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During the last 15 years, there has been growing interest in the field of spatial demography (e.g., Raymer et al. [7]). Ever since, sessions on population and migration have been a stalwart component of virtually all regional science conferences - providing many innovations and insights into the study of spatial population dynamics. The rapidly evolving big data environments and new techniques to study space-time processes offer much scope, although there are pitfalls (see Cesare et al. [2]). [Extracted from the article]

There is evidence in many countries of an inverse relationship between the real wages paid to workers and the unemployment rate in their local labor market, a so-called wage curve. However, the evidence to date for Japan has been rather limited. In this paper, we estimate wage curves for Japan using pooled cross-section time-series data from 1981 until 2001. The presence of a wage curve is confirmed. The wage curve has become slightly more elastic after the bubble economy of the 1980s than it was in the pre-bubble and mid-bubble period. The unemployment elasticity of pay is greater for males than for females. We also estimate regional wage curves using time-series data. The male wage curve elasticity is larger in the northern regions of Hokkaido and Tohoku and the western region of Shikoku, while it is smaller in the central regions of Hokuriku, Tokai and Kinki. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of whether the public sector enhances or retards long-run economic growth has been debated passionately in recent years. We use meta-analysis to shed light on the issue. A sample of 93 published studies, yielding 123 meta-observations, is used to examine the robustness of the evidence regarding the effect of fiscal policy on growth. Five fiscal policy areas are considered: general government consumption, tax rates, education expenditure, defence, and public infrastructure. Several meta-analytical techniques are applied, including descriptive statistics, contingency table analysis and rough set analysis. On balance, the evidence for a positive effect of conventional fiscal policy on growth is rather weak, but the commonly identified importance of education and infrastructure is confirmed. The results are sensitive to several research design parameters, such as the type of data, model specification and econometric technique. The top two tiers of journals appear less supportive of the conventional priors with respect to government and growth than lesser-ranked journals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article we survey common themes in recent migration research and comment on the actual and potential contribution of regional science to this literature. There has been a marked shift in research from internal to international migration. The two research programmes would benefit from a unified framework. Spatial and systemic features of migration systems remain underdeveloped. Moreover, the perspectives from the different disciplines that intersect in regional science can still be integrated better. Communication of the research findings in terms understood by policymakers and practitioners is also desirable. Finally, many new and interesting research topics will emerge when greater effort is made to link migration research with other current research topics in regional science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Becker and Barro (1988) formulated a theoretical model which identified a range of macroeconomic variables which can temporarily or permanently affect fertility in small open economies. This article tests the Becker-Barro model with relevant data which covers most of the 20th century for two small open economies, namely The Netherlands and New Zealand. The results show that government subsidies for having children have a strong positive effect on fertility, while the provision of public pensions has a strong negative effect. The degree of intergenerational altruism appears to have been declining. Moreover, there is only weak support for the hypothesis that real interest rates positively influence fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper provides a synthesis of the 1983-98 published literature on the empirical evidence regarding the interaction between government policies and growth. Five policy areas are considered: general government consumption, tax rates, education expenditures, defense and public infrastructure. The most conclusive results in the literature relate to the positive impact of education expenditures on growth. Public infrastructure also appears important. Regression analysis remains the most commonly adopted research methodology. A better link with current theories will be obtained when parameter calibration methods for micro-foundations based models replace parameter estimation of regression models with ad hoc specifications. Nonetheless, there remain severe limitations on what can be learned for policy from highly aggregative models of endogenous growth. Better data are needed at the regional macro and meso levels to complement the currently available pooled cross-section time-series country data. The potential endogeneity of government fiscal variables can be resolved through the selection of appropriate instrumental variables, such as those that arise in cases of "natural experiments". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses economic aspects of New Zealand immigration during the 1980s. General features are overall net emigration coinciding with high levels of immigration from Asia and Pacific Island countries. Earnings by years in New Zealand profiles for immigrants with selected occupations are steeper for Pacific Island-born males than for other immigrant groups. Although there are few data, there is some evidence that profiles differ between cohorts. Since the level of controlled immigration is likely to be increased and the perceived labor market outcomes are an input in the selection criteria, further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of homogamy on the distribution of household income in New Zealand at the national level and across different sized cities. We focus on homogamy by age, education, hours worked, employment status, and migration status. We present a new index of homogamy that takes account of maximum potential homogamy. Our index is less sensitive to categories with small population shares than the commonly used concentration ratios. We compare the inequality impact of actual matching with that of randomized matching by means of the additional randomization method. Contrary to public perception, homogamy of the highly educated has declined relative to random matching. Nonetheless, homogamy has had an inequality‐increasing impact on the distribution of income and this effect has grown over time: from around 5% of the mean log deviation (MLD) measure of income inequality in 1986 to 16% in 2013. Allowing for simulated labor supply responses reduces this effect by less than 1%. Spatially, the effect of homogamy is larger and increases more in metropolitan areas than in other urban areas. In Auckland, New Zealand's largest city (around a third of the population), homogamy accounted for a fifth of MLD inequality by 2013, up from 6% in 1986. Educational homogamy plays the biggest role in this process, but the effects of hours worked, employment status and migration status are relatively important too. Homogamy by age has little effect on income inequality. Using the Gini index as an alternative inequality measure yields similar results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auckland, the largest city of New Zealand, is one of the most diverse cities in the world, with more than 40% of its population born abroad, more than 200 ethnicities represented and 160 languages spoken. In this paper, we measure residential sorting of individuals in Auckland by their cultural (ethnicity) and economic (income, education and occupation) characteristics for the years 1991–2013. Using entropy-based measures of residential sorting and of neighbourhood diversity, we find that individuals exhibit greater residential sorting by ethnicity than by economic characteristics. Geographically, the semi-rural fringes of the city exhibit less diversity than the central urban area. Multi-group indexes of cultural and economic sorting showed a small decline over the 1991–2013 period. We also observe that ethnic sorting declined over that period for broad ethnic groups, but that sorting within the broad ethnic groups increased since 2001. A similar pattern of decreasing sorting at the aggregate level, with increasing sorting within groups in the more recent sub-period, is observed for occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper conducts a robustness analysis of the impact of diasporas on institutional quality in home countries. Using the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC), we attest that the home country institutional development role of diasporas found in the literature is robust to modifications in terms of the dataset, the measurement of diasporas and the instrumental variable procedures used in our cross‐sectional and panel analyses. The novelty of this paper is that we take the heterogeneity of diasporas into account in terms of their distribution across host countries, their duration of stay, and the level of development of their home countries. As in earlier literature, we find robust evidence that diasporas enhance institutional quality in home countries. We also find that the intensity of the diffusion of advanced institutions from developed host countries to home countries through the international migration channel is weaker with diasporas characterized by shorter average duration of stay and with diasporas from developing home countries. However, this diffusion effect is not significantly related to the distribution of diasporas across OECD host countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the link between local institutional quality in the home country and locational choices of international return migrants. We scrutinize the locational choices of Vietnamese return migrants to the south central and the south regions of Viet Nam in 2014. Binary and multinomial regression models are fitted to identify the influence of migrants' individual attributes and the characteristics of regional destinations within Viet Nam. Our analysis reveals that both individual‐specific and region‐specific variables are significantly related to Vietnamese return migrants' choices when registering for permanent residency back in their home country. More remarkably, we provide compelling evidence of the positive role of institutional quality at the local level in these migration decisions. Moreover, the effect of institutional quality differs with the characteristics of migrants: regions with better institutional quality are more attractive both to younger return migrants and to those who returned from host countries with better institutional quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data spanning 70 years (1939–2008), we examine whether Kubitschek’s planned creation of Brasília and its associated highway network had its intended effect of spreading development from Brazil’s coast to its interior. Specifically, we test whether the spatial structure of the country’s urban population and per capita GDP changed as a result of Brasília’s inauguration in 1960. Uniquely amongst studies of Brasília’s impacts, we use a ‘spatial-difference-in-differences’ approach, contrasting pre-Brasília with post-Brasília outcomes. We control for macroeconomic conditions, fixed city-specific factors, convergence forces, changing industrial structure and agglomeration impacts arising from proximity to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We find a modest impact on population in the western coastal and western interior regions whose share of Brazil’s urban population increased from 4.8% (1959) to 9.0% (2008); our spatial-difference-in-differences estimates show the impact to be statistically significant. We confirm per capita income convergence across regions, but we find no (descriptive or statistical) evidence of per capita income effects related to proximity to Brasília. Thus, even a massive development initiative such as Brasília’s creation is estimated to have had only limited population impacts and zero per capita income impacts on the spatial structure of Brazil’s economy outside of Brasília itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate econometrically whether cultural diversity at the workplace boosts innovation. Our longitudinal linked employer-employee data combines two innovation surveys, with Dutch administrative, tax and regional data. We analyse the determinants of a firm's product and process innovations with respect to the firm's internal resources, employee composition and regional agglomeration externalities. We reconfirm the findings of several other recent studies showing a positive partial correlation between innovation and cultural diversity in pooled cross-sectional data; in some cases even when accounting for reverse causation. However, no statistically significant traces of benefit for innovation from cultural diversity remain after introducing firm fixed effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural diversity is a complex and multi-faceted concept. Commonly used quantitative measures of the spatial distribution of culturally defined groups—such as segregation, isolation or concentration indexes—have been designed to capture just one feature of this distribution. The strengths and weaknesses of such measures under varying demographic, geographic and behavioral conditions can only be comprehensively assessed empirically. This has been rarely done in the case of multigroup cultural diversity. This paper aims to fill this gap and to provide evidence on the empirical properties of various segregation indexes by means of Monte Carlo replications of agent-based modelling simulations under widely varying assumptions. Schelling’s classical segregation model is used as the theoretical engine to generate patterns of spatial clustering. The data inputs include the initial population, the assumed geography, the number and shares of various cultural groups, and their preferences with respect to co-location. Our Monte Carlo replications of agent-based modelling data generating process produces output maps that enable us to assess the sensitivity of the various measures of segregation to parameter assumptions by means of response surface analysis. We find that, as our simulated city becomes more diverse, stable residential location equilibria require the preference for co-location with one’s own group to be not much more than the group share of the smallest demographic minority. When equilibria exist, the values of the various segregation measures are strongly dependent on the composition of the population across cultural groups, the assumed preferences and the assumed geography. Index values are generally non-decreasing in increasing preference for within-group co-location. More diverse populations yield—for given preferences and geography—a greater degree of spatial clustering. The sensitivity of segregation measures to underlying conditions suggests that meaningful analysis of the impact of segregation requires spatial panel data modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This research assesses the prevalence and determinants of job-education mismatches among male immigrants in the United States between 1980 and 2009. The results suggest that educational attainment levels do not match occupational education requirements for almost half of all immigrants. Overeducation among high-skilled immigrants vastly exceeds that of comparable natives. Probit models of overeducation suggest that: (i) personal characteristics operate in similar fashion for immigrants and natives; (ii) immigrant brain waste is above average in gateway states, metropolitan areas and in prosperous high-wage areas; and (iii) proficiency in English and length of residence reduce the overeducation risk among high-skilled immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of immigrants across the world has doubled since 1980. The estimates of the impact of immigration on wages and employment in host countries are quantitatively small but vary widely. We summarize previous meta-analyses of the empirical literature and consider the implications for policy. We conclude that, on average, the impact on employment of the native born is smaller than on wages, while impacts are generally smaller in the US than in other countries studied to date. The variation in the estimates is related to the definition of the labour market, the extent of substitutability of foreign and native workers, and controls for endogeneity of immigrant settlement in statistical modelling. Policies enhancing labour-market flexibility, while at the same time improving immigrant economic integration, are likely to be effective in reducing transitory negative impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 per cent. An increase of one percentage point in the net migration rate of a region increases the per capita income growth rate in that region on average by about 0.1 percentage points. Introducing a net migration variable in a growth regression increases the estimate of beta convergence slightly. Studies that use panel models or IV estimation methods yield smaller coefficients of net migration in growth regressions, while the opposite holds for regressions controlling for high-skilled migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most “wage curve” studies ignore the geography of local labor markets. However, when a local labor market is in close proximity of other labor markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration of their workers. Hence, the unemployment elasticity of pay will be greater, the more isolated the local labor market is. Wages are also expected to be higher in regions that interact strongly with other regions. These hypotheses are confirmed by means of an estimation of wage curves with data for 327 regions of western Germany over the period 1990–1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on forecasting migration between Australia and New Zealand which commonly referred to as trans-Tasman migration. Standard approach to population forecasting; Information on the New Zealand postwar population growth and international migration; Description of the development of the vector autoregression and Bayesian versions models of trans-Tasman migration.

Increasing international labor migration has important effects on the workforce composition of firms in all migrant-receiving countries. The consequences of these changes for firm performance have attracted growing attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus explicitly on the impact of cultural diversity among migrant employees on the innovativeness of firms. We briefly synthesize empirical evidence from a range of contexts across Europe, North America, and New Zealand. We then utilize two unique and harmonized linked employer-employee datasets to provide comparative microeconometric evidence for Germany and the Netherlands. Our panel datasets contain detailed information on the generation of new products and services, determinants of innovation success, and the composition of employment in establishments of firms over the period 1999 to 2006. We find that innovation in both countries is predominantly determined by establishment size and industry. Moreover, obstacles encountered and organizational changes faced by firms drive innovation too. With respect to the composition of employment, the presence of high-skilled staff is most important. Cultural diversity of employees has a positive partial correlation with product innovation. The size and statistical significance of this effect depends on the econometric model specification and the country considered. We conclude from the literature synthesis and the new comparative evidence that cultural diversity of employees can make a positive, but modest and context dependent, contribution to innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the hitherto unexplored evolution of the size distribution of 185 functionally defined urban areas in Brazil between 1907 and 2008. We apply the traditional power law and the Gabaix-Ibragimov improved estimation method. We find that the power parameter of the size distribution of the 100 largest urban areas increases towards unity, that is, the rank-size rule. Seventeen thousand and twenty cointegration tests of pairwise non-stationary growth paths of cities point to evidence of a common stochastic trend that strengthens throughout the century. Thus, while Zipf's law and Gibrat's law did not formally hold in Brazil's past, these laws are becoming steadily more appropriate descriptions of Brazil's increasingly unequal size distribution of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies suggest that homeownership positively impacts on social capital formation. However, many studies find it difficult to control adequately for selection effects in the form of factors, some of which may be unobserved, that encourage both homeownership and investment in social capital by households. A biennial survey conducted in New Zealand cities provides data that enable the control of such selection effects with propensity score matching methods, while also benchmarking the results by means of regression methods. The results confirm that homeownership exerts positive impacts on the formation of social capital. At the same time, homeownership demands greater accountability of local government and leads to reduced satisfaction with local government performance, thereby negatively impacting on community social capital. Hence these two dimensions of housing-related social capital work in opposite directions from each other, a finding which has not been previously observed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use data on Mexican and Chinese immigrants in the US to calculate the average marginal effects of residential and occupational segregation on immigrants' ability to speak English, and similarly the effects of English fluency of family members. Our results confirm that residential segregation is generally inversely related to English language proficiency of immigrants, except for skilled Chinese immigrants. Allowing for occupational fixed effects, the minority population share at the place of work is relevant for proficiency in English among skilled Chinese, but not for Mexicans and unskilled Chinese. We also find that the presence of English-speaking adults in the household increases the probability of immigrants' proficiency in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we link unique data on local social infrastructure expenditure with microlevel individual survey data of self-reported social capital measures of trust and participation in community activities. We use both probit and tobit models to estimate the impact of social infrastructure expenditure on social capital formation. Our results imply that the links between social capital, demographic characteristics, human capital, geography, and public social infrastructure investment are rather more subtle and complex than much of the literature implies. While we find evidence in support of many of the hypothesized relationships discussed in the social capital literature, our results also suggest that the impact of public social infrastructure investment is affected by both selection effects and free rider processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Books reviewed: A. Stewart Fotheringham and Michael Wegener (eds.), Spatial Models and GIS: New Potential and New Models . Aura Reggiani (ed.), Spatial Economic Science: New Frontiers in Theory and Methodology . Jean-Claude Thill (ed.), Geographic Information Systems in Transportation Research . Barbara Dluhosch, Industrial Location and Economic Integration: Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces in the New Europe . Jean-Marie Huriot and Jacques-François Thisse, Economics of Cities: Theoretical Perspectives . Manfred M. Fischer and Yee Leung (eds.), GeoComputational Modelling: Techniques and Applications . Eduardo A. Haddad, Regional Inequality and Structural Changes: Lessons from the Brazilian Experience . Manfred M. Fischer, Luis Suarez-Villa, and Michael Steiner (eds.), Innovation, Networks and Localities . Marjolein C.J. Caniëls, Knowledge Spillovers and Economic Growth: Regional Growth Differentials across Europe . Martin van der Velde and Henk van Houtum (eds.), Borders, Regions, and People . Peter W. J. Batey and Peter Friedrich (eds.), Regional Competition . John E. Anderson and Robert W. Wassmer, Bidding for Business: The Efficacy of Local Economic Development Incentives in a Metropolitan Area . Philip Hanson and Michael Bradshaw (eds.), Regional Economic Change in Russia . Gred Hise and William Deverell, Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]