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During the 1990s the Kagera region of Tanzania experienced a forced migration shock. A series of geographical barriers led to a higher concentration of forced migrants in some parts of the region relative to others, resulting in a natural experiment. Using panel data (pre and post forced migration shock), we find that greater exposure to the refugee shock resulted in Tanzanians having a lower likelihood of working outside the household as employees. However, employees more affected by the shock had a higher probability of being in professional occupations and being part of a pensions program.

Trade economists have long studied the effects of globalization on wage differences between workers with different levels of skill or education. 1 This literature has generally sought to link globalization to changes in the economy-wide skill premium. Attanasio, Goldberg, and Pavcnik (2004) and Gonzaga, Menezes Filho, and Terra (2006) are salient examples that investigate whether changes in sector-specific prices or tariffs, changes in skill composition within and across sectors, and movements in the skill premium are consistent with the predictions of workhorse trade models, such as the HeckscherOhlin model. However, there is little evidence directly establishing a causal effect of globalization on the skill premium. 2 More recently, a growing body of research has focused on trade’s differential effects across local markets within a country. 3 In this paper, we combine these two strands of literature by developing a theoretically consistent approach to studying the causal

For the role of the population of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) countries was given an assessment. In the years of independence (1991-2014), growth dynamics were formed of the population of the country and was identified influences to the demographic, social and economic factors. It was divided into groups of growth rate of territorial population of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Any geo-demographic news on the territory of Uzbekistan can be finding in Tashkent city and Tashkent region and in two directions: the extension to the south-west and east were based. It was analyzed the structure of population in the republic and it was scientifically based that the rate urban population was increased; on the other hand, the rate of rural population has been decreased. Urbanization rate of the territory of the Republic of Uzbekistan is divided into low, medium and high.

Using historical data on the size of state-specific Mexican birth cohorts and geographic migration networks between Mexican states and US metropolitan areas, I construct an instrumental variable that predicts decadal migration from Mexico to the United States. The intuition behind this identification strategy is that larger historical birth cohorts in Mexico yield more potential migrants once each birth cohort reaches prime migration age. I report evidence that Mexican immigration is associated with a decline in property crimes and an increase in aggravated assaults. The available evidence suggests that this is not an artifact of reduced crime reporting among immigrants.

A large theoretical and empirical literature suggests that the salience of network-based ties in contract enforcement under relation-based governance systems limits market expansion. This paper illustrates the incorporation of new agents into market exchange under conditions of informal contract governance using a case study of the cycle-rickshaw rental market in a city in central India. Our analytical model formalizes features of this market through a higher penalty of default for migrants that introduces a gap between the ex ante risk for out-of-network agents and the ex post risk. The model predicts a sorting equilibrium such that migrants are more likely to participate in the rental contract. We test this prediction using primary survey data with multi-dimensional measures of migrant status and find that it is a significant predictor of rental contract participation, even controlling for credit access and other variables that moderate the rickshaw driver's ability to own a cycle-rickshaw.

The relation between income and migration intentions can be monotonically decreasing, increasing, or inverse U-shaped, dependent on the level of migration cost relative to wealth and if individuals are credit constrained. Using unique individual level data, covering countries in three geographic regions – sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America – we show that migration intentions respond to individual wealth, and that the pattern differs across the country groups studied in a manner compatible with the predictions of our simple model. We also show that contentment with various dimensions of local amenities, such as public services and security, are key determinants of migration intentions.

Social networks have gained wider relevance in economics and other interdisciplinary sciences in recent era. Various literature and studies have been undertaken to assess the role and impact of social networks on migration. At one side it encourages migration and on other side to some extent it also acts as entry barrier and thus restricts migration if it is based on any caste, creed, religion or region. The literature on role of social network in migration is under explored as there is dearth of proper data source and is also difficult to evaluate. The present paper thus fills this gap. The paper makes an attempt to assess the applicability of network theory for the analysis of migration from Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai. The paper will unravel existing studies and literature across various disciplines on role of social networks in facilitating migration. To support the objectives and findings from literature, the study carry out a primary survey of 50 Auto-rickshaw and Taxi drivers at Andheri, Khar East, Chembur- Deonar and Jogeshwari in Mumbai. Snowball methodology has been used for selection of sites and study is solely based on primary data. Collected data were tabulated and analyzed with simple statistical tools. Finding of the study is that network positively affects migration decision by reducing transfer costs both in physical and monetary terms. Study by employing exhaustive literature review and field survey found that social networks encourage migration. Migration from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai is, to a large extent facilitated by social networks in case of auto and taxi drivers.

The global expansion of urban slums poses questions for economic research as well as problems for policymakers. We provide evidence that the type of poverty observed in contemporary slums of the developing world is characteristic of that described in the literature on poverty traps. We document how human capital threshold effects, investment inertia, and a “policy trap” may prevent slum dwellers from seizing economic opportunities offered by geographic proximity to the city. We test the assumptions of another theory—that slums are a just transitory phenomenon characteristic of fastgrowing economies—by examining the relationship between economic growth, urban growth, and slum growth in the developing world, and whether standards of living of slum dwellers are improving over time, both within slums and across generations. Finally, we discuss why standard policy approaches have often failed to mitigate the expansion of slums in the developing world. Our aim is to inform public debate on the essential issues posed by slums in the developing world.

This paper explores hypotheses of hierarchical migration using data from the Alaskan Arctic. We focus on migration of Iñupiat people, who are indigenous to the region, and explore the role of income and subsistence harvests on migration. To test related hypotheses we use confidential micro-data from the US Census Bureau’s 2000 Decennial Census of Population and Income and generate migration probabilities using a mixed multinomial and conditional logit model. Our findings are broadly consistent with Ravenstein’s (1885) early hypothesis of step-wise migration; we find evidence of step-wise migration, both up and down an urban and rural hierarchy. We also find that where migrants choose to live is a function of place, personal, and household characteristics.

Working away from home might bring higher earnings than working near home. However, the absence of parents due to work can have unexpected effects on children. This paper examines the effects of the temporary absence of parents on the well-being of children aged between 5 and 8 years old in Vietnam, using indicators of household poverty, per capita consumption expenditure, and children’s time allocation. The paper relies on OLS and fixed-effects regression and panel data from the Young Lives surveys in 2007 and 2009. It finds a positive correlation between parental absence and per capita expenditure. Parental absence tends to increase per capita expenditure on food rather than non-food expenditure. Regarding the way children spend their time, there are no statistically significant effects of parental absence.

This paper models how migration both influences and responds to differences in disease prevalence between cities, regions and countries, and show how the possibility of migration away from high-prevalence areas affects long-run steady state disease prevalence. We develop a dynamic framework where both migration and prevention behaviour respond to the prevalence of disease, to the costs of migration and of treatment, and to current and anticipated health regulations. The model treats disease prevalence as an endogenous consequence of other features of the areas concerned, notably their economic endowments. It explores how pressure for migration in response to differing equilibrium levels of disease prevalence causes countervailing differences in city characteristics, notably in land rents. Competition for scarce housing in low-prevalence areas can create pressures for segregation, with disease concentrated in high-prevalence "sinks". We show that multiple steady states may exist and explore their comparative static properties. In particular we find that migration can have positive health benefits, in that reductions in barriers to migration can reduce steady-state disease incidence in low-prevalence areas while having no impact on prevalence in high-prevalence areas. This may have important consequences for policy; in some circumstances, public health measures may need to avoid discouraging migration away from high-disease areas.

Poverty is one of the most serious challenges confronting paddy farmers worldwide, including those in Malaysia. Off-farm employment is an alternative strategy and has the potential to improve the income and well-being of the paddy farmers. This study assesses the off-farm employment decision among 500 paddy farmers in the Muda Agricultural Development Authority and Kemasin Semerak granary areas. Specifically, the study determines the relationship between the determinants of offfarm employment and the off-farm participation decision using descriptive analysis and logit regression methods. The results reveal that the farmers’ age, gender and number of dependants, as well as other income and the type of farm were the variables that influenced their likelihood to engage in off-farm employment. Evidently, the variables of farm size and level of education were insignificant in affecting off-farm participation.

For the four years since 2006, Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, has led the world in the receipt of foreign remittance as a proportion of GDP. Needless to say, key reasons for this are the low income levels in Tajikistan and the country's special relationship with Russia, which is enjoying rapid economic growth. Yet while interest in the relationship between migration and foreign remittance has existed for a long time, not many studies have looked at this region. This paper used household survey forms from two points in time to profile households in Tajikistan and international labour migration by Tajiks, and examined the relationship between household income levels in Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet republics, and foreign remittance being received from international labour migrants and the likelihood of migrants being supplied. It found no correlation between household income levels and amounts of money received from abroad, which suggests that altruistic models of the relationship between migration and remittance do not apply. Moreover, it also found that households with high incomes are more likely to supply migrants, indicating that international labour migration from Tajikistan may not be conductive to reducing poverty in that country.

This paper aims to introduce Migration Impact Assessment (MIA) as a new methodological tool to estimate the socio-economic impacts of migrants on local, regional or national economies. Two approaches are presented here, viz. empirical macro studies and meta-analytical studies. The overall results suggest a modestly positive impact of migration on the economies of host countries or regions.

Over the past few decades of economic reform, China's labor markets have been transformed to an increasingly market-driven system. China has two segregated economies: the rural and urban. Understanding the shifting nature of this divide is probably the key to understanding the most important labor market reform issues of the last decades and the decades ahead. From 1949, the Chinese economy allowed virtually no labor mobility between the rural and urban sectors. Rural-urban segregation was enforced by a household registration system called “hukou.” Individuals born in rural areas receive “agriculture hukou” while those born in cities are designated as “nonagricultural hukou.” In the countryside, employment and income were linked to the commune-based production system. Collectively owned communes provided very basic coverage for health, education, and pensions. In cities, state-assigned life-time employment, centrally determined wages, and a cradle-to-grave social welfare system were implemented. In the late 1970s, China's economic reforms began, but the timing and pattern of the changes were quite different across rural and urban labor markets. This paper focuses on employment and wages in the urban labor markets, the interaction between the urban and rural labor markets through migration, and future labor market challenges. Despite the remarkable changes that have occurred, inherited institutional impediments still play an important role in the allocation of labor; the hukou system remains in place, and 72 percent of China's population is still identified as rural hukou holders. China must continue to ease its restrictions on rural–urban migration, and must adopt policies to close the widening rural–urban gap in education, or it risks suffering both a shortage of workers in the growing urban areas and a deepening urban–rural economic divide.

Literally, it has been accepted that one of the major obstacles to Turkey’s EU membership is in population term. There has not been any enlargement process as large as Turkey’s population as a single state in EU history before. The enlargement in 2004 which includes 10 states involved 74 million people as whole member states while Turkey’s population is 72 million inhabitants in 2007 data which is only lower than Germany’s population in all EU member states. Thus, Turkey's accession would be different from previous enlargements because of the combined impact of high population. This study compares the population dynamics, working conditions, minimum wage rates and main macroeconomic indicators between Turkey and EU member states. Turkey has young generations compared to EU countries. In the comparison of age groups proportion in total population, 0-19 age group %21,9 in EU 27 and %36,5 in Turkey, 20-39 age group is %28 in EU 27 and %34,3 in Turkey, 40-59 age group is %27,9 in EU and %20,9 in Turkey, 60 and above age group is %22,1 in EU and %9,5 in Turkey. Thus, population dynamics of Turkey could make a contribution to offsetting the ageing of EU 27 societies if the membership would occur in the future. However, minimum wage rates in Turkey are lower than many EU member states but generally higher than EU member states located in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus, immigration possibilities from Turkey can be expected to Western European Countries, but not the same direction to Central and Eastern Europe Countries. Furthermore, the process in macroeconomic indicators will be a determinant in immigration expectations while Turkey’s GDP has been grown faster than EU level recently.

From a cost-benefit perspective, things don’t look good for migrants all over the world, especially in Europe. EU nations are tightening border controls, raising red-tape barriers to legal migration, reducing the length of work permits, and shutting off access to the social welfare system. Some countries have closed the door to both work and social assistance. Other nations think that the “boat is full”, that there are too many migrants increasing unemployment, abuse the welfare system and take jobs from natives. With all these, Europe is a place where migration is especially useful from an economic perspective. European citizens are not mobile and there are large productivity differences across and within countries. Spatial arbitrage by mobile workers – migrants – reduces the economic burden of these rigidities. This article comes in shedding a light unto this subject.

Migration is often seen as a negative cause in the economy. Stereotypes portraying migrants as ‘stealing our jobs’ or ‘scrounging off the taxpayer’ abound in sections of the media and public opinion, especially in times of recession. This paper seeks to broaden and rebalance perceptions of migration to reflect a more complex and highly variable reality. Movement has a huge potential for improving human development. Our vision of development as promoting people’s freedom to lead the lives they choose recognizes mobility as an essential component of that freedom. Also, we want to emphasize the role of migration during history and the benefits in shaping the world as it is now, with future perspective.

This paper analyzes the contribution of the minimum wage to the well documented rise in earnings inequality in Mexico between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. We find that a substantial part of the growth in inequality, and essentially all of the growth in inequality in the bottom end of the distribution, is due to the steep decline in the real value of the minimum wage. (JEL J31, J38, O15, O17, O18, R23)

Paper purpose – The present paper aims at analyzing the internal migration phenomenon in Romania between 1990 and 2008, from quantitative perspective in order to provide a comprehensive image of the phenomenon that can represent an adequate frame for further research on the subject. Approach/method – The present paper is based on a descriptive analysis of the internal migration phenomenon in Romania in the mentioned period. This was accomplished by using different statistical methods of analysis with the aim to process the data identified in the “Statistical Yearbook of Romania” – 2008 and 2009 editions, provided by the National Institute of Statistics. Findings – The conducted analysis on the internal migration phenomenon in Romania between 1990 and 2008 revealed an oscillatory evolution of it during the analysed period and a prevailing presence of women and of persons aged between 20 and 34. Originality/value – The value of the paper consists in the descriptive analysis of the internal migration phenomenon in Romania accomplished for the 19-year period, respectively 1990-2008 and in its approach and presenting methods.

This paper focuses on estimating interregional human capital migration flows in Spain, based on the assumption of key hypothesis on data and temporal characteristics of educated population migration flows. The results point to the increasing intensity of medium and high educated gross migration flows and confirm Madrid, the Basque Country and Catalonia as the three main independent poles of attraction and emission for educated migrants. Likewise, there is a reasonable concordance between education levels of immigrants and the needs for educated workers in Spanish regions. However, the average amount of years of study within the active population in the region is increasing while that of the immigrants remains unaltered, thus immigration seemed not to be a key factor in reducing regional inequalities in human capital endowments.

This research was carried out to appraise the influence of fertility and migration on the age-sex population structure of Lagos State, Nigeria. Respondents were randomly selected and given questionnaire to fill with regards to fertility and migration trends in the study area. Using partial correlation and multiple regression analyses, we determined the influence of migration and fertility on the age structure of the population. The combined effects of the partial correlation of fertility and migration were 0.66 (males) and 0.79 (females). The regression analyses yielded influence of fertility of 9.6 and 11.7 for males and females respectively, which far outstrips the influence of migration of 6.4 and 1.5 for males and females respectively on the age-sex structure. Also, the base constant was –5.1 for females and –3.2 for males i.e. the minimum change in age of male and female populations that would occur before the influence of fertility and migration become noticeable. Finally, the socio-economic implications of the age-sex structure were highlighted.

“Fuga de cérebros" é conhecida na literatura como emigração de pessoas relativamente mais qualificadas de regiões subdesenvolvidas para regiões desenvolvidas. A partir de indicadores que consideram o impacto da escolaridade sobre a produtividade, este trabalho busca identificar a existência de “fuga de cérebros" dos estados brasileiro em direção a São Paulo, estado economicamente mais desenvolvido do Brasil. Os principais resultados encontrados indicam que: i) os principais estados que registraram "fuga" de capital humano foram Rio de Janeiro e Rio Grande do Sul; ii) não existe perda de capital humano da região Nordeste para São Paulo; e iii) as regiões Norte e Centro-Oeste, apesar de apresentarem baixas taxas de migração, se enquadram perfeitamente no conceito de "fuga de cérebros". Por fim, vale ressaltar que as unidades da federação com mais responsabilidade na emigração em direção a São Paulo não registram perda de produtividade causada pela emigração de pessoas qualificadas.

We analyze the effects of the increase in China’s import competition on Mexican domestic and international migration. We exploit the variation in exposure to competition from China, following its accession to the WTO in 2001, across Mexican municipalities and estimate the effect of international competition on the individual decision to migrate. Controlling for individual and municipality features, we find that individuals living in municipalities more exposed to Chinese import competition are more likely to migrate to other municipalities within Mexico, while a negative effect is found on the decision to migrate to the US. In particular, we find that Chinese import competition reduces migrants’ negative self-selection: the rising international competition lowers the likelihood of low-educated, low-income people to migrate to the US, by making them more financially constrained. (Less)

Expectations of migration and mobility steadily increasing in the longer term, which have a long currency in migration theory and related social science, are at odds with the latest US research showing a marked decline in internal migration rates. Given the similarity in demographic, economic and social trends between the USA and the UK, this paper reports the results of research that investigates whether the latter has been experienced any similar change in more recent decades. Using the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS) of linked census records, it examines the evidence provided by its 10-year migration indicator, with particular attention to a comparison of the first and latest decades available, 1971-1981 and 2001-2011. This suggests that, as in the USA, there has been a marked reduction in the level of shorter-distance (less than 10km) moving that has involved almost all types of people. In contrast to this and to US experience, however, the propensity of people to make longer-distance address changes between decennial censuses has declined much less, though the 2.6% fall between the 1970s and the 2000s may be an underestimate owing to the inclusion of moves to and from university in the latest decade. This finding is consistent with the results of a companion study which analysed data on migration between the health areas of England and Wales (Champion and Shuttleworth, 2015). There is therefore a strong case for now probing the causes of the sharp reduction in shorter-distance moving in Britain as well as the USA, as well as for investigating why the two countries differ in terms of their experience of longer-distance migration trends.

This paper is prompted by the widespread acceptance that the rates of inter-county and inter-state migration have been falling in the USA and sets itself the task of examining whether this decline in migration intensities is also the case in the UK. It uses the inter-area migration matrices available for England and Wales from the National Health Service Central Register (NHSCR) which provides continuous monitoring since the 1970s by broad age group. The main methodological challenge, arising from changes in the geography of health areas for which the inter-area flows are given, is addressed by adopting the lowest common denominator of 80 areas. Care is also taken to allow for the effect of business cycles in producing short-term fluctuations on migration rates and to isolate the effect of a sharp rise in rates for 16-24 year olds in the 1990s, which is presumed to be related to the expansion of the university sector. The findings suggest that, unlike for the USA, there has not been a substantial decline in the intensity of internal migration between the first two decades of the study period and the second two. While there was a 3 per cent reduction in the overall rate of migration between the regions of England and Wales between 1975-1990 and 1996-2011 (omitting the 16-24s), the rate for within-region moves between areas was some 10 per cent higher in the latter period. The main evidence for decline relates to particular age groups of between-region migration, where the rate for those aged 65 and over shrank by a quarter and that for 0-15 year olds was down by a tenth. In general, however, if there has been any major decline in the intensity of address changing in England and Wales, it can only be for the shortest-distance (within area) moves that the NHSCR does not record.

This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms' behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors' inter-regional mobility) with firm-level data (providing information on firms' innovation inputs and behaviour) a robust identification strategy makes it possible to shed new light on the geographical mobility-innovation nexus. The analysis of English firms suggests that firm-level heterogeneity - largely overlooked in previous studies - is the key to explain the innovation impact of inter-regional mobility over and above learning-by-hiring mechanisms. A causal link between inflows of new inventors into the local labour market and innovation emerges only for firms that make the use of external knowledge sources an integral part of their innovation strategies.

We study the relationship between geography and growth. To do so, we first develop a dynamic spatial growth theory with realistic geography. We characterize the model and its balanced growth path and propose a methodology to analyze equilibria with different levels of migration frictions. We bring the model to the data for the whole world economy at a 1º times 1º geographic resolution. We then use the model to quantify the gains from relaxing migration restrictions as well as to describe the evolution of the distribution of economic activity in the different migration scenarios. Our results indicate that fully liberalizing migration would increase welfare more than three-fold and would significantly affect the evolution of particular regions in the world. We then use the model to study the effect of a spatial shock. We focus on the example of a rise in the sea level and find that coastal flooding can have an important impact on welfare by changing the geographic-dynamic path of the world economy.

We analyse whether migration is an adaptation that households employ to cope with climate in Ghana and Nigeria. If migration is part of the present adaptation portfolio of households in developing countries, it is reasonable to expect that it will also be an adaptation to future climate change. It is important to stress that we are interested in long-term climatic conditions rather than in short-term weather fluctuations. The data to test these predictions are drawn from two different household surveys: the Nigeria General Household Survey and the Ghana Living Standard Survey. We find a hill-shaped relationship between temperature in the dry sea son and the propensity to migrate in households that operate farms. We also find a significant hill-shaped relationship between precipitations in the wet seasons and the propensity to migrate in farm households. Climate has instead no significant impact on the propensity to migrate in non-farm households. Climate change scenarios generated by General Circulation model reveal that, ceteris paribus, migration may decline in Ghana and in Nigeria.

In this paper we present and confront the main comparative static results - effects of labor supply, demand and institutional wage movements - of the (a) basic two-sector model in six different scenarios: free market; partial (one-sector) coverage with perfect intersector mobility; partial (one-sector) coverage with imperfect mobility (Harris-Todaro); multiple (two-sector) coverage with imperfect mobility (Bhagwati-Hamada); partial (one-sector) coverage with affiliation restrictions in the covered sector; partial (one-sector) coverage with limited employment generation ability in the traditional uncovered sector.

Since the early 1990s, at least 600,000 Albanians have availed themselves of the option of temporarily or permanently emigrating. Although there is no denying that the consequences of large-scale emigration and the related return flow of money do have an impact on Albanian society, the question is, how? Drawing on the returns to a survey conducted in a border district in south-eastern Albania in late 2002, including a sample of 1,315 households, this paper assesses some of the basic features of remittances - recipients, channels, frequency, forms and use - in a society that has recently become a source of substantial flows of out-migration.

Resume THE YOUNG ADULTS RETURN MIGRANTS : AN ENERGY FOR REGIONSDynamisme, creativite, implication, voici plusieurs qualites qui sont regulierement mises de l’avant par les organisations vouees au developpement. Des jeunes migrants semblent detenir plusieurs de ces qualites, particulierement ceux qui reviennent dans leur milieu d’origine. Ces qualites sont ressorties en comparant les migrants de retour avec les individus qui ne sont jamais partis de leur region. Cette comparaison s’est faite sur la base des projets qu’ils ont realises, de leur implication dans leur milieu et de leur interet face a leur environnement de vie. La recherche realisee au Quebec montre que les migrants de retour, dans les regions les plus eloignees des grands centres urbains, se sont reveles des acteurs importants dans leur milieu de vie et, de ce fait meme, peuvent contribuer au developpement de leur collectivite et de leur region.

During the last couple of decades, migratory movements in Chile have been minimal. Regions are far from achieving equality in per capita income, and migration has not been an equalizing force. Hence, there is marked persistence in regional inequity. This

The present article studies migration rates in between andalucian provincies and also between them and the rest of Spain. Using administrative data from Spanish Social Security, we are able to identify not only permanent migrants but also those who migrate only to do a temporary job during a short term period. We find that migration in Andalucia is mainly in between andalucian provincies although, when we control by distance, the main destinations are Madrid and the Baleares islands. Moreover, these flows are higher for males and highly qualified workers. We estimate a model for the probability of migrating and find that andalucian workers go mainly to provincies with relatively high levels of income, higher real wages and low home prices. We also obtain that the differences in unemployment rates between the origin and the destination is a fundamental motivation of the probability of migrating.

In this paper we study how the migration movements powers the inequalities in the human capital acquisition among more and less developed regions. To that end, we consider that migration is a familiar decision derived from maximising the familiar utility function. The main hypothesis infers that welfare depends, on one hand, on monetary variables such as the salary of the household head or being part of social programs (milk glass or breakfast), and on the other hand, on variables related to those services that improve the health status and educational level of the children. This study is realized for Peru using the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS), 2000.

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the migration processes that have been occurring in Chile between 1977-1982 and 1987-1992, as a market mechanism to re-allocate labor among regions. Using traditional consumer theory, a model is developed for a migrant who is evaluating migration. Secondly, this model is estimated, with cross section aggregate data, for both periods using a logit formulation. The results indicate that there is a strong force in the Chilean regional labor market, which serves to concentrate the workforce around the largest populated region of the country. Finally, regional labor markets are simulated to show that migration forces are very weak to arbitrage regional wages and unemployment rate and specific policy is required to promote balanced development across Chilean regions.

The U.S.-Mexico border region has experienced substantial economic growth over the last two decades; nonetheless, employment and wage growth has been uneven across the border cities with a high maquiladora presence. We hypothesize that these growth differences can be traced to relative labor union power. Using microdata from the 1998 National Urban Employment Survey, we find evidence of job queuing in Mexico’s maquiladoras. Queuing seems to be stronger in cities with powerful labor unions such as Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo, but it is weaker in cities where union strength is minimal such as Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana.

This paper investigates the impact of land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of China's rural residents. A simple model first frames the relationship among these variables and the probability that a reallocation of land will occur in the following year. After first demonstrating that a village leader's support for administrative land reallocation carries with it the risk of losing a future election, the paper exploits election-timing and village heterogeneity in lineage group composition and demographic change to identify the effect of land security. In response to an expected land reallocation in the following year, the probability that a rural resident migrates out of the county declines by 2.8 percentage points, which accounts for 17.5 percent of the annual share of village residents, aged 16 to 50, who worked as migrants during the period. This finding underscores the potential importance of secure property rights for facilitating labor market integration and the movement of labor out of agriculture.

A “poverty trap” can be understood as a set of self-reinforcing mechanisms whereby countries start poor and remain poor: poverty begets poverty, so that current poverty is itself a direct cause of poverty in the future. The idea of a poverty trap has this striking implication for policy: much poverty is needless, in the sense that a different equilibrium is possible and one-time policy efforts to break the poverty trap may have lasting effects. But what does the modern evidence suggest about the extent to which poverty traps exist in practice and the underlying mechanisms that may be involved? The main mechanisms we examine include S-shaped savings functions at the country level; “big-push” theories of development based on coordination failures; hunger-based traps which rely on physical work capacity rising nonlinearly with food intake at low levels; and occupational poverty traps whereby poor individuals who start businesses that are too small will be trapped earning subsistence returns. We conclude that these types of poverty traps are rare and largely limited to remote or otherwise disadvantaged areas. We discuss behavioral poverty traps as a recent area of research, and geographic poverty traps as the most likely form of a trap. The resulting policy prescriptions are quite different from the calls for a big push in aid or an expansion of microfinance. The more-likely poverty traps call for action in less-traditional policy areas such as promoting more migration.

We study urban Chinese employers' preferences between workers with and without a local residence permit (hukou) using callback information from an Internet job board serving private sector employers. We find that employers prefer migrant workers to locals who are identically matched to the job's requirements; these preferences are especially strong at low skill levels. We argue that migrants' higher work hours and effort help to account for employers' preferences, and present evidence that efficiency wage and intertemporal labor substitution effects might explain these hours/effort gaps.

Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an $8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to temporarily out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22% of households to send a seasonal migrant, their consumption at the origin increases significantly, and treated households are 8-10 percentage points more likely to re-migrate 1 and 3 years after the incentive is removed. These facts can be explained qualitatively by a model in which migration is risky, mitigating risk requires individual-specific learning, and some migrants are sufficiently close to subsistence that failed migration is very costly. We document evidence consistent with this model using heterogeneity analysis and additional experimental variation, but calibrations with forward-looking households that can save up to migrate suggest that it is difficult for the model to quantitatively match the data. We conclude with extensions to the model that could provide a better quantitative accounting of the behavior.

It is difficult to determine whether ghettos are good or bad, partly because racial segregation may have some effects that are unobservable. To overcome this challenge, we present a migration choice model that allows for estimating the overall effects of racial segregation. The key idea underlying our empirical approach is that if segregation indeed has a negative overall effect, migrants should be willing to give up some earnings to avoid living in segregated cities. Using decennial census data from 1980 to 2000, we provide new evidence that ghettos are bad. It is shown that both black and white migrants prefer to live in less segregated cities. For example, for a one-percentage-point reduction in the dissimilarity index, the estimated marginal willingness to pay of blacks is $436 (in 1999 dollars) in 2000. Among whites, this marginal willingness to pay is $301.

The paper discusses the issue of an economic distance and its significance in modeling phenomena occurring in regional space. Economic distances between regions were deter-mined and their influence on internal migration flows in Poland in the period 2000-2010 was examined. The period before Poland’s accession to the EU, as well as two periods re-ferring to the changes in economic trend and the intensity of domestic migrations, was considered. The economic distance is one of the most significant determinants of internal migration flows. In comparison to the geographical distance, it undergoes changes in time and space. Furthermore it affects the intensity of flows between regions in the opposite di-rection. Higher economic distance results in more intensive interactions between regions.

Immigrants and ethnic minorities tend to have lower life satisfaction than majority populations. However, current understanding of the drivers of these gaps is limited. Using a rich, nationally representative data set with a large sample of ethnic minorities and matched neighbourhood characteristics, we test whether first and second generation minorities experience lower life satisfaction once accounting for compositional differences and whether, specifically, neighbourhood deprivation impacts their wellbeing. We further investigate whether a larger proportion of own ethnic group in the neighbourhood improves satisfaction. We find life satisfaction is lower among ethnic minorities, and especially for the second generation, even controlling for individual and area characteristics. Neighbourhood concentration of own ethnic group is, however, associated with higher life satisfaction for Black Africans and UK born Indians and Pakistanis. The effect for Black Africans may stem from selection into areas, but findings for Indians and Pakistanis are robust to sensitivity tests.

Working away from home might bring higher earnings than working near home. However, the absence of parents due to work can have unexpected effects on children. This paper examines the effects of the temporary absence of parents on the well-being of children aged 5–8 years old in Vietnam, using indicators of household poverty, per capita consumption expenditure, and child time allocation. The paper relies on OLS and fixed-effects regression and panel data from the Young Lives surveys in 2007 and 2009. It finds a positive correlation between parental absence and per capita expenditure. Parental absence tends to increase per capita food expenditure instead of per capita non-food expenditure. Regarding the way children spend their time, there are no statistically significant effects of parental absence.

We exploit the increase in immigration flows into western European countries that took place in the 2000s to assess whether immigration affects crime victimization and the perception of criminality among European natives. Using data from the European Social Survey, the Labour Force Survey and other sources, we provide a set of fixed effects and instrumental variable estimations that deal with the endogenous sorting of immigration by region and with the sampling error in survey based measures of regional immigration shares, whose implications in terms of attenuation bias are investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Our empirical findings show that an increase in immigration does not affect crime victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear of crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with the natives' unfavourable attitude toward immigrants. Our results reveal a misconception of the link between immigration and crime among European natives.

Over the course of China's economic reforms, a pronounced divergence in the labor force participation patterns of rural and urban elders emerged – rural elders increased their rates of participation while urban elders reduced theirs. In this project, based on the data of the Chinese population censuses of 1982 and 2000, we employ a two-stage procedure to take into account the endogeneity of the residency and labor force participation decisions of older persons. We find that the effect of coresidency with adult children on the labor force participation of older adult differs by urban vs. rural residence. In 1982, the LFPR of urban elders who coresided with their adult children were significantly higher than those who did not coreside. By 2000, this effect completely disappeared. In contrast, in rural areas, coresidency with adult children had a large and significant negative effect on the labor force participation of both male and female elders. This effect diminished only slightly over the reform period. Finally, we decompose the changes over time in elders' labor force participation decisions and find that the response effect for all groups (male and female, urban and rural) is positive, such that, holding the levels of demographic and economic variables constant, each group of elders would have had higher rates of participation in 2000 than in 1982. The remarkable divergence in urban and rural elders' labor force participation trends are due to differences in the relative sizes of their attribute and response effects.

Initially, economic development increases resistance because migration of people to urban areas in developing countries increases incomes, crowding and the use of antibiotics. Also, developing countries often don't require prescriptions or distribute high quality antibiotics. In developed countries, antibiotic resistance often falls or there is a decline in the rate of growth of resistance because infections decline with improvements in water quality, sanitation, housing and nutrition. However, in developed countries most antibiotics are used to treat food animals rather than humans. The use of antibiotics to treat food animals creates a risk that the effectiveness of antibiotics to treat humans will be reduced. However, evidence seems to indicate that antibiotic use in animals has had little effect on antibiotic resistance in humans.

In our paper we have used the New Economics of Labor Migration framework to trace the complex linkages that exist among migration remittances and agricultural productivity [in China]. Constraints in the operation of on-farm labor and capital or insurance markets (or institutions) provide households with a motivation to migrate and distort on-farm operations when labor leaves. In our household sample the net impact of migration and remittances on maize production is negative. (EXCERPT)

This paper addresses three issues that are central to understanding the effects of the transition in China from central planning to a more market-oriented economic system. First, what have been the consequences of the economic reforms for the distribution of income in urban areas? Second, what has happened to the incidence of urban poverty? Third, have government policies helped to diminish or accentuate urban poverty and inequality? Answers to these questions are based on a comparison of two national sample surveys conducted in 1988 and 1995.