environmental efficiency evaluation of industry in china based on a new fixed sum undesirable output data envelopment analysis national natural science funds of china for innovative research groups 70821001 national natural science funds of china 70901069 71222106 71203186 research fund for the doctoral program of higher education of china 20133402110028 fundamental research funds for the central universities wk 2040150007 china scholarship council

labor supply of husbands and wives a simultaneous equations approach labor supply functions for married men and women are formulated as a dynamic simultaneous equations system which is estimated using panel data controlling for fixed individual effects allows marginal labor supply responses to be disentangled from permanent patterns in hours worked due to assortative mating the results suggest that the labor supply of husbands and wives without pre school children is not jointly determined in the short run while families with young children exhibit strong interactions in work hours and negative cross earnings effects neither the joint utility model of family labor supply nor an ad hoc traditional family model is supported by these results the data are for the united states and concern 381 couples from the denver income maintenance experiment excerpt

economies of traffic density in the deregulated airline industry this article estimates a structural model of competition among hub and spoke airlines in order to measure the strength of economies of traffic density on individual route segments we find that economies of density were strong during the sample period fourth quarter 1985 stronger than previous estimates by douglas caves laurits christensen and michael tretheway derived from traditional cost function methods we also find that the airlines competitive behavior was far from collusive in the markets under study markets requiring a connection at a hub airport our structural model also provides plausible estimates of demand elasticities we use our estimates to provide a cost based rationale for the major changes in the structure of the industry following deregulation for example the increase in airport and industry wide concentration and the increase in competition at the city pair market level and to simulate the effects of a merger of airlines that share a hub

assessing firm behavior in carve out markets evidence on the impact of carve out policy abstract airlines wanting to cooperatively set prices for their international air travel service must apply to the relevant authorities for antitrust immunity ati while cooperation may yield benefits it can also have anti competitive effects in markets where partners competed prior to receiving ati a carve out policy forbids ati partners from cooperating in markets policymakers believe will be most harmed by anti competitive effects we examine carve out policy applications to three ati partner pairings and find evidence more consistent with cooperative pricing in carve out markets in spite of the policy calling into question the effectiveness of the policy in achieving intended market outcomes

off farm work decisions of husbands and wives joint decision making theoretical and econometric models are developed to examine joint wage labor participation and hours decisions of a husband and wife in farm households the econometric model is multiple equation and recursive the specification of the off farm labor supply equation of the husband wife depends on whether his her wife husband does or does not work off the farm and this structure is endogenous the model is fitted to data for iowa farm households the main conclusion is that the off farm labor supply equation of a married individual differs significantly depending on whether his or her spouse also works for a wage copyright 1989 by mit press

off farm work decisions of farm couples estimating structural simultaneous equations with ordered categorical dependent variables we estimate a full system of structural farm and off farm labor supply equations of farm couples as a set of simultaneous equations with categorical dependent variables in a first step the reduced form is estimated by ordered probit with unknown thresholds then the identified structural coefficients are recovered from the reduced form coefficients through minimum distance estimation using census data from israel we find that for men a one hour increase in farm labor supply causes a one hour decrease in off farm labor supply but not for women this could not have been found without estimating structural coefficients

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

measuring ecological efficiency with data envelopment analysis dea abstract the measurement of ecological efficiency provides some important information for the companies environmental management ecological efficiency is usually measured by comparing environmental performance indicators data envelopment analysis dea shows a high potential to support such comparisons as no explicit weights are needed to aggregate the indicators in general dea assumes that inputs and outputs are goods but from an ecological perspective also bads have to be considered in the literature bads are treated in different and sometimes arbitrarily chosen ways this article aims at the systematic derivation of ecologically extended dea models starting from the assumptions of dea in production theory and activity analysis a generalisation of basic dea models is derived by incorporating a multi dimensional value function f extended preference structures can be considered by different specifications of f e g specifications for ecologically motivated applications of dea

how valuable is on farm work to farmers in this article we estimate a rural household model that allows specific tastes for working on farm and can fit the data as well as the general model of lopez we use two samples that are matched by individual characteristics and adopt the method for matched surveys proposed by arellano and meghir we replicate using french data the empirical finding of elhorst who reports evidence that implicit wages of on farm family labor are significantly below off farm wages we then provide estimates of the lower bounds for preferences for on farm work for males and females which are significant and positive

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

eco efficiency assessment of eu manufacturing sectors combining input output tables and data envelopment analysis following production and consumption based accounting approaches abstract assessing the footprint of anthropogenic activities has become particularly challenging in today s globalized markets where a large number of economic transactions taking place across the globe need to be disentangled before the most critical sectors are identified in this work we present an approach to quantify the eco efficiency of economic activities that combines multi regional environmentally extended input output tables and data envelopment analysis we employ this method to assess the european union manufacturing sectors in terms of three inputs global warming potential potential acidifying equivalent and tropospheric ozone forming potential and one output economic wealth following both production and consumption based accounting approaches our approach classifies economic sectors as efficient and inefficient and for the latter it provides improvement targets that if attained would make them efficient we find that there is a significant mismatch at the sectorial level between both accounting schemes each providing complementary information for policy making in the production based case targets allow identifying sectors and pollutants requiring more stringent regulations and or higher investments in cleaner technologies conversely the consumption based accounting allows identifying the ultimate sources of impact an insight that can assist in the selection of alternative cleaner suppliers via eco labelling of products services and proper taxation schemes

wage labour activities by agricultural households in nicaragua this article considers wage labour activities by agricultural households in nicaragua it analyses the role of 1 comparative advantage as determined by individual and household characteristics and 2 agricultural conditions and market imperfections in shaping wage labour supply an econometric specification is developed which allows for random household specific effects results reveal that non agricultural wage work is largely determined by comparative advantages whereas agricultural wage work is used to deal with a number of agricultural conditions and market imperfections

the supply of off farm labor a random coefficients approach a joint model of off farm labor decisions for farm operator and spouse is presented attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions as well as associated problems of multiple sample selectivity biases two stage fixed and random coefficient methods corrected for possible selectivity biases are used to estimate supply function parameters results indicate that supply function parameters are random variation in important supply parameters is investigated results also illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off farm labor supply function structure

quasi maximum likelihood estimation of multivariate probit models farm couples labor participation joint estimation of farmers farm and off farm work participation requires a multivariate probit model in which the number of equations is twice the number of household members where there are more than two such equations i suggest a quasi maximum likelihood method which requires only two levels of numerical integration the method maximizes the use of sample information given this numerical feasibility condition it is used for estimating a joint participation model of farm couples farm and off farm work the model yields conclusions about comparative advantages of men and women in farm off farm and housework which cannot be obtained with a more limited setup

crop insurance acreage decisions and nonpoint source pollution the redirection of farm policy in the 1996 farm bill has generated much interest in seeking environmentally friendly and economically viable ways to protect farm income agricultural insurance has been suggested as such an instrument this article estimates the effect of crop insurance on crop mix and the resulting change in chemical use in the central nebraska basin providing corn insurance will shift land from hay and pasture to corn which will increase chemical use at the extensive margin this extensive margin effect dominates the effect of crop insurance on the application rate leading to an increase in total chemical use

cooperation and part time farming in the israeli moshav a simultaneous equations model of the israeli moshav in which the levels of cooperative marketing part time and full time farming output and capital stock are endogenous is developed and empirically estimated in the process hypotheses relating to the problem of voluntary collective action are tested

the determinants of vinegrowers employment and policy implications the case of a greek island this study investigates the employment of vinegrowers on a greek island samos where there exist attractive alternative employment opportunities particularly in the tourist sector the recent dramatic decline in the number of vinegrowers has been of great concern particularly to wine producers policy makers and local authorities because such a pattern has had and most importantly will have serious economic social and environmental implications the focus of this paper is on two issues first some descriptive statistics on the demographics of vinegrowers and characteristics of vineyards are presented and second a probit model is developed to identify the demographic and other determinants of the probability of off farm and off vineyard work participation the most important source of data information is primary data collected by the authors using a questionnaire which was completed by a representative sample of vinegrowers from the island of samos the empirical findings suggest that the promotion of vinegrowing requires policies that will enlarge the size of vineyards promote investments in human and physical capital and improve the public infrastructure

wage functions and occupational selection in a rural less developed country setting economists are just beginning to develop empirical knowledge about the basic relationships that determine the distribution of incomes and allocation of resources in the poor rural regions of the world understanding interactions between agriculture and the rest of the economy is particularly important in this context this paper empirically investigates the allocation of human resources between farm work and other jobs and the compensation received by individuals for their work in agriculture and elsewhere specifically two related tasks are undertaken in this paper 1 the estimation of wage functions and 2 the estimation of functions determining the allocation of time among occupations there have been a series of papers which estimate the earnings function using data from poor countries for examples see blaug 1974 chiswick 1977 and valdes 1971 however this study focuses not on total earnings but on the wage rates a person may earn in labor market work because the wage rate is the relevant price of time for many allocative decisions for example in dividing the work year between self employed farming and work as an employee off the farm a key price is the potential wage rate the person can earn in the labor market for discussion and evidence on this issue see sumner 1978 recently a few studies have appeared which illustrate the importance of understanding potential wage variations across individuals in less developed countries rosenzweig 1978 uses wage estimates from aggregate indian data in a model determining the impact of land reform bardhan 1979 develops wage functions from a sample survey in rural india as a step in estimating labor supply for rural households kusnic and davanzo 1980 use wage functions to impute potential incomes and to measure the full income distribution these previous studies illustrate the importance of understanding the determinants of market wages the present paper develops wage functions in more detail focusing especially on industrial differentials in many rural areas employment opportunities may be usefully categorized into 1 self employment mainly on small farms 2 work for wages on large farms and 3 work for wages in non farm industries the combination of selfemployment and work as an employee is also important in many rural areas in both rich and poor countries this paper examines the impact of personal characteristics on the choice to participate in work for wages and on the choice of industry these estimates also form a basis for studying industrial wage differentials tentative estimates of the dependence of participation on expected wages are also presented below the empirical analysis in this paper is based on a 1974 sample of five villages in central guatemala see corona 1978 and stein 1978 one village petapa is larger richer and more urban than the others it lies south of guatemala city within commuting distance of the capital the other villages are outside the capital city region the population sampled is almost exclusively ladino spanish culture as opposed to indian data are available on the earnings hours of work industry age schooling literacy and village of 1 005 male heads of households approximately one third of the sample work as both self employed farmers and hired workers and most of these men work on fincas large plantations another quarter of the sample work as self employed farmers and do no work for wages the suburban village has mostly nonagricultural workers whereas the four other villages have predominantly farmers and farm employees in received for publication june 21 1979 revision accepted for publication december 31 1980 north carolina state university research on this paper began while i was a rockefeller foundation supported post doctoral fellow in the labor and population group of the economics department of the rand corporation and continued at north carolina state university supported by the agricultural research service at rand robert newman served as my research assistant and at n c state james cochell provided able assistance i have benefited from the comments of colleagues at both institutions and from members of the labor economics workshop at the university of north carolina at chapel hill i also thank two anonymous referees for useful suggestions this is paper number 6558 of the journal series of the north carolina agricultural research service raleigh n c

education labor supply and market development in rural peru summary research suggests that education has a limited effect on subsistence farm productivity yet rural incomes include more than farming as households diversify their income portfolios furthermore education may affect the number of labor hours supplied utilizing data from peru this paper finds that farm households benefit from more education by finding more lucrative opportunities characterized by fewer hours the extent to which this is possible depends on how well local markets are developed since education policy takes time to yield returns policy makers have an additional tool at their disposal improving market access will also increase the returns to education

pre commitment and flexibility abstract this paper considers several related strategic duopoly settings in which uncertainty creates an option value from retaining flexibility by delaying investment or output decisions until after uncertainty is resolved this value of flexibility must be weighed against the strategic value of pre commitment yielding a trade off between flexibility and pre commitment we obtain a simple characterization of the timing of output decisions as a consequence of the degree of uncertainty particular attention is paid to the implications for entry deterrence by an incumbent firm and to the possible flexibility enhancing effects of investment in capital

the strategic effects of batch processing we study a duopoly game in which firms commit to a batch technology before competing in sales quantities adopting a batch technology requires the quantity produced to equal an integer number of batches and allows sales to be less than production when larger batch sizes lower unit production costs as in the u s airline industry with its economies of density subgame perfect equilibrium sales quantities are unique and more competitive than the cournot equilibrium quantities of a one shot game with continuous total cost functions when larger batch sizes yield higher unit costs equilibrium production can exceed equilibrium sales

family composition and off farm participation decisions in israeli farm households this article studies the relationship between the off farm participation behavior of farm operators and their spouses and the demographic composition of the household we focus on farm families without parents siblings or partners and examine the effects of the existence of elderly children of the farm couple we find that both the father and the mother tend to reduce their participation in off farm work as the number of elderly children rises this result holds even after controlling for observed characteristics we also find that the effect of elderly children stems from considerations related to both farm production and household production

local economic conditions and wage labor decisions of farm and rural nonfarm couples effects of geographical differences in local economic conditions on wage labor demand and wage labor participation decisions of rural couples are examined for current population survey households 1978 82 wage premiums are shown to exist for localities anticipating labor demand growth higher unemployment rates larger share of employment in services and higher costs of living these effects are stronger for males than females effects of local economic conditions on the probability of wage work are consistent with expected market wage and reservation wage effects and for farm households the probability of wage work increases when expected farm output prices decline or the wage increases

assessment of the environmental efficiency of the electricity mix of the top european economies via data envelopment analysis abstract moving towards a more sustainable energy system is a major goal of modern societies that aim to minimize the dependence on fossil fuels and the associated anthropogenic impacts in this article the combined use of life cycle assessment lca and data envelopment analysis dea is applied to analyse the environmental performance eco efficiency of the electricity mix of the top european economies this approach allows identifying environmentally efficient and inefficient countries considering as undesirable inputs several environmental impacts associated with the production of 1 kwh regarded as output the method provides as well targets for the inefficient countries that if attained would make them efficient our results provide valuable insight for governments and policy makers that aim to satisfy the electricity demand while minimizing the associated environmental impact

measuring the efficiency of grid companies in china a bootstrapping non parametric meta frontier approach abstract the unbundling policy reform of power industry has become a worldwide trend since 1980s there are quite many studies focusing on the efficiency changes of transmission and distribution sectors in european and latin american countries while few reports on china s issues have been found this paper employs a nonparametric frontier estimation combined with meta frontier and bootstrapping method to measure the productive efficiency and changes in the decomposition index for china s 31 grid companies from 2004 to 2013 in addition it further employs tobit regression model to analyze the influences of relevant policies and heterogeneity factors such as natural conditions and economic development the results indicate that the grouping approach extends the application of non parametric data envelopment analysis which may decrease the assumption of homogeneity for the decision making units and provide better efficiency estimates by increasing the credibility of the evaluation results overall productive efficiency increased during the whole study period with technology progress the main contributor to this improvement efficiency trends fluctuated with changes in economic development and power supply situation and the economics and customer density had positive effects on productive efficiency while the influence of clean power proportion is negative

on the empirical implementation of some game theoretic models of household labor supply this paper discusses some issues in the empirical implementation of game theoretic models of household labor supply in particular we focus on the identification problems inherent in many of these models as an illustration we estimate a game theoretic model which uses data on preferred working hours as additional identifying information

the off farm work behavior of farm operators there is widespread concern about the opportunities for people to begin farming most observers argue that the financial barrier to entry into agriculture has risen relative to farm incomes several authors have pointed to off farm earnings as one important way to overcome this barrier coffman carlin and ghelfi steeves steeves in particular cited evidence that fewer than 20 of canadian farm entrants between 1966 and 1971 recorded no significant off farm work in 1971 nearly 43 of these entrants worked 229 to 365 days off the farm in that year similar evidence for farm entrants in iowa is found in kaldor and jetton hence off farm work by new farmers is often viewed as an important way to manage the high capital investment required to establish a viable farm this viewpoint is not the only one possible neoclassical theory predicts that farmers increase off farm work when marginal returns to off farm work become larger than marginal returns to farming lee bollman sumner because entering farmers often have current off farm work skills they may choose some off farm work regardless of the financial obligations of farming because offfarm work skills depreciate and returns to farming appreciate over time established farmers are less likely to engage in off farm work clearly a simple correlation between farm entry and off farm work will not allow us to distinguish between these views this paper develops two formal models of offfarm labor supply to examine these two interpretations first it analyzes the off farm work decisions in a conventional utility maximizing framework consistent with the view that off farm work is chosen when marginal returns to farming fall below potential off farm returns the paper then analyzes the off farm work decisions when an income target reflecting the need to meet the financial obligations of farming is the objective the paper demonstrates that these models produce divergent predictions about off farm work decisions only under the assumption that the higher financial obligations exceed the higher returns to work on larger farms the models are then tested under this assumption using the 1978 agricultural enumerative survey for the canadian province of saskatchewan

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

the costs of equal land distribution the case of the israeli moshavim equal land distribution achieved by government policy may adversely affect aggregate output israeli moshavim cooperative villages operate under an equal land allocation rule this study assesses the production and distributional consequences of three alternative hypothetical allocation rules a free market allocation a value maximizing policy of distributing land to current farmers and a policy that maximizes value added without discrimination based on nativity or ethnicity production and supply functions are estimated using sample data on israeli family farms then the four allocation rules are simulated the output loss from distributing land equally is found to be modest compared to the income inequality generated by the other rules

does risk matter the case of wage labour allocation by owner cultivators this study analyses the impact of revenue risk on the hiring out behaviour of owner cultivators since hiring out is not certain labour market risk is also allowed for a large sample of owner cultivators residing in semi arid regions in india and hence subject to high production and labour market risks is used for this purpose it is found that possibly because production risks carry forward into the local labour market households are unable to use the labour market as a hedge against production risk we also find that labour force participation is positively affected by increases in the real wage rate a result that is contrary to the findings of earlier studies using data from less developed agriculture several other insights also result

the off farm labor supply of farmers theoretical and empirical models are developed to examine the off farm wages labor force participation and hours of work of farmers econometric estimates use data from a 1971 survey of illinois farmers the off farm wage depends on farmer human capital and the local labor market the major result confirms the sensitivity of off farm work to economic incentives a 10 increase in the off farm wage entails an 11 increase in hours of off farm work holding farm characteristics constant results also indicate effects of seasonality risk and life cycle factors on off farm work

efficiency and allocation of emission allowances and energy consumption over more sustainable european economies abstract efficient use of energy reduction in fossil fuel dependence and control of co2 emissions are all fundamental to development of a sustainable economy competitiveness in energy use saves imports of oil and gas increases gross domestic product and creates new jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors this study identifies the more or less competitive european union member states in terms of sustainable growth using data envelopment analysis dea model and proposes new allocations of country greenhouse gas limits and energy consumption using a zero sum gains dea model the analysis of european countries fills a gap in the existing literature and contributes to the discussion on the 2020 2030 european strategy proposing an efficiency based indicator which measures country performance in terms of economic social and environmental factors gdp represents the economic factor population represents the social factor and emissions final and renewable energy consumption are the environmental factors the numerical results show that the initial allocations are inefficient applying the modelled reallocation the most efficient countries are rewarded by potential increases in emission and energy consumption while the least efficient countries must bring about decreases to achieve full efficiency

does cash crop adoption detract from child care provision evidence from rural nepal this document addresses the issues of agricultural commercialization using data from fieldwork conducted in nepal it aimed to examine the impact of a project designed to commercialize vegetables and fruit the vegetable and fruit cash crop program vcf on male and female time allocation the goal of vfc program was to increase the commercial production of vegetables and fruits in farm households that were heavily dependent on the production of cereal and livestock for home consumption findings from multivariate analysis suggest that for households with one preschooler vfc participation results in more time to agricultural production of the cash crop for both men and women but also a decrease in care time to preschoolers from both men and women meanwhile for households with more than one preschooler this trade off is not so apparent the analysis also suggests that behavior change initiatives to protect time to child care might be feasible in that vfc participation does not decrease the overall nonwork time of men or women with preschool children in residence

sustainability assessment of u s manufacturing sectors an economic input output based frontier approach abstract due to increasing concerns related to emerging environmental problems as a result of industrial activities sustainable manufacturing has become a topic of considerable interest worldwide in this study economic input output life cycle assessment eio lca and data envelopment analysis dea a linear programming based mathematical optimization model were integrated to analyze the eco efficiency of manufacturing sectors in the united states this integration was achieved by aggregating different environmental pressures into a single eco efficiency score first greenhouse gas emissions energy use water withdrawals hazardous waste generation and toxic releases of each manufacturing sector were quantified using the eio lca model second an input oriented dea multiplier model was developed third eco efficiency scores and rankings target and performance improvement values of each environmental category were determined finally the sensitivity of each environmental impact category was analyzed analysis results showed that five industrial sectors such as petroleum and coal products manufacturing food manufacturing printing and related support activities ordinance and accessories manufacturing and motor vehicle manufacturing were 100 eco efficient compared to other manufacturing sectors on the other hand approximately 90 of u s manufacturing sectors were found to be inefficient and require significant improvements in their life cycle performance among the environmental impact categories energy use had the highest sensitivity on the eco efficiency of u s manufacturing sectors and therefore improved energy efficiency in industrial processes and successful policy making toward increasing the share of renewable energy utilization were highly recommended

time allocation between farm and off farm activities in israeli farm households this paper examines the time allocation of israeli farm families between farm work and off farm work we found that extended families behave differently than nuclear families people in families with adult children or siblings of the farm couple tend to work more off the farm and less on the farm while people in families with parents tend to work less both on and off the farm we also found that farm land and capital do not affect time allocation once we control for the productive structure of the farm the private arab and jewish farm families behave differently than families in moshavim perhaps due to institutional factors cultural background and or labor market discrimination