Implications of EU Accession for International Migration: An Assessment of Potential Migration Pressure

This paper estimates the potential migration from eight EU accession countries as well as Bulgaria and Romania as a result of the eastern enlargement. The experience of migration from Greece, Portugal and Spain is used to estimate the parameters of a migration function, exploiting panel estimation techniques. The results from the models are then used for so-called double out of sample extrapolations - for ten countries that are not within the estimated sample and for the time period in the future. It was found that potential migration flows from central and eastern Europe will be modest. Moreover, legal introduction of free movement of workers seems not to increase migration significantly, contrary to what one might expect.international migration, migration projections, EU enlargement, panel estimation

Self-Selection and the Returns to Geographic Mobility: What Can Be Learned from the German Reunification "Experiment"

This paper investigates the causal effect of geographic labour mobility on income. The returns to German East-West migration and commuting are estimated exploiting the structure of centrally planned economies and a "natural experiment" of German reunification for identification. I find that migration premium is insignificantly different from zero, the returns for commuters equal to four percent of the mean of the total income, and the local average treatment effects for compliers are insignificant. In addition, estimation results suggest no positive self-selection for migrants, and some evidence of positive self-selection for commuters. Based on these results, moving West does not appear to be a highly rewarded option in Germany.returns to geographic mobility, causality, treatment effects

Individual support for economic and political changes: Evidence from transition countries, 1991-2004

Using a unique dataset, we propose a new measure of public evaluation of transitional reforms and study, for the first time, the evolution of support for economic and political reforms in 14 transition economies over 1991-2004. We show that support for economic changes has been increasing over time after an initial dip, while support for political reforms has generally been higher. Support attitudes are lower among the old, less skilled, unemployed, poor, and those living in the CIS countries, especially during the 1990s. We also find evidence that transition-related hardship, opinions on the speed of reforms, political preferences and preferences towards redistribution, ideology and social capital matter. Finally, we show that preferences for state ownership and the quality of political institutions contribute mostly to explaining the lower levels of support in the CIS countries.political economy; public support; reforms; transition

East-West migration and gender: Is there a "double disadvantage" vis-à-vis stayers?

This paper examines whether female East-West migrants in Germany after the reunification face an additional disadvantage after they move compared to both stayers and males. It employs panel data techniques to take account of unobserved heterogeneity. I find that migrant women after migration neither experience a drop in relative employment, nor earn lower relative hourly wages. They do, however, work relatively less hours and have a lower relative annual income. The results also suggest that for them, the income effect dominates the substitution effect and they substitute market work with home production, in particular with childcare

Multitasking

This chapter reviews economic studies on multitasking in household production. Whereas multitasking or task juggling in the workplace has been analyzed more widely, economic literature on multitasking in a household is relatively scarce. The chapter first provides relevant measures of such multitasking activities, discusses time diary data, and presents some empirical facts employing Harmonized European Time Use Survey data. It then reviews theoretical and empirical contributions to this topic, focusing on childcare, food consumption, and remote work. It also reviews the determinants of multitasking and identifies the factors that are more likely to affect these activities. In addition, it discusses multitasking by certain groups, such as ethnic minorities and children. Finally, it offers policy implications and suggestions for future research

Informal Employment in Russia: Definitions, Incidence, Determinants and Labor Market Segmentation

This paper takes stock of informal employment in Russia analyzing its incidence and determinants, developing several measures of informal employment and demonstrating that the incidence varies widely across the different definitions. We, however, show that the determinants of informal employment are roughly stable across the different measures. We also estimate an informal-formal wage gap at the means and across the entire wage distributions. We find only weak evidence for labor market segmentation in Russia for salaried workers but establish a segmented informal sector with a lower free entry tier and an upper rationed tier when including the self-employed and entrepreneurs

Transition Fatigue? Cross-Country Evidence from Micro Data

The transition process has had different distributional impacts across different interest groups and countries. These have led to differences in the support for transition. In this paper, we study support attitudes for both the economic and political transition using data from the New Barometer Surveys for 14 transition economies from 1991 to 2004. We document that the overall support is low and heterogeneous across countries and individuals. Support attitudes are lower among the old, less skilled, unemployed, poor, and those living in the CIS countries. There seems to be an increasing trend in the support for the economic transition in most countries. Our findings are robust to changes in the definition and measurement of the dependent variable. We also find evidence that transition-related hardship, opinions on the speed of reforms, political preferences and preferences towards redistribution, ideology and social capital matter. Finally, we show that individual preferences for secure jobs, the role of state and trust in politicians as well as better institutions, in particular, the quality of governance, seem to contribute mostly to explaining the lower levels of the support in the CIS countries.political economy, transition, subjective attitudes

Children, Kitchen, Church: Does Ethnicity Matter?

Gender role attitudes are well-known determinants of female labor supply. This paper examines the strength of those attitudes using time diaries on childcare, food management and religious activities provided by the British Time Use Survey. Given the low labor force participation of females from ethnic minorities, the role of ethnicity in forming those attitudes and influencing time spent for "traditional" female activities is of particular interest. The paper finds that white females in the UK have a higher probability to participate in the labor force than non-white females. Non-white females spend more time for religious activities and, to some extent, for food management than white females, while there are no ethnic differences for time spent on childcare. The ethnicity effect is also heterogenous across different socio-economic groups. Hence, cultural differences across ethnicities are significant, and do affect work behavior.Time use, ethnic minorities, gender, UK

Job Separations, Job Loss and Informality in the Russian Labor Market

Having unique data we investigate the link between job separations (displacement and quits) and informal employment, which we define in several ways posing the general question whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators in the Russian labor market. After we have established positive causal effects of displacement and quits on informal employment we analyze whether displaced workers experience more involuntary informal employment than their non-displaced counterparts. Our main results confirm our contention that displacement entraps some of the workers in involuntary informal employment. Those who quit, in turn, experience voluntary informality for the most part, but there seems a minority of quitting workers who end up in involuntary informal jobs. This scenario does not fall on all the workers who separate but predominantly on workers with low human capital. We also pursue the issue of informality persistence and find that informal employment is indeed persistent as some workers churn from one informal job to the next. Our study contributes to the debate in the informality literature regarding segmented versus integrated labor markets. It also contributes to the literature on displacement by establishing informal employment as an important cost of displacement. We also look at the share of undeclared wages in formal jobs and find that these shares are larger for separators than for incumbents, with displaced workers bearing the brunt of this manifestation of informality

Labor Market Outcomes of Immigrants and Non-Citizens in the EU: An East-West Comparison

The starkly different histories and institutions in the eastern and western member states of the European Union (EU) suggest different roles of being non-native in these two regions. In this paper we study the roles of foreign origin and citizenship in the comparative East-West perspective. Our results indicate that while it is immigrant status that is of key importance in the western EU member states, both immigrant status and citizenship matter in the eastern EU member states, their roles depending on gender. We find some evidence that it is the Russian ethnic minority in Estonia and Latvia that drives the relationships between being non-citizen and labor market outcomes that we find in the eastern EU member states.employment, earnings, labor market, Eastern Europe, citizenship, immigrant