Elles Bulder (p)

Stephen Brunow

The so called Second Demographic Transition (Lesthaeghe and Van der Kaa, 1986), which surfaced in the sixties of the twentieth century in Western Europe and North America, resulted from a significant change in the pattern of norms and values. This again resulted in delayed fertility, a declining population when there was no replenishment through "replacement migration” and an increasing variety of household structures (with a rising number of one-person households). The rise in life expectancy coupled with a declining fertility, evolved into a gradual ageing of the population.
The concept of ‘unbalanced population decline’ (Van Nimwegen and Heering 2009) enables us, while studying population decline, to take into account different motives underlying the decision to migrate during the life course; young people migrating in search of higher education and job opportunities and elderly clustering in places with a high facility level. This unbalanced population decline is taking place in some rural parts and smaller towns in the Netherlands. Especially the two migration flows mentioned above determine the structure of the population and the possibilities for effective family, kin and other social support systems for the elderly.

Method:
Analysis using amongst others recent demographic data from de community of Oldambt (Netherlands)

Results:
It will be shown that the effects of the demographic transition in the North of the Netherlands are accelerated because of unbalanced population decline. Furthermore it will be argued that because of this combination in parts of the Northern Netherlands family, kin and social support systems for the elderly are deteriorating more rapidly than in other parts of the county.

Conclusion:
Combined effects of demographic transition and unbalanced population decline urge for a reconsideration of the possibilities to rely on family, kin and other social support systems in different regions in the Netherlands.

Luigi Benfratello (p), Davide Castellani , Anna D'Ambrosio

Elles Bulder

This study concerns the links between movements of people and movements of capital, i.e. migration and Foreign Direct Investments. A growing international economics literature has shown that migration acts as a factor that decreases the costs of trade between partner countries. The underlying mechanism has been attributed to two mechanisms: an “information effect” and an “enforcement effect”. Through the “information effect”, migrants facilitate the flow of information between the origin and the destination country regarding business opportunities thanks to their knowledge of the home country institutions and language. Through the “enforcement effect” the inclusion of migrants within co-ethnic networks acts as an enforcement mechanism for transnational contracts by weak institutional settings. We argue that migrants, through their information effect, may affect the location choices of FDI by effectively reducing the Liability of Foreignness in overseas investments. We link FDI markets data with a unique database joining a wide set of sources to study the effect of immigrants on the inward FDI received by Italian provinces. Our results show a positive and significant effect of immigrants on FDI and confirm our expectation that their effect is stronger by trade-substituting market-access FDI, i.e. less complex ventures where the information effect is more salient.

Stephan Brunow (p), Oskar Jost

Luigi Benfratello

This paper puts new light on the wage structure of natives and foreigners working in Germany. We are especially interested in the wage gap between both groups. What can we explain by observable, individual, firm and job characteristics? A general problem of such analysis is the chosen reference or comparison group; in our case the group of Germans. We overcome that problem and select a reference group that is potentially unbiased against discrimination or preference and serves therefore ideally for our purpose: This group is a group of German employees that work in firms that solely employ Germans. First evidence shows that most of the wage gap can be explained by observed factors. The remaining, unexplained or “discrimination” part computes to about 91€ in gross wages per year and are therefore negligible from an economic point of view.