scholarly journals Refugees’ and Irregular Migrants’ Self-selection into Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cevat Giray Aksoy

We provide the first large-scale evidence on self-selection of refugees and irregular migrants who arrived in Europe in 2015 or 2016. Our analysis uses unique datasets from the International Organization for Migration and Gallup World Polls. We find that refugees are positively self-selected with respect to human capital, as are female irregular migrants. Male irregular migrants are negatively self-selected. These patterns hold whether analyzing individually stated main reason to emigrate, country-level conflict intensity, or sub-regional conflict intensity. Several additional analyses show that our results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias or liquidity constraints. We offer a theoretical framework to explain these patterns, by extending the Roy-Borjas model to include risks related to staying in an unsafe country of origin, risks related to migration, and gender specific returns to human capital.

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neha S. Singh ◽  
Orit Abrahim ◽  
Chiara Altare ◽  
Karl Blanchet ◽  
Caroline Favas ◽  
...  

AbstractHumanitarian organizations have developed innovative and context specific interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as guidance has been normative in nature and most are not humanitarian specific. In April 2020, three universities developed a COVID-19 humanitarian-specific website (www.covid19humanitarian.com) to allow humanitarians from the field to upload their experiences or be interviewed by academics to share their creative responses adapted to their specific country challenges in a standardised manner. These field experiences are reviewed by the three universities together with various guidance documents and uploaded to the website using an operational framework. The website currently hosts 135 guidance documents developed by 65 different organizations, and 65 field experiences shared by 29 organizations from 27 countries covering 38 thematic areas. Examples of challenges and innovative solutions from humanitarian settings are provided for triage and sexual and gender-based violence. Offering open access resources on a neutral platform by academics can provide a space for constructive dialogue among humanitarians at the country, regional and global levels, allowing humanitarian actors at the country level to have a strong and central voice. We believe that this neutral and openly accessible platform can serve as an example for future large-scale emergencies and epidemics.


2010 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. R43-R51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Barrett ◽  
Jean Goggin

Using data from a large-scale survey of employees in Ireland, we estimate the extent to which people who have emigrated from Ireland and returned earn more relative to comparable people who have never lived abroad. In so doing, we test the hypothesis that migration can be part of a process of human capital formation. We find through OLS estimation that returners earn 7 per cent more than comparable stayers. We test for the presence of self-selection bias in this estimate but the tests suggest that the premium is related to returner status. The premium holds for both genders, is higher for people with postgraduate degrees and for people who migrated beyond the EU to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The results show how emigration can be positive for a source country when viewed in a longer-term context.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Moehring

Multilevel models that combine individual and contextual factors are increasingly popular in comparative social science research; however, their application in country-comparative studies is often associated with several problems. First of all, most data-sets utilized for multilevel modeling include only a small number (N<30) of macro-level units, and therefore, the estimated models have a small number of degrees of freedom on the country level. If models are correctly specified paying regard to the small, level-2 N, only a few macro-level indicators can be controlled for. Furthermore, the introduction of random slopes and cross-level interaction effects is then hardly possible. Consequently, (1) these models are likely to suffer from omitted variable bias regarding the country-level estimators, and (2) the advantages of multilevel modeling cannot be fully exploited.The fixed effects approach is a valuable alternative to the application of conventional multilevel methods in country-comparative analyses. This method is also applicable with a small number of countries and avoids the country-level omitted variable bias through controlling for country-level heterogeneity. Following common practice in panel regression analyses, the moderator effect of macro-level characteristics can be estimated also in fixed effects models by means of cross-level interaction effects. Despite the advantages of the fixed effects approach, it is rarely used for the analysis of cross-national data.In this paper, I compare the fixed effects approach with conventional multilevel regression models and give practical examples using data of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) from 2006. As it turns out, the results of both approaches regarding the effect of cross-level interactions are similar. Thus, fixed effects models can be used either as an alternative to multilevel regression models or to assess the robustness of multilevel results.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Antônio Bittencourt Marconatto ◽  
Emidio Gressler Teixeira ◽  
Fernando de Oliveira Santini ◽  
Wagner Junior Ladeira

PurposeThe paper aims to provide robust evidence about the relationships between key individual characteristics of owners and managers (OMs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)' growth and the moderating influence of the country context on these relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe authors meta-analyzed 62 studies presenting a cumulative sample of 175 effect-sizes and 174,590 SMEs.FindingsThe authors found that SMEs led by more experienced men with higher levels of education are more likely to grow. While the relationship between OMs' experience and SMEs' growth is significant for differing country contexts, national characteristics affect the magnitude of the influence that OMs' education and gender specifically exert on SME expansion. The authors also found that the positive impact of OMs' human capital on SMEs' growth increases when these firms are focused on technology.Research limitations/implicationsThe study yielded small-effect sizes for the impact of OMs' human capital and gender on SMEs' growth. Researchers can assess the influence of these characteristics on SMEs' growth along with other individual dimensions.Originality/valueThe current study is the first meta-analytical investigation about the influence of OMs' gender on SMEs' growth. The study focuses solely on SME OMs, as SMEs are not simply larger businesses on a smaller scale. The authors employ a wide set of country-level moderators in the research going beyond most empirical examinations of the topic that have given only marginal attention to moderators.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 887-888
Author(s):  
Amber Heemskerk ◽  
Tian Lin ◽  
Elizabeth Harris ◽  
Natalie Ebner ◽  
Jay Van Bavel

Abstract The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought far-reaching consequences on individual and societal levels. Social distancing and physical hygiene constitute effective public health measures to limit the spread of the virus. The current study investigates individual age and gender demographics, in interaction with a country’s human development index (HDI), as crucial factors influencing compliance with public health measures in a large multi-national adult lifespan sample. This report leverages data from a large-scale international collaboration (Van Bavel et al., 2020; https://psyarxiv.com/ydt95/) comprising 45,576 individuals from 66 countries/territories. Participants provided self-reports of their compliance/agreement with three public health measures (i.e., spatial distancing, physical hygiene, policy support). Older age, female gender, and lower HDI were independently associated with greater compliance with public health measures. In addition, a significant three-way interaction between participant age, participant gender, and a country’s HDI revealed that compliance was lowest in younger adults from well-developed countries, while compliance was highest among females across all ages from less-developed countries. Compliance with public health measures is crucial in effectively reducing coronavirus spread. Our findings suggest that age and gender as individual-level demographics, in tandem with HDI as a country-level predictor, affect individuals’ willingness to comply with public health measures. These results highlight the potential of data-driven, tailored (i.e., towards specific demographics) health campaigns and public policies in the fight against a global pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1937) ◽  
pp. 20201201
Author(s):  
Mohammad Atari ◽  
Mark H. C. Lai ◽  
Morteza Dehghani

Most of the empirical research on sex differences and cultural variations in morality has relied on within-culture analyses or small-scale cross-cultural data. To further broaden the scientific understanding of sex differences in morality, the current research relies on two international samples to provide the first large-scale examination of sex differences in moral judgements nested within cultures. Using a sample from 67 countries (Study 1; n = 336 691), we found culturally variable sex differences in moral judgements, as conceptualized by Moral Foundations Theory. Women consistently scored higher than men on Care, Fairness, and Purity. By contrast, sex differences in Loyalty and Authority were negligible and highly variable across cultures. Country-level sex differences in moral judgements were also examined in relation to cultural, socioeconomic, and gender-equality indicators revealing that sex differences in moral judgements are larger in individualist, Western, and gender-equal societies. In Study 2 (19 countries; n = 11 969), these results were largely replicated using Bayesian multi-level modelling in a distinct sample. The findings were robust when incorporating cultural non-independence of countries into the models. Specifically, women consistently showed higher concerns for Care, Fairness, and Purity in their moral judgements than did men. Sex differences in moral judgements were larger in individualist and gender-equal societies with more flexible social norms. We discuss the implications of these findings for the ongoing debate about the origin of sex differences and cultural variations in moral judgements as well as theoretical and pragmatic implications for moral and evolutionary psychology.


Author(s):  
Dimitar Eftimoski

Abstract This paper investigates the effect of human capital on economic growth in OECD countries by focusing on two different channels: (1) absorption of superior technologies, and (2) augmentation of factors of production. One recent empirical study found that in isolation each channel appears insignificant, which implies that estimates that emanate by restrictive specifications that account for only a subset of these channels are likely to suffer from an omitted variable bias. Using an augmented specification (with interaction terms between the initial level of real GDP per capita and the average years of schooling), we find that OECD countries that start with a higher stock of human capital grow faster, which implies that human capital influences economic growth through the first channel only. Our results differ from previous studies (that investigated both channels), which either confirmed the simultaneous (positive or neutral) effect from both channels, or found that only the second channel had an isolated positive effect. We use a broad array of measures as proxies for human capital (six measures for educational attainment, and two measures for health status). We also account for the quality of human capital.


1993 ◽  
Vol 76 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1089-1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Richard Ferraro

The present article describes a demonstration experiment used in a large introductory psychology class pertaining to mental imagery ability. The experiment is effective in providing a concrete instance of mental imagery as well as an effective discussion regarding individual differences and gender differences in imagery ability.


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