Ethnic externalities and 2nd generation immigrants

I analyze the role of regional ethnic capital – defined as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups – in the educational attainment of young second generation immigrants in Germany and whether results are sensitive to regional aggregation. I find evidence for externalities of ethnic capital for ethnic groups at the regional level. A higher average education of ethnics makes attendance of higher-quality secondary schools more likely. Moreover, the marginal effect of the externality is increasing in the ethnic concentration in the region. However, if higher than regional aggregates are used for the measurement of ethnic capital, no externalities are detected

Homeownership and Unemployment Duration

We examine the effects of homeownership on individuals' unemployment durations in the USA. We take into account that an unemployment spell can terminate with a job or with a non-participation transition. The endogeneity of homeownership is addressed through the estimation of a full maximum likelihood function which jointly models the competing hazards and the probability of being a homeowner. Unobserved factors contributing to the probability of being a homeowner are allowed to be correlated with unobservable heterogeneity in the hazard rates. We find that unemployed homeowners are less likely to find a job than renters. The effect is small but statistically significant for most specifications. The effect is stronger for outright owners and weaker for mortgage holders. We also find that outright owners have a higher and mortgage holders a lower probability of exiting to non-participation than renters

Ethnic concentration and language fluency of immigrants in Germany

Studies that investigate the effect of the regional ethnic composition on immigrant outcomes have been complicated by the self-selection of ethnic minorities into specific neighbourhoods. We analyse the impact of own-ethnic concentration on the language proficiency of immigrants by exploiting the fact that the initial placement of guest-workers after WWII was determined by labour demanding firms and the federal labour administration and hence exogenous to immigrant workers. Combining several data sets, we find a small but robust and significant negative effect of ethnic concentration on immigrants’ language ability. Simulation results of a choice model in which location and learning decisions are taken simultaneously confirm the presence of the effect. Immigrants with high learning costs are inclined to move to ethnic enclaves, so that the share of German-speakers would increase only modestly even under the counterfactual scenario of a regionally equal distribution of immigrants across Germany

Ethnic externalities in education and second-generation immigrants

I analyze the role of ethnic and native human capital – defined respectively as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups and of natives within a specific region – and of ethnic concentrations in the educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Germany. Compared to natives’ children, parents’ education has a small and insignificant effect on second generation immigrants’ education. Ethnic concentrations have a negative effect, while ethnic capital is insignificant. The effect of native capital, too, is insignificant but much larger in magnitude than the effect of ethnic capital. For women, mother’s education is relatively more important. For men, ethnic concentrations constitute a stronger impediment to educational attainment than for women

Do Ethnic Enclaves Impede Immigrants’ Integration? Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Social-Interaction Approach

It is widely debated whether immigrants who live among co-ethnics are less willing to integrate into the host society. Exploiting the quasi-experimental guest worker placement across German regions during the 1960/70s as well as information on immigrants' inter-ethnic contact networks and social activities, we are able to identify the causal effect of ethnic concentration on social integration. The exogenous placement of immigrants ‘switches off’ observable and unobservable differences in the willingness or ability to integrate which have confounded previous studies. Evidence suggests that the presence of co-ethnics increases migrants' interaction cost with natives and thus reduces the likelihood of integration

Assessing prospective chemistry teachers' understanding of gases through qualitative and quantitative analyses of their concept maps

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The use of concept mapping as a tool to measure the meaningful learning of students is the focus of this study. The study was carried out with 24 last year students (22 years old) from the Department of Chemistry Teaching at Fatih Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University (KTU). Prospective Chemistry Teachers (PCT) were asked to create concept maps using a list of given concepts related to gases. An examination of the PCTs' maps revealed that the students could not form hierarchical maps even after being shown examples of the basic elements and meaningful propositions between the concepts. After being provided with feedback about their concept maps and trained to form non-hierarchical concept maps, the students were asked to create new maps. This time they were allowed to use either hierarchical or non-hierarchical maps. When their new maps were examined, we found that most of the PCTs formed non-hierarchical maps. However, they still could not form meaningful relationships between the given concepts. We also found that the PCTs had some misconceptions about gases and kinetic molecular theory that explains gas behavior. The study ended up with some suggestions and implications for educators and researchers related to pre-service teachers' training