Libros

Resumen

The demand for highly skilled labor exceeds its supply in most developed economies. As the domestic supply of such labor is likely inelastic in the short and medium term, immigration can help to meet the demand. However, firms are often unable to attract sufficient highly skilled labor, partly due to difficulties hiring foreign workers. This inability could be due to insufficient demand from highly skilled individuals to immigrate or an insufficient supply of visas to allow those wanting to immigrate to do so. Immigration is a highly salient political issue. While the focus has primarily been on the publics' attitudes towards immigrants and their effect on migration policy, their attitudes might also affect the preferences of potential emigrants. Political populism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the destination country may deter high-skilled migrants that have a greater choice over their emigration destination. We examine the migration preferences of potential high skilled immigrants to Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada to determine whether the decision to emigrate is driven by primarily economic or political considerations. We conduct a conjoint survey experiment drawing from the CESS student subject pools in Chile, China, India, and the UK to identify causal drivers of emigration preferences. China and India have existing patterns of high skilled migration to the UK and the USA; Canada has been a popular destination country for Chilean emigrants; and high skilled UK emigrants have historically migrated to the USA. Our findings indicate that both politics and economics matter. In a post-Brexit Britain, these findings are directly relevant for understanding how the UK might look to attract high-skilled immigrants from beyond Europe.

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Resumen 

Evidence shows that the sole access to saving devices is not necessarily linked to an increase of savings. Individuals may have behavioral biases that limit their savings. For example, limited attention and time inconsistency have proven to be important, with SMS savings reminders and financial instruments with default savings being effective in increasing the amounts of savings. Using a randomized control trial, we evaluate both types of devices in vulnerable populations of Chile. We also test the effectiveness of providing savings rules of thumb.  One year after the offering, the automatic savings plan increases savings in 18%, whereas the rule of thumb treatment had a positive but insignificant impact. On the other hand, savings remainders have a negative impact on a transactional bank account balances, and no impact on savings account balances.

Resumen

We estimate the effect of a permanent income increase for the elderly on their health outcomes. Our regression discontinuity design exploits an eligibility cutoff in a Chilean basic pension program that grants monthly payments of 40 percent of the minimum wage to pensionless retirees. Four years after applying, pension recipients are 2.5 percentage points less likely to die. Effects are concentrated on pension recipients living without working-age relatives, who in turn have more children if living with recipients. This seems explained by pre-existing income transfers from working-age relatives to retirees, which cease when payments begin. Results suggest that increasing income for older individuals could reduce health inequalities across income groups, and mitigate the intergenerational transmission of poverty by alleviating the financial burden on younger relatives.

Resumen 

In this paper, we model information acquisition in a voting model with deliberating citizens. We analyze information aggregation under unanimity rule.