The penal system has played a central role in the North Korean government's response to the country's profound economic and social changes. As the informal market economy has expanded, so have the scope of economic crimes. Two refugee surveys—one conducted in China, one in South Korea—document that the regime disproportionately targets politically suspect groups, and particularly those involved in market-oriented economic activities. Levels of violence and deprivation do not appear to differ substantially between the infamous political prison camps, penitentiaries for felons, and labor camps used to incarcerate individuals for a growing number of economic crimes. Such a system may also reflect ulterior motives. High levels of discretion with respect to arrest and sentencing and very high costs of detention, arrest and incarceration encourage bribery; the more arbitrary and painful the experience with the penal system, the easier it is for officials to extort money for avoiding it. These characteristics not only promote regime maintenance through intimidation, but may facilitate predatory corruption as well.
Growth accounting can be used to estimate the general bounds of the contribution the rise of schooling has made to economic growth over the past few centuries. A key assumption of growth accounting is that factors of production are paid their social marginal products. Growth accounting starts with estimates of the growth of individual factors of production, as well as the shares of these factors in total output and estimates of the growth of total product. It then apportions the growth in output into that attributable to growth in each factor of production specified in the analysis and into that due to a residual that cannot otherwise be explained. Estimates of how much schooling has increased the productivity of individual workers, combined with estimates of the increase in schooling completed by the labor force, yield estimates of how much the increase in schooling has contributed to increasing output. A growth accounting approach offers the advantage that with basic estimates (or at least possible ranges) for trends in output, labor force, schooling attainment, and preferably capital stock and factor shares, it yields estimates of schooling's contribution to economic growth. An important disadvantage is that it relies on indirect estimates at the micro level for how schooling influences productivity at the aggregate level, rather than on direct empirical evidence.
we simulate the long-run effects of migrant flows on wages of high-skilled and low-skilled non-migrants in a set of countries using an aggregate model of national economies. New in this literature we calculate the wage effect of emigration as well as immigration. We focus on Europe and compare the outcomes for large Western European countries with those of other key destination countries both in the OECD and outside the OECD. Our analysis builds on an improved database of bilateral stocks and net migration flows of immigrants and emigrants by education level for the years 1990 through 2000. We find that all European countries experienced a decrease in their average wages and a worsening of their wage inequality because of emigration. Whereas, contrary to the popular belief, immigration had nearly equal but opposite effects: positive on average wages and reducing wage inequality of non-movers. These patterns hold true using a range of parameters for our simulations, accounting for the estimates of undocumented immigrants, and correcting for the quality of schooling and/or labor-market downgrading of skills. In terms of wage outcomes, it follows that prevalent public fears in European countries are misplaced; immigration has had a positive average wage effect on native workers. Some concerns should be focused on the wage effect of emigration, instead.
This study measures the impact of changing economic conditions in OECD countries on tourist arrivals to countries/destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean. A model of utility maximization across labor, consumption of goods and services at home, and consumption of tourism services across monopolistically competitive destinations abroad is presented. The model yields estimable equations arrivals as a function of OECD economic conditions and the elasticity of substitution across tourist destinations. Estimates suggest median tourism arrivals decline by at least three to five percent in response to a one percent increase in OECD unemployment, even after controlling for declines in OECD consumption and output gaps. Arrivals to individual destination are driven by differing exposure to OECD country groups sharing similar business cycle characteristics. Estimates of the elasticity of substitution suggest that tourism demand is highly price sensitive, and that a variety of costs to delivering tourism services drive market share losses in uncompetitive destinations. One recent cost change, the 2009 easing of restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, supported a small (countercyclical) boost to Cuba’s arrivals of U.S. non-family travel, as well as a pre-existing surge in family travel (of Cuban origin). Despite the US becoming Cuba’s second highest arrival source, Cuban policymakers have significant scope for lowering the relatively high costs of family travel from the United States.
After accounting for the effect of new official population weights, the labor force held steady in January. The new population controls, however, show that the labor force is around half a million workers smaller than previously thought. In January, the labor force participation rate was 64.2%, the lowest point of the recession. Astonishingly, the labor force is three-quarters of a million workers smaller than it was before the recession started. It would have been expected to increase by roughly 4.1 million workers from December 2007 to January 2010 given working-age population growth over this period. Thus, as the Figure shows, the pool of “missing workers,” that is, workers who dropped out of (or didn’t enter) the labor force during the downturn, numbers 4.9 million. If just half of these workers were currently in the labor force and officially counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 10.5% instead of 9.0%. None of these workers is reflected in the official unemployment count, but their eventual entry or re-entry into the labor force will contribute to keeping the unemployment rate high going forward.