Race/Ethnicity and Education Effects on Employment in High Technology Industries and Occupations in the US, 1992–2002

High technology industries employ higher than average numbers of scientists and engineers when compared to the employment of the same group among all industries. Since these jobs require high levels of skills to undertake creative, cutting edge activities, it is anticipated that employment in these industries will be largely based on the levels of human capital of individuals or merit. This study compares how changes in levels of educational attainment affect employment in science and engineering jobs in high technology industries with those outside for four racial and ethnic groups. Although blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in science and engineering occupations, the study finds that the effects of education vary with the level of education, race/ethnicity, and the industry/occupational group under consideration in ways that suggest that the race/ethnicity of an individual still plays an important role in determining employment.     

Tattoos,Employment, and Labor Market Earnings: Is There a Link in the Ink?

The popularity of tattooing has increased substantially in recent years, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Moreover, tattooed images are permanent unless the individual opts for expensive, time consuming, and painful removal procedures. Given the increasing popularity of tattooing, and the permanent nature of this action, it is of interest to know whether tattooed workers are more or less likely to be employed and, conditional on employment, if they receive wages that are different from the wages of their non‐tattooed peers. To investigate these questions, we analyze two large data sets—from the United States and Australia—with measures of tattoo status, employment, earnings, and other pertinent variables. Regardless of country, gender, specific measures, or estimation technique, the results consistently show that having a tattoo is negatively and significantly related to employment and earnings in bivariate analyses, but the estimates become smaller and nonsignificant after controlling for human capital, occupation, behavioral choices, lifestyle factors, and other individual characteristics related to labor market outcomes. Various robustness checks confirm the stability of the core findings. These results suggest that, once differences in personal characteristics are taken into account, tattooed and non‐tattooed workers are treated similarly in the labor market. We offer suggestions for improving future surveys to enable a better understanding of the relationships between tattooed workers and their labor market outcomes.     

What Does Behavioral Economics Mean for Policy? Challenges to Savings and Health Policies in the Netherlands

Key findings in behavioral economics are that people’s behavior (revealed preferences) is often not in line with their intentions (normative preferences), that they are sensitive to the way choices are presented to them, and that their cognitive abilities are limited. This is manifest in particular in areas of intertemporal choice, like personal finance and health-related behavior. Policy makers can develop policies that help citizens to make choices that are more in line with their normative preferences. In this paper we summarize the behavioral evidence, discuss the motivations for interventions, and show how recent behavioral insights can help to improve upon existing policies. These new policies could be described as libertarian paternalism, and include setting defaults thoughtfully and using unorthodox commitment mechanisms.     

Does It Get Better? Recent Estimates of Sexual Orientation and Earnings in the United States

Using 2013–2015 National Health Interview Survey data, we reproduce a well‐documented finding that self‐identified lesbians earn significantly more than comparable heterosexual women. These data also show — for the first time in the literature — that self‐identified gay men also earn significantly more than comparable heterosexual men, a difference on the order of 10% of annual earnings. We discuss several possible explanations for the new finding of a gay male earnings premium and suggest that reduced discrimination and changing patterns of household specialization are unlikely to be the primary mechanisms.     

Race,Quality of Care and Patient Outcomes: What Can We Learn from the Department of Veterans Affairs?

The large and persistent differences in health outcomes between African Americans and whites have sometimes been attributed to differences in the quality of the facilities in which they receive care. A large body of literature documents systematically worse performance by facilities which serve a larger share of black patients. However, these estimates may be biased by unobserved variables which correlate with the racial profile of the clinic and also affect outcomes. This paper uses a unique dataset from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs system to examine the relationship between the quality of health care and the racial profile of the patient population in an equal-access health care system. An instrumental variable is used to overcome the omitted variable bias in the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates. Both the OLS and IV estimates show that increasing the proportion of visits by African–American patients results in improved outcomes for all patients treated at the clinic. The OLS results significantly underestimate the effect of increasing the proportion of black patients. Holding the overall clinic load constant and adding one hundred outpatient visits by African Americans in a year would result in a 0.5 percentage point decrease in 1-year mortality for the average patient in the clinic. Thus, contrary to results from the private health care sector, increasing clinic racial integration in an equal access system would benefit all patients.     

The Whiter the Better? Racial Composition and Access to School Resources for Black Students

Rigorous courses are an important resource, distributed within schools, that merit attention as a central determinant of student achievement and future outcomes (Cook and Evans, J Labor Econ. 18(4):729–754, 2000; Rose and Betts, Rev Econ Stat. 86(2):497–513, 2004). Yet, black students are less likely to be enrolled in advanced courses in general (ex. Darity et al. 2001; Klopfenstein, Contemp Econ Pol. 23(3):416–28, 2005) and specifically Algebra 1 in middle school (Riley 1997). Debate exists around the potential benefits or drawbacks for black students attending highly integrated schools relative to highly segregated schools. This study examines which school characteristics are associated with large disparities in black student enrollment in Algebra 1 relative to white student enrollment in Algebra 1 in the same middle schools in North Carolina. Of particular interest is the relationship between access and the percentage of white students in a school. The study finds that: (1) black students are underrepresented in Algebra 1 in essentially all schools in North Carolina; (2) the largest disparities occur in schools that are highly integrated while the disparities are reduced in schools that are either large majority white or large majority non-white; (3) schools with a larger share of white teachers are related to larger disparities between black and white students; (4) the marginal effects of racial composition on the relative disparity in enrollment are significantly larger for black females than black males.     

Does the belt and road initiative expand China's export potential to countries along the belt and road?

In this paper, we use difference-in-differences estimation to examine the effect of the Belt and Road Initiative on China's export potential to the countries along the Belt and Road routes. The results show that China's export potential to the Belt and Road countries rose significantly after the initiative began, especially for exports of products in capital intensive industries. We also distinguish between different regions and find a much stronger effect for countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and West Asia.     

What Does the `Show Case' Show? Evidence of and Lessons from Adjustment in Uganda

Uganda is often seen as an African show case for the beneficial effects of structural adjustment. High growth rates have been combined with a high degree of “ownership” of the reforms. At the same time, critics have pointed to continued aid dependence, and limited growth of the important agricultural export sector. The contribution of this paper to this debate is three-fold. First, “ownership” has not always been exemplary and is still fragile in some respects. Second, although aid has indeed been important for bringing about high growth, aid dependence has diminished over time. Third, there have been real supply responses from the agricultural export sector.     

What Have Remittances Done to Development? Evidence from the Caribbean Community and Common Market

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of remittances on socio-economic development in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) between 1970 and 2013. We find that remittances have improved the health indicators, reducing infant and child mortality, and food deficit and improving life expectancy, and sanitation and water sources, especially in the rural areas. However, remittance inflows have no significant impact on education and communication infrastructure. Neither do they contribute to any demographic changes.     

The COVID‐19 Pandemic and Its Impact on the Global Economy: What Does It Take to Turn Crisis into Opportunity?

The COVID‐19 pandemic broke out at a time when there were heightened uncertainties in the global economy. Understanding these uncertainties provides an important background for analyzing the impact of the pandemic on the global economy, assessing the effectiveness of policy measures in combating the pandemic and reviving the global economy, and predicting the trajectory of the economic recovery in the post‐pandemic era. We analyze how COVID‐19 would likely deepen an existing malaise in the global economy, and what could be done to address these problems while managing the economic recovery. We argue that three fundamental factors that could lead to a solid recovery in the post pandemic era are structural reform, new technology and re‐integration. They could be managed by instituting a new “global social contract.” Supported by strong public policies at all levels, especially at national level, these three factors could bring about the salvation of the global economy as it recovers or re‐emerges from the pandemic crisis.     

Foreign Direct Investment in the Enlarged EU: Do Taxes Matter and to What Extent?

Foreign direct investment is of increasing importance in the European Union. This paper estimates the effect of taxes on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and on three sub-components of these flows for the countries of the enlarged European Union. The model in the spirit of gravity equations robustly explains FDI flows between the 25 member states. Sample selection needs to be addressed in the estimation. We show that the different subcomponents of FDI should and indeed do react differently to taxes. After controlling for unobserved country characteristics and common time effects, the top statutory corporate tax rate of both, source and host country, turn insignificant for total FDI and investment into equity. However, high source country taxes clearly increase the probability of firms to re-invest profits abroad and lower the percentage of debt financed FDI. This might reflect profit re-allocation to avoid taxes. Market size factors have the expected signs.

Exchange Rates and the Trade Balance for Dynamic Asian Economies—Does the J-Curve Exist for Singapore,Malaysia, and Korea?

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the real trade balance and the real exchange rate for bilateral trade in merchandise goods between Singapore, Korea, and Malaysia and the USA and Japan on a quarterly basis over the period 1970 to 1996 using the partial reduced form model of Rose and Yellen (1989) derived from the two-country imperfect substitutes model. With the exception of Korean trade with the USA, and in line with recent work using a similar methodology, our findings suggest that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on the real trade balance, and for Singapore and Malaysia we can find no persuasive evidence for J-curves. For Korea, however, the data were consistent with some J-curve effects with respect to both Japan and the USA. Moreover, it is possible that for Korea these effects were being masked or muted by small country pricing of exports in foreign currency, but there was no evidence that imports subsequently fell as the lag length on the real exchange rate increased, which would be required to support a strict interpretation of the J-curve.     

Does financial integration make banks more vulnerable? Regulation,foreign owned banks,and the lender-of-last resort

We describe a simple model in which banks’ prudential efforts and public regulation can reduce the probability of bankruptcy. Focusing on the European example, we contrast the national case with an integrated banking market and find that banks will exert, and public regulators will demand, greater prudential effort to monitor their bank’s activities. Thus, financial integration may increase voluntary prudential behavior by banks, avoid a regulatory “race to the bottom,” and improve the soundness of the financial system. Along similar lines, we show that the absence of a dedicated lender of last resort within the euro area can reduce the probability of financial crisis. Despite these findings, the overall level of regulatory activity may remain suboptimal from a European perspective. We also discuss incentives for European banks to organize their foreign holdings in branches or subsidiaries.

China's outward foreign direct investment in the Belt and Road Initiative: What are the motives for Chinese firms to invest?

Because of the potentially large and important effects of the extremely ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by China in late 2013, considerable attention has been given to the motives for, and repercussions of, the BRI-driven infrastructural projects. Yet, the non-infrastructural outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from China to BRI countries, which varies quite substantially across different sectors and different countries, has not yet received much attention. In contrast to some recent studies showing that the massive initiative has increased China's total FDI outflows to fellow BRI countries, in this paper, based on our sector-level difference-in-differences models, we find that effect to be statistically insignificant. Yet, at the same time, we provide empirical evidence on the sectoral pattern of China's outward FDI before and after 2014 indicating that China's FDI outflows to BRI countries have significantly increased in sectors characterized by overcapacity and contributing to pollution in China, thereby demonstrating that China's BRI-driven outward FDI has been very selective in terms of sectors. We confirm these findings with a variety of robustness checks and show that it is BRI countries with relatively low institutional quality that have been more likely to receive these types of FDI from China. We thus speculate that Chinese firms have been motivated to place FDI investments in BRI countries for the sake of alleviating China's own overcapacity and pollution problems. Our findings lead us to suggest that, although these sectoral patterns are consistent with the different stages of economic development in which China and its fellow BRI-identified countries find themselves, Chinese investors and host country governments should be more concerned with the potential for unwanted side-effects of the FDI investments so that the mutually beneficial effects of the BRI can be sustained into the indefinite future among all countries involved.     

Role of professionalism in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Does a public health or medical background help?

In response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), there have been substantial variations in policy response and performance for disease control and prevention within and across nations. It remains unclear to what extent these variations may be explained by bureaucrats' professionalism, as measured by their educational background or work experience in public health or medicine. To investigate the effects of officials' professionalism on their response to and performance in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, we collect information from the résumés of government and Party officials in 294 Chinese cities, and integrate this information with other data sources, including weather conditions, city characteristics, COVID-19-related policy measures, and health outcomes. We show that, on average, cities whose top officials had public health or medical backgrounds (PHMBGs) had a significantly lower infection rate than cities whose top officials lacked such backgrounds. We test the mechanisms of these effects and find that cities whose officials had a PHMBG implemented community closure more rapidly than those lacked such backgrounds. Our findings highlight the importance of professionalism in combating the pandemic.     

China and India in World Trade: Are the Asia Giants a Threat to Malaysia?1

Abstract

With higher shares in world merchandise trade and improvements in product quality, China is better positioned than India in the near term for influencing global trade. From the Malaysian perspective, China represents a non-negligible share in Malaysia's trade. The trends in bilateral trade with both Giants however suggest that competition has intensified. Relative to India, China appears to promulgate a more influential role on Malaysia via higher commodity overlap in external markets, greater matched trade that is of vertical differentiation, distinct quality shifts and negative adjustment pressures. Within this broad rubric of trade-induced changes, there is no evidence of skill upgrading for Malaysia in trade expansion with both Giants. This mirrors the lack of product quality improvements and the low levels of export values of high quality varieties in matched trade. Hence trade induced changes from the Giants that have been cited to be favourable from the Malaysian perspective in previous studies, may have been grossly overstated.     

What are the health benefits of a constant water supply? Evidence from London, 1860–1910

What are the benefits of moving from intermittent water delivery (which limits user access to less than 24 h per day) to constant service? To address this question, we study the transition from intermittent to constant water supply in London. Between 1871 and 1910, the proportion of London households with access to a constant water supply (24 h a day, 7 days a week) rose from less than 20–100 percent. Idiosyncratic delays in the negotiation process between companies and property owners generated random variation in the timing of the transition across London districts. Exploiting this variation, we find that a one percentage point increase in a local population with access to constant service decreased deaths from waterborne diseases by as much as 0.4 percent and explains approximately a fifth of the late nineteenth century decline in waterborne disease mortality. Results are robust to the inclusion of controls for population density, concerns regarding the reporting of cause-of-death, district-specific time trends, district demographics and spatial autocorrelation.     

What explains the intention to bring mobile phones for recycling? A study on university students in China and Germany

The analysis investigates the determinants of the intention to bring mobile phones for recycling. The paper is based on data regarding the determinants of bringing mobile phones for recycling collected from university students in Autumn 2016 (N = 1013) in both the Chinese and German academia. Using structural equation modeling, we examine the direct and indirect effects of social norms, knowledge about the environmental benefits of recycling and a pro-environmental attitude on the intention to recycle mobile phones. We find confirmation that attitude, social norms, and knowledge contribute positively and significantly to the intention to bring phones for recycling. As for three mediating effects tested, attitude mediates the relationship between knowledge and intention, as well as between social norms and intention. Knowledge as a mediator between social norms and attitude does not have a highly significant effect. Looking at the results of the Chinese and German sub-samples, we find that social norms have no direct effect on intention for the German sub-sample, but an indirect one through attitude. Knowledge has no significant effect for the German sub-sample. Results for the Chinese sub-sample indicate an indirect effect of social norms on attitude via knowledge, while knowledge itself has an indirect effect on intention through attitude.     

A Tale of Three Countries: What is the Relationship Between COVID-19, Lockdown and Happiness?

The COVID-19 pandemic led many governments to implement lockdown regulations to curb the spread of the virus. Though lockdowns do minimise the physical damage caused by the virus, there may also be substantial damage to population well-being. Using a pooled data set, we analyse the relationship between a mandatory lockdown and happiness in three diverse countries: South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. These countries differ amongst others in terms of lockdown regulations and duration. The primary aim is to determine, whether a lockdown is negatively associated with happiness, notwithstanding the characteristics of a country or the strictness of the lockdown regulations. Second, we compare the effect size of the lockdown on happiness between these countries. We use Difference-in-Difference estimations to determine the association between lockdown and happiness and a Least Squares Dummy Variable estimation to study the heterogeneity in the effect size of the lockdown by country. Our results show that a lockdown is associated with a decline in happiness, regardless of the characteristics of the country or the type and duration of its lockdown regulations. Furthermore, the effect size differs between countries in the sense that the more stringent the stay-at-home regulations are, the greater it seems to be.