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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2008‒05‒17
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes; Sara de la Rica |
| Abstract: | How immigration affects the labor market of the host country is a topic of major concern for many immigrant-receiving nations. Spain is no exception following the rapid increase in immigrant flows experienced over the past decade. We assess the impact of immigration on Spanish natives’ income by estimating the net immigration surplus accruing at the national level and at high immigrant-receiving regions while taking into account the imperfect substitutability of immigrant and native labor. Specifically, using information on the occupational densities of immigrants and natives of different skill levels, we develop a mapping of immigrant-to-native self-reported skills that reveals the combination of natives across skills that would be equivalent to an immigrant of a given self-reported skill level, which we use to account for any differences between immigrant self-reported skill levels and their effective skills according to the Spanish labor market. We find that the immigrant surplus amounts to 0.04 percent of GDP at the national level and it is even higher for some of the main immigrant-receiving regions, such as Cataluña, Valencia, Madrid, and Murcia. |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2008-17&r=ltv |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower |
| Abstract: | n this paper I examine changes in self-employment that have occurred since the early 1980s in the United States. It is a companion paper to a recent equivalent paper that related to the UK. Data on random samples of approximately twenty million US workers are examined taken from the Basic Monthly files of the CPS (BMCPS), the 2000 Census and the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS). In contrast to the official definition of self-employment which simply counts the numbers of unincorporated self-employed, we also include the incorporated self-employed who are paid wages and salaries. The paper presents evidence on trends in self-employment for the US by race, ethnicity and gender. Evidence is also presented for construction which has self-employment rates roughly double the national rates and where there are strikingly high racial and gender disparities in self-employment rates. The construction sector is also important given the existence of public sector affirmative action programs at the federal, state and local levels directed at firms owned by women and minorities. I document the fact that disparities between the self-employment rates of white men and white women and minorities in construction narrowed in the 1980s, widened during the 1990s after the US Supreme Court's decision in Croson but then narrowed again since 2000 after a number of legal cases, which found such programs constitutional. Despite this substantial disparities remain, particularly in earnings. I also find evidence of discrimination in the small business credit market. Firms owned by minorities in general and blacks in particular are much more likely to have their loans denied and pay higher interest than is the case for white males. This is only partially explained by their lack of creditworthiness and is consistent with a finding of discrimination in the credit market by banks. |
| JEL: | J71 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13972&r=ltv |
| By: | Damien Echevin (GREDI, Département d'économique, Université de Sherbrooke) |
| Abstract: | The intermediation |
| Keywords: | Intermediation approach, efficiency, Malmquist index |
| JEL: | G21 D24 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shr:wpaper:08-02&r=ltv |