Time-Bound Labor Access to the United States: A Four-Way Win for the Middle Class, Low-Skill Workers, Border Security, and Migrants

The US economy needs low-skill workers now more than ever, and that requires a legal channel for the large-scale, employment-based entry of low-skill workers. The alternative is what the country has now: a giant black market in unauthorized labor that hinders job creation and harms border security. A legal time-bound labor-access program could benefit the American middle class and low-skill workers, improve US border security, and create opportunities for foreign workers

The place premium : wage differences for identical workers across the US border

This paper compares the wages of workers inside the United States to the wages of observably identical workers outside the United States-controlling for country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and rural-urban residence. This is made possible by new and uniquely rich microdata on the wages of over two million individual formal-sector wage-earners in 43 countries. The paper then uses five independent methods to correct these estimates for unobserved differences and introduces a selection model to estimate how migrants'wage gains depend on their position in the distribution of unobserved wage determinants. Following all adjustments for selectivity and compensating differentials, the authors estimate that the wages of a Bolivian worker of equal intrinsic productivity, willing to move, would be higher by a factor of 2.7 solely by working in the United States. While this is the median, this ratio is as high as 8.4 (for Nigeria). The paper documents that (1) for many countries, the wage gaps caused by barriers to movement across international borders are among the largest known forms of wage discrimination; (2) these gaps represent one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; and (3) these gaps imply that simply allowing labor mobility can reduce a given household's poverty to a much greater degree than most known in situ antipoverty interventions.,Population Policies,Income,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Markets

The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the US Border

We estimate the “place premium”—the wage gain that accrues to foreign workers who arrive to work in the United States. First, we estimate the predicted, purchasing-power adjusted wages of people inside and outside the United States who are otherwise observably identical—with the same country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and rural or urban residence. We use new and uniquely rich micro-data on the wages and characteristics of over two million individual formal-sector wage-earners in 43 countries (including the US). Second, we examine the extent to which these wage ratios for observably equivalent workers may overstate the gains to a marginal mover because movers may be positively selected on unobservable productivity in their home country. New evidence for nine of the countries, combined with a range of existing evidence, suggests that this overstatement can be significant, but is typically modest in magnitude. Third, we estimate the degree to which policy barriers to labor movement in and of themselves sustain the place premium, by bounding the premia observed under self-selected migration alone. Finally, we show that the policy induced portion of the place premium in wages represents one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; is much larger than wage discrimination in spatially integrated markets; and makes labor mobility capable of reducing households’ poverty at the margin by much more than any known in situ intervention.migration, wage discrimination, price distortions, policy barriers, place premium, poverty.

Cooperative action of cellulase enzyme and carboxymethyl cellulose on cotton fabric cleanability from a topographical standpoint

In this study, the effect of cotton treatment with cellulose and carboxymethyl cellulose on soil release of three different types of fabric: woven plain, woven twill and knitted were systematically studied. A recent study of the effect of a cleaning cellulase enzyme on cellulose films has proven that this substance selectively attacks amorphous cellulose regions, consisting of small hills in a matrix of flat crystalline regions. According to our previous investigations, where carboxymethyl cellulose is present in the formula, the enzyme seems to drive soil release performance. However, the mechanism has not yet been sufficiently studied from the topographical standpoint. In the present study, topographical changes caused by the treatment with cleaning cellulase enzyme and carboxymethyl cellulose on the fabrics by conditioning while washing were analysed on three different length scales in order to interpret their cooperation on water and oil absorption mechanisms and, hence, on cleanability of cotton fabrics stained with liquid–solid, liquid and solid soils

Cleanability Improvement of Cotton Fabrics Through Their Topographical Changes Due to the Conditioning with Cellulase Enzyme

In this study, topographical changes of woven cotton fabrics conditioned with a cellulase enzyme during several wash–dry cycles are systematically studied. A recent study of cellulase enzyme effect on cellulose films has proven that this substance selectively attacks amorphous regions of cellulose, consisting of small hills in a matrix of flat crystalline regions. In another study, topographical changes caused by cotton treatment with cellulase by conditioning while washing were analysed on three different length scales in order to interpret their cooperation on water and oil absorption mechanisms and, hence, on the cleanability of cotton fabrics stained with liquid–solid, liquid and solid soils. In the present study, we emphasise the micro-topographical changes resulting from several wash–dry cycles by the application of mathematical methods to quantify the changes of yarn micro-surfaces. As a result, we present a conceptual model that describes how the topographical effect of washing and conditioning by cellulase enzyme improves the cleanability of woven plain cotton fabrics

The Evolution of Poverty During the Crisis in Indonesia

The economic crisis caused a clear deterioration in the welfare of the Indonesian people. in this paper, we examine the appropriate method to compare the change in poverty rates over time. we then piece together a consistent series of estimates of poverty rates during the crisis from various sources, covering a period from february 1996 to february 2002. the reconciliation of these various estimates paints a very reasonable picture and neatly tracks events. the poverty rate increased from the lowest point of around 15 percent at the onset of the crisis in the mid of 1997 to the highest point of around 33 percent nearing the end of 1998. this maximum increase in poverty rate during the crisis of 18 percentage points implies that around 36 million additional people were pushed into absolute poverty due to the crisis. after the peak point, the poverty rate started to decline again and reached the pre-crisis level of around 15 percents at the end of 1999, implying the lost time in poverty reduction due to the crisis was around two and a half years. however, the poverty rate after this point appears to have fluctuated. during 2001 until early 2002, poverty was on the rise again. keywords: poverty, crisis, welfare, measurement, Indonesi

Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers

Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally-representative microdata on both U.S. immigrant workers and workers in their 42 home countries. The average price equivalent of migration barriers in this setting, for low-skill males, is greater than $13,700 per worker per year. Natural and policy barriers may each create annual global losses of trillions of dollars

Quantifying Vulnerability to Poverty: a Proposed Measure, with Application to Indonesia

Vulnerability is an important aspect of households' experience of poverty. many households, while not currently "in poverty", recognize that they are vulnerable to events that could easily push them into poverty-a bad harvest, a lost job, an unexpected expense, an illness, an economic downturn. most operational measures define poverty as some function of the shortfall of current consumption expenditures from a poverty line, and hence measure only poverty at a single point in time. we propose a simple expansion of these measures to quantify "vulnerability." we define vulnerability as a probability, the risk a household will experience at least one episode of poverty in the near future. a household is defined to be vulnerable if it has 50-50 odds or worse of falling into poverty. using these definitions we calculate the "vulnerability to poverty line" (vpl) as the level of expenditures below which a household is vulnerable to poverty. this vpl allows the calculation of the direct analogue of the "headcount poverty rate," which is the proportion of households vulnerable to poverty. we implement this approach using panel data from Indonesia. we first show that if poverty line is set so that the headcount poverty rate is 20 percent, the proportion of households that are vulnerable to poverty is 50 percent. so in addition to the 20 percent that are currently poor, hence are vulnerable, an additional 30 percent of the population is at risk of poverty. second, we illustrate the usefulness of this approach by examining differences in vulnerability between households by level of education, by land holding status and by gender of the household head. the conclusion speculates on the policy implications of these high levels of vulnerability. * we would like to thank peter rosner, martin ravallion, and menno pradhan for their valuable comments and suggestions. we are very grateful to unicef and bps for providing access to the data