked employer employee data the author investigates the returns to being a native speaker for immigrant men in the low skilled labor market she compares the two main recent immigrant groups in portugal brazilians who are portuguese native speakers and eastern europeans who are not findings show that both wage level and wage growth of the two groups are similar to better understand this surprising result the author studies two mechanisms through which language fluency may lead to higher wages sorting across occupations and across firms brazilians do sort into occupations that require greater language skills however this does not translate into a wage premium considerable workplace segregation occurs in portugal but brazilians are not less segregated from natives than are eastern europeans evidence in this article suggests that language skills are not a major driver of economic assimilation in the low skilled labor market

global disaggregation of information intensive services information intensive services are being globally disaggregated as corporations respond to the pressures of increasing global competition and take advantage of the opportunities made available by the progress of information technology and the emerging global work force in order to globally disaggregate services corporations must decide whether or not to carry out a service activity within the organization and where to locate it within or outside the geographic boundary of the home base country this paper analyzes the opportunities and challenges of global disaggregation of information intensive services specifically the paper proposes a taxonomy of disaggregation and develops a theoretical framework that identifies the criteria and guidelines for successfully selecting service activities to be globally disaggregated

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

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 earnings growth selection bias or real progress we use longitudinal tax data linked to immigrant landing records to study the effect of selective attrition on the estimated earnings assimilation of immigrants to canada contrary to findings in the existing international literature we show that the immigrant native earnings gap closes at the same pace in longitudinal and cross sectional data low earning immigrants are likely to leave the cross sectional samples over time but the same is true for the native born our study suggests that immigrants to canada have labour market participation dynamics similar to those of the native born

the performance of immigrants in the canadian labor market in this article we examine the economic assimilation of immigrants to canada we provide new evidence on immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and document an increase in the dispersion of labor market outcomes across immigrants of different vintages over time our results confirm u s evidence of permanent differences across immigrant cohorts what distinguishes the canadian experience is small or negative rates of assimilation for most cohorts over the sample period finally we test the overidentification of the assimilation process specified in previous studies and fail to reject the usual cohort fixed effect specification

the receipt of transfer payments by immigrants to canada using the native born as a benchmark we examine immigrants reliance on canadas social safety net we find that immigrants have lower participation rates in unemployment insurance and social assistance than natives we also find that assimilation leads to greater participation in both these programs more recent immigrant cohorts have higher recipiency rates than their predecessors the results for social assistance contrast with u s evidence that the raw entry participation rates of many immigrant cohorts exceed the native rates finally our analysis of rent subsidies shows that immigrants initially have higher rates of participation which fall with assimilation excerpt

education credentials and immigrant earnings using 1981 to 2001 census data we study how the human capital of immigrants is rewarded in canada we distinguish between years of schooling and degrees obtained in order to estimate sheepskin effects the gain in earnings associated with receipt of a degree controlling for years of schooling we find that immigrant years of schooling and immigrant work experience accumulated before arrival is valued much less than canadian experience of comparable natives however for immigrants the increase in earnings associated with completing educational programs is generally higher than that of comparable natives we provide both signalling and human capital interpretations of this finding a l aide des donnees de recensement entre 1981 et 2001 on examine la facon dont le capital humain des immigrants est reconnu et remunere au canada on fait la distinction entre les annees de scolarite et les grades obtenus afin de calibrer les effets du diplome les gains associes a l obtention du grade apres avoir pris en compte les annees de scolarite on decouvre que les annees de scolarite et d experience accumulees par les immigrants avant leur arrivee recoivent une ponderation moins grande que l experience comparable des canadiens cependant pour les immigrants le fait de completer leur programme a un effet sur l accroissement des revenus qui est plus important que pour les canadiens de souche on suggere des interpretations de ces resultats a partir de theorisations fondees sur le capital humain et la theorie des signaux

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

understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers the role of implicit contracts understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers we examine the wage patterns of canadian less skilled male workers over the last quarter century by organizing workers into job entry cohorts we find entry wages for successive cohorts declined until 1997 and then began to recover wage profiles steepened for cohorts entering after 1997 but not for cohorts entering in the 1980s a period when startwageswere relatively high we argue that these patterns are consistent with a model of implicit contracts with recontracting inwhich aworker s currentwage is determined by the best labour market conditions experienced during the current job spell comprendre les patterns de salaires des travailleurs canadiens moins qualifi es le r ole des contrats implicites on examine les patterns de salaires des travailleurs masculins moins qualifi es au cours du dernier quart de si ecle en d epartageant les travailleurs en cohortes diff erentes selon le moment d entr ee dans le monde du travail on d ecouvre que les salaires a l entr ee des cohortes successives ont d eclin e jusqu en 1997 et qu ensuite ils ont commenc e a cro itre les profils de salaires se sont raffermis pour les cohortes entrant dans le monde du travail apr es 1997 mais pas pour les cohortes qui sont entr ees dans le monde du travail dans les ann ees 1980 une p eriode o u les salaires de d epart etaient relativement elev es on sugg ere que ces patterns sont consistants avec un mod ele de contrats implicites de ren egociation qui implique que le salaire courant des travailleurs est d etermin e par les meilleures conditions du march e du travail dont on a fait l exp erience dans la p eriode r ecente de travail

job search methods and their success a comparison of immigrants and natives in the uk a major issue in the immigration debate concerns whether immigrants take jobs away from natives in this article we present new evidence on the job search methods used by immigrants and their relative success in gaining employment in the uk we find that 1 immigrant job search is less successful than that of natives 2 immigrants are as likely to gain employment through informal methods as via verifiable routes 3 the probability of success increases with years since migration the finding that immigrants do not effectively compete for jobs may help explain why immigration has little impact on native employment

the effect of unionization on productivity evidence from a long panel of coal mines the author measures the effect of unionization on productivity based on a panel of west virginia coal mines from 1897 to 1928 output and inputs are measured in physical terms and most of the mine

international migration with capital constraints interpreting migration from the netherlands to canada in the 1920s an inability to borrow affected migration from europe to north america this capital constraint is formalized with a life cycle model where agents jointly choose how much to save the optimal period to finance migration and whether to migrate using a life cycle model we show that preference for the home country the period of adjustment after arrival and the direct cost of migration affect the savings of migrants age at migration and who migrates these results are discussed in light of wages in canada and the netherlands and the characteristics of dutch immigrants drawn from ship passenger manifests capital constraints delayed migration and help explain the large wage gap between the netherlands and canada jel classification j61 n32 n34 une incapacitea emprunter a affecte la migration de l europe vers l amerique du nord cette contrainte sur l acces au capital est formalisee a l aide d un modele de cycle de vie ou les agents choisissent conjointement combien epargner la periode optimale pour financer la migration et le choix de migrer ou non a l aide d un modele de cycle de vie on montre que la preference pour le pays d origine la periode d ajustement apres l arrivee et le cout direct de la migration affectent l epargne des emigrants l ge auquel ils migrent et qui emigre ces resultats sont discutes a la lumiere des salaires au canada et au pays bas et des caracteristiques des immigrants hollandais tirees de listes de passagers de bateaux les contraintes sur l acces au capital ont retarde la migration et aident a expliquer le grand ecart entre les salaires en hollande et au canada

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

immigration skill heterogeneity and qualification mismatch we investigate the effects of us immigration on native workers in a search and matching environment that allows for skill heterogeneity differential search cost cross skill matching and imperfect transferability of human capital across borders we find that cross skill matching benefits the unskilled and hurts the skilled native workers similarly new unskilled immigration benefits the low skilled native workers and hurts the high skilled on the other hand new skilled immigration benefits both skilled and unskilled natives moreover when we simulate the effects of the actual us immigration influx that took place between the years 2000 and 2009 we find that both skilled and unskilled native workers gain we also find that initially an improvement in the transferability of human capital benefits the high skilled natives at the expense of the low skilled nevertheless below a certain overeducation ratio further improvements in the transferability of human capital make both types of native workers worse off

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

unions and the economy what we know what we should know the wages and working conditions of about one in three canadian workers are determined by collective bargaining in this paper current knowledge about the economic effects of collective bargaining is surveyed unions raise wages by about 15 percent on average and reduce wage dispersion for their members while also reducing profits unions do not seem to reduce employment levels in affected firms or cause nonunion wages to fall efficiency losses due to sectoral misallocation of labor and to strikes are small but some evidence suggests lowered investment in unionized firms union effects on total factor productivity need more careful study using firm level data

union effects in low wage services evidence from canadian childcare empirical evidence presented in this paper based on survey data for canadian childcare workers in 1991 contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market although childcare labor was low wage the authors find that the union impact on wages 15 and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other better compensated work and they find substantial returns to education occupational level and firm specific experience the returns to the skill related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter the findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education experience and skill acquisition of childcare workers unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low wage service sector workers in small firms u nion organizing in the growing lowwage female dominated service sector is often regarded as key to offsetting the decline in union membership that is occurring in the areas of traditional union strength the recent success of the service

the effect of implicit contracts on the movement of wages over the business cycle evidence from micro data in this paper we address the question of whether wages are affected by labor market conditions in a manner more consistent with a contract approach than with a standard spot market model from a simple implicit contract model we derive implications about the links between wages and past labor market conditions using individual data from the current population survey and the panel study of income dynamics we find that an implicit contract model with costless mobility describes these links better than either a simple spot market model or an implicit contract model with costly mobility

adjustment with a human face evidence from jamaica summary in september 1991 jamaica liberalized its exchange rate as part of its structural adjustment program sap the sudden and steep devaluation associated with this policy move had serious repercussions for real purchasing power poverty general inflation and food prices especially staple foods such as rice and flour which are imported this study evaluates the social cost of the liberalization policy by examining the behavior of preschool childrens weight for height or wasting an indicator of nutritional status that is sensitive to short term fluctuations in living conditions using 8 years of national microsurvey data for 1989 96 we apply synthetic cohort analysis to disentangle the separate impacts of childs age date of birth and measurement date on weight for height estimates based on an exhaustive set of controls indicate that children weighed in the aftermath of the policy november and december 1991 are significantly lighter by 0 178 z scores than children weighed just a few months later and children in urban areas were especially affected when food price inflation is explicitly entered into the model it is highly statistically significant and reduces but only slightly the effect of being measured at the end of 1991 the calculated elasticity of weight for height z score with respect to food price inflation is a very high 0 86 during the rapid economic reform in 1991 this elasticity rose to 1 24 indicating a large response of weight for height to food price inflation as is to be expected in a small open economy 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

the impact of host country schooling on earnings a study of male immigrants in the united states immigrants in the united states who acquire u s schooling earn higher wages than other immigrants using data from the u s censuses and the national longitudinal survey of youth we show that this wage advantage results from both greater educational attainment and higher returns to education the higher returns are not the consequence of ability bias or greater english proficiency of those who acquire u s schooling returns to years of non u s education are higher for immigrants who complete their schooling in the united states consistent with the view that u s schooling upgrades or certifies education received in the source country for those without u s schooling returns are higher for immigrants from highly developed countries and countries for which english is an official language

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

understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers the role of implicit contracts we examine the wage patterns of canadian less skilled male workers over the last quarter century by organizing workers into job entry cohorts we find entry wages for successive cohorts declined until 1997 and then began to recover wage profiles steepened for cohorts entering after 1997 but not for cohorts entering in the 1980s a period when start wages were relatively high we argue that these patterns are consistent with a model of implicit contracts with recontracting in which a worker s current wage is determined by the best labour market conditions experienced during the current job spell on examine les patterns de salaires des travailleurs masculins moins qualifies au cours du dernier quart de siecle en departageant les travailleurs en cohortes differentes selon le moment d entree dans le monde du travail on decouvre que les salaires a l entree des cohortes successives ont decline jusqu en 1997 et qu ensuite ils ont commencea croitre les profils de salaires se sont raffermis pour les cohortes entrant dans le monde du travail apres 1997 mais pas pour les cohortes qui sont entrees dans le monde du travail dans les annees 1980 une periode ou les salaires de depart etaient relativement eleves on suggere que ces patterns sont consistants avec un modele de contrats implicites de renegociation qui implique que le salaire courant des travailleurs est determine par les meilleures conditions du marche du travail dont on a fait l experience dans la periode recente de travail

the decline of the immigrant home ownership advantage life cycle declining fortunes and changing housing careers in montreal toronto and vancouver 1981 2001 in the past working age immigrant families in canada s large urban centres had higher home ownership rates than the canadian born over the past 20 years however this advantage has reversed due jointly to a drop in immigrant rates and a rise in the popularity of home ownership among the canadian born this paper assesses the efficacy of a fairly standard microeconomic consumer choice model which includes indicators for age income education family type and immigrant characteristics plus several interactions with time to explain these changes it is found that the standard model almost completely explains the immigrant homeownership advantage in 1981 as well as the rise in home ownership rates over time among the canadian born even after accounting for the well known decline in immigrant economic fortunes however it is shown that only about half of the 1981 2001 immigrant change in homeownership rates is explained by the standard model

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

the legacy of immigration labour market performance and education in the second generation previous research finds that the children of immigrants or the second generation earn at least as much as other native born but that there are persistent ethnic differences in the intergenerational transmission of education and wages we explain why these results are not incompatible and extend the empirical evidence in several directions using the canadian survey of labour and income dynamics first we estimate a model of wages earnings and hours worked using modern econometric techniques to corroborate earlier us results of complete integration by the second generation in the labour market we find that ethnic differences in labour market performance are significant but that these difference do not alter conclusions about the relative performance of the second generation second we find a source of superior labour market performance for the second generation in higher educational attainment which constitutes an important legacy of immigration that should not be ignored third we find that the de

unionization and plant closure in canada this paper examines for the first time the role of unionization as a determinant of plant closings in canada using the 1999 to 2001 canadian workplace and employee survey the paper contributes to the north american evidence by showing that the share of a plant s workers covered by collective bargaining has a robust positive partial correlation with the probability of larger plants closing for smaller plants the extent of unionization tends to be much lower and its variation plays no role in plant closure the study highlights the theoretical and statistical importance of examining closure separately for large and small plants ce memoire examine pour la premiere fois le role de la syndicalisation en tant que determinant de la fermeture d usines au canada a l aide des resultats de l enquete sur le milieu de travail et les employes de 1999 et de 2001 emte le texte contribue a enrichir le dossier qui montre qu il y a correlation positive partielle robuste entre la portion des travailleurs d usines couverts par une convention collective et la probabilite de fermeture des grandes usines pour les plus petites usines le degre de syndicalisation tend aetre plus faible et sa variation ne joue pas de role dans le processus de fermeture d usines cette etude montre l importance theorique et pratique qu il y a aetudier separement les fermetures des grandes et des petites usines

school quality and returns to education of u s immigrants using the u s labor market as a common point of reference this article investigates the influence of source country school quality on the returns to education of immigrants based on 1980 and 1990 census data we first estimate country of origin specific returns to education results reveal that immigrants from japan and northern europe receive high returns and immigrants from central america receive low returns next we examine the relationship between school quality measures and these returns holding per capita gdp and other factors constant immigrants from countries with lower pupil teacher ratios and greater expenditures per pupil earn higher returns to education

willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co benefits among high flying young adults in the uk voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change certain offset project types may also deliver co benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity supporting human development and poverty reduction and enabling market and technology development in low carbon sectors these co benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market depending on their effects both on consumers willingness to pay wtp for offsets and on implementation costs however the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer wtp for offsets with varying attributes this exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate wtp for certified and uncertified offsets with or without these specific co benefits in an aviation context it is to the best of our knowledge the first to do so our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co benefits and by emphasising those co benefits to consumers they also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets helping compensate for increased costs provided that consumers are made fully aware of them

employment wages and the economic cycle differences between immigrants and natives in this paper we analyse differences in the cyclical pattern of employment and wages of immigrants and natives for two large immigrant receiving countries germany and the uk we show that despite large differences in their immigrant populations there are similar and significant differences in cyclical responses between immigrants and natives in both countries even conditional on education age and location we decompose changes in outcomes into a secular trend and a business cycle component we find significantly larger unemployment responses to economic shocks for low skilled workers relative to high skilled workers and for immigrants relative to natives within the same skill group there is little evidence for differential wage responses to economic shocks we offer three explanations for these findings an equilibrium search model where immigrants experience higher job separation rates a model of dual labour markets and differences in the complementarity of immigrants and natives to capital

the visible minority earnings gap across generations of canadians abstract to what extent the earnings gaps facing canada s visible minorities reflect discrimination is a question of tremendous policy interest this paper argues that failing to account for the limited canadian ancestry of visible minorities overestimates discrimination if immigrant assimilation is an intergenerational process using the 2001 and 2006 canadian censuses weekly earnings conditional on a rich set of worker and job characteristics are compared with child immigrant second and third and higher generation canadian men the results reveal a tendency for earnings to increase across subsequent generations of visible minority but not white men though the pattern is strongest between the first and second generation for black men it is also evident between the canadian born with and without a canadian born parent despite this progress for most visible minority groups earnings gaps are identified even among third and higher generation canadians

labor market assimilation of immigrant women using 1970 1980 and 1990 u s census data the author examines the life cycle patterns of immigrant women s labor force participation he finds that the cross sectional approach that has been used in all previous studies leads to a substantial over estimate of the degree to which immigrant women s assimilation increases their labor force participation the effect of assimilation found by using the cohort approach however which acknowledges the possibility that patterns of labor force participation partly reflect the year of immigration is still sizable the effect is concentrated within the first 10 years after arrival there are substantial differences in participation and assimilation by country of birth immigrants from japan korea and china are found to have experienced the greatest degree of assimilation with an effect that raises the probability of working by 20 percentage points during the first 10 years after arriving in the united states

securing access to lower cost talent globally the dynamics of active embedding and field structuration manning s sydow j and windeler a securing access to lower cost talent globally the dynamics of active embedding and field structuration regional studies this article examines how multinational corporations shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high skilled yet lower cost science and engineering talent two in depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of german automotive suppliers in romania and china illustrate how multinational corporations engage in active embedding by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs multinational corporations thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge intensive work from globally dispersed locations the findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and are shaped by multinational corporation activities manning s sydow j and windeler a

you can t take it with you immigrant assimilation and the portability of human capital the national origin of an individual s human capital is a crucial determinant of its value education and labor market experience acquired abroad are significantly less valued than human capital obtained domestically this difference can fully explain the earnings disadvantage of immigrants relative to comparable natives in israel variation in the return to foreign schooling across origin countries may reflect differences in its quality and compatibility with the host labor market the return to foreign experience is generally insignificant acquiring additional education following immigration appears to confer a compound benefit by raising the return to education acquired abroad

classifying carbon credit buyers according to their attitudes towards and involvement in cdm sustainability labels abstract carbon markets are increasingly conscious of the social and environmental quality of credits delivered by cdm projects consequently carbon credits are no longer viewed as a homogenous good and buyers now differentiate between credits supplied by different types of cdm project the objective of this paper is to classify cer buyers according to their attitudes towards and preferences for cdm sustainability labels k means clustering was used to segment a sample of buyers into two clusters the results indicate that two clear clusters exist with distinct profile patterns moreover the results of discriminant analysis confirmed that the two cluster solution was valid finally the results of the chi square analysis and a cross tabulation showed that these two clusters were significantly different in organization type level of paid up capital perception of sustainable development benefits perception of return on investment perception of image of the sustainability labeling participation in the voluntary market the project priority knowledge in the sustainability label attitude towards the host country s duty and their willingness to pay

are foreign it workers cheaper u s visa policies and compensation of information technology professionals the use of h 1b and other work visas to hire foreign information technology it professionals in the united states has attracted significant controversy and policy debates on one hand hiring high skill foreign it professionals on work visas can be advantageous for u s firms and the overall economy on the other hand high skill immigration can adversely impact the wages of foreign and american it professionals this study uses data on skills and compensation of more than 50 000 it professionals in the united states over the period 2000 2005 to study patterns in compensation of foreign and american it professionals to inform these debates contrary to the popular belief that foreign workers are a cheap source of labor for u s firms we find that after controlling for their human capital attributes foreign it professionals those without u s citizenship and those with h 1b or other work visas earn a salary premium when compared with it professionals with u s citizenship the salary premiums for non u s citizens and for those on work visas fluctuate in response to supply shocks created by the annual caps on new h 1b visas setting lower and fully utilized annual caps results in higher salary premiums for non u s citizens and those with work visas we discuss implications of this study for crafting informed visa and immigration related policies by the u s government for staffing practices of firms and for human capital investments by it professionals

does standardized information in online markets disproportionately benefit job applicants from less developed countries abstract we examine trade in services between employers from developed countries dcs and workers from less developed countries ldcs on an online platform for contract labor we report evidence that 1 dc employers are less likely to hire ldc compared to dc workers even after controlling for a wide range of observables 2 workers with standardized and verified work history information are more likely to be hired and 3 information on verified work history disproportionately benefits ldc contractors the ldc premium also applies to additional outcomes including wage bids obtaining an interview and being shortlisted in addition the evidence suggests that informational limits to trade may be addressed through a variety of market design approaches for instance an online monitoring tool substitutes for verified work history information

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

how many cake eaters chouette on a du monde a diner abstract we use a cake eating model with a non renewable resource and a backstop technology to describe the intertemporal effect of a sudden increase of the population level e g due to migration the migrants enter an economy in which there is already surplus labor and they receive transfers from natives these assumptions imply that the present discounted value of natives welfare falls the counterintuitive result is that the flow of natives utility can increase at the time of the population change

immigrant job search assimilation in canada immigrant assimilation is a major issue in many countries while most of the literature studies assimilation through a human capital framework we examine the role of job search assimilation to do so we estimate an equilibrium search model of immigrants operating in the same labour market as natives where newly arrived immigrants have lower job offer arrival rates than natives but can acquire the same arrival rates according to a stochastic process using canadian panel data we find substantial differences in job offer arrival and destruction rates between natives and immigrants that are able to account for three quarters of the observed earnings gap the estimates imply that immigrants take on average 13 years to acquire the native search parameters due to immigrants facing much lower on the job offer arrival rates than natives the model predicts that earnings growth through job search is minimal for immigrants prior to their job search assimilation

do highly unionized companies compensate their ceos less in periods of financial distress evidence from canada in this article the author studies the strategic interaction between employee stakeholders in particular labor unions and top management and he evaluates the effect of the two parties inherent competitive rent seeking behavior on ceo pay using a panel of firms listed on the s p tsx composite index the author shows that ceo compensation withstood the financial crisis 2008 2011 despite lower and even negative corporate performance further highly unionized companies were associated with higher ceo pay in terms of non equity elements such as salary and pension allocations the presence of unions had no observed effect in reducing bonuses stock options and restricted stock units these findings have implications for the debate on income inequality and the power of unions to bring about change

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

thedouble negativeeffect onthe earnings of foreign born females in canada this paper contributes to the debate over immigrant quality by examining whether or not a double negative effect on the earnings of female immigrants exists in canada contrary to popular belief this study observes that labour market adjustments occur at a faster rate for female immigrants than for male immigrants the results indicate that immigrant women in canada suffer from a double negative effect mainly because of gender earnings discrimination rather than birthplace discrimination earnings discrimination by birthplace is more pronounced among males than females the findings suggest that in evaluating immigrant quality researchers should take into account the potential role of labour market discrimination

global delivery models the role of talent speed and time zones in the global outsourcing industry global delivery models gdms are transforming the global it and business process outsourcing industry gdms are a new form of client specific investment promoting service integration with clients by combining client proximity with time zone spread for 24 7 service operations we investigate antecedents and contingencies of setting up gdm structures based on comprehensive data we show that providers are likely to establish gdm location configurations when clients value access to globally distributed talent and speed of service delivery in particular when services are highly commoditized findings imply that coordination across time zones increasingly affects international operations in business to business and born global industries

the earnings of immigrant men in canada job tenure cohort and macroeconomic conditions using eleven cross sectional surveys spanning 1981 92 the authors compare the earnings of immigrant and native born men in canada apparently recent immigrant cohorts have suffered no decline in earnings job tenure is found to be a strongly significant determinant of earnings previous estimates of immigrant earnings differentials which have not incorporated job tenure information may partly reflect differences in tenure between immigrants and the native born when the sample is restricted to pairs of surveys that are close to the census survey years the estimates of cohort effects are sensitive to the choice of survey years one possible explanation for that sensitivity is suggested by the finding that macroeconomic conditions are a statistically significant determinant of the rate of assimilation of recent immigrants

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

evidence of new immigrant assimilation in canada previous studies of the labour market experience of male immigrants to canada have uncovered two disturbing trends declining entry earnings for successive new immigrant cohorts and low assimilation rates these findings suggest that many of these cohorts may never assimilate the 1991 census provides a first look at the immigrant cohorts arriving in the 1980s these immigrants appear to avoid the plight of their predecessors entry earnings have stopped falling and those immigrants arriving between 1981 and 1985 experienced a 17 per cent assimilation rate i am unable to explain this turnaround based on the observable characteristics recorded in the census data

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

sheepskin effects in the returns to education an examination of women and minorities recent confirmation of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for prime age white males has been taken as evidence of screening or signaling in the labor market the authors report evidence of sheepskin effects among women and minority males and demonstrate that they are somewhat smaller for lower diploma years but larger for higher diploma years than those of white males these are among the first broad based results confirming the frequent contention derived from signaling models that minorities have smaller returns to low productivity signals but larger returns to high productivity signals copyright 1991 by mit press

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