Internal migration and inclusive development: Insights from the field

Migration is a universal phenomenon. From time immemorial women and men have travelled in search of better living. There are two separate streams of migration. The first one is at the upper end of human capital hierarchy, to fill in existing surplus demand in the labour market of destination regions. Consequently, this process is highly selective in nature – in terms of skill & training, age, and gender. The second stream emerges due to ‘Push factors’ or distress conditions in the source regions (relative to the destination) – economic hardships in the form of low wages, high unemployment, heavy population pressure, etc. in the native places, and the lure of better earning opportunities in the economically vibrant destination region. This process is a coping mechanism of poor families and helps them come out of poverty. Thus migration can be both discriminatory and egalitarian. Another issue is the emerging pattern of identity and conflict between natives and migrants in several parts of the country. Social inclusion of migrants is sometimes at jeopardy and goes against the ethos and economics of one nation-one labour market principle. This issue needs to be examined also. Using field data, this paper seeks to understand the following issues:(a) Who migrates – what are the social, economic and institutional factors that determine migration decisions? (b) Are there any disparities between migrants/natives and various socio-religious groups regarding – Educational Attainment, Availability of employment, Nature of employment (casual/regular), Occupational distribution, and Earnings?; (c) What are the migration patterns of lagging socio-religious groups? Whether migration does form a route out of poverty for them, and whether specific policies for these groups exist or should be recommended; (d) Understand whether the process of migration is leading to better human capital standards for the subsequent generation or stifling it; and, (e) Examine the perception of natives in receiving regions about migrant workers and how migrants assimilate. The paper uses primary data from 3 districts of Bengal to explore the issues highlighted. It would also explore the impact on the migrants, the receiving regions and the sending regions through case studies to help us in understanding the issue of social inclusion of migrants. Several processes/local systems of migration have also been examined to highlight the vulnerability of the migrants. Inferences from the paper would help in devising a broadbased and inclusive migration policy

A Tale of Many Cities: Universal Patterns in Human Urban Mobility

The advent of geographic online social networks such as Foursquare, where users voluntarily signal their current location, opens the door to powerful studies on human movement. In particular the fine granularity of the location data, with GPS accuracy down to 10 meters, and the worldwide scale of Foursquare adoption are unprecedented. In this paper we study urban mobility patterns of people in several metropolitan cities around the globe by analyzing a large set of Foursquare users. Surprisingly, while there are variations in human movement in different cities, our analysis shows that those are predominantly due to different distributions of places across different urban environments. Moreover, a universal law for human mobility is identified, which isolates as a key component the rank-distance, factoring in the number of places between origin and destination, rather than pure physical distance, as considered in some previous works. Building on our findings, we also show how a rank-based movement model accurately captures real human movements in different cities

Spatio-temporal diffusion of residential land prices across Taipei regions

ABSTRACT: Past studies have shown that changes in the house price of a region may transmit to its neighbouring regions. The transmission mechanism may follow spatial and temporal diffusion processes. This paper investigates such regional housing market dynamics and interactions among local housing sub-markets in Taipei. The analysis is based on a panel data framework and spatial panel models using annual data on median residential land prices from 41 Taipei sub-markets over the period from 1992 to 2010. The empirical analysis suggests that spatial dependence plays a significant role in interactions among regional housing markets. The results are strongly robust across several model specifications and regions controlling for time fixed effects and space-time covariance. These findings have significant implications for urban spatial planning and efficient use of public resources in mega-urban areas. JEL CLASSIFICATIONS: C21; C23; R12; H5

Jan Tinbergen’s Legacy for Economic Networks: From the Gravity Model to Quantum Statistics

Jan Tinbergen, the first recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1969, obtained his PhD in physics at the University of Leiden under the supervision of Paul Ehrenfest in 1929. Among many achievements as an economist after his training as a physicist, Tinbergen proposed the so-called Gravity Model of international trade. The model predicts that the intensity of trade between two countries is described by a formula similar to Newton's law of gravitation, where mass is replaced by Gross Domestic Product. Since Tinbergen's proposal, the Gravity Model has become the standard model of non-zero trade flows in macroeconomics. However, its intrinsic limitation is the prediction of a completely connected network, which fails to explain the observed intricate topology of international trade. Recent network models overcome this limitation by describing the real network as a member of a maximum-entropy statistical ensemble. The resulting expressions are formally analogous to quantum statistics: the international trade network is found to closely follow the Fermi-Dirac statistics in its purely binary topology, and the recently proposed mixed Bose-Fermi statistics in its full (binary plus weighted) structure. This seemingly esoteric result is actually a simple effect of the heterogeneity of world countries, that imposes strong structural constraints on the network. Our discussion highlights similarities and differences between macroeconomics and statistical-physics approaches to economic networks

Nicotinamide's Ups and Downs:Consequences for Fertility, Development, Longevity and Diseases of Poverty and Affluence

Aims and Scope: To further explore the role of dietary nicotinamide in both brain development and diseases, particularly those of ageing. Articles cover neurodegenerative disease and cancer. Also discussed are the effects of nicotinamide, contained in meat and supplements and derived from symbionts, on the major transitions of disease and fertility from ancient times up to the present day. A key role for the tryptophan – NAD ‘de novo’ and immune tolerance pathway are discussed at length in the context of fertility and longevity and the transitions from immune paresis to Treg-mediated immune tolerance and then finally to intolerance and their associated diseases. Abstract: Nicotinamide in human evolution increased cognitive power in a positive feedback loop originally involving hunting. As the precursor to metabolic master molecule NAD it is, as vitamin B3, vital for health. Paradoxically, a lower dose on a diverse plant then cereal-based diet fuelled population booms from the Mesolithic onwards, by upping immune tolerance of the foetus. Increased tolerance of risky symbionts, whether in the gut or TB, that excrete nicotinamide co-evolved as buffers for when diet was inadequate. High biological fertility, despite disease trade-offs, avoided the extinction of Homo sapiens and heralded the dawn of a conscious, creative, and pro-fertility culture. Nicotinamide equity now would stabilise populations and prevent NAD-based diseases of poverty and affluence

IMAGE-Asia: an introduction

Migration is set to play a pre-eminent role in the transformation of regional populations in the twenty-first century. Studies of internal migration, i.e. movements between regions within a country, have been subject to considerably less scholarship than international migration. This is despite the fact that internal migrants outnumber international migrants by a factor of four to one. This chapter introduces our comparative study of internal migration in 15 Asian countries. The chapter begins by providing the rationale for cross-national studies on internal migration, and their particular value in the Asian context. Following a brief review of past studies, the chapter introduces an analytic framework for comparative studies of internal migration. Three dimensions central to understanding internal migration are considered: migration intensity, age structure, and spatial impact. The chapter goes on to describe the genesis of the IMAGE-Asia project under the auspices of the Asian Demographic Research Institute, before providing an overview of the chapters contained in this volume

Refugee mobility. Evidence from Phone Data in Turkey

Our research report employs the D4R data and combines it with several other sources to study one of the multiple aspects of integration of refugees, namely the mobility of refugees across provinces in Turkey. In particular, we employ a standard gravity model to empirically estimate a series of determinants of refugees movements. These include the standard determinants such as province characteristics, distances across provinces, levels of income, network effects as well as some refugee specific determinants such as the presence of refugees camps ans the intensity of phone call interaction among refugees. Importantly, we explore the effect of certain categories of news events, notably protests, violence, and asylum grants. Considering news as an indicator of policy implemented at the provincial level, we gain a better understanding as to how policy can facilitate refugee mobility and thus enhance integration. To benchmark our findings, we Estimate the same model for the mobility of individuals with non-refugee status

Refugee mobility : evidence from phone data in Turkey

Our research report employs the D4R data and combines it with several other sources to study one of the multiple aspects of integration of refugees, namely the mobility of refugees across provinces in Turkey. In particular, we employ a standard gravity model to empirically estimate a series of determinants of refugees movements. These include the standard determinants such as province characteristics, distances across provinces, levels of income, network effects as well as some refugee specific determinants such as the presence of refugees camps ans the intensity of phone call interaction among refugees. Importantly, we explore the effect of certain categories of news events, notably protests, violence, and asylum grants. Considering news as an indicator of policy implemented at the provincial level, we gain a better understanding as to how policy can facilitate refugee mobility and thus enhance integration. To benchmark our findings, we Estimate the same model for the mobility of individuals with non-refugee status