The book focuses on Indonesia's most pressing labor market challenges and associated policy options to achieve higher and more inclusive economic growth. The challenges consist of creating jobs for and the skills in a youthful and increasingly better educated workforce, and raising the productivity of less-educated workers to meet the demands of the digital age. The book deals with a range of interrelated topics---the changing supply and demand for labor in relation to the shift of workers out of agriculture; urbanization and the growth of megacities; raising the quality of schooling for new jobs in the digital economy; and labor market policies to improve both labor standards and productivity.
Migration presents a stark policy dilemma. Research repeatedly confirms that migrants, their families back home, and the countries that welcome them experience large economic and social gains. Easing immigration restrictions is one of the most effective tools for ending poverty and sharing prosperity across the globe. Yet, we see widespread opposition in destination countries, where migrants are depicted as the primary cause of many of their economic problems, from high unemployment to declining social services. Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets addresses this dilemma. In addition to providing comprehensive data and empirical analysis of migration patterns and their impact, the report argues for a series of policies that work with, rather than against, labor market forces. Policy makers should aim to ease short-run dislocations and adjustment costs so that the substantial long-term benefits are shared more evenly. Only then can we avoid draconian migration restrictions that will hurt everybody. Moving for Prosperity aims to inform and stimulate policy debate, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge gaps. It demonstrates why existing income gaps, demographic differences, and rapidly declining transportation costs mean that global mobility will continue to be a key feature of our lives for generations to come. Its audience includes anyone interested in one of the most controversial policy debates of our time.
As awareness of the process of globalization grows and the study of its effects becomes increasingly important to governments and businesses (as well as to a sizable opposition), the need for historical understanding also increases. Despite the importance of the topic, few attempts have been made to present a long-term economic analysis of the phenomenon, one that frames the issue by examining its place in the long history of international integration. This volume collects eleven papers doing exactly that and more. The first group of essays explores how the process of globalization can be measured in terms of the long-term integration of different markets-from the markets for goods and commodities to those for labor and capital, and from the sixteenth century to the present. The second set of contributions places this knowledge in a wider context, examining some of the trends and questions that have emerged as markets converge and diverge: the roles of technology and geography are both considered, along with the controversial issues of globalization's effects on inequality and social justice and the roles of political institutions in responding to them. The final group of essays addresses the international financial systems that play such a large part in guiding the process of globalization, considering the influence of exchange rate regimes, financial development, financial crises, and the architecture of the international financial system itself. This volume reveals a much larger picture of the process of globalization, one that stretches from the establishment of a global economic system during the nineteenth century through the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depression into the present day. The keen analysis, insight, and wisdom in this volume will have something to offer a wide range of readers interested in this important issue.
The Economics of International Migration is a collection of the fundamental articles written by Giovanni Peri on the economic determinants and consequences of international migration. These papers have provided the theoretical framework and empirical analysis for a rethinking of the economics of migration, going beyond the Canonical model of labor demand and supply used until the 1990s. Beginning with a simple model that recognizes the differences between immigrants and natives as workers, the articles develop the analysis of complementarity, specialization and productivity effect of immigrants in developed economies. The book then presents a series of papers analyzing and testing the economic motivation for international migration. Finally, the focus is shifted to the effect of immigration policies and their consequences on immigration and the economy.
Millions of people—nearly 3 percent of the world’s population—no longer live in the country where they were born. Every day, migrants enter not only the United States but also developed countries without much of a history of immigration. Some of these nations have switched in a short span of time from being the source of immigrants to being a destination for them. International migration is today a central subject of research in modern labor economics, which seeks to put into perspective and explain this historic demographic transformation. Immigration Economics synthesizes the theories, models, and econometric methods used to identify the causes and consequences of international labor flows. Economist George Borjas lays out with clarity and rigor a full spectrum of topics, including migrant worker selection and assimilation, the impact of immigration on labor markets and worker wages, and the economic benefits and losses that result from immigration. Two important themes emerge: First, immigration has distributional consequences: some people gain, but some people lose. Second, immigrants are rational economic agents who attempt to do the best they can with the resources they have, and the same holds true for native workers of the countries that receive migrants. This straightforward behavioral proposition, Borjas argues, has crucial implications for how economists and policymakers should frame contemporary debates over immigration.
"The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. Even though it has been the focus of abundant research over the past five decades, some key policy questions have not found clear answers yet. To what extent is internal migration a desirable phenomenon and under what circumstances? Should governments intervene and, if so, with what types of interventions? What should be their policy objectives? To shed light on these important issues, the authors survey the existing theoretical models and their conflicting policy implications and discuss the policies that may be justified based on recent relevant empirical studies. A key limitation is that much of the empirical literature does not provide structural tests of the theoretical models, but only provides partial findings that can support or invalidate intuitions and in that sense, support or invalidate the policy implications of the models. The authors' broad assessment of the literature is that migration can be beneficial or at least be turned into a beneficial phenomenon so that in general migration restrictions are not desirable. They also identify some data issues and research topics which merit further investigation. "--World Bank web site.
1. 1. Why this essay? It is customary for the author on return migration to complain about the lack of theoretical and empirical knowledge on his sub ject. Three recent general handbooks on the sociology of migra tion Jackson (1969), Jansen (1970) and Albrecht (1972), pro duce together no more than 10 sources on return migration. The by Mangalam (1968), although extensive migration bibliography giving no less than 2051 titles, still comes up with no more than 10 sources. I t is true that not so many books and articles are de voted exclusively to return migration: Appleyard (1962a, 1962b), Cerase (1967,1970), Committee ... (1967), Davison, B. (1968), Dietzel (1971), Elizur (1973), Feindt & Browning (1972), Form & Rivera (1958), Frohlich & Schade (1966), Hernandez-Alvarez (1967,1968), Kraak (1957a, 1957b, 1958), Kayser (1972), Myers & Masnick (1968), Migration News (1969), Mc Donald (1963), O.E. CD. (1967a, 1967b), Patterson. H.O. (1968), Richmond (1967a, 1967b, 1968), Richardson (1968), Saloutos (1956), Stark (1967b), Vanderkamp (1972), Vagts (1960) and Wilder-Okladek (1969). But this does not imply that no further research has been done and that therefore every new student of return migration had to begin from scratch. In numerous studies on emigration, migrant labour, immigration, integration and assimilation, room has been made for a chapter or a paragraph on "those who re turned" or "the migrant's return". I've found the demographical periodicalPopulation Index relatively useful in tracing the subject. 1. 2
Are immigrants squeezing Americans out of the work force? Or is competition wth foreign products imported by the United States an even greater danger to those employed in some industries? How do wages and unions fare in foreign-owned firms? And are the media's claims about the number of illegal immigrants misleading? Prompted by the growing internationalization of the U.S. labor market since the 1970s, contributors to Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market provide an innovative and comprehensive analysis of the labor market impact of the international movements of people, goods, and capital. Their provocative findings are brought into perspective by studies of two other major immigrant-recipient countries, Canada and Australia. The differing experiences of each nation stress the degree to which labor market institutions and economic policies can condition the effect of immigration and trade on economic outcomes Contributors trace the flow of immigrants by comparing the labor market and migration behavior of individual immigrants, explore the effects of immigration on wages and employment by comparing the composition of the work force in local labor markets, and analyze the impact of trade on labor markets in different industries. A unique data set was developed especially for this study—ranging from an effort to link exports/imports with wages and employment in manufacturing industries, to a survey of illegal Mexican immigrants in the San Diego area—which will prove enormously valuable for future research.
