Residential segregation and educational attainment of children from regional migrant families in China

This paper studies the residential segregation effects on educational attainment of children from regional migrant families in China. We find that if migrant families live in segregated communities with fewer local residents, the school dropout rate of the children living with their parents in the host cities is higher and their high school enrollment rate is lower. We employ a unique set of nationwide survey data of regional migrants in China in 2012 and 2013 that comprises more than 150,000 individuals in each year. We first use the ratio of migrants over the total population residing in a community to measure segregation. When the ratio increases by 10%, the school dropout rate of migrant children increases by 4.7% from the mean value. Secondly, we identify segregation from the housing type of the migrant family. When they reside in the dorms provided by their employers or in the workplace, they will also be surrounded by many migrant colleagues. We find that living in such places increases the “not‐going‐to‐high‐school rate” of migrant children by 35% from the mean value. Our subsample analysis indicates that the segregation effects only exist in the samples of male migrant children and rural hukou families.     

Migration and political institutions: Other side of the hill

The present paper examines the effect of migrant population on political institutions in their host societies using data from the local elections in Hong Kong. The share of the population that has migrated from mainland China is found to have a positive effect on the pro-government votes in local elections. This effect continues to exist after demographic characteristics are controlled. Further investigation suggests that the effect of migrant population on voting patterns varies across periods of migration to Hong Kong. These findings contribute to the published literature in two ways. First, they provide evidence that the effects of migration on political development are two-way. Migration not only influences the political institutions in migrants’ home countries, but also shapes the political institutions in their host regions. Second, they also pave the way for future research on why and how periods of migration influence migrant populations’ voting patterns in their host regions.     

A theory of development controls in a ‘small’ city

This paper analyzes the implications of an institutional structure in which current residents of an urban area have the power to exercise control over the level and pattern of new residential development. We develop a general equilibrium spatial model of a ‘small’ urban area in which the current residents can control new residential development through a zoning policy determined by majority vote. The current residents are modeled explicitly as home owners, and are allowed to be arbitrarily different in tastes and endowments. The urban government is assumed to provide a public good for its residents, the level of which is also determined by majority vote.The ‘optimal’ development control policy from the point of view of a particular current resident is determined and the allocation resulting from a majority vote of the current residents is described for both head tax and property tax systems. Efficient development control policies are also analyzed.     

The trickle-down effect: how elite sporting success affects amateur participation in German football

The trickle-down effect assumes that sporting success at the elite sport level descends down to the amateur sport level in the sense that people are inspired by sporting success to participate themselves. Previous research failed to find convincing evidence for this relationship, mostly because the data used and the methods applied (e.g. cross-sectional data, primary data, correlations) were not adequate. This study addresses these shortcomings and examines the effect of national sporting success on amateur sport participation in German football using longitudinal data from 1950 to 2014. Since an individual’s decision to participate in sport also depends on other factors, the regression models also control for working hours, real wages etc. The results show that only World Cup title wins of the men’s national team have a positive and statistically significant impact on the number of and percentage changes in individual club memberships, clubs and teams. The coefficients of European Championship titles and title wins of the women’s national team turn out to be mostly insignificant. Future research should examine the reasons as to why only title wins by the men’s team have a measurable inspirational effect on amateur sport participation in football.     

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.     

DOES SOCIAL TRUST INCREASE INDIVIDUAL HAPPINESS IN JAPAN?*

Economists are mainly interested in trust as being growth enhancing, but whether trust is well‐being enhancing is underexplored. This paper examines if trust is intrinsically valuable by using individual happiness data from Japan. I attempt to mitigate the problem of non‐random selection of residents by restricting the sample to non‐movers. I also address reverse causality by instrumenting trust with residential stability, as trust should be higher for a more stable community. I find that trust has positive and significant effects on individual happiness. The instrumental variables approach suggests that social trust has a causal effect on individual happiness.     

采煤塌陷区农民居住空间重构后的居住满意度及影响因素——以安徽省淮北市为例

采煤塌陷区农民居住空间重构后的居住满意度是煤炭资源型城市转型发展中亟待解决的重要问题之一。以典型煤炭资源型城市淮北市为例,对安置后的采煤塌陷区农民进行问卷调查,通过探索性因子分析与多元线性回归分析研究其居住满意度及影响因素。结果表明:居住空间重构后的农民居住满意度具有6个维度的结构特征,其评分由高到低分别为:配套设施、住宅条件、人际交往、社区环境、社区参与和经济收入;农民对总体居住满意度的评价一般,且自建类独院社区高于统建类多层公寓社区;农民的教育程度、职业、个人月收入、住宅条件、社区环境、经济收入、配套设施以及人际交往显著影响重构后的总体居住满意度,其中住房条件是最主要因素,而经济收入是最为关键的因素。文章最后提出优化采煤塌陷区农民居住空间的对策建议。     

Relative concerns of rural-to-urban migrants in China

As their environment changes, migrants constitute an interesting group to study the effect of relative income on subjective well-being. This paper focuses on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. Using a novel dataset, we find that the well-being of migrants depends on several reference groups: it is negatively affected by the income of other migrants and workers of home regions; in contrast, we identify a positive, ‘signal’ effect vis-à-vis urban workers: larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. These effects are particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently, decline with years since migrations and change with other characteristics including work conditions and community ties.     

Altruism: primary motivation of remittances

This article examines primary incentives of remittances. After controlling for host country’s GNI per capita, real exchange rates and real interest rates, a rise in home country’s GNI per capita leads to fewer remittances. A rise in host country’s GNI per capita motivates migrants to remit more. Real interest rates have no effect on remittances. These results indicate primary incentive of remittances is altruism.     

Family violence and football: the effect of unexpected emotional cues on violent behavior

We study the link between family violence and the emotional cues associated with wins and losses by professional football teams. We hypothesize that the risk of violence is affected by the “gain-loss” utility of game outcomes around a rationally expected reference point. Our empirical analysis uses police reports of violent incidents on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for the pregame point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by four or more points) lead to a 10% increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (victories when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game and is larger for more important games. We find no evidence for reference point updating based on the halftime score.     

Brain waste? Educated immigrants in the US labor market

This paper investigates the occupational placement of immigrants in the US labor market using census data. We find striking differences among highly educated immigrants from different countries, even after we control for individuals' age, experience and level of education. With some exceptions, educated immigrants from Latin American and Eastern European countries are more likely to end up in unskilled jobs than immigrants from Asia and industrial countries. A large part of the variation can be explained by attributes of the country of origin that influence the quality of human capital, such as expenditure on tertiary education and the use of English as a medium of instruction. These findings suggest that “underplaced” migrants suffer primarily from low (or poorly transferable) skills rather than skill underutilization. The selection effects of US immigration policy also play an important role in explaining cross-country variation. The observed under-placement of educated migrants might be alleviated if home and host countries cooperate by sharing information on labor market conditions and work toward the recognition of qualifications.     

Brain waste? Educated immigrants in the US labor market

This paper investigates the occupational placement of immigrants in the US labor market using census data. We find striking differences among highly educated immigrants from different countries, even after we control for individuals' age, experience and level of education. With some exceptions, educated immigrants from Latin American and Eastern European countries are more likely to end up in unskilled jobs than immigrants from Asia and industrial countries. A large part of the variation can be explained by attributes of the country of origin that influence the quality of human capital, such as expenditure on tertiary education and the use of English as a medium of instruction. These findings suggest that “underplaced” migrants suffer primarily from low (or poorly transferable) skills rather than skill underutilization. The selection effects of US immigration policy also play an important role in explaining cross-country variation. The observed under-placement of educated migrants might be alleviated if home and host countries cooperate by sharing information on labor market conditions and work toward the recognition of qualifications.     

Remittances as a social status signaling device

Like all human beings, migrants may have a concern about their prestige or social status in the eyes of left-home family and friends. They can remit money in order to signal their economic success and increase their status. We show that if migrants’ income is private information, unsuccessful migrants might accept a worsening of their living conditions and send back home large amounts of remittances only in order to make residents believe that they are successful. In some cases, successful migrants can signal their true favorable economic situation by remitting an even larger amount. The game presents various equilibria that differ with respect to the proportion and nature of the migrants who sacrifice consumption opportunities to status revealing actions.     

Major League Baseball 2015, What a Difference a Year Makes

An econometric analysis of the 2015 Major League Baseball season is conducted with respect to regular season victories. Results obtained confirm some, but not all, results reported in prior research. The importance of solid team pitching and offense is underscored. Similar to 2014, team defence did not vary sufficiently to play a statistically significant role in team victory differences. Outcomes for total payrolls and salary disparities differ substantially from prior seasons. History may serve as a guide to what occurs on the field, but it does not always replicate the patterns of bygone years. Parameter heterogeneity is substantial and argues against pooling sample data from season to season. From a strict econometric perspective, the results obtained indicate that panel methods should not be utilized to analyse wins data for Major League Baseball. Ultimately, 2015 represents another departure from the standard baseball norm.     

A better job thanks to personal networks? An evaluation for migrants who arrived in France before age 18

It is more difficult for migrants than natives to find a job in their host country, so many of them have to accept, at least temporarily, a job that is below their level of qualification. This represents a waste of human capital for society and can undermine social cohesion. Relying on social relationships might help them to bypass some of the obstacles that prevent them from finding a job that matches their skillset. We focus on migrants who arrived in France before the age of 18 years, who were educated entirely or partially in France. We use the rich French Trajectories and Origins dataset for 2009 to study the impact of personal contacts on the quality of the current employment. We measure the job quality using an indicator based on the educational requirement for a given occupation. To address the endogeneity between our dependent variable (holding a suitable job or not) and the variable of interest (employment found through a personal contact or not), we use the variable ‘sibling(s) in France’ as an instrument: this variable influences an individual’s probability of finding a job through contacts but does not influence directly the quality of the employment. Our results indicate that for these migrants, finding a job through personal contacts strongly and positively impacts the occupational status attained: it raises both women’s and men’s probability of holding a suitable job by more than 0.40 points.     

我国不同经济发展水平地区农村居民生活幸福感的影响因素研究

本文利用对北京、辽宁和河北三省市调查所获得的1033个农户样本,运用有序逻辑模型进行数据处理,分析了不同的经济发展水平地区农村居民生活幸福感的影响因素。结果发现:收入、年龄、健康状况、对合作医疗满意度等因素对所有地区的农村居民生活满意度均有正向显著影响;性别、教育程度、婚姻状况、住房面积和结构等因素对不同经济发展水平地区农村居民生活幸福感的影响存在差异;宗教信仰、家庭人口、家庭成员的身体状况以及是否有需要赡养的老人等因素对我国不同经济发展地区农村居民生活幸福感的影响不显著。     

The influence of rapid rural-urban migration on Korean national fertility levels

A autoregressive model is applied to personal migration and pregnancy histories recorded in the 1974 Korean World Fertility Survey to assess the adaptation effect of rural-urban migration on migrant fertility and national fertility levels. The objective of this study is to provide policy makers in developing nations with a model that will enable them to quantify the effects of rapid urbanization on the fertility level of migrant women and thus on national fertility levels. The fertility of rural-urban migrants is on the average lower than that of rural stayers; this study supports the adaptation hypothesis and indicates that rural-urban migrants experienced a significant reduction in 5 year fertility rates from those of comparable rural stayers after migration to the urban area. In addition, the city specific effects of migration on fertility are of considerable importance; migrants to larger cities adapt more over their lifetime than migrants to smaller cities. The completed adaptation by postmarital, rural-urban migrants is largest among migrants who are least educated. The autoregressive model controls the fertility level at the beginning of the observed period; it is assumed that this is a proxy for family size preferences. Results show that the completed fertility of migrant women with less than 4 years of school is 1.9 children fewer than that of comparable rural stayers, 1 child fewer for migrant women with 4 to 6 years of school, and .8 children fewer for migrant women with at least 6 years of school. For Korea, the overall effects on national fertility of rural-urban migration represent a reduction of 1.79 births per woman for the 1965-1970 period; it is estimated that the 945,400 rural-urban women migrants of this period would avoid, on average, 71,300 births annually for their expected average 24 years of urban life.     

Network effects on labor contracts of internal migrants in China: a spatial autoregressive model

This paper studies the fact that 37% of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant’s decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts in the co-villager network increases the probability that a migrant accepts a contract-free job. We provide three possible explanations on how networks influence migrants’ contract decisions: job referral mechanism, limited information on contract benefits, and the “mini-labor union” formed among co-villagers, which substitutes for a formal contract. In the subsample analysis, we also find that the effects are larger for migrants whose jobs were introduced by their co-villagers, male migrants, migrants with rural Hukou, short-term migrants, and less educated migrants. The heterogeneous effects for migrants of different employer types, industries, and home provinces provide policy implications.     

Open issues in happiness research

Happiness research is one of the most vivid and fruitful parts of modern economics. The focus is on empirical findings. In contrast, theoretical work has been rather neglected. The paper deals with three areas needing more analytical work: the choice or imposition of comparison or reference groups; and the extent, speed and symmetry of adaptation to positive and negative shocks on happiness. In both areas, theoretical propositions are derived which can in the future be empirically tested. The third area relates to the political economy of happiness. Many governments intend to take the happiness index as a criterion of how successful their policies are. As a consequence, survey respondents get an incentive to misrepresent their happiness level, and governments to manipulate the aggregate happiness indicator in their favor. A country’s constitution must induce governments to carefully observe human rights, democracy, the decentralization of political decision making, and market institutions and provide people with the possibility to acquire a good education and find a suitable job.     

National levels of corruption and foreign direct investment

We model the relationship between bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) and the level of corruption in multinational firms’ (MCNs’) home and host countries. We construct and test a model of bilateral FDI between countries that differ in their levels of corruption. FDI is affected negatively both by the level of corruption in the host country and by differences in home- and host-country corruption. Our model emphasizes that MNCs develop skills for dealing with home-country corruption, and these skills become a competitive advantage in similarly corrupt host countries. We test the model using data on bilateral FDI stocks among a large number of home and host countries, using a variety of specifications and estimation strategies to provide robustness. Our results show that the effects of host-country corruption and of differences in corruption levels between home and host countries are statistically and economically significant.