Publications (79)9.02 Total impact
-
Article: Is Caste Destiny? Occupational Diversification Among Dalits in Rural India
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The caste system – a system of elaborately stratified social hierarchy – distinguishes India from most other societies. Among the most distinctive factors of the caste system is the close link between castes and occupations, especially in rural India, with Dalits or Scheduled Castes (SC) clustered in occupations that were the least well paid and most degrading in terms of manual labor. Along with the Scheduled Tribes (STs), the SCs have the highest incidence of poverty in India, with poverty rates that are much higher than the rest of the population. Since independence, the Indian government has enacted affirmative action policies in educational institutions and public sector employment for SCs and STs. In addition, there has been an emergence of political parties that are strongly pro-SC in their orientation in the more populous states of India. We use five rounds of all-India employment data from the National Sample Survey quinquennial surveys from 1983 to 2004 to assess whether these political and social changes have led to a weakening of the relationship between low caste status and occupational segregation that has existed historically in India. We find evidence that the occupational structure of the SC households is converging to that of the non-scheduled households. However, we do not find evidence of a similar occupational convergence for ST households.INTL: Descriptive Studies in Emerging Markets (Topic). 01/2012; -
Article: Migration, Transfers and Child Labor
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children's working hours. Analysis using Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data on the Kagera region in Tanzania lend support to the hypothesis that both emigration and remittances reduce child labor.IZA Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper Series. 04/2011; -
Article: Chapter 1 Migration and Culture
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Culture is not new to the study of migration. It has lurked beneath the surface for some time, occasionally protruding openly into the discussion, usually under some pseudonym. The authors bring culture into the open. They are concerned with how culture manifests itself in the migration process for three groups of actors: the migrants, those remaining in the sending areas, and people already living in the recipient locations. The topics vary widely. What unites the authors is an understanding that though actors behave differently, within a group there are economically important shared beliefs (customs, values, attitudes, etc.), which we commonly refer to as culture. Culture and identity play a central role in our understanding of migration as an economic phenomenon; but what about them matters? Properly, we should be looking at the determinants of identity and the determinants of culture (prices and incomes, broadly defined). But this is not what is done. Usually identity and culture appear in economics articles as a black box. Here we try to begin to break open the black box.Frontiers of Economics and Globalization. 12/2010; 8:1-21. -
Article: Chapter 26 Changes in Attitudes toward Immigrants in Europe: Before and After the Fall of the Berlin Wall
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This chapter provides a statistical analysis of the determinants of attitudes toward foreigners displayed by Europeans sampled in Eurobarometer surveys in 1988 and 1997. Those who compete with immigrants in the labor market are more negative toward foreigners. An increased concentration of immigrants in neighborhoods increases the likelihood of negative attitudes. Racial prejudice exerts a strong influence on anti-foreigner sentiment. Greater racial prejudices, and the decline in the strength of educational attainment in reducing negative attitudes toward foreigners, contribute to the increased anti-foreigner attitudes between 1988 and 1997.Frontiers of Economics and Globalization. 12/2010; 8:649-676. -
Article: Migration and Culture
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Culture is not new to the study of migration. It has lurked beneath the surface for some time, occasionally protruding openly into the discussion, usually under some pseudonym. The authors bring culture into the open. They are concerned with how culture manifests itself in the migration process for three groups of actors: the migrants, those remaining in the sending areas, and people already living in the recipient locations. The topics vary widely. What unites the authors is an understanding that though actors behave differently, within a group there are economically important shared beliefs (customs, values, attitudes, etc.), which we commonly refer to as culture. Culture and identify play a central role in our understanding of migration as an economic phenomenon; but what about them matters? Properly, we should be looking at the determinants of identity and the determinants of culture (prices and incomes, broadly defined). But this is not what is done. Usually identity and culture appear in economics articles as a black box. Here we try to begin to break open the black box.Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), IZA Discussion Papers. 01/2010; -
Article: A Political Economy of the Immigrant Assimilation: Internal Dynamics
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Within immigrant society different groups wish to help the migrants in different ways – immigrant societies are multi-layered and multi-dimensional. We examine the situation where there exists a foundation that has resources and that wishes to help the migrants. To do so they need migrant groups to invest effort in helping their country-folk. Migrant groups compete against one another by helping their country-folk and to win grants from the foundation. We develop a model that considers how such a competition affects the resources invested by the groups’ supporters and how beneficial it is to immigrants. We consider two alternative rewards systems for supporters – absolute and relative ranking – in achieving their goals.Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), IZA Discussion Papers. 01/2010; -
Article: Measuring ethnic linkages among migrants
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Purpose – Using three different measures, the aim of this paper is to investigate the channels through which ethnic linkages/networks affect the location choice of migrants. Design/methodology/approach – The authors estimate conditional logit models of the US location choice by Mexican migrants, using individual level data on Mexican-US migration collected by the Mexican Migration Project Findings – The main finding is that the choice of Mexican immigrants to move to a region has a hump-shaped relation with the amount of fellow-Mexicans living there and with the amount of people coming from the same village. These effects are stronger for illegal immigrants and for first-time immigrants than for legal immigrants and repeat immigrants respectively. Mixed evidence is found for the effect of the total time the Mexicans from the same village have lived in the USA. Originality/value – The paper formulates the location choice of Mexican migrants in the USA as influenced by: the number of Mexicans living in the US region; the number of Mexicans from the same village as the migrants living in the US region; and the total time the Mexicans from the same village have lived in the US region.International Journal of Manpower 01/2009; 30(May):56-69. · 0.56 Impact Factor -
Article: Measuring Income Assimilation of Migrants to Germany
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: We measure the income assimilation of migrants to Germany employing a new measure of assimilation that uses the whole income distribution rather than selected moments. To do this we implement a discrete-state Markov chain to model the dynamics of the cross-sectional income distribution of migrants and natives in Germany. Bayesian methods allow us to fully characterize the limiting cross-sectional income distribution for migrants and natives, enabling us to compare our measures of assimilation in the limiting case. We find no evidence in this sample of income assimilation for migrants to Germany.Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. 01/2009; 129(2):333-342. -
Article: Ethnicity, Assimilation and Harassment in the Labor Market
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: We often observe minority ethnic groups at a disadvantage relative to the majority. Why is this and what can be done about it? Efforts made to assimilate, and time, are two elements working to bring the minority into line with the majority. A third element, the degree to which the majority welcomes the minority, also plays a role. We develop a simple theoretical model useful for examining the consequences for assimilation and harassment of growth in the minority population, time, and the role of political institutions. Over time, conflicts develop within the minority group as members exhibit different interests in assimilating and in maintaining their cultural identity. We discuss how this affects the minority’s position over time and the influence of public policy.08/2008; -
Article: Migration, Remittances, and Child Labor
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: SHORT ABSTRACT We examine child labor in the context of emigration and remittances. Remittances sent by the emigrating parents might enable not only their children, but also others, to stop working. Our empirical formulation of this model is recursive simultaneous equations model of migration, remittances and child labor supply, where we hypothesize a positive coefficient of both the migration and remittance variables in the child labor equation. We use Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data on the Kagera region in Tanzania, provided by the World Bank. It consists of a panel of close to 800 rural households for 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994 and approximately 2500 in 2004, where some of the households can be traced back to the 1991-1994 panel. .05/2008; -
Article: Was the Mandal Commission Right? Living Standard Differences between Backward Classes and Other Social Groups in India
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Affirmative action has been at the heart of public policies towards the socially disadvantaged in India. Compensatory discrimination policies which have been adopted for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) since independence were recommended for Other Backward Classes (OBC) by the Mandal Commission established by the Indian government in 1979. We examine why OBC have lower living standards, as measured by per capita household consumption expenditures, relative to the mainstream population, and whether these reasons are similar to those observed for SC and ST. We find that while the causes of the living standard gap for the OBC are broadly similar to those for the SC and ST, the role of educational attainment in explaining the gap is higher in importance for the OBC.05/2008; -
Article: POVERTY IN RURAL INDIA: CASTE AND TRIBE
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the determinants of rural poverty in India, contrasting the situation of scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) households with the non-scheduled population. The incidence of poverty in SC and ST households is much higher than among non-scheduled households. By combining regression estimates for the ratio of per capita expenditure to the poverty line and an Oaxaca-type decomposition analysis, we study how these differences in the incidence of poverty arise. We find that for SC households, differences in characteristics explain the gaps in poverty incidence more than differences in transformed regression coefficients. In contrast, for ST households, differences in the transformed regression coefficients play the more important role. Copyright 2008 The Authors.Review of Income and Wealth 02/2008; 54(1):50-70. · 0.81 Impact Factor -
Article: Gender and Ethnicity in Post-Conflict Kosovo
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The paper examines the comparative economic wellbeing of female- and male-headed households among Serbs and Albanians in post-conflict Kosovo. Evidence from the living standards measurement study (LSMS) household survey, 2001, shows that Serb households, both those headed by women and men, are worse off than Albanians households. We find that female-headed households do not generally suffer more than male-headed households, but there is substantial variation among ethnic groups. While Albanian female-headed households are marginally better-off than Albanian male-headed households, Serb female-headed households have the lowest standard of living.02/2008; -
Article: Poverty and Governance: The Contest for Aid
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called ?fragile states?, countries with critically low policy and institutional performance ratings. The current paper addresses this void by examining possible links between aid and economic growth in fragile states. It finds that: (i) growth would have been 1.4 percentage points lower in highly fragile states in the absence of aid to them, compared to 2.5 percentage points in other countries; (ii) highly fragile states from a per capita income growth perspective can only efficiently absorb approximately one-third of the amounts of aid that other countries can, and; (iii) while from the same perspective most fragile states are under-aided, to the extent that they could efficiently absorb greater amounts of aid than they currently receive, many of the highly fragile states are substantially over-aided in this sense. The overall conclusion is that donors need to look very closely at their aid to the sub-set of fragile states deemed in this paper as highly fragile.World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER), Working Papers. 01/2008; -
Article: Rationality as a Barrier to Peace: Micro-Evidence from Kosovo
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Despite a significant expansion of the literature on conflicts and fragility of states, only a few systematic attempts have been made to link the theoretical literature on social conflicts to the available micro-level information about the people who are involved in these conflicts. We address this lacuna in the literature using a household-level data set from Kosovo. Our analysis suggests that it is individually rational for competing ethnic communities, Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs, to resist a quick agreement on a social contract to share the region’s resources.04/2007; -
Article: Understanding the development of fundamentalism
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects in which leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable conditions, rivalry among fundamentalists makes them more extreme.Public Choice 01/2007; 132(3):257-271. · 0.91 Impact Factor -
Article: Migrants, Ethnicity and Strategic Assimilation
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers to trade such as information costs, risk, and uncertainty by building trust and by substituting for the difficulty of enforcing contracts internationally. We study networks which emerge from the interaction (i) between migrants and natives in the host country and (ii) between migrants and natives in their home country. The degree of assimilation and the strength of the networks do not “just happen”, but are the outcomes of strategic choices of subsets of the migrant population.01/2007; -
Article: The Hope for Hysteresis in Foreign Aid
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: We argue that a purpose of foreign aid is to whet the appetite of the recipient in order to bring about a long term commitment to what the donor perceives as a need, but which the recipient may rank lower down on his list of undertakings, or may be sufficiently resource constrained as to be unable to start the project. In other words, we explore the implications and conditions for success of a donor trying to affect long-term recipient policy by creating path dependence. Once the project is established, aid can be removed without reversing the process that has been set in motion. Quite simply, the donor wants its project to stick. We place a formal structure on this.01/2007; -
Article: A Note on Decomposing Differences in Poverty Incidence Using Regression Estimates: Algorithm and Example
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This paper decomposes differences in poverty incidence (head count ratio) using estimates from a regression equation, synthesizing the approaches proposed in World Bank (2003) and Yun (2004). A significance test is developed for characteristics and coefficients effects when decomposing differences in poverty incidence. The proposed method is implemented for studying differences in poverty incidence between Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo using Living Standard Measurement Survey.01/2007; -
Article: Wage Growth and Inequality Change During Rapid Economic Transition
[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: East Germany, a unique socialist command economy prior to the 1990s, underwent rapid transition to a market-oriented economic system. This transition has been of intense interest given the environment of Eastern Germany vis-a-vis Western Germany, a setting different from most other transition economies. However, changes in the Eastern wage structure during transition demonstrates considerable similarity to that occurring in other transition economies. During the course of this transition, East Germany experienced big increases in both its wage level and wage dispersion. From 1990 to 2000 real wages in East Germany for men aged 20-60 rose by 118%, while various inequality measures indicate an increase in wage inequality of 25 to 61%. This paper studies the causes of this growth in wages and the changes in wage inequality, the first two moments of the wage distribution. We find that changes in the wage structure due to the transition explains most of wage growth and inequality change in East Germany. Most of the increases occur at the beginning of the transition. We compare our 1990-2000 results for East Germany to West German wage earners during the same period in order to investigate whether convergences took place in terms of mean (level) and dispersion (inequality).01/2007;
Top co-authors
Top Journals
Institutions
-
2000–2009
-
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Brunswick, NJ, USA -
University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL, USA
-
-
2008
-
Brunel University
London, ENG, United Kingdom
-
-
2002–2007
-
Tulane University
- Department of Economics
New Orleans, LA, USA
-
-
2000–2004
-
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
-
-
2001–2002
-
Bar Ilan University
- Department of Economics
Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel
-
-
1994
-
Columbia University
New York City, NY, USA
-
