A closer look at the determinants of international migration: decomposing cultural distance

Using a modified gravity model and three measures of cultural distance, we employ the zero-inflated negative binomial estimation technique to examine the impact of cultural distance on international migration flows. We confirm the finding of prior studies that there exists a negative relationship between composite measures of cultural distance and immigrant flows. Extending the literature, we decompose our composite cultural distance measures into their component dimensions to examine potential variability in the influences of individual dimensions on international migration. We find the cultural dimensions that reflect individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and perceived gender roles are typically more influential in determining immigrant flows than are other cultural dimensions.     

The role of social networks in determining migration and labour market outcomes

This paper empirically examines social network explanations for migration decisions in the context of German reunification. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel, we first show that the presence of a family in West Germany is an important predictor for the migration hazard rate of East Germans. We then explore whether pre‐migration networks have a discernible impact on the economic and social assimilation of East German immigrants in West Germany. We find that East German immigrants are more likely to be employed and to hold higher paying jobs when socially connected to the West prior to emigrating.     

On the estimation and forecasting of international migration: how relevant is heterogeneity across countries?

This paper performs a comparative analysis of estimation as well as of out-of-sample forecasting results of more than 20 estimators common in the panel data literature using the data on migration to Germany from 18 source countries in the period 1967–2001. Our results suggest that the choice of an estimation procedure has a substantial impact on the parameter estimates of the migration function. Out-of-sample forecasting results indicate the following: (1) the standard fixed effects estimators clearly outperforms the pooled OLS estimator, (2) both the fixed effects estimators and the hierarchical Bayes estimator exhibit the superior forecast performance, (3) the fixed effects estimators outperform GMM and other instrumental variables estimators, (4) forecasting performance of heterogenous estimators is mediocre in our data set.     

城市流迁就业新格局下的农民工收入问题思考——基于主观感知视角的实证研究

随着代际更替的完成,农民工城市流迁模式出现新的变化。新生代农民工行业选择性增强,劳动力回流返城再就业比重上升,安居乐业正在成为"家庭迁徙型"农民工城市生活的写照。尽管还有部分农民工仍往返于城乡与地区之间,但这种"候鸟型"流迁模式已在明显弱化。因此,以北京5区县为样本取集聚地,针对不同流迁模式下的农民工收入状况及幸福感知进行计量分析。研究结果表明:收入边际效用影响力在下降,农民工积极感知呈上升趋势,表明作为"城市边缘人"的农民工社会待遇不公、幸福感低下境遇正在改善,这与社会关注度提高、新生代农民工成为群体主导有关。在收入水平短期内难以获得大幅提升的现阶段,政府应致力于教育、职业发展以及社会保障权利等国民待遇平等环境创造,尽可能激发农民工群体正向心理潜能,以其积极品质提升主观幸福感。     

Transformation of international migrants in head wind: Evidence from Tajikistan in the 2010s

Tajikistan has relied on remittances by international migrants that have exceeded a quarter of annual GDP to date, despite a series of exogenous adverse events in the mid-2010s. We use a nationally representative panel dataset collected in 2013 and 2018 to explore the socio-economic characteristics of households with international migrants and migrants themselves. We provide several new findings. First, the prevalence of households with international migrants is 40%, with a substantial transition in migrant status during the research period. Second, households with international migrants are not poor, have Russian-speaking members, and are supported by an intense migration network. Third, younger, single, and more educated males comprise most of Tajikistan's international migrants. Fourth, households without Russian-speaking members or migration networks in 2013 had begun to send international migrants by 2018, while households in the richest group had exited from migration, suggesting s transition of the socio-economic composition of migrant-sending households during the mid-2010s.     

Use of social networks in banking: a study in the Czech Republic

Social networks are becoming more and more important nowadays. Apart from regular users of the Internet, companies have started to use them in their business. Their potential is that a great number of people, future clients of big companies, use them on a daily basis. Thus, the aim of this article is to analyse the use of social networks in the banking sector of the Czech Republic, particularly with respect to customer support. The methods of this study include common data analysis and professional analysis. Common data analysis consists of the evaluation of public data from social networks and web pages of the selected bank institutions. The professional analysis is conducted by paid professional analytical tools that provide more detailed statistics. The findings of the study show that social networks are now well-established tools for the Czech banks to attract both their current and potential clients. The Czech banks seem to care about their clients by trying to meet their needs. Customer care and services provided, however, differ with type of bank.     

The role of social capital in the labour market in China1

Social capital is considered to play an economic role in labour markets. It may be particularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market‐oriented system. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labour market is thus guanxi, the Chinese variant of social capital. With individual‐level measures of social capital, we test for the role of guanxi using a dataset designed for this purpose, covering 7,500 urban workers and conducted in early 2000. The evidence is consistent with the basic hypothesis. Both measures of social capital – size of social network and Communist Party membership – have significant and substantial coefficients in the income functions. Social capital can have influence either in an administered system or in one subject to market forces. It appears to do so in both parts of the labour market.     

Occupational attainment and stratification in China: The interactive effects of social networks and the hukou system

This paper examines the effects of social networks and hukou status on worker’s occupational attainment in China. To identify the potential ranking of different occupations, we consider the use of the stereotype ordered regression model to estimate individual occupational choice. Our results show that social networks play different roles in shaping occupational outcomes for urban and rural workers. In particular, friendship ties significantly improve urban workers’ opportunities in obtaining higher‐ranked occupations; in contrast, kinship ties appear to be more influential for rural migrants, but the effects are limited to the attainment of lower‐ranked occupations. While social contacts from government organizations or state‐owned sectors facilitate urban workers’ attainment of higher‐ranked occupations, similar patterns are not observed among rural workers. We further find that the beneficial effects of social networks or urban hukou identity are stronger for workers who are from less‐developed regions, who work in state‐owned enterprises, or who have a college degree. Decomposition of the wage gap between urban and rural workers suggests that differences in social networks and occupation types, together with hukou discrimination, account for the majority of the current wage inequality.     

The role of social and technical excludability for the success of impure public good and common pool agreements: The case of international fisheries

We argue that international fisheries are a prime example to study the incentive structure of forming impure public good and common pool agreements. We consider a fully integrated multiple zone model, in which zones are linked through density-dependent migration. The incentive to accede to Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs) is related to multiple characteristics. Firstly, the relative patch sizes of the high seas, which is the internationally (publicly) accessible domain, compared to exclusive economic zones, which are state-owned (privately owned). This can be related to the degree of socially constructed excludability. Secondly, the intensity of fish migration between various zones, which can be related to the degree of technical excludability. Thirdly, the growth rate of the resource, which can be interpreted as the degree of rivalry, with a low (high) degree of rivalry approximating public good (common pool) features. We show that, generally, excludability reduces free-riding incentives but also the need for cooperation, a variant of the “paradox of cooperation”. Moreover, we show that the benefit-cost duality between public goods and common pool resources generally holds except for some extreme parameter values for which a low degree of rivalry fosters the success of cooperation. Finally, through a variation of the diffusion matrix, we can also analyze a closed as well as a sink-source system.