Heaven's Swing Door: Endogenous Skills,Migration Networks,and the Effectiveness of Quality‐Selective Immigration Policies

A growing number of OECD countries are leaning toward the adoption of selective immigration policies, which are expected to raise the quality (or education level) of migrants. This view neglects two important dynamic effects: the role of migration networks, which could reduce the quality of migrants, and the responsiveness of education decisions to the prospect of migration. We propose a model of self‐selection into migration with endogenous education choices, which predicts that migration networks and the quality of migrants can be positively associated when destination countries adopt sufficiently selective immigration policies. Empirical evidence, presented as background motivation, suggests that this is indeed the case.     

The brain drain and the world distribution of income

Skilled emigration (or brain drain) from developing to developed countries is becoming the dominant pattern of international migration today. Such migration is likely to affect the world distribution of income both directly, through the mobility of people, and indirectly, as the prospect of migration affects the rate of return to education in both the sending and receiving economies. This migration pattern will therefore affect human capital accumulation and fertility decisions in both the sending and receiving economies. This paper analyzes these effects in a dynamic two country model of the world economy where agents in both countries make optimal fertility and human capital decisions. The implications of the analysis for the world distribution of income are derived in the light of recent empirical findings of the brain drain literature. The analysis shows that the current trend towards predominantly skilled emigration from poor to rich countries may in the long run increase inequality in the world distribution of income as relatively poor countries grow large in terms of population. In the short run however, it is possible for world inequality to fall due to rises in GDP per capita in large developing economies with sufficiently low skilled emigration rates.     

Bargaining in Uncertain Environments: A Systematic Distortion of Perfect Equilibrium Demands

We present data supporting the notion that subjects distort monotonically subgame perfect equilibrium demands in two-person discount bargaining games, where, in addition to the traditional offer counter-offer sequence of moves, a player who rejects an offer may either be forced out of the bargaining or be given the option to opt out. Subjects also exhibit behavioral adaptivity—learning from past demands in a search for the highest acceptable demand. These reuslts are consistent with previous experimental evidence for these types of games, but stand in sharp contrast to those obtained in discount bargaining where side options are not available.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C78.     

A Theoretical Analysis of Trade Union Membership Fees, Bargaining Power, Wage Rate and Unemployment

The positive effect of membership fees on trade unions' cohesion and commitment and the adverse effect of these fees on trade unions' density imply that the effects of membership fees on trade unions' bargaining power, wage rate and unemployment can be depicted by inverted U-shaped curves whose upper bounds are reached when membership fees are set at half the ratio of the upper-bound on members' level of satisfaction from the trade union services to their disposable income rate. The implications of these effects for membership fees are analysed for a trade union that sets its membership fee so as to minimise the loss stemming from missing wage rate and unemployment targets.     

An experimental study of coordination and learning in iterated two-market entry games

Summary. Tacit coordination in large groups is studied in an iterated market entry game with complete information and multiple market capacities that are varied randomly from period to period. On each period, each player must decide independently whether to enter any of the markets, and if entering, which of the two markets to enter. Across symmetric and asymmetric markets, we find remarkable coordination on the aggregate level, which is accounted for by the Nash equilibrium, together with considerable individual differences in frequency of entry and decision rules. With experience, the decisions of most players converge to decision rules with cutoff values on the combined market capacity that determine whether or not to enter but not which of the two markets to enter. This latter decision is determined probabilistically by the differential market capacities. The aggregate and individual results are accounted for quite well by a reinforcement-based learning model that combines deterministic and probabilistic elements.     

Too big to succeed or too big to fail?

It is often argued that smaller/younger firms are more innovative than older/larger firms—the latter may be “too big to succeed.” We show in the context of a simple industry model with consumer search frictions why evidence suggesting that smaller or younger firms are more successful at innovation may be subject to sample selection bias. Specifically, smaller more recent entrants may appear to innovate more successfully simply because unsuccessful larger incumbent firms’ size advantage enables them to survive when unsuccessful smaller ones cannot—they may be “too big to fail.”     

The ‘Wining and dining’ project — I. ‘The wine adviser’, a deductive database

This section of the paper describes The Wine Adviser, a deductive database on wine, that was developed in the framework of the WINING AND DINING Project in applied artificial intelligence. The Wine Adviser provides information on wines of interest to final customers and restaurant management.     

Elicitation of Strategy Profiles in Large Group Coordination Games

The strategy method is an experimental procedure for eliciting a complete strategy of play for all information sets, not only the ones that happen to be reached during the course of a play of a game. We use it to elicit individual strategy profiles for a class of large group, market entry games in which the payoff for a player who enters on a given market capacity value decreases linearly in the difference between the capacity value and the corresponding number of entrants. Our results show that the aggregate frequencies of entry do not differ from previous results obtained under the more common decision method. Under both methods, the number of entrants across a large set of market capacity values is organized remarkably well by the equilibrium solution. In contrast, theindividual profiles do not support mixed equilibrium play; only three of the sixty profiles suggest attempts at randomization or mixing between periods. About half of the individual profiles appear to converge, albeit slowly, to cutoff decision policies and more than a quarter of the profiles exhibit a variety of patterns that defy classification.