What drags and drives mobility? Explaining Canada's aggregate migration patterns

Understanding the factors that determine the migration of labour between regions is crucial for assessing the response of the economy to macroeconomic shocks and identifying policies that will encourage an efficient reallocation of labour. Using a gravity model, Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood specifications and Census data for 69 economic regions, this article examines the determinants of aggregate migration within Canada from 1991 to 2006. Our results suggest that migration tends to increase with differences in labour market performance. We also find that provincial borders have the strongest impact on migration involving low‐populated regions and that distance is most important across provincial borders.     

Economic and Social Motivation‐Based Im/migration Modeling: The Case of Turkey

This paper aims to develop a generally applicable model to examine the eventual motivations both for internal migration and external immigration. For this reason our model involves not only economic motivations of development and geographical economics but also social motivations of behavior economics. We tested the model through Turkish internal and external population flows toward German regions. Our analysis contains the first regional‐level immigration analysis between an EU country (Germany) and Turkey. The main results are: (i) the purely economic motivations are more important than the social motivations; (ii) among the economic motivations income level and economic size of host regions are the biggest ones; and (iii) and the network externalities play a more important role than the herd effect. Subsequently, we estimated some country‐specific factors on im/migration. The main results are: (i) joining to the Customs Union led to acceleration in intern migration but slowing‐down in external immigration; (ii) even though Turkey acts slowly in adopting EU reforms, the EU reform process seems to reduce the economic and social stress on Turkish im/migration; and (iii) the reunification of Germany created a constraint on Turkish immigration flows toward German regions.     

FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH OF VIETNAMESE PROVINCES: THE ROLE OF LOCAL PUBLIC GOVERNANCE

This study offers an insight into the public governance role in the relationship between fiscal decentralization and provincial economic growth in Vietnam. Fiscal decentralization measures are assorted. Applying a sequential (two‐stage) estimation for the panel data of 62 provinces of Vietnam over the 2006–2015 period, we find that first, fiscal decentralization is positively related to the economic growth of Vietnamese provinces. Second, the effects of public governance on economic growth vary across provinces depending on various levels of local public governance. Interestingly, the effect of fiscal decentralization is strengthened when this variable is added along with better quality of public governance. In a region of high public governance quality, fiscal decentralization exerts a positive effect on its economic growth. Our findings imply that the design of fiscal decentralization needs to be associated with local governments’ ability of public governance to improve the local economic growth.     

The Welfare and Employment Effects of Centralized Public Sector Wage Bargaining

In many countries, the government pays almost identical nominal wages to workers living in regions with notable economic disparities. By developing a two‐region general equilibrium model with endogenous migration and search frictions in the labor market, I study the differences in terms of unemployment, real wages, and welfare between a regional wage bargaining process and a national one in the public sector. Adopting the latter makes residents in the poorer region better off and residents of the richer region worse off. Private sector employment decreases in the poorer region and it increases in the richer one. Under some conditions, the unemployment rate in the poorer region soars.     

Demographic and Economic Pressure on Emigration out of Africa*

Two of the main forces driving European emigration in the late nineteenth century were real wage gaps between sending and receiving regions and demographic booms in the low‐wage sending regions. Our new estimates of net migration for the countries of sub‐Saharan Africa show that exactly the same forces driving African across‐border migration are at work today. The results suggest that rapid growth in the cohort of potential young emigrants, population pressure on the resource base, and slow economic growth are likely to intensify the pressure for migration out of Africa and into high‐wage OECD countries over the next two decades.     

Is Private Saving in Latin America and the Caribbean Different?

Private saving and economic growth are intimately linked, and low saving rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have often been held responsible for disappointing growth in the region. Thus, identifying factors that spur saving is critical. This paper surveys previous empirical studies on LAC, highlighting contradictions, omissions and in some cases inconclusiveness of findings. Relying on a large dataset and a nested econometric framework, it analyzes private saving patterns and explores the role of its determinants in LAC, across LAC sub‐regions and compared with other regions. While the results highlight great heterogeneity in private saving rates within LAC and compared with the rest of the world, saving determinants are broadly the same notwithstanding some differences in sensitivity and contributions' sizes, and include its lag, income, demographics and public saving.     

区域经济发展差距:新经济地理、要素流动与经济政策

改革开放后,中国区域经济发展差距主要表现为区域间差距的扩大,而非区域内部差距的扩大。这一现象的发生是多方面原因共同作用的结果:在新经济地理因素的影响下,具有区位优势的东部沿海地区吸引了中西部地区大量的生产要素进行跨区域流动,加上中央政府的政策导向作用,使得中国经济发展差距呈现出逐步扩大的趋势。因此,中央政府应该采取有力措施,以便在全国形成合理的区域分工,进而达到缩小区域经济发展差距的目标。     

我国地区间公共福利基尼系数及其经济增长效应研究

本文采用1995—2007年我国31个省(市)的福利性财政支出数据,应用基尼系数方法测算了我国省(市)间的公共福利差距。通过分解计算基尼系数的地区构成,发现东、中、西部地区间的经济差距是我国福利性财政支出差异的主要表现方面。鉴于此,本文利用VAR模型和脉冲响应函数,计算并比较东、中、西部地区福利性财政支出基尼系数的经济增长效应差异性。结果表明:东、中部地区公共福利基尼系数的经济增长效应正负交替出现,但最终负向且趋于平稳;而西部地区公共福利的经济增长效应则一直是负向且稳定的。     

Determinants of internal migration in Israel: expected returns and risks

A multinomial logit model of place-to-place migration focusing on economic, geographic and demographic factors is applied to empirical data on inter-regional migration in Israel in 1980. It explains 75% of the (cross-sectional) variance in the data. The results presented in this paper depart from previous empirical work due to its industrialized context and its focus on risk aversion as a determinant of the migration decision. The results support the Harris–Todaro (1970) hypothesis, and indicate that regional similarities in the structure of industrial employment promote migration.     

Agricultural Roots in Intergenerational Transfers in China

Economists have been interested in the motivations of intergenerational transfers, for different motivations affect the effectiveness of anti-poverty public transfers. However, one’s motivation is largely shaped by culture and social conventions. This paper sheds light on the influence of rice cultivation in intergenerational transfers in China. This is also the first time that economists consider cultural factors in the study of intergenerational transfers. Cultivating rice requires elaborate irrigation systems and large amounts of labor input so that rice farmers have to cooperate extensively with their neighbors, which has gradually shaped people’s value to be more inter-dependent. Based on micro-level data from CHARLS and sub-national rice data from China, our empirical results show strong evidence that individuals from rice regions are more likely to provide economic support for their parents. A one-percentage point increase in the share of rice in the total grain planting area will raise transfer incidence by 0.2–0.4 percentage points, and rice region residents transfer on average 300–400 yuan more in 2011 and about 1,000 yuan more in 2013 to their parents than those from wheat regions. Meanwhile they are more inclined to rely on their adult children for elderly support. Urban citizens are less affected. Using instrumental variable estimation, we are able to prove the effect is causal. With future continued deepening of population aging in China, relying on children for old age support may become more and more unrealistic, the government needs to coordinate the relationship between public transfer and private transfer to ensure the quality of life for the elderly.