I.C.N.I.E.

Sumber: NBER, Digest

The share of the U.S. population that is foreign-born has risen from 4.8 percent in 1970 to 12.2 percent in 2009. Furthermore, the combined Asian and Latin American share of U. S. immigrants was 81.1 percent in 2009, a fact that may be important because the culture and norms surrounding the issue of women’s work outside the home in a woman’s home country influence whether she will be employed in the United States.

In Substitution between Individual and Cultural Capital (NBER Working Paper No. 17275), authors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn analyze data from the New Immigrant Survey. They find that women who migrate from countries with relatively high levels of female labor supply work more once they arrive in the United States. Furthermore, the effect of source-country female labor supply on an immigrant woman’s work hours in the United States remains strong and positive even after the researchers control for her own labor supply before coming to the United States.

The researchers also find that source-country female labor supply has a much stronger effect for those who did not work for pay in their home country than for those with prior work experience. Moreover, there is a stronger impact of pre-migration work experience on work in the United States for women from source countries with low female labor supply than for women from high-female-labor-supply countries.

The discovery of this negative interaction effect between a female immigrant’s previous work experience and the prevalence of female labor supply in her home country in predicting immigrant women’s U.S. work hours and wages suggests that cultural capital can substitute for individual job-related human capital in affecting preparedness for work in the United States. The large positive effect of source-country female labor supply on the work hours of women who did not work before migrating suggests that there can be substantial cultural or social capital effects on immigrant women’s labor supply.

In most economic analyses of labor supply, an individual’s preparedness for work depends on traditional measures of human capital, such as education or prior work experience. But by comparing immigrant women who come to the United States from different countries with different gender roles, and with or without prior experience, this research suggests that cultural capital — that is, women’s work roles in the source country — is also an important source of labor market skills, as well as an influence on preferences for market work.

Sumber: Editorial Media Indonesia

SEMAKIN rajin saja pengadilan tindak pidana korupsi (tipikor) di daerah membebaskan terdakwa korupsi. Contohnya Pengadilan Tipikor Bandung dan Lampung seakan berlomba membebaskan terdakwa korupsi.

Tidak hanya itu. Seperti tidak mau kalah, Pengadilan Tipikor Samarinda, Kalimantan Timur, pun membuat kejutan. Dalam tempo tiga hari, pengadilan itu membebaskan 14 pesakitan korupsi.

Vonis majelis hakim tipikor di daerah membuat kita geram. Geram karena sangat kontradiktif dengan putusan pengadilan tipikor pusat yang nyaris tidak pernah membebaskan satu pun terdakwa korupsi. Apalagi jika kasusnya diajukan jaksa Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK).

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Sumber: Editorial Media Indonesia, Senin, 21 2011.

SULIT membantah jika ada yang mengatakan gedung parlemen di negeri ini laksana pasar saja. Benar pula jika ada yang menilai proses legislasi di negara ini tak ubahnya proses jual beli belaka.

Di gedung parlemen itu memang berlangsung barter dan jual beli pasal-pasal dalam pembahasan rancangan undang-undang. Perbedaannya, transaksi barang dagangan di pasar dilakukan terbuka, sementara transaksi di parlemen berlangsung tertutup. Meski dibungkus rapat-rapat, bau bangkai tercium jua.

Oleh: Kurniawan Agung*

BERBAGAI tantangan ke depan, seperti semakin kompleksnya inovasi produk keuangan dan perbankan, semakin beragamnya kejahatan perbankan, relatif rendahnya tingkat literasi masyarakat, maupun krisis keuangan global 2008 yang dampaknya masih dirasakan berbagai negara besar, telah menjadi pelajaran berharga bagi Pemerintah di banyak negara untuk menjadikan perlindungan nasabah sebagai salah satu prioritas utama reformasi sektor keuangan.

Gap kesenjangan informasi (assymetric information) antara nasabah dan bank terkadang menyebabkan masyarakat memiliki bargaining power yang lebih rendah dibandingkan bank semakin menyadarkan akan perlunya upaya lain yang perlu ditempuh Pemerintah guna lebih meningkatkan perlindungan nasabah.

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Sumber: nber.org

Tropical deforestation accounts for almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and threatens the world’s most diverse ecosystems.

To better understand why deforestation occurs, Robin Burgess, Matt Hansen, Ben Olken, Peter Potapov, and Stefanie Sieber analyze data on annual changes in forest cover during an eight- year period of institutional change in post-Suharto Indonesia.

They find that: increases in the numbers of political jurisdictions are associated with increased deforestation.

They also find that illegal logging increases dramatically in the years leading up to local elections, suggesting the presence of “political logging cycles”. And, illegal logging and rents from unevenly distributed oil and gas revenues are short run substitutes, but this effect dissapears over time as political turnover occurs.

The results illustrate how incentives faced by local government officials affect deforestation, and provide an example of how standard economic theories can explain illegal behavior.

Deforestasi di Kalimantan