Derechos de los trabajadores migrantes. Aspectos económicos,políticos y éticos

Las políticas de inmigración laboral de los países de altos ingresos establecen una relación inversa entre el grado de apertura y algunos de los derechos concedidos a los migrantes admitidos. Esta observación empírica es la base del libro The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration, que el autor de este artículo escribió en 2013. Aquí resume sus principales conclusiones, argumentos e implicaciones políticas, y responde a una reseña publicada por la Revista Internacional del Trabajo en 2015. Concluye exhortando a un debate más abierto sobre los vínculos entre derechos, migración laboral y desarrollo entre las organizaciones nacionales e internacionales interesadas en estas cuestiones.     

The disclosure of key performance indicators in the public sector

This article investigates the disclosure of key performance indicators in the annual reports of Irish public sector organizations. It begins by discussing the two main driving forces behind public sector bodies disclosing performance information in their annual reports for the first time as well as looking at other contributing factors. The present situation with regard to the disclosure of key performance indicators in the whole of Ireland is then analysed. A number of annual reports from central government departments or agencies, local government bodies, other public sector entities and, in the case of the Republic of Ireland, semi-state organizations are examined to see whether such information is being disclosed and, more importantly, whether performance indicators are being linked to predetermined objectives and targets.     

Quantity,quality and the welfare effects of US airline deregulation

In this paper we employ a method for estimationg quality-adjusted demand to calculate measures of the change in consumer suruplus due to US airline deregulation. The quality-adjusted estimates of the price elasticity of demand indicate that consumers are from 25% to 50% more sensitive to changes in air fares than unadjusted estimates would suggest. Changes in unadjusted consumer surplus overstate the net welfare gains from deregulation by roughly a factor of two, strongly suggesting that adjustments for quallity of service are essential to welfare analysis of regulatory changes in this industry     

An Examination of the Quality of Jobs in the Call Center Industry

This paper examines jobs in the information society and the new economy, taking as its focus the call center industry. More specifically, the study analyzes the degree of variability of the quality of call center jobs. In order to achieve this objective, an index of job quality is generated, and an empirical analysis of the characteristics of jobs in call centers is carried out. This allows us to determine the level and variability of quality of jobs in this sector and to establish whether the reality of these jobs is as good as the forecasts for work in the new economy.      

Conflicted financial advice: disclosure revisited

We examine the impact of disclosing an advisor’s conflict of interest in providing financial advice to a client in an experiment. We find that an advisor’s conflict of interest harms the client and that disclosing the conflict harms the advisor. Unlike earlier literature, we do not find that disclosure of the advisor’s conflict of interest results in moral licensing or strategic exaggeration behaviour by the advisor nor, relatedly, that disclosure disadvantages the client.     

TESTING POVERTY LINES

In theory, a poverty line can be defined as the cost of a common (inter‐personally comparable) utility level across a population. But how can one know if this holds in practice? For groups sharing common consumption needs but facing different prices, the theory of revealed preference can be used to derive testable implications of utility consistency knowing only the “poverty bundles” and their prices. Heterogeneity in needs calls for extra information. We argue that subjective welfare data offer a credible means of testing utility consistency across different needs groups. A case study of Russia's official poverty lines shows how revealed preference tests can be used in conjunction with qualitative information on needs heterogeneity. The results lead us to question the utility consistency of Russia's official poverty lines.     

Democratization and Real Exchange Rates,

In this article, we combine two so far separate strands of the economic literature and argue that democratization leads to a real exchange rate appreciation. We test this hypothesis empirically for a sample of countries observed from 1980 to 2007 by combining a difference‐in‐difference approach with propensity score matching estimators. Our empirical results reveal a strong and significant finding: democratization causes real exchange rates to appreciate. Consequently, the ongoing process of democratization observed in many parts of the world is likely to reduce exchange rate distortions.     

Uncertainty and sustainability in the management of rangelands

We analyze a dynamic and stochastic ecological-economic model of grazing management in semi-arid rangelands. The ecosystem is driven by stochastic precipitation. A risk averse farmer chooses a grazing management strategy under uncertainty such as to maximize expected utility from farming income. Grazing management strategies are rules about which share of the rangeland is given rest depending on the actual rainfall in that year. In a first step we determine a myopic farmer's optimal grazing management strategy and show that a risk averse farmer chooses a strategy such as to obtain insurance from the ecosystem: the optimal strategy reduces income variability, but yields less mean income than possible. In a second step we analyze the long-run ecological and economic impact of different strategies. We conclude that a myopic farmer, if he is sufficiently risk averse, will choose a sustainable grazing management strategy, even if he does not take into account long-term ecological and economic benefits of conservative strategies.     

Economic globalization and the change of electoral rules

This paper takes up an argument from Ronald Rogowski about the “natural affinity” between trade and an electoral system with proportional representation. We draw on literature on the historical determinants of electoral system choice to advance the general argument that trade integration and PR are related because the adoption of PR helps to secure gains from trade. Our specific model of electoral rule changes in the age of globalization predicts that the likelihood of electoral rule change towards more proportionality increases with levels of trade integration in the world economy. The theoretical model draws on a micro model of the distributive effects of increased economic integration. Because more proportional systems are more credibly able to commit to compensate the losers of globalization processes, there will be increased demand to change the electoral system towards more proportionality under economic circumstances that increase the costs of maintaining a closed economy. In accordance with our model, our empirical tests find a positive association between (a) trade integration and the proportionality of the electoral system, (b) proportionality and social spending, and (c) global integration levels and the probability of electoral rules changes that render voting rules more proportional.