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The pro-export effect of sub-national migration networks: New evidence from Spanish provinces
Full text linkWe investigate the effect that subnational networks of immigrants
and emigrants had on exports from Spanish provinces (NUTS3) over the period of 2007–2016 by integrating state-of-the-art advances in the gravity model
literature. In particular, we allow for heterogeneity in provincial export capacity, which significantly reduces pro-export effects, and select the Poisson
Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood as the most suitable estimator according to diagnostic tests. When both immigration and emigration are instrumented, the
pro-export effect of immigrants found by previous studies vanishes and that of
emigrants, instead, appears appreciable. The results we obtained suggest that
over the period that encompasses the double-deep crisis, immigrants did not
show significant information and enforcement effects in the considered context, while the effects of emigrant demand for home-country goods may have
been important. The prevalence of emigrant over immigrant effects appears
attributable to a change in the composition of the migration stocks over the
considered period of crisis
Per qualche euro in più: un’analisi RDD della generosità dei sussidi di disoccupazione
Full text linkA few Euro more: benefit generosity and the optimal path of unemployment benefits
Full text linkIn this paper, we exploit the provision of higher UB at different points of the unemployment spell to shed light on the relative cost of insurance at different horizons after the job loss. First, we exploit a double cap system in an RDD setting to study the effect of higher benefit levels in the early part of unemployment spell on time on benefits and non-employment. We find that higher benefits increase the time spent on benefits and in non-employment, with no impact on new job quality. Second, we exploit an age-based discontinuity in benefit duration, which determines higher benefits later in the spell, to compare the behavioural and mechanical costs of these two variations in benefits. We find that the moral hazard costs are greater for higher benefit levels early in the spell. In addition, we provide evidence of a slight negative selection in long term unemployment and argue that the long-term unemployed face higher uncertainty in their employment prospects. These findings suggest that higher benefits later in the unemployment spell generate lower costs and would provide higher insurance. Our results question the optimality of strongly declining schedules for unemployment benefit levels
International Investment Agreements and FDI inflows in Africa
Full text linkUsing investment-level data, we study the location choice of 8,283 greenfield investments in 44 African countries over the 2003-2017 period, focusing on the role of International Investment Agreements. We document a positive relation between the existence of these agreements and the location of FDI into African countries. This overall effect appears to be driven by investments in Services and in Construction and Electricity, while no effect appears to exist for Extraction investments
Foreign direct investments in Africa: are Chinese investors different?
No full textWe study whether the determinants of greenfield FDI in Africa differ between Chinese and non-Chinese investors. By using investment-level data we focus on the differential effect of risk- and information-related factors, i.e., investment protection provided by International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and agglomeration economies both at an aggregate level and for different functions. Chinese investors appear to be less reliant on internal and country-of-origin agglomeration and on investment protection agreements than non-Chinese ones. We argue that Chinese investors are backed by the direct engagement of their State when locating in Africa so that firm co-location and IIA protection are less salient in affecting their location choices
Foreign Direct Investments in Africa: are Chinese investors different?
No full textIn light of the upsurge in Chinese investments in Africa since Deng’s ‘‘Go Global’’ policy, we study whether
the location choices of greenfield investors in Africa differ between Chinese and non-Chinese firms. We
focus on risk- and information-related factors, i.e., investment protection provided by investment agreements
and country-of-origin, industry, and internal agglomeration. We argue that Chinese firms enjoy ownership
advantages that reduce their concern for risk. Our results show that Chinese firms are less sensitive to
risk-mitigating factors compared to firms from advanced and other emerging economies. A lower reliance
on internal agglomeration emerges as their distinctive trait in internationalization. We attribute this result
to the systemic engagement of the Chinese government, which goes beyond state ownership and reduces
the ‘‘liability of foreignness’’. Chinese firms also appear more market-seeking and manufacturing-oriented,
aggressively pursuing knowledge spillovers. Contrary to common perceptions, they do not seem distinctively
resource-seeking or to pursue unstable countries
The impact of Foreign Direct Investments on the Human Development Index in Africa: a dynamic panel analysis
No full textWhile numerous studies have analyzed the relationship between Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and economic growth, researchers have devoted very little attention to the impact of FDI on other dimensions of welfare, such as health and education. In this paper, we explore the effects of FDI on the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) and its three components (namely income, health and education) in African countries by using dynamic models for a panel dataset of 35 countries observed in the 1991-2017 period. In doing so, we take into account the very limited cross-sectional dimension of the dataset and the ensuing pitfalls of IV/GMM-like estimators by relying on the Least Squares Dummy Variables Corrected (LSDVC) estimator (Kiviet, 1995).
The analysis shows, overall, a positive but quite weakly significant effect of FDI on the HDI. When we consider the different components of the Index, we ascertain that the positive effect is, predictably, mainly determined by the Income component, which is positively and significantly affected by FDI flows across all model specifications. Less predictably, we detect a positive, although marginally significant in just a few of our specifications, effect on the health component of the Index. The education dimension does not seem affected by FDI.
To our knowledge, this is among the first attempts to disentangle the effect of FDI on the different components of the HDI of African countries, and the first to do it by taking into account the peculiar characteristics of the dataset. Future research should be aimed at further exploring the dynamics of the individual components of the Index, analyzing the diversified effects of FDI in different industries and from different origin countries, as well as exploring the heterogeneity given by the very different FDI destinations included in the sample
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Migration and the location of MNE activities: evidence from Italian provinces
Full text linkWe investigate the migration-inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) nexus in narrow geographies. A novel two-stage empirical strategy allows us to investigate the role of migration as determinant of multinational enterprises (MNEs) location choices and unpick heterogeneity in foreign investors’ preferences towards the presence of migrants in the host location. This allows us to shed light on the relative importance of the underlying mechanisms linking migration and inward FDI. Relying on 1,113 greenfield investments by 895 MNEs in Italian NUTS3 regions over 2003–2015, we find that immigrants from the country of origin of the investor exert a positive but highly heterogeneous effects on MNE location choices. Investors are more sensitive to the presence of migrants from their country of origin when they lack experience in the destination country (first time investors) and when their investments concern market-access or business-services (downstream) activities. This is consistent with the view that migrants act as information brokers that bridge the fixed costs of international business activities
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