http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-mig Economics of Human Migration 2012-02-08 Yuji Tamura http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:nepswp:2011_005&r=mig A range of theories have attempted to explain the existing variation in the level of civilian victimization across countries. To date, most of these theories have been focused on the influence of the strategic environment in which these atrocities take place or they have emphasized the organizational difference between the involved actors. Less attention is, however, devoted to the possible spillover effect of these atrocities. This study fills this niche by analyzing the role of refugee flows on the diffusion of atrocities. We do so through statistical analyses of refugee from neighboring countries and the occurrence of atrocities in Africa during the period of 1995-2010, controlling for other possible explanation of atrocities. Our study is the first to systematically examine the effect of refugees on the likelihood of atrocities in refugee-recipient states. We do this by employing a spatial lag model with a temporal component with two different spatial weighting matrices. The preliminary results of the analyses suggest that refugees indeed influence the amount of atrocities and that atrocities are spatially determined. Furthermore, civilian killings is primarily caused by strategic factors such as the number of atrocities and rebel groups in neighboring state and the number of rebel groups and battle deaths in the host country. Gold, Valentin, Haer, Roos 2012-01-23 atrocities; refugees; spatial temporal lag model http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0100&r=mig Employment flexibility is commonly associated to greater labour mobility and thus faster cross-regional adjustments. The literature however offers very little hard evidence on this and quite limited theoretical guidance. This paper examines empirically the relationship between employment flexibility and cross-regional adjustment (migration) at the regional and local levels in the UK. Employment flexibility is associated to higher labour mobility (but only at a rather localised scale) and at the same time seems to reduce the responsiveness of migration to unemployment. This suggest that rising flexibility may be linked to higher persistence in spatial disparities, as intra-regional adjustments are strengthened while extraregional adjustments weakened. Ioannis Kaplanis, Vassilis Monastiriotis 2012-01 Employment flexibility, regional migration, labour market adjustment http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sulcis:2012_001&r=mig This paper studies to what extent immigrants have less access to main- stream credit than their native counterparts. For this purpose I use a large, unique data set with a panel of Swedish pawnshop customers. The data al- low me to investigate to what extent pawnshop customers actively apply for mainstream bank credit and how successful they are by comparing credit ap- plications from immigrants and natives and the corresponding bank decisions. I do not …nd that immigrants have a di¤erent propensity to apply for main- stream bank credit. However, I do …nd that banks have a lower propensity to grant loans to immigrants from African descent compared to their Nordic-born counterparts. Robustness tests based on data from recent immigrants only suggest that the demand for credit varies with the duration of residence while di¤erences in loan-granting rates are enduring. Bos, Marieke 2012-01-24 Consumer credit; lending policy; alternative credit; pawn credit; immigrants http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:201128&r=mig This paper investigates the factors that drive and constrain remittance inflows into SubSaharan Africa (SSA) using annual data for 35 SSA countries from 1980 to 2008, generalised method of moments by Arellano and Bover (1995) and LSDV with Driscoll and Kraay (1998) corrected standard errors. We find that when cross-sectional dependence of the error term and individual effects are controlled for, host country economic conditions override home country income in driving remittances to SSA The quality of financial service delivery and investment opportunities in the home country and exchange rate considerations are also significant to remittance inflows to SSA. This is more consistent with self interest motives for remittance inflows than altruism. However there are country level differences. Francis Kemegue, Emmanuel Owusu-Sekyere, Renee van Eyden 2011-11 Migration, remittances, Sub-Saharan Africa http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea12:119739&r=mig Outmigration and industrial composition have separately been the focal points of a significant amount of research related to nonmetropolitan counties; however, few (if any) studies have explicitly looked at the relationship between the two topics. The primary objective of this research is to identify what industry specialization level is âtooâ specialized with regards to outmigration â that is, to determine the level where specialization begins to have a damaging effect on population change. County-level data from a variety of sources is used to explore the impact of both earnings-based and employment-based definitions of specialization on net migration in nonmetropolitan counties from 2000 â 2009. Two distinct techniques (ordinary least squares and average treatment effects) are then used to assess both the impact and causality of being âtoo specialized.â The results suggest that a variety of specialization thresholds exist across various industries, including some surprising positive influences of industry composition on migration rates. Jackson, Ashley, Whitacre, Brian 2012 Outmigration, Nonmetropolitan, Industrial Specialization, Industrial Diversification, Community/Rural/Urban Development,