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This study estimates the causal effects of language proficiency on the economic and social integration of Australian immigrants. Identifying the effects of languages on socioeconomic outcomes is inherently difficult owing to the endogeneity of language skills. Using the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children, we construct an instrumental variable for language proficiency. To achieve this, we consider the age at arrival of immigrants who came as children from Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries. We find a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages and promotions among adults who immigrated to Australia as children. Higher levels of English proficiency are associated with increased risk-taking, more smoking, and more exercise for men, but have considerable health benefits for women. English language proficiency has a significant influence on partner choice and a number of social outcomes, as well as on children's outcomes, including their levels of academic achievement. The results are robust to alternative specifications, including accounting for between-sibling differences and alternative measures of English skills.

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The objective of this paper is to estimate the impacts of medium-and long-term participation in microcredit programs. It utilises a new and large panel dataset collected from treatment and control households from 1997 to 2005. The data enables us to identify continuing participants in the program as well as newcomers and leavers. We employ di¤erent estimation strategies including triple-di¤erence and propensity score matching methods to control for selection bias. The impact estimates indicate that the bene…ts from microcredit vary more than proportionately with the duration of participation in a program. Larger bene…ts are realized from longer-term participation, and that the bene…ts continue to accrue beyond departure from the program. The …ndings indicate the need to observe longer periods of participation to provide a reliable basis for assessing the e¤ectiveness of microcredit lending.JEL Classi…cation: C21, C33, H43, G21, I31, O12, O16

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This paper examines the relationship between unemployment and immigration in Canada. The bidirectional causality test finds no evidence of a significant effect of Canadian immigration on unemployment. Cointegration tests indicate that there is no observed increase in aggregate unemployment due to immigration in the long run. The results from the causality test based on the vector error correction model confirm that, in the short run, past unemployment does cause (less) immigration but not vice versa . There is also a long-run positive relationship among per-capita GDP, immigration rate and real wages. The results indicate that, in the short-run, more immigration is possibly associated with attractive Canadian immigration policies, and in the long-run, as the labour market adjusts, Canadianborn workers are likely to benefit from increased migration.