Diasporas Beine, Michel; Docquier, Frédéric; Özden, Çağlar
Journal of development economics,
05/2011, Volume:
95, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms, both of which are affected by the presence of a diaspora abroad. In this paper, we analyze how ...existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current bilateral migration flows. Our analysis exploits a bilateral data set on international migration by educational attainment from 195 countries to 30 OECD countries in 1990 and 2000. Based on simple micro-foundations and controlling for various determinants of migration, we found that diasporas increase migration flows and lower their average educational level. Interestingly, diasporas explain majority of the variability of migration flows and selection. This suggests that, without changing the generosity of family reunion programs, education-based selection rules are likely to have moderate impact. Our results are highly robust to the econometric techniques, accounting for the large proportion of zeros and endogeneity problems.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Large Japanese banks often engaged in sham loan restructurings that kept credit flowing to otherwise insolvent borrowers (which we call zombies). We examine the implications of suppressing the normal ...competitive process whereby the zombies would shed workers and lose market share. The congestion created by the zombies reduces the profits for healthy firms, which discourages their entry and investment. We confirm that zombie-dominated industries exhibit more depressed job creation and destruction, and lower productivity. We present firm-level regressions showing that the increase in zombies depressed the investment and employment growth of non-zombies and widened the productivity gap between zombies and non-zombies.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
We employ a gravity framework to evaluate the importance of transport infrastructure in determining the tourism attractiveness of destinations. The analysis is based on a panel data set of bilateral ...tourism flows among 28 countries over the decade 1990–2000. We find that, on top of tourism infrastructure and other classical determinants, transport infrastructure is a significant determinant of tourism inflows into a destination. Disaggregated continent-wise analysis reveals that the sensitiveness of tourism flows to transport infrastructure does vary, depending on origins and destinations. We also find evidence of repeated tourism around the world, the more so from high-income origins and to high-income destinations.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Using U.S. Census data for 1990 to 2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on U.S. wages. We look for effects of the agreement by industry and by geography, measuring each industry's vulnerability to ...Mexican imports and each locality's dependence on vulnerable industries. We find evidence of both effects, dramatically lowering wage growth for blue-collar workers in the most affected industries and localities (even for service-sector workers in affected localities, whose jobs do not compete with imports). These distributional effects are much larger than aggregate welfare effects estimated by other authors.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
I study Los Angeles Metro Rail's effects using panel data on bilateral commuting flows, a quantitative spatial model, and historically motivated quasi-experimental research designs. The model ...separates transit's commuting effects from local productivity or amenity effects, and spatial shift-share instruments identify inelastic labor and housing supply. Metro Rail connections increase commuting by 16% but do not have large effects on local productivity or amenities. Metro Rail generates $94 million in annual benefits by 2000 or 12–25% of annualized costs. Accounting for reduced congestion and slow transit adoption adds, at most, another $200 million in annual benefits.
We propose a new methodology that does not assume a prior specification of the statistical properties of the measurement errors and treats all sources as noisy measures of some underlying true value. ...The unobservable true value can be represented as a weighted average of all available measures, using weights that must be specified a priori unless there has been a truth audit. The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) survey jobs are linked to Social Security Administration earnings data, creating two potential annual earnings observations. The reliability statistics for both sources are quite similar except for cases where the SIPP used imputations for some missing monthly earnings reports.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
This study examines when established firms participate in corporate venture capital (CVC). We build on the resource-based view of interfirm collaboration and emphasize the strategic flexibility of ...CVC relationships. We use longitudinal data on 477 firms from 1990 to 2000 to test our hypotheses. We find that firms in industries with rapid technological change, high competitive intensity and weak appropriability engage in greater CVC activity. We also show that firms that possess strong technological and marketing resources and resources developed from diverse venturing experience engage in greater CVC activity. Finally, we find that these firm resources moderate the influence of the observed industry effects in paradoxical ways.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Conventional hedonic techniques for estimating the value of local amenities rely on the assumption that households move freely among locations. We show that when moving is costly, the variation in ...housing prices and wages across locations may no longer reflect the value of differences in local amenities. We develop an alternative discrete-choice approach that models the household location decision directly, and we apply it to the case of air quality in US metro areas in 1990 and 2000. Because air pollution is likely to be correlated with unobservable local characteristics such as economic activity, we instrument for air quality using the contribution of distant sources to local pollution—excluding emissions from local sources, which are most likely to be correlated with local conditions. Our model yields an estimated elasticity of willingness to pay with respect to air quality of 0.34–0.42. These estimates imply that the median household would pay $149–$185 (in constant 1982–1984 dollars) for a one-unit reduction in average ambient concentrations of particulate matter. These estimates are three times greater than the marginal willingness to pay estimated by a conventional hedonic model using the same data. Our results are robust to a range of covariates, instrumenting strategies, and functional form assumptions. The findings also confirm the importance of instrumenting for local air pollution.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
The intent of this research is to explore changes in US rural poverty rates from 1990 to 2000. Using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) I focus on spatial variations in the role of tourism and ...recreation in changing poverty rates. Results suggest that tourism and recreation as I have measured it play a small role in explaining changes in poverty rates and there is limited spatial variation. This result challenges the notion that the promotion of tourism and recreation as a rural economic development strategy results in low paying inferior job opportunities.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This paper presents empirical evidence on immigration flows into the OECD countries during the period 1990–2000. Our results indicate that network effects are strong, but vary between different ...groups of welfare states and between countries according to the type of immigration policy being applied. Network effects seem to be less important in the Nordic countries which also seem to attract immigrants from the lowest income level source countries. We do not find clear evidence that selection effects measured by migration flows being sensitive to differences in public social expenditures have had a major influence on the observed migration patterns until now. This may partly be explained by restrictive migration policies which may have dampened the potential selection effects.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
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