Out of sight, out of mind? Educational outcomes of children with parents working abroad.

Impact of parental emigration on educational outcomes of children is theoretically ambiguous. Using novel data I collected on migration experience and its timing, family background and school performance of lower secondary pupils in Poland, I analyse the question empirically. Migration is mostly temporary in nature, with one parent engaging in employment abroad. As many as 63% of migrant parents have vocational qualifications, 29% graduated from high school, 4% have no qualifications and the remaining 4% graduated from university. Almost 18% of children are affected by parental migration. Perhaps surprisingly, estimates suggest that parental employment abroad has a positive immediate impact on a pupil’s grade. Parental education appears pivotal; children of high school graduates benefit most. Longer term effects appear more negative, however, suggesting that a prolonged migration significantly lowers a child’s grade. Interestingly, siblings’ foreign experiences exert a large, positive impact on pupils’ grades.

Educational spillovers and parental migration

Impacts of parental emigration on educational outcomes of children and, in turn, the children’s influence on peers are theoretically ambiguous. Using novel data I collected on migration experiences and timing, family background and school performance of lower secondary pupils in Poland, I analyse empirically whether children with parents working abroad (PWA) influence school performance of their classmates. Migration is mostly temporary in nature, with one parent engaging in employment abroad. As many as 63% of migrant parents have vocational qualifications, 29% graduated from high school, 4% have no qualifications and the remaining 4% graduated from university. Almost 18% of all children are affected by parental migration and, on average, 6.5% of pupils in a class have a parent abroad. Perhaps surprisingly, estimates suggest that pupils benefit from the presence of PWA classmates. PWA pupils whose parents graduated from high school exert the biggest positive impact on their classroom peers. Further, classmates are differently affected by PWA children; those who themselves experienced migration within the family benefit most. This positive effect is likely driven by the student level interactions or increased teachers’ commitment to classes with students from migrant families.

Multiple Objectives in Monetary Policy: A de Facto Analysis for ‘Advanced’ Countries

A statistical methodology is developed by which realised outcomes can be used to identify, for calendar years between 1974 and 2012, when policy makers in ‘advanced’ economies have successfully pursued single objectives of different kinds, or multiple objectives. A simple criterion is then used to distinguish between multiple objectives pure and simple and multiple objectives subject to a price stability constraint. The overall and individual country results which this methodology produces seem broadly plausible. Unconditional and conditional analyses of the inflation and growth associated with different types of objectives reveal that multiple objectives subject to a price stability constraint are associated with roughly as good economic performance as the single objective of inflation. A proposal is then made as to how the remit of an inflation-targeting central bank could be adjusted to allow it to pursue other objectives in extremis without losing the credibility effects associated with inflation targeting.