We examine the long-term impacts of drought on local labor markets in Brazil. Using rainfall data going back over a century, we build contemporaneous and historical drought indices for more than 3,000 local areas, and examine them in conjunction with five waves of population census data spanning 1970−2010. Results from a differencein-differences design reveal that increased drought frequency in...

This paper contributes to the literature on temporary migration by developing and solving a model of repeated circular migration that accounts for saving behavior. Using Mexican Migrant Project data on undocumented migrants and non-migrants, I estimate the parameters of the model through the Method of Simulated Moments. The cost of migration and an individual’s preference for residence in Mexic...

The Gender Gap in Early Career in Mongolia Relatively little is known about the youth labour market in general and about gender differences in Mongolia, one of the fifty poorest countries in the world. This paper addresses the issue by taking advantage of a School to Work Survey (SWTS) on young people aged 15-29 years carried out in 2006. On average, female wages are not lower than those of mal...

This paper empirically analyzes the influence of road proximity on HIVinfection using geographical data on road infrastructure and the Demographic and Health Surveys collected in six African countries. Firstly we show that living in proximity to a major road increases the individual risk of infection. This observed relationship is found to be sensitive to the use of the road and to be robust af...

Given the different income inequalities between rural, urban and metropolitan areas in Paraguay, the standard Roy model predicts the possibility that a selection bias of rural metropolitan migrants exists. Based on an extended Roy model, which allows for correlation between labor market characteristics and moving cost, I use a switching regression model to evaluate if migrants from rural to met...

This paper analyses the effect of local crime rates on the mental well being of residents. Our identification strategy addresses the problem of sorting, and endogenous moving behaviour. We find that crime causes considerable mental distress of residents, and that these effects are mainly driven by property crime. However, individuals react also to violent crime, in particular in areas individua...

A large body of research has established a positive connection between an industry’s productivity and the magnitude of its presence within locally defined geographic areas. This paper examines the extent to which this relationship can be explained by a micro-level underpinning commonly associated with productivity: establishment scale. Looking at data on two-digit manufacturing across a sample ...

Females’ Willingness to Work and the Discouragement Effect of a Poor Local Childcare Provision We analyze the effects of regional structures on females’ willingness to work as well as on the probability that non-employed women who are willing to work actually will engage in job search. Special permission was granted to link regional data to individual respondents in the German Socio-Economic Pa...

The Effect of Migration on Income Growth and Convergence: Meta-Analytic Evidence We compare a set of econometric studies that measure the effect of net internal migration in neoclassical models of long-run real income convergence and derive 67 comparable effect sizes. The precision-weighted estimate of beta convergence is about 2.7%. An increase in the net migration rate of a region by one perc...

A standard result in the literature on environmental economics is that efficient environmental policies regulating transboundary pollution will be adopted only if there is interjurisdictional coordination. Efficient policies can be adopted as a result of interregional treaties or mandated by a central authority. The present paper demonstrates that if there is perfect population mobility between...