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== Biography==
== Biography==


Over the course of his career, Oded Stark has held the Chair in Economic and Regional Policy at the [[University of Klagenfurt]], the Chair in Development Economics at the [[University of Oslo]], and has worked as Professor of Population and Economics as well as the Director of the Migration and Development Programme at [[Harvard University]], as Honorary University Professor of Economics at the [[University of Vienna]], and as Distinguished Research Scholar at [[Georgetown University]]. As of 2019, he works as Distinguished Professor at the [[University of Warsaw]], adjunct professor at the [[University of Tübingen]], and as Distinguished Fellow at the [[University of Bonn]]'s Center for Development Research. Stark is a co-editor of the ''Handbook of Population and Family Economics'' (with [[Mark R. Rosenzweig]]).<ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/handbook-of-population-and-family-economics/vol/1/part/PB Rosenzweig, M.R., Stark, O. (1997, eds.). ''Handbook of Population and Family Economics''. Amsterdam: Elsevier.]</ref>
Over the course of his career, Oded Stark has held the Chair in Economic and Regional Policy at the [[University of Klagenfurt]], the Chair in Development Economics at the [[University of Oslo]], and has worked as Professor of Population and Economics as well as the Director of the Migration and Development Programme at [[Harvard University]], as Honorary University Professor of Economics at the [[University of Vienna]], and as Distinguished Research Scholar at [[Georgetown University]]. As of 2019, he works as Distinguished Professor at the [[University of Warsaw]], adjunct professor at the [[University of Tübingen]], and as Distinguished Fellow at the [[University of Bonn]]'s Center for Development Research. Stark is a co-editor of the ''Handbook of Population and Family Economics'' (with [[Mark Rosenzweig (economist)|Mark Rosenzweig]]).<ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/handbook-of-population-and-family-economics/vol/1/part/PB Rosenzweig, M.R., Stark, O. (1997, eds.). ''Handbook of Population and Family Economics''. Amsterdam: Elsevier.]</ref>


== Research==
== Research==

Revision as of 06:12, 1 October 2019

Oded Stark
Academic career
InstitutionUniversity of Warsaw
University of Tübingen
University of Bonn
FieldDevelopment economics, labour economics
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Oded Stark is an economist and Distinguished Professor at the University of Warsaw as well as a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Bonn's Center for Development Research. He ranks among the top migration economists in Europe.[1]

Biography

Over the course of his career, Oded Stark has held the Chair in Economic and Regional Policy at the University of Klagenfurt, the Chair in Development Economics at the University of Oslo, and has worked as Professor of Population and Economics as well as the Director of the Migration and Development Programme at Harvard University, as Honorary University Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna, and as Distinguished Research Scholar at Georgetown University. As of 2019, he works as Distinguished Professor at the University of Warsaw, adjunct professor at the University of Tübingen, and as Distinguished Fellow at the University of Bonn's Center for Development Research. Stark is a co-editor of the Handbook of Population and Family Economics (with Mark Rosenzweig).[2]

Research

Oded Stark's research interests include applied microeconomic theory, development economics, population economics, the economics of migration, and labour economics.[3] According to IDEAS/RePEc, Oded Stark ranks among the top 2% of economists in terms of research output.[4]

Stark's research on migration is set against the background of what he and David Bloom call the "new economics of labor migration", i.e., a theory of labour migration accounting for interpersonal income comparisons as a driver of migration, the role of asymmetric information between immigrant jobseekers and native employers, migration decision making by households and intra-household contracts about education, migration and remittances, risk attitudes, migrant networks, migrantion selectivity, and the role of game theoretic strategic behaviour.[5] For instance, early work by Stark highlighted the role of risk aversion as a driver of rural-to-urban migration in the least developed countries, wherein rural households diversify their incomes by placing their best-suited member in the urban sector.[6] This implies that, unlike suggested by e.g. Michael Todaro, rural-to-urban migration may be rational even if rural income is higher than expected urban income, namely, if individuals - instead of households - make decisions, have a one-period planning horizon and are risk averse.[7] Alternatively, in other work with Eliakim Katz, Stark has showed that information asymmetries between immigrants and native employers may tend to reduce the skill level of migrants and that providing information to employers may raise the skill level of immigrants. [8] A similar argument to Katz & Stark (1982) is present in Stark's work with Mark Rosenzweig on rural India, wherein they hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant, dispersed but kinship-related households reflects interhousehold arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment where information is costly and risks are spatially correlated.[9] The role of the family in migration decisions is further underlined in Stark's research with Jennifer Lauby in the Philippines, where migrants - typically young women - are selected partly for their amenability to familial income needs and manipulation, which often favour certain though low short-run returns through high remittances.[10]

Together with J. Edward Taylor, Shlomo Yitzhaki, and Robert E.B. Lucas, Stark has also explored the nexus between migration, remittances and inequality. Therein, one key argument of Stark is that (rural-to-urban) migration decisions may be driven by migrants' desire to improve their absolute incomes but also by their interest in reducing their deprivation relative to a local reference group.[11] Stark and Yitzhaki further show that locally rich individuals are unlikely to emigrate, whereas the poorest may have both very weak or very strong incentives to migrate.[12] In further work with Taylor on migration from Mexico to the United States, the relevance of relative deprivation is confirmed; independent of relative deprivation, they also observe that households tend to send members to those domestic or foreign labour markets where their returns to human capital are highest.[13][14] Together with Lucas, Stark has sought to explain remittance behaviour, theorizing that remittances may be seen as part of a long-term understanding between migrants and their families; in this contract, families (e.g. from Botswana) sacrifice resources to educate their children who - once abroad - are expected to earn higher wages and remit to their families, leading families to undertake more risky activities and save less, with competition over inheritance being mediated through remittances.[15][16] In joint work with Taylor and Yitzhaki on the relationship between remittances and income inequalities in rural Mexico, Stark finds that villages' migration histories (e.g. internal vs. international migration) and the degree of diffusion of migration opportunities across households are key determinants of remittances' impact on rural income inequality,[17] which itself is sensitive to the weights attached to local income distributions.[18] In work with Oded Galor, Stark has also explored return migration, demonstrating how a positive probability thereof may increase migrants' work effort and help account for positive migrant-native earning differentials.[19][20]

In the late 1990s, Stark began to weigh in on the brain drain debate. Together with Christian Helmenstein and Alexia Prskawetz, he showed that, given asymmetric information, the possibility of migration can generate a brain gain along with a brain drain by increasing the expected returns to education, resulting in a situation where the increase in incentives for human capital investments overcompensates the emigration of education persons.[21][22] This effect is further augmented by positive educational externalities, strengthening the theoretical argument that the lure of emigration for the highly educated may actually improve a source country's human capital[23] and may be a substitute for subsidies for the formation of human capital (with Yong Wang).[24]

Another strand of Stark's research concerns altruism. Along with Douglas Bernheim, Stark has criticized the view that altruism necessarily increases the benefits of group interactions or improves the allocation of resources within families, instead emphasizing how altruisms makes individuals exploitable and inefficient, especially the more as altruists are reluctant to punish betrayals.[25] By contrast, in work with Theodore Bergstrom, Stark has highlighted the potential for cooperation to persist in evolutionary, competitive environments through genetic and cultural inheritance.[26]

Bibliography (selected)

  • Stark, O. (1993). The Migration of Labor. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
  • Stark, O. (1999). Altruism and Beyond: An Economic Analysis of Transfers and Exchanges Within Families and Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

  1. ^ According to IDEAS/RePEc, Oded Stark ranked 4th among migration economists in Europe. Retrieved July 14th, 2019.
  2. ^ Rosenzweig, M.R., Stark, O. (1997, eds.). Handbook of Population and Family Economics. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  3. ^ Profile of Oded Stark on the website of IZA. Retrieved July 14th, 2019.
  4. ^ Oded Stark ranked 568th out of 56344 authors registered on IDEAS/RePEc. Retrieved July 14th, 2019.
  5. ^ Stark, O., Bloom, D.E. (1985). The New Economics of Labor Migration. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 75(2), pp. 173-178.
  6. ^ Stark, O., Levhari, D. (1982). On Migration and Risk in LDCs. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 31(1), pp. 191-196.
  7. ^ Katz, E., Stark, O. (1986). Labor Migration and Risk Aversion in Less Developed Countries. Journal of Labor Economics, 4(1), pp. 134-149.
  8. ^ Katz, E., Stark, O. (1987). International Migration Under Asymmetric Information. Economic Journal, 97(387), pp. 718-726.
  9. ^ Rosenzweig, M.R., Stark, O. (1989). Consumption Smoothing, Migration, and Marriage: Evidence from Rural India. Journal of Political Economy, 97(4), pp. 905-926.
  10. ^ Lauby, J., Stark, O. (1988). Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines. Journal of Demography, 42(3), pp. 473-486.
  11. ^ Stark, O. (1984). Rural-to-Urban Migration in LDCs: A Relative Deprivation Approach. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 32(3), pp. 475-486.
  12. ^ Stark, O., Yitzhaki, S. (1988). Labour migration as a response to relative deprivation. Journal of Population Economics, 1(1), pp. 57-70.
  13. ^ Stark, O., Taylor, J.E. (1989). Relative Deprivation and International Migration. Demography, 26(1), pp. 1-14.
  14. ^ Stark, O., Taylor, J.E. (1991). Migration Incentives, Migration Types: The Role of Relative Deprivation. Economic Journal, 101(408), pp. 1163-1178.
  15. ^ Lucas, R.E.B., Stark, O. (1985). Motivations to Remit: Evidence from Botswana. Journal of Political Economy, 93(5), pp. 901-918.
  16. ^ Stark, O., Lucas, R.E.B. (1988). Migration, Remittances, and the Family. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 36(3), pp. 465-481.
  17. ^ Stark, O., Taylor, J.E., Yitzhaki, S. (1986). Remittances and Inequality. Economic Journal, 96(383), pp. 722-740.
  18. ^ Stark, O., Taylor, J.E., Yitzhaki, S. (1988). Migration, remittances and inequality: A sensitivity analysis using the extended Gini index. Journal of Development Economics, 28(3), pp. 309-322.
  19. ^ Galor, O., Stark, O. (1990). Migrants' Savings, the Probability of Return Migration and Migrants' Performance. International Economic Review, 31(2), pp. 463-467.
  20. ^ Galor, O., Stark, O. (1991). The probability of return migration, migrants' work effort, and migrants' performance. Journal of Development Economics, 35(2), pp. 399-405.
  21. ^ Stark, O., Helmenstein, C., Prskawetz, A. (1997). A brain gain with a brain drain. Economics Letters, 55(2), pp. 227-234.
  22. ^ Stark, O., Helmenstein, C., Prskawetz, A. (1998). Human capital depletion, human capital formation, and migration: a blessing or a 'curse'? Economics Letters, 60(3), pp. 363-367.
  23. ^ Stark, O. (2004). Rethinking the Brain Drain. World Development, 32(1), pp. 15-22.
  24. ^ Stark, O., Wang, Y. (2002). Inducing human capital formation: migration as a substitute for subsidies. Journal of Public Economics, 86(1), pp. 29-46.
  25. ^ Bernheim, B.D., Stark, O. (1988). Altruism within the Family Reconsidered: Do Nice Guys Finish Last? American Economic Review, 78(5), pp. 1034-1045.
  26. ^ Bergstrom, T.C., Stark, O. (1993). How Altruism Can Prevail in an Evolutionary Environment. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 83(2), pp. 149-155.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oded_Stark&oldid=918981773"