Immigrant-Native Substitutability: The Role of Language Ability

Wage evidence suggests that immigrant workers are imperfectly substitutable for native-born workers with similar education and experience. Using U.S. Censuses and recent American Community Survey data, I ask to what extent differences in language skills drive this. I find they are important. I estimate that the response of immigrants’ relative wages to immigration is concentrated among immigrants with poor English skills. Similarly, immigrants who arrive at young ages, as adults, both have stronger English skills and exhibit greater substitutability for native-born workers than immigrants who arrive older. In U.S. markets where Spanish speakers are concentrated, I find a “Spanish-speaking” labor market emerges: in such markets, the return to speaking English is low, and the wages of Spanish and non-Spanish speakers respond most strongly to skill ratios in their own language group. Finally, in Puerto Rico, where almost all workers speak Spanish, I find immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes. The implications for immigrant poverty and regional settlement patterns are analyzed.

The Diffusion of Mexican Immigrants During the 1990s: Explanations and Impacts

Mexican immigrants were historically clustered in a few cities, mainly in California and Texas. During the past 15 years, however, arrivals from Mexico established sizeable immigrant communities in many "new" cities. We explore the causes and consequences of the widening geographic diffusion of Mexican immigrants. A combination of demand-pull and supply push factors explains most of the inter-city variation in inflows of Mexican immigrants over the 1990s, and also illuminates the most important trend in the destination choices of new Mexican immigrants %u2013 the move away from Los Angeles. Mexican inflows raise the relative supply of low-education labor in a city, leading to the question of how cities adapt to these shifts. One mechanism, suggested by the Hecksher Olin model, is shifting industry composition. We find limited evidence of this mechanism: most of the increases in the relative supply of low-education labor are absorbed by changes in skill intensity within narrowly defined industries. Such adjustments could be readily explained if Mexican immigrant inflows had large effects on the relative wage structures of different cities. As has been found in previous studies of the local impacts of immigration, however, our analysis suggests that relative wage adjustments are small.

Physical Capital and Capital Service Costs in U.S. Colleges and Universities: 1993

Physical capital represents an important input to the production of higher education--the essential services of buildings, equipment, and land--for which we have only highly inadequate measures. This paper has three objectives: to report estimates of the value of the capital stocks used by 3,148 colleges and universities in the US in 1993 (virtually all of them), to give a sense of the distribution of that physical capital and of capital service costs among different kinds of institutions, and to make these estimates available to other students of higher education in the form of FoxPro or Excel files.Education

Cracks in the Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, and Segregation

We examine whether low-skilled immigration to the United States has contributed to immigrants\u27 residential isolation by reducing native demand for public schools. We address endogeneity in school demographics using established Mexican settlement patterns in California and use a comparison group to account for immigration\u27s broader effects. We estimate that between 1970 and 2000, the average California school district lost more than 14 non-Hispanic households with children to other districts in its metropolitan area for every 10 additional households enrolling low-English Hispanics in its public schools. By disproportionately isolating children, the native reaction to immigration may have longer-run consequences than previously thought. (JEL H75, I21, J15, J24, J61, R23

Cracks in the Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, and Segregation *

Abstract This paper examines whether the large wave of Mexican immigration to the United States since 1970 has lowered non-Hispanic demand for public education. Our analysis focuses on California, where many of these immigrants settled, accounts for endogeneity of immigrant inflows using established settlement patterns, and uses relative outflows of children from a district to identify shifts in district choice working through schools. We find that between 1970 and 2000, the average metropolitan school district in California lost at least 12 non-Hispanic children to other school districts and two to private school within district for every ten additional low-English Hispanic arrivals in its public schools. These responses are similar in magnitude to "white flight" from school districts court-ordered to desegregate in the 1960s and 1970s

Benchmarking Outcomes for Molecularly Characterized Synchronous Oligo metastatic Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Reveals EGFR Mutations to Be Associated With Longer Overall Survival

PURPOSE: Local consolidative therapy (LCT) for patients with synchronous oligometastatic non-small-cell lung cancer is an evolving treatment strategy, but outcomes following LCT stratified by genetic mutations have not been reported. We sought to identify genomic associations with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) for these patients. METHODS: We identified all patients presenting between 2000 and 2017 with stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer and ≤ 3 synchronous metastatic sites. Patients were grouped according to mutational statuses. Primary outcomes included OS and PFS following initial diagnosis. RESULTS: Of 194 included patients, 121 received comprehensive LCT to all sites of disease with either surgery or radiation. CONCLUSION: When compared with wild-type patients, those wit

Hydrodynamic turbulence cannot transport angular momentum effectively in astrophysical disks

The most efficient energy sources known in the Universe are accretion disks. Those around black holes convert 5 -- 40 per cent of rest-mass energy to radiation. Like water circling a drain, inflowing mass must lose angular momentum, presumably by vigorous turbulence in disks, which are essentially inviscid. The origin of the turbulence is unclear. Hot disks of electrically conducting plasma can become turbulent by way of the linear magnetorotational instability. Cool disks, such as the planet-forming disks of protostars, may be too poorly ionized for the magnetorotational instability to occur, hence essentially unmagnetized and linearly stable. Nonlinear hydrodynamic instability often occurs in linearly stable flows (for example, pipe flows) at sufficiently large Reynolds numbers. Although planet-forming disks have extreme Reynolds numbers, Keplerian rotation enhances their linear hydrodynamic stability, so the question of whether they can be turbulent and thereby transport angular momentum effectively is controversial. Here we report a laboratory experiment, demonstrating that non-magnetic quasi-Keplerian flows at Reynolds numbers up to millions are essentially steady. Scaled to accretion disks, rates of angular momentum transport lie far below astrophysical requirements. By ruling out purely hydrodynamic turbulence, our results indirectly support the magnetorotational instability as the likely cause of turbulence, even in cool disks.Comment: 12 pages and 4 figures. To be published in Nature on November 16, 2006, available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/abs/nature05323.htm

A Mixed Blessing: Market-Mediated Religious Authority in Neopaganism

This research explores how marketplace dynamics affect religious authority in the context of Neopagan religion. Drawing on an interpretivist study of Wiccan practitioners in Italy, we reveal that engagement with the market may cause considerable, ongoing tensions, based on the inherent contradictions that are perceived to exist between spirituality and commercial gain. As a result, market success is a mixed blessing that can increase religious authority and influence, but is just as likely to decrease authority and credibility. Using an extended case study method, we propose a theoretical framework that depicts the links between our informants’ situated experiences and the macro-level factors affecting religious authority as it interacts with market-mediated dynamics at the global level. Overall, our study extends previous work in macromarketing that has looked at religious authority in the marketplace) and how the processes of globalization are affecting religion

The Impact of Immigration on the Wage Distribution in Switzerland

Recent immigrants in Switzerland are overrepresented at the top of the wage distribution in high and at the bottom in low skill occupations. Basic economic theory thus suggests that immigration has led to a compression of the wage distribution in the former group and to an expansion in the latter. The data confirm this proposition for high skill occupations, but reveal effects close to zero for low skill occupations. While the estimated wage effects are of considerable magnitude at the tails of the wage distribution in high skill occupations, the effects on overall inequality are shown to be negligible