nep-ure New Economics Papers
on Urban and Real Estate Economics
Issue of 2018‒11‒19
forty-six papers chosen by
Steve Ross
University of Connecticut

  1. The propagation of regional shocks in housing markets: Evidence from oil price shocks in Canada By Kilian, Lutz; Zhou, Xiaoqing
  2. Location Choices of Swedish Independent Schools: How Does Allowing for Private Provision Affect the Geography of the Education Market? By Edmark, Karin
  3. Optimal Spatial Taxation: Are Big Cities too Small? By Jan Eeckhout; Nezih Guner
  4. Grading on a Curve: When Having Good Peers is not Good By Caterina Calsamiglia; Annalisa Loviglio
  5. Property Tax and Land Use: Evidence from the 1990s reforms in Japan By MIYAZAKI Tomomi; SATO Motohiro
  6. Urban Toll: Rethinking Acceptability Through Accessibility By Yves Crozet; Aurélie Mercier
  7. Does Municipal Development Policy Affect Property Values: A Quasi-Experimental Hedonic Model Approach in Alberta, Canada By Cao, Y.; Swallow, B.; Qiu, F.
  8. Homeownership and Residential Mobility during the "Lost Decades" By Jun Nagayasu
  9. Research note: The distributional impact of local social benefits in Croatia By Pezer, Martina; Bezeredi, Slavko; Leventi, Chrysa
  10. Friendship and Female Education: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Bangladeshi Primary Schools By Hahn, Youjin; Islam, Asadul; Patacchini, Eleonora; Zenou, Yves
  11. Strategic Planning for Integrated Mobility-on-Demand and Urban Public Bus Networks By Konrad Steiner; Stefan Irnich
  12. Assessing the direct and indirect impacts of breeding activities on residential values: a spatial hedonic approach in Brittany By Dupraz, P.; Osseni, A.; Bareille, F.
  13. Inequality of Opportunity in Education: Accounting for the Contributions of Sibs, Schools and Sorting across East Africa By Anand, Paul; Behrman, Jere R.; Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Jones, Sam
  14. Rural-Rural Migration, Land and Labor Markets in Zambia By Chamberlin, J.; Sitko, N.; Jayne, T.
  15. Mobility and congestion in urban India By Akbar, Prottoy A.; Couture, Victor; Duranton, Gilles; Storeygard, Adam
  16. Reforming Private and Public Urban Transport Pricing By Stef Proost
  17. Social Norms in Networks By Ushchev, Philip; Zenou, Yves
  18. New Mortgage Lending Activity in a Comparative Context By Keenan, Enda; O'Brien, Martin
  19. Test Scores, Schools, and the Geography of Economic Opportunity By Mookerjee, Sulagna; Slichter, David
  20. Arrival of Young Talents: The Send-down Movement and Rural Education in China By Chen, Yi; Fan, Ziying; Gu, Xiaomin; Zhou, Li-An
  21. Long-Lasting Social Capital and its Impact on Economic Development: The Legacy of the Commons By Daniel Montolio; Ana Tur-Prats
  22. Time-Use and Academic Peer Effects in College By Nirav Mehta; Todd Stinebrickner; Ralph Stinebrickner
  23. The Effects of Grade Retention on Human Capital Accumulation By Solis, Alex
  24. Entrepreneurship and ageing: Exploring an economic geography perspective By Heike Mayer, Birgit Leick
  25. How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field By Bastek, Christian; Klaus, Bettina; Kübler, Dorothea
  26. Social networks and tax avoidance: Evidence from a well-defined Norwegian tax shelter By Alstadsaeter, Annette; Kopczuk, Wojciech; Telle, Kjetil
  27. Relocation of the Rich: Migration in Response to Top Tax Rate Changes from Spanish Reforms By David R. Agrawal; Dirk Foremny
  28. Childcare - A safety net for children? By Aalto, Aino-Maija; Mörk, Eva; Sjögren, Anna; Svaleryd, Helena
  29. Global Connectedness and Local Innovation in Industrial Clusters By Ekaterina Turkina; Ari Van Assche
  30. Barriers to Entry and Regional Economic Growth in China By Loren Brandt; Gueorgui Kambourov; Kjetil Storesletten
  31. Matching in Cities By Wolfgang Dauth; Sebastian Findeisen; Enrico Moretti; Jens Suedekum
  32. Immigrants, labor market dynamics and adjustment to shocks in the Euro Area By Gaetano Basso; Francesco D'Amuri; Giovanni Peri
  33. Forecasting house prices in Italy By Simone Emiliozzi; Elisa Guglielminetti; Michele Loberto
  34. Family Unification, Siblings, and Skills By Duleep, Harriet Orcutt; Regets, Mark
  35. Quality of Politicians and Electoral System. Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design for Italian Cities By De Benedetto, Marco Alberto
  36. Robots and reshoring: Evidence from Mexican local labor markets By Faber, Marius
  37. Oligarchic place leadership and resistance to change in industrial districts By Marco Bellandi; Monica Plechero; Erica Santini
  38. Expenditure Visibility and Consumer Behavior: New Evidence By Ori Heffetz
  39. Assessing the Net Overall Distributive Effect of a Congestion Charge By Jillian Anable; Phil Goodwin
  40. Incentives for Information Provision: Energy Efficiency in the Spanish Rental Market By Bian, Xueying; Fabra, Natalia
  41. Dynamic Causal Effects of Post-Migration Schooling on Labour Market Transitions By Marie Albertine Djuikom; Guy Lacroix
  42. The impact of air transport availability on research collaboration: A case study of four universities By Adam Ploszaj; Xiaoran Yan; Katy Borner
  43. Improving Transparency of Indirect Private Real Estate By van der Spek, Maarten
  44. Low achievers, teaching practices and learning environment By Artur Pokropek; Patricia Costa; Sara Flisi; Federico Biagi
  45. Role of land access in youth migration and youth employment decisions: Empirical evidence from rural Nigeria By Ghebru, Hosaena; Amare, Mulubrhan; Mavrotas, George; Ogunniyi, Adebayo
  46. Remoteness, Urbanization and Child Nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa By Stifel, D.; Headey, D.; You, L.; Guo, Z.

  1. By: Kilian, Lutz; Zhou, Xiaoqing
    Abstract: Shocks to the demand for housing that originate in one region may seem important only for that regional housing market. We provide evidence that such shocks can also affect housing markets in other regions. Our analysis focuses on the response of Canadian housing markets to oil price shocks. Oil price shocks constitute an important source of exogenous regional variation in income in Canada because oil production is highly geographically concentrated. We document that, at the national level, real oil price shocks account for 11% of the variability in real house price growth over time. At the regional level, we find that unexpected increases in the real price of oil raise housing demand and real house prices not only in oil-producing regions, but also in other regions. We develop a theoretical model of the propagation of real oil price shocks across regions that helps understand this finding. The model differentiates between oil-producing and non-oil-producing regions and incorporates multiple sectors, trade between provinces, government redistribution, and consumer spending on fuel. We empirically confirm the model prediction that oil price shocks are propagated to housing markets in non-oil-producing regions by the government redistribution of oil revenue and by increased interprovincial trade.
    Keywords: house price,regional heterogeneity,oil price,redistribution,resource boom,regional propagation,Canada
    JEL: F43 Q33 Q43 R12 R31
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cfswop:606&r=ure
  2. By: Edmark, Karin (Swedish Institute for Social Research)
    Abstract: This paper studies the location decisions of Swedish start-up independent schools. It makes use of the great expansion of independent schools following a reform implemented in 1992 to test what local market characteristics are correlated with independent school entry. The results suggest that independent schools are more likely to choose locations with a higher share of students with high-educated parents; a higher student population density; and a lower share of students with Swedish-born parents. There is also some evidence that independent schools are less likely to locate in municipalities with a left-wing political majority. These results are robust to various alternative and flexible definitions of local school markets, which were employed in order to alleviate the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem. For some of the included variables, the definition of the local market however had a large impact on the results, suggesting that the issue of how to define regions in spatial analyses can be important.
    Keywords: Private provision; Mixed markets; Education sector; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem
    JEL: H44 I28 L19 R32
    Date: 2018–11–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1244&r=ure
  3. By: Jan Eeckhout (UCL and Barcelona GSE-UPF-ICREA); Nezih Guner (CEMFI, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros)
    Abstract: We analyze the role of optimal income taxation across different local labor markets. Should labor in large cities be taxed differently than in small cities? We find that a planner who needs to raise a given level of revenue and is constrained by free mobility of labor across cities does not choose equal taxes for cities of different sizes. The optimal tax schedule is location specific and tax differences between large and small cities depends on the level of government spending, the concentration of housing wealth and the strength of agglomeration economies. Our estimates for the US imply higher optimal marginal rates in big cities than in small cities. Under the current Federal Income tax code with progressive taxes, marginal rates are already higher in big cities which have higher wages, but the optimal difference we estimate is lower than what is currently observed. Simulating the US economy under the optimal tax schedule, there are large effects on population mobility: the fraction of population in the 5 largest cities grows by 7.6% with 3.4% of the country-wide population moving to bigger cities. The welfare gains however are smaller. This is due to the fact that much of the output gains are spent on the increased costs of housing construction in bigger cities. Aggregate goods consumption goes up by 1.51% while aggregate housing consumption goes down by 1.70%.
    Keywords: Misallocation, taxation, population mobility, city size, general equilibrium.
    JEL: H21 J61 R12 R13
    Date: 2017–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2018_1705&r=ure
  4. By: Caterina Calsamiglia (CEMFI and Barcelona GSE); Annalisa Loviglio (UAB and Barcelona GSE)
    Abstract: Student access to education levels, tracks or majors is usually determined by their previous performance, measured either by internal exams, designed and graded by teachers in school, or external exams, designed and graded by central authorities. We say teachers grade on a curve whenever having better peers harms the evaluation obtained by a given student. We use rich administrative records from public schools in Catalonia to provide evidence that teachers indeed grade on a curve, leading to negative peer effects. We find suggestive evidence that school choice is impacted only the year when internal grades matter for future prospects.
    Keywords: Grading on a curve, negative peer effects, school choice.
    JEL: I21 I28 H75
    Date: 2017–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2018_1704&r=ure
  5. By: MIYAZAKI Tomomi; SATO Motohiro
    Abstract: This paper examines the effects of property tax reforms at the beginning of the 1990s in Japan through theoretical and empirical investigation. Preferential treatment of farmland in the center of cities and inner suburbs is not favorable because it may hinder changing such land into residential areas and henceforth deter urbanization. We utilize a natural experiment provided by the aforementioned reforms. The results reveal that the proportion of farmland that might have impeded urbanization decreased after the reforms in major cities within metropolitan areas. However, landlords did not necessarily replace all of the land with housing lots, suggesting that the government should have conducted the reforms in a way to promote more conversion.
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:18072&r=ure
  6. By: Yves Crozet (University of Lyon); Aurélie Mercier (University of Lyon)
    Abstract: This paper highlights the necessity of a spatial approach to addressing the acceptability problem of road tolls in cities. Few cities have implemented urban congestion charges because of limited public acceptance and perceived distributive impacts. The report focuses on the space consumption of car traffic as opposed to on time losses from road congestion. It shows that by focusing on accessibility, user groups who would be most adversely affected by tolls can be identified and the effectiveness of mitigation measures tested.
    Date: 2018–10–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:itfaab:2018/16-en&r=ure
  7. By: Cao, Y.; Swallow, B.; Qiu, F.
    Abstract: Rapid economic and demographic growth is changing the nature of Alberta s urban and rural landscapes. This has had profound effects on land use, particularly in areas near to Edmonton and Calgary where there is great concern about urban sprawl into surrounding farmlands. In 2012, town of Okotoks shifted from a finite growth policy to a continuous growth policy, thus eliminating a key policy constraint on urban development. This policy history makes Okotoks a natural experiment of land use policy. We selected Okotoks to reveal people s willingness to pay for open spaces, and most importantly, the causal effects of the municipal development policy on property values. Our study is based on a hedonic price approach with a spatial lag model as well as a spatial two-stage least squares. Under residential property transactions from 2010 to 2017 in Okotoks and surrounding area, we chose properties with developable lands in a 200-meter buffer as a treatment group, and those without developable lands as a control group, to incorporate Difference-in-Difference into the estimations. Results showed that people value pastures and forests within the 200-meter buffer, but disvalue the municipal policy of continuous growth. Individuals are willing to pay to avoid that policy. Acknowledgement : This research has been sponsored by the Alberta Land Institute and funded by the Max Bell Foundation, Calgary Regional Partnership, Alberta Land Institute, and Capital Region Board. Brookfield Real Property Solutions generously provided the housing transaction data used in this analysis.
    Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:277044&r=ure
  8. By: Jun Nagayasu
    Abstract: Using household survey data from the recent economically depressed period, we attempt to identify typical household characteristics by residential type and study whether households change their residence in different stages of life. We find that the general trend in residential choice is influenced by their socioeconomic backgrounds. Multinomial probit estimation results show that the probability of homeownership is higher in rural areas and increases with the age of household heads, income, and family size. In contrast, the probability of renting a home increases in urban areas along with rising mortgage rates. Moreover, despite market imperfection, there is a significant tendency among people to adjust residential size according to their needs in different stages of life. Indeed, there is a strong tendency for dwelling size to increase with household age, but it begins to reduce once households reach the age of 55. However, because of the small scale of this reduction in the late life-cycle, we conclude that post-war housing policies were not very supportive of the elderly.
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:toh:dssraa:89&r=ure
  9. By: Pezer, Martina; Bezeredi, Slavko; Leventi, Chrysa
    Abstract: The aim of this research note is to analyse the distributional impact of five types of local social benefits (compensation for housing costs, old-age income supplement, grant for a newborn child, kindergarten subsidy and city transport subsidy) in the four major Croatian cities – Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek – which is a first analysis of this kind for Croatia. Using miCROmod – the Croatian tax-benefit microsimulation model, a comparative analysis of benefits and their generosity has been conducted; their income redistribution and poverty reduction effects have also been investigated. Results reveal that, in all local benefit systems considered, the most significant resources are devoted to the city transport subsidy and the kindergarten subsidy. If we compare the per capita values, the most generous benefits are found in Zagreb, followed by Rijeka, Osijek and Split. Also, social protection benefits of Zagreb and Rijeka are the most redistributive, achieving the highest poverty headcount reduction.Â
    Date: 2018–10–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:emodwp:em17-18&r=ure
  10. By: Hahn, Youjin; Islam, Asadul; Patacchini, Eleonora; Zenou, Yves
    Abstract: We randomly assigned 150 primary schools in Bangladesh to one of three settings: children studying individually, children studying in groups with friends, and children studying in groups with peers. The groups consisted of four people with similar average cognitive abilities and household characteristics. While the achievement of male students was not affected by the group assignment, low-ability females in groups with friends outperformed low-ability females working with peers by roughly 0.4 standard deviations of the test score distribution. This is shown not to be due to the fact that friends tend to be of the same gender or to a higher frequency of interactions among friends.
    Keywords: education; Gender; learning; Social interactions
    JEL: I25 J16 O12
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13221&r=ure
  11. By: Konrad Steiner (Johannes Gutenberg-University); Stefan Irnich (Johannes Gutenberg-University)
    Abstract: Traditional planning for urban transportation usually assumes a given or calculated split between motorized individual transport and public transportation. However, app-based services and ridesharing in the field of mobility on demand (MoD) induce an intermediate mode of transport, whose long-term role in the urban mobility landscape and within public transport systems is not fully understood as of today. If the public transport industry wants to capture the opportunities these new services offer and mitigate the risks that come with them, planning tools for integrated intermodal networks are indispensable. In this work, we develop a strategic network planning optimization model for bus lines that allows for intermodal trips with MoD as a first or last leg. For an existing public transport network, we decide simultaneously on the use of existing lines and segments in the future fixed-route network, on areas of the city where an integrated MoD service should be offered, on how MoD interacts with the fixed route network via transfer points, and on passenger routes. The objective is the optimization of the financial performance of the resulting network, which also includes additional demand and thus revenues induced by enhanced network coverage. The model provides several options for modeling MoD costs, which allows linking with operational models such as dial-a-ride. Moreover, our model considers a range of additional important strategic decisions like subsidies for a potential private sector operator of MoD services and the interplay between the demand for public transport and the role of MoD. We develop a path-based formulation of the problem and a branch-and-price algorithm as well as an enhanced enumeration-based approach to solve real-world instances to proven optimality. The model is tested on instances generated with the help of real-world data from a medium-sized German city that currently operates around 20 bus lines.
    Keywords: mobility on demand, strategic network planning, intermodal networks,multimodality, dial-a-ride, branch-and-price
    Date: 2018–06–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1819&r=ure
  12. By: Dupraz, P.; Osseni, A.; Bareille, F.
    Abstract: Agriculture contributes to the production of a large range of externalities. Their valuation is a critical issue for the design of agro-environmental policies. Hedonic pricing method allows for such valuation using house prices and attributes. However, several endogenous biases affect the estimation. Some of these biases are due to spatial effects, which arise when observations are spatially correlated. The objective of the paper is to apply latest developments of spatial econometrics on a hedonic model to estimate the value of agricultural externalities from Brittany (France). We focused especially on externalities from breeding. We distinguish between direct and spatially indirect impacts of nitrogen pollution, but also on green algae presence, i.e. a nitrogen-related pollution arising on Breton seacoasts for years. Using a database of 8,075 transactions from 2010 to 2012, we run several linear and spatial hedonic models. A Spatial Durbin Error Model (SDEM) is selected as the best model. Our estimations reveal that swine and poultry breedings reduce house prices while cattle breeding has almost no impact on house prices. We highlight that the pollution from swine and poultry overlaps from the municipality where the production occurs. The green algae pollution of the closest beach decreases houses prices by 13.5%. Acknowledgement : This research was funded by the EU s Horizon 2020 program under grant agreement n 633838 (PROVIDE project, http://www.provide-project.eu/). This work does not necessarily reflect the view of the EU and in no way anticipates the Commission s future policy.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:276994&r=ure
  13. By: Anand, Paul; Behrman, Jere R.; Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Jones, Sam
    Abstract: Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two factors separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying special attention to their covariation, which indicates whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing household-based inequalities. The paper develops a new variance decomposition framework and applies it to data on more than one million children in three low-income East African countries. The empirical results show that although household factors account for a significant share of total test score variation, variation in school quality and positive sorting between households and schools are, together, no less important. The analysis also finds evidence of substantial geographical heterogeneity in schooling quality. The paper concludes that promoting equity in education in East Africa requires policies that go beyond raising average school quality and should attend to the distribution of school quality as well as assortative matching between households and schools.
    Keywords: inequality of opportunity,education achievement,decomposition,household,school,sorting,Africa
    JEL: D6 H0 I2 O1
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:270&r=ure
  14. By: Chamberlin, J.; Sitko, N.; Jayne, T.
    Abstract: While the bulk of migration literature in Africa has focused on the movement of people from rural to urban areas, much less is known about rural mobility, including its magnitude, drivers, and implications for agricultural development. Using nationally representative survey data for Zambia, we document very high levels of rural mobility throughout the country, and show that this movement is correlated with both land and labor market conditions. About 20% of rural households on average have moved from elsewhere, with highest in-migration rates (~30%) in more accessible, higher density areas, reflecting the importance of wage-employment and services as pull factors. We find that rural in-migrants in relatively accessible areas are wealthier than in-migrants in less accessible areas, although in-migrants are wealthier than non-migrants in all areas. Furthermore, rural in-migrants exhibit greater use of inputs, agricultural productivity, land use intensity and market integration than their non-migrant neighbors. Impacts of in-migration on receiving communities appear to be virtuous: in addition to descriptive indicators that indicate cash injections into local economies (e.g. via greater propensity to hire in labor and services), we find econometric evidence of positive spillover effects of neighborhood in-migration rates on farm-level land productivity outcomes. Acknowledgement : This work was funded by a grant from the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), which is led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by CGIAR Fund Donors.
    Keywords: Labor and Human Capital
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:277404&r=ure
  15. By: Akbar, Prottoy A.; Couture, Victor; Duranton, Gilles; Storeygard, Adam
    Abstract: We develop a methodology to estimate robust city level vehicular mobility indices, and apply it to 154 Indian cities using 22 million counterfactual trips measured by a web mapping service. There is wide variation in mobility across cities. An exact decomposition shows this variation is driven more by differences in uncongested mobility than congestion. Under plausible assumptions, a one standard deviation improvement in uncongested speed creates much more mobility than optimal congestion pricing. Denser and more populated cities are slower, only in part because of congestion. Urban economic development is correlated with better (uncongested and overall) mobility despite worse congestion.
    Keywords: cities; determinants of travel speed; roads; traffic; urban transportation
    JEL: R41
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13291&r=ure
  16. By: Stef Proost (Catholic University of Leuven)
    Abstract: This paper examines the optimal level of public transport pricing in metropolitan areas, using Stockholm and Paris as case studies. It shows that overall welfare improves if public transport prices are increased during peak hours to balance demand and fund additional services in the peak. This report considers the sources of welfare improvements and compares the effect of such pricing policy on cities with and without road pricing.
    Date: 2018–10–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:itfaab:2018/15-en&r=ure
  17. By: Ushchev, Philip; Zenou, Yves
    Abstract: Although the linear-in-means model is the workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects, its theoretical properties are understudied. In this paper, we investigate how social norms affect individual effort, aggregate Although the linear-in-means model is the workhorse model in empirical work on effort, and welfare. While individual productivity always positively affects own effort and utility, we show that taste for conformity has an ambiguous effect on individual outcomes and depends on whether an individual is above or below her own social norm. Equilibria are usually inefficient and, to restore the first best, the planner subsidizes (taxes) agents whose neighbors make efforts above (below) the social norms in equilibrium. Thus, provision of more subsidies to more central agents is not necessarily efficient.
    Keywords: networks; Social norms; welfare
    JEL: D85 J15 Z13
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13250&r=ure
  18. By: Keenan, Enda (Central Bank of Ireland); O'Brien, Martin (Central Bank of Ireland)
    Abstract: This Letter examines the ratio of new mortgage lending to household disposable income in monitoring cyclical systemic risk related to residential real estate lending. As the flow of new lending is more responsive to changing economic conditions than the stock of credit, this indicator may be beneficial in an early-warning context.We also examine the non-cyclical or structural determinants of the ratio in a cross-country setting to find that, as at end-2017, the actual level of the ratio in Ireland had converged to its estimated structural value. As a result, near-term developments in the volume of new mortgage lending warrants careful monitoring such that higher levels of activity are not accompanied by the emergence of excessive cyclical systemic risk.
    Date: 2018–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbi:ecolet:5/el/18&r=ure
  19. By: Mookerjee, Sulagna; Slichter, David
    Abstract: Do standardized test scores in a community indicate whether schools there are effective at producing human capital? Counties with high average test scores produce high-earning adults. But, using data from North Carolina, we find that counties' effects on test scores are either uncorrelated (for low-income kids) or negatively correlated (for high-income kids) with their effects on income in adulthood. We argue with a simple model that this is probably because the inputs directly responsible for counties' effects on test scores do not substantially increase income. In particular, we directly demonstrate that differences in test score production have little to do with teacher quality. Our results suggest that differences in test score production across places are not necessarily a useful measure of the quality of schools.
    Keywords: Human capital, intergenerational mobility, value-added
    JEL: I24 J24 J62
    Date: 2018–08–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:89101&r=ure
  20. By: Chen, Yi; Fan, Ziying; Gu, Xiaomin; Zhou, Li-An
    Abstract: This paper studies human-capital spillovers and its persistence by exploiting a unique event in modern China|the send-down movement. From 1962 to 1979, the Chinese central government mandated the temporary resettlement of roughly 18 million urban youths to rural areas across the country. The movement's coercive features, together with strict restrictions on migration during that period, provide an ideal natural experiment to identify the causal impact of the better-educated sent-down youths (SDYs) on the less-educated local rural residents. Using a county-level dataset compiled from over 3,000 book-length local gazetteers and microlevel population censuses, we find that a greater exposure to SDYs significantly increased local residents' educational achievement. Our estimate shows that the unintended gain of rural education almost compensated the loss in urban China due to the educational disruption during the Cultural Revolution. The positive effect gradually declined as SDYs started to return to their urban homes in the late 1970s, but it never dropped to zero, indicating the persistence of human-capital spillovers. We also find suggestive evidence that the arrival of young talents reshapes the attitudes of local residents toward education.
    Keywords: Send-down Movement,Rural Education,Human-capital Spillovers
    JEL: I25 J24 N35 O15 R23
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:272&r=ure
  21. By: Daniel Montolio (Department of Economics, University of Barcelona and Barcelona Institute of Economics.); Ana Tur-Prats (Department of Economics, University of California, Merced.)
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the historical determinants and long-term persistence of social capital, as well as its effect on economic development, by looking at the legacy of the commons in a Spanish region. In medieval times, common goods were granted to townships and were managed collectively by local citizens. This enabled the establishment of institutions for collective action and self-government. Common goods persisted until the second half of the nineteenth century. We argue that the experience of cooperation among villagers, repeated over the centuries, increased the social capital in each local community. In 1845, a law forced small villages to merge with others, a fact which generated exogenous variation in the number of mergers (i.e., cooperative networks) that each modern municipality was required to have. We exploit this change in an IV and RD setting and find that current municipalities formed by a greater number of old townships have a denser network of associations. We also find that higher social capital is associated with more economic development.
    Keywords: collective action, self-government, long-term persistence, common goods
    JEL: N90 P48 Z10 H49
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2018-8&r=ure
  22. By: Nirav Mehta (University of Western Ontario); Todd Stinebrickner (Western University); Ralph Stinebrickner (University of Western Ontario)
    Abstract: This paper examines academic peer effects in college. Unique new data from the Berea Panel Study allow us to focus on a mechanism wherein a student’s peers affect her achievement by changing her study effort. Although the potential relevance of this mechanism has been recognized, data limitations have made it difficult to provide direct evidence about its importance. We find that a student’s freshman grade point average is affected by the amount her peers studied in high school, suggesting the importance of this mechanism. Using time diary information, we confirm that college study time is actually being affected.
    Keywords: peer effects, time use, higher education, mechanisms
    JEL: I00 I21 I23 J22
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2018-082&r=ure
  23. By: Solis, Alex (Department of Economics)
    Abstract: Grade retention is a widely used educational policy promoting human capital. However, its benefi ts and costs are still under debate. Retention may a ffect learning, cognitive and psychological capacities, educational attainment and the lifetime income (through the timing of entry to the labor market). This paper estimates the causal eff ects of grade retention on all these outcomes exploiting a retention rule based on the school GPA that enables a regression discontinuity design. I use administrative data from a 15-years panel on the universe of students in the educational system in Chile. The fi ndings are fourfold. First, (marginally) retained students achieve the same amount of education than (marginally) promoted (i.e., high school graduation, higher education enrollment, etc.). Second, they improve their cognitive ability (measured by test scores) in the short and the long run. Third, induces parents to increase parental time investments and expectations. Fourth,enhances student psychological traits, and overall learning experience.
    Keywords: Grade retention; attainment; cognitive achievement; high school graduation; parental investmet; self-esteem; learning.
    JEL: I21 I30 J24
    Date: 2017–03–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2018_015&r=ure
  24. By: Heike Mayer, Birgit Leick
    Abstract: The traditional understanding of entrepreneurship is biased towards certain population groups and specific locations. Yet the literature points to a much more diverse perspective on entrepreneurship and regional development. In this paper, we argue that regional characteristics such as the extent to which a region faces demographic change (population growth or decline, population ageing, emigration of youth, etc.) may exert a strong influence both on the individual propensity to start a business and the aggregate numbers of entrepreneurial activities. In addition, demographic change also influences the types of businesses or business models found in different regional contexts. With this idea in mind, we argue that the opportunities and challenges that are associated with old age entrepreneurship depend strongly on the regional context. We place old age entrepreneurship into a regional context and illustrate the ways in which opportunities and constraints arise from such a context and, in particular, from demographic change occurring in different regional types.
    Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Ageing, Silver Economy, Regional Development
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdv:wpaper:credresearchpaper22&r=ure
  25. By: Bastek, Christian; Klaus, Bettina; Kübler, Dorothea
    Abstract: The use of lotteries is advocated to desegregate schools. We study lottery quotas embedded in the two most common school choice mechanisms, namely deferred and immediate acceptance mechanisms. Some seats are allocated based on merit (e.g., grades) and some based on lottery draws. We focus on the effect of the lottery quota on truth-telling, the utility of students, and the student composition at schools, using theory and experiments. We find that the lottery quota strengthens truth-telling in equilibrium when the deferred acceptance mechanism is used while it has no clear effect on truth-telling in equilibrium for the immediate acceptance mechanism. This finds support in the experiment. Moreover, the lottery quota leads to more diverse school populations in the experiments, as predicted. Comparing the two mechanisms, students with the lowest grades profit more from the introduction of the lottery under immediate than under deferred acceptance.
    Keywords: school choice,immediate acceptance mechanism,deferred acceptance mechanism,lotteries,experiment,market design
    JEL: C78 C91 D82 I24
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2018205&r=ure
  26. By: Alstadsaeter, Annette; Kopczuk, Wojciech; Telle, Kjetil
    Abstract: In 2005, over 8% of Norwegian shareholders transferred their shares to new (legal) tax shelters intended to defer taxation of capital gains and dividends that would otherwise be taxable in the aftermath of 2006 reform. Using detailed administrative data we identify family networks and describe how take up of tax avoidance progresses within a network. A feature of the reform was that the ability to set up a tax shelter changed discontinuously with individual shareholding of a firm and we use this fact to estimate the causal effect of availability of tax avoidance for a taxpayer on tax avoidance by others in the network. We find that take up in a social network increases the likelihood that others will take up. This suggests that taxpayers affect each other's decisions about tax avoidance, highlighting the importance of accounting for social interactions in understanding enforcement and tax avoidance behavior, and providing a concrete example of "optimization frictions" in the context of behavioral responses to taxation.
    JEL: D22 H25 H26 H32
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13251&r=ure
  27. By: David R. Agrawal (University of Kentucky, Department of Economics and Martin School of Public Policy & Administration); Dirk Foremny (IEB, Department of Public Economy, Political Economy and Spanish Economy, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa)
    Abstract: recent Spanish tax reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates, resulting in substantial tax di erentials. We use individual-level information from Social Security records over a period of one decade. Conditional on moving, taxes have a significant e ect on location choice. A one percent increase in the net of tax rate for a region relative to others increases the probability of moving to that region by 1.7 percentage points. Focusing on the stock of top-taxpayers, we estimate an elasticity of the number of top taxpayers with respect to net-of-tax rates of 0.85. Using this elasticity, a theoretical model implies that the mechanical increase in tax revenue due to higher tax rates is larger than the loss in tax revenue from the out- ow of migration.
    Keywords: Migration, Taxes, Mobility, Rich, Fiscal Decentralization
    JEL: H24 H31 H73 J61 R23
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2018-9&r=ure
  28. By: Aalto, Aino-Maija (UCLS); Mörk, Eva (UCLS, UCFS,CESifo, IZA, IEB); Sjögren, Anna (IFAU Uppsala, UCLS); Svaleryd, Helena (UCLS, UCFS)
    Abstract: We analyze how access to childcare affects health outcomes of children with unemployed parents using a reform that increased childcare access in some Swedish municipalities. For 4–5 year olds, we find an immediate increase in infection-related hospitalization, when these children first get access to childcare. We find no effect on younger children. When children are 10–11 years of age, children who did not have access to childcare when parents were unemployed are more likely to take medication for respiratory conditions. Taken together, our results thus suggest that access to childcare exposes children to risks for infections, but that need for medication in school age is lower for children who had access.
    Keywords: Childcare; Child health; Unemployment; Quasi-experiment
    JEL: I14 J13
    Date: 2018–08–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2018_011&r=ure
  29. By: Ekaterina Turkina; Ari Van Assche
    Abstract: In today’s knowledge economy, clusters are a key driver of a country’s competitiveness. Yet a cluster’s technological base is now more than ever influenced by constituent firms’ actions to tap into distant knowledge sources. Drawing on a social network perspective, and distinguishing between horizontal versus vertical organization-based linkages, we explore the effects of a cluster’s connectedness to foreign locations on its innovation performance. We show that improvements in horizontal and vertical connectedness both stimulate a cluster’s innovation performance, but that their relative effects vary across cluster types. Innovation in knowledge-intensive clusters disproportionately benefits from enhancements in their constituent firms’ horizontal connectedness to foreign knowledge hotspots. Innovation in labor-intensive clusters mostly gains from stronger vertical connections by their firms to central value chain players abroad. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on global knowledge sourcing and cluster upgrading.
    Keywords: Cluster,Knowledge Sourcing,Connectedness,Network Analysis,Patent,
    Date: 2018–04–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2018s-12&r=ure
  30. By: Loren Brandt; Gueorgui Kambourov; Kjetil Storesletten
    Abstract: The non-state manufacturing sector has been the engine of China's economic transformation. Up through the mid-1990s, the sector exhibited large regional differences; between 1995 and 2004 we observe rapid convergence in terms of productivity, wages, and new firm start-up rates. To analyze the drivers of this behavior, we construct a Hopenhayn (1992) model that incorporates location-specific capital wedges, output wedges, and a novel entry barrier. Using Chinese Industry Census data we estimate these wedges and examine their role in explaining differences in performance across prefectures and over time. Entry barriers turn out to be the salient factor explaining performance differences. We investigate the empirical covariates of these entry barriers and find that barriers are causally related to the size of the state sector. Thus, the downsizing of the state sector after 1997 may be important in explaining the regional convergence and manufacturing growth after 1995.
    Keywords: Chinese economic growth; SOEs; fi rm entry; entry barriers; capital wedges; output wedges; SOE reform
    JEL: O11 O14 O16 O40 O53 P25 R13 D22 D24 E24
    Date: 2018–11–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-622&r=ure
  31. By: Wolfgang Dauth; Sebastian Findeisen; Enrico Moretti; Jens Suedekum
    Abstract: In most countries, average wages tend to be higher in larger cities. In this paper, we focus on the role played by the matching of workers to firms in explaining geographical wage differences. Using rich administrative German data for 1985-2014, we show that wages in large cities are higher not only because large cities attract more high-quality workers, but also because high-quality workers are significantly more likely to be matched to high-quality plants. In particular, we find that assortative matching—measured by the correlation of worker fixed effects and plant fixed effects—is significantly stronger in large cities. The elasticity of assortative matching with respect to population has increased by around 75% in the last 30 years. We estimate that in a hypothetical scenario in which we keep the quality and location of German workers and plants unchanged, and equalize within-city assortative matching geographical wage inequality in Germany would decrease significantly. Overall, assortative matching magnifies wage differences caused by worker sorting and is a key factor in explaining the growth of wage disparities between communities over the last three decades. If high-quality workers and firms are complements in production, moreover, increased assortative matching will increase aggregate earnings. We estimate that the increase in within-city assortative matching observed between 1985 and 2014 increased aggregate labor earnings in Germany by 2.1%, or 31.32 billion euros. We conclude that assortative matching increases earnings inequality across communities, but it also generates important efficiency gains for the German economy as a whole.
    JEL: J0 R0
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25227&r=ure
  32. By: Gaetano Basso (Bank of Italy); Francesco D'Amuri (Bank of Italy); Giovanni Peri (Univeristy of California, Davis)
    Abstract: We analyze the role of labor mobility in cushioning labor demand shocks in the Euro Area. We find that foreign-born workers’ mobility is strongly cyclical, while this is not the case for natives. Foreigners’ higher population to employment elasticity reduces the variation in overall employment rates over the business cycle: thanks to foreigners, the impact of a one standard deviation change in employment on employment rates decreases by 6 per cent at country level and by 7 per cent at regional level. In addition, we compare Euro Area mobility with that of another currency union, the US. We find that the population to employment elasticity estimated for foreign-born persons is similar in the Euro Area and the US, while Euro Area natives are definitely less mobile across countries than US natives are across states in response to labor demand shocks. This latter result confirms that in the Euro Area there is room for improving country-specific shock absorption through higher labor mobility. It also suggests that immigration has helped labor market adjustments.
    Keywords: business cycles, international migration, mobility
    JEL: E32 F22 J6
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1195_18&r=ure
  33. By: Simone Emiliozzi (Bank of Italy); Elisa Guglielminetti (Bank of Italy); Michele Loberto (Bank of Italy)
    Abstract: Forecasting house prices is a difficult task given the strong relationship between real estate markets, economic activity and financial stability, but it is an important one. This paper evaluates the out-of-sample forecasting performance of various models of house prices in a quasi-real time setting. Focusing on Italy, we consider two structural models (using simultaneous equations) and a Bayesian VAR and compute both conditional and unconditional forecasts. We find that the models perform better than a simple autoregressive benchmark; however, the relative forecast accuracy depends on the forecast horizon and also changes over time. For the full sample period the simultaneous equation model, which takes into account credit supply restrictions and real estate taxation, shows the best performance measured in terms of root mean squared forecasting error (RMSFE). In the first part of the sample (2005-2010), medium-term forecasts of house prices greatly benefit from conditioning on the evolution of households’ disposable income, whereas from 2010 onwards the path of the stock of mortgages becomes important.
    Keywords: house prices, forecasting, structural model, BVAR
    JEL: C32 C53 E37 R39
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_463_18&r=ure
  34. By: Duleep, Harriet Orcutt; Regets, Mark
    Abstract: Recently proposed immigration reforms would constitute a major break in the 40-year-old U.S. admissions policy favoring family members. Although emphasizing the importance of the nuclear family, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and a house subcommittee on immigration recommend eliminating immigration preferences to other close relatives, including the brothers, sisters, and adult children of U.S. citizens. Under the proposed system, those relatives could not obtain U.S. visas unless they qualified because of specific job skills. Using Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data on admissions criteria matched to 1990 Census data, we examine the effect of family admissions on immigrant education, self-employment, and earnings. Of particular relevance to the current debate, we also examine the effect of one of the family-based admission categories recommended for elimination -- the preference category that admits the siblings of U.S. citizens. We find that family-based immigrants, in general, have low initial earnings but high earnings growth relative to immigrants admitted on the basis of occupational skills. The earnings growth of immigrants is particularly high in cohorts with relatively high sibling admissions. Furthermore, sibling admissions are positively associated with immigrant self-employment. We also find that immigrant education levels are positively associated with sibling admissions and that the flows of occupation-based immigrants and immigrants admitted under the sibling category are intimately connected, particularly for immigrants from regions of the world where economic opportunities are limited for highly educated individuals. The results on earnings growth, self-employment, and education suggest that eliminating the sibling category may be counterproductive. More generally, the paper adds to our basic knowledge about the complex interactions of admission categories, human capital investment, and earnings growth.
    Keywords: immigrant economic assimilation,human capital investment,country of origin,immigrant earnings convergence,immigration law
    JEL: J15 J24 J61
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:271&r=ure
  35. By: De Benedetto, Marco Alberto
    Abstract: We study the effect of the electoral system on the quality of politicians, measured by the average educational attainment, at the local level in Italy over the period 1994-2017. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single-ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants threshold are subject to a double ballot. Exploiting the discontinuous policy change nearby the population cut-off we have implemented a RDD and found that runoff elections lead to a decrease in the educational attainment of local politicians by about 2% compared to years of schooling of politicians in municipalities voting with a single-ballot scheme. We speculate that the negative effect is driven by the different selection process of candidates adopted by political parties between runoff and single-ballot system. Findings are similar when we use alternative measures of quality of politicians related both to the previous occupation and to previous political experience, and when we control for different measures of political closeness.
    Keywords: Regression discontinuity design; Electoral system; Education; Political competition.
    JEL: C31 D72 I20 J42
    Date: 2018–10–14
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:89511&r=ure
  36. By: Faber, Marius (University of Basel)
    Abstract: Robots in advanced economies have the potential to reduce employment in offshoring countries by fueling reshoring. Using robots instead of humans for production may reduce the relative cost of domestic production and, in turn, lower demand for imports from offshoring countries. I analyze the impact of robots on employment in an offshoring country, using data from Mexican local labor markets between 1990 and 2015. A recent literature shows that the effect of robots on local employment can be estimated by regressing the change in employment on exposure to domestic robots in local labor markets. I similarly construct a measure of exposure to foreign robots , assuming that the share of US robots competing with Mexican labor is proportional to that industry's initial reliance on Mexican imports. Using robot penetration in the rest of the world (i.e., neither in Mexico nor in the US) as an instrument for domestic and foreign robotization, I show that the use of robots in the US has a robust and sizable, negative impact on employment in Mexico by reducing exports to the US. The effect is not driven by pre-existing trends, the automotive industry or migration patterns. It is strongest for low-skilled machine operators and technicians in highly robotized manufacturing industries as well as high-skilled managers and professionals in the service industry.
    Keywords: Technology: trade; robots; reshoring; offshoring
    JEL: F16 O14 O33
    Date: 2018–10–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2018/27&r=ure
  37. By: Marco Bellandi; Monica Plechero; Erica Santini
    Abstract: The capability of local productive systems to react positively to disruptive challenges, entering new paths of development, depends on the presence of supportive local institutions, organizations and actors. A quite recent literature points out the key support given to path transformation by sets of local actors expressing a place leadership (PL). With a focus on industrial districts (IDs), characterized by a manufacturing specialization and a decentralized business organization based on SMEs, the paper aims at exploring conditions of a PL resisting change. We develop a conceptual frame that enables the identification of three different types of PL: open PL, corporate PL, and oligarchic PL. Specifically, oligarchic PL allows to reflect on models of developments and structural conditions where changes to meet disruptive challenges could be intentionally obstructed. In this regard, the paper provides some considerations and examples on how a model deviating from the canonical ID of local development and expressing an oligarchic PL could drive local productive systems through lock-in conditions.
    Keywords: Industrial District, Place Leadership, Lock-in Conditions, ID’ Life Cycle
    JEL: L60 O14 O30
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2018_18.rdf&r=ure
  38. By: Ori Heffetz
    Abstract: Expenditure visibility—the extent to which a household’s spending on a consumption category is noticeable to others—is measured in three new surveys, with ~3,000 telephone and online respondents. Visibility shows little change across time (ten years) and survey methods. Four different notions, or dimensions, of visibility are measured: the noticeability of above-average spending on a category; that of below-average spending; and the positivity/negativity of impressions made by above- and below-average spending. Jointly, these visibility measures explain up to three quarters or more of the observed variation in total-expenditure elasticities across consumption categories in U.S. data. Possible theoretical explanations are explored.
    JEL: D12 D83 D91 Z13
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25161&r=ure
  39. By: Jillian Anable (University of Leeds); Phil Goodwin (University College London)
    Abstract: This paper offers new insights into the definition, measurement and operationalisation of different dimensions of social vulnerability to road user charges, using unique data sets available in the UK. Assessing distributional effects of road pricing or congestion charging schemes requires evaluating distributional patterns: who receives the benefits of reduced congestion and who receives the revenues collected? How these impacts change over time also needs consideration.
    Date: 2018–10–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:itfaab:2018/13-en&r=ure
  40. By: Bian, Xueying; Fabra, Natalia
    Abstract: Energy certificates (ECs) provide information about the houses' energy efficiency, potentially al- lowing owners to earn a premium when renting more efficient houses. In this paper, we build a search model with asymmetric information regarding energy efficiency to shed light on the owners' incentives to obtain and disclose the ECs. From both a theoretical and empirical perspective, we address three questions: (i) is there an efficiency rent premium?; (ii) do owners of inefficient houses have incentives to hide their ECs?; and (iii) how do both questions depend on the disclosure rate of ECs in the local housing market? We document a premium for more efficient houses, both with respect to less efficient houses as well as with respect to unlabeled ones. We also document a rent penalty for unlabeled houses, which is higher the greater the disclosure rate of ECs. Therefore, in local markets with higher disclosure rates, owners face stronger incentives to obtain and disclose their ECs. Through this channel, higher fines for non-compliance can give rise to a virtuous circle of disclosure that goes beyond the direct effects of increasing fines.
    Keywords: adoption rate; asymmetric information; energy efficiency; rental market
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13270&r=ure
  41. By: Marie Albertine Djuikom; Guy Lacroix
    Abstract: Immigrants often experience diÿculties integrating the local labor market. In Canada, the govern-ment of Quebec implemented a program back in 1996 that explicitly selected highly qualified workers (Bachelors’, Masters’ or PhD’s). This paper investigates the extent to which the return to foreign-acquired human capital is di˙erent from the education acquired in Quebec. Specifically, we seek to estimate the benefits of post-migration education over foreign-education on the transitions between qualified and un-qualified jobs and unemployment by means of a multiple-spells and multiple-states model. Our results indicate that immigrants originating from well-o˙ countries have no need to further invest in domestic education. On the other hand, immigrants from poorer countries, despite being highly qualified, benefit greatly from such training in the long run as it eases their transitions into qualified and unqualified jobs and out of unemployment. Our results also indicate that selection into domestic education needs to be accounted for to avoid significant selection problems.
    Keywords: Post-migration Schooling,Foreign Education,Labour Market Histories,Multiple-spells Multiple-states Models,
    JEL: C31 C41 J15 J24 J64 J61
    Date: 2018–04–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2018s-09&r=ure
  42. By: Adam Ploszaj; Xiaoran Yan; Katy Borner
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of air transport connectivity and accessibility on scientific collaboration.
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1811.02106&r=ure
  43. By: van der Spek, Maarten
    Abstract: This PhD thesis focuses on the non-listed real estate fund market. This is a relatively new market, and a lack of data is one of the reasons why there is an insufficient amount of relevant academic literature. This thesis includes four studies dealing with this issue. The first study offers an overview of the performance of the non-listed real estate fund market in Europe and looks at the link between the commitment to improve sustainability on the one hand, and performance and firm characteristics on the other. The second study provides necessary additional transparency by analyzing private real estate fee structures and showing the main drivers of the fee level. The third study examines the risk and return profile of real estate debt funds, and how this form of real estate could fit the investor’s portfolio. The final study analyzes the relationship between the amount of leverage and the interest rates of a real estate loan using a new indicator for the quality of the underlying real estate. The results of this research should be useful for a wide audience, including real estate investors, as it covers some very relevant strategic issues that real estate investors are faced with within their portfolios.
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:2c64d9aa-9eda-4e7d-9c94-bb1c95e5a5db&r=ure
  44. By: Artur Pokropek; Patricia Costa (European Commission - JRC); Sara Flisi (European Commission - JRC); Federico Biagi (European Commission - JRC)
    Abstract: The importance of reducing the incidence of low achievement is clearly recognized by the European Union, which – within its strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training – has set the objective of reducing the share of low-achieving 15-year-olds in mathematics, reading and science below 15% by 2020. This report uses data from the 2015 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to analyse the relationship between teaching practices – teacher-directed instruction, enquiry-based teaching, and adaptive instruction – and the likelihood that students are low achievers in science. Results show that teaching practices are strongly related with the probability of being a low-achieving student. Moreover, some complementarity exists between teaching practices. Properly combining different instruction methods leads to lower levels of underachievement in science. In particular, better outcomes are found in situations with high levels of adaptive instruction and teacher-directed methods, and medium intensity of enquiry-based practices.
    Keywords: Education and Lifelong Learning
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc113499&r=ure
  45. By: Ghebru, Hosaena; Amare, Mulubrhan; Mavrotas, George; Ogunniyi, Adebayo
    Abstract: The paper examines the role of land access in youth migration and employment decisions using a two wave panel data set from the Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) from Nigeria. Overall, the findings show that the size of expected land inheritance is significantly and negatively associated with long distance migration and migration to urban areas, while a similar impact is negligible when a broader definition of migration is adopted and when migration is deemed as temporary. A more disaggregated analysis by considering individual characteristics of the youth shows that results are more elastic for older youth and those that are less educated, while we find no difference when comparisons are made by gender. Similar analysis on the influence of land access on youth employment choices shows strong evidence that the larger the size of the expected land inheritance the lower the likelihood of the youth being involved in non-agricultural activities and a higher chance of staying in agriculture or the dual sector. The results further reveal that youth in areas with a high level of agricultural commercialization and modernization seem to be more responsive to land access considerations in making migration and employment decisions than are youth residing in less commercialized areas. Finally, the results from the differential analysis suggest that rural-to-urban migration and the likelihood of youth involvement in the dual economy is more responsive to the size of the expected land inheritance for less educated youth as compared to more educated ones.
    Keywords: NIGERIA; WEST AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA; AFRICA ; land access; migration; youth; employment; rural urban migration; land inheritance
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:nsspwp:58&r=ure
  46. By: Stifel, D.; Headey, D.; You, L.; Guo, Z.
    Abstract: Reducing undernutrition requires improving access to goods and services from a wide range of economic and social sectors, including agriculture, education and health. Yet despite broad agreement on the multisectoral nature of the global burden of undernutrition, relatively little research has analyzed how different dimensions of accessibility, such as urbanization and travel times to urban centers, affect child nutrition and dietary outcomes. In this paper we study these relationships in sub-Saharan Africa, a highly rural continent still severely hindered by remoteness problems. We link spatial data on travel times to 20,000 person cities to survey data from 10,900 communities in 23 countries. We document strong negative associations between nutrition indicators and rural livelihoods, but only moderately strong associations with remoteness to cities. Moreover, the harmful effects of remoteness and rural living largely disappear once education, wealth, and social/infrastructural services indicators are added to the model. This implies that the key nutritional disadvantage of rural populations stems chiefly from social and economic poverty. Combating these problems requires either an acceleration of urbanization processes, or finding innovative cost-effective mechanisms for extending basic services to isolated rural communities. Acknowledgement : This paper was funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the project Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture (ARENA), Phase II, as well as the CGIAR program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). We thank Marie Ruel for comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
    Keywords: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae18:277147&r=ure

This nep-ure issue is ©2018 by Steve Ross. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.