Too Many Migrants, Too Few Services: A Model of Decision-making on Immigration and Integration with Cultural Distance

In this paper we model the demand for immigrants as a trade-off native voters face between having services, produced by unskilled and non-assimilated immigrants, and experiencing disutility due to the immigrant workers having a culture different from the native culture. Immigrants decide whether to integrate into the native culture. If they don’t, they produce services. Assimilated immigrants take on skilled jobs. At the political level natives choose the number of immigrants that can be allowed, given some fixed price for services. We show that, at the assumed price, it is never optimal for natives to have equilibrium or unemployment in the service sector. Market forces then lead to higher service prices, implying that the initially allowed number of immigrants is too large.

The International Spillover Effects of Pension Reform

This paper explores how pension reforms in countries with PAYG schemes affect countries with funded systems. We use a two-country two-period overlapping-generations model, where the countries only differ in their pension systems. We distinguish between the case where a reform potentially leads to a Pareto improvement in the PAYG country, and where this is impossible. In the latter case the funded country shares both in the costs and the benefits of the reform. However, if a Pareto-improving pension reform is feasible in the PAYG country, a Pareto improvement in the funded country is not guaranteed.international spillover effects, pension reform

The Politics of Pension Reform under Ageing

In this paper we address the question whether in case of population ageing a transition from an unfunded to a more funded pension scheme is politically feasible in a representative democracy. We consider two parties: a right-wing party which is willing to trade off intragenerational equity against efficiency gains in intergenerational redistribution, and a left-wing party which does not want to adjust the level of intragenerational distribution. We show that, in an economy with an exogenously given interest rate, only a thus defined right-wing government will propose a social-security reform. Moreover, we demonstrate that such a policy proposal may lead to electoral success if it entails an appropriate mix of distributional efficiency and equity.Ageing, overlapping generations, pensions

Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes

This paper develops a framework to understand the role of interpersonal interactions in the labor market including task assignment and wages. Effective interpersonal interactions involve caring, to establish cooperation, and at the same time directness, to communicate in an unambiguous way. The ability to perform these tasks varies with personality and the importance of these tasks varies across jobs. An assignment model shows that people are most productive in jobs that match their style and earn less when they have to shift to other jobs. An oversupply of one attribute relative to the other reduces wages for people who are better with the attribute in greater supply. We present evidence that youth sociability affects job assignment in adulthood. The returns to interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model.Interpersonal Interactions, Wage Level, Wage Structure

Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes

This paper develops a framework to understand the role of interpersonal interactions in thelabor market including task assignment and wages. Effective interpersonal interactionsinvolve caring, to establish cooperation, and at the same time directness, to communicate inan unambiguous way. The ability to perform these tasks varies with personality and theimportance of these tasks varies across jobs. An assignment model shows that people are most productive in jobs that match their style and earn less when they have to shift to other jobs. An oversupply of one attribute relative to the other reduces wages for people who are better with the attribute in greater supply. We present evidence that youth sociability affects jobs assignment in adulthood. The returns to interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model.education, training and the labour market;

People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups

Despite indications that people skills are important for understanding individual labor-market outcomes and have become more important over the last decades, there is little analysis by economists. This paper shows that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupations and wages. We show that technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. We particularly focus on how the increased importance of people skills has affected the labor-market outcomes of under represented groups. We show that the acceleration rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s can help explain why women%u2019s wages increased more rapidly while the wages of blacks grew more slowly over these years relative to earlier years.