People‘s Attitudes and the Eff ects of Immigration to Australia

This paper compares the eff ects of immigration fl ows on economic outcomes and crime levels to the public opinion about these eff ects using individual and regional data for Australia. We employ an instrumental variables strategy to account for non-random location choices of immigrants and fi nd that immigration has no adverse eff ects on regional unemployment rates, median incomes, or crime levels. This result is in line with the economic eff ects that people typically expect but does not confi rm the public opinion about the contribution of immigration to higher crime levels, suggesting that Australians overestimate the eff ect of immigration on crime.International migration; eff ects of immigration; attitudes towards immigrants

Fixed, Random, or Something in Between? – A Variant of HAUSMAN’s Specifi cation Test for Panel Data Estimators

This paper proposes a variant of the classical HAUSMAN specifi cation test commonly employed to decide whether the estimation of a random-eff ects model is a viable alternative to estimating fi xed eff ects. Whereas the classical test probes the equality of fi xed- and random eff ects, the proposed variant focuses on the equality of between-groups and fi xed-eff ects coeffi cients. While both test procedures lead to the same conclusions, the panel model specifi cation underlying our testing strategy facilitates the simultaneous estimation of the fi xed- and between-groups eff ects. As a consequence, we are able to examine both the equality of the whole range of coeffi cients as well as that of individual variables. The usefulness of the test is illustrated using a panel of household travel data for Germany.Specification tests, fuel price elasticity

'Achieving Bologna convergence: is ECTS failing to make the grade?'

Transparent and consistent credit transfer procedures are essential if EU Universities are to successfully build the European Higher Education Learning Area and thrive in the emerging global knowledge economy. Currently the European Credit Transfer System is the most widely used mechanism to enable credit transfer between universities in different EU nations. Using data from 20 universities in four EU states, this paper examines the problems of calculating and using ECTS grades. The results demonstrate that the alignment of ECTS grades varies within nation states and show that, despite the fact that ECTS grading is a norm referenced system, while the national systems are usually criterion referenced, many ECTS conversion tables provided by universities indicate straight line transference from institutional to ECTS grades . Given the anticipated increase in student mobility following the EU enlargement to 25 nations, the paper proposes a re-alignment of ECTS towards a criterion referenced system. Such a new system would acknowledge and build on the diversity of EU higher education systems, unlike the current mechanistic system, which both masks this diversity and is flawed in calculation, and ad hoc in operation

Competition and interaction of polydisperse bubbles in polymer foams

The e®ects of interactions between bubbles of di®erent sizes during bubble growth in a polymeric foam are investigated. Two models are used: a two-dimensional sim-ulation in which both the e®ects of gas di®usion through the polymer and bubble interactions through °uid stresses are included, and a three-dimensional model in which bubbles are assumed to interact only through direct competition for gas, and di®usion of gas into the bubbles is instantaneous. In the two-dimensional model, two di®erent bubble sizes are used in a hexagonal array. For slow gas di®usion, the additional polymer stresses have little e®ect on the ¯nal bubble size distribution. For faster gas di®usion the growth occurs in two phases, just as was found in earlier work for isolated bubbles: an initial rapid viscous phase and a later phase controlled by the rate of polymer relaxation. In this later phase, polymers in the windows between neighbouring bubbles become highly stretched and these regions of high stress determine the dynamics of the growth. In the three-dimensional model we consider the e®ects of rheology on a pair of di®erent-sized spherical bubbles, interacting only through competition for available gas. Viscoelastic e®ects result in a wider distribution of bubble volumes than would be found for a Newtonian °uid. Key words: Polymeric °uid; bubble growth; foam; bubble interactions; size distribution ¤ To whom correspondence should be addressed

A Dual Characterization of Incentive Efficiency

We show that incentive e cient allocations in economies with adverse se- lection and moral hazard can be determined as optimal solutions to a linear programming problem and we use duality theory to obtain a complete charac- terization of the optima. Our dual analysis identi es welfare e ects associated with the incentives of the agents to truthfully reveal their private information. Because these welfare e ects may generate non-convexities, incentive e cient allocations may involve randomization. Other properties of incentive e cient allocations are also derived

Neighborhood Eff ects and Individual Unemployment

Using a unique dataset for Germany that links individual longitudinal data from the GSOEP to regional data from the federal employment agency and data of real estate prices, we evaluate the impact of neighborhood unemployment on individual employment propects. The panel setup and richness of the data allows us to overcome some of the identifi cation problems which are present in this strand of literature. The empirical results indicate that there is a signifi cant negative impact of neighborhood unemployment on the individual employment probability.Social interactions; unemployment; neighborhood characteristics

Assessing the welfare effects of promoting biomass growth and the use of bioenergy – A simple back-of-an-envelope calculation

Using a growth model that accounts for environmental and climate externalities, we take a closer look at the welfare e¤ects of promoting biomass growth and the use of bioenergy. As an illustration, a forest hypothetical intensive forest cultivation project is simulated. Costs and benefi…ts of the project show that we need not only determine the postive effects of promoting biomass growth and the use of bioenergy, such as substitution away from fossil fuels and carbon sequestration. But more importantly, to achieve a balanced measure of the e¤ects on the climate, we must also incorporate all carbon emissions that is associated with bioenergy. Not doing so will overestimate the positive climate e¤ects of increasing the use of bioenergy.Bioenergy

A Hybrid Drift Diffusion Model: Derivation, Weak Steady State Solutions and Simulations

In this paper we derive a new hybrid model for drift di usion equations. This model provides a description of the quantum phenomena in the parts of the device where they are relevant, and degenerates to a semiclassical model where quantum e ects are negligible, so that the system can be considered classically. The study of quantum correction to the equation of state of an electron gas in a semiconductor with the assumption of localized quantum e ects leads to a further condition on the classical-quantum interface. Moreover, we prove the existence of weak solutions for our hybrid model. Finally, we present numerical results for di erent devices, by means of Colsys software

Long-term Care Responsibility and its Opportunity Costs

This paper analyzes the relationship between long-term care provision and the average individual wage rate. In addition, the eff ects of the number of hours spent on caregiving on the probability of employment as well as on the number of hours worked are examined. Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) of 2004 and 2006 is used to analyze caregiving eff ects on the European labor market. Descriptive statistics show a positive correlation between hours of care and the wage rate for those working. In the regression analysis, sample-selection models combined with instrumental-variable estimation are used to estimate the causal eff ects of hours of care on wages. The results illustrate that care for parents has a large negative impact on the individual’s wage rate. Test results show that controlling for sample selection is reasonable. Finally, the probability of employment is only decreased in the female sample. Although the hours worked are not signicantly affected.Informal care; labor-market outcomes; sample selection

Spatial modelling of claim frequency and claim size in insurance

In this paper models for claim frequency and claim size in non-life insurance are considered. Both covariates and spatial random e ects are included allowing the modelling of a spatial dependency pattern. We assume a Poisson model for the number of claims, while claim size is modelled using a Gamma distribution. However, in contrast to the usual compound Poisson model going back to Lundberg (1903), we allow for dependencies between claim size and claim frequency. Both models for the individual and average claim sizes of a policyholder are considered. A fully Bayesian approach is followed, parameters are estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The issue of model comparison is thoroughly addressed. Besides the deviance information criterion suggested by Spiegelhalter et al. (2002), the predictive model choice criterion (Gelfand and Ghosh (1998)) and proper scoring rules (Gneiting and Raftery (2005)) based on the posterior predictive distribution are investigated. We give an application to a comprehensive data set from a German car insurance company. The inclusion of spatial e ects significantly improves the models for both claim frequency and claim size and also leads to more accurate predictions of the total claim sizes. Further we quantify the significant number of claims e ects on claim size