This paper re-examines the role of labor-market competition as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration. We claim two main contributions. First, we use more sophisticated measures of the degree of exposure to competition from immigrants than previously done. Specifically, we focus on the...

This paper summarises the key findings of a recent study on the impact of Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (EU) on labour markets in the current Member States. The study focuses on three main channels, along which enlargement may affect labour markets in the EU, namely i) trade, ii)...

This study utilizes a panel fixed effects model to explore the economic impact of hurricanes on local crop production in Jamaica using quarterly 1999-2008 micro level data. We find, in general, that hurricanes will have a negative impact on production but not for crops grown below ground. The...

Food production and distribution is essential for human well-being, but the food sector has experienced a number of difficulties maintaining worker health and productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine employment status changes of persons recently employed in the U.S. food sector with...

Monitoring soil quality provides indispensable inputs for effective policy advice, but very few poorer countries can implement high-quality surveys on soil. We offer an alternative, low-cost imputation-based approach to generating various soil quality indicators. The estimation results validate...

Reflecting recent enforcement policy activism of US states, this paper examines federal-state overlap of illegal immigration policy in a spatial context. Keeping the US-Mexico context in mind, we assume that labor from a source nation enters a host nation through bordering states. Once in the...

Lack of adequate childcare is a main reason women cite for not participating in the labor force. We investigate the effect of a reform that lengthened school schedules from half to full days in Chile - essentially providing zero-cost childcare - on different maternal labor participation...

Demand for air quality depends on health impacts and defensive investments that improve health, but little research assesses the empirical importance of defenses. We study an important cap-and-trade market, which dramatically reduced NOx emissions, a key ingredient in ozone formation. A rich...

In spite of widespread acclaims of social audits as low-cost and powerful participatory tools that can bolster awareness and improve public service delivery, a key policy question is what such audits have achieved so far. Using a unique panel data set assembled from official social audit...

Maternity and family leave policies enable mothers to take time off work to prepare for and recover from childbirth and to care for their new children. While there is substantial variation in the details of these policies around the world, the existing research yields the following general...