Migrant remittances and fertility

This study examines the role of migrants’ remittances in developing countries’ fertility transition. Employing an unbalanced panel of South Asian countries and controlling for various economic and socio-demographic factors, we find that remittances are significantly associated with a lower number of children born to women of childbearing age. This suggests the remittances’ substitution effect to be at play rather than the income effect, and may result from decreased need for children for financing the household’s future needs as well as from better access to healthcare and contraceptive methods available to migrant households. Remittances’ association with fertility appears to be more important than the transfer of fertility norms from migrants’ host countries. The monetary aspects of international migration may therefore be more important for the region’s demographic transition than social remittances.     

Making Economics More Useful: How Technological Eclecticism Could Help

Keynes thought it would be “splendid” if economists became more like dentists. Disciplinary economics has instead become more like physics in focusing on concise, universal propositions verified through decisive tests. This focus, the author argues, limits the practical utility of the discipline because universal propositions form only a part of new policy recipes. The author further suggests that, as in engineering and medicine, developing economic recipes requires eclectic combinations of suggestive tests and judgment. Additionally, the author provides a detailed example of how a simulation model can help evaluate new policy combinations that affect the screening of loan applications.     

Stability or growth: The rich nations’ dilemma

The article discusses the economic difficulties from which the industrialized nations have been suffering for the past years giving special regard to the controversy as to what concept of economic policy should be adopted in order to overcome the present problems.     

Making economics more useful: how technological eclecticism could help

ABSTRACT

Keynes thought it would be ‘splendid’ if economists became more like dentists. Disciplinary economics has instead become more like physics in focusing on concise, universal propositions verified through decisive tests. This focus, I argue, limits the practical utility of the discipline because universal propositions form only a part of new policy recipes. I further suggest that, as in engineering and medicine, developing economic recipes requires eclectic combinations of suggestive tests and judgement. Additionally, I offer a detailed example of how a simulation model can help evaluate new policy combinations that affect the screening of loan applications.     

Imperfect Labor Mobility and Unemployment in LDCs: Reply

In a recent paper (Parai and Beladi 1997; PB hereafter), we have analyzed the implications of growth and trade policies for a small open economy facing imperfect labor mobility and unemployment of the Harris-Todaro variety. We have used the Casas (1984) specification of the labor immobility phenomenon for a Harris-Todaro type economy, and have shown that most of the results in Harris-Todaro framework remain unaltered even under imperfect labor mobility, provided that the elasticity of labor mobility parameter exceeds a critical minimum value. On the optimal tariff issue, Gilbert and Mikic (1997; GM hereafter) find our results counterconventional. In GM's view, the nonconventional result in PB is due to our simplification of the labor mobility specification given by Casas. In this note, we offer our response to GM's comments.     

Symmetric ignorance: The cost of anonymous lemons

Rules that restrict information required in negotiated private transactions have spurred a vast increase in the scope of anonymous financial markets, particularly in the United States. The subtle costs of the information-restricting rules raise questions about the social value of “completing” anonymous markets that would not naturally survive and did not historically exist.     

The Elusive Underpinnings of U.S. Venturesomeness (If Not Prosperity)*

This article explores the question of how the U.S. economy has managed to maintain (or even increase) its lead over other nations in per capita income and the average productivity of its workforce. The answer provided in the author's recent book is that such productivity depends on the greater willingness and effectiveness of U.S. consumers and businesses in making use of innovations in products and business processes. But this begs the question: What accounts for the increase in the innovative capabilities or effectiveness of U.S. consumers and businesses, both over time and relative to that of their global counterparts? After starting with the conventional “supply‐side” focus on low taxes, limited regulatory barriers, and strong property rights, the author goes on to shift the main emphasis to the following six “institutional” contributors to U.S. prosperity:

• ? Breadth of participation: the modern U.S. economy draws, to a greater extent than either its global competitors or the U.S. of a century ago, on the contributions of far more individuals both as developers and as users of new products.
• ? Organizational diversity and specialization: the evolution of new forms of organization in the U.S., from small venture capital‐backed firms to huge public corporations with dispersed ownership, has enabled the system to use the contributions of many individuals more effectively.
• ? Changes in common beliefs and attitudes: greater receptiveness to technological change has accelerated the adoption of new products in all countries, but especially in the U.S.
• ? Increased pressure for growth: the “grow or die” imperative faced by U.S. businesses has encouraged them to look for help from new technologies.
• ? The professionalization of management and sales functions—a distinctively U.S. phenomenon whose beginnings can be traced to IBM in the 1920s—has improved the capacity of modern U.S. organizations to develop markets and use new products.
• ? The expansion of higher education, to a far greater extent in the U.S. than elsewhere, has increased the supply of individuals with habits and attitudes that improve their ability to develop and use innovations.