Income transfers of Chinese rural migrants: some empirical evidence from Jinan

This paper explores the determinants of migrant remittances to rural households using data on male migrant workers drawn from the Jinan Municipality in Shandong province in the summer of 1995. The majority of migrants are found to retain close links with their rural households with 85%?remitting some income in the 12 months preceding the survey date. The transfers accounted for over a third of urban labour earnings. A number of models are used to undertake the estimation of remittance functions. No evidence of altruistic behaviour is uncovered and evidence for exchange and coinsurance theories is mixed. Labour earnings proved the most robust determinant of the level of remittance and the remittance/wage elasticity calculated is found to be at the top end of the range of estimates obtained in the literature.     

Impact of remittances on male and female labor force participation patterns in Africa: Quasi‐experimental evidence from Ghana

In this paper, we examine how remittances, an outcome of labor mobility, affect labor market activities in Ghana using detailed household and individual‐level data. This is important, considering the extensive literature that has documented the remittance–poverty reduction nexus. First, we find a strong negative association between household remittance‐receiving status and individual labor supply decisions using instrumental variable estimation techniques. Second, we find the depressing effect of remittances on labor supply decisions to be much stronger in rural areas. Rural women who reside in remittance‐receiving households are less likely to be in the labor force compared with those who do not reside in such households. Remittances have very little impact on labor supply decisions in urban areas. Our findings support that remittances can exacerbate long‐term poverty reduction in rural areas through lower labor force participation, and as such rural‐based and gender‐based interventions may be needed to help redirect remittance income.     

Remittances and return migration

This paper utilizes survey data of return migrants to analyze the determinants of remittances sent while the migrants were abroad. We approach our research question from the perspective of three sending countries in the Maghreb, namely Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. We investigate the remittance behavior using the migrants’ conditions before migration as well as during the migration experience. Using a two‐part model, we show that the decision to remit and the amount remitted depend on a combination of different migrant characteristics and reasons for migration as well as the form of migration. More importantly, we also consider if the remittance behavior is dependent on the type of return: “decided” or “compelled.” We show that the two groups have different incentives to remit, which can help explain the link between type of migrants and their remittance behavior.     

The effect of rural labor migration on poverty alleviation: a village-level study in China

The construction of the new socialist countryside is being carried out in China nowadays. Although lots of successful experience has been gotten, different problems occur in various regions yet. To analyze the relationships among rural labor migration, poverty alleviation and characteristics of migrants is important in considering the effect of rural labor migration on the construction of the new socialist countryside. Available sampling and typical case study are adopted and 236 questionnaires are collected from[bur villages in northwest GuangxL China, Daxin Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyze the rural labor migration status, characteristics of migrants, remittance situation and income, household income and the ratio of remittance income to total household income. A bout 2/3 of the households have migrants in surveyed villages. And nearly half of the migration households have only one fam- ily member as migrants in the four villages. The migrants mainly comprise male and the younger, with the education level of junior middte school and higher More than half of the migrants are employed in Guangdong Province. But the characteristics of migrants in Yongchang are more diverse. The rural labor migration in the village is extremely active and extensive. And over 60% of the household with family members as migrants have remittance income. The rate in Yongchang is extremely high (80%). And the income of households with migrants getting remittance income significantly higher than their counterparts. More than half of their income comes from remittance as far as the former kind of household is concerned And in Yongchang, the rate is nearly 80%. The conclusion is that rural labor migration is popular and extensive in lots of villages. And the migration and remittance play an important role in rural household income, especially in some poor villages. For this kind of village, the rural labor migration may be some "compulsory course" in rural development. And the rural labor emigration is an essential way in poverty al-leviation. This is the first step in the construction of the new socialist countryside.     

Guestworker migration,remittances and the extended family: evidence from Pakistan

"The paper places migration in the context of the extended family. It models informal loans between migrant and extended family for financing the costs of international labor migration. To show repayments to extended family is important; we trace the effects of such loans on migrant savings and remittance to the immediate family. We employ a standard life-cycle approach, which predicts that the demand for extended family financing rises with migration costs and falls with pre-migration wealth. Remittance to the immediate family and savings retained abroad both fall with the pre-migration loan." These hypotheses are tested using data from a survey of return migrants to Pakistan carried out in 1986.     

An economic analysis of remittance of unskilled migration on skilled–unskilled wage inequality in labor host region

The present paper establishes a two-sector general equilibrium model and conduct the comparative static approach to investigate the impact exerted by an increase in the remittance rate of the unskilled migrants on the skilled–unskilled wage inequality in the labor host region. We find that the unskilled migrants increase their remittance rate to the labor outsourcing regions that will decrease the skilled–unskilled wage inequality in the labor host region.     

Remittances and Business Cycles: Comparison of South Asian Countries

ABSTRACT

South Asia is one of the world's principal remittance-receiving regions. This study examines the home and host business cycles of migrant remittance flows to the region. Employing the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) technique, the remittance behaviour of the region's four main countries is compared. Remittances to India and Pakistan show a mainly acyclical behaviour with respect to the output of the four host regions, and a countercyclical behaviour with respect to home output. In contrast, remittances to the two smaller economies of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are found to be mainly procyclical. The study shows that the macroeconomic remittance behaviour varies with respect to the importance of remittance flows in the home economy. Moreover, remittance behaviour seems to respond more to home economy specificities than to those of the different regions that host the migrants from the developing countries.     

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.     

SOME ESSENTIALS OF A WORKABLE GUEST‐WORKER PROGRAM*

A guest‐worker program provides an appealing way of addressing labor shortages in an advanced country. It requires, however, that foreign workers are willing to return home when their work permit expires. I examine how immigration policies, enforcement measures, and opportunities available in various markets at home and abroad affect the behavior of program participants. Welfare of a migrant who obeys the rules of the program is compared with that of workers who choose other options in order to define the conditions under which temporary migration is attractive to potential migrants and at the same time consistent with voluntary return.     

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

Many developed and developing countries are experiencing large and growing levels of international migration of labor. However, the large majority of research on the economic impact of inflows of migrant workers on host economies focuses exclusively on developed countries. In this paper, we address this gap in the literature by examining migrant‐induced productivity effects in the emerging economy of Malaysia. Importantly, the Malaysian case is typical for many Asian economies where, next to high skilled foreign workers, large numbers of migrants consist of low skilled workers that are employed in host economies on a temporary basis. Using detailed industry level data for the period 2005 to 2009, we find that both high skilled and low skilled foreign workers generate positive productivity effects in Malaysian manufacturing industries. Furthermore, our results identify a strong presence of industry heterogeneity, as the effects of foreign workers, in general, and low skilled foreign workers, in particular, are pronounced in labor and assembly intensive modern industries with a strong export focus. This indicates the importance of foreign workers for the contemporary international competitiveness of the Malaysian manufacturing sector. As such, our findings provide important new input to the debate on the role of low skilled foreign workers in processes of development of the Malaysian economy.     

Hours risk and wage risk: repercussions over the life cycle*

We decompose earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks, we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. For estimation, we use data on married American men from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Permanent wage shocks explain 31 percent of total risk, permanent hours shocks 21 percent. Progressive taxation attenuates cross-sectional earnings risk, but its life-cycle insurance impact is much smaller. At the mean, a one-standard-deviation hours shock raises lifetime income by 11 percent, a wage shock by 13 percent.     

劳动力流动对城市劳动力市场的影响

本文使用2005年1%人口抽样调查数据,考察了在我国大中城市中,劳动力流动对本地劳动者就业率和工资的影响。我们发现,外来劳动力对城市本地劳动力的就业率和工资均具有统计上显著的负向作用,但是影响的规模非常小。对于全部教育组平均而言,外来劳动力每增加10%,城市本地劳动力的就业率下降0.3%,工资下降0.65%;对于中低教育水平(高中及以下)的城市本地劳动力而言,外来劳动力的影响程度相对高一些,但是仍然不算大。另外,我们发现,外来劳动力对本地职工工资的影响,要大于对就业率的影响,说明城市本地劳动力对于外来劳动力存在有限的反应,主要体现在降低保留工资,而非放弃工作机会。     

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 counterfactuals 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."     

基于动态视角的中国劳动力供给决策实证分析--以杭州出租车司机为例

生命周期劳动供给理论预测工人的劳动供给对短期工资波动有正向的反应，然而不少研究发现国外出租车司机劳动供给弹性是负的。国内出租车司机的情况如何呢？文章用杭州出租车GPS 行程数据分析了司机的内延性和外延性劳动供给。为解决由测量误差和同事效应产生的内生性问题，我们用司机当天遇到的长途载客次数作为其每小时工资的工具变量，进而探讨每小时工资对司机劳动供给时间的影响。我们发现，杭州出租车司机的内延性和外延性劳动供给工资弹性均显著为正，这说明政府增加司机每公里燃油补贴等政策的确能激励司机增加劳动供给。另外，这也说明放松出租车市场的价格管制能使司机更好地根据市场需求优化自己的工作决策。     

Differential rewards to, and contributions of, education in urban China's segmented labor markets

Abstract. Using worker data from a 1999–2000 urban enterprise survey, we examine the effects of education on the current earnings of continuously employed urban workers, migrants and laid off but subsequently re‐employed workers. We also decompose the earnings differentials between each of these groups of workers and then assess the contribution of education to explanations of the differentials. The empirical results demonstrate that returns to education increase with marketization and competition in the workplace. We also find educational attainment to be an important explanator of the earnings differentials between institutionally differentiated groups of workers in China's urban labor markets.     

Consumption and Remittances in Migrant Households: Toward a Productive Use of Remittances

This article reviews the magnitude of remittance flows into Mexican households and examines the consumption patterns of remittance-receiving households. A thorough understanding of the dynamics of remittances and consumption in migrant households in Mexico should inform policy makers of the best ways to channel these resources into productive uses. The Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey for 1989 is used to compare and test patterns of consumption and uses of remittances in urban and rural Mexico. (JEL F2–F22 , O1–O15 )     

FROM INDIVIDUAL TO AGGREGATE LABOR SUPPLY: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS BASED ON A HETEROGENEOUS AGENT MACROECONOMY*

At the aggregate level, the labor‐supply elasticity depends on the reservation‐wage distribution. We present a model economy where workforce heterogeneity stems from idiosyncratic productivity shocks. The model economy exhibits the cross‐sectional earnings and wealth distributions that are comparable to those in the micro data. We find that the aggregate labor‐supply elasticity of such an economy is around 1, greater than a typical micro estimate.     

ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH,PRODUCTIVITY SHOCKS,AND THE INDIVIDUAL EARNINGS PROCESS*

Individual labor earnings observed in worker panel data have complex, highly persistent dynamics. We investigate the capacity of a structural job search model with on‐the‐job search, wage renegotiation by mutual consent, and i.i.d. productivity shocks to replicate salient properties of these dynamics, such as the covariance structure of earnings, the evolution of individual earnings mean, and variance with the duration of uninterrupted employment, or the distribution of year‐to‐year earnings changes. Structural estimation of our model on a 12‐year panel of highly educated British workers shows that our simple framework produces a dynamic earnings structure that is remarkably consistent with the data.     

外来劳动力挤占了本地居民的就业机会吗??

城市就业包容性的提升是实现城镇化发展的重要内容,而异质外来移民对原有居民的就业机会将产生不同影响.文章运用动态监测数据,按劳动力的技能水平、所属行业和流入时期分析城市劳动力市场的就业包容性,衡量人力资本等因素在异质外来劳动力就业过程中的作用机制.研究发现：(1)总体而言,人力资本的差异性取代传统的行业壁垒已成为获取就业机会的主要因素.(2)进一步使用工具变量,对劳动力组群的就业决定模型进行估计发现,外来劳动力占比每上升10％,城市原有劳动力的就业率将下降0．04－1．99个百分点,表现为外来劳动力对城市原有低技能劳动力就业率的影响并不明显,但对高技能劳动力的就业率产生显著冲击,且此现象在部分高进入门槛行业尤为明显.(3)城市劳动力市场对不同时期流入的高技能组劳动力的包容性显著低于低技能组,高技能组劳动力之间存在更高的替代性.(4)与本地劳动力的就业率相比,新进入的外来劳动力对前期进入的外来劳动力的就业率的影响会更大,且这种影响同样会随着受教育程度的提高而递增.因此,在完善就业市场的同时,应在就业的前置和后置环节制定更有针对性的人才培养机制和引入措施.     

Optimal Taxation of Risky Human Capital*

In a two‐period life‐cycle model with ex ante homogeneous households, earnings risk, and a general earnings function, we derive the optimal linear labor tax rate and optimal linear education subsidies. The optimal income tax trades off social insurance against incentives to work. Education subsidies are not used for social insurance, but they are only targeted at offsetting the distortions of the labor tax and internalizing a fiscal externality. Both optimal education subsidies and tax rates increase if labor and education are more complementary, because education subsidies indirectly lower labor tax distortions by stimulating labor supply. Optimal education subsidies (taxes) also correct non‐tax distortions arising from missing insurance markets. Education subsidies internalize a positive (negative) fiscal externality if there is underinvestment (overinvestment) in education because of risk. Education policy unambiguously allows for more social insurance if education is a risky activity. However, if education hedges against labor‐market risk, optimal tax rates could be lower than in the case without education subsidies.