Mobility within Europe - What Do We (Still Not) Know?

Intensified European integration, enlargement of the EU, and increasing migration activity worldwide have pushed migration and migration policy to the forfront of the European agenda. This paper identifies the salient questions to be addressed by any educated migration policy. It embeds this discussion into a systematic classification of economic migration research according to its major conceptual and applied questions. The state of theoretical and empirical research in the different strands of the taxonomy is reviewed briefly, with a focus on European aspects. Furthermore, we offer some empirical evidence on the determinants of intra-EU-migration by an analysis of the Eurobarometer. The paper concludes with an outline of the major open research questions in the European context. Specifically, at this junctur e the generation of individual-based detailed and comprehensive data material covering the phenomenon is imperative.

Mobility within Europe – The Attitudes of European Youngsters

Intensified European integration, enlargement of the EU, and increasing migration activity worldwide have pushed migration and migration policy to the forefront of the European agenda. While many observers hesitate to embrace immigration emanating from outside Europe, sectoral skill shortages and social security systems under demographic pressure have fostered an almost unanimous call for larger mobility within Europe. Yet, neither does intra-European migration respond to this request, nor are the possible consequences of increased migration activity well understood. This paper embeds this discussion into a systematic classification of economic migration research according to its major conceptual and applied questions. The state of theoretical and empirical research in this literature is reviewed briefly, with a focus on intra-European migration. We conclude that the relatively positive assessment of this type of migration mainly derives from its high skill content. To prepare the prediction of future developments, we offer empirical evidence on the determinants of intra-EU-migration by an analysis of the Eurobarometer survey. Unless information deficits, traces of xenophobic tendencies, and the perception of prohibitively high levels of bureaucratic red tape are overcome, intra-European migration will not play the role it is hoped for.Labor mobility, migration intention, intra-EU-migration

Gerontocracy in Motion? – European Cross-Country Evidence on the Labor Market Consequences of Population Ageing

Taking a European cross-country perspective, this paper addresses the most important issues in the nexus of population ageing and labor markets.We start from a descriptive overview of the demographic change currently shaping European societies.The subsequent section intensively discusses the potential consequences of these demographic processes for and interdependencies with the labor market situation in Europe.We place particular emphasis on the issue of non-competitive wage setting. In our empirical application we demonstrate that moderately large birth cohorts seem to experience lower employment rates, but also that education investments might be able to mitigate these consequences, and that the relative economic success of large cohorts might even be disproportionately positive. Finally, in the concluding section we review possible policy options for coping with the consequences of population ageing.Demographic change, cohort size, unemployment

The Role of Equality and Efficiency in Social Preferences

Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) claim that a combination of efficiency seeking and minmax preferences dominates inequity aversion in simple dictator games. This result relies on a strong subject pool effect. The participants of their experiments were undergraduate students of economics and business administration who self-selected into their field of study and learned early on that efficiency is desirable. We show that for non-economists the preference for efficiency is much less pronounced. We also find a gender effect indicating that women are more egalitarian than men. However, perhaps surprisingly, the dominance of equality over efficiency is unrelated to political attitudes

The Role of Equality and Equity in Social Preferences

Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) question the relevance of inequity aversion in simple dictator game experiments claiming that a combination of a preference for efficiency and a Rawlsian motive for helping the least well-off is more important than inequity aversion. We show that these results are partly based on a strong subject pool effect. The participants of the E&S experiments were undergraduate students of economics and business administration who self-selected into their field of study (economics) and learned in the first semester that efficiency is desirable. We show that for non-economists the preference for efficiency is much less pronounced. We also find a non-negligible gender effect indicating that women are more egalitarian than men. However, perhaps surprisingly, the dominance of equality over efficiency is unrelated to political attitudes

Which point sets admit a k-angulation?

For k >= 3, a k-angulation is a 2-connected plane graph in which every internal face is a k-gon. We say that a point set P admits a plane graph G if there is a straight-line drawing of G that maps V(G) onto P and has the same facial cycles and outer face as G. We investigate the conditions under which a point set P admits a k-angulation and find that, for sets containing at least 2k^2 points, the only obstructions are those that follow from Euler's formula.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

The Role of Equality and Efficiency in Social Preferences

Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) claim that a combination of efficiency seeking and minmax preferences dominates inequity aversion in simple dictator games. This result relies on a strong subject pool effect. The participants of their experiments were undergraduate students of economics and business administration who self-selected into their field of study and learned early on that efficiency is desirable. We show that for non-economists the preference for efficiency is much less pronounced. We also find a gender effect indicating that women are more egalitarian than men. However, perhaps surprisingly, the dominance of equality over efficiency is unrelated to political attitudes.Social Preferences; Inequity Aversion; Efficiency Preferences

The Impact of Demographic Change on Human Capital Accumulation

This paper investigates whether and to what extent demographic change has an impact on human capital accumulation. The effect of the relative cohort size on educational attainment of young adults in Germany is analyzed utilizing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for West-German individuals of the birth cohorts 1966 to 1986. These are the cohorts which entered the labor market since the 1980's. Particular attention is paid to the effect of changes in labor market conditions, which constitute an important channel through which demographic change may affect human capital accumulation. Our findings suggest that the variables measuring demographic change exert a considerable though heterogeneous impact on the human capital accumulation of young Germans. Changing labor market conditions during the 1980's and 1990's exhibit a sizeable impact on both the highest schooling and the highest professional degree obtained by younger cohorts.schooling, vocational training, demographic change

The Impact of Demographic Change on Human Capital Accumulation

This paper investigates whether and to what extent demographic change has an impact on human capital accumulation. The effect of the relative cohort size on educational attainment of young adults in Germany is analyzed utilizing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for West-German individuals of the birth cohorts 1966 to 1986. These are the cohorts which entered the labor market since the 1980's. Particular attention is paid to the effect of changes in labor market conditions, which constitute an important channel through which demographic change may affect human capital accumulation. Our findings suggest that the variables measuring demographic change exert a considerable though heterogeneous impact on the human capital accumulation of young Germans. Changing labor market conditions during the 1980's and 1990's exhibit a sizeable impact on both the highest schooling and the highest professional degree obtained by younger cohorts.Demographic Change, Schooling, Vocational Training