The consequences of mutually secured debts: The case of Israeli moshavim

This paper explores the long-run consequences of the farm’s own debt and the moshav’s average debt on the farm household investment in productive capital stock, borrowing and consumption. In particular, the analysis focuses on the financial externalities that might arise from the moshav’s organizational principle of mutual responsibility for members’ debts. These externalities can have a considerable adverse effect on the capital stock and borrowing of the more efficient farms, and hence on their productive activity. These effects are studied within the framework of an optimal control model and summarized by a number of optimality conditions. The effects of the individual member’s position and the moshav’s financial position on the individual member’s investment and borrowing are estimated and tested in two cross-section regression analyses, which also take into account observed variations in characteristics among the family farms.     

Measuring International Skilled Migration: A New Database Controlling for Age of Entry

Recent data on international migration of skilled workers defineskilled migrants by education level without distinguishing whetherthey acquired their education in the home or the host country.This article uses immigrants' age of entry as a proxy for wherethey acquired their education. Data on age of entry are availablefrom a subset of receiving countries that together represent77 percent of total skilled immigration to countries of theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Usingthese data and a simple gravity model to estimate the age-of-entrystructure of the remaining 23 percent, alternative brain drainmeasures are proposed that exclude immigrants who arrived beforeages 12, 18, and 22.