The impact of immigration on geographic mobility of New Zealanders

This paper uses data from the New Zealand Census to examine how the supply of recent migrants in particular skill groups affects the geographic mobility of the New Zealand-born and earlier migrants. We identify the impact of recent migration on mobility using the ‘area-analysis’ approach, which exploits the fact that immigration is spatially concentrated, and thus a change in the local supply of migrants in a particular skill group should have an impact on the mobility of similarly skilled nonmigrants in that local labour market. Overall, our results provide little support for the hypothesis that migrant inflows displace either the NZ-born or earlier migrants with similar skills in the areas that new migrants are settling. If anything, they suggest that there are positive spillovers between recent migrants and other individuals that encourage individuals to move to or remain in the areas in which similarly skilled migrants are settling. Thus, it appears unlikely that internal mobility moderates any potential impacts of immigration on labour or housing markets in New Zealand

Helioseismic Holography of an Artificial Submerged Sound Speed Perturbation and Implications for the Detection of Pre-Emergence Signatures of Active Regions

We use a publicly available numerical wave-propagation simulation of Hartlep et al. 2011 to test the ability of helioseismic holography to detect signatures of a compact, fully submerged, 5% sound-speed perturbation placed at a depth of 50 Mm within a solar model. We find that helioseismic holography as employed in a nominal "lateral-vantage" or "deep-focus" geometry employing quadrants of an annular pupil is capable of detecting and characterizing the perturbation. A number of tests of the methodology, including the use of a plane-parallel approximation, the definition of travel-time shifts, the use of different phase-speed filters, and changes to the pupils, are also performed. It is found that travel-time shifts made using Gabor-wavelet fitting are essentially identical to those derived from the phase of the Fourier transform of the cross-covariance functions. The errors in travel-time shifts caused by the plane-parallel approximation can be minimized to less than a second for the depths and fields of view considered here. Based on the measured strength of the mean travel-time signal of the perturbation, no substantial improvement in sensitivity is produced by varying the analysis procedure from the nominal methodology in conformance with expectations. The measured travel-time shifts are essentially unchanged by varying the profile of the phase-speed filter or omitting the filter entirely. The method remains maximally sensitive when applied with pupils that are wide quadrants, as opposed to narrower quadrants or with pupils composed of smaller arcs. We discuss the significance of these results for the recent controversy regarding suspected pre-emergence signatures of active regions

Connecting up strategy: are senior strategy directors a missing link?

With companies being exhorted to become more strategically agile and internally connected, this article examines the role of the Senior Strategy Director, the executive tasked specifically with internal strategy. In particular, it explores what they do, what specific capabilities they deploy to enable effective contribution to the company, and in what ways they facilitate the connectedness of strategy. An analysis of multiple interviews over time with Senior Strategy Directors of large companies shows the vital and challenging role these executives play in both shaping, connecting up, and executing strategy. This article identifies the particular capabilities necessary for Senior Strategy Directors to perform their role and shows how it all depends upon their skilful deployment. These findings have significant implications for understanding unfolding micro-processes of strategy in large organizations, for assumptions about the skills and capabilities necessary to be an effective Senior Strategy Director, and for business schools in terms of the content and style of strategy courses they provide

Distressed Relationships: Lessons from the Norwegian Banking Crisis

This paper measures the economy-wide impact of bank distress on the loss of relationship benefits. We use the near-collapse of the Norwegian banking system during the period 1988 to 1991 to measure the impact of bank distress announcements on the stock prices of firms maintaining a relationship with a distressed bank. We find that although banks experience large and permanent downward revisions in their equity value during the event period, firms maintaining relationships with these banks face only small and temporary changes, on average, in stock price. In other words, the aggregate impact of bank distress on the real economy appears small. We analyze the cross-sectional variation in firm abnormal returns and find that firms that maintain international bank relationships suffer more upon announcement of bank distress.bank relationship;bank distress;Norwegian banking crisis

The Impact of Bank Consolidation on Commercial Borrower Welfare

We estimate the impact of bank merger announcements on borrowers' stock prices for publicly-traded Norwegian firms.In addition, we analyze how bank mergers influence borrower relationship termination behavior and relate the propensity to terminate to borrower abnormal returns.We obtain four main results.First, on average borrowers lose about one percent in equity value when their bank is announced as a merger target.Small borrowers of target banks are especially hurt in large bank mergers, where they lose an average of about three percent.Second, bank mergers lead to higher relationship exit rates for three years after a bank merger, and small bank mergers lead to larger increases in exit rates than large mergers.Third, target borrower abnormal returns are positively related to pre-merger exit rates, indicating that firms that find it easier to switch banks are less harmed when their bank merges.Fourth, we find weak evidence that target borrowers with large merger-induced increases in exit rates are more negatively affected by bank merger announcements, suggesting that target borrowers are forced out of relationships and suffer welfare losses as a result of bank mergers.banks;mergers;bank lending

Degradation of Common Pastures: An Economics Perspective of its Impact on Livestock Farming and Coping Strategies

The study has examined the farmers’ perception regarding deterioration of pasturelands, its impact on livestock farming and the factors affecting farmers’ willingness to contribute to a participatory pasture development programme. It is based on the primary data collected from sheep farmers of semi-arid and arid regions of Rajasthan in the year 2008. A large proportion of farmers have perceived deterioration of the pastureland which has resulted in the reductions of wool yield per animal (18%), body weight of sheep (20%) and age of disposal of lambs (45%). The major coping mechanisms adopted by the farmers have been identified are: reduction in total livestock holding (86%), reduction in sheep flock size (55%), grazing on alternative fodder sources (30%), increased frequency of migration (59%), increased duration of migration (41%), and disposal of male lambs at an early age (76%). The reduction of pastureland has resulted in cost escalation for sheep farming, particularly for the landless and small farmers. Double Bounded Dichotomous Choice (DBDC) method of Willingness to Pay (WTP) has been used to analyze the factors affecting the association of farmers with a participatory pasture development programme. The bivariate probit model estimated using this data has indicated that the expected cost and the concerns regarding inequitable distribution of benefits affect WTP negatively, whereas flock size affects it positively. The farmers in the arid region have been found more forthcoming towards a participatory management strategy. The study has highlighted the importance of awareness generation about the participatory management strategy and its incorporation as a component of livestock development programmes.Agricultural and Food Policy,

NN^k networks for Content-Based Image Retrieval

This paper describes a novel interaction technique to support content-based image search in large image collections. The idea is to represent each image as a vertex in a directed graph. Given a set of image features, an arc is established between two images if there exists at least one combination of features for which one image is retrieved as the nearest neighbour of the other. Each arc is weighted by the proportion of feature combinations for which the nearest neighbour relationship holds. By thus integrating the retrieval results over all possible feature combinations, the resulting network helps expose the semantic richness of images and thus provides an elegant solution to the problem of feature weighting in content-based image retrieval.We give details of the method used for network generation and describe the ways a user can interact with the structure. We also provide an analysis of the network’s topology and provide quantitative evidence for the usefulness of the technique