The effect of immigrants on natives' incomes through the use of capital

"This paper deals with questions about the effects of immigrants on three types of capital: the private capital immigrants work with, the public (government) capital that immigrant workers use, and the public capital used for services by immigrants." The geographic focus is on the United States. The authors conclude that although the average cost to natives in 1975 dollars to provide services for immigrants is 4,172 dollars, this amount "is considerably smaller than the benefits of immigrants to natives through their relatively low use of welfare services and their relatively high contribution of taxes." Comments by Jacob Mincer (pp. 95-7) are included.     

Does trade unionism have a future in Russia?

Official Russian trade unions seek to maintain their traditional privileges and resources, while alternative unions have remained marginal and relatively ineffectual. The result is that workers are not effectively represented by either type of union. This argument is supported by extensive original research, examining the recent history of Russian unionism.     

How do school ‘report cards’ affect school choice decisions?

Abstract. We estimate the effect of information about school achievement that is disseminated to the public through websites and school ‘report cards’ on school choice decisions. We find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school‐level performance. Some parents’ school choice decisions respond to information soon after it becomes available. Others, including non‐English‐speaking parents, alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media. Parents in low‐income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information. JEL classification: I21, D83     

Competition for attention in the Information (overload) Age

The Information Age has a surfeit of information received relative to what is processed. We model multiple sectors competing for consumer attention, with competition in price within each sector. Sector advertising levels follow a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) form, and within‐sector prices are dispersed with a truncated Pareto distribution. The “information hump” shows highest ad levels for intermediate attention levels. Overall, advertising is excessive, although the allocation across sectors is optimal. The blame for information overload falls most on product categories with low information transmission costs and low profits.