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on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Jose M. Berrospide; Lamont K. Black; William R. Keeton |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the mortgage lending of banks operating in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas during the housing market collapse of 2007-2009. Some metro areas in the U.S. suffered much greater mortgage defaults than others. We use this regional variation to identify whether high mortgage delinquencies in some markets affected multi-market banks' mortgage lending in other markets. Our results show that multi-market banks reduced local mortgage lending in response to delinquencies in other markets, consistent with the view that local economic shocks can be transmitted to other regions through banks' internal capital markets. This spillover effect was greatest in peripheral markets where multi-market banks do a small share of their lending. We find that securitized lending may have mitigated the decline in portfolio lending, but the effect on total lending is economically significant. The mechanism of the transmission appears to be through changes in bank capital and new information about the mortgage market. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2013-52&r=ure |
| By: | Christopher F. Goetz |
| Abstract: | This study uses worker-level employment data from the U.S. Census Bureau to test whether falling home prices affect a worker's propensity to take a job in a different metropolitan area from where he is currently located. Using a sample of workers from the American Community Survey, I employ a within-MSA-time estimation that compares homeowners to renters in their propensities to relocate for jobs according to data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics database. This strategy allows me to disentangle the influence of house prices from that of other time-varying, location-specific shocks. Estimates show that homeowners who have experienced declines in the nominal value of their home are approximately 20% less likely to take a new job in a location outside of the metropolitan area that they currently live and work in, relative to an equivalent renter. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that housing lock-in has contributed to the decreased labor mobility of homeowners during the recent housing bust. |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:13-43&r=ure |
| By: | John Geanakoplos (Yale University); William Zame (University of California, Los Angeles) |
| Abstract: | Much of the lending in modern economies is secured by some form of collateral; residential and commercial mortgages and corporate bonds are familiar examples. This paper builds an extension of general equilibrium theory that incorporates durable goods, collateralized securities and the possibility of default to argue that the reliance on collateral to secure loans and the particular collateral requirements chosen by the social planner or by the market have a profound impact on prices, allocations, market structure and the efficiency of market outcomes. These findings provide insights into housing and mortgage markets, including the sub-prime mortgage market. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eie:wpaper:1319&r=ure |
| By: | Nicola Branson (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape Town); Clare Hofmeyr; David Lam (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | The release of the National Income Dynamics Study Wave 2 provides the first nationally representative longitudinal data collected in South Africa. This makes it possible to study transitions in and out of school, across grades and into work in ways not previously possible. We illustrate the high levels of grade repetition evident in South African schools and show how school completion presents a significant hurdle with very few youth successfully completing matric. Exit from school does not offer any advantages as most youth find themselves idle once they have left school. Our regression analysis investigates correlates of school dropout and shows that not keeping pace is a key determinant of school dropout, even after controlling for school quality and socioeconomic status. Those behind but attending higher quality schools are partially protected from dropping out. Some evidence that credit constraints may be related to dropout is found, especially among males. |
| Keywords: | education, dropout, school completion, credit constraints in educational attainment |
| JEL: | I24 I20 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:100&r=ure |
| By: | Charles Ka Yui Leung; Song Shi; Edward Tang |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how commodity price movements have affected local house prices in commodity-dependent economies, Australia and New Zealand. We build a geographically hierarchical empirical model and find that commodity prices influence local house prices directly and also indirectly through macroeconomic variables. While commodity price changes function more like “income shocks” rather than “cost shocks” in both Australia and New Zealand, regional heterogeneity is also observed in terms of differential dynamic responses of local house prices to energy versus non-energy commodity price movements. The results are robust to alternative approaches. Directions for future research are also discussed. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddgw:154&r=ure |
| By: | Działek, Jarosław |
| Abstract: | Since 1989, Poland has been experiencing a revival of local and regional movements rediscovering their traditions. The movements benefited from a reform of the system of local and regional government. The paper introduces a case of one of new administrative unit established at the foot of a southern Polish peak Babia Góra. Regional actors have used the peak’s image in building a regional identity. The paper analyses how this mountain and its various representations are exploited in regional narratives. This importantly includes a use of this newly created identity to rally the regional community around common development objectives. |
| Keywords: | mountain(s), landscape, symbolic place, regional identity, regionalism |
| JEL: | O18 Z1 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49438&r=ure |
| By: | R. Brian Cobb; Stephen Lipscomb; Jennifer Wolgemuth; Theresa Schulte; Abigail Veliquette; Morgen Alwell; Keriu Batchelder; Robert Bernard; Paul Hernandez; Helen Holmquist-Johnson; Rebecca Orsi; Laura Sample McMeeking; Jun Wang; Andrea Welnberg |
| Keywords: | Students with disabilities, secondary transition, post-high school outcomes, evidence review |
| JEL: | I J I |
| Date: | 2013–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:7878&r=ure |
| By: | Sandner, Malte |
| Abstract: | This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first-time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. I analysis the impact of the intervention on maternal employment, school attendance, child care use, fertility, life-satisfaction and well-being. Biannual telephone interviews with the participating mothers until the third birthday of the child give a rich data source to evaluate these outcomes. I find that the intervention increases fertility and maternal life-satisfaction and well-being, whereas the treatment does not affect maternal employment, school attendance and child care use. These results are in contrast to previous studies from the US where home visiting programs decreased fertility. |
| Keywords: | Early Childhood Intervention, Randomized Experiment, Fertility |
| JEL: | J13 J12 I21 H52 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-516&r=ure |
| By: | Crafts, Nicholas (University of Warwick); Wolf, Nikolaus (Humboldt University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market access and sunk costs. We show that some of these characteristics have substantial explanatory power. Moreover, we exploit the change from water to steam power to show that the persistent effect of first nature characteristics on industry location can be explained by a combination of sunk costs and agglomeration effects. |
| Keywords: | agglomeration; cotton textiles; geography; industry location |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:warwcg:147&r=ure |
| By: | d'Albis, Hippolyte; Iliopoulos, Eleni |
| Abstract: | We study a benchmark model with collateral constraints and heterogeneous discounting. Contrarily to a rich literature on borrowing limits, we allow for rental markets. By incorporating this missing market, we show that impatient agents choose to rent rather than to own the collateral in the neighborhood of the deterministic steady state. Consequently, impatient agents are not indebted and borrowing constraints play no role in local dynamics. |
| Keywords: | heterogeneous discounting, collateral constraints, rental market, credit market. |
| JEL: | E30 R31 |
| Date: | 2013–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49529&r=ure |
| By: | Gobillon, Laurent (INED and Paris School of Economics); Magnac, Thierry (TSE) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate the use of interactive effect or linear factor models in regional policy evaluation. We contrast treatment effect estimates obtained by Bai (2009)'s least squares method with the popular difference in difference estimates as well as with estimates obtained using synthetic control approaches as developed by Abadie and coauthors. We show that difference in differences are generically biased and we derive the support conditions that are required for the application of synthetic controls. We construct an extensive set of Monte Carlo experiments to compare the performance of these estimation methods in small samples. As an empirical illustration, we also apply them to the evaluation of the impact on local unemployment of an enterprise zone policy implemented in France in the 1990s. |
| Keywords: | Policy evaluation, Linear factor models, Synthetic controls, Economic geography, Enterprise zones |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:27411&r=ure |
| By: | Zheng Liu; Jianjun Miao; Tao Zha |
| Abstract: | We integrate the housing market and the labor market in a dynamic general equilibrium model with credit and search frictions. The model is confronted with the U.S. macroeconomic time series. Our estimated model can account for two prominent facts observed in the data. First, the land price and the unemployment rate tend to move in opposite directions over the business cycle. Second, a shock that moves the land price is capable of generating large volatility in unemployment. Our estimation indicates that a 10 percent drop in the land price leads to a 0.34 percentage point increase of the unemployment rate (relative to its steady state). |
| Keywords: | Housing ; Labor market |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2013-22&r=ure |
| By: | Brian K. Bucks; Jesse Bricker |
| Abstract: | This paper uses data from the 2007-09 Survey of Consumer Finances panel to examine U.S. households' decisions to move and the role of negative home equity and economic shocks, such as job loss, in these decisions. Even over this period of steep house price declines and sharp recession, we find that most moves were prompted by standard reasons. The recession's effects are nonetheless apparent in the notable fraction of homeowners who moved involuntarily due to, for example, foreclosure. Many involuntary moves appear to stem a combination of negative home equity and adverse economic shocks rather than negative equity alone. Homeowners with both negative equity and economic shocks were substantially more likely to have moved between 2007 and 2009 and to have moved involuntarily. The findings suggest that, analogous to the double-trigger theory of default, the relationship between negative equity and household mobility varies with households' exposure to adverse shocks. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2013-53&r=ure |
| By: | Lechner, Michael; Wunsch, Conny; Scioch, Patrycja |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the link between variation in the supply of workers who participate in specific types of active labour market policies (ALMPs) and firm performance using a new exceptionally informative German employer-employee data base. For identification we exploit that German local employment agencies (LEAs) have a high degree of autonomy in determining their own mix of ALMPs and that firms' hiring regions overlap only imperfectly with the areas of responsibility of the LEAs. Our results indicate that in general firms do not benefit from ALMPs and in some cases may even be harmed by certain programs, in particular by sub¬sidized employment and longer training programs. These findings complement the negative assessment of the cost-effectiveness of ALMPs from the empirical literature on the effects for participants. |
| Keywords: | Subsidized employment programs, training programs, regional variation, program evaluation |
| JEL: | J68 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usg:econwp:2013:18&r=ure |
| By: | Florian Szücs |
| Abstract: | We study the degree of agglomeration of acquisition activity within clusters of temporal, geographic and industrial proximity based on almost 600,000 individual transactions. The findings indicate that significant clustering occurs in time and across industries, while the results on geographic clustering are mixed. This supports the view that merger waves are mostly driven by neoclassical motives. |
| Keywords: | Merger wave, clustering, acquisitions, neoclassical, behavioral |
| JEL: | L2 G3 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1322&r=ure |
| By: | Luigi Guiso (EIEF and CEPR); Paola Sapienza (Northwestern University, NBER and CEPR); Luigi Zingales (University of Chicago, NBER and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | We study whether culture has an independent role in creating persistence of institutional shocks by testing whether today’s notable differences in civic capital between the North and the South of Italy are the legacy of the medieval free city-state experience of the Middle Ages. We show that cities that experienced self-government in the Middle Ages have more civic capital today. This effect is observable even within the North and persists even accounting for the fact that cities did not become independent randomly. We conjecture that this effect persisted over time through the intergenerational transmission of attributional styles (i.e., the way people explain the events they experience to themselves). Consistently, we find that fifth-graders in former city-states exhibit a less pessimistic attributional style, which itself is correlated with a higher level of civic capital. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eie:wpaper:1323&r=ure |
| By: | Jack R. Rogers (Department of Economics, University of Exeter) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the transmission from UK policy and a range of wholesale money market rates to retail mortgage rates using the long-run estimator proposed by Phillips and Loretan (1991), with a single-equation error correction model (SEECM) framework, from 1995 to 2009. I document the economy-wide effect of the financial market turmoil since August 2007, and show how this has altered long- and short-term relationships. In the long-run there is evidence of a contrast between the discounted mortgage rates that banks may use to initially attract customers, and standard variable rates, with pass-through complete for the former but not for the latter. For fixed rate mortgages, pass-through is generally complete. Since the crisis, for eight of the seventeen estimated relationships I find strong evidence in the long-run of both a significant jump in equilibrium spreads, and a fall in pass-through, whilst in the short-run there is a considerable weakening of the process that re-adjusts retail rates back towards their equilibrium with the money market. Although I do not find strong statistical evidence for an asymmetric re-adjustment process before August 2007, retail mortgage rates generally take considerably longer to move back towards their equilibrium with wholesale rates during times when they are relatively expensive. These results add to previous studies by showing that the UK retail banking sector is imperfectly competitive at the aggregate level, and also suggest that discounted rates are used as a highly competitive loss-leader product. |
| Keywords: | Mortgage Rates, Monetary Transmission, Error Correction Model. |
| JEL: | E43 E52 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:1307&r=ure |
| By: | Masha Maslianskaia-Pautrel (TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - CNRS : FR3435 - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEMLV), LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique - Université de Nantes : EA4272, GAINS - Groupe d'Analyse des Itinéraires et des Niveaux Salariaux - Université du Maine) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to study how the hedonic equilibrium is modified when group-wise consumer heterogeneity with horizontal differentiated housing supply is assumed. We complete the hedonic segmentation analysis of Baudry and Maslianska¨ıa-Pautrel (2011a,b) for vertical differentiation of housing supply by investigating the more realistic case of horizontal differentiation. Our results confirm the segmentation of the hedonic price function at equilibrium and the discontinuity of the implicit price of environmental quality on the borders of the segments. We also demonstrate that horizontal differentiation can lead to a partial sorting of consumer demand for housing attributes at hedonic equilibrium. Finally we show that according to model specification, the group-wise heterogeneity with horizontal differentiation can lead to modification of welfare assessment related to changes in environmental quality. |
| Keywords: | Hedonic model; Group-wise consumers' heterogeneity; Horizontal differentiation |
| Date: | 2013–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00856127&r=ure |
| By: | H. Lehmann; M. G. Silvagni |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes convergence in per capita gross regional product of Russia’s regions during the period 1995-2010, when regional data are available. Using a panel regression framework we find no evidence for beta-convergence. Instead we find divergence, which is, however, attenuated over time. Robustness checks that use regional real income instead of gross regional product confirm this outcome as do non-parametric estimates of convergence, namely estimates using Markov transition probability matrices and stochastic kernel plots of regional relative income. Decompositions of regional income and gross regional product also find no sigma-convergence of Russian regions. These decompositions point to the geographical concentration of extractive activities in the Urals and of business services and of the public administration in the Moscow area as the main culprit for this lack of convergence. They also establish that despite reforms to equalize provisions of public goods across Russia, the social services sector of the public administration, education and health still do not have the expected equalizing impact on regional income. |
| JEL: | O47 P25 R11 R12 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp901&r=ure |
| By: | Botero Degiovanni, Hernan |
| Abstract: | In this paper paper, I use Mejia and Restrepo's(2011d} strategy to disentangle the causal relationship between drug enforcement and violence. To test this relationship, I use information on Colombian municipalities during the period 1999-2010. Due to technological reasons related to the quality of terrain, climate, and locational characteristics of the Colombian territory, cocaine production is more productive at low altitudes. Using the altitude of each municipality and distance from capital cities as sources of exogenous variation, I estimate the effect of drug enforcement on violence in Colombia. To control for a possible omitted-variable bias in the estimations, I run a Panel Data Spatial Durbin Model (SDM). Additionally, I construct a set of indices with comparable units of measure which allows me to determine which percentage of the Colombian violence data is explained by drug enforcement. The results indicate that the Colombian government's enforcement activities increased in 0.98% the homicide rate and in 1.24% the displacement rate and the war among drug dealers increased in 4.00% the homicide rate and 0.16% the displacement rate in the period 1999-2010. |
| Keywords: | War, Criminal Law, Enforcement, Drugs |
| JEL: | H56 K14 K42 L65 |
| Date: | 2013–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49459&r=ure |
| By: | Mario V.Tomasello (ETH Zurich,Switzerland); Mauro Napoletano (Ofce sciences-po, Skema,Business School Campus Sophia Antipolis France); Antonio Garas (:ETH Zurich,Switzerland); Franck Schweitzer (ETH Zurich,Switzerland) |
| Abstract: | Drawing on a large database of publicly announced RD alliances.we track the evolution of RD networks in a large number of economic sectors over a long time period 1986 2009.Our main goal is to evaluate temporal and sectoral robustness of the main statistical properties of empirical RD networks. By studying a large set of indicators, we provide a more complete description of these networks with respect to the existing literature. We find that most network properties are invariant across sectors. In addition, they do not change when alliances are considered independently of the sectors to which partners belong. Moreover, we find that many properties of RD networks are characterized by a rise-andfall dynamics with a peak in the mid-nineties. Finally, we show that such properties of empirical RD networks support predictions of the recent theoretical literature on RD network formation. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fce:doctra:1315&r=ure |
| By: | D. Bakas; T. Panagiotidis; G. Pelloni |
| Abstract: | This paper re-examines Lilien’s sectoral shifts hypothesis for U.S. unemployment. We employ a monthly panel that spans from 1990:01 to 2011:12 for 48 U.S. states. Panel unit root tests that allow for crosssectional dependence reveal the stationarity of unemployment. Within a framework that takes into account dynamics, parameter heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence in the panel, we show that sectoral reallocation is significant not only at the aggregate level but also at the state level. The magnitude and the statistical significance of the latter as measured by Lilien’s index increases when both heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence are taken into account. |
| JEL: | C33 E24 E32 J21 R23 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp902&r=ure |
| By: | Bas ter Weel; Lex Borghans; Bruce A. Weinberg |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupational choice and wages. 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 underrepresented groups assuming gender differences in interactions and that cultural differences (including prejudice) may impede cross-racial and ethnic interactions. Our estimates for Britain, Germany and the United States are consistent with such an explanation. Acceleration in the rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s in the US can help explain why the gender-wage gap closed and the black-white wage gap stagnated in these years relative to the preceding and following years. |
| JEL: | J16 J21 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:253&r=ure |
| By: | Lucia Foster; Cheryl Grim; John Haltiwanger |
| Abstract: | The high pace of output and input reallocation across producers is pervasive in the U.S. economy. Evidence shows this high pace of reallocation is closely linked to productivity. Resources are shifted away from low productivity producers towards high productivity producers. While these patterns hold on average, the extent to which the reallocation dynamics in recessions are “cleansing” is an open question. That is, are recessions periods of increased reallocation that move resources away from lower productivity activities towards higher productivity uses? It could be recessions are times when the opportunity cost of time and resources are low implying recessions will be times of accelerated productivity enhancing reallocation. Prior research suggests the recession in the early 1980s is consistent with an accelerated pace of productivity enhancing reallocation. Alternative hypotheses highlight the potential distortions to reallocation dynamics in recessions. Such distortions might arise from many factors including, for example, distortions to credit markets. We find that in post-1980 recessions prior to the Great Recession, downturns are periods of accelerated reallocation that is even more productivity enhancing than in normal times. In the Great Recession, we find the intensity of reallocation fell rather than rose (due to the especially sharp decline in job creation) and the reallocation that did occur was less productivity enhancing than in prior recessions. |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:13-42&r=ure |
| By: | Ernesto Reuben; Matthew Wiswall; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | Standard observed characteristics explain only part of the differences between men and women in education choices and labor market trajectories. Using an experiment to derive students' levels of overconfidence, and preferences for competitiveness and risk, this paper investigates whether these behavioral biases and preferences explain gender differences in college major choices and expected future earnings. In a sample of high-ability undergraduates, we find that competitiveness and overconfidence, but not risk aversion, are systematically related with expectations about future earnings: Individuals who are overconfident and overly competitive have significantly higher earnings expectations. Moreover, gender differences in overconfidence and competitiveness explain about 18 percent of the gender gap in earnings expectations. These experimental measures explain as much of the gender gap in earnings expectations as a rich set of control variables, including test scores and family background, and they are poorly proxied by these same control variables, underscoring that they represent independent variation. While expected earnings are related to college major choices, the experimental measures are not related with college major choice. |
| Keywords: | Career development - Sex differences ; Women - Education ; Universities and colleges ; Risk-taking (Psychology) ; Prediction (Psychology) ; Competition |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:627&r=ure |
| By: | Laura Jaitman; Stephen Machin |
| Abstract: | We study a high profile public policy question on immigration, namely the link between crime and immigration, presenting new evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s. For studying immigration impacts, this period is of considerable interest as the composition of migration altered dramatically with the accession of Eastern European countries (the A8) to the European Union in 2004. As we show, this has important implications for ensuring a causal impact of immigration can be identified. When we are able to implement a credible research design with statistical power, we find no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on criminal behavior, nor do we when we consider A8 and non-A8 immigration separately. We also study London by itself as the immigration changes in the capital city were very dramatic. Again, we find no causal impact of immigration on crime from our spatial econometric analysis and also present evidence from unique data on arrests of natives and immigrants which shows no immigrant differences in the likelihood of being arrested. |
| Keywords: | Crime, Immigration, Enclaves, A8. |
| JEL: | F22 K42 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1238&r=ure |
| By: | Bettina Becker (School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK) |
| Abstract: | This paper offers an extensive survey and a critical discussion of the empirical literature on the driving factors of R&D. These factors are subsumed under five broad types. The paper first summarises the key predictions from theory regarding each type's R&D effect. It then examines for which factors differences in the theoretical predictions can also be found in empirical studies, and for which factors the empirical evidence is more unanimous. As the focus is on the empirical literature, methodological issues are also highlighted. The major factor types identified in the literature are, individual firm or industry characteristics, particularly internal finance and sales; competition in product markets; R&D tax credits and subsidies; location and resource related factors, such as spillovers from university research within close geographic proximity, membership of a research joint venture and cooperation with research centres, and the human capital embodied in knowledge workers; and spillovers from foreign R&D. Although on balance there is a consensus regarding the R&D effects of most factors, there is also variation in results. Recent work suggests that accounting for nonlinearities is one area of research that may explain and encompass contradictory findings. |
| Keywords: | R&D; R&D policy; innovation policy; financial constraints; competition; public funding; knowledge spillovers. |
| JEL: | G20 G28 M15 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lbo:lbowps:2013_09&r=ure |
| By: | Cally Ardington (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape TownAuthor-Email:); Till Bärnighausen (Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies and Harvard School of Public Health); Anne Case (Princeton University); Alicia Menendez (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | An Apartheid-driven spatial mismatch between workers and jobs leads to high job search costs for people living in rural areas of South Africa—costs that many young people cannot pay. In this paper, we examine whether the arrival of a social grant – specifically a generous state old age pension given to men and women above prime age – enhances the ability of young men in rural areas to seek better work opportunities elsewhere. Using 8 waves of socioeconomic data on household living arrangements and members' characteristics and employment status, collected between 2001 and 2011 at a demographic surveillance site in KwaZulu-Natal, we find that young men are significantly more likely to become labor migrants when someone in their household becomes age-eligible for the old-age pension. More specifically, we find that pension gain is a significant force, encouraging migration for work, but only among those who have successfully completed high school (matric). On average, relative to other potential labor migrants, young men with a matric are 8 percentage points more likely to migrate for work when their households become pension eligible. Among young men who were observed as labor migrants, we find that, upon pension loss, it is the youngest men who are the most likely to return to their sending households, perhaps because they are the least likely to be self-sufficient at the point the pension is lost. We present evidence consistent with binding credit constraints limiting young men from poorer households from seeking more lucrative work elsewhere. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:96&r=ure |
| By: | Li, Jun |
| Abstract: | Rapid urbanization, and particularly the associated problems of urban poverty, unsustainable development and environmental degradation, pose an enormous challenge to many developing countries. In the last decade more foreign aid has been diverted to urban |
| Keywords: | developing countries, sustainability, aid effectiveness, scalable, transferable, framework |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2013-051&r=ure |