BEAST 2:A Software Platform for Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis

We present a new open source, extensible and flexible software platform for Bayesian evolutionary analysis called BEAST 2. This software platform is a re-design of the popular BEAST 1 platform to correct structural deficiencies that became evident as the BEAST 1 software evolved. Key among those deficiencies was the lack of post-deployment extensibility. BEAST 2 now has a fully developed package management system that allows third party developers to write additional functionality that can be directly installed to the BEAST 2 analysis platform via a package manager without requiring a new software release of the platform. This package architecture is showcased with a number of recently published new models encompassing birth-death-sampling tree priors, phylodynamics and model averaging for substitution models and site partitioning. A second major improvement is the ability to read/write the entire state of the MCMC chain to/from disk allowing it to be easily shared between multiple instances of the BEAST software. This facilitates checkpointing and better support for multi-processor and high-end computing extensions. Finally, the functionality in new packages can be easily added to the user interface (BEAUti 2) by a simple XML template-based mechanism because BEAST 2 has been re-designed to provide greater integration between the analysis engine and the user interface so that, for example BEAST and BEAUti use exactly the same XML file format

Destination images, holistic images and personal normative beliefs: Predictors of intention to revisit a destination

This research examines the complex relationship between components of images of destinations and behavioral intentions, incorporating two pivotal constructs that have not been explored in the related literature, namely holistic image and personal normative beliefs (PNBs). Previous studies incorporating destination images as predictors of intention to revisit have mostly investigated their direct effect. This research integrates holistic image as a mediator and PNBs as a moderating variable. The findings verify the mediating role of holistic image for predicting tourists’ intentions to revisit a destination, supporting a model that incorporates a partial effect and two indirect mediations. Interestingly, only affective and conative images contribute to the prediction of tourists’ intentions to revisit a destination through the holistic image towards this destination. Moreover, PNBs moderate the effect that conative destination images have on tourists’ holistic images. Practically, the research sheds light to factors that affect tourists' tendency to select a tourism destination, which can serve as a basis for tailoring the effective positioning of destinations

The Evolution of Durable Goods Demand During China's Transition. An Empirical Analysis of Household Survey Data from 1989 to 2006

Durable goods ownership is commonly seen as a ‘defining gauge’ for the stage of development of a country. Its unprecedented economic growth and the rise of a strong and steadily growing class of consumers make China a formidable case study for the investigation of durable goods diffusion. Drawing on a household-panel with a survey period from 1989 to 2006, the empirical analysis of the driving forces behind the diffusion of durable goods shows that growth of disposable income was not equally important for all goods in their diffusion process. Rather it was the fall of individual preference thresholds (explained in part by falling durable prices) that proved to have a significant influence on the diffusion process of some goods. As it turned out, this tendency was significantly stronger in rural areas and could have counterbalanced, therefore, welfare patterns in terms of ownership contrary to the stable urban-rural gap in economic performance. Apart from changes in income and durable prices, it was found, that improvement of public services had particularly strong effects for urban poor and in rural areas. A forecast exercise up to 2030 revealed that growth in ownership rates is expected to be particularly strong for durable goods like refrigerators and cars for which households already show (or are about to do so in the case of cars) high sensitivity towards further increases in their disposable income. For other durables, like colour TVs, that are already well spread in the population there are signs of saturation with lower expected growth rates of ownership. Additionally, ownership rates are expected to pick up stronger in rural areas were households are less saturated and show higher income elasticities. As a comparison with figures from the literature demonstrates, actual and projected ownership rates depend, to some degree, also on the choice of the data set. The projections based on CHNS data could, therefore, build a reference to other commonly used data sets from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics

The evolution of durable goods demand during China’s transition. An empirical analysis of household survey data from 1989 to 2006

Durable goods ownership is commonly seen as a ‘defining gauge’ for the stage of development of a country. Its unprecedented economic growth and the rise of a strong and steadily growing class of consumers make China a formidable case study for the investigation of durable goods diffusion. Drawing on a household-panel with a survey period from 1989 to 2006, the empirical analysis of the driving forces behind the diffusion of durable goods shows that growth of disposable income was not equally important for all goods in their diffusion process. Rather it was the fall of individual preference thresholds (explained in part by falling durable prices) that proved to have a significant influence on the diffusion process of some goods. As it turned out, this tendency was significantly stronger in rural areas and could have counterbalanced, therefore, welfare patterns in terms of ownership contrary to the stable urban-rural gap in economic performance. Apart from changes in income and durable prices, it was found, that improvement of public services had particularly strong effects for urban poor and in rural areas. A forecast exercise up to 2030 revealed that growth in ownership rates is expected to be particularly strong for durable goods like refrigerators and cars for which households already show (or are about to do so in the case of cars) high sensitivity towards further increases in their disposable income. For other durables, like colour TVs, that are already well spread in the population there are signs of saturation with lower expected growth rates of ownership. Additionally, ownership rates are expected to pick up stronger in rural areas were households are less saturated and show higher income elasticities. As a comparison with figures from the literature demonstrates, actual and projected ownership rates depend, to some degree, also on the choice of the data set. The projections based on CHNS data could, therefore, build a reference to other commonly used data sets from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.Durable consumption in China, ownership analysis and forecast, household panel data

The Labor Market Effects of Opening the Border: Evidence from Switzerland

Between 1999 and 2004 Switzerland fully opened its border region (BR) to cross-border workers (CBW), who are foreign residents commuting to Switzerland for work. In this paper, we exploit the timing of implementation and the fact that CBW commute almost exclusively to municipalities close to the border to estimate the effect of this policy on foreign labor supply and on native labor market outcomes, using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that opening the border to CBW increased their employment within 10 minutes of commuting time from the border by 4 to 5 percentage points. The increased inflow was mainly constituted of highly-educated workers and it was associated with an increase of wages of highly-educated Swiss workers and no significant changes of wages of other workers. We also find weak evidence that employment and hours worked by less educated native workers increased. Native highly-educated workers became more likely to fill top managerial positions after the liberalization and they became more likely to stay in border regions. Occupation upgrading and complementarity with highly-educated natives, particularly strong in highskilled manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services, contribute to explaining these effects of CBW on natives

Demand forces of technical change evidence from the Chinese manufacturing industry

This paper investigates the effct of domestic market size on innovation activities across different durable good industries in the Chinese manufacturing sector. We address the endogeneity of market size by an IV strategy, based on a measure of potential market size, which is driven only by changes in the Chinese income distribution. This measure is exogenous to changes in prices and qualities of durable goods and is a valid instrument for expected future market size. Our results indicate that an increase in market size by one percent leads to an increase in firm-specific total factor productivity by 0.46 percent and an increase in labor productivity by 0:50 percent. These findings are robust to controlling for export behavior of firms and supply side drivers of R&D

Which factors drive the skill-mix of migrants in the long-run?

A pervasive, yet little acknowledged feature of international migration to developed countries is that newly arriving immigrants are increasingly highly skilled since the 1980s. This paper analyses the determinants of changes in the skill composition of immigrants using a framework suggested by Grogger & Hanson (2011). We focus on Switzerland, which continuously showed very high immigration rates and dramatic changes in the skill composition of immigrants. In addition, the recent integration of Switzerland into the European labour market in 2002 serves as a policy experiment which allows analysing the influence of a reduction on immigration restrictions on immigrants from European countries in comparison to those from other countries. Our findings suggest that changes of education supply in origin countries and shifts to the relative demand for education groups stand out as the two most important drivers. Yet, while supply alone predicts only a modest increase in the case of highly educated workers and a large increase of middle educated workers, one particular demand channel, the polarisation of labour demand induced by the adoption of computer capital, is crucial to explain the sharp increase in highly educated workers and the mere stabilisation of the share of middle educated immigrant workers. The abolition of quotas for EU residents played a smaller role, yet may have slightly reduced the high skill share among immigrants relative to immigrants from other countries

The supply of foreign talent: How skill-biased technology drives the skill mix of immigrants Evidence from Switzerland 1990–2010

An important goal of immigration policy is facilitating the entry and supply of workers whose skills are scarce in national labour markets. In recent decades, the introduction of information and communication technology [ICT] fuelled the demand for highly skilled workers at the expense of lower skill groups throughout the developed world. In this paper, we show that the skill mix of newly arriving immigrants strongly responded to this shift in the demand for skills. Exploiting the fact that different regions in Switzerland were differentially exposed to ICT due to their pre-ICT industrial composition, we present evidence suggesting more exposed regions experienced stronger growth in relative employment and wage premia for highly skilled workers between 1990 and 2010. We find robust evidence that regions with higher initial ICT exposure experienced a considerably stronger relative influx of highly skilled immigrants. Taken together, these results strongly sug- gest that immigrants responded to skill-biased changes in economic opportunities. Complementing these findings, we document whether and how the response of immigrants to skill demand changed when Switzerland abolished immigration restrictions for European workers

The supply of foreign talent: how skill-biased technology drives the location choice and skills of new immigrants

An important goal of immigration policy is facilitating the entry of foreign-born workers whose skills are in short supply in destination labor markets. In recent decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has fueled the demand for highly educated workers at the expense of less-educated groups. Exploiting the fact that regions in Switzerland have been differentially exposed to ICT due to their pre-ICT industrial composition, we present evidence suggesting that more exposed regions experienced stronger ICT adoption, accompanied by considerably stronger growth in relative employment and wage premia for college-educated workers. Following this change in the landscape of relative economic opportunities, we find robust evidence that these regions experienced a much larger influx of highly educated immigrants in absolute terms as well as relative to lower educated groups. Our results suggest that immigrants’ location decisions respond strongly to these long-run, technology-driven changes in their economic opportunities.ISSN:0933-1433ISSN:1432-147