To what extent does immigration affect the economic institutions in destination countries? While there is much evidence that economic institutions in developed nations are either unaffected or improved after immigration, there is little evidence of how immigration affects the economic institutions of developing countries that typically have weaker institutions.
... See More + Using the Synthetic Control Method, this study estimates a significant and long-lasting positive effect on Jordanian economic institutions from the surge of refugees from the First Gulf War. The surge of refugees to Jordan in 1990–1991 was massive and equal to 10 percent of Jordan's population in 1990. Importantly, these refugees were able to have a large and direct impact on Jordanian economic institutions because they could work, live, and vote immediately upon entry due to a quirk in Jordanian law. The refugee surge was the main mechanism by which Jordan's economic institutions improved in the decades that followed.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8817 APR 11, 2019
Remittances are an important source of income for households in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as a crucial source of foreign exchange for countries in the region.
... See More + Despite the relatively large inflows of remittances to SADC, the cost of sending money to and within the region is significantly higher than other regions in the world. To address the high cost of remittances globally, the World Bank has been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency and safety of the market for remittances. At the regional level, the SADC Committee of Central Bank Governors (CCBG) has led several initiatives aimed at enhancing the regional payment system infrastructure, also with a focus on reducing the cost of remittances within the region.
See Less -
Ratings for the Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA) Project for Bangladesh were as follows: outcomes were moderately unsatisfactory, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: the success of a project depends a great deal on its leadership capacity and empowerment. Contrary to the expectation, the Project turned out to be politically sensitive. Project management as well as its steering committee were often constrained in making decisions based on available technical advice. In hindsight, the design for the implementation arrangements could have considered more robust mitigating measures for likely political interference in the implementation of the Project. The Project recruited a professional communications firm to implement strategic communication programs which was effective in the promotion of NID authentication services. It has also collected feedback from the citizens and users of NID services about their experience. There is continuing high demand for NID services by the citizens as well as different agencies, and it would be important for NIDW to further strengthen its communication strategy after closing of the Project. Significant investment is required to update and maintain a database for over 103 million registrants. The NID system has many busy users to conduct their essential Customer Due Diligence. The NIDW will need to further collect revenues to run the system on its own and be economically viable. Therefore, an effective business model would be important to diversify NID services. The private sector will be willing to pay for the value-added services of the NID system.
See Less -
Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR4570 AUG 24, 2018
Using a rich data set of primary school students, this paper estimates the effects of immigrant concentration in the classroom on the academic achievement of natives.
... See More + In contrast with previous contributions, it exploits rare information on age-at-migration to estimate separate spillover effects by duration of stay of immigrant classmates. To identify treatment effects, it uses cohort-by-cohort deviations in immigrant concentration within schools combined with attractive features of the Dutch school system. Overall, the paper finds no effect of the concentration of immigrant students on natives’ test scores. However, although immigrant students who have been in the country for some time have virtually no effect on natives, the analysis finds a small negative effect of recent immigrants in the classroom on natives’ test scores. The effect is significant only for language test scores, but insignificant for mathematics test scores. When significant, effect sizes are quite small compared to other educational interventions and classroom peer effects estimated in other contexts.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8492 JUN 25, 2018
This Policy Research Report (PRR), Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets, is an attempt to address this tension between the academic research and the public discourse by focusing on the economic evidence.
... See More + The authors suggested a labor market–oriented, economically motivated rationale to the political opposition to migration. Global migration patterns lead to high concentrations of immigrants in certain places, industries, and occupations. For example, the top 10 destination countries account for 60 percent of global immigration. Four states host half of all immigrants in the United States, and 10 counties host half of the immigrants in these four states. Immigrants are further concentrated in a narrow set of industries and occupations in specific geographic regions. The same pattern repeats itself in almost every major destination country. It is these geographic and labor market concentrations of immigrants that lead to increased anxiety, insecurity, and potentially significant short-term disruptions among native-born workers. Furthermore, the positive effects and benefits in the destination labor markets tend to be more diffuse whereas the costs are more concentrated and easily attributable to immigration. This PRR aims to inform and stimulate debate, contribute to better policies, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge and data gaps. It presents key facts and findings, research methods and data sources on economic migration and refugees, the determinants of their decisions, and their impact on labor markets in both source and destination countries. The labor market focus of the PRR is motivated not only by the fact that important development and poverty implications of migration— the World Bank’s operational and analytical focus—work through these labor market channels. This focus also reflects space and time constraints, and the absence of rigorous research in certain other areas, which simply do not allow an all-encompassing report that covers every dimension of migration. We believe many of the social, cultural, and politicaldimensions are highly important; and we are certain future analytical work within and outside the World Bank will address these shortcomings.
See Less -
Southern Africa has a long history of human mobility centered around the migration of labor to farms and mines in the region. Patterns of migration and displacement have since been transformed by the end of Apartheid, changing economic systems, and conflict and political instability, both in the region and elsewhere.
... See More + Today mobility in the region is motivated by a combination of diverse social, political and economic reasons; shaped by long-standing historical movements and re-shaped by newer patterns of urbanization and displacement; organized through various legal and extra-legal means and governed by fragmented and contradictory legal frameworks. These complex patterns of migration and displacement, state responses to them, and the implications of mobility for job outcomes in South Africa - as the major destination country in the region - are the subject matter of this study. Our quantitative analysis on the impact of immigration on local jobs in South Africa finds that one immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for South Africans during the period analyzed (1996 and 2011). These results and the substantiations provided in this publication are significant for policy makers and development actors in South Africa and the wider region, and as such, their implications should be seriously considered.
See Less -
Southern Africa has a long history of human mobility centered around the migration of labor to farms and mines in the region. Patterns of migration and displacement have since been transformed by the end of Apartheid, changing economic systems, and conflict and political instability, both in the region and elsewhere.
... See More + Today mobility in the region is motivated by a combination of diverse social, political and economic reasons; shaped by long-standing historical movements and re-shaped by newer patterns of urbanization and displacement; organized through various legal and extra-legal means and governed by fragmented and contradictory legal frameworks. These complex patterns of migration and displacement, state responses to them, and the implications of mobility for job outcomes in South Africa - as the major destination country in the region - are the subject matter of this study. Our quantitative analysis on the impact of immigration on local jobs in South Africa finds that one immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for South Africans during the period analyzed (1996 and 2011). These results and the substantiations provided in this publication are significant for policy makers and development actors in South Africa and the wider region, and as such, their implications should be seriously considered.
See Less -
This issue of Indonesia Daily Economic Update for May 30, 2018 contains economic highlights, including: Bank Indonesia (BI) Board of Governors has decided to raise its 7-Day Reverse Repo Rate by 25 basis points to 4.75 percent, while also raised the deposit and lending facility rates by the same amount to 4.0 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, effective on 31 May 2018.
... See More +See Less -
The movement of people in Southeast Asia is an issue of increasing importance. Workers move throughout Southeast Asia in search of economic opportunities.
... See More + This book highlights how mobility affects the well-being of workers, the constraints workers face when migrating for better opportunities, and the solutions to ease these constraints. The diversity of economic development in Southeast Asia means that there are ample opportunities for workers to seek out better jobs that pay higher wages. The book documents why workers are not always able to take advantage of these opportunities, what is lost when they are not able to take advantage of them, and potential policies that will expand their access to them. The report is structured as follows: part one gives migration and regional integration in Southeast Asia; and part two presents migration policy in Southeast Asia.
See Less -
