DSpace community: Departament d'Economia i Empresa

How do Very Open Economies Adjust to Large Immigration Flows? Recent Evidence from Spanish Regions

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:14:12 GMT

title: How do Very Open Economies Adjust to Large Immigration Flows? Recent Evidence from Spanish Regions authors: Libertad González Luna; Francesc Ortega
abstract: In recent years, Spain has received unprecedented immigration flows. Between 2001 and 2006 the fraction of the population born abroad more than doubled, increasing from 4.8% to 10.8%. For Spanish provinces with above-median inflows (relative to population), immigration increased by 24% the number of high school dropouts while only increasing college graduates by 11%. We study different channels by which regional labor markets have absorbed the large increase in relative supply of low educated workers. We identify the exogenous supply shock using historical immigrant settlement patterns by country of origin. Using data from the Labor Force Survey and the decennial Census, we find a large expansion of employment in high immigration regions. Disaggregating by industry, the absorption operated through large increases in the share of low-educated workers, compared to the same industry in low-immigration regions. We do not find changes in sectoral specialization. Overall, and perhaps surprisingly, the pattern of absorption is very similar to the one found in the US.

Property Titling and Conveyancing

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:54 GMT

title: Property Titling and Conveyancing authors: Arruñada, Benito
abstract: This paper analyzes titling institutions and the regulation of supporting conveyancing services. After examining the tradeoff of enforcement benefits and consent costs posed by property rights, it explains how different public titling systems (privacy, recording and registration) try to solve this tradeoff, and what the consequences are for the nature and regulation of private conveyancing services. The paper ends with a discussion of some empirical issues and data which are useful for comparing, designing and managing titling and conveyancing systems.

Efficient Interval Scoring Rules

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:51 GMT

title: Efficient Interval Scoring Rules authors: Schlag, Karl H.; Weele, Joël van der
abstract: Scoring rules that elicit an entire belief distribution through the elicitation of point beliefs are time-consuming and demand considerable cognitive e¤ort. Moreover, the results are valid only when agents are risk-neutral or when one uses probabilistic rules. We investigate a class of rules in which the agent has to choose an interval and is rewarded (deterministically) on the basis of the chosen interval and the realization of the random variable. We formulate an e¢ ciency criterion for such rules and present a speci.c interval scoring rule. For single- peaked beliefs, our rule gives information about both the location and the dispersion of the belief distribution. These results hold for all concave utility functions.

A house price index defined in the potential outcomes framework

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:47 GMT

title: A house price index defined in the potential outcomes framework authors: Longford, Nicholas T.
abstract: Current methods for constructing house price indices are based on comparisons of sale prices of residential properties sold two or more times and on regression of the sale prices on the attributes of the properties and of their locations. The two methods have well recognised deficiencies, selection bias and model assumptions, respectively. We introduce a new method based on propensity score matching. The average house prices for two periods are compared by selecting pairs of properties, one sold in each period, that are as similar on a set of available attributes (covariates) as is feasible to arrange. The uncertainty associated with such matching is addressed by multiple imputation, framing the problem as involving missing values. The method is applied to aregister of transactions ofresidential properties in New Zealand and compared with the established alternatives.