heterogeneous effects of international migration and remittances on crop income evidence from the kyrgyz republic this paper uses a unique representative household budget survey from the asian development bank to analyze the impact of international migration and remittances on crop income of rural farmers in the kyrgyz republic unlike other studies we allow the impact of remittances to be different for farmers with different land size and test whether reduced labor availability is more relevant for permanent than for seasonal migrants we find that losing family members has a significant negative effect on crop income but only for permanent migrants remittances partially compensate for this but their positive impact decreases with farm size

the impacts of international migration on remaining household members omnibus results from a migration lottery program this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled the impacts of international migration on remaining household members omnibus results from a migration lottery program conducted in 2002 in tonga the study observed the impact of migration lottery program on the remaining household members of tongan emigrants on the individual and intra household level income falls rapidly by 22 to 25 percent with a rise in remittances failing to offset a large fall in labor earnings ownership of livestock durable and access to financial services is lower for the remaining household members diets change to be less nutritious and more rice and root crops immigration has a negative impact on household size there is no significant impact of migration on labor supply for men nor women funding for the study derived from the world bank stanford university the waikato management school and mardsen fund

education work and crime a human capital approach this article develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration older more intelligent and more educated adults should commit fewer street unskilled crimes white collar crimes decline less or increase with age and education predictions for age crime and education crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self report data from the national longitudinal survey of youth and arrest data from the uniform crime reports the effects of education training and wage subsidies as well as enforcement policies on criminal behavior are discussed

individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

impact of internal in migration on income inequality in receiving areas a district level study of south africa abstractthe impact of internal migration on regional income inequality of the receiving areas has hitherto gone largely unstudied this dearth of literature is especially surprising because income inequality and in migration into urban centres of growth are two issues that many developing economies are faced with and tackling these issues effectively involves understanding the interactions between these two related phenomena this study is therefore a first attempt to analyse the impact of internal in migration on receiving areas and is placed in the context of south africa based on a conceptual analysis the study argues that in migration into the formal sector of the receiving areas will in general reduce inequality while in migration into the informal or unemployed sector increases inequality using individual panel data the study further tests empirically at the district level the impact of in migration and finds that rising urban inequality in urban areas can be attributed at least in part to rural

labour migration and social networks participation in southern mozambique this paper investigates how social networks in poor developing settings are affected by migration using a unique household survey from southern mozambique we test the role of labour mobility in shaping participation in groups and interhousehold cooperation by migrant sending households in village economies at origin we find that migration cum remittances boosts household engagement in community based social networks our findings are robust to alternative definitions of social interaction and to endogeneity concerns suggesting that stable migration ties and higher income stability through remittances may decrease participation constraints and increase household commitment in cooperative arrangements in migrant sending communities

emigration and wages in source countries evidence from mexico abstract this paper examines empirically the effect of mexican emigration to the united states on wages in mexico using data from the mexican and us censuses from 1970 to 2000 the main result in the paper is that emigration has a strong and positive effect on mexican wages there is also evidence for increasing wage inequality in mexico due to emigration simple welfare calculations based on a labor demand supply framework suggest that the aggregate welfare loss to mexico due to emigration is small however there is a significant distributional impact between labor and other factors

seasonal migration and agricultural production in vietnam abstract when markets are incomplete migration can have multiple effects on agricultural production i use instrumental variables techniques to explore the effects of seasonal migration on agricultural production in rural vietnam during the 1990s using network variables specific to vietnam as instruments i find that migrant households in north vietnam appear to move out of rice production and into the production of other crops inputs used by migrant households decrease relative to similar non migrant households the evidence is consistent with a shift from labor intensive into land intensive crops rather than productivity changes or the use of additional capital in production

economic reform and armed conflict in mozambique abstract this paper discusses the evolution of the mozambican economy in the 1980s particular emphasis is placed on the effects of the policy reform package implemented by the government beginning in 1987 this reform centered around the restoration of economic incentives to the agricultural sector is an example of a structural adjustment package pursued under extremely adverse conditions the new strategy has yielded some favorable results but also illustrates some of the limits of price policy in sub saharan africa

subsidy or market reform rethinking china s farm consolidation strategy chinese food security policy is anchored increasingly on the conviction that domestic grain production should be greatly enhanced and the best way to do so is to expand farm production scale to that end an increasing stream of public investment has been directed to the grain sector in the form for example of farm expansion subsidies our purpose is to assess the potential impacts of china s farm scale expansion on both yields and per hectare economic returns analysis of a large sample of farm household production data finds with some exceptions that grain yields likely will decline as farm size grows compromising food self sufficiency targets more importantly in only isolated cases would per hectare economic returns decline with size thus an emphasis on reducing farmland transactions costs may stimulate cropland consolidation and achieve the desired long term structural transformation

remittances financial development and growth abstract despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied this paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth in particular how local financial sector development influences a country s capacity to take advantage of remittances using a newly constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints this finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used and is robust to a number of robustness tests including threshold estimation we also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population

emigration to south africa s mines this paper presents a simultaneous econometric model of both the determinants of international migration to the south african mines and of some of the economic consequences for each of the labor supplying countries not only are the short run effects of labor withdrawal on traditional crop cultivation and the domestic wage labor markets considered but also the long term effects of savings from mine earnings invested in crops and cattle in the home countries the experiences of botswana lesotho malawi mozambique and the south african homelands are compared it is shown that emigration to the south african mines has reduced crop production in the subsistence sectors of botswana lesotho malawi and the south african homelands in the short run but the results also suggest that earnings of migrants have enhanced both crop productivity and cattle accumulation in the longer run except in lesotho excerpt

migration and income diversification evidence from burkina faso this paper uses limited dependent variable methods and new data from burkina faso to test the impact of inter continental and continental migration on activity choice and incomes in rural households econometric evidence supports our theoretical expectation that the impact of emigration varies both by migrant destination and production activity we find no evidence of either positive or negative effects of continental migration on agricultural or livestock activities and only a small negative impact on non farm activities however inter continental migration which tends to be long term and generates significantly larger remittances stimulates livestock production while being negatively associated with both staple and non farm activities

group dynamics in experimental studies the bertrand paradox revisited abstract different information provision in experimental markets can drastically change subjects behavior considering the repeated bertrand duopoly game of dufwenberg and gneezy dufwenberg m gneezy s u 2000 price competition and market concentration an experimental study international journal of industrial organization 18 7 22 we find that population feedback about the prices in other markets outside a subjects own current market causes group dynamics that prevent prices from convergence to nash equilibrium limited information comprising only the decisions of a subject s own opponent in contrast leads to competitive behavior when we extend the number of periods from 10 to 25 in the full information treatment full we observe a very robust cyclical up and down movement of prices we can explain tacit coordination in our experiment with an extended learning direction model and leadership by example

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

simultaneous and sequential price competition in heterogeneous duopoly markets experimental evidence abstract we investigate simultaneous and sequential price competition in duoply markets with differentiated products and random matching of symmetric firms we find that second movers gain from the sequential structure in comparison to simultaneous move markets whereas first movers do not as predicted by the theory there is a significant first mover disadvantage in the sequential game finally we report the results of control treatments varying the matching scheme and the mode of eliciting choices strategy method vs standard sequential play

the evolution of income inequality in rural china abstract in this article we analyze trends in income inequality and the distribution of income in rural china from 1987 to 1999 we find an uneven but long run increase in inequality in rural china and show that nearly half of the rural population was not much better off in 1999 than at the start of the period we rule out geography as the most important factor for explaining income differences and the increases that occurred over time much more important were growing differences between households living in the same village province or region we also find that access to nonagricultural incomes from local wage employment and family businesses contributes to inequality but that employment outside the county in which a household lives and accessed through temporary migration is relatively equalizing finally we document important strengths and weaknesses of the primary data set used for our analyses relative to other data sources available for study of inequality and poverty in rural china

remittances and chain migration longitudinal evidence from bosnia and herzegovina abstractmost of the literature on remittances focuses on their implications for the welfare of family members in the country of origin and disregards their role as facilitator of chain migration we address this issue with the use of longitudinal data from bosnia and herzegovina one of the primary exporters of migrants and recipients of remittances in the world we find that remittances have a significant positive impact on the migration prospects of their recipients better endowed people are most likely to migrate which highlights a potential negative implication of migration and remittances

migration transfers and economic decision making among agricultural households an introduction abstract the increasing volume of remittances and public transfers in rural areas of the developing world has raised hopes that these inflows may serve as an effective mechanism for reducing poverty in the long term by facilitating investments and raising productivity particularly in agriculture where market failures are most manifest the seven papers in this special issue systematically test the relationship between transfers and productive spending amongst rural households in six different countries overall the studies embrace a less optimistic view of the role of migration and public and private transfers on agriculture with migration as facilitating a transition away from agriculture or to models of less labour intensive agriculture

agrarian structure and agricultural practice typology and application to western sudan a typology of models that explain patterns of variation in farm endowments and farm practices and yields shows that insecurity in renting land financing constraints and the absence of insurance generate patterns of factor use quite different from the famous inverse relationship caused by labor supervision problems one might expect to observe positive relationships between wealth and yields village level data from western sudan confirm that such positive relationships are not a theoretical curiosity wealthy farmers have higher levels of output per hectare because they use more labor per hectare insurance and financing constraints appear to be the crucial market failures

exclusion and reintegration in a social dilemma using a social dilemma game we study the cooperative behavior of individuals who reintegrate their group after being excluded by their peers we manipulate the length of exclusion and whether this length is imposed exogenously or results from a vote we show that people are willing to exclude the least cooperators and they punish more and more severely chronic defections in return a longer exclusion has a higher disciplining effect on cooperation after reintegration but only when the length of exclusion is not chosen by group members its relative disciplining effect is smaller when the length of exclusion results from a vote in this environment a quicker reintegration also limits retaliation the difference in the impact of long vs short exclusion on retaliation is larger when the length of exclusion is chosen by group members than when it is exogenous post reintegration cooperation and forgiveness depend not only on the length of exclusion but also on the perceived intentions of others when they punish

the shadow value of migrant remittances income and inequality in a household farm economy this article offers econometric evidence that income remittances sent home by family migrants stimulate household farm incomes indirectly by relieving credit and risk constraints on household farm production a high but unequally distributed shadow value of migrant remittances appears to reinforce an equalising direct effect of remittances on the income distribution across a sample of household farms in rural mexico

the crime reducing effect of education in this article we study the crime reducing potential of education presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in england and wales we frame the analysis in a regression discontinuity setting and uncover significant decreases in property crime from reductions in the proportion of people with no educational qualifications and increases in the age of leaving school that resulted from the change in the law the findings show that improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key policy tool in the drive to reduce crime

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

does migration raise agricultural investment an empirical analysis for rural mexico the effect of remittances on capital accumulation remains a contested topic this paper uses a panel data set from rural mexico to investigate the impact of remittances on agriculture and livestock investments after controlling for the endogeneity of migration through an instrumental variable estimation our empirical results show that international migration has a significantly positive effect on the accumulated agricultural assets but not on livestock capital this suggests that households use the capital obtained from international migration only to overcome liquidity constraints for subsistence production whereas migration itself seems to be the superior investment option compared to other productive activities such as livestock husbandry

temporary emigration and welfare the case of low skilled labor this article studies the implications of temporary emigration for the welfare of a source country the framework is one of general equilibrium where the economy s stocks of both capital and labor are endogenously determined by the saving and migration decisions of optimizing agents simulations of the model suggest that for realistic values of the parameters welfare of nonmigrants of the source country is maximized when the migrants are employed abroad for a period in the range of roughly 8 12 years the ideal duration is found to be an increasing function of the international wage differential migration costs and the degree to which the rights of migrants are protected in the host country

determinants of intraregional migration in sub saharan africa 1980 2000 despite great accomplishments in the migration literature the determinants of south south migration remain poorly understood in an attempt to fill this gap this paper formulates and tests an empirical model for intraregional migration in sub saharan africa within an extended human capital framework taking into account spatial interaction using bilateral panel data between 1980 and 2000 we find that intraregional migration on the subcontinent is predominantly driven by economic opportunities and sociopolitics in the host country facilitated by geographical proximity the role played by network effects and environmental conditions is also apparent finally origin and destination spatial dependence should definitely not be ignored

an economic approach to social capital a standard optimal investment model can be used to analyse an individual s decision to accumulate social capital we analyse six facts that support the predictions of this individual based approach 1 social capital first rises and then falls with age 2 social capital declines with expected mobility 3 social capital rises in occupations with greater returns to social skills 4 social capital is higher among homeowners 5 social connections fall sharply with physical distance 6 people who invest in human capital also invest in social capital we fail to find robust evidence that social capital investments fall with the value of time or that geographic religious groups generate social capital complementarities

migration and the sending economy a disaggregated rural economy wide analysis abstract most economic research on migration impacts focuses on the households that send the migrants and get the remittances ignoring linkages with others in the sending economies this paper offers an alternative disaggregated economy wide perspective on migration and its impacts data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey are used to calibrate a series of interacting rural household models nested within a general equilibrium model of the whole rural economy simulations reveal that the impacts of international migration and remittances on sending areas depend critically on the ways in which local markets transmit influences among households

is off farm income reforming the farm evidence from mexico does access to off farm income complement or compete with agricultural production this article explores the effect of off farm income on agricultural production activities using data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey we first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model instrumental variable iv estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities technologies and input use differ between households with and without access to off farm income we find that off farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs there is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off farm income findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off farm income activities

migration and rural welfare the impact of potential policy reforms in europe summary this paper uses an agricultural household model in an imperfect market environment and data from burkina faso to explore the impact of potential immigration policy reforms in europe on the welfare of rural households simulation results demonstrate that in contrast to continental migration increased intercontinental migration has strong positive household welfare effects similarly an increase in the stay abroad of intercontinental migrants impacts positively on welfare of the migrant sending household results of these simulations lend support to the introduction of a tmp which would in addition to facilitating migration control in host economies improve the welfare of sending households by allowing for increased engagement in intercontinental migration the temporary nature of such a program would ensure that dutch disease effects would be mitigated through eventual migrant return

mines and migrants in south africa between 1971 and 1978 wages of more than one half million nonwhite laborers in the south african mines tripled in real terms in the same period the nonwhites employed in the mines switched from being 62 percent foreign to 62 percent domestic these changes followed a period from 1911 to 1971 during which real wages of black gold miners did not rise and terminated almost a century of reliance on foreign labor reserves for the majority of such labor 2 these dramatic events are examined here in the context of an econometric model of the demand for labor by the south african mining sector from 1946 to 1980 this affords an unusual opportunity to study the demand side of a market for internal and international migrants in a society where racial discrimination is formalized in the apartheid system where powerful mining houses wield potential monopsony power and where political factors in the region are major determinants of economic behavior to comprehend the derived demand for workers in this sector it is essential to outline at least certain aspects of the industry s organization and that of the market for labor this is undertaken in section i section ii develops a stylized model which is then estimated from data described in section iii for the gold diamond coal and other minerals sectors separately in section iv i organization of the mine labor market

the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of young men many young men commit crime and many are arrested i estimate the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of arrestees using a large longitudinal data set constructed by merging police records with ui earnings data i find that the effects of arrests are moderate in magnitude and rather short lived

the impact of management incentives in intergroup contests abstract in intergroup contests a manager advises and motivates her group s members her rewards often depend on the subsequent contest expenditure of the members i test whether such incentives undermine the credibility and effectiveness of a manager s efforts in the different experimental treatments the managers either benefit from very high or low expenditure or get a predetermined payment the results show that different management incentives shape the expenditure of the group members even if managers have an advisory role only however group members follow recommendations more closely if management compensation is not linked to contest expenditures

toward an economic theory of leadership leading by example this paper explores leadership within organizations leadership is distinct from authority because following a leader is a voluntary rather than coerced activity of the followers this paper considers how a leader induces rational agents to follow her in situations when the leader has incentives to mislead them copyright 1998 by american economic association

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

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

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

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

migration and incomes in source communities a new economics of migration perspective from china the objective of this paper is to understand the effects of china s migration on source communities and to discuss their policy implications we draw from new economics of labor migration nelm theory to understand how migration and migrant remittances can relax or tighten market constraints in china s rural economy using simultaneous equation econometric techniques and household survey data from china we estimate net sectorspecific effects of migration on rural household income focusing on farm production and self employment our econometric findings indicate that the loss of labor to migration has a negative effect on household cropping income in source areas however we provide evidence that remittances sent home by migrants positively compensate for this lost labor effect contributing to household incomes directly and indirectly by stimulating crop and possibly self employment production this finding offers evidence in support of the nelm hypothesis that remittances loosen constraints on production in the imperfect market environments characterizing rural areas in less developed countries taking into account both the multiple effects of migration and the change in household size participating in migration increases household per capita income between 14 and 30 percent migration and incomes in source communities a new economics of migration perspective from china china is experiencing the largest peacetime flow of labor out of agriculture ever witnessed in world history solinger 1999 rozelle et al 1999 despite the rapid expansion of labor migration china s work force is still disproportionately employed in agriculture compared to other countries at similar levels of per capita gdp taylor and martin 2001 hence as china s economy continues to expand the flow of labor to urban areas will continue and even accelerate johnson 1999 the massive flow of labor away from farms has intensified research interest in china s migration in recent years however as in the broader literature on migration in less developed countries most recent studies on china s migration have focused on determining the size and composition of the labor flow macroeconomic implications of increased migration and the effects of migration on urban areas zhao 1999 yang 1999 1997 less emphasis has been placed on researching the effects of migration on the rural communities that migrants leave even though evidence shows that the rural household in the village of origin is typically the central concern of all those involved in migration both those who leave and those who stay behind exceptions include wang and zuo 1999 bai 2001 moreover the recent increase in migration has left policy makers particularly concerned regarding the way source communities will be affected moa 1999 they are concerned that as labor flows away from farms food production and crop income will decline potentially threatening china s food security furthermore policy makers are concerned about the increasing gap between urban and rural household incomes if migration exacerbates this gap some fear that as it grows rural residents eventually will flood cities ill equipped to absorb them others fear that discontent over a rising urban rural income gap could even spill over into political unrest yang 1999 because china s markets and other modern economic institutions are still relatively undeveloped migration may play a pivotal role in creating or overcoming constraints caused by the lack of well functioning markets and or institutions knight and song 1999 benjamin and brandt 2000 the new economics of labor migration nelm literature analyzes migration as a household decision rather than as an individual decision stark 1991 the nelm hypothesizes that rural households facing imperfect market environments decide

migration amongst the batswana the present study undertakes analysis of the effects of employment probabilities and wage alternatives on migration decisions in the context of botswana adopting micro level data both to estimate a multinomial migration function and to develop prediction equations for wages and likelihood of employment data are from the 1978 1979 national migration survey the factors that influence rural batswana adults to remain at home migrate to town on a short or long term basis move to another rural area or emigrate to south africa are examined consideration is given to the effects of employment alternatives on the rate of internal migration and the selectivity of movements with respect to personal household and locational factors excerpt

intra household labour allocation migration and remittances in rural el salvador abstractmigration can affect labour participation decisions back home either by stimulating work to replace foregone labour or reducing it through the role of remittances using evidence from a r

investment opportunities in the source country and temporary migration this paper examines how attractive investment opportunities available to temporary migrants in their country of origin aect their saving behavior and the optimal duration of stay abroad the model predicts an inverse u shaped relationship between migration duration and the expected rate of return on repatriated savings a higher rate provides an incentive to go back earlier and consume less abroad while it can also trigger emigration aimed at generating the savings required for investment after return at a more general level the paper illustrates how the behavior of temporary migrants re ects the interaction between their preferences and the opportunities available in the labor and capital markets of both countries

shadow wages and peasant family labour supply an econometric application to the peruvian sierra a striking feature of developing economies is the large proportion of the work force that is self employed lack of widespread labor market participation in the agricultural sector can pose a major obstacle to the empirical implementation of economic models of the peasant household whether because wage data are simply not available or because the assumptions required to make use of wage data stretch the bounds of credulity this paper develops a methodology for estimating a structural labor supply model for primarily self employed peasant households which holds under a general agricultural technology and set of labor market conditions the unique feature of the approach is that the opportunity cost of time or shadow wage of household workers is explicitly estimated from an agricultural production function and is subsequently used to identify a set of structural labor supply parameters recent household survey data from rural peru is employed to estimate and perform various diagnostic tests on the model the empirical findings lend support to the hypothesis that peasant households allocate their members time as if to maximize a family utility function and moreover demonstrate the tractability of the shadow wage methodology and its usefulness in estimating more elaborate time allocation models

migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china in our paper we have used the new economics of labor migration framework to trace the complex linkages that exist among migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china constraints in the operation of on farm labor and capital or insurance markets or institutions provide households with a motivation to migrate and distort on farm operations when labor leaves in our household sample the net impact of migration and remittances on maize production is negative excerpt

taking the initiative what characterizes leaders abstract taking the initiative is a crucial element of leadership and an important asset for many jobs we assess this element of leadership in a game in which it emerges spontaneously since people have a non obvious possibility to take the initiative we can show that leadership in this game correlates with real life activities associated with taking the initiative combining this game with other experimental games and with questionnaires we investigate the personality characteristics that entail leadership we find efficiency concerns and generosity to be important determinants of leadership leaders have an internal locus of control and are more patient than non leaders but they are not different from the non leaders with respect to risk attitude response time patterns and the results from the cognitive reflection test show that cognitive resources are relevant in the decision to lead

impacts of migration on household production choices evidence from china abstractthe great migration from chinese farms to cities during the past several decades ranks among the most economically consequential of modern population movements we use a national sample of rice producing chinese households to examine the effects of that migration on agricultural production our assessment involves evaluating four alternative theories of labour market equilibrium in the framework of an expanded agricultural household model migration s farm production impacts appear to be slight not on account of farm labour market perfections or remittance financed technological improvements but by substituting a reduction in leisure and other low return activities for lost labour

search method use by unemployed youth this article presents a search model which shows that search method choices should be related to their costs and expected productivities as well as to nonwage income and wage offer distributions the empirical evidence then shows that the most frequently used search methods i e friends and relatives and direct applications without referral are also the most productive in generating offers and acceptances the number of methods used is affected by factors that presumably reflect opportunities as well as income sources and needs specific methods are chosen in a manner that generates positive average effects on outcomes for those using them

the effect of education on crime evidence from prison inmates arrests and self reports we estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling we begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using census data instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites when estimating the impact of high school graduation only ols and iv estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration we clarify the relationship between ols and iv estimates and show that the weights placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates overall the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about 76 percentage points for whites and 3 4 percentage points for blacks we corroborate these findings using fbi data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes the biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder assault and motor vehicle theft we also examine the effect of drop out on self reported crime in the nlsy and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime we estimate that the externality of education is about 14 26 of the private return to schooling suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction

migration unemployment and development a dynamic two sector analysis abstract a time minimizing problem of attaining a full employment state is solved in a dual economy model with harris todaro migration mechanism and with a positive level of urban unemployment in the starting period it appears that the optimum solution lies in the specialization of investment in the urban sector at least in the initial stage of development if the per capita capital stock in the urban sector is very small in the starting period

migration and food consumption patterns in ghana abstract this paper examines the link between migration and food consumption patterns in ghana which has a history of widespread migration and high levels of poverty data from 4130 households from the nationally representative 2005 2006 ghana living standards survey are used for the analysis since migrants self select into migration an instrumental variable approach is taken to analyze the relationship between migration and total food expenditures per capita food expenditures across a range of food categories and shares of food expenditures across these categories overall the results indicate that migration does not substantially affect total food expenditures per capita and has minimal noticeable effect on food expenditure patterns looking at results in different settings the analysis indicates that only in high migration regions does migration appear to increase overall food expenditures resulting in a shift towards the consumption of potentially less nutritious categories of food such as sugar and beverages and eating out of the home the results raise questions about the value of migration for improving the food consumption of migrant sending households

the impact of rural urban migration on subjective well being in south africa abstractthis paper quantifies the short to medium term impact of rural urban migration on an individual s subjective well being in south africa between 2008 and 2012 we work through different econometric specifications using instrumental variables to control for endogeneity caused by shock induced self selection and propensity score matching to control for migration self selection bias we find that rural urban migration leads to a decrease in subjective well being by 8 3 per cent we suspect that the decreased well being is a result of false expectations and changing relative groups used to peg aspirations as well as the emotional cost of being away from family and a home environment

does incarceration length affect labor market outcomes abstractthis paper studies how longer incarceration spells affect offenders labor market outcomes by using a reform that increased incarceration lengths by approximately 1 month i use detailed register data for offenders who predominantly serve incarceration spells of 1 2 months i analyze the sample for several years prior to and after incarceration and show that the reform led to an exogenous increase in incarceration lengths i find that the longer incarceration spells result in lower unemployment rates and higher earnings possibly because marginal increases in short incarceration spells improve conditions and incentives for rehabilitation while the costs of jail related to these outcomes are unaffected i show that the estimates are robust to different econometric specifications and further provide evidence that my results are not driven by changes in macroeconomic conditions

does nonagricultural labor relax farmers credit constraints evidence from longitudinal data for vietnam we examine the relationship between participation in nonagricultural labor activities and farming production decisions focusing on the use of inputs using longitudinal data for vietnam from 1993 to 1998 we find that households engaged in nonagricultural labor spend significantly more on seeds services hired labor and livestock inputs this is consistent with the hypothesis that nonagricultural labor income relaxes credit constraints to farming

does migration make rural households more productive evidence from mexico abstract the migration of labour out of rural areas and the flow of remittances from migrants to rural households are an increasingly important feature of less developed countries this paper explores ways in which migration influences incomes and productivity of land and human capital in rural households over time using new household survey data from mexico our findings suggest that a massive increase in migration to the united states increased per capita incomes via remittances and also by raising land productivity in migrant sending households they do not support the pessimistic view that migration discourages production in migrant sending economies nor the view implicit in separable agricultural household models that migration and remittances influence household incomes but not production

effect of remittances on poverty and financial development in sub saharan africa summary this paper assesses the effect of the steadily growing remittance flows to sub saharan africa though the region receives only a small portion of the total recorded remittances to developing countries and the volume of aid flows to sub saharan africa swamps remittances this paper finds that remittances which are a stable private transfer have a direct poverty mitigating effect and promote financial development these findings hold even after factoring in the reverse causality between remittances poverty and financial development the paper posits that formalizing such flows can serve as an effective access point for unbanked individuals and households

moving forward looking back the impact of migration and remittances on assets consumption and credit constraints in the rural philippines abstract this paper investigates the impact of migration and remittances on asset holdings consumption expenditures and credit constraint status of households in origin communities using a unique longitudinal data set from bukidnon philippines taking into account the endogeneity of the number of migrants and remittances received a larger number of migrant children reduces the values of nonland assets and total expenditures per adult equivalent however remittances have a positive impact on housing consumer durables nonland assets total expenditures per adult equivalent and educational expenditures enabling asset accumulation and investment in human capital neither migration nor remittances affects current credit constraint status

migration and self protection against climate change a case study of samburu county kenya climate change will affect the livelihoods of pastoralists in arid and semi arid lands using data on agro pastoral households from northern kenya we explore whether migration of household members enhances adoption of agricultural innovations that aim to provide protection against weather shocks specifically we seek to test whether migration and adaptation are complementary mechanisms to protect the household against adverse shocks or whether they are substitutes do remittances relax capital constraints and facilitate the uptake of adaptive measures or do they render adaptation superfluous our data provide suggestive evidence that remittances from migrant household members may relax capital constraints and that remittances are an important mechanism linking migration to adoption enabling the uptake of new technologies that involve change in activities or high costs specifically migrant households adopt more adaptive measures promoting self protection and we document some support for the hypothesis that this is especially the case for high cost adaptations such as the purchasing of drought tolerant livestock these findings suggest that migration and local innovation are complementary rather than substitutive mechanisms of self protection for pastoral households in the semi arid lands of northern kenya households who have at least one member who has migrated are able to overcome barriers to employ high cost agricultural innovations through using remittances received thus enhancing their self protection against climate change related shocks