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.     

A theory of permissible illegal immigration

In many countries laws are not enforced against visibly present illegal immigrants. The visibly present illegal immigrants also tend to be concentrated in particular sectors. We explain such permissible illegal immigration in an endogenous-policy model where selective sector-specific illegality transforms illegal immigrants from non-sectorally specialized to sector-specific factors of production. Under initial conditions where no immigrants are present, the median voter opposes immigration. When, however, a population of illegal immigrants has accumulated, ongoing illegal immigration becomes an endogenous equilibrium policy, at the same time that a majority of voters opposes legal immigration and opposes amnesty that would legalize the immigrants' presence. We also establish a basis for domestic voters preferring that illegal immigrants be employed in service rather than traded-goods sectors.     

The effect of mode 4 liberalization on illegal immigration

This paper aims to assess the impacts of the temporary movement of workers on the illegal immigration. It uses a discrete time, forward-looking model with heterogeneous agents, in order to describe the decision made by illegal migrants from developing countries. Illegal migrants are supposed to accede only to the informal sector and are price takers, as they have no negotiating power. Taking into account these specifications, the theoretical model is solved analytically and illustrated numerically. It demonstrates that under some conditions, the liberalization of temporary movement of workers could lead to a decrease of illegal migration.     

Foreign aid and economic growth in Cameroon

A recent study of the fixed-odds betting market on baseball games, while finding that the betting market is generally efficient, also found evidence of an underbetting on underdog teams. This article examines the evidence for this new anomaly. It corrects Woodland and Woodland's estimates of the commission, subjective win probabilities and test statistics. The efficiency null hypothesis cannot be rejected for all of their tests when revised test statistics are calculated for their sample period (however, like them, it was found that slight underdogs are underbet). It is also shown that their bias is not simply a bias involving favourites and underdogs. Whether underdogs are playing at home or away also seems to matter in their sample period. As well a positive relationship between returns and subjective probabilities was found for underdogs and favourites, a relationship suggestive of a favourite-longshot bias rather than its reverse. It is concluded that there is insufficient evidence to claim that this bias is a ‘true market inefficiency’.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

Foreign aid,poverty reduction,and democracy

Eradication of poverty is the most pervasive goal of donors' foreign aid programmes. As a result, there has been much research on the degree of correlation between aid and poverty reduction. However, this work to date has shed little light on the direction of causation between the two variables. Using the method of Granger causality, and conditioning aid and poverty on the state of democracy in developing countries, this study asks whether aid flows impact poverty, whether poverty influences aid flows, or whether causality proceeds in both directions simultaneously. While the results identify no causal relationships in some of the sub-samples, they point to the existence of a multitude of relationships across others.     

Equilibrium unemployment as a discipline device when finding employment is costly

Abstract In this paper, we study a model that incorporates costly job search into an efficiency wage model. We show that the relationship between wages and detection rates is ambiguous in this framework. The model can generate a positive relationship, consistent with empirically reasonable values for unemployment rates, job finding rates, and employment duration.     

Restricted immigration in a two-sector economy

This paper will analyze income redistribution and fiscal effects caused by immigration in a two-sector economy, where one sector is closed and where foreign and domestic labor are homogeneous. The setup of this model is guided by the stylized fact that today's immigrants in the European Union are distributed highly unequal across sectors, with a clear concentration in low-income sectors. Unlike many previous studies, we do not interpret this segmentation by means of differential skills because we focus on tomorrow's potential immigrants from former communist countries in northeastern Europe, which exhibit education levels similar to those of western European workers. Contrary to results from one-sector models, some pure wage earners may also win from immigration as a result of changing relative prices. Therefore, the political support for immigration depends not only on the capital ownership distribution, but also on relative immigration sector size and relative sector productivity. Furthermore, the necessary tax rate to finance the transfer system may decrease as a result of immigration. The authors thank the participants of the Forty-Seventh International Atlantic Economic Conference, Vienna, Austria, March 16–23, 1999, in particular, Willi Altzinger, Koen Schoors, and Heinz Hollenstein, for their valuable comments which helped to improve this paper considerably.     

International immigration and economic welfare in an efficiency wage model: The co-existence case of both legal and illegal foreign workers

Abstract. In the developed countries some native workers are unemployed while there exist illegal unskilled (legal skilled) foreign workers who are complementary to (substitutable for) natives and their wages are usually lower than (equal to) that of natives. Reflecting this situation, we introduce two types of immigrant in an efficiency wage model. It is shown that domestic government should exclude illegal foreign workers but welcome legal ones if the total number of illegal immigrants is small enough and well controlled. On the other hand, legal immigration should be restricted if the flood of illegal immigration is out of control.     

The demographic transition revisited: lessons for foreign aid and U.S. immigration policy.

"The completed demographic transitions in industrialized countries inspired a model which underlies many well-meant policies affecting the Third World. However, the model's postulate--modernization and prosperity will lower fertility rates--has exacerbated rather than helped control worldwide population growth and the associated environmental degradation. Here we show that perceived economic opportunity leads to raising family size targets and to discarding elements of traditional cultures which formerly held fertility rates in check. Conversely, fertility rates fall when limits are recognized. These observations imply that a liberal immigration policy and large-scale foreign aid are counterproductive for restoring balance between population size and carrying capacity."     

Illegal immigration in a heterogeneous labor market

This paper examines the effects of illegal immigration in a neoclassical growth model with two groups of workers, skilled and unskilled. We show that although illegal immigration is a boon to a country as a whole, there are distributional effects, whose sign is in general ambiguous. This is because all sources of income of both groups are affected and some of these changes tend to move income in opposite directions. Nevertheless, calibration exercises show that the wealth distribution is likely to become more unequal as the number of illegal immigrants increases. We confirm most of our calibration results analytically in a small open economy version of the basic model. Finally, our results remain robust when we extend the model to allow for endogenous skill acquisition.     

Foreign aid and government fiscal behaviour in low-income South Asian countries

The major purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between foreign aid and government fiscal behaviour using a pooled sample of three low-income South Asian countries: Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. A simultaneous equation system was developed and estimated using nonlinear three-stage least squares procedure. The results confirm the hypothesis that foreign aid affects both the expenditure and the revenue side of the recipient government budgets. Both grants and loans are used for consumption as well as for investment purposes. However, grants leak into consumption more than loans. Thus, if the purpose of aid is to generate investment, it is more helpful if donors extend loans to the developing countries than by giving grants. The results also indicate that both grants and loans increase the taxation effort. Multilateral aid actually pulls resources out of consumption and places them into investment projects. Thus the results confirm the assertion that a shift from bilateral to multilateral aid will induce a greater increase in investment. This could stem from better economic performance resulting from high-conditionality lending associated with aid from the major multilateral agencies.     

中国药品广告违法问题探讨

由于药品的特殊性,故人们在日常生活中往往难以获取相关的药品知识,药品广告封指导合理用药、安全用药起着至关重要的作用。所以真实合法的广告宣传对药品的推广使用,能起到有效的促进作用,否则将误导消费者。笔者试图对此做出具体的分析。     

Foreign Aid as Prize: Incentives for a Pro-Poor Policy

The authors develop a theoretical model of foreign aid to analyze a method of disbursement of aid which induces the recipient government to follow a more pro-poor policy than it otherwise would do. In their two-period model, aid is given in the second period and the volume of it depends on the level of well-being of the target group in the first period. They find that this way of designing aid does increase the welfare of the poor. They also consider the situations where the donor and the recipient governments act simultaneously as well as sequentially, and they find that, by moving first in a sequential game, the donor country can, under certain conditions, increase the welfare of the poor and that of its own country compared to the case of simultaneous moves.     

浅析地下博彩业的兴盛

20世纪90年代初,地下“六合彩”传入内地,给中国部分地区的经济发展造成了严重的影响,十多年过去了,虽经政府的强力打击,“六合彩”还在继续蔓延,彩民购买势头并未消减。本文试图从彩民、庄家两个方面分析地下博彩业兴盛的原因,以及封经济造成的影响,最后提出根除建议。     

A permanent effect of temporary immigration on economic growth

Immigration can help to lessen the burden of ageing for the welfare states of most Western economies. To show this, we develop a decomposition framework for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita which deals with the impact of both ageing and immigration on economic growth. Using a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) for the Netherlands during 1973 to 2009, we demonstrate the empirical relevance of some crucial interactions between elements of that decomposition. The conclusion is that even temporary immigration may help to alleviate the ageing problem through a positive long-term contribution to employment, wages and GDP per capita, as long as the immigrants are able to participate in the labour force in tandem with the native population. Unfavourable short-term effects should be avoided through a gradual phasing in of immigration policies.