The ethics of ‘going green’: the corporate social responsibility debate

A significant proportion of authors of green business texts proposes that managers should be the instigators and guardians of a societal change towards sustainable development. There is the notion of managerial duty towards the environment. This paper attempts to unravel the implications of this call for managerial eco‐heroism. The reason that this unravelling is important is that there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that win–win situations – the ‘low hanging fruit’ – are progressively becoming less apparent for many firms. This implies a conflict between profitability and environmental performance. This translates into a (perhaps familiar) scenario for business: one greener option is more expensive, and the financial gains associated with it are insufficient to justify it on the grounds of profitability – ‘going green’ then means losing potential profits. A neoclassical and a socio‐economic perspective are provided as foundations for managerial reasoning. Even though the corporate social responsibility debate is not resolved, it is nonetheless of importance, not least because environmentally proactive managers might intend to increase social well‐being but actually reduce it through their green decision‐making. Thus the real‐world applicability of the positions adopted by the opposing philosophical schools is analysed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Brexit and immigration

• Net inward migration from the EU has been running at record levels in recent years, although the steep increase in new National Insurance numbers issued suggests that the official data may be understating the level of immigration. There was a clear step up in inflows after both expansions of the EU into central and eastern Europe, while the relative strength of the UK labour market has been an important driver of the more recent rise in inflows.
• High levels of immigration have helped to offset the impact of an ageing population and ensured that the UK has enjoyed stronger labour supply growth than many of its peers. With migrants typically being better educated than their UK‐born counterparts, the quality of the stock of labour has also improved, and migrants have been found to have a net positive fiscal impact.
• But there have been some downsides, with evidence that high immigration has had a small dampening impact on wages. That migrants tend to head to London and the other southern regions over other destinations has exacerbated the imbalances in regional housing markets.
• Given that a desire to have greater control over immigration is usually one of the key motivations for those favouring Brexit, a vote in favour of leaving the EU is likely to see the UK abandon the policy of free movement of labour. This would probably see the UK extend the points‐based system that it currently uses for non‐EU countries to include EU migrants.
• Our modelling suggests that the adoption of a ‘populist’ immigration policy which lowers net inward migration by 60,000 a year could reduce the level of GDP by 1.1% in 2030 compared with our baseline forecast.

     

Emily Greene Balch,Political Economist

The first female economist to win a Nobel Prize was Emily Greene Balch, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for the same anti‐war activism for which she lost her Wellesley professorship of economics and sociology in 1918. Balch, an outspoken pacifist, social reformer, and defender of ethnically‐diverse immigration, has largely been forgotten in the history of economic thought and of sociology. Her contributions and her remarkable career warrant attention.     

Managed migration? Nurse recruitment and the consequences of state policy

This article analyses the main trends in nurse migration to the UK and highlights the importance of state policy as a major influence shaping employer utilisation of migrant nurses. The introduction of the points‐based immigration system is considered, and the consequences for migrant nurses, employers and trade unions are examined.     

The wisdom of demagogues: institutions,corruption and support for authoritarian populists

This article analyses the drivers of support for authoritarian populist parties in Europe. Such parties claim to represent the interests of ordinary people against greedy and out‐of‐touch elites. Simultaneously, they reject conventional constraints on democratic policymaking. In recent years, such parties on the political left and right have been gaining influence in countries across Europe. Using a panel data set from 1980–2016, we use semiparametric Tobit models with country fixed effects to explain support for authoritarian populists. We find that large vote shares of right‐wing – but not left‐wing – authoritarian populists are associated closely to corruption. Other commonly cited explanations such as unemployment, inequality and immigration perform poorly in predicting support for populist political platforms on the political right. While a full theoretical explanation of the link between corruption and right‐wing populism remains beyond the scope of this article, we suggest that the mechanism involves political trust. Corruption weakens trust in political institutions, which populists exploit. Curbing the rise of right‐wing authoritarian populism in Europe will thus require restoring trust in the integrity of politics.     

Normative target‐based decision making

This paper relates normative expected‐utility decision making to target‐based decision making, and introduces a new quantity, the aspiration equivalent. We show that using the aspiration equivalent as a target provides a new method for choosing between lotteries that is consistent with expected‐utility maximization. Furthermore, we show that the aspiration‐equivalent target provides a win–win situation for executive–manager delegation. This result furnishes a new link between normative decision analysis and target‐based decision making. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Voting over selective immigration policies with immigration aversion

Selective immigration policies set lower barriers to entry for skilled workers. However, simple economic intuition suggests that skilled majorities should welcome unskilled immigrants and protect skilled natives. This paper studies the voting over a selective policy in a two-country, three-factor model with skilled and unskilled labor, endogenous migration decisions, costly border enforcement and aversion to immigration. Results show that heterogeneity in capital distribution forces skilled voters to form a coalition with unskilled voters, who become pivotal. The voting outcome is therefore biased towards the preferences of the latter, and consists in a selective protectionism. Finally, immigration aversion helps to explain why skilled majorities do not bring down entry barriers against unskilled workers.     

Assessing inherent model bias: An application to native displacement in response to immigration

There is a long-standing debate among academics about the effect of immigration on native internal migration decisions. If immigrants displace natives this may indicate a direct cost of immigration in the form of decreased employment opportunity for native workers. Moreover, displacement would also imply that cross-region analyses of wage effects systematically underestimate the consequences of immigration. The widespread use of such area studies for the US and other countries makes it especially important to know whether a native internal response to immigration truly occurs. This paper introduces a microsimulation methodology to test for inherent bias in regression models that have been used in the literature. We show that some specifications have built biases into their models, thereby casting doubt on the validity of their results. We then provide a brief empirical analysis with a panel of observed US state-by-skill data. Together, our evidence argues against the existence of native displacement. This implies that cross-region analyses of immigration’s effect on wages are still informative.     

A fuzzy bi-level method for modeling age-specific migration

Modeling and forecasting international migration are significant research areas since migration forecasts are vital in decision making and policy design regarding economy, security, society, and resource allocation. The methods for modeling and forecasting migration rely on strict subjective or statistical assumptions which may not always be met. In addition, lack of a universally accepted definition of the term “migrant” and the ambiguities in data due to recording and collection systems result in inconsistencies and vagueness in migration modeling. Considering these, in this paper, a fuzzy bi-level age-specific migration modeling method is proposed. The bi-level structure embedded in the model makes use of the well-known Lee-Carter method as well as fuzzy regression, singular value decomposition technique, and hierarchical clustering to reflect the general characteristics of the country of concern together with the distinct emigration and immigration behaviors of the age groups. Bayesian time series models are fitted to the time-variant fuzzy parameters obtained through the proposed method to forecast future migration values. The proposed method is applied on female and male age-specific emigration and immigration counts of Finland for 1990–2010 period and Germany for 1995–2012 period, and the future values are forecasted for 2011–2025 and 2013–2025 respectively. The method is compared with an existing Bayesian approach and the numerical findings display that the proposed fuzzy method is superior to the existing one in modeling and forecasting age-specific migration values within significantly narrower prediction intervals.     

Corporate Sustainability and Economic Performance: an Empirical Analysis of a Voluntary Environmental Program in the USA

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are designed based on a win–win approach to environmental protection that reconciles environmental protection and economic performance. Despite the claims about VEPs, there has been an ongoing debate over their efficacy with regard to whether environmental goals are balanced by economic interests on both theoretical and empirical grounds. To resolve this controversy, this paper empirically investigates a public VEP by the US Environmental Protection Agency: Green Lights (GL). For this, the paper constructs a treatment effects regression model to account for the effects of non‐random assignment for GL participants and non‐participants. The proposed model can simultaneously estimate probit models that predict corporate participation in the GL program and linear models that test the extent to which this participation contributes to economic performance. The results indicate significant positive effects of corporate participation in the GL program on economic performance, providing support for the win–win perspective. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON THE LABOR MARKET

The literature on the impact of immigration on the labor market is highly controversial. The aim of this paper is to review the existing literature and draw some general conclusions on how wages and employment respond to immigration. Economic studies indicate that the impact of immigration on the average wage and employment of native workers is null or slightly positive. However, because adjustments take time, the immediate labor market effects of unexpected (as opposed to expected) migration episodes can be detrimental. Immigration also can have distributional consequences. In particular, the skill composition of immigrants matters in determining their impact on native labor market outcomes. An inflow of immigrants will tend to reduce the wages of competing native workers (with skills similar to those of the migrants), and increase those of complementary workers (with skills that complement those of immigrants). By affecting the skill composition of the workforce, immigration can create winners and losers among native workers via changes in the wage structure.     

国内生态移民研究综述

生态移民是由于生态环境恶化而部分民众改换生活地点的人口流动现象。本文对前人对生态移民理论及实践的研究成果进行系统梳理,对生态移民概念界定、形成因素、安置模式等方面进行总结述评。     

Sabotaging in contests with monitoring efforts

This paper considers a 3‐stage contest with both sabotage and monitoring efforts that aim to reduce sabotage. In the first stage, the regulator sets his monitoring efforts for each contestant. In the second stage, each contestant determines his sabotaging efforts, based on the monitoring efforts that were imposed by the regulator. In the third stage, each contestant determines his productive efforts in the contest. The results supply a justification to exert monitoring efforts because these efforts may benefit both the contestants and the regulator (a win‐win situation). Furthermore, the paper defines the conditions where exerting monitoring efforts would be worthwhile.     

Henry George and Immigration

Henry George's opposition to free immigration may be surprising in light of his positions on other aspects of economic theory and policy. This essay reviews George's statements on immigration policy, discusses inconsistencies of these statements with his positions on free trade and Malthusian population theory, compares George's views with the neoclassical economic perspective on immigration, and suggests that implementation of George's policy of taxing land values would share the gains from immigration in a manner that might reduce opposition to open borders.     

HOW TO MEASURE LABOUR MARKET EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION: A REVIEW

Abstract.  This paper surveys available empirical evidence on labour market effects of immigration. Many different approaches have been used already to try to find out whether immigration hurts the labour market opportunities of natives. No doubt new approaches will follow in the future as globalization will keep the migration issue on the agenda. This literature review discusses the different approaches concentrating on both the methodology and the results. At the end, it tries to summarize available evidence.     

Counting the costs: Denmark's changing migration policies

During the Danish local and national elections in November 2001, the scale, intensity and tone of the debates on migration took both national and international commentators by surprise. Within the first year of the new right‐wing government, supported by the influential Danish People's Party, Denmark has become one of the most exclusive and restrictive immigration regimes in Europe. This article takes a closer look at the recent politicization of migration issues in Denmark. While there is certainly concern with the compatibility of migrant ‘otherness’, in particular Islam, with Danish society and norms, then an equally, or even more central issue regards the ‘cost of migration’ for Danish social policy standards. Because of high unemployment rates, migrants and their descendants receive a relatively large part of Danish social contributions. This has raised the more general question of how to combine immigration with a tax‐financed universal welfare system where all have rights to full social benefits immediately upon arrival. The answer of the government has been to cut both sides of the equation by implementing stricter entry rules for family reunification and asylum‐seekers, as well as making a historical break with the principle of equal social welfare benefits for all legal residents. Lors des élections danoises locales et nationales de novembre 2001, l'ampleur, l'intensité et le ton des débats sur la migration ont surpris les commentateurs tant nationaux qu'étrangers. Au cours de la première année au pouvoir du nouveau gouvernement de droite, soutenu par le puissant Parti populaire danois, le Danemark a mis en place l'un des régimes d'immigration les plus fermés et restrictifs d'Europe. L'article s'attache à la récente politisation des questions de migration dans ce pays. Sans négliger le souci réel de compatibilité de ‘l'altérité’ des migrants, notamment l'Islam, avec la société et les normes danoises, il expose un problème aussi, voire plus crucial: le ‘coût de la migration’ selon les bases de la politique sociale nationale. Compte tenu des forts taux de chômage, les migrants et leurs descendants reçoivent une part relativement importante des contributions sociales danoises. D'où une question plus générale sur la façon de combiner immigration et système social universel financé par la fiscalité, où tous ont droit à l'intégralité des prestations sociales dès leur arrivée. En réponse, le gouvernement a tronqué les deux câtés de l'équation, en appliquant des règles d'entrée plus strictes pour la réunification familiale et les demandeurs d'asile, tout en créant une rupture historique avec le principe de prestations sociales égales pour tous les résidents légaux.     

TRAFFIC LIGHTS: WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION,DANGER AND DELAY

Since my 2006 article in Economic Affairs proposing traffic system reform, there has been a growing interest in the subject. Trials in deregulation have produced the results that students of the subject predicted – congestion‐free roads and sociable interaction between road‐users.     

And a populist New Year: global hopes and fears framework

• Get ready for more populist governments. There is now sufficiently widespread backing for global populism that at least one further victory in a major economy is very likely in the next year or so, our analysis of populist policies and support in 20 large economies shows.
• While there are no populist electoral front‐runners, many large economies have elections coming up in which populists have a decent chance of capturing sizeable votes. If you roll the dice enough times, the populist number is likely to come up somewhere – there is now around a 50% chance of a populist government in one key Eurozone country; bookmakers' odds suggest an even higher probability.
• Donald Trump's victory showed how market reaction to populism is hard to predict. Our survey provides a framework for assessing the diverse and complex channels.
• We see limited possibilities of Trump‐like, populist‐propelled fiscal expansions elsewhere in the world, which are typically market positive. Even where populist‐leaning politicians have a chance of power, they have shown little appetite for fiscal expansion.
• Globally, populist policies are focussed more on immigration, trade, and governance, which are typically market negative. As such, populist electoral victories would imply modest downward revisions to baseline growth forecasts and risk greater instability.
• Populist electoral victories in Europe would result in unsettling brinksmanship and provide an existential threat to the EU, though compromise is the most likely outcome and subsequent risks are two‐sided. For example, (i) reductions in free movement in labour could make Brexit softer; (ii) populism could challenge unhelpful pro‐cyclicality in the Stability and Growth Pact.

     

Brexit — velvet divorce or messy breakup?

• We use a ‘scenario tree’ approach to look at the possible outcomes of the negotiations around the UK's exit from the EU. Given how little common ground there is between the two sides, we find that a relatively loose relationship is the most likely outcome, with the UK set to leave the EU in early‐ 2019.
• The negotiating positions of the UK and EU are diametrically opposed. The UK wants to end the free movement of labour, cease making contributions to the EU budget and regain ‘sovereignty’ from Brussels, while retaining as much access to the single market as possible. But the EU's starting position is that single market access is dependent upon agreeing to the four freedoms and that this is non‐negotiable.
• So far all signs are that the UK will prioritise the ability to control immigration over single market access. Thus remaining a member of the EEA is very unlikely to be viable over the longer‐term – our scenario tree analysis gives it a probability of just 6% – although it may be adopted as an interim step. Remaining part of the customs union is also unlikely (18%) as it will preclude the UK from making FTA with third countries.
• If the EU takes a mercantilist approach, it will have little incentive to come to an agreement with the UK over single market access for services, given the UK's large trade surplus with the EU for these activities, implying that UK firms may face growing non‐tariff barriers after the UK has left the EU. The UK's large deficit on goods trade with the EU gives a better chance of agreeing a FTA for goods, though with any FTA requiring agreement from all 27 EU members, the UK would have to be prepared for lengthy negotiations and make extensive concessions. Therefore, we think that a reversion to WTO rules (37%) is slightly more likely than agreeing a FTA (36%).

     

Immigration,socio-economic conditions and crime: a cross-sectional versus cross-sectional time-series perspective

This study purpose is to verify if there is an association between foreign immigration and crime. In doing this, the study investigates also some satellite aspects revolving around this possible association: the range of offences affected by immigration, the relationship between immigrant and native crime, and whether the immigration impact on crime is direct or indirect. The present study has addressed these issues by both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal analysis, the latter including an instrument. The study is based on data of the Italian provinces. Italy represents a critical case for studying the migration–crime relationship, because in this country the rise in foreign immigration has been sudden and its pace feverish. The cross-sectional analysis findings show that crime intensities are affected by time-invariant factors and marginally by immigration. On the contrary, the longitudinal analysis shows that variations in immigration had a positive impact on both the most serious and the most common offences, on property crimes as well as on crimes of violence. There is no evidence of indirect effects of immigration on crime or of a link with native crime. In contrast to previous literature regarding the U.S., Canada, and Australia, these results suggest that a spiralling immigration can affect crime. In terms of methods, these findings show that the standard synchronic analysis models can be biased by non-observed factors and that therefore cross-sectional time-series models can offer significant advantages.