why don t remittances appear to affect growth although measured remittances by migrant workers have soared in recent years macroeconomic studies have difficulty detecting their effect on economic growth this paper reviews existing explanations for this puzzle and proposes three new ones first it offers evidence that a large majority of the recent rise in measured remittances may be illusory arising from changes in measurement not changes in real financial flows second it shows that even if these increases were correctly measured cross country regressions would have too little power to detect their effects on growth third it points out that the greatest driver of rising remittances is rising migration which has an opportunity cost to economic product at the origin net of that cost there is little reason to expect large growth effects of remittances in the origin economy migration and remittances clearly have first order effects on poverty at the origin on the welfare of migrants and their families and on global gross domestic product but detecting their effects on growth of the origin economy is likely to remain elusive

rebound effects and green growth an examination of their relationship in a parsimonious equilibrium input output framework abstract attempts to curb pollution or reduce resource consumption while maintaining growth and thus to achieve what is often referred to as green growth are frequently compromised by rebound effects that is the reduction of emissions or resource consumption is less than what would be expected from a technical perspective rebound effects may occur because greater efficiency makes the use of a resource cheaper in economic terms and thereby more widespread or because the demand for green products induces additional demand for brown products the focus of the present research is to examine from a theoretical cum simulation perspective the latter aspect and the resulting possibility that firms may invest in additional capacity for producing brown rather than green products even if initially there is increasing demand for green products such effects could be termed macro level rebound effects in that there occurrence and significance depends on the properties of the production system as a whole the purpose of the paper is to develop a parsimonious framework combining a simple input output model with some standard macroeconomic relationships between savings consumption and investment within which macroeconomic rebound effects can be analysed in doing so the paper purports to show undertaking a monte carlo study that in a broad range of technological configurations green growth may be feasible in the sense that macroeconomic rebound effects are unlikely to occur however depending on the structure of the economy i e depending on the extent to which sectors are green this result must be qualified the more sectors exist where green capital is equally productive the higher is the likelihood of rebound effects moreover it is mainly the productivity of using a good for its own production which determines the likelihood of rebound the lower the productivity the higher the likelihood that an increase in the production of that capital good will be eaten up to a large extent by the resulting input requirements of the same industry

measuring noise in inventory models this paper has two purposes one is to assess different models of inventory behavior in terms of their ability to approximate the realized data we do this initially for the pure production smoothing model and then for a sequence of generalizations our analysis both performs specification tests as well as measures the deviations of the data from each null model through use of a noise ratio statistic a second purpose is to explore whether observed cost shocks in particular raw materials prices help explain inventory movements we find that the production smoothing model of inventories augmented by buffer stock motives stockout avoidance motives and observed cost shocks well approximates monthly data

rebound effect in china evidence from the power generation sector abstract when talking about energy conservation rebound effect re is always concerned which defined as the increasing energy consumption relative to the counterfactual predicted by technological progress because of efficiency induced decrease in the real price of energy services in this paper we try to find a way to figure out the re through calculating the substitution relations accord with the definition based on the trans log cost function and considering the asymmetric impact on energy cost share equation the paper applies allen uzawa substitution elasticity to establish the price oriented analysis diagram of fossil energy consumption re using time series data applying the joint method of the dynamic ols dols and the seemingly unrelated regressions sur the re in china s electricity generation sector is estimated the results showed that the re is 11 6 in china s electricity generation sector if allowing for asymmetric price effects which indicates that china s power generation sector generally displays a feature of energy saving

toward a neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption eight golden age propositions abstract popular trends in ecological economics increasingly consign neoclassical economics to the sidelines of modern day relevancy the neoclassical tradition is often seen as reliant for its authenticity on a presumption of human avarice both unbridled consumerism and corporate cupidity and demanding for its real world applicability an assumption of continuous economic growth in a world of hard limits this article examines the question of whether neoclassical theory could instead provide keys to deeper understanding of sustainable consumption by combining in a single framework neoclassical growth theory general equilibrium theory and duality theory and by explicitly considering leisure time the analysis demonstrates that neoclassical economics yields several useful insights bearing on long term sustainability the analysis confirms several tenets of ecological economics and challenges others eight propositions emerge from this analysis that could help speed the development of a robust neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption here branded golden age propositions as they strongly echo the golden rule discoveries of edmund phelps

accounting for output fluctuations in manufacturing there is a substantial body of evidence to the effect that output is more volatile than sales among manufacturing industries numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this excess output volatility some examples are pro cyclical inventory movements induced by a stockout avoidance motive cost and technology shocks and decreasing marginal costs this article assesses the contribution of these different motives to output volatility for six different manufacturing industries linear quadratic models are estimated for each of the industries and then dynamic simulations are employed to determine the volatility of output when one or more of the factors are removed from the model technology shocks provide the most significant contribution to output volatility the stockout avoidance motive is also important cost shocks provide a very small contribution and marginal production costs are increasing at the margin and thus stabilize output it is also shown that output volatility declines when curre

remittances and development in latin america flows of workers remittances have become a major source of external finance for developing countries and are particularly important in latin america and the caribbean where they are estimated to have reached 40 billion in 2004 not surprisingly academics policymakers and development practitioners in general have been devoting increasing attention to the potential development impact that these flows may have on receiving countries this paper contributes to this debate along four dimensions first it reviews the evolution of remittances flows to latin america using balance of payments data and compares these statistics with estimates of remittances income based on household surveys second the paper describes the varying profile of remittances recipients in ten latin american countries third the paper reviews the few macro and microeconomic studies that have estimated the impact of remittances on poverty and inequality finally the paper expands some of the existing works to investigate the extent to which that impact is different in latin america and varies across countries in the region

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

the production and inventory behavior of the american automobile industry understanding inventory movements is central to an understanding of business cycles this paper presents an empirical study of the behavior of inventories in the automobile industry it finds that inventory behavior is well explained by the assumption of intertemporal optimization with rational expectations the underlying cost structure appears to have substantial costs of changing production as well as substantial costs of being away from target inventory thelatter being a function of current sales given this cost structure whether inventory behavior is stabilizing or destabilizing depends on the characteristics of the demand process in the automobile industry inventory behavior is destabilizing the variance of production is larger than the variance of sales

globalization brain drain and development this paper reviews four decades of economics research on the brain drain with a focus on recent contributions and on development issues we first assess the magnitude intensity and determinants of the brain drain showing that brain drain or high skill migration is becoming a dominant pattern of international migration and a major aspect of globalization we then use a stylized growth model to analyze the various channels through which a brain drain affects the sending countries and review the evidence on these channels the recent empirical literature shows that high skill emigration need not deplete a country s human capital stock and can generate positive network externalities three case studies are also considered the african medical brain drain the exodus of european scientists to the united states and the role of the indian diaspora in the development of india s information technology sector we conclude with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for education immigration and international taxation policies in a global context

a general equilibrium view of global rebound effects abstract how do energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption the effects are generally called rebound effects in the literature previous studies have extensively focused on only part of the global economy to study rebound effects e g energy consumption by households one industry or one country however since the global economy is highly connected among countries these studies may lead to misleading conclusions if the rebound effects in the rest of the economy are significant recently saunders 2008 analyzes the demand side by taking the global economy as a whole wei 2007 also provides a general analysis by using cobb douglas production functions for the global economy the present article expands wei 2007 general analysis to explore the rebound effects from an economist s viewpoint by taking the global economy as a whole and applying general forms of production functions the analysis provides new insights related to rebound effects we highlight the role of energy supply as a determinant of rebound we show that the substitution between energy resources and other productive resources is more relevant to long term rebound we predict that long term rebound may be lower than short term rebound and we also discover that super conservation can happen in both the short term and the long term

water access farm productivity and farm household income sri lanka s kirindi oya irrigation system income differences attributed to differential access to water in irrigation systems are common prior studies of farm level water use in developing areas have typically been limited to using number of irrigations as a proxy for water use we develop a volumetric measure in sri lanka s kirindi oya irrigation system through recent farmer recall and use it in production function estimation and welfare analysis findings indicate substantial differences in water use by farms across seasons and across subareas of the irrigation district alternative plans for allocating additional water among seasons and subareas to elevate net rice revenues are examined the recommended plan predicts higher net returns from rice and greater equality in the distribution of household income than would be generated if the additional water were allocated based on the current allocation criteria concurrent application of fertilizer at recommended levels would further increase net revenues and reduce income inequality jel classifications q12 q15

migrant labor and farm technical efficiency in lesotho abstract the rural economy of lesotho is characterized by dependence on circular labor migration to south african mines and declining agricultural output per capita this paper attempts to improve the understanding of the relationship between circular labor migration and agricultural production by comparing the technical efficiency of farms that supply migrant laborers with that of farms that do not through analysis of the relative technical efficiency of these two farm categories conclusions are drawn concerning the likely impact of changing migration patterns on the agricultural sector

what is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in latin america workers remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries however little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality using a large cross country panel dataset the authors find that remittances in latin american and caribbean lac countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty these results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances household survey based estimates for 10 lac countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty reducing effects even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants

do sticky energy prices impact the time paths of rebound effects associated with energy efficiency actions abstract there is broad consensus in the policy and academic communities regarding the importance of energy efficiency actions in reducing energy requirements and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions however there is also a requirement to understand the extent to which the technically possible energy savings from exogenously introduced efficiency improvements might be eroded by knock on economic effects which will further change energy use these effects strongly influence the way this rebound phenomenon evolves over time while economy wide drivers of rebound effects are well understood there has been some controversy over the relative sizes of the short and long run rebound effects associated with energy efficiency improvements theoretical analysis predicted that rebound effects would always be greater in the long run than in the short run however numerical general equilibrium simulations have contradicted this result a principal driver of the simulation results is the fully flexible response of energy supply prices to shifting demand however in practice there are a number of reasons for arguing that energy prices are likely to be sticky in this paper we systematically explore the effects of energy price stickiness on the evolution of rebound effects we find that price stickiness is an important determinant of the time path of rebound effects and of their relative size in the short and long runs moreover there is considerable variation in the scale of rebound effects through time especially where short run rebound is lower than its long run counterpart however the most significant overall finding is that rebound reflects the system wide interaction between energy producing and energy using sectors

migration remittances and inequality estimating the net effects of migration on income distribution this paper examines the net effects of migration and remittances on income distribution potential home earnings of migrants are imputed as are the earnings of non migrants in migrant households in order to construct no migration counterfacmals to compare with the observed income distribution including remittances the earnings functions used to impute migrant home earnings are estimated from observations on non migrants in a selection corrected estimation framework which incorporates migration choice and labor force participation decisions for a sample of households in bluefields nicaragua migration and remittances increase income inequality when compared with the no migration counterfactual 1998 elsevier science b v

international migration self selection and the distribution of wages evidence from mexico and the united states we use the 1990 and 2000 mexican and u s population censuses to test borjas s negative selection hypothesis that the less skilled are those most likely to migrate from countries with high skill premia earnings inequality to countries with low skill premia earnings inequality we find that mexican immigrants in the united states are more educated than nonmigrants in mexico and were mexican immigrants to be paid according to current skill prices in mexico they would be concentrated in the middle of mexico s wage distribution these results are inconsistent with the negative selection hypothesis and instead suggest that there is intermediate selection of immigrants from mexico

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

inventories and asymmetric business cycle fluctuations in the uk a structural approach this paper investigates the movement of manufacturing inventories and production over the business cycle to arrive at an asymmetric structural equilibrium correction model initially cross correlation coefficients and deepness and steepness tests for skewness are utilized to present descriptive statistics of the time series cointegration analysis is performed on each disaggregate inventory by stage of production finished goods work in progress and raw materials with a set of explantory variables restricted cointegration vectors are added to the symmetric and non symmetric specifications of the structural equilibrium correction model these are compared by parameter constancy tests and one step ahead forecasts

are international remittances altruism or insurance evidence from guyana using multiple migrant households abstract while international remittances provide significant disposable income for many households in less developed countries there is no consensus on migrants remittance motivation two principal competing explanations for remittances are altruism and risk sharing this paper employs previously unanalyzed data to bring new evidence to the debate we develop a simple theoretical model that yields distinct testable predictions for each motivation among the model s testable predictions is differential remittance behavior by migrants from households with multiple versus single migrants under altruism and risk sharing our estimation finds significant differences in remittance behavior of multiple and single migrants and these differences support the altruistic incentive to remit

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

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

on the joint consumption and labour supply effects of migration on those left behind previous literature has investigated the effect of migration on remaining household members consumption or labour supply but has rarely examined them jointly when migration increases consumption

effects of attending preschool on adolescents outcomes evidence from china abstractthis study examines whether attending preschool enhances the cognitive abilities health and socialization of junior high school students in china using propensity score matching to control for a rich data set of student family and school characteristics i find that attending preschool enhances cognition among seventh graders but those gains fade among ninth graders the greatest benefits from preschool accrue to both seventh and ninth graders from economically disadvantaged families results for non cognitive categories are mixed and no evidence suggests superior health outcomes evidence also shows cognitive benefits among adolescents especially those economically disadvantaged who entered preschool earlier

understanding different migrant selection patterns in rural and urban mexico abstract the productive characteristics of migrating individuals emigrant selection affect welfare the empirical estimation of the degree of selection suffers from a lack of complete and nationally representative data this paper uses a dataset that addresses both issues the enet mexican labor survey which identifies emigrants right before they leave and allows a direct comparison to non migrants this dataset presents a relevant dichotomy it shows negative selection for urban mexican emigrants to the united states for the period 2000 2004 together with positive selection in mexican emigration out of rural mexico to the united states in the same period three theories that could explain this dichotomy are tested whereas higher skill prices in mexico than in the us are enough to explain half of the negative selection result in urban mexico its combination with network effects and wealth constraints fully accounts for positive selection in rural mexico

rebound effect of improved energy efficiency for different energy types a general equilibrium analysis for china abstract this paper explores the rebound effect of different energy types in china based on a static computable general equilibrium model a one off 5 energy efficiency improvement is imposed on five different types of energy respectively in all the 135 production sectors in china the rebound effect is measured both on the production level and on the economy wide level for each type of energy the results show that improving energy efficiency of using electricity has the largest positive impact on gdp among the five energy types inter fuel substitutability does not affect the macroeconomic results significantly but long run impact is usually greater than the short run impact for the exports oriented sectors those that are capital intensive get big negative shock in the short run while those that are labour intensive get hurt in the long run there is no backfire effect however improving efficiency of using electricity can cause negative rebound which implies that improving the energy efficiency of using electricity might be a good policy choice under china s current energy structure in general macro level rebound is larger than production level rebound primary energy goods show larger rebound effect than secondary energy goods in addition the paper points out that the policy makers in china should look at the rebound effect in the long term rather than in the short term the energy efficiency policy would be a good and effective policy choice for energy conservation in china when it still has small inter fuel substitution

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

bringing it all back home return migration and fertility choices summary return migration exerts a wide ranging influence upon the countries of origin of the migrants we analyze whether returnees adjust their fertility choices to the norms that prevail in their previous countries of destination using egyptian household level data egyptian men migrate predominantly toward other arab countries characterized by a higher number of children per woman relying on a two step instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity of the migration decisions we show that return migration has a positive and significant influence on marital childbearing

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

worker remittances and inequality in rural egypt this study analyzes the impact of international migration and remittances on the rural socioeconomic order in egypt the empirical findings show that age marital status employment size of land farmed and number of household males over 13 years are all statistically related to the decision of an individual to go work abroad the variables age size of land farmed employment as a student and number of household males over 13 years of age are all negatively related to the decision to work abroad while the influence of all the other variables is positive the study shows that the remittance earnings of migrants abroad had a negative impact on rural income distribution in egypt the data indicate that remittances from abroad worsened rural household income distribution both in gross terms and in per capita terms because they were earned mainly by upper income villagers regardless of whether households are ranked in terms of gross income or per capita income households in the top income quintile benefited the most from remittances the findings thus tend to confirm those of gilani khan and iqbal and of lipton to the effect that international remittances have a deleterious effect on rural income distribution because they are earned mainly by upper income villagers however it should be noted that the negative impact of remittances on rural income distribution was neither automatic nor inevitable in the once abroad category of migrants the poorest households did send virtually the same number of workers abroad as households in the upper income groups had households sending migrants abroad been as evenly distributed in the past it may be logically inferred that the impact of remittances on rural income distribution would also have been more equitable

the economy wide rebound effect from improved energy efficiency in swedish industries a general equilibrium analysis the objective of this paper is to analyse the rebound effect from increased efficiency in industrial energy use in sweden energy efficiency improvements can have significant micro and macroeconom

estimation of global rebound effect caused by energy efficiency improvement abstract rebound effect refers to the phenomenon that the actual reduction in energy use and emissions is less than the expected reduction caused by an energy efficiency improvement due to induced behavior adjustment of relevant economic agents this article studies the global rebound effects on energy use and related emissions caused by an energy efficiency improvement we adopt a global computable general equilibrium cge model to design a scenario of energy efficiency improvement which is compared to a business as usual bau scenario to identify the global rebound effect our results show very large rebound effect on energy use 70 and related emissions 90 in 2040 at the global level with regional and sectoral differences important determinants among others are induced labor movement among economic activities and labor supply and substitution elasticity between energy and other goods labor mobility has a marked impact on both rebound effects and on fuel mix the global rebound effect is still considerable even with a low substitution elasticity between energy and other goods the effect of capital accumulation over time contributes marginally to the global rebound effect as it is utilized to promote economic growth by using energy input more efficiently

evaluating the economic impact of international remittances on developing countries using household surveys a literature review abstract this literature review covers 50 recent empirical studies of the economic impact of international remittances on the developing world that are based on household survey data it begins by reviewing the considerable methodological problems confronting economic work on international remittances and then examines the strengths and weaknesses of various economic studies of the impact of remittances in the developing world on such outcomes as poverty and inequality health and education investment and savings labour supply and participation and economic growth it finds that while international remittances generally have a positive impact on poverty and health in the developing world remittances can have negative effects on labour supply education and economic growth

structural instability and the production smoothing model of inventories the production smoothing model of inventories implies that inventories labor inputs sales and factor input prices are cointegrated if sales and factor prices are i 1 with one cointegrating vector for each state variable held these propositions are tested in six nondurable goods industries all industries provide evidence of cointegration fewer quasi fixed factors are found than previous research often assumed estimates of cointegrating vectors provide implausible parameter estimates rank stability tests with fixed or seqentially chosen breakpoints indicate that the cointegrating matrix has unstable rank parameter estimates of cointegrating vectors do not provide much support for the production smoothing model of inventories

the impact of microfinance on energy access a case study from peripheral districts of lome togo this study seeks to understand the impact of microfinance on energy access in the peripheral districts of lome in togo we use descriptive statistics multiple regression propensity score matching

remittances schooling and child labor in mexico abstract this paper studies the effects of remittances from the u s on child labor and school attendance in recipient mexican households we identify these effects using the impact of the 2008 2009 u s recession on remittance receipts the methodology employed is a differences in differences strategy that compares households that were remittance recipients before the crisis with never recipient households to avoid possible selection problems we instrument for membership in the remittance recipient group we find that the negative shock on remittance receipts caused a significant increase in child labor and a significant reduction of school attendance

costs of energy efficiency mandates can reverse the sign of rebound abstract improvements in energy efficiency reduce the cost of consuming services from household cars and appliances and can result in a positive rebound effect that offsets part of the direct energy savings we use a general equilibrium model to derive analytical expressions that allow us to compare rebound effects from a costless technology shock cts to those from a costly energy efficiency standard ees we decompose each total effect on the use of energy into a direct efficiency effect direct rebound effect and indirect rebound effect we show which factors determine the sign and magnitude of each rebound from a cts is generally positive as in prior literature but we also show how a pre existing ees can negate the direct energy savings from the cts leaving only the positive rebound effect on energy use then we analyze increased stringency of an ees and we show exactly when the increased costs reverse the sign of rebound using plausible parameter values in this model we find that indirect effects can outweigh the direct effects captured in partial equilibrium models and that the total rebound from a costly ees can be negative

livelihoods and poverty the role of migration a critical review of the migration literature this review of the literature concludes that development studies have paid insufficient attention to labour migration and makes a plea to integrate analyses of migration within those of agricultural and rural development it emphasises that population mobility is much more common than is often assumed and that this has been so throughout human history in fact available material suggests that it is as likely that population mobility has decreased as that it has increased a review of empirical studies shows that it may not be possible to generalise about the characteristics of migrants or about the effects of migration on broader development inequality or poverty the review concludes that given the importance of migration for the rural livelihoods of many people policies should be supportive of population mobility and possibilities should be explored to enhance the positive effects of migration

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

energy rebound effect in china s industry an aggregate and disaggregate analysis abstract considering the crucial role of industrial sectors in energy conservation this paper investigates the impact of output growth on energy consumption in china s industrial sectors with an index decomposition model and the energy rebound effect in the industrial sectors with a panel data model using the annual data during 1994 2012 the empirical results indicate that first industrial output growth is proved to be the major factor in promoting industrial energy consumption while energy intensity reduction and structure shifts across industrial sub sectors play the dominant roles in slowing down industrial energy consumption second there does exist energy rebound effect in china s aggregate industry which ranges from 20 to 76 during 1995 2012 or 39 on average in particular the energy rebound effect in manufacturing is relatively smaller during the sample period i e 28 on average finally the energy rebound effect in both china s aggregate industry and manufacturing exhibit an overall decreasing trend over time

return migration and occupational choice evidence from albania this paper explores the impact of return migration on the albanian economy by analyzing the occupational choice of return migrants while explicitly differentiating between self employment as either own account work or entrepreneurship we find that the own account workers have characteristics closer to non participants in the labor market i e lower education levels while entrepreneurship is positively related to schooling foreign language proficiency and savings accumulated abroad furthermore compared to having not migrated return migrants are significantly more likely to be entrepreneurs showing the positive impact of migration on job creating activities in albania

international migration transfers of norms and home country fertility this paper examines the relationship between international migration and source country fertility the impact of international migration on source country fertility may have a number of causes including a transfer of destination countries fertility norms and an incentive to acquire more education it provides provide a rigorous test of the diffusion on of fertility norms using original and detailed data on migration the results provide evidence of a significant transfer of fertility norms from migrants to their country of origin a one percent decrease in the fertility norm to which migrants are exposed reduces home country fertility by about 0 3 percent for origin countries

school attendance child labour and remittances from international migration in el salvador abstract international migrant remittances can increase household budget and reduce liquidity constraint problems generating consumption and investment opportunities for recipient households in particular remittances can enable investing in children s human capital and reduce child labour key outcomes from the perspective of growth in a developing country using data for el salvador this article shows a a null or insignificant overall impact of remittances on schooling b a strong reduction of child wage labour in remittance recipient households and c an increase in unpaid family work activities for children in those households moreover the evidence shows important differences by gender and age of the child in consideration while girls seem to indeed increase school attendance upon remittance receipts by reducing labour activities boys do not benefit on average from higher schooling but some time substitution takes place favouring family work activities over paid jobs and among secondary sc

inventories sticky prices and the persistence of output and inflation post war business cycle fluctuations of output and inflation are remarkably persistent many recent sticky price models however grossly underpredict this persistence we assess whether adding inventories to a standard sticky price model raises the persistence of output and inflation for this addition we consider a shopping cost model in the model consumers find shopping activities costly and the cost of shopping depends on the stock of goods available in this context producers manage inventories to smooth production and to affect the cost of shopping we find that the shopping cost model generates a persistence for output and inflation that matches the persistence observed in the post 1985 us data

crossing the border self selection earnings and individual migration decisions many empirical studies on the determinants of international migration flows rely exclusively on macro data and do not account for migrants self selection we analyze a very interesting episode in international migration for which we are able to gather individual level data covering all relevant countries namely the exodus of ecuadorians to spain and the us in the aftermath of the economic collapse of 1999 specifically we produce selection corrected predictions of counterfactual individual earnings and use them to estimate a discrete choice migration equation that allows for correlated errors across destinations and a rich structure of migration costs we find that earnings significantly shape individual migration decisions even in an episode in which ecuadorians mostly chose spain where earnings were lower than in the us and they contribute to explaining the observed composition of migration flows moreover our estimates show that changes in earnings at a particular destination have a larger effect on destination choice conditional on migration than on the scale of migration

do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries summary few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world this paper fills this lacuna by constructing and analyzing a new data set on international migration remittances inequality and poverty from 71 developing countries the results show that both international migration and remittances significantly reduce the level depth and severity of poverty in the developing world after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration and controlling for various factors results suggest that on average a 10 increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2 1 decline in the share of people living on less than 1 00 per person per day after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances a similar 10 increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 3 5 decline in the share of people living in poverty

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

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

land use intensification potential in slash and burn farming through improvements in technical efficiency abstract much attention is being paid to find alternative land use options in slash and burn sab farming or forest fallow based shifting cultivation systems the conservation objective is often twofold that is to discourage farmers from expanding into the forest frontier and to reduce the ecological damage from burning plots options include the total abandonment of forest plots the adoption of productivity increasing green revolution type technologies and the application of modern evergreen agroforestry knowledge this paper evaluates another alternative the intensification of land use by improving technical efficiency in farming this involves the reduction of land clearing while at the same time maintaining crop output levels and the local and traditional low input technology the potential for such land use intensification is empirically assessed with ecological and socioeconomic household data from yucatan mexico the methodology is based on both parametric and nonparametric output and input distance functions in addition the sources of inefficiency are addressed the results of the analysis suggest that on and off farm labour diversification can play a key role to help shifting cultivating households to improve their technical efficiency in farming and thus to help to intensify land use furthermore while the empirical results point towards the positive effect of soil fertility mainly determined by the length of forest fallows on crop output levels farmers appear to overcome the ecological constraint of farming in less fertile soils by being more technically efficient

household food security and child nutrition the interaction of income and gender of household head abstract data from kenya and malawi suggest that food security and preschooler nutritional status are influenced by the interaction of income and gender of the head of household rather than simply one or the other not only is household food security influenced by total household income but the proportion of income controlled by women has a positive and significant influence on household caloric intake households were disaggregated not simply in male and female headed households but female headed households were further disaggregated into de jure legal head of household is a woman and de facto female headed households male head of household is absent more than 50 of the time in both kenya and malawi the de facto female headed households had the lowest income despite this low income preschoolers nutritional status was significantly better than in the higher income male headed and de jure female headed households the ability to improve nutritional status in a low income environment in the de facto female headed households is related to a combination of child feeding practices and other nurturing behavior the findings suggest that interventions that exploit incentives to invest in children can provide more immediate improvements in child health and nutrition where sustained income growth is possible only in the long term

migration remittances and male and female employment patterns little is known about the labor market impacts of workers remittances despite their magnitude in countries with considerable outmigration reports that families receiving international remittances severely curtail their work efforts are fairly common in the popular press e g robert frank 2001 yet we lack rigorous analyses of how male and female labor supplies respond to increases in remittance income to either support or refute these anecdotal observations according to the neoclassical model of labor leisure choice mark r killingsworth 1983 remittances a source of nonlabor income may lift budget constraints raise reservation wages and through an income effect reduce the employment likelihood and hours worked by remittance receiving individuals the receipt of remittances is usually preceded by the out migration of working aged household members however which may induce changes in the labor supply of nonmigrating household members in order to compensate for forgone income or to defray migration related expenses distinguishing the disruptive effect from the income effect of remittance inflows is problematic as most surveys do not contain detailed information on household outmigration and remittance receipt to the extent that these two effects are expected to have opposite impacts on labor supply however we can assess which effect dominates the impact of remittances on the decision to work has been previously examined by edgard rodriguez and erwin r tiongson 2001 in manila and by edward funkhouser 1992 in managua without accounting for the endogeneity of remittances with respect to labor supply they conclude that remittances reduce employment funkhouser also finds that remittances slightly increase self employment while informative these studies focus on the decision to work and do not consider that without altering employment rates remittances may change the hours worked and or the type of work performed in the receiving economy furthermore the impact may be different on male and female labor supplies and responsiveness to remittance income may vary from rural to urban areas using data from mexico a country with a large and growing remittance inflow we address the following questions how does the employment status and hours worked by men and women vary owing to international remittances do male and female labor supplies differ across various types of employment in rural versus urban areas due to higher remittance inflows

financing constraints and inventory investment a comparative study with high frequency panel data this study provides new evidence of the importance of financing constraints for explaining the dramatic cycles in inventory investment we compare the empirical performance of different financial variables coverage ratio cash stocks and cash flow used in previous research to test for the presence of financing constraints the comparison is undertaken in a common framework with an identical sample and high frequency quarterly firm panel data cash flow is much more successful than cash stocks or coverage in explaining the facts about inventory investment across firm size different inventory cycles and different manufacturing sectors

remittances and labor force participation in mexico an analysis using propensity score matching summary about 2 5 million mexicans migrated to the united states during 1997 2002 and 1 6 million of them sent remittances to their families did recipients change their labor force status in response to these remittances this question has been examined before unlike the previous studies we separate persistent from sporadic remittances and we use propensity score matching to measure differences in behavior we find limited evidence of labor force participation effects of persistent remittances which is broadly consistent with remittances being an integral part of household s income generation strategy

empirical analysis on energy rebound effect from the perspective of technological progress a case study of china s transport sector abstract energy rebound effect is a major issue in energy economics global energy and environmental problems have compelled the need for simultaneous attainment of economic development and energy conservation technological progress increases energy efficiency and saves energy but it also causes energy rebound effect which discounts the expected energy conservation china s transport sector is energy intensive therefore investigating rebound effect in china s transport sector has a very important significance for energy conservation and the formulation of related policies taking china s transport sector as a case study we used translog production function to measure the contribution rate of technological progress to output growth and estimated the rebound effect the results show that the average rebound effect was about 68 3 during 1981 2015 finally we provided relevant policy recommendations on the rebound effect based on the characteristics of energy use in china s transport sector

the impact of remittances on investment and poverty in ghana summary this paper analyzes the impact of internal remittances from ghana and international remittances from african or other countries on investment and poverty in ghana it has three findings first when compared to what they would have spent without the receipt of remittances households receiving remittances spend less at the margin on food second households receiving remittances spend more at the margin on three investment goods education housing and health third the receipt of remittances greatly reduces likelihood of household poverty these findings support the growing view that remittances can reduce poverty and increase investment in developing countries

frontier production functions and technical efficiency a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics abstract the modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades forsund lovell and schmidt 1980 and schmidt 1986 present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication this paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper

supply elasticity matters for the rebound effect and its impact on policy comparisons abstract we develop a model of the rebound effect which explicitly accounts for both the demand and supply sides of the energy sources we consider a transportation sector originally using a dirty fossil fuel and examine the relative effectiveness of alternative policies efficiency improvements in the dirty fuel technology sector e g cafe standards and technology shifts by partial adoption of a new clean technology e g low carbon fuel standards the model generates endogenous equilibrium quantities and prices for the dirty and clean fuels we characterize the magnitude of the rebound effect as a function of demand and supply elasticities and use the equilibrium values to compare policy options when the supply of the dirty fuel is inelastic we find that introducing a new technology with non zero emissions may actually increase the total level of emissions similar to the leakage effect a technology shift policy can perform better than an efficiency improvement policy in the dirty fuel sector only when the dirty fuel supply is sufficiently elastic the emission intensity of the new technology very low and the technology shift is greater than a threshold value using data for gasoline as a proxy for the dirty technology and several other cleaner technologies we show that these conditions are satisfied by a hypothetical zero emission technology but not by electric vehicles using the average us generation mix or the current us corn based e85 our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for the supply side in estimating the magnitude of the rebound effect and its impact on fuel consumption in a large scale policy implementation

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

a land of milk and honey with streets paved with gold do emigrants have over optimistic expectations about incomes abroad millions of people emigrate every year in search of better economic and social opportunities anecdotal evidence suggests that emigrants may have over optimistic expectations about the incomes they can earn abroad resulting in excessive migration pressure and in disappointment among those who do migrate yet there is almost no statistical evidence on how accurately these emigrants predict the incomes that they will earn working abroad in this paper the authors combine a natural emigration experiment with unique survey data on would be emigrants probabilistic expectations about employment and incomes in the migration destination their procedure enables them to obtain moments and quantiles of the subjective distribution of expected earnings in the destination country the authors find a significant underestimation of both unconditional and conditional labor earnings at all points in the distribution this underestimation appears driven in part by potential migrants placing too much weight on the negative employment experiences of some migrants and by inaccurate information flows from extended family who may be trying to moderate remittance demands by understating incomes

general equilibrium rebound from energy efficiency innovation abstract energy efficiency improvements rebound when economic responses undercut their direct energy savings i show that general equilibrium channels typically amplify rebound by making consumption goods cheaper but typically dampen rebound by increasing demand for non energy inputs to production and by changing the size of the energy supply sector improvements in the efficiency of the energy supply sector generate especially large rebound because they make energy cheaper in all other sectors quantitatively general equilibrium channels reduce rebound in u s consumption good sectors from 39 to 28 but increase rebound in the energy supply sector from 42 to 80

evidence of direct and indirect rebound effect in households in eu 27 countries abstract this research estimates the direct and indirect rebound effect of energy efficiency in households for the eu 27 countries the first twenty seven member states of the european union a hybrid methodology that combines econometric estimates environmental extended input output analysis and re spending models has been developed although most of the economies present values below 100 there are seven countries situated above this critical threshold by weighting individual estimates by gdp an average value for the overall eu 27 economy has been found between 73 62 and 81 16 these results suggest that the energy policy at the european level should be rethought if efficiency measures pursue reducing energy consumption and tackling climate change

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

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

a note on the econometric use of constant dollar inventory series abstract one dollar of finished goods inventories does not represent the same amount of physical goods as one dollar of sales when department of commerce constant dollar series are used this can cause seriously biased regression estimates

impact of energy efficiency gains on output and energy use with cobb douglas production function abstract a special issue of energy policy 28 2000 was devoted to a collection of papers edited by dr lee schipper the collection included a paper entitled a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes in which it was argued that the impact of fuel efficiency gains on output roughly gdp is likely to be relatively small by cobb douglas production function however an error in the analysis leads to under estimation of the long term impact this paper first provides a partial equilibrium analysis by an alternative method for the same case and then proceeds to an analysis on the issue in a two sector general equilibrium system in the latter analysis energy price is internalized both energy use efficiency and energy production efficiency are involved

remittances transaction costs and informality abstract recorded workers remittances to developing countries reached 167 billion in 2005 bringing increasing attention to these flows as a potential tool for development in this paper we explore the determinants of remittances and their associated transaction costs we find that recorded remittances depend positively on the stock of migrants and negatively on transfer costs and exchange rate restrictions in turn transfer costs are lower when financial systems are more developed and exchange rates less volatile the negative impact of transactions costs on remittances suggests that migrants either refrain from sending money home or else remit through informal channels when costs are high we provide evidence from household surveys supportive of a sizeable informal sector

migration networks and microenterprises in mexico are migration networks associated with lower capital costs or the alleviation of capital constraints we examine these questions with data measuring access to remittance flows among small scale entrepreneurs in mexico using a survey of more than 6000 self employed workers and small firm owners located in 44 urban areas of mexico we estimate the impact of attachment to migration networks on the level of capital investment the capital output ratio sales and profits of microenterprises the impact is identified from the geographic pattern of migration from mexico driven by the completion of rail lines in the early 1900s for the full sample of firms we find that migration is associated with higher investment levels and higher profits but not higher sales the strongest effects on investment are in the categories of automobiles tools and inventories when the sample is limited to firms in high capital sectors investment sales and profits all increase with attachment to the migration networks suggesting that attachment to the migration network alleviates capital constraints in those sectors

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

the relationships among energy consumption economic output and energy intensity of countries at different stage of development based on 3gr model the relationships between energy consumption economic effect and technical effect of countries at different stage of development developed developing and the least developed countries was figured out comparing the equivalent value of grec greo and grei during the period from 1996 to 2013 the diverse development laws in different kinds of countries was found the following conclusions were obtained 1 based on 3gr model there is a liner relationship between grec and greo or grei and an inverse relationship between grei and greo when the equivalent value of 1 greoi or 1 greii or 1 greci is a constant 2 the equivalent value of greo are in the following orders developed countries developing countries the least developed countries while that of grei have the opposite orders the orders of the equivalent value of grec are developed countries the least developed countries and developing countries from small to large the least developed countries own the largest potential to realize further development whether in economic expansion technical innovation or in optimize industrial structure while these potential in developed countries are the smallest and in developing countries are at the middle level the development in developing countries shows the most growth going forward 3 the change in energy consumption is codetermined by eo effect ei effect and their interactive effect eo effect shows the leading position among the three effects especially in developing countries and the least developed countries in developed countries ec change eo effect and ei effect are both change in a tight range while in developing countries and the least developed countries these ranges are rather large

international migration remittances and household investment evidence from philippine migrants exchange rate shocks how do households respond to overseas members economic shocks overseas filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 asian financial crisis appreciation of a migrant s currency against the philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas the estimated elasticity of philippine peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0 60 positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households child schooling and educational expenditure rise while child labour falls households also work more hours in self employment and become more likely to start relatively capital intensive household enterprises

green growth in oil producing african countries a panel data analysis of renewable energy demand renewable energy has been considered as the solution to the hydra headed problems of energy security energy access and climate change especially in africa in addition renewable energy sources such as the sun wind wave and waste abound in africa are in need of investment in order to provide both policy and investment guide this study investigates the drivers of renewable energy demand in oil producing african countries three panel data models a random effect model a fixed effects model and a dynamic panel data model are used to estimate renewable energy demand with a comprehensive set of determinants the estimation results indicate that the main drivers of renewable energy in oil producing african countries are real income per capita energy resource depletion per capita carbon emissions per capita and energy prices the study recommends that policies should encourage the consumption of commercial sources of renewable energy to attract the needed investments

remittances and vulnerability to poverty in rural mexico international remittances have been portrayed as the human face of globalization given their potential to alleviate poverty by directly increasing household income using a panel of rural households in mexico from october 1998 to november 2000 this study assesses whether this is in fact the case however rather than examining whether transfers income would reduce future consumption poverty we asked if transfers are likely to reach people whose conditions are prone to worsen in the future we used vulnerability to consumption poverty to quantify the extent to which risks and the more permanent disadvantages embedded in most rural livelihoods can translate into future declines in well being we found contrary to our expectations a negative and statistically significant relationship between the remittance of transfers including foreign remittances and the threat to future poverty that rural households could experience

gauging the performance of the linear quadratic inventory model the explanatory and predictive abilities of the infinite horizon linear quadratic inventory model are gauged using the flexible accelerator model as a baseline tests of explanatory power for six nondurables industries indicate that the flexible accelerator has superior explanatory power for inventories and output in the majority of industries tests of predictive ability during the late 1990s also support the superiority of the flexible accelerator model

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

a panel data study on spanish firms inventory investment this paper raises several questions about inventory investment of a sample of 172 big nonfinancial spanish companies inventory investment has been usually explained by two alternative theories the production smoothing model and the s s model first we provide a descriptive analysis based on industry level data to show some shortcomings of the first model then we test a flexible accelerator model using firm level data the results seem to show that inventory investment previous period inventories and sales are closely and significantly related this evidence although not conclusive rejects both the pure production smoothing model and the s s model at the same time our results confirm the view of a target inventory level and the plausibility of the so called stock adjustment model so that the optimal inventory holding buffers sales volatility

the brain drain and the world distribution of income abstract skilled emigration or brain drain from developing to developed countries is becoming the dominant pattern of international migration today such migration is likely to affect the world distribution of income both directly through the mobility of people and indirectly as the prospect of migration affects the rate of return to education in both the sending and receiving economies this migration pattern will therefore affect human capital accumulation and fertility decisions in both the sending and receiving economies this paper analyzes these effects in a dynamic two country model of the world economy where agents in both countries make optimal fertility and human capital decisions the implications of the analysis for the world distribution of income are derived in the light of recent empirical findings of the brain drain literature the analysis shows that the current trend towards predominantly skilled emigration from poor to rich countries may in the long run increase inequality in the world distribution of income as relatively poor countries grow large in terms of population in the short run however it is possible for world inequality to fall due to rises in gdp per capita in large developing economies with sufficiently low skilled emigration rates

the effects of restrictive south african migrant labor policy on the survival of rural households in southern africa a case study from rural swaziland confronted with high unemployment figures and widespread poverty among the black population one of the priorities of the first postapartheid government of south africa has been to combat poverty among its population by enlarging employment opportunities it is generally accepted that this policy will have a large impact on the number of foreigners called to work in south africa by taking swaziland where data were collected in 1990 as a case study this article investigates the impact on the capacity of swazi rural households to survive if the possibility for international labour migration should become constrained the paper first investigates whether common socioeconomic characteristics can be identified among homesteads whose survival is threatened next it investigates the possibilities and constraints for returning migrants to find employment in swaziland in the final section conclusions are presented on the prospects of swazi rural households to survive without migrant labour to south africa the main finding is that in the short run relatively young households with few working members and a weak economic position in the local rural economy are among the most vulnerable in the long run the survival of most swazi households with migrants in south africa is at stake bibliogr notes ref sum

the macroeconomic rebound effect in china the rebound effect measures the fraction of an energy efficiency improvement that is offset by increased energy consumption a rebound effect can arise at both the microeconomic level and the macroeconomic level the macroeconomic rebound effect measures the effect of an increase in energy efficiency on overall energy demand after markets adjust and re equilibrate at the macroeconomic level energy efficiency gains can increase energy consumption through two channels the macroeconomic price effect and the macroeconomic growth effect in this paper we econometrically estimate the macroeconomic energy rebound effect in china our results show that there is a statistically significant macroeconomic price rebound effect for china for each province and for the short run intermediate run and the long run we also find some evidence of a macroeconomic growth rebound in the short run and the intermediate run for some years either nation wide or for some provinces in china moreover for some years and some provinces we cannot reject backfire the rebound effect is an important phenomenon that the government of china should not neglect when making energy policy as it affects how improvements in energy efficiency translate into changes in energy consumption

return migration and the survival of entrepreneurial activities in egypt summary the literature shows that temporary international migrants have a high propensity to opt for an entrepreneurial activity upon return but the prospects of survival of these activities have not been explored we address this research question using longitudinal egyptian data we find that entrepreneurs migration experience significantly improves the chances of survival of their entrepreneurial activities adopting econometric techniques that control for return migrants nonrandom selection in unobservables we resort to a bivariate probit model and a two stage residual inclusion estimator using the rate of population growth and the real oil price as alternative instruments for migration

can the production smoothing model of inventory behavior be saved the production smoothing model of inventory behavior has a long and venerable history and theoretical foundations that seem very strong yet certain overwhelming facts seem not only to defy explanation within the production smoothing framework but actually to argue that the basic idea of production smoothing is all wrong most prominent among these is the fact that the variance of detrended production exceeds the variance of detrended sales this paper first documents the stylized facts then it derives the production smoothing model rigorously and explains how the model can be amended to make it consistent with the facts finally it reviews the theoretical and empirical evidence and tries to draw some tentative conclusions