Basic income,liberal neutrality,socialism, and work

Liberal critics often object to basic income (BI) on the grounds that it violates reciprocity and is biased toward those who choose voluntarily to opt out of work and thus violate the principle of liberal neutrality toward conceptions of the good life. In the first part of this paper I argue that liberal neutrality favors BI. Marxist critics of BI are less likely to accept liberal neutrality, but I argue in the second part that the argument for BI in the first part applies with equal force to Marxist objections that BI is unfairly exploitative of workers. Marxists are also less likely to accept current labor market trends, seeing socialism as affording more opportunity for guaranteeing everyone a right to decent work, and suspecting BI of making the unfair inequalities of capitalism a little more palatable while diverting attention from a more equitable socialist alternative. I argue that BI is not incompatible with socialism or Marxism, and should not be opposed to but rather combined with strategies for full employment.     

Intergenerational Correlations of Extreme Right‐Wing Party Preferences and Attitudes toward Immigration

In this paper, we analyze the importance of parental socialization on the development of children's far right‐wing preferences and attitudes toward immigration. Using longitudinal data from Germany, our intergenerational estimates suggest that the strongest and most important predictor for young people's right‐wing extremism are their parents' right‐wing extremist attitudes. While intergenerational associations in attitudes toward immigration are equally high for sons and daughters, we find a positive intergenerational transmission of right‐wing extremist party affinity for sons, but not for daughters. Compared to the intergenerational correlation of other party affinities, the high association between fathers' and sons' right‐wing extremist attitudes is particularly striking.     

Immigration, Unemployment and Pensions

This paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly. It is shown that low‐skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate. Furthermore, it harms the low‐skilled native population and benefits the high‐skilled natives and pensioners. Nevertheless, as under competitive labor markets, immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole. However, in contrast to the findings under full employment, this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system.     

Electoral systems and immigration

Unexplored stylized facts on OECD countries suggest that plurality electoral systems are associated with higher openness to immigration. We propose an explanation based on a retrospective voting model where immigration hurts voters but benefits a rent-seeking policymaker who appropriates part of the income generated by immigrants. To be reappointed, the policymaker must distribute the compensation. With respect to proportional systems, plurality systems make it possible to compensate only a few decisive districts and leave after-compensation rents higher, therefore producing higher immigration. In our model, non-decisive districts receive no compensation at all under both electoral systems, providing a rationale for widespread anti-immigration attitudes. Notably, our results also help to explain why governments often seem more pro-immigration than do voters. Finally, our model predicts that opposition to immigration is more geographically dispersed in plurality systems. Basic evidence supports this prediction.     

Wish you were here? Quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of education on self-reported attitude toward immigrants

We use European Social Survey and Labour Force Survey data from 2002 to 2012 to estimate the causal effect of years of education on European natives׳ opinion toward immigration, by exploiting the exogenous discontinuity generated by reforms in compulsory education in Europe in the 1940s through the 1990s. Our findings show that higher levels of education lead to a more positive reported attitude toward immigrants. We also investigate the mechanisms behind the effect of education on reported attitudes by evaluating both economic and non-economic channels. We find that higher levels of education place individuals in occupations that are less exposed to the negative effects of migration, although not in sectors/occupations where the share of migrants is necessarily smaller, suggesting that migrants and low-educated natives may be complementary rather than substitutes in the labour market. In addition, education alters values and the cognitive assessment of the role of immigration in host societies, with a positive effect on reported attitude toward diversity and on the assessment of immigration׳s role in host countries. Our findings suggest that education as a policy instrument can increase social cohesion in societies that are subject to large immigration flows.     

The impact of welfare benefits on natives' and immigrants' attitudes toward immigration

We investigate the effect of the relative welfare dependence of immigrants on attitudes toward further immigration of different groups of the population in a pooled cross-section of 24 European countries for the 2004–2010 period. Explicitly controlling for the dependence of immigrants and natives on welfare benefits we find that in countries with higher take-up rates among immigrants relative to natives pro-immigration attitudes, very robustly, increase more strongly with increasing educational attainment and, slightly less robustly, decline more strongly with the age of natives. Within the group of immigrants, by contrast, the impact of age on pro-immigration attitudes is more favorable with increasing relative benefit take-up of immigrants.     

Attitudes Towards Immigration: a Trade-Theoretic Approach

The paper uses a three-factor (capital, low- and high-skill labor), two-household (low- and high-skill individuals), two-sector trade model to analyze the determinants of voter attitudes towards immigration under direct democracy, and to identify factors that would be coherent with both the observed increase in the skilled–unskilled wage differential and the stiffening attitudes towards low-skill capital-poor immigration. If the import-competing sector is intensive in the use of low-skill labor, and capital is the middle factor, an improvement in the terms of trade or neutral technical progress in the exporting sector leads nationals to oppose immigration of capital-poor low-skill households. An increase in income inequality is also likely to stiffen attitudes towards this type of capital-poor, low-skill immigration prevalent in Europe until recently.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NATIVE PREFERENCES TOWARD UNDOCUMENTED AND LEGAL IMMIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM SAN DIEGO

The literature has noted that native views about legal as opposed to undocumented immigration in the United States differ. Furthermore, native views about immigration are known to vary by gender. Yet, most surveys do not inquire native men and women about their views with regards to the two distinct immigrant groups, thus impeding an analysis of differences in preferences toward legal and undocumented immigrants from the same sample of natives. Using a recent San Diego County survey, we examine differences in native male and female opinions with regard to legal and undocumented immigration and their determinants. Native preferences toward immigration appear to significantly differ by gender as well as according to immigrants' legal status. In addition, public finance and welfare concerns are among the key factors driving native male and female preferences toward legal and undocumented immigration. However, native women's attitudes are also impacted by concerns regarding the social integration and economic assimilation of undocumented immigrants possibly related to the alleged prejudice factor. (JEL J61, F22)     

The determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration

The paper formulates hypotheses and reports on individual attitudes towards immigration based on data for 24 countries on socioeconomic position, sociodemographic characteristics and political attitudes. The results are consistent with the predictions of factor proportions trade theory, but also suggest that a range of other economic and cultural factors influence attitudes towards immigration.     

Should They Stay or Should They Go? Attitudes Towards Immigration in Europe

This paper examines the main determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration in Europe. Our results suggest that both economic and non‐economic variables shape attitudes towards immigration, but the relative importance of these factors depends crucially on the race/ethnicity of the arriving immigrants. While fears over labour market competition are more likely to shape attitudes towards the arrival of same race immigrants, more exposure to immigrants reduces opposition towards the arrival of different race immigrants. These findings persist after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, and after exploiting the data to allow for cohort‐specific effects.     

Interior immigration enforcement policy and the subjective well-being of US residents: evidence from secure communities

There were increased efforts to enhance interior enforcement of immigration laws in the United States in recent years. Considering that more interior immigration enforcement measures are going to be proposed in the near future, there is a need to evaluate whether such policy can achieve its objective and imparts some benefits to the population it is supposed to help. In this article, I examine the impact of one of the largest interior immigration enforcement effort – Secure Communities – on the subjective well-being of US residents. The analyses show that there is no evidence that Secure Communities statistically significantly increased the proportion of white or black non-Hispanics reporting that they were satisfied with their life. Evaluated at the mean, at 10% significance level, the results suggest that I can rule out an effect size larger than 0.5% and 1% for white and black non-Hispanics, respectively. Since only a small share of white or black non-Hispanics are foreign-born, this finding suggests that the benefit of Secure Communities to US-born individuals that are coming through an increase in their life satisfaction is not economically large.     

论中国特色社会主义政治经济学国家主体性的特殊属性

国家在经济社会生活中所发挥的作用与所扮演的角色是在任何国家都存在的普遍性问题,国家主体性问题是政治经济学的一个基本问题。然而,对中国国家主体性问题仅仅进行一般性研究是不够的。由于中国的特殊国情、社会历史传统与客观现实等,中国特色社会主义政治经济学的国家主体性有其特殊属性,主要表现为中国国家定位的特殊性、国家职能的特殊性和国家制度的特殊性。研究中国特色社会主义政治经济学"国家主体性"的特殊属性具有十分重要的意义:可以使我们科学地确定中国特色社会主义政治经济学理论体系的逻辑起点、主要内容与理论框架;可以明确区分东西方两种不同类型的社会生产方式,有助于构造马克思主义广义政治经济学科学体系;可以深刻认识中国特色社会主义制度的根本特性与显著优势,进一步增强中国特色社会主义制度自信。     

Local Labor Supply Responses to Immigration

How natives adjust is central to an understanding of the impact of immigration in destination countries. Using detailed labor force data for Malaysia for 1990–2010, we provide estimates of native responses to immigration on multiple extensive margins and rare evidence for a developing country. Instrumental variable estimates show that increased immigration to a state causes substantial internal inward migration, consistent with the fact that immigration increases the demand for native workers. Relocating Malaysian workers are accompanied by their spouses (three‐quarters of whom are housewives) and children who attend school. We find that these effects are concentrated among middle‐ and lower‐skilled Malaysians.     

PUBLIC FINANCE AND INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES OVER GLOBALIZATION STRATEGIES

Do preferences toward globalization strategies vary across public‐finance regimes? In this paper, we use data on individual preferences toward immigration and trade policy to examine how pre‐tax and post‐tax cleavages differ across globalization strategies and state fiscal jurisdictions. High exposure to immigrant fiscal pressures reduces support for freer immigration among U.S. natives, especially the more skilled. The magnitude of this post‐tax fiscal cleavage is comparable to the pre‐tax labor‐market effects of skill itself. There is no public‐finance variation in opinion over trade policy, consistent with U.S. trade policy having negligible fiscal‐policy impacts. Public finance thus appears to shape opinions toward globalization strategies.     

Government compensation and citizen support for immigration openness

This paper explores how government compensation programs like unemployment insurance and worker training may influence citizen attitudes about immigration openness. It considers several different arguments, including the proposition that social welfare programs may induce less-educated citizens to feel more negatively about their class identity, thus pushing them toward an exclusionary national identity with greater opposition to immigration openness. Using data from the International Social Survey Program's 2013 National Identity module with more than 20,000 respondents from 24 developed democracies, it reports that greater government compensation can be associated with less supportive attitudes for the least educated with a diminishing negative effect for more educated citizens. Consistent with an identity shift argument for why less-educated citizens might become more hostile toward immigration openness with greater government compensation, it also reports that greater compensation is associated with a more exclusionary national identity for less-educated citizens.     

State capitalism and the rent-seeking conjecture

The notion that state capitalism (an economic system “in which the state functions as the leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain”) is a new form of capitalism emerging in the global arena has been recently advanced by several authors. This paper explores the problem of the nature of this system in the light of these claims to novelty. What are its main features as described by these authors? Is state capitalism distinctive from other forms of capitalism or other types of economic systems? Are we really witnessing the emergence of a new type of economic system? To address such questions the paper starts by trying to place the model of state capitalism within the traditional comparative economic systems framework. The inconclusive result leads to a different approach in which the concept of rent-seeking society is used to underlie the structural similarities between mercantilism, real life socialism and state capitalism. The article argues that the conjecture that what has been labeled “state capitalism” is yet another form of rent-seeking system is both robust and worth further investigating.     

Risk preference,immigration policy and illegal immigration

The paper analyzes the effects of government policy upon illegal immigration. The model used as a vehicle for this analysis is an extension of Ethier's one-small-country model of illegal immigration to a two-country context. We distinguish between the cases of capital immobility and free capital mobility, and consider illegal immigration when there are border patrols by the government and when there are internal enforcement procedures in effect. Unlike previous researchers who have assumed risk neutrality, we examine the impacts of government policy when prospective illegal immigrants exhibit risk averse and risk loving behavior. The relaxation of the risk neutrality assumption leads to the possibility of multiple and unstable equilibria. Moreover, attitudes to risk and the probability of detection are shown to have implications for some equilibrium responses to tighter surveillance.     

Risk preference,immigration policy and illegal immigration

The paper analyzes the effects of government policy upon illegal immigration. The model used as a vehicle for this analysis is an extension of Ethier's one-small-country model of illegal immigration to a two-country context. We distinguish between the cases of capital immobility and free capital mobility, and consider illegal immigration when there are border patrols by the government and when there are internal enforcement procedures in effect. Unlike previous researchers who have assumed risk neutrality, we examine the impacts of government policy when prospective illegal immigrants exhibit risk averse and risk loving behavior. The relaxation of the risk neutrality assumption leads to the possibility of multiple and unstable equilibria. Moreover, attitudes to risk and the probability of detection are shown to have implications for some equilibrium responses to tighter surveillance.     

The effect of immigration on unemployment in Europe: Does the core-periphery dualism matter?

The migrant crisis is one of the most challenging tasks the EU has ever faced. This paper uses a Panel Error Correction Model to assess the direction of the impact of immigration on domestic unemployment, in the short and in the long run, for a sample of 15 EU countries between 1997 and 2016. We test for different effects in core and periphery countries based on differences in macroeconomic fundamentals and labor market characteristics. In the long run, immigration is found to reduce unemployment in peripheral countries only, whereas in the short run, we find that immigration reduces unemployment for the whole sample. However, country-specific coefficients based on interactions with labour market characteristics indicate that short-run impacts are larger in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries. Conversely, Italy, Greece and Portugal show the smallest impacts. Our results suggest that negative sentiments toward immigration due to labour market competition are mostly unjustified.     

Fairness in the contingent valuation of environmental public goods: attitude toward paying for environmental improvements at two levels of scope

Respondents to contingent valuation (CV) surveys give a variety of reasons for not wanting to pay money. This variability is likely to reflect people's attitudes toward paying for the public good change, their attitudes toward paying for public goods in general, and a component that is independent of these attitudes but unique to particular beliefs about paying (e.g. ‘I can't afford to pay’). Negative attitudes toward paying can contribute to an apparent insensitivity to different levels of the same public good. In a telephone survey, northern Wisconsin property owners were asked about their WTP for four environmental public goods (biodiversity, Indian spearfishing, water quality, and wolves) at two levels of scope (part and whole). For water quality and spearfishing, the part was a chain of lakes that was geographically nested within a larger region of lakes. Similarly, the biodiversity whole represented a region comprising the smaller level of the public good. The scope conditions for wolves were quantitatively nested levels of returning 300 and 800 wolves to northern Wisconsin. Respondents’ beliefs about paying for each public good and level of scope were measured in order to test their generality across the different public goods and levels of scope. Negative attitudes toward paying that are general across public goods place restrictions on the use of CV for environmental public goods. However, negative attitudes that are tied to specific environmental public goods suggest that the valuation method might be difficult to implement in these cases only. Moreover, negative attitudes toward paying that are either general or specific may contribute to perfect embedding when they are expressed across different levels of scope for the same public good. Respondents' beliefs about paying for each public good were associated with an attitude toward paying for the respective good and an attitude toward paying for public goods in general at both levels of scope. The general attitude was more explanatory of beliefs about paying for wolf reintroduction and spearfishing than were the specific attitudes. The distribution of beliefs was sensitive to the type of good being valued, but less so to the scope of the public good change. Contingent valuation practitioners should seek improvements in respondents' perceptions of the fairness of the valuation process in order to facilitate citizens' involvement in decisions about environmental public goods. Avenues for future research are proposed and discussed.