This paper aims to provide the first evidence concerning the relationship between time ans risk preferences and illegal migration in an African context. Based upon our theoretical model and using a unique data set on potential migrants collected in urban Senegal, we evaluate a measure of time and risk preferences through the individual's intertemporal discount rate and coefficient of absolute risk aversion. Remarkably, our results show that these individual preferences matter in the willingness to migrate illegally and to pay a smuggler.
The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro-level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between married and single women’s participation, and the “motherhood gap” between mothers’ and nonmothers’ participation. They find significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of these gaps, the speed at which they are changing, and the relationships between them and the educational gap. But counterfactual regression analysis shows that the labour force participation gap remains largely unexplained by the other gaps.
Does the government control of school systems facilitate equality in school quality? Whether centralized or localized control produces more equality depends not only on what ‘could’ happen in principle, but also on what does happen in practice. We use the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database to examine the association between school sector and the variance in school fixed effects. We find, on average, the same inequality in adjusted learning achievement across the private and public schools. However, in some countries, such as Denmark, there is more equality across the public sector schools, while in others, such as Mexico, there is more equality across the private schools. Among the 18 non-OECD countries, the standard deviation across schools in adjusted quality is, on average, 36% higher in government schools. Our findings suggest that top-down educational systems in weak states can be lose-lose relative to localized systems relying on bottom-up control, producing both worse average performance and higher inequality.
Countries with weaker domestic investor protection hold less diversified international portfolios. An equilibrium business cycle model of North-South capital flow with corporate governance frictions between outside investors and corporate insiders explains this phenomenon through two channels. First,weak governance leads to concentrated ownership in the South because international diversification by insiders is penalized by lower stock market valuation. This reduces the float portfolio, or the supply of South assets. Second, weak governance tilts the demand of South outside investors towards domestic assets to hedge labor income risk. This is due to a higher share of labor in income, which increases labor income risk. In addition, the dynamics of investment under insider control leads relative dividend and labor income to be more negatively correlated in the South, making domestic assets a better hedge against local labor income risk. I find that the insider ownership and hedging channels are responsible for at least 29% and 11%, respectively, of the cross-country variation in international diversification. Thus, weak institutions lower international diversification primarily through concentrated ownership of firms, with outsider hedging also playing a quantitatively significant role.
