Work Effort, Moderation in Expulsion, and Illegal Migration

Illegal migrants supply a valuable productive input: effort. But their status as illegals means that these migrants face a strictly positive probability of expulsion. A return to their country of origin entails reduced earnings when the wage at origin is lower than the wage at destination. This prospect induces illegal migrants to exert more work effort than comparable workers who face no such prospect. The lower the probable, alternative earnings, the harsher the penalty that illegal migrants will be subjected to upon their return, for a given probability of expulsion, and the higher the level of effort they will exert at destination. While the home‐country wage that awaits the illegal migrants upon their return is exogenous to the host country, the probability of their return is not. Given the home‐country wage, a higher probability of expulsion will induce illegal migrants to supply more effort. Hence, different combinations of probabilities of expulsion and home‐country wages yield the same level of effort. Thus, variation in the extent to which receiving countries undertake measures aimed at apprehending and expelling illegal migrants can be attributed not to characteristics of the illegal migrants themselves but to a feature that pertains to the illegal migrants’ country of origin.     

Growth,Migration and Poverty: Some Corrections and Critical Comments

Journal of Quantitative Economics -     

Patent Enforcement, Innovation and Welfare

This paper analyzes how the Southern patent enforcement affects the Northern firm's choice of licensing, subsidiary production or exports for serving the Southern market, and the innovation rate in the North and ultimately the welfare in the South. We show that for imperfect patent enforcement, licensing contract leads to more innovation in the North relative to subsidiary or exports. When both subsidiary and exports are very costly options, no patent enforcement in the South is best for the South. However, when either subsidiary operation or exports can be organized cheaply, the Southern government chooses some positive degree of patent enforcement. We also establish that strengthening of patent enforcement in the South may lead to more licensing and less subsidiary operations or exports.     

分权、外部性与边界效应

分权创造竞争激励的同时也带来了协调不足的问题。当经济活动存在正外部性,地方政府会策略性地减少辖区边界上的公共投资,产生区域发展中的边界效应。本文构建了存在外部性的政府投资模型来说明边界效应的产生机制,并从三方面给出经验证据:第一,利用县级经济统计和夜间灯光数据,在控制影响本地生产率的因素后,发现省份边界县的经济产出显著低于其他县,即存在区域经济发展的省界效应。第二,由省政府主导投资的交通设施存在显著的省界效应,这种效应并不存在于由中央政府主导投资的交通设施。第三,基于夜间灯光亮度的微观地理数据,利用撤县设区的政策实验和双重差分模型,发现地级市政府统筹权力的加强显著提高了原市辖区与被撤并县交界处的经济活动水平,即降低了区县边界效应。本文的结果表明,在保证地方政府竞争激励的前提下,建立政府间协调和利益共享机制,对于实现区域协调发展战略至关重要。     

Migration,growth, distribution and welfare

In this note we argue that the inverted U curve of inequality is a technical derivative of the attributes of the conventional indices of inequality; that these indices are inadequate measures of the change in welfare associated with the typical distributional consequences of rural-to-urban migration; and that an explicit welfare judgment with respect to this process should and can be made.     

农村劳动力流动、人力资本积累与中国经济增长的源泉

中国近30年来的经济增长与伴随着工业化、城市化的农村劳动力流动存在内在的联系.在农村劳动力流动过程中,"农民工"通过"干中学"积累了知识,并在流动中使之产生了溢出效应,同时农民在社区中积累的社会资本在流动过程中依托特有的流动方式得以延伸,降低了农民获取工作的信息成本与在城市生存的交易费用."农民工"的非正规学习及其知识普及所导致的人力资本水平提高,成为中国近30年以来经济增长的源泉.     

Credence Goods,Efficient Labelling Policies,and Regulatory Enforcement

We analyse the optimality of information revelation of hidden attributes of “credence goods” via alternative labelling procedures. When consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for the hidden attribute, producers can either self-label their products, or have them certified by a third party. The government can impose self or third party labelling requirements on either the “green” or the “brown” producers. Our benchmark model develops a condition that links the optimal imposition of third party labelling to the relative market share of each type of the good under complete information. We extend our analysis to incorporate asymmetric information and cheating by the producers. When corrupt producers can affix spurious labels, the government needs to supplement the labelling policy with costly monitoring activities. We find that mandatory self-labelling schemes generally dominate mandatory third party labelling, unless the “market share effect” greatly exceeds the “incentive-to-cheat effect”.      

National Borders, Trade and Migration

The paper confirms a strikingly large effect of national borders on trade patterns. Estimates comparing trade among Canadian provinces with that between Canadian provinces and US states show interprovincial trade in 1988–90 to have been more than 20 times as dense as that between provinces and states, with some evidence of a downward trend since, owing to the post-FTA growth in trade between Canada and the USA. Using approximate data for the volumes and distances of internal trade in OECD countries, the 1988–92 border effect for unrelated OECD countries is estimated to exceed 12. Estimates from a census-based gravity model of interprovincial and international migration show a much higher border effect for migration than for trade, with interprovincial migration among the Anglophone provinces almost 100 times as dense as that from US states to Canadian provinces.     

Migration decisions, expected remittances, and altruism

We investigate the effects of altruism on migration decisions by the potential migrant as well as the effects of altruism on remittances by the migrant to clarify how altruism affects remittances that the household in the home country will receive, i.e., expected remittances. Previous studies did not pay adequate attention to the effects of altruism on migration decisions of the potential migrant when examining the effects of altruism on remittances that will be sent from aboard. We find that if migration does not incur any costs, the potential migrant always migrates, and altruism increases expected remittances monotonically. On the other hand, if migration incurs costs, the potential migrant does not necessarily migrate, and the potential migrant with a higher degree of altruism is less likely to migrate. As a result, with migration costs, altruism may decrease expected remittances. Therefore, altruism does not increase expected remittances monotonically. Our results falsify the usual assumption of monotonicity regarding the effects of altruism on remittances.     

Public Debt, Migration, and Shortsighted Politicians

We analyze a model where local public debt levels are set by politicians who are chosen in local elections. Migration causes an externality across districts, and leads to overaccumulation of local public debt. Since debt is a strategic substitute, the median voters in each district prefer shortsighted political leaders who “borrow and spend,” thereby exacerbating the problem of overaccumulation of local public debt.     

Monitoring,Appeal, and Investigation: The Enforcement and Legal Process

In this article, I consider a model of law enforcement in which a regulatory agency faces the following problem: To induce firms which are required to adopt a certain level of environmental care, the agency can make spot checks. This monitoring, however, measures a firms degree of protection only with error. On the basis of the observed signal, the agency then has to decide whether or not to fine a firm for taking insufficient protection. If it fines a firm which has actually met the level of environmental protection, the firm has the right to lodge an appeal. To plead the cause, the agency then is required to investigate at high cost the actual degree of the firms protection.In this context we ask how the regulatory agency allocates resources between different enforcement activities. We show how the structure of the optimal enforcement policy depends on the cost of the enforcement activities, on the uncertainty of observation, on its enforcement budget and other factors.     

农业劳动力流动对中国经济增长的贡献

本文针对农业劳动力流动对中国经济增长的贡献,在二元经济结构和增长源核算框架下给出新的度量和结果。研究发现:(1)采用劳动再配置效应经典公式评估这种贡献时,通常会产生漏测或过测。在马塞尔增长源分解模式中嵌入劳动的制度异质性,可以得到一个具有比较优势的近似测算公式。(2)1985—2011年中国农业劳动力流动对经济增长的贡献具有递减的趋势,与经济增长具有相似的波动特征。(3)市场化改革以来,由于非农部门劳动的制度异质性被固化和农村劳动力教育增速放缓,农业劳动力流动促进经济增长的潜力受到了抑制。(4)实施相应制度创新之后,农业劳动力流动仍可为延续"中国奇迹"做出贡献。     

家庭禀赋、农民工回流与创业参与——来自湖北恩施州的经验证据

本文运用湖北省恩施州的农户调查数据,系统地研究了家庭禀赋对农民工回流及回流后自主创业的影响。实证分析发现,家庭禀赋能够提升劳动力回流农村后的个人发展能力,对农民工回流以及回流后自主创业都有着重要的影响。与没有外出务工经历的农村劳动力相比,回流劳动力在农村可以更好地利用家庭禀赋,以获得更高的经济效率和投资回报,这也正是导致部分农民工回流农村的主要原因。丰富的家庭经济资本、家庭社会资本和家庭自然资本对于农民工回流有着促进作用,尤其会增加农民工回流后自主创业的可能性。通过家庭禀赋对农民工回流及返乡创业的积极效应,也反映出在农民工回流和返乡创业的过程中农村市场化的滞后和社会支持的不足。各级政府需要加大力度,构建完善的社会支持体系搭建好农民工返乡创业的平台。     

Enforcement of Intellectual Property,Pollution Abatement,and Directed Technical Change

We theoretically investigate the interaction between endogenous enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and tax-financed pollution abatement measures. IPRs affect dirty and clean intermediates alike such that higher IPR enforcement may promote the transition to the clean technology, if this technology is productive enough. If the green technology is relatively unproductive, higher IPRs promote the dirty technology while pollution is increasing. As households are due to subsistence consumption subject to a hierarchy of needs, the level of IPR enforcement as well as the level of abatement measures depends on the state of technology and is increasing during economic development. Thus, if the incentive to enforce IPRs is low the level of abatement measures is also low. This argument provides a theoretical foundation for the observed clash of interests in international negotiation rounds regarding the harmonization of IPR protection and actions to combat climate change.     

Contract-Intensive Money: Contract Enforcement, Property Rights, and Economic Performance

We introduce a new, easily accessed and objective measure of the enforceability of contracts and the security of property rights. This measure, called contract-intensive money or CIM, is based on citizens decisions regarding the form in which they choose to hold their financial assets. Country case studies show that CIM varies over time in response to political events in ways predicted by our arguments. We also show that CIM is positively related to investment and growth rates, and to the relative size of contract-dependent sectors of the economy.     

Migration, human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier.     

EU Enlargement, Migration, and Lessons from German Unification

The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces turns out to be efficient, migration should not be artificially reduced by means of legal constraints or subsidies to the new member countries. The paper draws the parallel with German unification and points out the lessons to be learned by Europe. The analysis concludes with a brief discussion of the second-best problem posed by the existence of welfare states in the old member countries.