on selecting a measure of labour activity evidence from registered nurses 1981 and 1989 the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effects of the selection of measures of labour activity on the conclusions that are derived from the analysis of individual labour supply the results of the analysis using three commonly specified single measures annual hours worked hours worked per week and weeks worked per year as the dependent variable in tobit equations are compared with those obtained using a probit 2sls in which the individual labour supply is measured by hours worked per week and weeks worked per year the rhs variables are those that are used in earlier individual labour supply studies and are the same in all of the models analysed among the findings are 1 wage rate effects that are quite strong in single equation models and disappear when a multi equation approach is used 2 the effects of children on labour supply is more complex than in indicated in single equation results and 3 duration dependence is much stronger than indicated results using a single measure of indiv

time to build and aggregate fluctuations some new evidence this paper presents maximum likelihood estimates and tests of a model similar to one kydland and prescott 1982 suggested for this purpose it derives equilibrium laws of motion for a set of aggregate variables as functions of the model s parameters and the innovation to the technology shock the paper shows that a single unobservable index can explain the variability in the observed series but identifying the single index with the innovation to the technology shock implies that per capita hours is not well explained it also shows that time separable preferences with respect to leisure are consistent with the data copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

money not morale the impact of desires and beliefs on private investment in photovoltaic citizen participation initiatives abstract a transition towards renewable energy production is one proposed solution as one means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this regard photovoltaic citizen participation initiatives are a cornerstone in fostering the diffusion of renewables allowing for active citizen engagement this article investigates the drivers behind people s decision to participate in two selected austrian citizen participation initiatives in the field of photovoltaics based on a survey of 870 potential adopters in addition to commonly used indicators variables assessing both people s desires their goals or preferences with respect to energy autonomy environmental protection financial aspects etc and their beliefs how likely they think their participation in a citizen participation initiative in the field of photovoltaics will help them achieve these goals are also included in the analysis the findings show that people s desires are not decisive in deciding on pv participation and that financial beliefs are the main driver behind joining such an initiative this focus on financial gain clearly poses a risk in any attempted transition towards renewable energy production as it indicates that adopters may withdraw from participation as soon as a more attractive investment opportunity becomes available it also indicates that subsidized feed in tariffs are likely to be essential in any long term transition policy

factors affecting levels and growth rates in the wage rates of women evidence from nursing using data from two surveys of nurses 1981 and 1989 the study examines the factors affecting the levels and growth rates in the wage rates paid to women especially married women who were licensed as registered nurses our results indicate that the influence of such household characteristics as marital status age and number of children and spouse s characteristic tended to diminish over the 1980s the evidence further suggests that the penalties for frequent switches in employment state were larger at the end of the decade than at the beginning further wages paid to nurses with baccalaureates were statistically the same as those paid to nurses with lesser formal education the return to the baccalaureate appears to be in the form of the higher wages and salaries earned by those who obtain post baccalaureate degrees

the rbc models through statistical inference an application with french data the aim of this paper is to evaluate the capacity of rbc models to mimic the french business cycle we are thus led to investigate the three following assumptions on the labour market 1 the non time separability of leisure 2 the indivisibility of labour and 3 the imperfect information on labour market and time varying effort using the general method of moments we estimate the structural parameters and we test 1 the model s hypothesis using a set of overidentifying restrictions and 2 the model s implications i e its ability to reproduce the cyclical features of the french economy

addressing nurse shortages what can policy makers learn from the econometric evidence on nurse labour supply this paper provides a detailed review of the international studies that have used formal econometric models to investigate the labour supply decision of registered nurses rns the main finding is that at least in the short run rn labour supply appears to be fairly unresponsive to wage changes consequently even large wage increases are unlikely to be successful in tackling current and predicted nurse shortages this finding points to the importance of non pecuniary job aspects in influencing labour supply however the paper concludes by arguing that these empirical findings should be viewed with some caution given both theoretical and econometric limitations

current real business cycle theories and aggregate labor market fluctuations hours worked and the return to working are weakly correlated traditionally the ability to account for this fact has been a litmus test for macroeconomic models existing real business cycle models fail this test dramatically we modify prototypical real business cycle models by allowing government consumption shocks to influence labor market dynamics this modification can in principle bring the models into closer conformity with the data our empirical results indicate that it does

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

indivisible labor and the business cycle abstract a growth model with shocks to technology is studied labor is indivisible so all variability in hours worked is due to fluctuations in the number employed we find that unlike previous equilibrium models of the business cycle this economy displays large fluctuations in hours worked and relatively small fluctuations in productivity this finding is independent of individuals willingness to substitute leisure across time this and other findings are the result of studying and comparing summary statistics describing this economy an economy with divisible labor and post war u s time series

real business cycle theory wisdom or whimsy abstract this paper assesses the empirical plausibility of the view that aggregate productivity stocks account for most of the variability in post world war ii us output we argue that the type of evidence forwarded by proponents of this proposition is too fragile to be believable the answer could be 70 as kydland and prescott 1989 claim but the data contain almost no evidence against either the view that the answer is really 5 or that the answer is really 200 moreover point estimates of the importance of technology shocks are extremely sensitive to small perturbations in the theory depending on the sample period investigated allowing for labor hoarding behavior in an otherwise standard rbc model reduces the ability of technology shocks to account for aggregate fluctuations by between 30 to 60

simultaneously modeling the supply of weeks and hours of work among female household heads this paper explores the differential nature of labor supply decisions regarding weeks of work per year and hours of work per week among female household heads a model of labor supply that separates the weeks hours decision is presented and estimated allowing for simultaneity in the weeks hours decision as well as for the presence of either fixed costs or weeks and hours constraints the results indicate that not only are weeks and hours decisions separate from the labormarket participation decision but they are also quite different from each other although they appear to be simultaneously determined

intertemporal preferences and labor supply in this paper the authors examine whether nonseparable preference structures ar e important in characterizing life cycle labor supply using longitud inal data on prime age males from the panel study of income dynamics they estimate a model of life cycle leisure and consumption under un certainty in which intertemporal preferences are allowed to be nonsep arable in leisure the model tests several alternative specifications considered in the literature they investigate the robustness of the ir findings to certain forms of population heterogeneity and types of model misspecification across alternative specifications the autho rs find that the standard assumption of intertemporally separable pre ferences for leisure is not consistent with the data copyright 1988 by the econometric society

production growth and business cycles ii new directions abstract this paper outlines new directions for investigations of real business cycle models consideration of stochastic growth of exogenous and endogenous forms analysis of suboptimal outcomes arising due to externalities of distorting taxes and implications of labor market heterogeneity

methodological and empirical issues in real business cycle theory abstract in this paper we argue that the major impact of the rbc literature has been to propose a new methodology for macroeconomics this methodology is distinguished first by the importance it attributes to the empirical description of the phenomena to be explained and second by the use of this description in conjunction with quantitative theorizing i e the construction of computable general equilibrium models whose characteristic statistics match those of the data in accordance with this approach we first report on the current state of knowledge concerning business cycle regularities and conclude that additional empirical effort is called for in order to arrive at the appropriate basis for theorizing we then examine the performance of existing models and evaluate the case for integrating monetary factors and demand shocks into them lastly we review the recent efforts to explain the employment variability puzzle and argue that the search for a solution naturally leads to the incorporation of significant non walrasian features into the rbc framework

a simultaneous equation model of labor supply fertility and earnings of married women the case of registered nurses a simultaneous equation model of labor supply fertility and earnings is developed and estimated for an important subset of the female population married registered nurses rns measures of variables specific to married nurses age 21 64 are developed by aggregating observations on individual nurses or their families into standard metropolitan statistical area smsa averages from the 1 in 100 public use sample of the 1970 census of population in the u s the sample was restricted in certain ways the grouped observations apply only to white rns who are married with husband present and live in smsas of over 250000 population in 1970 except honolulu the sample is further restricted so that each included observation representing an smsa average is based upon an underlying pool of at least 15 individual nurses this last restriction reduces the sample of smsas to 88 from 124 the coefficient on the nurse wage variable is positive and statistically significant with an implied wage elasticity of 40 at the means these estimates are consistent with those observed using the analogous microcensus data on rns rn fertility has the predicted negative effect on nurse labor supply but is statistically insignificant but the magnitude of the fertility coefficient is plausible a 10 increase in nurse fertility within an smsa number of children ever born 1000 nurses ever married within an smsa is associated with a reduction in the smsa nurse labor supply the estimated coefficients of the husband earnings and nonlabor income variables are negative but only the former is statistically significant at the 90 level or above the estimated effect of the nurses earnings opportunities on her fertility are statistically insignificant but the wage coefficient is negative as expected and implies an elasticity of nurse fertility with respect to the nurse wage rate of approximately 2 the coefficient on the labor supply variable is negative and statistically significant confirming the hypothesis that increased labor market activity increases the opportunity costs of children husbands earnings are not a significant determinant of rn fertility the estimates suggest that nurse labor supply and fertility decisions are relatively unimportant factors in determining the nurses market earnings

productivity shocks and real business cycles abstract productivity shocks play a central role in real business cycles as an exogenous impulse to macroeconomic activity however measured solow prescott residuals do not behave as an exogenous impulse rather econometric evidence provided in this paper indicates that 1 money interest rates and government spending granger cause these impulses and 2 a substantial component of the variance of these impulses between one quarter and one half is attributable to variations in aggregate demand these results are robust to a number of econometric issues including measurement errors specification of the production function and certain forms of omitted real variables

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

his and hers gender differences in work and income 1959 1979 this paper describes changes in hours of work and income between 1959 and 1979 of women and men ages 25 64 it includes attempts to measure and value nonmarket production and leisure as well as market work to take account of possible income sharing within households and to allow for economies of scale in household production the most important empirical result is that relative to men women s access to goods and services and leisure was lower in 1979 than in 1959 changes in hourly earnings hours of work and household structure contributed to this result the sex differential in hourly earnings is explored in detail

nurses labour supply elasticities the importance of accounting for extensive margins abstract we estimate a multi sector model of nursing qualification holders labour supply in different occupations a structural approach allows us to model the labour force participation decision the occupational and shift type choice and the decision about hours worked as a joint outcome following from maximising a utility function disutility from work is allowed to vary by occupation and also by shift type in the utility function our results suggest that average wage elasticities might be higher than previous research has found this is mainly due to the effect of wages on the decision to enter or exit the profession which was not included in the previous literature rather than from its effect on increased working hours for those who already work in the profession