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: 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
We assemble data on the structure of bank supervision, distinguishing supervision by the central bank from supervision by a nonbank governmental agency and independent from dependent governmental supervisors.
Using data on 140 countries from 1998 through 2010, Barry Eichengreen and Nergiz Dincer find that:
- in low-income countries, bank supervision tends to be assigned to the central bank.
- in countries that are ranked high in terms of government efficiency and regulatory quality, bank supervision is more likely to be undertaken by a non-independent agency of the government.
They further find that the choice of institutional arrangement makes a difference: countries with independent bank supervisors other than the central bank have fewer nonperforming loans as a share of GDP, even after controlling for inflation and per capita income.
Sumber: nber.org
Ratapan Petani
Petani kecil jika berusahatani secara individu akan terus berada di pihak yang lemah. Mengapa? Karena petani kecil secara individu akan mengelola usaha tani dengan luas garapan kecil dan terpencar serta kepemilikan modal yang rendah. Sehingga, pemerintah perlu memperhatikan penguatan kelembagaan lewat kelompok tani karena dengan berkelompok maka petani tersebut akan lebih kuat, baik dari segi kelembagaannya maupun permodalannya.
Kelembagaan petani di desa umumnya tidak berjalan dengan baik, yang disebabkan (Zuraida dan Rizal, 1993; Agustian, dkk, 2003; Syahyuti, 2003; Purwanto, dkk, 2007) :
Read more…
Inclusive Ccities
Slums, informal settlements, and dilapidated inner-city tenements are problems that many cities in Asia and the Pacific struggle with while their economies try to modernize and develop. Their existence puts at risk not only these economies but also poor people occupying vulnerable areas that climate change and natural disasters will only make worse. Slums are being addressed in countries in Asia and the Pacific but not yet at the rate required to create livable cities.
ADB’s Strategy 2020 aims for “livable cities” and will address the range of problems resulting from rapid urbanization and the limited capacity of basic service delivery associated with present and future urban growth. To accomplish the vision of livable cities, livelihood opportunities and shelter options of incremental land and housing development are important. ADB’s developing member countries will look for viable lending opportunities to finance inclusive cities.
Download: Inclusive Cities
Recent Comments