Download or read book Three Essays in Development Economics written by David Russell Hansen and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three chapters. All three deal with topics in development economics. The first chapter examines the effects on village institutions of introducing formal financial institution options into the village. The second addresses the effects of government policy on educational investment and crime. The third tests the explanatory power of various explanations of the gender gap in math test scores. The first chapter examines the effects of a transition from a ``traditional'' economy based on an uncertain source of income, with risk fully insured away by one's neighbors in a social network through costly network ties, to a ``modern'' economy in which some agents have access to partial insurance at a lower cost. A theoretical model is used to show that village social networks can break down as some members of the village no longer need the insurance the social network provides, producing a reduction in welfare (if the costs of reducing moral hazard are not too high) for at least some individuals and possibly the village as a whole. This loss of welfare can occur even when networks provide other benefits to those belonging to them and is likely to be heterogeneous, depending on the opportunities and networks available to individuals. This paper tests these predictions using Indonesian data to examine the effect of a change in the banking institutions available to a community on the strength of social networks (measured by community participation) and welfare (measured by household expenditure and by child health). The analysis finds that changing financial institution availability in general does not influence community participation or welfare, but that financial institutions that primarily serve certain groups do relatively reduce the welfare of households not in those groups, which is consistent with the hypotheses generated by the model. Crime is an important feature of economic life in many countries, especially in the developing world. Crime distorts many economic decisions because it acts like an unpredictable tax on earnings. In particular, the threat of crime may influence people's willingness to invest in schooling or physical capital. The second chapter explores the questions "What influence do crime rates and levels of investment have on one another?" and "How do government policies affect the relationship between investment and crime?" by creating a simple structural model of crime and educational investment and attempting to fit this model to Mexican data. A method of simulated moments procedure is used to estimate parameters of the model and the estimated parameters are then used to carry out policy simulations. The simulations show that increasing spending on police or increasing the severity of punishment reduces crime but has little effect on educational investment. Increased educational subsidies increase educational investment but reduce crime only slightly. Thus, one type of policy is insufficient to accomplish the goals of both reducing crime and increasing education. The third chapter is joint work with Prashant Bharadwaj, Giacomo De Giorgi, and Christopher Neilson. Boys tend to have better performances than girls in mathematical testing; in particular, there are significantly more boys than girls among high achievers and the score distribution appears to have a longer right tail for boys. We confirm such results on several low- and middle-income countries. In particular we find that the gender gap is already present by age 10 and substantially increases by age 14 and 15. We propose and try to test a series of explanations for such a gap: (i) parental investment, (ii) ability, (iii) school resources, (iv) individual investment and effort (not tested directly), (v) competitive environment, and (vi) cultural norms. We conclude that none of our proposed explanations can account for a substantial portion of the gap.

Download or read book Three Essays on Migration Education and Household Development in Rural China written by Alan D. De Brauw and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Development Economics written by Céline Ferré and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economics of Immigration written by Cynthia Bansak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics of Immigration provides students with the tools needed to examine the economic impact of immigration and immigration policies over the past century. Students will develop an understanding of why and how people migrate across borders and will learn how to analyze the economic causes and effects of immigration. The main objectives of the book are for students to understand the decision to migrate; to understand the impact of immigration on markets and government budgets; and to understand the consequences of immigration policies in a global context. From the first chapter, students will develop an appreciation of the importance of immigration as a separate academic field within labor economics and international economics. Topics covered include the effect of immigration on labor markets, housing markets, international trade, tax revenues, human capital accumulation, and government fiscal balances. The book also considers the impact of immigration on what firms choose to produce, and even on the ethnic diversity of restaurants and on financial markets, as well as the theory and evidence on immigrants’ economic assimilation. The textbook includes a comparative study of immigration policies in a number of immigrant-receiving and sending countries, beginning with the history of immigration policy in the United States. Finally, the book explores immigration topics that directly affect developing countries, such as remittances, brain drain, human trafficking, and rural-urban internal migration. Readers will also be fully equipped with the tools needed to understand and contribute to policy debates on this controversial topic. This is the first textbook to comprehensively cover the economics of immigration, and it is suitable both for economics students and for students studying migration in other disciplines, such as sociology and politics.

Download or read book Three Essays in Applied Economics written by Te-Fen Lo and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book International Handbook on the Economics of Migration written by Amelie F. Constant and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ŠThis is an extremely impressive volume which guides readers into thinking about migration in new ways. In its various chapters, international experts examine contemporary migration issues through a multitude of lenses ranging from child labor, human t

Download or read book Three Essays on the Role of Skills and Education in Immigration and Self employment written by Magnus Lofstrom and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economic Sociology of Immigration written by Alejandro Portes and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1995-06-22 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Portes suggests that immigration constitutes an especially appropriate Mertonian 'strategic research site' for economic sociology in that it provides very good opportunities for investigating the embeddedness of economic relationships in social situations....the contributors expand the conventional domain of economic sociology quite literally in both time and space."—Contemporary Sociology "Alejandro Portes and his splendid band of collaborators make clear that the causes, processes, and consequences of migration vary dramatically from group to group, that a group's history makes a profound difference to its fate in the American economy. They have produced a sinewy book, a book worth arguing with."—Charles Tilly, Columbia University The Economic Sociology of Immigration forges a dynamic link between the theoretical innovations of economic sociology with the latest empirical findings from immigration research, an area of critical concern as the problems of ethnic poverty and inequality become increasingly profound. Alejandro Portes' lucid overview of sociological approaches to economic phenomena provides the framework for six thoughtful, wide-ranging investigations into ethnic and immigrant labor networks and social resources, entrepreneurship, and cultural assimilation. Mark Granovetter illustrates how small businesses built on the bonds of ethnicity and kinship can, under certain conditions, flourish remarkably well. Bryan R. Roberts demonstrates how immigrant groups' expectations of the duration of their stay influence their propensity toward entrepreneurship. Ivan Light and Carolyn Rosenstein chart how specific metropolitan environments have stimulated or impeded entrepreneurial ventures in five ethnic populations. Saskia Sassen provides a revealing analysis of the unexpectedly flexible and vital labor market networks maintained between immigrants and their native countries, while M. Patricia Fernandez Kelly looks specifically at the black inner city to examine how insular cultural values hinder the acquisition of skills and jobs outside the neighborhood. Alejandro Portes also depicts the difference between the attitudes of American-born youths and those of recent immigrants and its effect on the economic success of immigrant children.

Download or read book Education and Immigration written by Grace Kao and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is a crucially important social institution, closely correlated with wealth, occupational prestige, psychological well-being, and health outcomes. Moreover, for children of immigrants – who account for almost one in four school-aged children in the U.S. – it is the primary means through which they become incorporated into American society. This insightful new book explores the educational outcomes of post-1965 immigrants and their children. Tracing the historical context and key contemporary scholarship on immigration, the authors examine issues such as structural versus cultural theories of education stratification, the overlap of immigrant status with race and ethnicity, and the role of language in educational outcomes. Throughout, the authors pay attention to the great diversity among immigrants: some arrive with PhDs to work as research professors, while others arrive with a primary school education and no English skills to work as migrant laborers. As immigrants come from an ever-increasing array of races, ethnicities, and national origins, immigrant assimilation is more complex than ever before, and education is central to their adaptation to American society. Shedding light on often misunderstood topics, this book will be invaluable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate-level courses in sociology of education, immigration, and race and ethnicity.

Download or read book The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics written by Robert A. Cord and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The University of Chicago has been and continues to be one of the most important global centres for economics. With six chapters on themes in Chicago economics and 33 chapters on the lives and work of Chicago economists, this volume shows how economics became established at the University, how it produced some of the world’s best-known economists, including Frank Knight, Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, and how it remains a global force for the very best in teaching and research in economics. With original contributions from a stellar cast, this volume provides economists – especially those interested in macroeconomics and the history of economic thought – with an in-depth analysis of Chicago economics.

Download or read book Immigration Economics written by George J. Borjas and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of people—nearly 3 percent of the world’s population—no longer live in the country where they were born. Every day, migrants enter not only the United States but also developed countries without much of a history of immigration. Some of these nations have switched in a short span of time from being the source of immigrants to being a destination for them. International migration is today a central subject of research in modern labor economics, which seeks to put into perspective and explain this historic demographic transformation. Immigration Economics synthesizes the theories, models, and econometric methods used to identify the causes and consequences of international labor flows. Economist George Borjas lays out with clarity and rigor a full spectrum of topics, including migrant worker selection and assimilation, the impact of immigration on labor markets and worker wages, and the economic benefits and losses that result from immigration. Two important themes emerge: First, immigration has distributional consequences: some people gain, but some people lose. Second, immigrants are rational economic agents who attempt to do the best they can with the resources they have, and the same holds true for native workers of the countries that receive migrants. This straightforward behavioral proposition, Borjas argues, has crucial implications for how economists and policymakers should frame contemporary debates over immigration.

Download or read book Three Essays in Labor Economics written by Michael Allgrunn and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Doctoral Dissertations written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Immigration and Education written by Karmen Suen and published by ProQuest. This book was released on 2008 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first chapter of this thesis, the 1995 TIMSS eighth-grade mathematics score is used to proxy for home country education quality for U.S. immigrants. On average, a one standard deviation increase in TIMSS magnifies the marginal returns to post-migrational education by 0.83 percentage points. This pre-migrational education quality effect remains positive and significant for individuals at the 25th percentile of the conditional wage distribution. In addition, diminishing returns to post-migrational years of schooling is observed at all wage quantiles, but evidence is mixed in regards to pre-migrational years of education. Using the 2000 Census, the second paper finds that, compared to another immigrant holding a job that requires less human-interaction, an immigrant worker who possesses knowledge in speaking a non-English language and who works in a human-interaction-intensive occupation would enjoy an average wage benefit of 4.47%. For an immigrant, other immigrants from a different home country are perceived as complements, while those from the same country of origin would be substitutes. Moreover, a one standard deviation increase in bilateral trade volume between the United States and the immigrant's country of origin is predicted to enhance the immigrant's returns to working in the Wholesale Trade industry by 3.36% on average, a pattern that is very different for immigrants whose country of origin uses English as an official language. A positive relationship between parental involvement in reading-related activities before the student began schooling and the student's 2001 PIRLS test score is found in the third chapter. On average, having a parent who played alphabet toys, played word games, and read signs and labels out loud during the student's preschool years is predicted to carry an effect size of 0.2, holding other attributes constant. However, the effect of watching reading programs on television on this test score seems negative. Under a quantile regression framework, the effect of these parental inputs continues to be observed for students belonging to the 25th quantile of the conditional score distribution. Lastly, these academic variables are predicted to not affect an immigrant student's PIRLS score, although small sample size may be an issue.

Download or read book The Economics of Immigration written by Örn B. Bodvarsson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-12 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for this book came from a collaborative research project on immigration, begun in 2001, when we were colleagues at University of Nebraska- Lincoln (Bodvarsson was a Visiting Professor there in 2001–05). Our project dealt with the application of Say’s Law to the supply of immigrant labor, meaning that when the supply of immigrant labor grows in an area, the new immigrants, being consumers, bolster labor demand and help to offset the lower wages they may bring about. Our test case was the seemingly obscure Dawson County, Nebraska, where the meatpacking industry experienced a relatively huge increase in Hispanic-born labor supply around 1990. We found for Dawson County this ‘‘demand effect’’ to be signi?cant and our results for this test case generalizable to other, more prominent, test cases. This inspired us to study the famous Mariel Boatlift, where Miami’s labor force grew suddenly by 7% due to the arrival of nearly 125,000 Cuban refugees in the spring of 1980. In that study, we showed that the Marielitos exerted a signi?cant demand effect, which we argue helps to account for the stylized fact that the Mariel in?ux had a relatively benign effect on the Miami labor market. We had the privilege of presenting both studies at various conferences in the USA, Norway, Taiwan and Israel, and these studies have been published in Labour Economics and the Research in Labor Economics series (both studies are discussed in detail in this book).

Download or read book An Integrated Assessment of China s Ecological Restoration Programs written by Runsheng Yin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China has been undertaking unprecedented ecological restoration efforts to deal with its problems of soil erosion, flooding, dust storms, and habitat loss. While there have been studies of these efforts, questions remain concerning whether they have been effectively implemented, what their induced socioeconomic and ecological impacts are, and how their performance can be improved. Tackling these important questions in an integrated manner, “An Integrated Assessment of China’s Ecological Restoration Programs” is extraordinary for its broad coverage and methodological rigor. It provides a substantial improvement over the conventional approach of simply reporting projects undertaken and accepting uncritically the government assessment, and thus fills an important knowledge gap of the restoration efforts being implemented upon a variety of ecosystems in China.

Download or read book Three Essays in Labor and Family Economics written by HwaJung Choi and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: