Identification and Estimation of Economic Models of Outmigration using Panel Attrition

Because their departures are difficultly observed, little is known about the performance of immigrants who leave their adoptive homeland.This paper shows conditions under which the (conditional) outmigration probability, work probability and the expected earnings of outmigrants are nonparametrically identified using data on immigrant sample attrition.We present an econometric model which extracts the information on outmigration behavior from sample attrition and estimate it using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP).Outmigrants are found to have significantly lower labor market earnings and work propensities than permanent migrants.migration;immigrants;emigration;econometric models;labour market;Germany

A Life-Cycle Model of Outmigration and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants in Germany

This paper estimates a structural dynamic life-cycle model of outmigration where, in each period, immigrants choose whether to work in the host country, not to work but remain in the host country, or outmigrate.The model incorporates several features of existing life-cycle theories of outmigration but distinguishes itself by introducing uncertainty in about future earnings and preferences which allows immigrants to revise their duration decisions throughout their migration experience.Because immigrants simultaneously face a migration and a work decision in each period, the economic assimilation rates commonly used to assess the performance of immigrants in the host economy are endogenously determined and estimated, a feature previously ignored in the literature.We overcome the problem of not directly observing outmigration movements by using panel attrition as a proxy variable and use a simple method to correct for the fact that part of the attrition is not a consequence of outmigration.Estimates are used to predict changes in life-cycle patterns of outmigration behavior.Estimation results indicate that outmigration does not depend exclusively on earnings differentials.Estimated assimilation rates are found to be robust to selection effects.Immigrants are found to be forward looking decision makers, and simulations show that predicted migration durations are very sensitive to changes in their economic environment and differ considerably from those of a myopic model.migration;dynamic programming;immigration;emigration;life cycles;Germany

Economic Assimilation and Outmigration of Immigrants in West-Germany

By analyzing earnings of observed immigrants workers, the literature on the economic assimilation of immigrants has generally overlooked two potentially important selectivity issues.First, earnings of immigrant workers may di¿er substantially from those of non-workers.Second, earnings of immigrants who do not return to their native country may differ from earnings of outmigrants. Economic theory has contradictory predictions on the signs of these potential selection biases.This paper uses data drawn from 8 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and estimates a three-equation model of income, work and outmigration decisions taking into account time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity across individuals.We -nd strong evidence in favor of negative outmigration selection in both the earnings and work equations.Simulation results show that the magnitude of the outmigration bias is important.immigration;migration;unemployment;economic theory;labour economics;assimilation

On Representative Social Capital

This paper analyzes data for a random sample drawn from the Dutch population who reveal their propensity to invest and reward investments in building up social capital by means of an economic experiment.We find substantial heterogeneity and asymmetries in the propensity to invest and in the propensity to reward investments.In particular, we find strong evidence that the young, elderly, and low educated individuals invest relatively less, but are relatively more likely to reward investments in social capital.On the other hand, labor market participation, income, and religion do not have any significant impact on behavior in the experiment. Series: CentER Discussion PaperSocial Capital Investments;Experimental Economics;Representative samples

Microeconometric essays on migration, trust and Satisfaction

One of the important findings is that very little assumptions need to be imposed to identify the economic performance of immigrants who leave a region when such departures are not observed in panel data sets. It is also shown that the evaluation of the determinants of an individual's trust and trustworthiness can greatly benefit from the combination of survey and experimental data. This combination is shown to reveal interesting insights on how individual actions do not necessarily match their stated attitudes. Finally, the final essay demonstrates how stated answers to questions on income satisfaction allow the identification and estimation of household equivalence scales using estimation techniques relaxing conventional statistical assumptions

Identification and Estimation of Economic Models of Outmigration using Panel Attrition

Because their departures are difficultly observed, little is known about the performance of immigrants who leave their adoptive homeland.This paper shows conditions under which the (conditional) outmigration probability, work probability and the expected earnings of outmigrants are nonparametrically identified using data on immigrant sample attrition.We present an econometric model which extracts the information on outmigration behavior from sample attrition and estimate it using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP).Outmigrants are found to have significantly lower labor market earnings and work propensities than permanent migrants.

Economic Assimilation and Outmigration of Immigrants in West-Germany

By analyzing earnings of observed immigrants workers, the literature on the economic assimilation of immigrants has generally overlooked two potentially important selectivity issues.First, earnings of immigrant workers may di¿er substantially from those of non-workers.Second, earnings of immigrants who do not return to their native country may differ from earnings of outmigrants. Economic theory has contradictory predictions on the signs of these potential selection biases.This paper uses data drawn from 8 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and estimates a three-equation model of income, work and outmigration decisions taking into account time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity across individuals.We -nd strong evidence in favor of negative outmigration selection in both the earnings and work equations.Simulation results show that the magnitude of the outmigration bias is important.

Count-Based Exploration with the Successor Representation

In this paper we introduce a simple approach for exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) that allows us to develop theoretically justified algorithms in the tabular case but that is also extendable to settings where function approximation is required. Our approach is based on the successor representation (SR), which was originally introduced as a representation defining state generalization by the similarity of successor states. Here we show that the norm of the SR, while it is being learned, can be used as a reward bonus to incentivize exploration. In order to better understand this transient behavior of the norm of the SR we introduce the substochastic successor representation (SSR) and we show that it implicitly counts the number of times each state (or feature) has been observed. We use this result to introduce an algorithm that performs as well as some theoretically sample-efficient approaches. Finally, we extend these ideas to a deep RL algorithm and show that it achieves state-of-the-art performance in Atari 2600 games when in a low sample-complexity regime.Comment: This paper appears in the Proceedings of the 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2020

Semi-parametric Models for Satisfaction with Income

An overview is presented of some parametric and semi-parametric models, estimators, and specification tests that can be used to analyze ordered response variables.In particular, limited dependent variable models that generalize or-dered probit are compared to regression models that generalize the linear model.These techniques are then applied to analyze how self-reported satisfaction with household income relates to household income, family composition, and other background variables.Data are drawn from the 1998 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel.The results are used to estimate equivalence scales and the cost of children.We find that the standard ordered probit model is rejected, while some semi-parametric specifications survive specification tests against nonpara-metric alternatives.The estimated equivalence scales, however, are often similar for the parametric and semi-parametric specifications.incomes;semiparametric estimation;satisfaction