The contribution of human capital to a holistic response to climate change: learning from and for the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

Abstract

The Mekong Delta has been identified by the International Panel on Climate Change as one of the three most vulnerable areas in the world as sea levels rise due to climate change. The Vietnam Government has implemented a range of policies to assist migration in order to address these environmental problems. While much research has focused on the environmental causes of, and responses to, climate change there has been less research on the impact of environmentally motivated responses to climate change on labour force and human capital factors. This paper examines the experience of the Vietnam Government in encouraging internal migration from vulnerable agricultural areas to urban industrial cities, to explore the human capital effects of these environmentally motivated response to climate change. The paper first presents the environmental argument for migration in response to climate change, together with examples of what the Vietnam Government has done to encourage migration from the rural (originating) areas to other rural resettlement and city (receiving) areas. It then uses data collected as part of recent study into the impact of government encouragement for internal migration to explore the labour force and human capital impacts in both the originating region and receiving areas. The findings suggest that while there are social and economic advantages there are challenges, including ensuring that job opportunities are available, migrants and appropriate skills, and that labour contracts provide for job security and healthy and safe working result in improved living conditions. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a more integrated approach that acknowledges and addresses associated human capital (skills upgrading) and business development needs and integrates these with environmentally-motivated policies.     

Immigration, In-Migration, Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom

This paper develops and tests hypotheses concerning the effect of migrant status and ethnicity on propensity to engage in entrepreneurship (defined as new business activity) at the individual level in the UK. The hypotheses are tested using bivariate analysis (Pearson tests of independence) and multivariate analysis (binary logistic regression). Bivariate analysis suggests that new business activity varies with migrant status and ethnicity. Multivariate analysis suggests that migration increases the odds of engaging in new business activity, that the independent effect of ethnicity is marginal, and that being a recent ethnic minority migrant decreases the odds, after controlling for other individual level factors. At the regional level, a preliminary analysis suggests that gross migration flow has a higher correlation with new business activity than other commonly used regional demographic or economic development measures.      

如何做好易地扶贫搬迁后续就业帮扶

易地扶贫搬迁计划实施后,我国秦巴山区贫困人口稳就业、能致富仍然需要后续帮扶。研究选取了秦巴山区 4 县 1 区的 3015 户易地扶贫搬迁户作为调查对象,通过因子分析对各指标进行归类,再综合运用组合赋权对其进行最后的权重排序,得出影响搬迁户后续就业的主要因素分别是：就业能力、就业方式、就业观念、就业质量和就业信息因素。最后,从提升综合素质、丰富就业方式、优化就业环境三个方面做好易地扶贫搬迁后续就业。     

地震资料叠前深度偏移处理质量控制

叠前深度偏移处理目前已广泛应用于地震勘探资料处理中,被认为是解决复杂地质构造正确成像困难问题较好方法,但其处理成果同时又受多种因素影响,需要在资料处理过程中加以控制。通过分析这些影响因素,提出消除或削减这些影响的方法,达到正确还原地层构造形态的目的。     

Migration and Americanization: The special case of Belgian economics*

One of the distinguishing features of Belgian economics is that, from the early 1920s, so many of Belgium's best economists pursued postgraduate studies at top American universities, a case of ‘temporary’ migration. This was made possible by the fellowships granted by the Commission for Relief in Belgium, a legacy of the First World War. After a stay in the US of a few years, most returned to Belgium. However, they maintained strong links with the US. Also, they tried to recreate in Belgium the most valuable elements of their American experience. It would lead to a strong and early Americanization of Belgian economics. Moreover, they were at the forefront of several initiatives to organize economics on a European scale, such as the European Economic Review and the European Economic Association.     

(Non-)Existence of Equilibria in Multicommunity Models

This paper reconsiders equilibrium existence in models with migration and voting over local public goods. We show that under some straightforward assumptions on preferences and income distributions, the basic structure of multicommunity models (i.e., perfect mobility, majority rule, single crossing property) implies that no equilibrium with jurisdictions conducting different policies can exist. Stratification equilibria—with sorting of the population according to income classes—are therefore not as natural as is sometimes suggested. Mechanisms that can serve to support stratification (i.e., tight housing markets, returns to scale in the provision of publicly consumed goods) are discussed.     

Different Roles of Land in Rural-Urban Migration： Evidence from China＇s Household Survey

This paper explores the influence of land holding on rural–urban migration using China's 2008 household survey data. It shows that the contradictory findings of existing published literature can be explained by introducing a migration distance variable. The empirical studies show that land holding plays a different role in short‐distance and long‐distance migration. Land holding has a U‐shaped curve association with the probability of short‐distance migration and has an inverted‐U‐shaped association with the probability of long‐distance migration. Therefore, the government needs to provide more job information and migration subsidies to farmers who have little land to overcome difficulties in the process of migration so as to reduce rural–urban inequality.     

Taxation and Migration in a Federal System

This paper discusses how taxation may affect migration, economic efficiency and income distribution. The institutional framework is a federal system, in which local authorities are responsible for the supply of public services and the financing of these services, and where the central authorities are in charge of income redistribution. The main conclusion is that a moderate policy of income redistribution is associated with greater centralization of the work force and greater economic inefficiency than is the case with both radical and more limited policies of redistribution.     

Tree farms: Driving forces and regional patterns in the global expansion of forest plantations

People have planted trees in rural places with increasing frequency during the past two decades, but the circumstances in which they plant and the social forces inducing them to plant remain unclear. While forests that produce wood for industrial uses comprise an increasing number of the plantations, most of the growth has occurred in Asia where plantations that produce wood for local consumption remain important. Explanations for these trends take economic, political, and human ecological forms. Growth in urban and global markets for forest products, coupled with rural to urban migration, may spur the conversion of fields into tree farms. Government programs also stimulate tree planting. These programs occur frequently in nations with high population densities. Quantitative, cross-national analyses suggest that these forces combine in regionally distinctive ways to promote the expansion of forest plantations. In Africa and Asia plantations have expanded most rapidly in nations with densely populated rural districts, rural to urban migration, and government policies that promote tree planting. In the Americas and Oceania plantations have expanded rapidly in countries with relatively stable rural populations, low densities, and extensive tracts of land in pasture. If, as anticipated, the growing concern with global warming spurs further expansion in forest plantations in an effort to sequester carbon, questions about their social and ecological effects should become more pressing.     

Foreign enclaves and economic development: A theoretical analysis

We consider an urban foreign enclave with sector-specific foreign capital in an otherwise mobile-capital Harris-Todaro model. We consider the taxation of foreign capital. A dynamic version of this model is considered. The long-run equilibrium and the comparative steady-state effects are analyzed. We get some interesting effects of reduction in tax rate on foreign capital on the short-run and the long-run equilibrium levels of domestic factor income and national income under some meaningful conditions.