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"Performance Metrics for Sustainable Cities provides an overview of measurement systems and tools to enable communities to self-assess and benchmark their progress along a continuum of smart, intelligent, and sustainable development. It begins by explaining the importance of measurement and evaluation for cities and smaller communities, as well as future factors that will need to be considered and embedded into planning processes. Across 14 chapters, the book describes existing evaluation mechanisms that are being used for government funding decisions, awards of recognition, and new measurement systems to assess what makes a city smarter and more sustainable, such as broader sustainable goal targets (UN SDGs), green cities, fabrication cities, and compassionate cities. It presents examples of metrics used for important sustainability and liveability concepts for cities such as how to measure trust, engagement, compassion, circular economy, and so forth. The book ends with reflections on the feasibility of a holistic system of measurement, and the implications of its implementation. This volume will be of great interest to students, researchers and professionals of urban sustainability, planning, smart cities and sustainable communities"--

Abstract
We examine households' temporary international migration response when faced with shocks in rural Kyrgyzstan. Using a household fixed effects model, we find that while a drought shock increases migration, a winter shock reduces migration. We argue that this difference is because of the trade-off between two effects of a shock for a household: loss of income and increase in the need for labor services. Migration increases when the former effect of a shock dominates and it reduces when the latter effect dominates. We explore these mechanisms further, and find that when households have easier access to informal finance the migration response is muted only for shocks for which the adverse income effect dominates. These findings provide evidence in favor of our proposed mechanisms through which shocks affect migration.

Recent changes to immigration selection policies favor skilled workers with prior work experience in the immigrant host country. Using unique administrative tax data for Canada, we estimate earnings equations to quantify the difference in earnings of immigrants with prior Canadian experience (prefilers) and those without prior experience (non-prefilers). We find that, relative to non-prefilers, entry earnings are higher for prefilers and, for male immigrants, this earnings advantage persists for at least 20 years after arrival. We show that the primary source of the higher entry earnings of prefilers is a higher return to foreign experience. In addition, the prefiler earnings advantage is largest for university graduates and the return to foreign experience is higher for prefilers from Western countries than those from the rest of the world. Our findings suggest that a move towards an immigrant selection system which uses previous host-country work experience as a criterion will improve the labor market performance of immigrants.

This paper examines the casual relationship between greater exposure to international trade and the size and composition of government expenditures, productive versus unproductive. To capture differential impacts on how government responds to greater international exposure three measures are used: the ratio of exports plus imports to GDP (openness), the ratio of exports to GDP, and the ratio imports to GDP. For all countries in aggregate, we find no causal relationship between openness and total government expenditures or productive and unproductive expenditures. For low-income countries however, there is a positive causal relationship between openness and productive government expenditures. Further, there is a positive causal relationship between the import ratio and productive expenditures for all countries as well as for low- and high-income countries separately. Exports, conversely, have no causal relationship with any measure of government expenditures. Our findings suggest that governments in economies with greater imports as a share of GDP increase productive expenditure to counteract the negative consequences from more exposure to foreign competition. ; http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/view/66313

Within the off-reserve Canadian Aboriginal population, high school graduation rates are about 45 percent lower in Northern communities (North) than the rest of Canada (South). Using data from the Aboriginal Peoples' Surveys for 2000 and 2005, we document that economic incentives do not appear to be important in explaining the North–South gap in graduation rates. We then consider individual-specific and schooling-related determinants of high school graduation and find that these factors can explain between 31 percent and 59 percent of the North–South gap in the probability of graduation for those who had graduated by the time of the survey. Further, much of the gap is attributable to a respondent speaking/understanding or being taught an Aboriginal language. We discuss the possible implications of these results for language and curricular programming in the North.

Provincial Nominee programs have increased the role of the provinces in selecting immigrants to Canada. We use administrative data to compare the earnings and settlement rates of Provincial Nominees (PNs) and immigrants through comparable federal programs, such as economic class immigrants (ECIs). We find that PNs experienced higher entry earnings, but slower subsequent earnings growth. While differences in observable characteristics of immigrants through the two programs played a nominal role in accounting for differences in entry earnings, they were more important in accounting for differences in subsequent earnings growth. Further, we find that PNs were more likely than ECIs to stay in the province to which they were initially destined, and that differences in observable characteristics account for most of the higher settlement rate of PNs.

To encourage more even dispersion of economic immigrants throughout Canada, the federal and various provincial governments have developed the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs). In this paper, we provide an overview of these programs and assess their impact on the flow of immigrants to smaller provinces, which have struggled to attract and retain skilled newcomers. We find, after controlling for provincial economic conditions, that the Nominee Programs of Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick were associated with significant increases in immigration flows to these provinces. We also find that one-year retentions rates of immigrants did not decrease for any province after the introduction of the PNPs. In fact, retention rates for immigrants through Nominee Programs were higher in most provinces than for economic class immigrants arriving through the federal programs. We conclude that PNPs were effective as a means of both attracting and retaining immigrants.