Vu M. Ngo, Klaus F. Zimmermann, Phuc V. Nguyen, Toan Luu Duc Huynh and Huan H. Nguyen (2022). “CAMPAGNE VACCINALE. Bons et mauvais élèves de la vaccination dans le monde : radioscopie des facteurs clés.”

Interview with the French media Atlantico. PDF. LINK to the French website.

Q: What are the main criteria for determining the success of a vaccination campaign in a given country ?

Our study looks at this from a global, cross-country perspective investigating how fast countries have moved with their vaccination campaigns after they got access to the vaccine. Factors considered in our statistical analysis were political regimes, the education system, Gross Domestic Product per capita, population density, share of older inhabitants, vaccines purchased, vaccine policies, average daily new infected COVID-19 cases and variables controlling for differences across continents.

Q: Do some countries have a structural advantage before starting a national vaccination campaign?

The intensity of the educational system is the most important, in particular at the beginning of the campaign. Later in the process, to get speed, it is the economic strength of the country. More democratic countries have advantages at the outset, they are more sensitive in reacting to people’s needs. But the differences to more autocratic countries become less relevant in the process.  Differences in vaccine policies mattered initially, but not afterwards.

Q: How important is it to determine these criteria before establishing a nationwide vaccination strategy ? Can the variables of the campaign be adjusted to fit the parameters of each country ? Can we see common incentives for different countries?  

These criteria provide a reference to judge the quality of country-specific strategies, the counterfactual to what the performance was against the average country in such a national situation. Since the challenge is global, it becomes also obvious that the rich and educated countries of the world need to support those that are still behind. It is also in their own interest.

Q: You note that democratic regimes have a faster rate of vaccination but that this advantage fades as they try to vaccinate more people. How much does the type of government in a country affect the success of a vaccination campaign? Based on these criteria, in what range is France?

We distinguished between full democracy, flaw democracy, hybrid regime and autocratic country. Initially, the differences of all those with autocratic countries were strong, but with the exception of full democracies these differences indeed faded away. Full democracies, as France, showed a persistent advantage however in the whole process. But we should admit that political regimes explain only 11% to 15% of the total factors we measure associated with the vaccination success.

Background studies:

Vu M. Ngo, Klaus F. Zimmermann, Phuc V. Nguyen, Toan Luu Duc Huynh and Huan H. Nguyen (2022). “Understanding the setup and speed of global COVID-19 vaccination campaigns”. VoxEU on 25 January 2022.

Vu M. Ngo, Klaus F. Zimmermann, Phuc V. Nguyen, Toan Luu Duc Huynh and Huan H. Nguyen (2021). “How education and GDP drive the COVID-19 vaccination campaign”. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 16757.

Related Covid-19 papers:

Gokhan Karabulut, Klaus F. Zimmermann, Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin and Asli Cansin Doker (2021), “Democracy and COVID-19 Outcomes”. Economics Letters (EL-Prepublication, EL-Online Appendix) Volume 203, June 2021, 109840 Open Access; free PDF. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109840

Klaus F. Zimmermann, Gokhan Karabulut, Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin and Asli Cansin Doker  (2020), “Inter-country Distancing, Globalization and the Coronavirus Pandemic“, The World Economy, Vol. 43, pp. 1484-1498. OPEN ACCESS, doi:10.1111/twec.12969. PDF.

Ends;

This book focuses on the earnings and human capital investment of Asian immigrants to the US after 1965. In addition, it provides a primer on studying immigrant economic assimilation, by explaining economists’ methodology to measure immigrant earnings growth and the challenges with this approach. The book also illustrates strategies to more fully use census data such as how to measure family income and how to use “panel data” that is embedded in the census.

The book is a historical study as well as an extremely timely work from a policy angle. The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act set the United States apart among economically developed countries due to the weight given to family unification. Based on analyses by economists—which suggest that the quality of immigrants to the US fell after the 1965 law—policymakers have called for fundamental changes in the US system to align it with the immigration systems of other countries. This book offers an alternative view point by proposing a richer model that incorporates investments in human capital by immigrants and their families. It challenges the conventional model in three ways: First, it views the decline in immigrants’ entry earnings after 1965 as due to investment in human capital, not to permanently lower “quality.” Second, it adds human capital investment and earnings growth after entry to the model. And finally, by taking investments by family members into account, it challenges the policy recommendation that immigrants should be selected for their occupational qualifications rather than family connections.”

Human Capital Investment. A History of Asian Immigrants and Their Family Ties

Authors: Duleep, H., Regets, M., Sanders, S., Wunnava, P.

“The authors attack forcefully an established myth in the US based immigration literature, namely that post-1965 immigrants were of low quality since they came at a time with a policy focus on family unification. They make us aware of the huge impact family investments have had among their studied Asian immigrants on high school attendance rates and other human capital improvements generating the most upwardly mobile among American workers. It seems that the migration history of that period has to be re-written.” (Klaus F. Zimmermann, President Global Labor Organization, Bonn University and UNU-MERIT, Maastricht)

The link to the publisher’s website:  
https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030470821#reviews

Mark C. Regets, Seth Sanders, Phanindra V. Wunnava and Harriet Duleep

• Harriet Duleep is Research Professor of Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. She is a Fellow of the Global Labor Organization. Her main areas of research include immigration, the socioeconomic determinants of mortality, discrimination and minority economic status, and women’s labor force behavior.
• Mark Regets is a Senior Fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy; a Fellow at the Global Labor Organization; and a Research Fellow at IZA.  He “retired” from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and continues to write on immigration and science labor markets both as separate issues and where they intersect.
• Seth G. Sanders is the Ronald G. Ehrenberg Chair in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. His research focuses on marginalized groups in the U.S. His work has appeared in a wide set of leading journals.
• Phanindra V. Wunnava is the David K. Smith ’42 Chair in Applied Economics at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, a Research Fellow at IZA, Bonn, Germany, and Fellow at Global Labor Organization. His research appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals.

Related research:

GLO Discussion Paper No. 820: How the Earnings Growth of U.S. Immigrants Was Underestimated – Download PDF by Duleep, Harriet & Liu, Xingfei & Regets, Mark
Forthcoming: Journal of Population Economics

GLO Discussion Paper No. 846: On Immigration and Native Entrepreneurship – Download PDF by Duleep, Harriet & Jaeger, David A. & McHenry, Peter

Interview

GLO: What is wrong with the received wisdom of the economics literature on the earnings of immigrants?

Harriet Duleep: Economists make two conceptual errors in their study of immigrant earnings. They equate earnings with level of human capital and they assume that differences in entry earnings, adjusting for levels of education and experience, measure differences in immigrant quality.

A perspective that permeates our book is that the economic success of immigrants cannot be measured by their initial ability to market their skills. If entry earnings are correlated with any factor that enables or increases human capital investment then immigrant entry earnings measure neither human capital or unmeasured immigrant quality. 

Human capital that is not immediately valued in the host-country’s labor market is useful for learning new skills. Immigrants who do not initially earn on par with similarly educated natives provide a flexible source of human capital that supports the ever-changing needs of the U.S. economy. Emphasizing the low entry earnings of the post-1965 immigrants minimizes the depth of their contributions to the U.S. economy.

Also distorted is the measurement of immigrant earnings growth. By using the fixed-cohort-effect method economists commit a statistical design error by assuming that earnings growth rates are constant across year-of-entry cohorts.

Seth Sanders: The received wisdom also ignores interactions among family members. For the groups analyzed in this book, the low adjusted earnings of immigrant men during their initial U.S. years are often partially, or even completely, offset by the earnings of immigrant women.

We also find a large negative effect of husband’s self-employment on wives’ labor force participation. This likely reflects the wife contributing unpaid labor to the family’s business. In fact, whether the husband is self-employed is more important to a woman’s decision to work than whether the husband has been recently unemployed and, for some groups, than having young children at home.

Phanindra Wunnava: The extended family is also ignored. Sibling admissions negatively affect initial earnings but positively affect earnings growth. This suggest that extended family, or being part of a group with high extended-family admissions, aids the human capital investment of individual immigrants. We also find a positive and highly statistically significant relationship between the propensity of individual immigrants to be self-employed and the percent of their cohort who gained admission as siblings. For Asian immigrant men, the effect of sibling admissions on the propensity to be self-employed exceeds the effect of any other variable in our analysis.

GLO: Why are human capital investments the clue?

Mark Regets: When immigrants have problems transferring skills between labor markets­—whether because of credentials, language, work processes, or changing their career—they have both lower costs and higher returns to human capital investments. Lower initial wages mean lower opportunity costs. New host-country human capital, valuable in of itself, also helps make their prior skills usable in their new labor market. In addition, the skill of knowing how to learn often transfers more directly than labor market skills. Thus, human capital investment not only makes entry earnings a poor predictor of an immigrant’s labor market success, but creates an inverse relationship between entry earnings and earnings growth.

Harriet Duleep: The human capital investments of immigrants who initially have problems transferring skills impact the U.S. economy. In a recent GLO paper David Jaeger, Peter McHenry, and I took the Immigrant Human Capital Investment (IHCI) model described in this book and viewed it from an employer’s perspective. Immigrants’ willingness to engage in human capital investment makes them a particular asset to entrepreneurs needing a labor force to learn new skills. We find that college-educated immigrants, especially from less-developed countries, are associated with increased entrepreneurship at the state level, a result that persists when we focus on entrepreneurship among natives (rather than immigrants themselves). David Green, in his 1999 Journal of Labor Economics paper, finds that immigration may contribute to a more flexible labor force because immigrants are more occupationally mobile than natives even long after their arrival.

GLO: Why have you chosen Asian immigrants to the US as reference? Strong family connections and high educational ambitions may make them a special group.

Seth Sanders: In the mosaic that is U.S. immigration, Asian immigrants have been understudied. They are, however, a very important part of U.S. immigration: as a percent of U.S. legal immigration they surpass Hispanic immigration.

I would also like to stress that though the book’s title is “Human Capital Investment: A History of Asian Immigrants and Their Family Ties,” it is more broadly focused on comparing immigrants from economically developing countries versus economically developed countries. We compare the earnings profiles, human capital investment, and family-aided assimilation of Asian immigrant groups from developing countries with immigrants from Western Europe and Japan.

Harriet Duleep: Persons coming from economically developing countries face serious constraints in their career, living conditions, and hopes for their children. By migrating—even if it means starting an entirely new career—they provide a highly flexible workforce to the U.S. A workforce all the more valuable because of what they have learned prior to their migration.

In addition to skill transferability (the lower the skill transferability, the higher the propensity to invest in new human capital), the book explores additional themes that affect the propensity of immigrants to invest in new human capital. These themes likely hold for other groups from economically developing countries.

One is the importance of permanence to human capital investment. In contrast to West European immigrants, Asian immigrants from developing countries are highly permanent. The propensity to invest in new human capital and the propensity to stay in the U.S. are jointly determined. Why invest in new human capital if you don’t plan on staying?

We would expect a high level of permanence for immigrants from the developing nations of Africa and much of Latin America. Analysts who follow our methodological suggestions should find high earnings growth particularly among those who enter the U.S. with relatively high levels of schooling.

Education’s effect on human capital investment is ambiguous in most human capital investment models increasing both the productivity and opportunity cost of human capital investment. In the IHCI model, explored in our book, education that does not fully transfer to the labor market (and thus does not raise the opportunity cost of human capital investment) is useful for learning new skills. The incentive to invest in new human capital increases for those with low skill transferability and with relatively high levels of education. We would expect to find high earnings growth among not only the Asian immigrants from developing countries but from similar immigrants from Africa and much of Latin America.

GLO: What brought you together as a team?

Harriet Duleep: Seth, Mark, and I were part of the research office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. One of our goals was to follow the economic status of various ethnic and racial groups over time. Examining the earnings growth of immigrant men, Mark and I found high earning growth, contradicting Borjas’ Journal of Economic Literature article.

Mark, Seth, and I also worked on how to measure discrimination. Phani invited us to Middlebury College for a conference focused on discrimination, which led to the book New Approaches to Economic and Social Analyses of Discrimination (Link to). Steve Woodbury, who attended Phani’s conference, had read The Economic Status of Americans of Asian Descent, which Seth and I had written. Steve noted that very little work had been done on Asian immigrants. He urged us to pursue a book focused on Asian immigrants. With this, Human Capital Investment: A History of Asian Immigrants and Their Family Ties was born. It was an ongoing activity for the four of us for two decades.

Phanindra Wunnava: I had the good fortune to have known Mark in graduate school (we both had the same mentor: Solomon Polachek), and worked with Harriet in co-organizing a professional conference at my home institution focusing on family ties and immigration in 1993, which resulted in a well-received edited volume (Link to). Our coedited volume provided a logical springboard to our current book focusing on Asian immigrants and the role of family in augmenting their human capital investments to succeed in the U.S. 

GLO: What are the policy conclusions from your work? 

Mark Regets: Too much of the U.S. immigration debate talks about good immigrants and not-so-good immigrants. Most green cards are given to people with either an employer or a family sponsor. Our book shows that family-sponsored immigrants, even if they often start with lower earnings, do well economically in the United States. To find a niche in the U.S. labor market, they invest in human capital. Their earnings rapidly rise because of their new human capital, and because their new skills or certifications help them use more of their old skills.

Their families are also a factor. There is the positive selectivity of a relative being willing to sponsor—few immigrants want to sponsor someone who will be a burden on them. There is also the possibility of family members assisting immigrants in adapting to the United States. Family-based immigrants and refugees do not enjoy the immediate high-demand for their skills that employment-based immigrants do. But, they experience much higher earnings growth than employment-based immigrants. The highest earning growth rates are among those from countries with high rates of sibling admissions—one of the most criticized admission categories.

It is not only employer-sponsored immigrants who help the economy. Other immigrants add dynamism to the economy by their numerous strategies to find a niche for their skills in the labor market. Their much faster earnings growth eliminates social pathologies associated with low initial earnings, creating a more optimistic path for both them and their children.  

Harriet Duleep: Concerns about a decline in immigrant quality emanate from methodological flaws in the measurement of immigrant earnings growth. The high earnings growth we find for immigrants beginning with low adjusted earnings is inconsistent with low labor market quality. The whole notion of a decline in immigrant quality when Asia and Latin America replaced Europe as the main source of immigrants should be excised from the policy discussion.

From a perspective of boosting human capital investment, policies to promote immigrant permanence should be encouraged. Temporary migration has an increasingly important role to play in a global economy, but policies that discourage long-term migration are short-sighted. 

Policy makers should not view the U.S. post-1965 emphasis on family admissions solely from a humanitarian perspective. Their high human capital investment via educational investment, occupational change, and other paths has the important policy implication that the post-1965 immigrants may be better equipped than U.S. natives or immigrants with high skill transferability to dynamically respond to the changing skill needs of the U.S. economy.  

Mark Regets:  None of our work explicitly deals with finding an “optimal” mix of admissions programs, but I don’t see any policy reason that the number of family and employer sponsored immigrants need to be under a common total cap—if anything family and employer sponsored immigration create an increased demand for each other and complement each other in labor markets.

While I see value to both family and employer sponsorship, it might be worthwhile for the United States to once again allow unsponsored immigrants. Any point system we adopt in the future should be an addition to, not a replacement to the sponsorship system—creating a pathway for unsponsored immigrants.

GLO: Your support of immigration selection through family connections may undervalue the policy of selecting immigrants from successful foreign university graduates. What do you think? 

Mark Regets:  Though often presented as a dichotomy, family-based immigration complements employment-based immigration When NSF’s surveys ask foreign-born university grads about why they came to the United States, more than half list family as one of the reasons. There is a lot I would support to make it easier for the highest skilled migrants to come to the United States and easier for them to stay, but if we want the best, we need to be friendly to families. Even if we were able to cherry-pick immigrants without consideration for their families, each type of immigrant provides different types of economic benefits. 

Phanindra Wunnava: My family is a perfect example of what Mark is talking about. My brother, Professor Subbarao Wunnava, is currently Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer engineering at Florida International University. Prior to coming to the U.S. he had a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from India with both teaching and industrial experience. He came to the U.S. via a visitor visa as a Post-Doctoral Fellow to North Dakota State University’s Physics Department, and later received his green card via an “Employment Visa.”  I then came to the U.S. from India through a “Family Preference Visa” sponsored by my brother. One of the attractions of the U.S. to my brother was its family-friendly admissions policy. 

Once here, my brother and sister-in-law supported me giving me a chance at the American Dream, which included among other things, allowing me to pursue a doctorate in economics. As documented in our book, the role of family cannot be overemphasized in the journey of immigrants to realize their full potential to be productive and contributing members of our society.   

GLO: Harriet, how relates the book to your forthcoming article in the Journal of Population Economics?

The book shows how the assumption that earnings growth rates are constant across year-of-entry cohorts understates the earnings growth of specific groups that begin their U.S. trajectories with low initial earnings. The JOPE article illustrates this point for all immigrants.  

The JOPE article also proves another important reason for the underestimates of immigrant earnings growth in studies following synthetic cohorts. This is how that revelation occurred.

For many years, Mark and I maintained that our results differed from those of Borjas because the fixed-cohort-effect method does not allow earnings growth to vary with entry earnings. But then, in recent years, editors rejecting our elusive and country-of-origin papers said that Borjas in his 2015 Journal of Human Capital paper did allow earnings growth to vary with entry earnings, and he still found low earnings growth for post-1965 immigrants.

The Society of Labor Economists was meeting in the Washington DC area and Xingfei Liu was presenting.  Mark, Xingfei, and I met at the National Gallery of Art to discuss our most recent country-of-origin paper rejection. Mark and I were skeptical that Borjas (2015) actually let earnings growth vary with entry earnings. Xingfei disagreed. In the midst of Matisse, Monet, and Cezanne, he painstakingly went through the computer programming that underlies Borjas’ Journal of Human Capital article and showed Mark and me that Borjas had indeed let earnings growth vary with entry earnings.

The three of us then asked, what is going on??! Why did Mark and I in our elusive papers and Xingfei, Mark, and I in our Country of Origin papers find high earnings growth for immigrant men relative to natives, when Borjas found low earnings growth, using the same data!

In the silence, a calling from Sherlock Holmes occurred: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

We did not exclude zero earners or students in our synthetic cohort analyses whereas Borjas did. We had also found high earnings growth for immigrants in longitudinal data (see our papers in Demography) where we did exclude zero earners. What did our synthetic cohort analyses and the longitudinal analyses have in common?

In each case the same type of individuals were in both first- and second-period samples—in the longitudinal data because they were the same individuals and in the synthetic cohorts because zero earnings did not knock anyone out of the sample in either period. Excluding zero earners in a synthetic cohort analysis will exclude people from the first period who would be eligible for the sample in the second period and vice versa. If immigrants are differentially affected from the sample restrictions as natives, then estimates of immigrant earnings growth relative to natives may have little to do with the actual earnings growth of immigrants. High earnings growth for immigrants may be changed to low earnings growth simply because low wage-earning natives are more likely to leave the labor force with age. Our results overturn the accepted wisdom that post-1965 U.S. immigrants have low earnings growth. They have high earnings growth. Please see Part IV of the forthcoming JOPE paper. 

*************
With the authors spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

Dr. Kristie Drucza, CEO of Includovate

• With over 17-years of experience as a community developer, gender and inclusion adviser, or researcher, Kristie Drucza is theoretically strong on gender, human rights/child rights, and social inclusion, particularly within a developing country context.
• She completed her PhD in Political Anthropology on social inclusion and has a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development specializing in gender and has a passion for building partnerships and capacity for systems change around social inclusion.
• Her passion for applied research and social inclusion has driven her education, her career, and the launch of Includovate.
• Throughout her varied career, she has conducted 12+ mixed-method evaluation projects for major donor country programs, including UNICEF and the UN.
• She has built a reputation for innovative, participatory data collection methods with stakeholders of all types, e.g., people with disabilities, NGO and government officials, youth, the private sector, and women.
• As founder and CEO of Includovate, she has been both the administrative and research team lead of 10 experts to deliver various assignments for the International Labour Organization, World Bank, Care International, WorldFish, International Rice Research Institute, and the International Water Management Institute.
• For Dr. Drucza’s publications see: Dr. Kristie Drucza Researchgate Profile

Interview

GLO: Explain to us your core mission.

Kristie Drucza: Includovate is a feminist research incubator that ‘walks the talk’. We decolonize research by employing researchers who have a lived experience of the topic being studied (this includes people living with disabilities and people from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds). Includovate’s mission is to incubate transformative and inclusive solutions for measuring, studying and changing discriminatory norms that lead to poverty, inequality and injustice. Following the meaning of our name, which is to innovate for inclusion, Includovate empowers researchers to co-create knowledge and make it more inclusive and sustainable.

GLO: What are core topics you intend to work on?

Kristie Drucza: Includovate studies and designs solutions for gender equality and social inclusion in close alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We usually conduct research in low- or middle- income countries and adopt an inclusive and empowering approach to the way we study and analyze. Poverty alleviation, social inclusion and protection, social policy and power relations, gender equality, disability and youth inclusion, behavior change and social norms, and migration and climate change are among our favorite research topics.

GLO: Are you a new global think tank with employed staff or a network of researchers?

Kristie Drucza: We are a certified social enterprise that consists of a network of researchers and employed staff who peer support one another to improve inclusive research capacity.
Includovate was established in early 2019 as a self-sustaining incubator to change the way inequality and exclusion are reproduced through research and data analysis.
Privileged researchers complete paid research assignments while helping to build the capacity of researchers from the global south that lack exposure to international opportunities.
We have a social licence business model where the office in Australia helps to grow the office in Ethiopia. We have doubled in size at the start of 2020 to more than 40 employees. We have employed staff working globally and have access to a network of more than 700 registered consultants.

GLO: You are 100% female-owned, accident or program?

Kristie Drucza: The Ethiopian firm is owned by Ethiopian women and the Australian women who own the Australian Includovate help the Ethiopian firm to grow in a co-created sister-supported style.
We specialize in women’s empowerment and a feminist approach to research for international development. We deliver best practices curation and truly deep dive into the intersectionality of inequality and exclusion. Not only that, 62% of Includovate employees are women as we hire through diverse mechanisms. Our work on women is accredited to the several feminist researchers we have who have worked on projects with UNIDO on the Economic Empowerment of women in the Green Industry, and a Policy Mapping with IDRC on Women’s Economic Empowerment, among others.

GLO: You are headquartered in Ethiopia and Australia. Is this a regional focus to meet the largest needs of your program?

Kristie Drucza: Includovate works globally. Once the Ethiopian office is more independent, Includovate‘s next goal is to open another office in Uganda by the end of 2022. We do have a regional focus on the Global South – however, are country agnostic as we feel the work in the development sector is needed across the globe!

GLO: How relevant is a physical presence at post-Covid times?

Kristie Drucza: Includovate has researchers and employees worldwide, and most of our communications are virtual (before and after the pandemic). Includovate recently re-opened our office in Ethiopia after a staff survey indicated an office was needed. Health and safety protocols are applied in the office and there is a roster for when people use the office. Every other Includovator works remotely.

GLO: You seem to have a strategic interest in Africa. Where do you see the major challenges and potentials to support development?

Kristie Drucza: We do have a strategic interest in Africa because the colonial legacy and power inequities are entrenched. The discrimination faced by African researchers is more pronounced than in other continents. This means that aside from language and analytical capacity, Includovate needs to deal with cross-cultural challenges, insecurities and the legacy of racism. We have to create an incubator that can develop the whole person (not just research outputs). Privileged researchers have as much work to do on themselves as those from Africa.
Includovate’s vision is to create inclusive markets, businesses, states and institutions that provide men and women with the power, aspiration and ability to innovate for their development and advancement. By doing this, Includovate would like to decolonize research by supporting, and empowering, researchers from the Global South to publish and use the evidence to shape the policies in their countries.
A major challenges is that we want to pay enumerators (those who collect data) a fair wage, but NGOs and other development actors employ a ‘value for money’ agenda that involves ‘a race to the bottom’ whereby budgets are cut until it is hard to maintain research ethics and quality and a decent wage. If we are able to secure funding we would develop a certification for enumerators that ensures safety and quality of researchers and the data collected. The whole research for the development sector needs to improve in standards.
Includovate has a highly ambitious agenda and thankfully, we have the passion and people to deliver systems change for inclusive research for development.

*************
With Kristie Drucza spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

LINK to the website: https://adatbank.krtk.mta.hu/en/

• János Köllő is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics (IE), Budapest, and director of the Databank of its Center for Economic and Regional Studies (CERS). He has been affiliated with IE since graduation, with interruptions in Collegium Budapest – Institute of Advanced Study (1993-94) and University of Michigan Business School (2003).
• He has written widely on unemployment in Central and Eastern Europe, demand for human capital, industrial relations, and ethnic and regional inequalities.
• GLO Fellow János Köllő is also the GLO Country Lead Hungary.

Interview

GLO: What is the relationship of your Hungarian Data Center with the CERS and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences?

János Köllő: The Data Center belongs to the CERS. We have no official relationship with the Academy since it was deprived of its research network in 2019.

GLO: Your new website became available these days: Why should we visit?

János Köllő: You will find descriptions of the data, documentation, variable lists, and a fairly long list of selected publications, partly or fully based on our data. This can give you an impression of what kind of research these data can support.

GLO: In what ways does the center innovate the access to Hungarian data?

János Köllő: The statistical background is rich in Hungary but few of the data sets are ready for academic research. Our mission is to provide researchers with ready-to-use data files. We clean, harmonize and test the data, build panels, generate supplementary variables, add labels, and a documentation of each step of this process. We were also first in building big and rich administrative LEED panels, which cover about 5 million people up to 20 years, and yield information on employment, wages, co-workers, employers, transfers, schooling and state of health.

GLO: A key issue is language, is your material accessible in English?

János Köllő: With a few exceptions, the data have English labels.

GLO: At Covid times and (hopefully) beyond soon again, how can one make use of your Data Room?

János Köllő: We have data, including big ones, on our own servers: these are available through remote access from anywhere, any time. We kept the Data Room open throughout the epidemic but restricted the number of work stations used parallelly.

GLO: What are the limits of online access to your database?

János Köllő: Availability is regulated by the primary data owners. We share everything we can with two exceptions. First, in an initial period of two years, we reserve the big panels for projects led by CERS researchers. The participants may come from outside. Second, in the Data Room the rules are set by the Central Satistical Office. Here again, researchers of the former Academy are allowed to start projects but they can invite participants from other institutions, including foreigners. The Data Room can only be used in person.

GLO: Do you have affiliated researchers open for international collaborations with the data?

János Köllő: Our data have been used by 48 universities and research institutes worldwide from Harvard to Princeton and Cambridge to Oxford. We are happy to share the data directly, or in joint projects. In the CERS, cooperation with foreign partners is a common practice. Contact the CERS homepage https://www.krtk.hu/english/ to see potential partners.

*************
With János Köllő spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

Some core messages of the interview:

• Chulalongkorn University collaborates with the Ministry of Labor to establish the National Labor Research Center and Collaborating Center for Labor Research at Chulalongkorn University (CU-COLLAR).
• The developing collaboration is to help facilitate the national-global platform in advancing labor research and policies into practice.
• Her upcoming publication deals with the socioeconomic disparities in Thailand under the impact of COVID-19.
• In the long-term, universal protection of vulnerable groups is the policy priority.
• The private sector is urging the Thai government to adopt a vaccine passport scheme to support tourism.
• Strong public health interventions, among other factors, had successfully flattened the epidemic Covid-19 curve by mid-2020.
• A large share of Thais were reported to be willing to be vaccinated.

Assistant Professor Dr Ruttiya Bhula-or is a Vice Dean at College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University, a director/ key coordinator of Collaborating Centre for Labour Research at Chulalongkorn University, Secretariat to National Labour Research Centre at the Ministry of Labour, and a committee member on Labour Reform, Thai Senate of Thailand. She has hand-on experience at the national and international level with UN organizations, and contributes to academic areas and promotes linkages of labour researches into policies and practices using an interdisciplinary approach. She has been actively working in the area of labour market analysis, skills, gender, migration, and labour policy linkages. As a GLO Fellow she is the GLO Country Lead Thailand.

Ruttiya Bhula-or & Attakrit Leckcivilize, Widening of Socioeconomic Disparities in Thailand under the Impact of COVID-19

Interview

GLO: CU-Collar and Chulalongkorn University have joined the GLO network. What is the institutional background?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: Chulalongkorn University collaborates with the Ministry of Labor to establish the National Labor Research Center and Collaborating Center for Labor Research at Chulalongkorn University (CU-COLLAR). The center aims at extending a network among educational institutions, private sectors in Thailand, as well as an international level and advancing labor, human resource research for the Thai and global community. The objective of CU-COLLAR is to leverage, to fully integrate and to manage labor-related knowledge and database of labor and human resources, along with (1) becoming a center for research studies on labor issues and enabling the planning of a labor development which is in line with the Thailand 4.0 heading toward sustainability and sustainable development goals; (2) promoting studies and usage of research in policy decision making; (3) developing a database that all interested parties can use for research purposes; (4) extending labor research network at the national and international level to increase competitiveness of the country and to promote a better quality of life for the Thai and global community.

GLO: What is your role in this new collaboration?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: As CU-COLLAR has a strong commitment to contributing to evidence-informed policy-making and promoting dialogue on labor, social and human development, our key roles are to promote linkages of knowledge and enable a platform as well as knowledge production and dissemination and for cooperation between stakeholders within the local and global community.
My role in this collaboration is to help facilitate this national-global platform in advancing labor research and policies into practice. The working mechanism includes existing and expanding public, private, and academic partnerships at the national and international level in building structures and systems that embed research use and drive evidence use in a sustainable development manner.

GLO: What are your recent research interests?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: My recent research interests are varied, including labor market analysis, skills, gender, migration, and labor policy linkages. My upcoming publication is the socioeconomic disparities in Thailand under the impact of COVID-19. CU-COLLAR has just published “a guideline to foster the Thai Labor Market through the COVID-19 pandemic” with the Thai Senate on Labor and has just reported to the Thai Senate last month.
Ruttiya Bhula-or and Chi Montakarn (2021) Approaches to Drive the Thai Labor Market Pass the COVID-19 Era: The Adaptation of All Work Groups and Ages Towards Stability and Sustainability

GLO: Beyond the COVID-19 crisis: What are the long-term challenges the Thai’s labor market has to solve?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: According to my article with Prof. Niaz, before the COVID-19, the COVID-19 outbreak will hammer existing income and wealth inequalities. The COVID-19 will have a disproportionately negative impact on the poorer households, who are informal workers, workers in small-to-mid enterprises and family businesses. On the other hand, many employers have reorganized businesses allowing employees the option to work from home, but the country’s digital divide remains wide. These challenges thus will be a short-term and long-term effect and need extensive and universal protection of vulnerable group as the policy priority.
M Niaz Asadullah and Ruttiya Bhula-or (2020) Why COVID-19 Will Worsen Inequality in Thailand. The Diplomat, 28 April 2020.

GLO: In particular: Will tourism recover and what can the options be for the country?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: It is clear that tourism-related sectors were the most severely affected due to the declaration of an emergency, a temporary ban on the majority of international flights, and measures restricting dining in restaurants and visiting entertainment venues.
Thai stimulus packages include a domestic tourism stimulus initiative, known as Rao Tiew Duay Kan (We Travel Together). However, Thailand is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world that attracted a large number of international tourists. Domestic tourism cannot compensate for the net loss. It is clear that the private sector is urging the Thai government to adopt a vaccine passport scheme and a travel bubble arrangement with countries where the prevalence rate of COVID-19 is low to moderate.
Maya Taylor (2021) The Thaiger Thai industry representatives push government on vaccine passport policy.

GLO: So far, Thailand was quite successful in fighting the pandemic: What is the explanation?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: Actually, Thailand reported an imported case of COVID-19; the first case detected outside China. Thanks to strong public health interventions, community engagement, effective governance, a high degree of public cooperation, and good community-based networks, Thailand had successfully flattened the epidemic curve by the mid-2020 (WHO & MOPH, 2020). Nevertheless, the second wave of outbreaks has started in December 2020 in a migrant-intensive province, highlighting the vulnerability of low-paid migrant workers to the pandemic.
World Health Organization & Ministry of Public Health (2020) Joint Intra-Action Review of the Public Health Response to COVID-19 in Thailand, 20-24 July 2020.

GLO: Why is Thailand not joining the international COVID-19 vaccine alliance?

Ruttiya Bhula-or: The Thai government claimed that Thailand, as a middle-income country, is ineligible for cheap vaccines under the WHO’s Covax scheme. The government also added that the country had to make an advance payment without knowing the source of vaccines and delivery dates. With this, Thailand becomes the last ASEAN nation to roll out vaccines.
In the meantime, health workers have begun receiving vaccination from imported Chinese Sinovac shots, but mass vaccinations for the general population will be locally produced in June [1]. The additional reason goes to the efficacy of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which is upward of 70.4%, compared with over 50% for Sinovac’s product [2].
No doubt, this policy draws attention to the public interest. According to the survey by YouGov, a large share of Thais reported that they are willing to be vaccinated. (The survey was taken between Nov. 17 and Jan. 10, covering 2,088 participants in Thailand.) [3] In addition, the private sector, for example, the tourism industry, also further push pressure on the government for alternative stimulus and vaccine passport policies. We are looking forward to this June for vaccination and, with uttermost hope, a gradually socioeconomic recovering.
[1] REUTERS (2021) Govt defends decision not to join Covax vaccine alliance, 14 FEB 2021.
[2] Dominic Faulder and Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat (2021)Thailand finally kicks off COVID vaccinations: 25 things to know
[3] Khaosod English (2020) Thais most willing to take vaccine, out of 24 surveyed countries, 18 January 2021
*************
With Ruttiya Bhula-or spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

Open to GLO members and invited guests, the next seminar is:
March 5, 2021 (Friday); 1-2 pm London/UK time:
Marco Vivarelli (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and GLO) on:
“May AI revolution be labour-friendly? Some micro evidence from the supply side”
Invitations with online links will be mailed in time.

The last seminar was given on February 5, 2021, London/UK at 1-2 pm, by Pedro Martins, Queen Mary University of London and GLO on Employer collusion and employee training. Below find a report and the video of the seminar.

Report

Employer Collusion and Employee Training

GLO Virtual Seminar on February 5, 2021

Pedro Martins, Queen Mary University of London and GLO

Video of Seminar. Presentation slides.

Based on joint work with Jonathan P. Thomas, University of Edinburgh.

Ends;

Cars are back & the lights are on

Some core messages of the interview below:

• Israel is a small country with very efficient medical organizations that can execute the vaccinations fast all over the country.
• The older population has seen the large benefits of vaccinations, and there was an effective and strong public campaign introducing the mission.
• There is a lot of pressure to open stores and go back to work.
• The groups left to be vaccinated are the young assuming a low risk of mortality and those fearing negative side effects.
• A green passport for all with a second vaccination was established. This enables going to concerts and shopping; going to work might be limited to those with such a document.
• The role of scientists is crucial.
• Incentives play a very important role.

GLO Fellow Gil S. Epstein is a Professor of Economics and Dean of Social Science at Bar-Ilan University, GLO Country Lead Israel, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics. He was already vaccinated against COVID-19 twice some time ago and carries a green passport. His fields of interest are labor economics, migration and political economy.

Interview

GLO: Why is Israel now by far the global front-runner in the vaccination race?

Gil S. Epstein: The main reason seems to be twofold: Obtaining a large number of vaccines and efficient distribution. Israel is a relatively small country with just over a population of nine million people. Israel obtained a large number of vaccinations in a short period of time. Israel signed a contract with Pfizer to provide them with data regarding the vaccinated population and this seems to be the reason why we were able to obtain so many vaccinations and so fast. Israel is a small country with very efficient medical organizations that can execute the vaccinations fast all over the country. Pfizer couldn’t ask for better conditions to test their vaccination. This gave them the incentive to provide Israel with the number of vaccinations needed.

GLO: What explains the initial dramatic speed of the vaccine campaign, luck or special Israeli factors?

Gil S. Epstein: The first vaccinations were given to the elderly. Those in the high-risk groups. Those that know that the probability of catching the virus with a high mortality rate is high. Elderly people that want to meet their kids and grand-kids want to be vaccinated. They understood that even if there are long run risks from taking the vaccination, the expected quality of life will increase by being vaccinated. Add to this a strong public campaign where the Prime Minister, the President and many other important people had their vaccination live on TV. The media talked about the benefits, and how this will change the life of those getting vaccinated.

GLO: It seems that the corona crisis is over: Shops are opening, strategy or just caused by pressure from the public?

Gil S. Epstein: The crisis is not over. There is a lot of pressure to open stores and go back to work. The data show that those who have received two vaccinations have a very low probability of becoming sick. We have had three lockdowns and small businesses are not doing well. The government issued a green passport for all those who have had two vaccinations. Most of the shops and businesses will, by law, only serve those that have the green passport and this decreases the probability of being sick and increases the incentive to get vaccinated. This week we had for the first time in a long-time live shows and concerts for those having the green passport with a limited number of attendants. In addition, the upcoming elections (in one-month) provide incentives to move forward.

GLO: Israel has seen a drop in immunization rates since making the vaccine available to everyone recently. Who are the anti-vaxxers and will this endanger reaching herd immunity soon?

Gil S. Epstein: We have seen a drop in the immunization rate. The reason for this is that those in the high risk group have been vaccinated, and the groups left is the younger population that do not see themselves at high risk of mortality. The side effects of the vaccine are not yet clear and there are those thinking it may affect fertility or create other health issues, and those issues discourage them from getting vaccinated.
In response, the medical institutes seeing that the public is not willing to be vaccinated decided to go to the public. For example, over the weekends when they saw that many people are vacationing in the parks, they went to the parks and offered to vaccinate those that hadn’t been vaccinated. The idea was to decrease the inconvenience of going to get vaccinated. This seems helping to increase the rate.
If we will not be able to increase the rate of vaccination, this may well decrease the chances of reaching herd immunity.

GLO: Israel has introduced a coronavirus vaccination certificate: A model for the world?

Gil S. Epstein: Israel has introduced a green passport for all those where at least one week has passed since the second vaccination. This will enable them to go to concerts, shopping and there are even talks about limiting the right to work to only those who have the green passport. This creates a strong incentive for people to get vaccinated. The idea is twofold: To create a safe environment for vaccinated people and to provide an incentive to get vaccinated. This seems to work quite well.

GLO: What role have scientists played in the success?

Gil S. Epstein: The role of scientists is very important. Both by passing the information to the public and by helping the decision makers to make the right decisions.

GLO: What are major scientific insights so far we can learn about?

Gil S. Epstein: Incentives play a very important role. Scientists have an important and major part in the decision making. Economics, biology, chemistry, etc., all have a strong impact in getting us out of this crisis. This crisis has brought scientists to the stage.

*************
With Gil S. Epstein spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

By “using a range of everyday objects and common experiences like bringing about lasting societal change through Facebook to historically momentous episodes like the shutting down of telegram services in India offers crisp, easy-to-understand lessons in economics. The book studies the development of familiar cultural practices from India and around the world and links the regular to the esoteric and explains everything from Game Theory to the Cobra Effect without depending on graphs or equations-a modern-day miracle! Through disarmingly simple prose, the book demystifies economic theories, offers delightful insights, and provides nuance without jargon.”

New book!
Sudipta Sarangi, The Economics of Small Things
2020, India Penguin, 296 pages. ISBN: 9780143450375.
MORE INFORMATION. Video.

Some core messages of the interview below:

• The ultimate goal of any theorist is to explain phenomena around us.
• Economic theory is all around us, and simple everyday actions can be explained using the lens of economics.
• Takeaways of the book are: incentives matter, heterogeneity matters, complementarities matter, information matters, cognitive costs matter, and strategic behavior matters.
• Even grandmas in India are obsessed with cricket!
• The anecdotes used are true and about actual people and their lives.
• Being closeted at home due to the pandemic has created curiosities that may not have happened otherwise.

GLO Fellow Sudipta Sarangi is a Professor and Department Head at Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). He has received the 2020 Kuznets Prize of the Journal of Population Economics.

Interview

GLO: Neither formulas nor figures: What drives a theorist to be so ‘practical’?

Sudipta Sarangi: This is an astute observation. While it is true that theorists are often considered to inhabit the realms of the esoteric, the ultimate goal of any theorist is to explain phenomena around us. For example, my very first paper was motivated by a real-life observation: Why does the late fee exceed the rental price (or opportunity cost) of an object? That combined with my love for teaching is what resulted in this plain-English book!

GLO: What is the core message you want to convey with your book?

Sudipta Sarangi: Sometimes when I talk about the book, I liken it to Rene Magritte’s painting: The Son of Man. Everything we see around us hides things, and we human being always want to see what is hidden by what we see. I feel that economic theory is all around us, and simple everyday actions can be explained using the lens of economics. So, as in Magritte’s painting, I want to draw attention to the apple covering the face and show people what lies behind the apple – get a closer look at those eyes peeping at us. I believe that this will not only create a curiosity about economics but also provide people better insights about their own behavior and those of the others.

GLO: What are the major insights the various sections of your book provide?

Sudipta Sarangi: Honestly speaking, I did not want to list insights in the book because I felt it would be too pedantic. I just wanted people to enjoy reading a book about economics. However, my wife and a philosopher friend insisted that I needed a set of takeaways. Now these are forces to reckon with! So, I finally gave in and suggested six takeaways: incentives matter, heterogeneity matters, complementarities matter, information matters, cognitive costs matter, and strategic behavior matters. Of course, you will have to read the book to find out how specifically they matter and what might be the caveats.

GLO: Your book can be placed in the Freakonomics tradition with an Indian touch: What makes it attractive for a typical European or American reader?

Sudipta Sarangi: Another insightful question! It is true that in some ways I wanted a book that an Indian reader would enjoy, and there are possibly a couple of chapters that will strongly appeal mostly to Indian readers – like the one on cricket for instance. Even grandmas in India are obsessed with cricket! I think the appeal is universal because the book tries to explain everyday phenomena. For instance – why does no one take that last slice of pizza at the office party? Why do we always offer the first piece of cake to the guests when evolution suggests that you just take it yourself? There is a story of shoe thieves operating in Sweden and Denmark stealing left and right shoes separately in the two different countries. This is used to drive home the importance of complementarities and explore Michael Kremer’s O-Ring theory.

GLO: What economists find insightful or funny is often not shared by non-economists. How do you break this resistance?

Sudipta Sarangi: This is so true – I chuckled to myself as I read this question. I think the most important element is the fact that many of the anecdotes are true and about actual people and their lives. So, the humor is not made up by me. Of course, it takes more than the crowd sourced stories and pop culture references – lots of rewriting, my wonderful editors and the many people from whom I have learnt to write and learnt about economics. The spectrum ranges from my first-grade teacher Mrs. Meera Pradhan to my PhD supervisors Hans Haller and Rob Gilles.

GLO: Is your success with the book related to a weakening of populism caused by the pandemic which demonstrates the importance of science?

Sudipta Sarangi: That is something I would like to believe – although I cannot say that I have a lot of hard evidence in its favor. I feel that being closeted at home due to the pandemic has created curiosities that may not have happened otherwise. I have also observed during several virtual book talks that young people looking for new things to explore are drawn to the book because of its intuitive explanation of economic models. They like the Indian examples, but also enjoy the anecdotes from other parts of the world. That gives me hope for science and the future.

Thank you, Professor Zimmermann, for the insightful questions and this virtual interview. I thoroughly enjoyed answering them. To end with a small quote from the book:

This is a book about the economics of these small things. Over the course of the book, I will delve into the economic concepts behind the events mentioned here and other such phenomena drawn from everyday life. The book invites you to explore these different economic ideas and concepts—and to have fun while doing it. And for those interested in exploring these topics further, there is a detailed reading list at the end.

Happy reading!

*************
With Sudipta Sarangi spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.

Ends;

Some core messages of the interview:

• Due to sound fiscal prudence in the past, St. Kitts and Nevis was able to act quickly and decisively in stimulating the economy.
• As an educated society with a 97% literacy rate St. Kitts and Nevis adapted well to the ‘new norm’ with respect to social and physical distancing, hand sanitizing and wearing masks in a joint effort to reduce the spread of the virus.
• As a result of the suspension of international and regional air and cruise travel, and precautionary border closures locally to contain and prevent the spread of the virus, economic activity within the local Tourism Sector contracted by some 35 percent in 2020.
• Agriculture, the (medical) Cannabis industry and I.T. will all play pivotal roles in the economic revival of St. Kitts and Nevis.
• The hotel, airline and cruise industries all play an important part in the economic revival of St. Kitts and Nevis.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel!

Dr. The Honourable Timothy Harris, Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, left, and Colin Cannonier, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics, GLO Fellow and GLO Country Lead of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Interview

GLO: How has the St. Kitts & Nevis economy outperformed most of the region in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic?

PM Timothy Harris: There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis due to sound fiscal prudence, was able to act quickly and decisively in stimulating the economy thereby bringing much needed relief to people who lost their jobs or were offered fewer working hours as a result of COVID-19. Our Stimulus Package in total was, approximately, US $44.4 million. This is significant as no other country in the region matched this. The stimulus package included increased benefits in social safety nets to buttress the effects of the pandemic. For example, our Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) was further funded and benefits were extended more citizens.

Additionally, Construction has long been a key driver of growth and development in our economy. The Construction Sector continues to provide employment for many of our citizens and residents and it is the primary source of income for many families. My government will continue to make the necessary investments to further enhance resilience and transform the economy as has been necessitated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, activity in the Construction Sector grew by 1.8 percent. This growth was primarily due to an increase in the contribution of locally financed construction activity emanating from the Public and Private Sectors. The Government sponsored projects – a major one being the rehabilitation of the Island Main Road – have made significant contributions to achieving this positive growth outturn.

GLO: To date, the island Federation has recorded zero COVID-19 related deaths. What do you attribute this to?

PM Timothy Harris: There are a number of reasons I can attribute this to. The government introduced the mandatory wearing of masks, lock-downs, curfews and closed our borders very early. Additionally, early activation of our National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) coupled with a proper functioning expert compliance team energetically working around the clock ensured that measures were quickly implemented to avoid widespread infections in St. Kitts and Nevis.

Our Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Medical Chief of Staff (MCS) and other Ministry of Health Officials were decisive in implementing social and physical distancing, hand sanitizing and mask wearing to protect our population. Additionally, the Attorney General’s Chambers worked indefatigably to ensure that timely, appropriate and legal procedures were in place throughout the entire process, especially with respect to curfew implementation. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) ensured that information was disseminated to our citizens and residents in an accurate and timely manner. All agencies including law enforcement functioned cohesively in order to respond effectively to this Pandemic.

Finally, the fortitude of our people cannot go unmentioned. We are an educated society with a 97% literacy rate. Kittitians and Nevisians although inconvenienced, understood the health risks of COVID-19. By far they adapted to the ‘new norm’ with respect to social and physical distancing, hand sanitizing and wearing masks all in an effort to reduce the spread. This is perhaps the biggest reason why we have recorded zero COVID-19 related deaths in our Federation.

GLO: What are some of the more significant challenges the Federation is expected to be confronted with during recovery?

PM Timothy Harris: For several years, Tourism has been the mainstay of our economy. For two years in a row we welcomed over one million cruise passengers to our shores. Notwithstanding the obvious need to further diversify our economy, particularly in light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot overlook the contributions of the Tourism Sector. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, development in the Tourism Sector was on an upward trajectory. The Koi Resort Curio Collection by Hilton St. Kitts made its debut in February 2020, increasing our room stock by 102 rooms, adding to the appeal to travellers who have continued to make the Federation their destination of choice.

The commissioning of the second cruise pier at Port Zante enabled the Federation to welcome four (4) cruise ships simultaneously on December 16^th, 2019. with the Celebrity Summit and the Seaborne Odyssey docking at the newly constructed pier while the Britannia and the Anthem of the Seas were moored at the original berthing facility indicating prospects for continued growth in the Cruise Sector.

The pandemic has, without a doubt, negatively impacted global tourism on an unprecedented scale. The border closures, stay-at-home requirements and No Sail orders for cruise ships that were imposed around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have had a deleterious effect on our Tourism Sector. As a result of the suspension of international and regional air and cruise travel, and precautionary border closures locally to contain and prevent the spread of the virus, it is estimated that economic activity within the local Tourism Sector will contract by 35.4 percent in 2020 when compared to a positive growth of 7.9 percent in 2019. The negative impact on our citizens and residents who have ties to the sector was significant as the closure of hotels and tourism support services resulted in approximately 5,000 people, roughly 20 percent of the labor force, being laid off or severed while others experienced underemployment due to reduced hours.

Notwithstanding the challenges, there is hope for recovery. My Government recognises that recovery in the Tourism Sector will not happen suddenly. We recognise that COVID-19 has dramatically changed the global sphere in which we are competing. It is therefore necessary that we transform our product. Our approaches at this time must be altered in order to realise our revision for our recovery in this Sector as well as related sectors and the economy as a whole. As a result, my Government along with a wide cross section of stakeholders in the Tourism Sector will continue to carefully plan how we will restructure and re-engineer our tourism product so that we produce the best result for our people. Our proactive and aggressive “All-of-Society Approach” to managing the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federation received international recognition from key news outlets such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Sky News and Tripoto, which named St. Kitts and Nevis among the few countries in the world to have effectively “beat” the virus. Further, according to the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), St. Kitts and Nevis has been categorized as Low Risk for travel purposes. This bodes well for us as we open our borders and welcome tourists who are looking for a place to vacation with minimal risk of contracting the virus. If we are to maintain this rating, it is imperative that we all continue to monitor adherence to the COVID-19 protocols. It is our hope that, with the reopened borders, persons who depend on our Tourism Industry for their main source of income will be able to return to work and have some semblance of normalcy in their lives.

GLO: Are there any emerging sectors likely to play a pivotal role in the economic revival of the Federation?

PM Timothy Harris: Definitely, the ability to feed one’s self is important to any country, especially a small Island developing state like St. Kitts and Nevis. Also, other interesting areas are Medicinal Marijuana and of course Information Technology (I.T.) which transcends all sectors. Therefore Agriculture, the Cannabis industry and I.T. will all play pivotal roles in the economic revival of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Food safety and security is important to every country. Agriculture has the potential to generate real wealth and provide decent jobs for our people. My Government therefore has identified this Sector as a major pillar of our strategy for recovery and transformation. We believe that our investment in this Sector is well placed and we hope to obtain bountiful returns, including enhancing food and nutrition security within our borders. Moreover, through our investment in Agriculture, we anticipate success in meeting the targets advanced by the United Nations for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 3 and 12 – Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well Being, Responsible Consumption, Production and export respectively.

Information and Communications Technology will continue to be a key pillar in the recovery and transformation process. Not surprisingly, our vision for transitioning to a digital economy remains a high priority for my Team Unity Administration. The Federation intends to become a world leader in the delivery of digital services to our citizens, residents and investors. We are therefore utilizing our comprehensive Digital Government Strategy to guide the rollout of the digital transformation process in the Public Sector.

A new and emerging area of focus for the Government is the Medicinal Cannabis Industry. Earlier last year, the pertinent legislation, the Cannabis Act No. 8 of 2020, was passed in this Honourable House. We therefore intend to take additional steps to advance the development of this industry. One important step planned for 2021 is the appointment of suitably qualified persons to serve the Medicinal Cannabis Authority. The primary function of this new body would be to regulate, monitor and control the cultivation, supply, possession, production and use of medicinal cannabis and for related matters. It also provides for the lawful access to medicinal cannabis as an alternative treatment for persons who are suffering from a qualifying medical condition and for a comprehensive licensing scheme. We are convinced that our people, particularly our small entrepreneurs and farmers could benefit from the development of the local industry here in the Federation. Several indirect benefits such as increasing employment opportunities, reduced crime and incarceration, reduced costs for law enforcement and medical treatment are also anticipated.

GLO: What role can the international community play in the recovery of the twin-island state?

PM Timothy Harris: The international Community through United Nation (UN) Agencies such as Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), the hotel, airline and cruise industries all play an important part in the economic revival of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is through relations with PAHO/WHO and our EU partners that we would be able to procure COVID-19 vaccines to curb or halt the spread of the pandemic.

Additionally, if we are to rebuild our tourism product it is important for us to maintain strong relations with the hotel, airline, cruise and yachting industries for obvious reasons. As you know relations in this Industry are symbiotic.

Sometimes when countries experience sudden economic downturns, as many countries have as a result of the COVID-19, it is important that countries implement recovery measures quickly and decisively in order to prevent a bigger economic crisis further down the road. What I’m saying is frankly the Federation must be prepared to make tough decisions now, and implement measures to avert bigger problems in the future. Therefore, maintaining strong relations with regional and international lending institutions like the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are critical to securing fiscal space in rebuilding an economy. What is comforting is that our country has done an incredible job in reducing our public debt to 60% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the past few years. Additionally, we have completely paid off our IMF debt.

GLO: What is your message to the people of St. Kitts and Nevis?

PM Timothy Harris: My message to the people of St. Kitts and Nevis is simple but hopeful. My Government will continue to do all in its power to grow this economy and put it back on a positive trajectory. Back to where we were prior to COVID-19. In the interim, we will continue to strengthen social safety nets to give our citizens support during these hard times.

Finally I would thank Kittitians and Nevisians for their tenacity, fortitude and understanding during this pandemic. Their collective resolve has been incredible. I would urge them to continue being each other’s keeper and to have faith, as there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

*************
With Dr. The Honourable Timothy Harris, Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, spoke Colin Cannonier, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics, GLO Fellow and GLO Country Lead of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Ends;

Interview with Grégory Ponthière

GLO: What brought you to population economics?

Grégory Ponthière: As a Ph.D. student in Economics in Cambridge in the early 2000s, I became interested in the measurement of human welfare across long periods of time. From that perspective, variations in survival conditions play a fundamental role, since the finiteness of life is a major cause of scarcity and deprivation for humans. This definitely oriented my research at the intersection of economic theory and demography.

GLO: Why can micro theory help us to understand demographic processes?

Grégory Ponthière: Demographic outcomes (fertility, mortality, migration) are influenced by economic factors, in particular individual endowments in terms of physical or human capital, and also by prices faced by individuals (e.g. the wage rate, housing prices). Thus demographic processes cannot be understood without considering the economic conditions under which they take place. This makes the microeconomic analysis of demographic trends fundamental: focusing on microeconomic foundations allows us to identify conditions under which existing population trends can be rationalized or explained. But I would go even further, and defend the view that most economic processes – in particular accumulation mechanisms and dynamics – cannot be understood without considering demography. Economic and demographic outcomes are joint products, and this makes population economics a central field of economic analysis.

GLO: Explain us your field of specialization!

Grégory Ponthière: My research lies at the intersection of economic theory and demography. It focuses, from a theoretical perspective, on multidirectional relations between economic variables and demographic outcomes. I published several papers on the economic rationalization of mortality variations (within a population at a given period and across long periods of time), and also on the microeconomic study of the timing of births (in particular the advancement of births in the early 20^th century, followed by a postponement of births starting in the 1970s). Besides those positive studies, my research also examined the design of optimal public policies when demographic outcomes are endogenously determined within the economy, and depend on material living conditions faced by individuals. Those normative studies involved the design of prevention policies, pensions, long term care social insurance, family policies (in particular family allowances) and fiscal policies (the taxation of savings and bequests).

GLO: What excites you most in your current research?

Grégory Ponthière: My current research focuses on the construction of a fair Welfare State, and on the normative foundations behind public policies. Since the pioneer works of Bentham and Mill, there is a long tradition, in Economics, which adopts utilitarianism as an ethical benchmark (the principle of “the largest happiness for the largest number”). My current research aims at identifying the unattractive implications of utilitarianism in the context where the population is heterogeneous on important dimensions (e.g. the genetic background determining longevity outcomes or the natural fecundity of individuals), and proposes to rethink the design of the Welfare State while adopting alternative normative foundations, which lay a stronger emphasis on equalizing welfare across individuals (either in ex ante terms or in ex post terms). Taking unequal demographic outcomes into account – beyond the mere “representative agent” – does not leave the design of the Welfare State unchanged.

GLO: Why have you accepted to take the Editor position?

Grégory Ponthière: I have been doing research in population economics since the beginning of my Ph.D. thesis, almost 20 years ago. Thus I have a long-lasting interest in that field of economic research. During that period, my research has greatly benefited from the (indirect) supervision of editors of journals, and also from the work of a large number of anonymous reviewers. It is time for me to contribute to the public good, by participating more actively to the life of scientific journals, not only as an author or as a reviewer, but also as an editor. Joining the Editorial team of the Journal of Population Economics is a unique opportunity to contribute actively to the flourishing of that exciting area of research.

GLO: Where do you see promising fields for population theory the Journal could explore?

Grégory Ponthière: At the micro level, I can see two promising areas of research, which are quite complementary. The first one concerns the modelling of the human life cycle, which faces serious limitations when considering basic decisions (e.g. the long term care insurance puzzle). In particular, the inclusion, within the lifecycle model, of the risk about the duration of life is challenging. A second – related – field concerns the modelling of the interests of economic agents at the two extremities of life: childhood and old-age dependency. Public policies should take the interests of the very young and of the very old into account, but the problem is that those individuals may not have well-defined preferences in the same way as adults can have. The microeconomic analysis of the family thus still faces major challenges, and those challenges are also relevant for the macroeconomic study of demographic trends. Finally, another fundamental challenge for population economics concerns the design of the Welfare State when demographic variables react to public policies, i.e. abstracting from the usual “ceteris paribus” assumption. This last point is most relevant in the context of the corona crisis.

GLO: Will the coronavirus change the world of academic publishing?

Grégory Ponthière: It is too early to know what will be the long-run consequences of coronavirus on the society, and on the world of science in particular. But one thing is certain: the corona crisis does not only affect health and mortality outcomes around the world, but it also deteriorates teaching and learning conditions in all universities. As such, this deteriorates the foundations of science in the future.

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With Editor and GLO Fellow Grégory Ponthière spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President & Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Population Economics.

GLO Fellow Gregory Ponthiere is a Professor of Economics and Philosophy at the Hoover Chair in Economic and Social Ethics, UCLouvain, and an Editor of the Journal of Population Economics. Before joining UCLouvain, he held permanent positions at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the University Paris XII, and was an Associate Researcher at the Paris School of Economics. His research focuses on relations between economic and demographic outcomes, from a positive perspective (rationalization of stylized facts) and a normative perspective (design of a fair Welfare State). His publications include three books and articles in journals such as the Journal of Economic Theory, the International Economic Review, Social Choice and Welfare and the Journal of Public Economics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Editor-in-Chief & Managing Editors

Editors

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