faculty ratings of major economics departments by citations the predominant ranking criterion for judging the comparative quality of economics departments has been the faculty publication record in a set of major journals in this tradition is a recent article which generates rankings based on volume of pages published in twenty four top journals during 1974 78 philip graves et al 1982 separate rankings are calculated for total and per capita contributions and credit is accorded to the institution at which the author is employed at the time of publication 2

on investor preferences and mutual fund separation abstract we extend cass and stiglitz s analysis of preference based mutual fund separation we provide a complete characterization of the general k fund separation we show that some instances of separation with many funds can be constructed by adding inverse marginal utility functions having separation with one or a few funds we also show that there is money separation in which we can choose the riskless asset as one of the funds if and only if there is a fund which may or may not be the riskless asset with a constant allocation as wealth changes in general we do not know how to write the separating utility functions in closed form but we can do so in the special case of sahara utility defined by chen et al and for a new class of gobi preferences introduced here

migration remittances and the family remittances by migrants along with migration itself are elements in a migrant familys intertemporal contractual arrangement the reasons why the migrant and his family voluntarily enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with each other rather than with a 3rd party are discussed and the conditions under which the contractual arrangement is self enforcing are identified both parties can usually benefit from a number of pareto efficient mutual contractual arrangements this gives rise to an indeterminacy problem solved through a bargaining process between the parties who consequently converge to a contractual arrangement implying a specific flow of migrant to family remittances the chosen contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargaining powers of the parties and variables impinging upon these powers thus bear upon remittances in the light of these arguments tests are conducted on observed remittance behavior across individual migrants in botswana authors

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

research quality and efficiency an analysis of assessments and management issues in dutch economics and business research programs abstract assessments of quality and productivity of academic research programs become more and more important in gaining financial support in hiring and promoting research staff and in building academic reputation most assessments are based on peer review or on bibliometric information in this paper we analyze both bibliometric data and peer review assessments of 169 research groups in economics econometrics and business administration the evaluations are achieved in two independent rounds in 1995 and in 2001 permitting replication of our study the purpose of this study is twofold in the first part we want to see to what degree bibliometric information relates to peer review judgments the results convey how evaluators weight different output categories in their final overall judgment of academic quality the results also have practical meaning since they indicate what the predictive ability of bibliometric data is for future peer review outcomes in the second part of this study we aim at explaining differences in research output quality and productivity by organizational factors like size of the research group composition of staff sources of research funding and academic discipline in this part a composite indicator is used to represent the review committees overall assessment the bibliometric data most strongly related to the peer reviews overall assessment are used to construct data envelopment analyses efficiency scores as measure of research productivity the main conclusions from our study are that the number of publications in international top journals is the best predictor of peer review assessment results changes in the classification of bibliometric information as introduced in the second evaluation round do not alter this conclusion size of the research group appears to be the only permanent characteristic associated with research quality and productivity size is positively related to research quality but negatively related to research productivity larger groups appear to have the potential to improve quality but as groups become larger they also experience problems in maintaining the research productivity of the research team s members the remaining organizational characteristics appear to be temporarily related to research quality and productivity in the first evaluation round research productivity and quality are associated with the discipline variable research programs in more quantitative areas and characterized by a higher level of paradigm development like econometrics and operations research achieved higher levels of research quality and productivity than programs in more diverse and less quantitative areas like business administration this relation however is not permanent since it becomes insignificant in the second evaluation round instead funding relations become more apparent in the second review round the relative amount of national funding in the research group s funding becomes positively related to academic quality whereas the portion of income from committed research is negatively related to academic quality of the programs research output this may have been caused by the increased importance of alternative sources of research funding in the period of the second review

a reexamination of the strategic bequest motive this paper investigates the strength of the empirical evidence of the strategic bequest hypothesis proposed by bernheim shleifer and summers 1985 at issue is whether bequests are primarily motivated by a desire to influnce the behavior of potential beneficiaries alternatively bequests may be motivated by altruism or risk aversion in the presence of incomplete annuity and health insurnace markets e g tomes 1981 hurd 1989

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

disaster risk and preference shifts in a new keynesian model in rbc models disaster risk shocks reproduce countercyclical risk premia but generate an increase in consumption along the recession and asset price fall through their effects on agents preferences gourio 2012 this paper offers a solution to this puzzle by developing a new keynesian model with such a small but time varying probability of disaster we show that price stickiness combined with an eis smaller than unity restores procyclical consumption and wages while preserving countercyclical risk premia in response to disaster risk shocks the mechanism then provides a rationale for discount factor first and second moment uncertainty shocks

parental allocations to children new evidence on bequest differences among siblings new survey based data on siblings are used to assess potential roles of bequests in redistributing income among siblings as implied by prominent models the data are not focused on the upper tail of the wealth distribution and include both own and sib reports on own and sib s bequests enabling use of a measurement model results indicate that bequests are received by almost two thirds of children average bequests are significant fractions of annual earnings and there are significant differences between sibs schooling and earnings however there are not significant sib differences in bequests once measurement error is incorporated into the analysis

determinants of research output in economics departments in british universities abstract the research output of economics departments in british universities is estimated by means of an analysis of publications in 20 major journals it is shown that most of the variation in research output between departments can be explained by differences in inputs a regression analysis enables the effect on output of changes in inputs to be quantified the results obtained here are compared with the ugc ratings

sibling rivalry and strategic parental transfers this paper develops a noncooperative nash model in which two siblings compete for their parents financial transfers treating sibling rivalry as a rent seeking contest and using a tullock skaperdas contest success function we derive the conditions under which more financial resources are transferred to the sibling with lower earnings we find that parental transfers are compensatory and that the family as an institution serves as an income equalizer within a sequential game framework we characterize the endogeneity of parental transfers and link it to parents income altruism and children s supply of merit goods e g parent child companionship or child services we show that merit goods are subject to a moral hazard problem from the parents perspective

the roles of destination gender and household composition in explaining remittances an analysis for the dominican sierra two non exclusive hypotheses about what motivates remittances sent by dominican migrants to their rural parents in the sierra are tested a an insurance contract taken by parents with their migrant children and b an investment by migrants in potential bequests results show that the relative importance of these two motives to remit is affected by destination us vs cities in the dominican republic gender and household composition the insurance function is mainly fulfilled by female migrants to the us only when a male is the sole migrant in his household does he play the role of insurer investment by contrast is pursued by both males and females but only among those migrating to the us d 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

institutional investors and stock market volatility statement of responsibility on t p reads xavier gabaix parameswaran gopikrishnan vasiliki plerou h eugene stanley

bequests as signals an explanation for the equal division puzzle in the united states more than two thirds of decedents with multichild families divide their estates exactly equally among their children in contrast gifts given before death are usually unequal these findings challenge the validity of existing theories regarding the determination of intergenerational transfers in this paper we develop a theory that accounts for this puzzle based on the notion that the division of bequests provides a signal about a parent s altruistic preferences the theory can also explain the norm of unigeniture which prevails in other societies

self fulfilling risk panics abstract recent crises have seen large spikes in asset price risk we propose an explanation for such panics based on self fulfilling shifts in beliefs about risk a negative link between the curre

land inheritance rules theory and cross cultural analysis abstract this paper develops a general theory of land inheritance rules that distinguishes between two classes of rules those allowing a testator discretion in disposing of his land e g a best qualified rule and those constraining his choice e g primogeniture the primary benefit of the latter is to prevent rent seeking by heirs but the cost is that the testator cannot use information about the relative abilities of his heirs to manage the land we also account for the impact of scale economies in land use and discuss the impact of the presence of a land market on the form of the inheritance rule we conclude by offering some empirical tests of the model using a cross cultural sample of societies

descent rules and strategic transfers evidence from matrilineal groups in ghana abstract traditional descent systems can roughly be divided into patrilineal and matrilineal in the latter a man s heir is not his own child but rather his sister s son the paper examines the implications of this social norm for the pattern of inter vivos transfers using household level data from rural ghana where the largest ethnic group is traditionally matrilineal in particular it tests the predictions of a model of strategic behavior according to which children should respond to the threat of disinheritance by increasing transfers to their parents during lifetime to induce a donation of land before the default matrilineal inheritance is enforced i find that the credibility of customary norms enforcement as proxied by the presence of a nephew in the father s household significantly increases the probability of receiving transfers from children for akans but not for the other groups the effect is specific to nephews and not to other co resident boys this pattern of behavior can affect asset accumulation decisions across generations

facts and fads in academic research management the effect of management practices on research productivity in australia abstract as a response to competitive market forces and governmental steering policies australian universities have strengthened considerably their internal research management in the last two decades this paper examines empirically the effect of management on academic research productivity the results suggest that management practices indeed seem to have some positive effect on research productivity and the effect is consistent in the earlier 1995 2000 and later 2001 2007 time period universities with a more intensive management approach not only have higher absolute level of research productivity but they demonstrate also faster growth in productivity an omitted variable bias and robustness of the results to the choice of the output measure are under a particular attention and call for some caution in interpreting the results

women s inheritance rights and bargaining power evidence from kenya abstractthis paper investigates the human capital effects of a legal reform granting kenyan women equal inheritance rights i employ a difference in differences strategy exploiting variation in pr

rotten kids or manipulative parents are children old age security in western kenya this study of old age assistance is based on a sample of elderly households 60 years in karateng sublocation which is 375 km west northwest of nairobi kenya in the area nonagricultural sources of income predominate interviews were conducted at the height of the hungry season whether parents can influence the level of assistance their offspring provide by adapting the bargaining model of intergenerational transfers developed by bernheim et al bss is examined this model captures both the conflict and cooperation within a family there is brief discussion of the bss model demographic and economic characteristics of the elderly and the nature of assistance from children an econometric model of the determinants of the levels of assistance is provided the results of the analysis are that children serve as old age security by providing food money and assistance with household tasks the most common form of assistance was water 70 3 secured water on at least 1 occasion 50 had received meals in the previous week collection of firewood and house cleaning were also widespread frequent assistance was low for washing clothes fetching firewood and going to market 55 7 of assistance was provided by sons and their wives and children the most common foodstuffs received were maize and maize flour tea and sugar nonfood items were rarely received the largest single receipt was money and absent sons more than 60 received assistance in the form of materials or cash for dwelling construction wealthier parents are more likely to receive greater transfers elderly households with greater numbers of children are better cared for than those with fewer children in karateng in contrast to other south asian studies successful elderly parents had both migrant sons and children resident or adjacent to them in the econometric analysis the hypothesis that the elderly can manipulate behavior to obtain higher levels of care is supported sons provide assistance out of a sense of duty and not for personal gain household heads 50 years responded that the land would be divided equally among the sons in fact land was equally divided in only 40 50 of the cases the small sample size restricts the applicability of results

does land fragmentation increase the cost of cultivation evidence from india although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked this paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically while crop choice can mitigate effects fragmentation as measured by the simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery especially for small and medium farmers greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect creating opportunities for market based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation induced cost increases

inheritance patterns in migration prone communities of the peruvian highlands abstract on the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in depth survey of three andean communities of peru and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying the main factors associated with particular patterns of land bequests a central result is that the positive relationship between caring and a favourable access to land bequest indeed exists yet is only observed for migrant children whether urban or rural long distance or short distance migrants combined with other findings and observations this result strengthens the case for an interpretation based on an active role of potential heirs in the determination of inheritance outcomes it therefore calls into question the strategic bequest theory which presumes that parents are the ultimate decision makers in this matter in addition our study shows that inheritance patterns are complex besides migration and caring behavior personal characteristics of potential heirs such as gender birth order and family status having children or not do appear to influence division of parental land