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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2010‒11‒27
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Peter Boenisch; Lutz Schneider |
| Abstract: | Despite poor regional labour market conditions East Germans exhibit a rather limited willing-ness of leaving their home region. Applying an IV ordered probit approach and using the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP), we test a local network explanation of lower spatial mobility. Firstly, we find that membership in locally bounded social networks reduces regional mobility. Secondly, we show that native East Germans are more invested in this type of social networks than West Germans. Thirdly, after controlling for the social network effect the mobility gap between East and West substantially reduces. Thus, low regional labour mobility of East Germans is for a significant part attributable to local ties binding people to their home region. |
| Keywords: | Social networks, labour mobility |
| JEL: | Z13 R23 J61 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp334&r=ltv |
| By: | Deepti Goel (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India); Kevin Lang (Boston University and NBER, IZA) |
| Abstract: | We show that increasing the probability of obtaining a job offer through the network should raise the observed mean wage in jobs found through formal (non-network) channels relative to that in jobs found through the network. This prediction also holds at all percentiles of the observed wage distribution, except the highest and lowest. The largest changes are likely to occur below the median. We test and conrm these implications using a survey of recent immigrants to Canada. We also develop a simple structural model, consistent with the theoretical model, and show that it can replicate the broad patterns in the data. For recent immigrants, our results are consistent with the primary effect of strong networks being to increase the arrival rate of offers rather than to alter the distribution from which offers are drawn. |
| Date: | 2010–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:189&r=ltv |
| By: | Fehrler, Sebastian (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | Being perceived as trustworthy comes with substantial economic benefits in many situations. Making other people think you are a trustworthy person may, therefore, be an important motive for charity and other forms of prosocial behavior, provided these activities work as signals of trustworthiness. This paper shows that donating money to an NGO substantially raises the other players' beliefs about the donors’ trustworthiness in a simple trust game. Consequently, donors receive higher transfers. The magnitude of these benefits is substantial. |
| Keywords: | charity, signaling, trust, trustworthiness |
| JEL: | C72 C92 H41 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5299&r=ltv |
| By: | Reuben, Ernesto (Columbia University); Rey-Biel, Pedro (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona); Sapienza, Paola (Northwestern University); Zingales, Luigi (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | We present evidence from an experiment in which groups select a leader to compete against the leaders of other groups in a real-effort task that they have all performed in the past. We find that women are selected much less often as leaders than is suggested by their individual past performance. We study three potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women, namely, gender differences in overconfidence concerning past performance, in the willingness to exaggerate past performance to the group, and in the reaction to monetary incentives. We find that men’s overconfidence is the driving force behind the observed prevalence of male representation. |
| Keywords: | discrimination, gender gap, glass ceiling, overconfidence, leadership |
| JEL: | J71 C92 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5300&r=ltv |
| By: | William Easterly |
| Abstract: | Structural adjustment, as measured by the number of adjustment loans from the IMF and World Bank, reduces the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Growth does reduce poverty, but the author find no evidence for a direct effect of structural adjustment on growth. Instead, the poor benefit less from output expansion in countries with many adjustment loans than in countries with few adjustment loans. By the same token, the poor suffer less from an output contraction in countries with many adjustment loans than in countries with few adjustment loans. [Discussion Paper No. 2001/102] |
| Keywords: | poverty, structural adjustment, economic growth, income distribution |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:3193&r=ltv |
| By: | Eddy van Doorslaer; Owen O’ Donnell |
| Abstract: | This paper describes approaches to the measurement and explanation of income-related inequality and inequity in health care financing, health care utilization and health and considers the applicability and the feasibility of these methods in low-income countries. Results from a comparative study of 14 Asian countries are used to illustrate the main issues. [Discussion Paper No. 2008/04] |
| Keywords: | health inequality, equity, Asian, applicablity, feasibility |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:3177&r=ltv |