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211. Migration as a Strategy for Household Finance: A Research Agenda on Remittances, Payments, and Development

Author:
Michael Clemens and Timothy N. Ogden
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
It is time to fundamentally reframe the research agenda on remittances, payments, and development. We describe many of the research questions that now dominate the literature and why they lead us to uninformative answers. We propose reasons why these questions dominate, the most important of which is that researchers tend to view remittances as states do (as windfall income) rather than as families do (as returns on investment). Migration is, among other things, a strategy for financial management in poor households: location is an asset, migration an investment. This shift of perspective leads to much more fruitful research questions that have been relatively neglected. We suggest 12 such questions.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Political Economy, Poverty, Labor Issues, and Immigration

212. Making Labor Market Reforms Work for Everyone: Lessons from Germany

Author:
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Mark Twain once wrote an essay about the difficulties of learning what he called "The Awful German Language." Similar barriers to comprehension seem to plague those trying to explain recent German economic performance. By most measures, Germany has the best functioning labor market among large economies in the West, with levels of employment reaching those in the United States at the end of the turbo-charged 1990s. A debate has stirred, however, about whether this success has come with a price—specifically, whether Germany's domestic structural reforms have lowered living standards for Germany's low income workers and worsened income inequality and whether Germany is fortuitously and perhaps selfishly riding a wave of strong foreign demand for German exports.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany

213. Migration and social mobility in Burkina Faso: historical perspectives on the migration divide

Author:
Anne Sofie Westh Olsen
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Mobility is a resource and a privilege that is unevenly distributed between countries, and within countries. People from developing countries depend on visas and residence permits to a larger extent than citizens of the developed world. Most migration policy research determines the inequality of mobility mainly as a consequence of restrictive immigration policies in destination countries. The focus of this paper is instead on the limited access order that has led to unequal access to migration between people from an African sending country, which has been largely overlooked. This paper shows the historical emergence of a migration divide between intercontinental and intra-African migrants. Through a historical analysis, the paper under-lines how academic migration to France became a means to social mobility in Burkina Faso after independence, while today there is a breakdown of the social elevator via migration since preferential access to migration is likely to enhance the divide between rich and poor.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Poverty, Social Stratification, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Africa and France

214. Global Trends of Multi-Factor Productivity

Author:
Jeong Yeon Lee
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Multi-factor productivity (MFP) compares the growth of gross domestic product with the growth of combined capital and labor inputs. The growth rate of MFP assumes theoretical significance because it represents the slope of the steady-state growth path, and hence is a major determinant of the long-term growth trend. This paper offers the balanced panel of the estimated growth rates of MFP for 24 OECD countries over 1986-2011. Based on the estimates of MFP growth, a number of notable trends in productivity growth are identified for the entire OECD area as well as three major economies – the United States, the Eurozone and Japan – within the OECD.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Europe

215. Designing Youth Employment Policies in Egypt

Author:
Akira Murata
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The paper uses a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to elicit job preferences among youth, and analyzes survey data collected from engineering students at 10 universities in six cities in Egypt during the period of July through October 2013. For a comparative analysis, the survey was also conducted at eight universities in five cities in Indonesia, which is one of the nations in Asia with a Muslim-majority population that faces the same demographic issue. The findings of this research will contribute to building a foundation for designing youth employment policies in Egypt. The most obvious findings to emerge from this study are that: the public-private sector wage differentials must be narrowed; better benefits must accompany private sector employment (particularly support for continuing education, upgrading qualifications, and health insurance); and good IT infrastructure matters. Taken together, these steps could significantly contribute to an increase in the rates of a private sector employment among young Egyptian job seekers, even in the case of continued high public sector wages.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Islam, Labor Issues, and Youth Culture
Political Geography:
Africa, America, and Arabia

216. Do Trends in U.S. Inequality Matter for Norms of Global Governance? Concepts and Empirics for Debate

Author:
Carol Graham
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The United States has long been viewed as the "land of opportunity," where those who work hard get ahead. Belief in this feature of American national identity has persisted even though inequality has been rising for de¬cades. In recent years, the trend toward extremes of income and wealth has accelerated significantly, owing to demographic shifts, the skills bias of the economy and fiscal policy. From 1997 to 2007, the share of income accru¬ing to the top 1 percent of U.S. households increased by 13.5 percentage points, which is equivalent to shifting $1.1 trillion in total annual income to this group - more than the total income of the bottom 40 percent of households. The precise impact of inequality on individual well-being remains controversial, partly because of the complex nature of the metrics needed to gauge it accurately, but also because why it matters depends on what it signals. If inequality is perceived to be the result of just reward for individual effort, then it can be a constructive signal of future opportunities. However, if it is perceived to be the result of an unfair system that rewards a privileged few, inequality can undermine incentives to work hard and invest in the future. In this sense, current U.S. trends have been largely destructive. Economic mobility, for example, has declined in recent decades and is now lower than in many other industrialized countries. There is also a strong intergenerational income correlation (about 0.5) in the U.S.; children of parents who earn 50 percent more than the average are likely to earn 25 percent above the average of their generation. In a world in which individuals' fates are increasingly linked and effective gover¬nance depends on some kind of consensus on social and distributive justice norms, growing income differentials in one country - especially one that has long served as a beacon of economic opportunity - can affect behavior elsewhere, both in terms of investments in education and the labor market and the propensity to protest. More generally, declining economic mobility in the U.S. could undermine confidence in the principles of market econo¬mies and democratic governance that America has espoused for decades - principles that are fundamental to many countries' development strategies.
Topic:
Economics, Poverty, Social Stratification, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States and Germany

217. Many worlds of the 'low-skilled', but only one generic policy

Author:
Ilaria Maselli and Miroslav Beblavý
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
There is a general consensus that to achieve employment growth, especially for vulnerable groups, it is not enough to kick-start economic growth. It is also essential to improve the s kills among both the high-and low-skilled population.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Science and Technology, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Europe and Somalia

218. Why too few students do maths and science

Author:
Ilaria Maselli and Miroslav Beblavý
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Tackling the high and increasing unemployment rate ranks at the top of the EU policy agenda, especially with regard to young people. There is a general consensus that to achieve employment growth, especially for vulnerable groups, it is not enough to kick-start economic growth - skills among both the high-and low-skilled population also need to be improved. However, we need to move beyond simplified narratives and generic policies in order to better understand a much-debated and lamented phenomenon : the lack of graduates in subjects related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Topic:
Education, Science and Technology, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Europe

219. The Crowding-out Effect of Mandatory Labour Market Pension Schemes on Private Savings: Evidence from renters in Denmark

Author:
Mikkel Barslund and Søren Arnberg
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper aims to estimate the crowding-out effect of the Danish mandatory labour market pension reforms begun in 1993 on the level of total household savings for renters. The effect is identified via a large panel of individual administrative records utilising the differences in speed, timing and sectoral coverage of the implementation of the reform in the period 1997 to 2005. Little substitutability was found between current mandatory labour market pension savings and private voluntary savings. Each euro paid into mandatory labour market pension accounts results in a reduction in private savings of approximately 0 to 30 cents, depending on age. This low rate of substitution is only, to a minor extent, explained by liquidity constraints. The results point to mandatory pension savings having a large effect on total household savings. Thus, pension reforms that introduce mandatory savings have macroeconomic implications.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, and Reform
Political Geography:
Denmark

220. Future of Skills in Europe: Convergence or polarisation?

Author:
Miroslav Beblavý and Marcela Veselkova
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
In this Working Paper, based on nearly 20 papers produced by the Centre for European Policy Studies, Slovak Governance Institute and the Conference Board Europe, we examine whether the current trends in the areas of education and skills are pushing the European Union, towards convergence or polarisation. We cover a wide range of questions related to this main issue. No easy answers, but several cross-cutting messages emerged from the research. We demonstrated that there is increasing complexity in what a 'low-skilled' person is and how well (or poorly) s/he fares in the labour market. There are undoubtedly powerful forces pushing for more polarisation, particularly in the labour market. Our research confirmed that early childhood education plays an important role, and it also appears to be increasingly uncontested as a policy prescription. However, the other frequently emphasised remedy to inequality - less selection in secondary education, particularly later division of children into separate tracks - is more problematic. Its effectiveness depends on the country in question and the target group, while education systems are extremely difficult to shift even on a long-term basis. A different, more-nuanced type of warning to policy-makers is delivered in our research on returns to higher education by field of study, which showed hidden rationality in how students choose their major.
Topic:
Economics, Education, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Europe