Risk, Implicit Contracts and the Family in Rural Areas of Low-Income Countries

In this paper the role of family structure in mitigating income volatility in the absence of income insurance in low-income agricultural environments is discussed. Hypotheses concerning the relationship between the membership, size and composition of households and insurance-based income transfers are tested using longitudinal data from India. A test is also performed of whether a household's ability to reduce risk ex post via family arrangements affects its willingness tobear risk ex ante through its selection of formal tenancy contracts. The results support these hypotheses concerning the risk-mitigating roles of both household structure and share contracts, and indicate as well the importance of heterogeneity in risk-aversion across households.Consumer/Household Economics,

The circulation migration of the skilled and economic development

I will consider three questions. First, how inefficient is the global allocation of workers and how large are the gains from increased international migration? How do you measure these gains? We will see that standard GDP comparisons are not sufficient. Second, how would reallocating high-skill workers from low- to high wage areas affect low-wage countries? Third, what is the relationship between the net international flow of skilled individuals and the development of low-income countries? Which countries benefit the most and least from skill migration?Emigration and immigration ; Economic development ; Human capital

Microeconomic Approaches to Development: Schooling, Learning, and Growth

I illustrate the variety of approaches to development issues microeconomists employ, focusing on studies that illuminate and quantify the major mechanisms posited by growth theorists who highlight the role of education in fostering growth. I begin with a basic issue: what are the returns to schooling? I discuss microeconomic studies that estimate schooling returns using alternative approaches to estimating wage equations, which require assumptions that are unlikely to be met in low-income countries, looking at inferences based on how education interacts with policy and technological changes in the labor and marriage markets. I then review research addressing whether schooling facilitates learning, or merely imparts knowledge, and whether there is social learning that gives rise to educational externalities. I next examine studies quantifying the responsiveness of educational investments to changes in schooling returns and assess whether and where there exist important barriers to such investments when returns justify their increase.schooling, development, growth

Global Wage Inequality and the International Flow of Migrants

A framework for understanding the determinants in the variation in the pricing of skills across countries and the model underlying the Mincer specification of wages that is used widely to estimate the relationship between schooling and wages are described. A method for identifying skill prices and for testing the Mincer model, using wages and the human capital attributes of workers located around the world, is discussed. A global wage equation that nests the Mincer specification is estimated that provides skill price estimates for 140 countries. The estimates reject the Mincer model. The skill price estimates indicate that variation in skill prices dominates the cross-country variation in schooling levels or rates of return to schooling in accounting for the global inequality in the earnings of workers worldwide. Variation in skill prices and GDP across countries has opposite and significant effects on the number and quality of migrants to the United States.wage, skill price, international migration, inequality

The Consequences of the Agricultural Productivity Growth for Rural Landless Households: Findings from Research Based on the Indian Green Revolution Experience

There has been much debate over the extent to which economic growth reduces poverty and augments human development among the poor. This paper describes ongoing research using survey data on the Green Revolution experience in India that focuses on this issue. The research is based on a general-equilibrium model of labour markets for adults and children that differentiates households by whether they own land and incorporates a public sector that chooses the amount of school building. The empirical results suggest, consistent with the model, that expectations of improvements in agricultural productivity increase the schooling of children in landed households and reduce schooling in landless households, in part because of the operation of the child labour market, as landless child labour is used to replace landed child labour lost due to increased child school attendance in landed households. The results also show, however, that school construction in India was undertaken at higher levels in areas in which there were expectations of greater future productivity increases, and that the closer proximity of schools differentially benefited landless households. Thus school building policy in India tended to offset the adverse distributional consequences of agricultural technological change in the early stages of the Green Revolution. The allocation of schools, however, did not fully offset the incentives for landless households to reduce schooling investments. The perverse correlation between human development and income growth observed among the poor landless households in India at the initial stages of the Green Revolution, thus, was not due to lack of responsiveness of public resources but to the lack of a return to schooling in the non-farm sector.

English Language Skill Acquisition, Locational Choice and Labor Market Returns Among the Major Foreign-Born Language Groups in the United States in 1900 and 1980

Labor and Human Capital,

What's In a Name? Country-of-Origin Influences on the Earnings of Immigrants in the United States

Labor and Human Capital,

Selection Criteria and the Skill Composition of Immigrants: A Comparative Analysis of Australian and U.S. Employment Immigration

This paper uses survey data on employment immigrants in Australia and the United States to identify the main determinants of the size and skill composition of employment immigrants to developed countries. Our approach emphasizes the key roles of world prices of skills and country proximity. Our empirical results are consistent with the view that these factors, rather than the nuances of selection systems, dominate. There are five main findings: (1) Higher skill prices in sending countries decrease the number of immigrants but increase their average schooling. (2) More-distant countries send fewer but more skilled immigrants. (3) Given skill prices and proximity, countries with higher income send more immigrants, of lower skill. (4) Within a sending country, Australia attracts less total but higher-skill migrants than does the United States. This can be attributed, however, to the fact that the skill price in Australia is lower than the U.S. skill price, so that immigration gains are greater from immigrating to United States. (5) The estimated coefficients determining migration flows to Australia and the United States are the same for both countries. We conclude that geography thus matters in the sense that who a country’s neighbors are, in terms of their level and type of development, has a significant effect on the size and skill composition of employment migrants. There is no evidence that the differences in the selection mechanism used to screen employment migrants in the two countries play a significant role in affecting the characteristics of skill migration.highly skilled immigration, immigration policy, immigrant selection criteria, skill prices, country proximity, globalization, employment immigration

Agricultural Prices, Food Consumption and the Health and Productivity of Farmers

Demand and Price Analysis, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Heterogeneity, Intrafamily Distribution and Child Health

Health Economics and Policy,