Can the Augmented Solow Model with Migration Explain the Italian Internal Brain Drain?

We extend the Dolado et al. (1994) model to both inflows and outflows of migrants and assume that they have a human capital endowment that contributes to increase/decrease the stock of human capital in the receiving/sending economy. We derive the conditional convergence equation in which the impact of migration flows on the growth rate is disentangled in a pure quantity effect and in a quality or composition effect of immigration and emigration rates that accounts for the relative human capital endowment of migrants with respect to resident population. Next, we test the model with Italian regional data for the 1970–2005 time period. We find that the model provides a good explanation of the Italian experience. The quantity effect is negative for the immigration rate and positive for the emigration rate, whereas the composition effect is positive for immigration and negative for emigration. Finally, we separate the centre‐north from the south and find that the composition effect of emigration is stronger for the latter. We interpret these results as a clear evidence of a brain drain from the Mezzogiorno to the centre‐northern regions.     

Temporary Contracts,Employment Protection,and Collective Bargaining

This paper examines the effect of employment protection in a matching model with endogenous job destruction, collective bargaining, and two types of employment contracts. Using this framework, we show that (i) the impact on job creation and job destruction caused by reducing the firing costs associated with temporary jobs depends on the labour unions' bargaining strength and the gap in firing costs between contracts; (ii) reducing the firing costs associated with permanent jobs unambiguously decreases equilibrium unemployment if labour unions have strong bargaining power; and (iii) the impact caused by the firing costs differs between collective and individual bargaining.     

Immigration,Growth, and Unemployment: Panel VAR Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper examines empirically the interaction between immigration and host country economic conditions. We employ panel vector autoregression (VAR) techniques for a large annual data set on 22 OECD countries over the period 1987–2009. The VAR approach addresses the endogeneity problem by allowing for endogenous interactions between the variables in the system. Our results provide evidence of migration contribution to host economic prosperity (positive impact on GDP per capita and negative impact on aggregate unemployment, native‐ and foreign‐born unemployment rates). We also find that migration is influenced by host economic conditions (migration responds positively to host GDP per capita and negatively to host total unemployment rate).     

Managerial Delegation under Alternative Unionization Structures

This paper studies the effects of managerial delegation in a duopoly game under alternative unionization structures. Introducing managerial delegation in a framework with centralized unionization leads to incentives for sales, lower profits and higher consumer surplus as well as overall welfare. In contrast, delegating output decisions to managers in the presence of decentralized unionization produces opposite results unless unions are strongly employment‐oriented. Moreover, managerial delegation makes unionization structure neutral in relation to consumer surplus and overall efficiency. Finally, the timing of moves in the three‐stage game proves to be important for obtaining the above qualitative results under decentralized unionization.     

International and National R&D Networks in Unionized Oligopoly

We study the endogenous formation of R&D networks between two domestic and one foreign firms in a unionized oligopoly. We find that the equilibrium networks are sensitive to the extent of knowledge spillovers between networked firms. If spillovers are sufficiently low, the complete network will arise in equilibrium; however, if spillovers are sufficiently high, the foreign partial network that includes a domestic and a foreign firm will arise. Moreover, for intermediate spillovers, no equilibrium network emerges. These results have implications for aggregate outcomes: equilibrium networks are not necessarily optimal in terms of aggregate effective R&D and aggregate firm profits.     

Unification of Dirichlet Methodology

In this article we provide a unified framework for solving Dirichlet related probability and waiting time problems. We consider a Pólya sampling scheme in which each time an object is selected, it is put back into the population along with c additional objects of the same type. By considering both fixed sample size and inverse sampling procedures, we unify the Dirichlet I, J, C, and D functions with their hypergeometric counterparts by extending these functions to Pólya sampling. We then use these functions to unify and extend the corresponding expected waiting time results.     

Der Sequentieile Quotiententest bei irreduziblen homogenen Markovschen Ketten mit endlichem Zustandsraum

The Sequential Probaility Ratio Test is applied to test two simple hypotheses about the transition probability matrix of an irreducible homogeneous MARKOV chain with finite state space. An analogue (14) of Wald's Fundamental Identity, the Operating Characteristic Function (20-21) and the Average Sample Number (22-23) are given. These statements are generalizations of the MARKOV chain as well as some more conditions about the eigenvalues of the transition probability matrix.     

Nonlinear unbiased estimation in linear models †

In the paper the problem of nonlinear unbiased estimation of expectation in linear models is considered. The considerations are restricted to linear plus quadratic estimators with quadratic parts invariant under a group of translations. The one way classification model is considered in detail, for which an explicit formula for the locally best estimators is presented. A numerical evaluation of variances of the best estimators is given for some unbalanced one way classification models and compared with the variance of the ordinary linear estimators.     

Replication: Cheating,loss aversion,and moral attitudes in Vietnam

We use the coin-flip paradigm and a short survey about moral attitudes under three conditions to answer three questions: (i) Do people cheat more when financial incentives are present in comparison with no incentives? (ii) Do they find it more difficult to maintain their ethical standards when they have been given a small amount of money? and (iii) Do moral attitudes predict cheating behavior? Using a sample of Vietnamese college students, we discover that a financial incentive does not matter until people feel that they are facing a loss. In addition, we do not find any evidence that moral attitudes could predict the unethical behavior in our sample. Our findings shed further light on cheating behaviors and loss aversion through an experimental investigation.