Student and Worker Mobility under University and Government Competition

We provide a normative analysis of endogenous student and worker mobility in the presence of diverging interests between universities and governments. Student mobility generates a university competition effect which induces them to overinvest in education, whereas worker mobility generates a free-rider effect for governments, who are not willing to subsidize the education of agents who will work abroad. At equilibrium, the free-rider effect always dominates the competition effect, resulting in underinvestment in human capital and overinvestment in research. This inefficiency can be corrected if a transnational transfer for mobile students is implemented. With endogenous income taxation, we show that the strength of fiscal competition increases with human capital production. Consequently, supranational policies aimed at promoting teaching quality reduce tax revenues at the expense of research.student mobility, worker mobility, university competition, government competition

Remittances as pure or precautionary investment? Risk, savings and return migration

This paper provides a theory of migrants? decisions to remit and save under uncertainty in connection with future location decisions. We show that the impact of remittances on the risk faced by the migrant is more complex than usually acknowledged. On the one hand, their effect on aggregate risk is non-monotonic. On the other hand, their impact on the geographical location of risk might be counter-intuitive, as remittances increase the migrant?s exposure to risk in the origin country. Also, marginal returns to remittances may be increasing, at least locally, due to the endogeneity of the future location. Interior solutions are therefore not guaranteed, and liquidity constraints faced by migrants may be binding. Finally, undocumented migrants are shown to be more likely to remit than legal migrants.return migration; remittances; risk; investment

Fertility and Child Occupation: Theory and Evidence from Senegal

This paper analyzes household fertility and child occupation decisions in a risky environment. Fertility decisions are made fi?rst, when only the distribution of shocks is known. When shocks are realized and fertility is ?xed, parents adapt by allocating children?s occupations, i.e. school, paid work and domestic chores. Fertility is decreasing with the shock probability and increasing with parental permanent income. Households facing an adverse shock make more use of child labor and send fewer children to school, unless the total number of children is small. These predictions are tested with data from the Senegalese SEHW (2003) following this two-step methodology. A Poisson model estimates the number of children with classical instruments and household-level information on shock distribution, con?rming the theory?s predictions on fertility. A multivariate Tobit model estimates the determinants of children occupations, including the occurrence of shocks and accounting for the endogeneity of fertility. The number of children increases (decreases) the probability of child specialization (multiple activities). Shock-related variables have an adverse e¤ect on schooling.Fertility; education; child labor; shocks

Loans, insurance and failures in the credit market for students

In the education literature, it is generally acknowledged that both credit and insurance for students are rationed. In order to provide a rationale for these observations, we present a model with perfectly competitive banks and risk averse students who have private information on their ability to learn and can decide to default on debt. We show that the combination of ex-post moral hazard and adverse selection produces credit market rationing when default penalties are low. When default penalties increase, the level of student risk aversion proves crucial in determining the market outcome. If risk aversion is low, banks offer non-insuring pooling contracts at equilibrium that may result in overinvestment in education. If student risk aversion is high, high ability students are separated and student loan contracts involve a limited amount of insurance

Student and worker mobility under university and government competition

We provide a normative analysis of endogenous student and worker mobility in the presence of diverging interests between universities and governments. Student mobility generates a university competition effect which induces them to overinvest in education, whereas worker mobility generates a free-rider effect for governments, who are not willing to subsidize the education of agents who will work abroad. At equilibrium, the free-rider effect always dominates the competition effect, resulting in underinvestment in human capital and overinvestment in research. This inefficiency can be corrected if a transnational transfer for mobile students is implemented. With endogenous income taxation, we show that the strength of fiscal competition increases with human capital production. Consequently, supranational policies aimed at promoting teaching quality reduce tax revenues at the expense of research

DG CONNECT’s Stakeholder Engagement Strategy. IES Policy Brief Issue 2013/03 • April 2013

Summary. How do we ensure that public policy represents the interests of all, rather than a select few? How will we ensure it draws upon the best insights and talents of key stakeholders? The European Commission’s DG CONNECT recently announced the results of its Stakeholder Engagement Survey, which is designed to ‘provide empirical results and feedback about existing practices and signal gaps and challenges for action in the area of stakeholder engagement.’ (Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Stakeholders Unit D4, 2013, p.4). The survey launched a new round of reflection on the Commission’s relations with its stakeholders by asking respondents to reflect on the way in which they interact with DG CONNECT. The strategic objective is to see how ICTs can be used in novel ways to enhance support for policymaking from stakeholders in the EU. The Stakeholder Engagement Survey makes a start at answering critical questions about use of ICT as a tool to build ‘smarter policy’ as part of DG CONNECT’s wider step toward defining a strategy for stakeholder engagement. This IES Policy Brief welcomes this current work-in-progress, and outlines some of the challenges that may await the European Commission as it seeks to exploit the full potential of ICT in stakeholder engagement. It provides an initial analysis of the results of this first Stakeholder Engagement Survey, and concludes that whilst many things have changed with regards to tools that policymakers can use to elicit input into policymaking, certain challenges have remained very much the same

The Education Motive for Migrant Remittances: Theory and Evidence from India

This paper analyzes the impact of anticipated old age support, provided by children to parents, on intra-family transfers and education. We highlight an education motive for remittances, according to which migrants have an incentive to invest in their siblings' education via transfers to parents, in order to better share the burden of old age support. Our theory shows that in rich families, selfish parents invest optimally in children education, while in poor families, liquidity constraints are binding and education is fostered by migrant remittances. We test these hypotheses on Indian panel data. Identification is based on within variation in household composition. We find that remittances received from migrants significantly increase with the number of school age children in the household. Retrieving the effects of household characteristics shows that more remittances tend to be sent to poorer and older household heads, confirming the old age support hypothesis

Influence of a salinity gradient on the vessel characters of the mangrove species <i>Rhizophora mucronata</i>

Although mangroves have been extensively studied, little is known about their ecological wood anatomy. This investigation examined the potential use of vessel density as a proxy for soil water salinity in the mangrove species Rhizophora mucronata (Rhizophoraceae) from Kenya. In a time-standardized approach, 50 wood discs from trees growing in six salinity categories were investigated. Vessel densities, and tangential and radial diameters of rainy and dry season wood of one distinct year, at three positions on the stem discs, were measured. A repeated-measures ANOVA with the prevailing salinity was performed. Vessel density showed a significant increase with salinity, supporting its use as a prospective measure of salinity. Interestingly, the negative salinity response of the radial diameter of vessels was less striking, and tangential diameter was constant under the varying environmental conditions. An effect of age or growth rate or the presence of vessel dimorphism could be excluded as the cause of the absence of any ecological trend. The clear trend in vessel density with salinity, together with the absence of a growth rate and age effect, validates the potential of vessel density as an environmental proxy. However, it can only be used as a relative measure of salinity given that other environmental variables such as inundation frequency have an additional influence on vessel density. With view to a reliable, absolute proxy, future research should focus on finding wood anatomical features correlated exclusively with soil water salinity or inundation frequency. The plasticity in vessel density with differing salinity suggests a role in the establishment of a safe water transport system. To confirm this hypothesis, the role of inter-vessel pits, their relationship to the rather constant vessel diameter and the underlying physiology and cell biology needs to be examined