globalization migration and development the role of mexican migrant remittances in this paper we present evidence suggesting that international migrant remittances generally lead to improved developmental outcomes using a cross section of mexican municipalities in the year 2000 we show that increases in the fraction of households receiving international remittances are generally correlated with better schooling and health outcomes and with reductions in some dimensions of poverty our results take into account the likely endogeneity between migration remittances and developmental outcome variables and they suggest that measures to facilitate remittance flows are desirable

risk sharing and internal migration over the past two decades more than half the population in rural tanzania migrated within the country profoundly changing the nature of traditional institutions such as informal risk sharing mass internal migration has created geographically disperse networks on which the authors collected detailed panel data by quantifying how shocks and consumption co vary across linked households they show how migrants unilaterally insure their extended family members at home this finding contradicts risk sharing models based on reciprocity but is consistent with assistance driven by social norms migrants sacrifice 3 to 7 percent of their very substantial consumption growth to provide this insurance which seems too trivial to have any stifling effect on their growth through migration

remittances and income diversification in bolivia s rural sector this article examines the role of remittances in income diversification strategies in bolivia s rural sector remittances can be consumed or invested by the recipient as an investment funds can be used for farming or to finance other nonfarm productions in this article we use a large and nationally representative survey to estimate the effect that remittances have on the probability of producing income from nonfarm activities diversification by using a bivariate probit model our evidence shows that remittances increase the probability that a rural family engages in nonfarm activities at least in some regions of bolivia we also find evidence that the sender s decision to remit and the recipient s decision to diversify may be jointly determined as such this suggests that remittances may serve as a mechanism to overcome localized failures in bolivia s capital markets

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

extending a lifeline or cutting losses the effects of conflict on household receipts of remittances in pakistan summary i examine the causal effects of long term exposure to conflict measured at the micro level on households receipt of remittances among households residing in areas affected by the 2010 floods in pakistan using a dataset of 7802 households representative of all flood affected areas of pakistan in 2010 i employ iv estimation to overcome the endogeneity of conflict exposure and remittance receipts and control for a range of confounding factors i find that contrary to the literature from country level case studies long term exposure to conflict reduces households likelihood of receiving any remittances at all as well as the average amounts of remittances received however for households in the lowest food consumption expenditure quintile conflict has a positive effect on the likelihood of remittance receipts which provides evidence for the existence of heterogeneous effects as well as a significant micro macro gap in understanding the causal effects of conflict on remittance receipts

family and community networks in mexico u s migration a household s decision to send migrants is based on infornation it has on the entry costs expected returns and risks of migration information and assistance flow from both family migrant networks and community migrant networks using data from a national survey of rural mexican households we show the importance of networks in both the decision to migrate and the level of migration we find that community and family networks are substitutes in assisting migration suggesting that once migration is well established in a community family networks become less important in addition the development of strong community networks erases the role of household characteristics in migration allowing those initially least favored to also participate in migration finally we show that network density at points of destination in the united states strongly affects where individuals choose to migrate

remittance and financial inclusion in refugee migrants inverse probability of treatment weighting using the propensity score abstractthis paper investigates the impact on remittances on financial inclusion of refugee migrants while financial inclusion is gaining traction in the humanitarian and development literature t

migration remittances and poverty in ecuador abstractwe analyse the influence of the recent wave of migration on the incidence of poverty among stayers in ecuador we draw our data from a survey that provides detailed information on migrants the analysis reveals a significant negative effect of migration on poverty among migrant households this effect is substantially smaller than the one that we find focusing on recipient households we explore the factors that account for this divergence our analysis entails that the existing empirical evidence on the relationship between remittances and poverty does not need to be informative about the size of the direct poverty reduction potential of migration

land tenure arrangements and rural urban migration in china summary obstacles to internal migration in china contribute to inefficiency inequality and land degradation academic and policy debate has primarily focused on discrimination against rural migrants on arrival in urban areas meanwhile barriers to migration out of rural areas have received less attention this paper examines the role of incomplete rural property rights in the migration decisions of rural households we examine the relationship between tenure insecurity and restrictions on land rentals and participation in outside labor markets the results indicate that tenure insecurity reduces migration this relationship is particularly pronounced on forest land which has implications for the conservation of recently replanted forest areas

remittances bonds and bridges remittances and social capital in burundi abstractthis study explores the effects of remittances on households structural social capital in urban burundi distinctions are made between bonding and bridging social capital referring to intra versus inter network ties of family members and friends the results demonstrate that remittance receiving households invest more in bridging social capital by participating in organisations donating time but make fewer monetary contributions compared to non receiving households remittances have mixed effects on bonding social capital receiving households give significantly less gifts to family members and friends but are more likely to send internal remittances compared to non receivers the implications of these findings for post conflict development are discussed

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

labor market performance as a determinant of migration in a comparison of migrants with nonmigrants both observed and unobservable productivity factors are relevant this paper focuses more on the unobservable factors and their correlation between places of origin and destination a human capital model of migration demonstrates that more productive workers at the origin would choose to migrate only if the correlation between origin and destination factors is strongly positive longitudinal data drawn from the cote d ivoire living standards survey 1985 86 are used to examine the pattern of migration in the light of labor market performance both of wage employees and non farm self employed workers it is found that indeed the more productive workers migrate furthermore the general direction of migration is toward cities the conclusion is therefore that rural areas lose their productive workers and that urban areas may gain in productivity from the geographical shifts in population

migration and child growth in rural guatemala this paper examines the relationship between migration and child growth in the rural highlands of guatemala a region with substantial international migration outflows significant remittance inflows and some of the highest rates of child undernutrition in the world using cross sectional survey data a double difference approach based on child growth patterns that controls for the selectivity of migration is used to assess the impact of migration to the us on height for age z haz scores and stunting prevalence of children haz scores for children in households with a migrant to the us are conservatively estimated to be 0 5 standard deviations higher and the prevalence of stunting is approximately 6 percentage points lower descriptive evidence suggests the possible channels through which migration may operate are improved food security and reduced morbidity

poverty transition in rural vietnam the role of migration and remittances abstractthis study combines insights of the new economics of labour migration with the asset based approach to welfare dynamics using panel household data from vietnam this method allows us to determine whether poverty transitions induced by remittances are actually structural that is based on asset growth and therefore long term or stochastic that is based only on short term increases in income which implies a risk of falling back into poverty to control for endogeneity of remittances we use household fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation the paper shows that remittances have a positive impact on asset growth and that the impact differs with welfare status and ethnicity

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

rural urban migration household vulnerability and welfare in vietnam summary this paper investigates the interaction of migration vulnerability to poverty and welfare of rural households in three provinces in central vietnam it addresses three questions 1 to what extent do shocks motivate rural household members to move to urban areas 2 are migrants in the new urban settings better off in terms of working conditions and quality of life and 3 what is the effect of migration on rural household s welfare and vulnerability to poverty the analysis uses panel data of 2200 households from rural vietnam covering the period 2007 2010 and a tracking survey of 299 migrants from 2010 the empirical evidence from a probit model shows that migration especially migration for employment is a livelihood support strategy for households exposed to agricultural and economic shocks migration for education is more likely observed among households with higher human capital and being financially better off nevertheless the probability of migration decreases with the employment opportunity in the village migrants perceive themselves to be better off at the place of destination but income losses from shocks of their rural households may reduce their employment quality the results from difference in difference specifications with propensity score matching techniques suggest that migration has positive income growth effects and that these effects are more pronounced in provinces with fewer job opportunities these effects help not only migrant households moving out of poverty but it also improves the poverty situation in rural areas

international migration and income distribution in the philippines the author uses data on remittances from migrants to determine the effects of migration on household income and its distribution in the philippines i briefly describe the evolution of household income distribution using fies the family income and expenditure survey and the characteristics of households that receive income from migrants and those that do not i discuss the analytical framework that is used and outline the changes in incomes and inequality that emigration causes excerpt

it for green and green it a proposed typology of eco innovation this article is in support of the development of an ecological economic framework it discusses from an interdisciplinary perspective the increasing use of green it and their applications it for green it and sustainable development have had a concomitant rise and reach the future world emerging from their respective interpretations enables in both cases a shift from today s questionable industrial capitalism towards post industrial capitalism this paper addresses the following questions what is known about green it and it for green are smart solutions buildings energy grids transport always beneficial to an ecological economy and if so in what ways in the first part of this article we analyse the economic social and environmental impact of it and argue for the need for green applications of green it in order to achieve sustainable outcomes the second part focuses on the managerial dimension of eco innovation theory and presents one of the distinctive features of green applications of green it the collective organisation of innovation a typology of eco innovation aimed at reconciling it development and green growth is then proposed explicitly addressing four kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social institutional and organisational innovation

how important is selection experimental vs non experimental measures of the income gains from migration measuring the gain in income from migration is complicated by non random selection of migrants from the general population making it difficult to obtain an appropriate comparison group of non migrants this paper uses a migrant lottery to overcome this problem providing an experimental measure of the income gains from migration new zealand allows a quota of tongans to immigrate each year with a lottery to choose among the excess number of applicants a unique survey conducted by the authors in these two countries allows experimental estimates of the income gains from migration by comparing the incomes of migrants to those who applied to migrate but whose names were not drawn in the lottery after allowing for the effect of non compliance among some of those whose names were drawn the authors also conducted a survey of individuals who did not apply for the lottery comparing this non applicant group with the migrants enables assessment of the degree to which non experimental methods can provide an unbiased estimate of the income gains from migration they find evidence of migrants being positively selected in terms of both observed and unobserved skills as a result non experimental methods are found to overstate the gains from migration by 9 to 82 percent a good instrumental variable works best while difference in differences and bias adjusted propensity score matching also perform comparatively well

remittances household expenditure and investment in guatemala the author uses a large household data set from guatemala to analyze how the receipt of internal remittances from guatemala and international remittances from the united states affects the marginal spending behavior of households on various consumption and investment goods contrary to other studies the author finds that households receiving remittances actually spend less at the margin on consumption food and consumer goods and durables than do households receiving no remittances instead of spending on consumption households receiving remittances tend to spend more on investment goods like education health and housing the analysis shows that a large amount of remittance money goes into education at the margin households receiving internal and international remittances spend 45 and 58 percent more respectively on education than do households with no remittances these increased expenditures on education represent investment in human capital like other studies the author finds that remittance receiving households spend more at the margin on housing these increased expenditures on housing represent a type of investment for the migrant as well as a means for boosting local economic development by creating new income and employment opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers

remittances and household wealth after conflict a case study on urban burundi few studies have researched the use of remittances in conflict affected contexts this study analyzes unique data from burundi testing three hypotheses relative deprivation investment and insurance derived from new economics of labor migration studies employing propensity score matching results show that remittances are common among wealthier households rejecting the relative deprivation hypothesis remittances have strong effects on non productive assets such as living conditions and food security and weak effects on productive assets such as asset ownership poorer households invest mostly in non productive assets suggesting that remittances are insurance for the poor whereas wealthier households seem largely unaffected by remittances

financial innovation and the transactions demand for cash we document cash management patterns for households that are at odds with the predictions of deterministic inventory models that abstract from precautionary motives we extend the baumol tobin cash inventory model to a dynamic environment that allows for the possibility of withdrawing cash at random times at a low cost this modification introduces a precautionary motive for holding cash and naturally captures developments in withdrawal technology such as the increasing diffusion of bank branches and atm terminals we characterize the solution of the model which qualitatively reproduces several empirical patterns we estimate the structural parameters using micro data and show that quantitatively the model captures important economic patterns the estimates are used to quantify the expenditure and interest rate elasticity of money demand the impact of financial innovation on money demand the welfare cost of inflation and the benefit of atm ownership

labor market participation of chinese agricultural households empirical evidence from zhejiang province abstract this work is devoted to the analysis of the different labor market participation regimes of chinese farm households over the reform process in the 1980s and 1990s using household data over the period 1986 2002 from the province zhejiang we apply a multinomial logit model to empirically examine household farm and regional characteristics affecting the probability that farmers participate in one of four alternative labor market regimes as generally accepted off farm participation is the dominant form of farm households labor market participation but rural households show additionally a significant impact on rural employment mainly linked with non agricultural household business results suggest that labor market decisions are significantly related to several family farm and village characteristics in particular we find education to be a key determinant of participation furthermore results point to a higher probability of female household members to take up off farm work

what happens to diet and child health when migration splits households evidence from a migration lottery program the impact of migration on food security and child health is likely to differ depending on whether children themselves migrate or whether they remain behind while other household members migrate however existing studies have not been able to examine how impacts differ in these two scenarios because parallel data are required for both the sending and receiving country moreover self selection into migration makes unbiased estimation of either impact difficult we overcome these problems by using a unique survey of tongan households that applied to migrate to new zealand through a migrant quota which selects households through a random ballot this survey covers both migrant children in new zealand and non migrant children in tonga with the migration policy rules providing a source of exogenous variation for identifying impacts our estimates of short run impacts show that diets diverge upon migration children who migrate experience improvements while diets worsen for children who remain there is also suggestive evidence of a divergence in health outcomes with increases in weight for age and height for age found for migrant children and decreases found for children who remain behind while other household members migrate

national wage trends and migration in a chinese village economy a micro level modeling approach based on a composite utility function china s economy is experiencing a regime shift away from a fully elastic supply of labor from a large pool of rural surplus labor and toward a situation of increasing labor scarcity and rising wage rates moreover faster wage increases in the regions of origin of many rural urban migrants are likely to affect the dynamics of inter regional migration these wage trends have implications at the local level in particular in a setting in which migration connects rural communities to the national labor market and in which migration is of high importance for the livelihoods of rural households taking a village perspective this article develops a village computable general equilibrium model to study local impacts of current wage trends in china as a central piece of the model the role of access to migration for household livelihoods is recognized access to migration is linked to household demographics and included in the model through a composite utility function that captures household preferences and disutilities associated with alternative off farm activities simulation results illustrate how households utility considerations affect migration responses to national wage changes statements about possible impacts on village level labor supply land use and agricultural production are made when migration wages and local off farm wages are simulated to increase an overall increase in household and village migration and a higher supply of labor to local off farm labor markets is accompanied by a contraction of farm production although land is reallocated between households with different migration responses total agricultural output declines

social capital and coping with economic shocks an analysis of stunting of south african children abstract south african households live in an environment characterized by risks and many face a significant probability of experiencing economic losses that threaten their daily subsistence using household panel data that include directly solicited information on economic shocks and employing household fixed effects estimation we explore how well households cope with shocks by examining the effects of shocks on child nutritional status unlike in the idealized village community some households appear unable to insure against risk particularly when others in their communities simultaneously suffer large losses households in communities with more social capital however seem better able to weather shocks

estimating the determinants of child health when fertility and mortality are selective most studies of the effects of education and health infrastructure on child health have not taken fertility decisions into account they assume that the composition of the population of children classified by health is unrelated to prior fertility decisions the author however estimates the determinants of child mortality and child health allowing for the possibility that samples of children are choice based reflecting prior selective fertility and mortality behavior parameter identification is the most serious practical problem in controlling for fertility and mortality selection if parents care about the health outcomes of potential births then any exogenous variable which affects health also affects the fertility decision the author adopts a new approach to the problem by imposing a random effects structure upon the error correlation matrix for the set of fertility mortality and health behaviors fertility selection is found to be statistically significant in the estimation of the determinants of mortality in all 14 sub saharan demographic and health survey data sets studied and fertility and mortality selection is found to be significant in the determination of child height in zambia nonetheless most parameters are only slightly changed when selection is accounted for

temporary migration and endogenous risk sharing in village india when people can self insure via migration they may have less need for informal risk sharing at the same time informal insurance may reduce the need to migrate to understand the joint determinat

prices credit markets and child growth in low income rural areas in this paper it is argued that fluctuations in child growth in rural areas of bangladesh during and after severe floods in i988 can provide insight into the structure of credit markets a model of intertemporal resource allocation is developed and euler equations relating growth patterns of children to the cost of borrowing by household are then derived from the model the evidence indicates that although some of the variation in growth patterns over the relevant period may be attributed to variation in illness and the price of rice growth patterns for children in landless households were influenced by credit market imperfections this paper links two prominent strands of research in economic development the first strand examines the extent to which households in poor rural economies are able to protect themselves from the adverse weather and other shocks that importantly influence earnings in underdeveloped areas while it has long been thought that credit market imperfections and other forms of market failure make it difficult for poor individuals in these economies to smooth consumption both within and across years there remains some question about the magnitude and pervasiveness of these imperfections while there is evidence that fluctuations in economic conditions result in inefficient allocation of resources e g morduch 1990 rosenzweig and wolpin i993 some recent papers have emphasised the fact that consumption patterns of households in the same village comove in a manner consistent with the idea that a substantial fraction of idiosyncratic variation in income is effectively

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

the demand for money financial innovation and the welfare cost of inflation an analysis with household data we use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized baumol tobin model our data set contains information on average currency deposits and other interest bearing assets the number of trips to the bank the size of withdrawals and ownership and use of atm cards we model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold interest bearing assets the interest rate and expenditure flow elasticities of the demand for currency are close to the theoretical values implied by standard inventory models however we find significant differences between individuals with an atm card and those without the estimates of the demand for currency allow us to calculate a measure of the welfare cost of inflation analogous to bailey s triangle but based on a rigorous microeconometric framework the welfare cost of inflation varies considerably within the population but never turns out to be very lar

moving to despair migration and well being in pakistan abstract internal migration has the potential to substantially increase incomes especially for the poor in developing countries and yet migration rates remain low we evaluate the impact of internal migration on both objective and subjective measures of well being using a unique longitudinal study in rural pakistan spanning 1991 2013 we account for selection using covariate matching migrants have roughly 35 40 percent higher consumption yet are less likely to report being happy calm and or in excellent health and more likely to report having been sick recently our results suggest that deteriorating physical health coupled with feelings of stress and relative deprivation underlie the disparity between objective and subjective well being thus despite substantial monetary gains from migration people may be happier and less mentally distressed by remaining at home if traditional market mechanisms cannot reduce psychic costs it may be more constructive to address regional inequality by shifting production rather than workers across space

remittances liquidity constraints and human capital investments in ecuador summary over the last decade ecuador has experienced a strong increase in financial transfers from migrated workers this paper investigates how remittances via trans national networks affect human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks our results show that remittances increase school enrollment and decrease incidence of child work especially for girls and in rural areas furthermore we find that aggregate shocks are associated with increased work activities while remittances are used to finance education when households are faced with these shocks 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

exploring the role of it for environmental sustainability in china an empirical analysis national natural science foundation of china 71202059 fundamental research funds for the central universities china 2011221016 national social science foundation 10zd047

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

lead markets and regulation a framework for analyzing the international diffusion of environmental innovations abstract environmental regulations are often intended to stimulate the generation and adoption of eco efficient innovations an important argument in the public debate is also the creation of new markets for environmentally benign products processes and services in other countries and the generation as a result of export opportunities for the pioneering country lead markets research on lead markets has not however focused on environmental innovations to date we therefore extend the lead market model to environmental innovations and take particular account of the peculiarities of such innovations in particular the public good character of environmental benefits and the role of regulations this approach is applied to two case studies wind energy and fuel efficient passenger cars in both cases the innovation was initially adopted in one country other countries subsequently adopted the same innovation design favored by the lead market which in turn developed into a large exporter in the wind generation and car industries respectively we discuss the regulations employed and the reasons for the international success of the innovations induced by them our findings demonstrate that when supported by global demand or regulatory trends strict regulation results in the creation of lead markets finally we provide recommendations on how our model could be used for further research and in the development of a coordinated environmental and innovation policy

economic effects of migration on the left behind in cambodia abstractusing propensity score matching this study examines the effects of migration on various indicators of household wellbeing in cambodia the results indicate that migration would reduce poverty headcount rate by 3 7 percentage points and decrease the depth of poverty migration is also found to reduce by 5 10 per cent the hours worked by members left behind the impact of migration on labour participation may be however vulnerable to unobservable factors nevertheless the study suggests that important heterogeneous effects which differ from the average impact exist the analysis is conducted separately by internal and international migration

technological change and the households demand for currency abstract it is shown that accounting for technology variations across households and periods is important to obtain theoretically consistent estimates of the demand for currency an inventory model is presented where the withdrawal technology is explicitly modeled both the level and the interest rate elasticity of cash holdings depend on the withdrawal technology available to households empirical proxies for the household withdrawal technology based on the diffusion of cash withdrawal points measured at city level are used to test the model predictions on a panel of italian household data over the 1993 2004 period

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

the less extreme the more you leave radical islam and willingness to migrate summary this paper studies radical islam as a determinant of individuals willingness to migrate surprisingly despite its relevance in the political debate this topic has not been investigated empirically in the literature in order to fill this gap we develop a model of the decision to migrate focusing in particular on the role played by cultural traits more specifically we focus on radical islam as a deterrent for migration following berman 2003 we define radical islam as a set of ideologies also referred to as political islam holding that islam should guide not only personal life but also social and political life in our model more radical values imply a higher psychological cost of migrating this cost derives from the fact that connections with socio religious friends and neighbors are generally not maintained after migration thus deterring individuals from migrating mayers 2000 we then test empirically the predictions of the model using individual level data from the second 2010 11 and third 2012 14 waves of the arab barometer our results suggest that ceteris paribus more radical individuals are less willing to migrate this finding is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of instrumental variables and propensity score matching aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of radical islam the result is also qualitatively unchanged when using aggregate data on actual outflows of migrants

global talent local careers circular migration of top indian engineers and professionals despite heightened interests from policy makers in the notion of brain circulation the discussion around the issue has remained largely theoretical drawing upon unique data of the alumni of a leading indian university this study examines how migration dynamics unfold within a highly educated population whose emigration is considered as a classic example of brain drain we adopt an integrative framework bringing together macro level push and pull influences and individual level selectivity we find that disparity in economic development between countries drives migration flows in both directions while host country demand has a stronger impact on out migration than on return migration we also detect significant selection effects at the individual level top students are more likely to emigrate and less likely to return in out migration flowing out of the country appear to be the best and the brightest amongst the highly educated talent pool in return migration negative selection is manifested in multiple aspects including ability post migration human capital investment and income we also find that the influences of macro forces vary amongst individuals higher ability individuals appear to be less affected by demand changes the findings have important policy implications for both source countries and receiving countries

short term labour migration from the republic of armenia to the russian federation we explore the determinants of short term labour migration from armenia to russia based on a unique panel dataset a dynamic switching regression model with endogenous switching is applied our evidence pinpoints migration experience the expected individual income gap from migration low job opportunities in armenia and the possibility of diversifying income risks as the most important determinants family ties turn out to be insignificant the hypothetical income gap is about 280 per cent several explanations are provided for the fact that some individuals do not migrate in spite of a large income gap

environmental stressors and migration evidence from vietnam the argument that environmental change is an important driving force of migration has experienced a strong revival in the climate change context while various studies predict large environmental migration flows due to climate change and other environmental events the ex post empirical evidence for this phenomenon is inconclusive we contribute to the extant literature by focusing on the micro level we examine whether and how individual perceptions of different types of environmental stressors induce internal migration the analysis relies on original survey data from vietnam including both migrants and non migrants the results suggest that individual perceptions of long term environmental events such as droughts significantly reduce migration while perceptions of sudden onset environmental events such as floods significantly increase the likelihood of migration controlling for other determinants of migration these findings also imply that improving the targeting of aid to environmental disaster affected areas and the financial and technical support for adaptation to environmental change could be the most productive policy options policymakers thus need to implement a wide range of developmental policies in combination with environmental ones in order to improve society s ability to effectively cope with environmental change and minimize its effect on migration

currency demand new technology and the adoption of electronic money micro evidence from japan we estimate currency demand functions conditional on electronic money adoption with household level survey data from japan under an instrumental quantile regression framework contrary to theoretical predictions our results suggest that users of electronic money hold more currency than non users

risk aversion time preferences and out migration experimental evidence from ghana and indonesia abstract it has long been hypothesized that migrants and non migrants differ in their individual risk and time preferences due to a lack of reliable data on migrants preferences empirical evidence however is scarce therefore this paper has sought to advance research on preferences and migration decisions by using original household survey data from two developing countries that are both characterized by a longstanding tradition in regional migration in coastal communities in ghana and indonesia individual risk and time preferences have not only been elicited through survey questions but also through experimental tasks with real and relatively large monetary payoffs there is evidence that out migrants from both study regions are significantly less risk averse and have a lower time preference than non migrants overall the results indicate that the considered individual preferences are as important as employment status education or networks which have mainly been the focus of migration theories

migration and farm technical efficiency evidence from kosovo this article investigates the effect of migration on farm technical efficiency drawing on a large and representative sample of agricultural households in kosovo a two stage estimation procedure is applied a frontier technique to estimate the effect of migration on farm efficiency followed by a propensity score based matching approach to robustly estimate the sample average effect on efficiency for different levels of migration intensity migration is found to have an efficiency decreasing effect which is amplified for better educated workers the observed negative effect of migration on efficiency is evident even at low levels of migration intensity

the characteristics of energy efficiency measures a neglected dimension abstract the diffusion of cost effective energy efficiency measures eems in firms is often surprisingly slow this phenomenon is usually attributed to a variety of barriers which have been the focus of numerous studies over the last two decades however many studies treat eems homogenously and assume they have few inherent differences apart from their profitability we argue that complementing such analyses by considering the characteristics of eems in a structured manner can enhance the understanding of eem adoption for this purpose we suggest a classification scheme for eems in industry which aims to provide a better understanding of their adoption by industrial firms and to assist in selecting and designing energy efficiency policies the suggested classification scheme is derived from the literature on the adoption of eems and the related fields including the diffusion of innovations eco innovations and advanced manufacturing technology our proposed scheme includes 12 characteristics based on the relative advantage the technical and the information context of the eem applying this classification scheme to six example eems demonstrates that it can help to systematically explain why certain eems diffuse faster than others furthermore it provides a basis for identifying policies able to increase the rate of adoption

digitalization and energy consumption does ict reduce energy demand abstract this article investigates the effect of digitalization on energy consumption using an analytical model we investigate four effects 1 direct effects from the production usage and disposal of information and communication technologies ict 2 energy efficiency increases from digitalization 3 economic growth from increases in labor and energy productivities and 4 sectoral change tertiarization from the rise of ict services the analysis combines empirical and theoretical findings from debates on decoupling energy consumption from economic growth and from debates on green it and ict for sustainability our main results effects 1 and 3 tend to increase energy consumption effects 2 and 4 tend to decrease it furthermore our analysis suggests that the two increasing effects prevail so that overall digitalization increases energy consumption these results can be explained by four insights from ecological economics a physical capital and energy are complements in the ict sector b increases in energy efficiency lead to rebound effects c ict cannot solve the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from exergy d ict services are relatively energy intensive and come on top of former production in future digitalization can only boost sustainability when it fosters effects 2 and 4 without promoting effects 1 and 3

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

the impact of international remittances on child outcomes and household expenditures in nepal abstractnepal has one of the highest ratios of international remittances to gross domestic product in the world we examine whether the massive inflow of international remittances affects child schooling child labour and household expenses controlling extensively for a host of observed characteristics of households and migrants and using an instrumental variable approach this research finds no effect of international remittances on child education or child labour in nepal however it does find a significant increase in non food expenditures including education spending due to international remittances despite increased expenditure on child education educational outcomes are not improving because of international remittances

regulatory capture a review this article reviews both the theoretical and empirical literatures on regulatory capture the scope is broad but utility regulation is emphasized i begin by describing the stigler peltzman approach to the economics of regulation i then open the black box of influence and regulatory discretion using a three tier hierarchical agency model under asymmetric information in the spirit of laffont and tirole 1993 i discuss alternative modelling approaches with a view to a richer set of positive predictions including models of common agency revolving doors informational lobbying coercive pressure and influence over committees i discuss empirical work involving capture and regulatory outcomes i also review evidence on the revolving door phenomenon and on the impact that different methods for selecting regulators appear to have on regulatory outcomes the last section contains open questions for future research copyright 2006 oxford university press

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

microeconomic implications of remittances in an overlapping generations model with altruism and a motive to receive inheritance abstract the article develops a framework to examine the interaction between the migrant and the remittance receiving relative s under non cooperative and cooperative scenarios the model has an overlapping generations structure where both parties have altruistic behavioural traits we derive the relationships between the remittances consumption labour supply savings and bequests and compare these variables under the two scenarios for both scenarios the remittances have a positive effect on the relative s leisure consumption and investment the effects of the wage and the non wage income of the relative and the migrant and the interest rate on the equilibrium level of remittances are also qualitatively similar under the two scenarios however the parties degrees of altruism as well as the discount rates have different effects on the equilibrium level and incidence of remittances for the non cooperative and cooperative interactions these shed some light on the differences in remittance behavi

the national system of innovation in historical perspective contrary to some recent work on so called globalisation this paper argues that national and regional systems of innovation remain an essential domain of economic analysis their importance derives from the networks of relationships which are necessary for any firm to innovate whilst external international connections are certainly of growing importance the influence of the national education system industrial relations technical and scientific institutions government policies cul tural traditions and many other national institutions is fundamental the historical examples of germany japan and the former ussr illustrate this point as well as the more recent contrast between east asian and latin american countries introduction the national system of friedrich list according to this author s recollections the first person to use the expression national system of innovation was bengt ake lundvall and he is also the editor of a highly original and thought provoking book 1992 on this subject however as he and his colleagues would be the first to agree and as lundvall himself points out the idea actually goes back at least to friedrich list s conception of the national system of political economy 1841 which might just as well have been called the national system of innovation the main concern of list was with the problem of germany overtaking england and for underdeveloped countries as germany then was in relation to england he advocated not only protection of infant industries but a broad range of policies designed to accelerate or to make possible industrialisation and economic growth most of these policies were concerned with learning about new technology and applying it the racialist and colonialist overtones of the book were in strong contrast to the inter nationalist cosmopolitan approach of the classical free trade economists and list s belief that holland and denmark should join the german bund and acquire german nationality because of their descent and whole character reads somewhat strangely in the european community of today nevertheless despite these unattractive features of his outlook he clearly anticipated many contemporary theories after reviewing the changing ideas of economists about development in the years since the second world war the world bank 1991 concludes that it is intangible investment in knowledge accumulation which is decisive rather than physical capital investment as was at one time believed pages 33 35 the report cites the new growth theory

migration and economic mobility in tanzania evidence from a tracking survey this study explores the extent to which migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in tanzania using longitudinal data on individuals the authors estimate the impact of migration on consumption growth between 1991 and 2004 the analysis addresses concerns about heterogeneity and unobservable factors correlated with both income changes and the decision to migrate the findings show that migration adds 36 percentage points to consumption growth during a period of considerable growth in consumption these results are robust to numerous tests and alternative specifications unpacking the findings the analysis finds that moving out of agriculture is correlated with much higher growth than staying in agriculture although growth is always higher in any sector if one physically moves economic mobility is strongly linked to geographic mobility the puzzle is why more people do not move if returns to geographic mobility are high the evidence is consistent with models in which exit barriers are set by home communities through social and family norms that prevent migration of certain categories of people

the dynamics of chinese rural households participation in labor markets the work is devoted to the dynamics of labor market participation of chinese rural households based on a theoretical farm household framework the choice between four distinct labor market participation states is empirically analyzed using household data over the period 1995 2002 from the province zhejiang we apply a discrete time hazard approach to analyze households labor market participation histories in particular we investigate the movements between autarky and participation in general and more specifically the shifts between part time and full time farming estimation results suggest significant duration dependence more precisely a decreasing risk of moving from one state to another with an increasing time a household occupies one of these states further the likelihoods of starting any participation in labor markets and to start part time farming are considerably higher than to end participation or to return to full time farming in addition we find that labor market participation decisions are significantly related to several household and farm characteristics

the effects of international remittances on poverty and inequality in ethiopia abstractthe article studies the effects of international remittances on poverty and inequality in ethiopia using an urban household survey from 2004 counterfactual consumption in the hypothetical case of no remittance is estimated in a selection corrected estimation framework inequality and poverty values in the hypothetical and actual cases are then compared there is a significant reduction in poverty while inequality does not change the head count the poverty gap and the squared poverty gap ratios decreased from 0 41 to 0 38 0 14 to 0 13 and 0 064 to 0 057 respectively

the effect of remittances on labour supply in the republic of haiti we examine the labour supply effect of remittances in the republic of haiti the prime international remittances recipient country in the latin american and caribbean lac region relative to its gdp unlike previous empirical literature we address three econometric issues that may bias the estimates we account for endogeneity of the remittances with respect to labour supply for the zero inflated nature of our dependent variable hours of work and for the self selection of the migrant sample our results are in line with previous literature and point to a decline of labour supply in the presence of remittances however contrary to previous findings the labour market response to remittances of female household heads is not as sensitive as male s

credit availability and internal migration evidence from thailand this study investigates the relationship between borrowing and internal migration exploiting the micro finance scheme village fund in thailand it investigates the short and medium term effects o

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

comparative effects of migrants remittances on composition of recipient household income in two small island economies we use unique household survey data from fiji and tonga to estimate and compare the combined impact of migration and remittances on the composition of household income a two step methodology is followed employing a migration prediction model followed by the estimation of a three stage least squares 3sls remittances and income equation system we find that remittances contribute to growth in productive capital and entrepreneurial activity in the longer established migrant economy but have yet to impact on business activity in the more recently remittances oriented economy despite it having a more developed market economy in the latter case remittances seem more linked to supporting consumption through supplementing low wage income these findings suggest that the duration and intensity of remittance driven migration and the structure of economic activity within a community are important in understanding the influences of migration and remittances on household resource allocation and production dec

the effects of internet usage and economic growth on co2 emissions in oecd countries a panel investigation this paper estimates the short and long run effects of internet usage and economic growth on carbon dioxide co2 emissions using oecd panel data for the period 1991 2012 the pedroni panel cointegration test confirms that the variables are cointegrated although pooled mean group pmg estimates indicate a positive significant long run relationship between internet usage and co2 emissions the coefficient is very small and no causality exists between them which both imply that the rapid growth in internet usage is still not an environmental threat for the region the study further indicates that economic growth has no significant short run and long run effects on co2 emissions internet use stimulates both financial development and trade openness the findings offer support in favor of the argument that oecd countries can promote their internet usage without being significantly concerned about its environmental consequences but the future emissions effect of internet usage cannot be ruled out as is evident from the variance decomposition analysis therefore this study recommends that in addition to boosting the existing measures for combating co2 emissions oecd countries need to use ict equipment not to simply reduce its own carbon footprint but also to exploit ict enabled emissions abatement potential to reduce emissions in other sectors such as the power energy agricultural transport and service sectors

are remittances a substitute for credit carrying the financial burden of health shocks in national and transnational households summary this paper tests for the assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit by comparing the response to health related shocks among national and transnational households using mexican household panel data while the occurrence of serious health shocks that required hospital treatment doubled the average debt burden of exposed households compared to the control group households with nuclear family members a parent child or spouse in the us did not increase their debts due to health shocks this finding is consistent with the view that remittances respond to households demand for financing emergencies and make them less reliant on debt financing

land retirement and nonfarm labor market participation an analysis of china s sloping land conversion program summary china s sloping land conversion program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland and has effected major land use changes farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time limited subsidies after which they in principle enter nonfarm employment we analyze annual data we collected on over 3 000 individuals and plots from 1998 2006 which contain variation in enrollment timing and alternative measures of enrollment and conclude enrollment has a small but significant and robust positive effect on nonfarm employment it arises not from alleviating constraints as recent papers have suggested but rather from simple farm to nonfarm labor substitution

brain drain from turkey an investigation of students return intentions the emigration of skilled individuals from turkey attracted greater media attention and the interest of policymakers in turkey particularly after the experience of recurrent economic crises that have led to an increase in unemployment among the highly educated young this study estimates a model of return intentions using a data set compiled from an internet survey of turkish students residing abroad the findings of this study indicate that as expected higher salaries offered in the host country and lifestyle preferences including a more organized environment in the host country increase the probability of student nonreturn however the analysis also points to the importance of prior return intentions and the role of the family in the decision to return to turkey or stay overseas it is also found that the compulsory service requirement attached to government scholarships increases the probability of student return turkish student association membership also increases return intentions longer sta

defying the law of gravity the political economy of international migration bilateral flows of international migrants exhibit tremendous variance both across destination countries and over time to explain this variance studies of international migration tend to focus on economic determinants such as income differentials or on social conditions such as the presence of coethnics in certain destination countries the authors argue that migration is driven not solely by economic or social determinants rather the political environment across destinations plays a substantively large role in influencing bilateral migration flows they test the importance of the political environment citizenship rights and the prominence of right wing parties using data on migration flows from 178 origin countries into 18 destination countries over the period 1980 2006 they find even after controlling for a variety of economic social policy and international variables that variation in political environments across time and destination plays a key role in observed patterns of international migration

remitting behaviour of turkish migrants evidence from household data in germany this paper provides an empirical analysis of the remittances of turkish migrants using novel data from 589 households in berlin which holds the largest turkish community outside turkey the findings suggest that the remittances of turkish migrants are determined mainly by a combination of self interest and tempered altruism comparison of migrant groups who do and do not intend to return to turkey shows that those intending to return remit mostly for self interest and remit larger amounts while those with no such intention remit mainly due to implicit loan agreement within the family there is no evidence of pure altruism in any of the samples in addition remitters are more likely to increase the amount of remittances where they are to be spent on education and investment the same relationship does not hold for basic needs

fishing and nonfishing income decisions the role of human capital and family structure resource dependent households often diversify their income we model demand for remittances and supply of off resource labor as a joint decision and discuss household trade offs we extend the off farm labor supply literature to a rural fishery contrasting our results to common findings in the farm literature and providing empirical evidence of the interdependence between education and family structure in determining income diversification using a unique dataset from malaysia we find that more educated households are less likely to diversify their income with caveats depending on family composition policy implications for resource management in a remittance economy with alternative livelihoods are discussed