On August 13, 1961 the former German Democratic Republic commenced the construction of the #Berlin Wall, which separated West-Berlin from its surroundings until the destruction starting on November 9, 1989.
In her article published August 13, 2021 on “As migration is rising, so are border barriers“, author and data journalist Gianna-Carina Grün of DW (Deutsche Welle) writes on the occasion of this anniversary on walls and fences worldwide.
Her article refers also to the study of Victoria Vernon and Klaus F. Zimmermann (2021), “Walls and Fences: A Journey Through History and Economics”, in: Kourtit, K., Newbold, B., Nijkamp, P. and Partridge, M., The Economic Geography of Cross-Border Migration, Springer, Heidelberg et al., pp. 33-54, and other remarks both authors made in personal correspondence with Gianna Grün.
The contribution of economics professors Vernon and Zimmermann studies the motivations for building walls and fences through history and draws conclusions of their poor effectiveness. Walls and fences typically do not solve the problems and disappear in the long-run. But building border walls and fences has become popular among policymakers worldwide since the early 1990s as the authors show in their article.
Article abstract: Throughout history, border walls and fences have been built for defense, to claim land, to signal power, and to control migration. The costs of fortifications are large while the benefits are questionable. The recent trend of building walls and fences signals a paradox: In spite of the anti-immigration rhetoric of policymakers, there is little evidence that walls are effective in reducing terrorism, migration, and smuggling. Economic research suggests large benefits to open border policies in the face of increasing global migration pressures. Less restrictive migration policies should be accompanied by institutional changes aimed at increasing growth, improving security and reducing income inequality in poorer countries.
As Klaus F. Zimmermann, also the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO), stated on the occasion of the 60th anniversary: “The fate of the Berlin Wall is a showcase for the global historical experience that walls and fences do not serve even their builders in the long-term.”
Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
The position is consistent with observations that restricting circular labor migration can be counterproductive. See Zimmermann‘s article on “Circular Migration“.
Zimmermann will present the joint article with Victoria Vernon on August 27, 2021 in a Special Academic Session on The Economic Geography of Cross-Border Migration as part of the 60th Annual Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), which is organized virtually from Bozen.
2021 Virtual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies ISQOLS 2021 CONFERENCE: “Quality-of-life and Adaptation in a Virulent World” VIRTUAL EVENT: 23-27, AUGUST 2021
The 2021 Virtual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS 2021) on “Quality-of-life and Adaptation in a Virulent World” takes place on 23-27 August 2021 as a virtual event. The conference features five GLO/EHERO Special Sessions on Happiness Economics put together under the direction of Martijn Hendriks, Martijn Burger, and Milena Nikolova. Milena Nikolova is also the GLO Cluster Lead on Happiness Economics and a Section Editor dealing with happiness economics in the GLO-supported forthcoming Handbook “Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics” edited by GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann. A number of review papers presented in the GLO/EHERO Special Sessions are articles from this Handbook.
Stephanie Rossouw and Talita Greyling: Big Data and Happiness
Olga Popova and Vladimir Otrachshenko: Religion and happiness
Clemens Hetschko, Andreas Knabe and Ronnie Schöb: Happiness, Work and Identity
Martin Binder and Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg: Self-Employment and Subjective Well-Being
Happiness Economics II: 10.00-11.40
Diana Tam and Arthur Grimes: The Economics of Free Speech: A Subjective Wellbeing Approach
Philip Morrison: Whose happiness in which cities? The urban wellbeing paradox revisited
Martijn Hendriks and Randall Birnberg: Happiness in the daily socio-cultural integration process: A day reconstruction study among US immigrants in Germany
Jeehoon Han and Caspar Kaiser: Changes in Time Use and Happiness
Happiness Economics III: 12.00-13.40
Richard Easterlin and Kelsey O’Connor: The Easterlin Paradox
Alberto Prati and Claudia Senik: Feeling good or feeling better?
Robin Konietzny, Milena Nikolova and Bart Los: Trade and Job (In)Security: The Two Sides of Occupational Import Exposure
Happiness Economics IV: 14.00-15.40
Carol Graham, Emily Dobson and James Kunhardt: When Public Health Crises Become Entwined: How Trends in COVID-19, Deaths of Despair, and Well-being Track Across the U.S.A.
Francesco Sarracino, Kelsey O’Connor, Chiara Peroni, Talita Greyling and Stephanie Rossouw: Well-being expressed through Twitter during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Julia Schmidtke, Clemens Hetschko, Gesine Stephan, Michael Eid, Ronnie Schöb and Mario Lawes: The impact of Covid-19 on mental health and well-being. An event-study based on high-frequency longitudinal survey data
Happiness Economics V: 19.00-20.40
Paul Fenton Villar: Is there a Mineral-Induced ‘Economic Euphoria’?: Evidence from Latin America
Mariano Rojas, Karen Watkins and Lázaro Rodríguez: The Happiness of CEOs in Family and Nonfamily Firms: Different Explanatory Structures and its Consequences
Annie Tubadji: Consumer Happiness and AI Sensitivity to Cultural and Moral Preferences
Posted inEvents, News|Comments Off on Five GLO/EHERO Sessions on “Happiness Economics” on the 2021 Virtual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies on Friday, August 27.
A new GLO Discussion Paper shows that exposure to the FIFA Soccer World Cups had had a negative impact on male Vietnamese student performance and subsequent labor market success.
Author Abstract: The FIFA Soccer World Cups often happen within one month just before the national entrance exam to universities and colleges in Vietnam. Watching soccer matches can distract male students from their studies and reduce their probability to pass the exam. We find that Vietnamese men who had the university entrance exam during the FIFA Soccer World Cups tend to have a lower proportion of having a bachelor’s degree. Exposure to World Cups also reduces the probability of having a formal job, a high-skilled job and management position for men. Using the exposure to World Cups as a natural shock for tertiary education, we find a large and positive effect of tertiary education on employment. It confirms the important role of education in reducing gender gap in employment.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds a decreasing trend in subjective poverty in 16 of 28 countries. Conversely, the official relative income poverty indicator exhibits increasing trends in eleven countries, with decreasing trends in only four countries.
Author Abstract: When developing anti-poverty policies, policy makers need accurate data on the prevalence of poverty. In this paper, we focus on subjective poverty, a concept which has been largely neglected in literature, yet remains a conceptually appealing way to define poverty. The primary goal of this study is to re-examine the concept of subjective poverty measurement and to estimate trends in subjective poverty rates in the European Union. Our estimations are based on a minimum income question using data from a representative survey, EU-SILC, and we find a decreasing trend in subjective poverty in 16 of 28 countries. Conversely, the official relative income poverty indicator exhibits increasing trends in eleven countries, with decreasing trends in only four countries. We believe that these trends may reflect changes in societies which have not been previously captured, and our results thus enrich the existing data on general poverty trends in the EU.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that social mobility rates were low during the Communist regime, and did not change measurably during the transition; however, the composition of the political elite changed fast and sharply.
Author Abstract: This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary 1949-2017, for upper class and underclass families, using surnames to measure social status. In these years there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People’s Republic, 1949-1989, a Communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. Then the modern liberal democracy, 1989-2020, a free-market economy. We find five surprising things. First, social mobility rates were low for both upper- and lower-class families 1949- 2017, with an underlying intergenerational status correlation of 0.6-0.8. Second, social mobility rates under communism were the same as in the subsequent capitalist regime. Third, the Romani minority throughout both periods showed even lower social mobility rates. Fourth, the descendants of the noble class in Hungary in the eighteenth century were still significantly privileged in 1949 and later. And fifth, while social mobility rates did not change measurably during the transition, the composition of the political elite changed fast and sharply.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper evaluate the differential responses of poor households vs. non-poor households to changes in food expenditures and prices and simulate the welfare losses from food price changes across poverty definitions.
Author Abstract: Evidence suggests that household responses to price and income changes are significantly sensitive across income levels and rural-urban location. In this paper, we focus on poor households vs. non-poor households using two definitions of poverty, objective and subjective. We evaluate the differential responses of poor households vs. non-poor households to changes in food expenditures and prices and simulate the welfare losses from food price changes across poverty definitions. We use the QUAIDS model to estimate food elasticities with data from the National Expenditure and Household Income Survey, 2016-2017, from Uruguay. Expenditure elasticities at the food level reveal that bread and dairy products are a necessity-food category, regardless of the poverty status and across poverty definitions, while beverages are a luxury good. The demand sensitivity for the rest of the food categories differs by poverty status and poverty definitions. Uncompensated own-price elasticities indicate that when poverty is defined objectively, then changes in demand due to changes in price are greater for poor households (except for meat products). However, poor households, under the subjective definition, are more sensitive than non-poor households only to changes in beverage prices. Additionally, changes in household economic welfare due to price increases vary according to poverty status. On average, the percentage of total income needed to avoid a loss in economic welfare of poor households, defined by the objective method, is double that required by the non-poor households, for all price changes. However, differences are much smaller when using the subjective approach to measure poverty.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper studies a natural experiment in the US to find that there are relevant effects of in utero exposure to polluted water on health at birth.
Author Abstract: In 2014, the city of Flint, MI in the U.S. changed its public water source, resulting in severe water contamination and a public health crisis. Using the Flint Water Crisis as a natural experiment, we estimate the effect of in utero exposure to polluted water on health at birth. Matching vital statistics birth records with various sources of data, we use a Synthetic Control Method (SCM) to identify the causal impact of water pollution on key birth outcomes. Our results suggest that the crisis modestly increased the rate of low birth weight (LBW) by 1.8 percentage points (or 15.5 percent) but had little effect on the length of gestation or rate of prematurity. However, these effects are larger among children born to black mothers, as indicated by an increase in the rate of LBW by 2.5 percentage points (or 19 percent). Children born to white mothers exhibit, on average, a 30.1-gram decrease in birth weight. We find little evidence that the male-to-female sex ratio declines in the overall population, suggesting that the inutero scarring effect of the Flint Water Crisis may dominate the channel of mortality selection. However, we observe a slight decline in the sex ratio among children born to black mothers. Finally, we find no notable change in the fertility rates of either black women or white women in Flint. These results are robust to a rich set of placebo and falsification tests. Our findings highlight the importance and urgency of upgrading U.S. aging, lead-laced water systems in promoting racial and ethnic health equity.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper suggests that extreme weather conditions, including those associated with climate change, could make children vulnerable to reduced physical activity.
Author Abstract: This study explores the differential impact of weather on time allocation to physical activity and sleep by children and their parents. We use nationally representative data with time use indicators objectively measured on multiple occasions for more than 1,100 child-parent pairs, coupled with daily meteorological data. Employing an individual fixed effects regression model to estimate the causal impact of weather, we find that unfavourable weather conditions, as measured by cold or hot temperatures or rain, cause children to reduce physical activity time and increase sedentary time. However, such weather conditions have little impact on children’s sleep time or the time allocation of their parents. We also find substantial differential weather impact, especially on children’s time allocation, by weekdays/weekends and parental employment status, suggesting that these factors may contribute to explaining the differential weather impact that we observed. Our results additionally provide evidence of adaptation, as temperature appears to have a more pronounced impact on time allocation in colder months and colder regions. The results suggest that extreme weather conditions, including those associated with climate change, could make children vulnerable to reduced physical activity.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Interested researchers are cordially invited to submit their abstracts or papers for presentation consideration. The 37th EBES Conference in Berlin will take place on October 6-8 2021 in Hybrid Mode (online and in-person). GLO is a co-organizing partner, and FOM University of Applied Sciences is the local host.
This is aGLO supported event. EBESis theEurasia Business and Economics Society, a strategic partner and institutional supporter of GLO as well as FOM University of Applied Sciences. GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann is also President of EBES.FOM and GLO will organize own sessions for the event.
Invited Speakers
EBES is pleased to announce that distinguished colleagues Dorothea Schäfer, Klaus F. Zimmermann and Marco Vivarelli will participate as keynote speakers and/or invited editors.
Dorothea Schäfer is the Research Director of Financial Markets at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and Adjunct Professor of Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University. She has also worked as an evaluator for the European Commission, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and Chairwoman of Evaluation Committee for LOEWE (Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-ökonomischer Exzellenz des Bundeslandes Hessen). She managed various research projects supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the EU Commission, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Stiftung Geld und Währung. Her researches were published in various journals such as Journal of Financial Stability; German Economic Review; International Journal of Money and Finance; and Small Business Economics. She is regularly invited as an expert in parliamentary committees, including the Finance Committee of the Bundestag and gives lectures on financial market issues in Germany and abroad. She is also a member of the Editorial Board and Editor-in-Chief of the policy-oriented journal “Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung” and Editor-in-Chief of Eurasian Economic Review. Her research topics include financial crisis, financial market regulation, financing constraints, gender, and financial markets, financial transaction tax.
Klaus F. Zimmermann is President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO); Co-Director of POP at UNU-MERIT; Full Professor of Economics at Bonn University (em.); Honorary Professor, Maastricht University, Free University of Berlin and Renmin University of China; Member, German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Regional Science Academy, and Academia Europaea (Chair of its Section for Economics, Business and Management Sciences). Among others, he has worked at Macquarie University, the Universities of Melbourne, Princeton, Harvard, Munich, Kyoto, Mannheim, Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania. Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Fellow of the European Economic Association (EEA). Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Population Economics. Editorial Board of International Journal of Manpower, Research in Labor Economics and Comparative Economic Studies, among others. Founding Director, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Past-President, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). Distinguished John G. Diefenbaker Award 1998 of the Canada Council for the Arts; Outstanding Contribution Award 2013 of the European Investment Bank. Rockefeller Foundation Policy Fellow 2017; Eminent Research Scholar Award 2017, Australia; EBES Fellow Award 2018. He has published in many top journals including Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Public Choice, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Population Economics and Journal of Public Economics. His research fields are population, labor, development, and migration.
Marco Vivarelli is a full professor at the Catholic University of Milano, where he is also Director of the Institute of Economic Policy. He is Professorial Fellow at UNU-MERIT, Maastricht; Research Fellow at IZA; Fellow of the Global Labor Organization (GLO). He is member of the Scientific Executive Board of the Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES); member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO, Vienna) and has been scientific consultant for the International Labour Office (ILO), World Bank (WB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the European Commission. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Eurasian Business Review, Editor of Small Business Economics, Associate Editor of Industrial and Corporate Change, Associate Editor of Economics EJournal, member of the Editorial Board of Sustainability and he has served as a referee for more than 70 international journals. He is author/editor of various books and his papers have been published in journals such as Cambridge Journal of Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economics Letters, Industrial and Corporate Change, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Economics, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Journal of Productivity Analysis, Labour Economics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Regional Studies, Research Policy, Small Business Economics, Southern Economic Journal, World Bank Research Observer, and World Development. His current research interests include the relationship between innovation, employment, and skills; the labor market and income distribution impacts of globalization; the entry and post-entry performance of newborn firms.
Executive Board
Prof. Klaus F. Zimmermann, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, and Free University Berlin Prof. Jonathan Batten, University Utara Malaysia, Malaysia Prof. Iftekhar Hasan, Fordham University, U.S.A. Prof. Euston Quah, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Prof. John Rust, Georgetown University, U.S.A. Prof. Dorothea Schäfer, German Institute for Economic Research DIW Berlin, Germany Prof. Marco Vivarelli, Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Abstract/Paper Submission
Authors are invited to submit their abstracts or papers no later than August 20, 2021
General inquiries regarding the call for papers should be directed to ebes@ebesweb.org.
Publication Opportunities
Qualified papers can be published in EBES journals (Eurasian Business Review and Eurasian Economic Review) or EBES proceedings books after a peer review process without any submission or publication fees. EBES journals (EABR and EAER) are published by Springer and both are indexed in the SCOPUS, EBSCO EconLit with Full Text, Google Scholar, ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide, CNKI, EBSCO Business Source, EBSCO Discovery Service, ProQuest International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service, ProQuest ABI/INFORM, ProQuest Business Premium Collection, ProQuest Central, ProQuest Turkey Database, ProQuest-ExLibris Primo, ProQuest-ExLibris Summon, Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Naver, SCImago, ABDC Journal Quality List, Cabell’s Directory, and Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory. In addition, while EAER is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics), EABR is indexed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Also, all accepted abstracts will be published electronically in the Conference Program and the Abstract Book (with an ISBN number). It will be distributed to all conference participants at the conference via USB. Although submitting full papers are not required, all the submitted full papers will also be included in the conference proceedings in a USB.
After the conference, participants will also have the opportunity to send their paper to be published (after a refereeing process managed by EBES) in the Springer’s series Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics (no submission and publication fees). This is indexed by Scopus. It will also be sent to Clarivate Analytics in order to be reviewed for coverage in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH). Please note that the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th (Vol. 2), 21st, and 24th EBES Conference Proceedings are accepted for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH). Other conference proceedings are in progress.
Important Dates
Conference Date: October 6-8, 2021 Abstract Submission Deadline: August 20, 2021 Reply-by: August 23, 2021* Registration Deadline: August 31, 2021 Submission of the Virtual Presentation: August 31, 2021 Announcement of the Program: September 10, 2021 Paper Submission Deadline (Optional): August 23, 2021** Paper Submission for the EBES journals: November 16, 2021
* The decision regarding the acceptance/rejection of each abstract/paper will be communicated with the corresponding author within a week of submission.
** Completed paper submission is optional. If you want to be considered for the Best Paper Award or your full paper to be included in the conference proceedings in the USB, after submitting your abstract before August 20, 2021, you must also submit your completed (full) paper by August 31, 2021.
Contact
Ugur Can, Director of EBES (ebes@ebesweb.org) Dr. Ender Demir, Conference Coordinator of EBES (demir@ebesweb.org)
Posted inEvents, News, Research|Comments Off on Call for contributions: 37th EBES Conference in collaboration with FOM University and GLO, Berlin/Germany, October 6-8, 2021. Submission deadline for abstracts is August 20!
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that living in a student room as a tertiary education student in Belgium (instead of commuting between one’s parental residence and college or university) does not affect exam results.
Author Abstract: We study whether living in a student room as a tertiary education student (instead of commuting between one’s parental residence and college or university) affects exam results. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study this relationship beyond cross-sectional analysis. That is, we exploit rich longitudinal data on 1,653 Belgian freshmen students’ residential status and exam scores to control for observed heterogeneity as well as for individual fixed (or random) effects. We find that after correcting for unobserved heterogeneity, the association found in earlier contributions disappears. This finding of no significant impact of living in a student room on exam results is robust for other methods used for causal inference including instrumental variable techniques.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
