Immigration and crime in Spain, 1999-2006

Crime in Spain is not high, by European standards, but together with immigration, crime rates have increased significantly in the last decade. The goals of this paper are (i) to evaluate empirically the extent to which there is either a negative or a positive correlation between crime and immigration and, (ii) to provide a preliminary assessment of the extent to which a causal mechanism can be identified. We find that both immigrants and natives have contributed to the increase in the crime rate. However, the contribution of immigrants seems to be relatively higher. This result is partly explained by the fact that immigration has contributed to the main increase of the collective of males aged 20 to 50, which are responsible for most offences, and by differences in socioeconomic opportunities between migrants and natives. After controlling for such differences, being an immigrant still plays a significant role, but its estimated effect is diminished and the gradual decrease in the crime rates for each nationality appears to indicate a lower propensity to commit criminal offences among the newly-arrived immigrants. We find significant differences in the behavior of immigrants towards crime by their nationality of origin. The crime gap between immigrants and natives is moderate, and can be largely explained by a higher propensity of immigrants to commit minor offences. This type of crimes, although being the less serious, generates a strong perception of insecurity among native population, but its number has decreased in recent years

Students' assessment of higher education in Spain

We explore evidence on the perceived economic value of higher education to college students in terms of their reported expected and shadow wages. Our estimates provide predictions for expected wages that are similar across gender and become closer to actual wages as students approach graduation. This is consistent with an improvement in the quality of student information used to forecast wages. Shadow wages relative to expected wages increase during the academic year for men and are constant for women, which is consistent with the higher reluctance of women to drop out of university. Finally, students with lower socioeconomic background and poor performance exhibit a higher propensity to drop out

The consequences on job satisfaction of job‐worker educational and skill mismatches in the spanish labour market: a panel analysis

The effects of job-worker mismatches on job satisfaction are examined using the eight waves (1994-2001) of Spanish data taken from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The impacts of both educational and skill mismatches are estimated considering unobserved heterogeneity, state dependence and attrition bias. Dynamic analysis shows that skill mismatches emerge as a much better predictor of job satisfaction than educational mismatches as the effects of the latter are related to unobserved heterogeneity among workers. Moreover, the current level of job satisfaction appears to be influenced by workers’ previous job perceptions, suggesting a dynamic structure for job satisfaction.We would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for their support through the SEJ2004-07924 research project, and the SEJ2005-08783-C04 02/ECON project contract, which has been co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund