why you can t find a taxi in the rain and other labor supply lessons from cab drivers i replicate and extend the seminal work of camerer et al labor supply of new york city cabdrivers one day at a time quarterly journal of economics 112 1997 407 441 who find that the wage elasticity of daily hours of work for new york city taxi drivers is negative and conclude that their labor supply behavior is consistent with reference dependence in contrast my analysis of the complete record of all trips taken in nyc taxi cabs from 2009 to 2013 shows that drivers tend to respond positively to unanticipated as well as anticipated increases in earnings opportunities additionally using a discrete choice stopping model the probability of a shift ending is strongly positively related to hours worked but at best weakly related to income earned i find substantial heterogeneity across drivers in their elasticities but the estimated elasticities are generally positive and rarely substantially negative i find that new drivers with smaller elasticities are more likely to exit the industry whereas drivers who remain quickly learn to be better optimizers have positive labor supply elasticities that grow with experience these results are consistent with the neoclassical optimizing model of labor supply and suggest that consideration of gain loss utility and income reference dependence is not an important factor in the daily labor supply decisions of taxi drivers jel codes d01 d03 j22

the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

fair trade and the depersonalization of ethics fair trade has changed considerably since its early days in this article we argue that these changes have led to a depersonalization of ethics thus raising serious questions about the future of fair trade in particular the depersonalization of ethics which is seen to accompany the current changes has led to greater variety in the interpretations of fair trade hiding these divergences behind the labels is increasing the risk that the movement will lose its credibility

artisanal gold and transformational exchange toward a public private partnership in tanzania abstract human rights abuses environmental predations and governance failures plague artisanal gold mining in tanzania gold s exchange value and the illegality of most artisanal gold product challenge the traditional fair trade model a potential solution additionally memories of the government s earlier failed effort to serve as a sole purchaser of artisanal gold undercut enthusiasm for statist interventions this paper presents an alternative a public private partnership ppp that would engage one or more private banks an agency within the ministry of energy and minerals and ngos or international initiatives specifically aimed at improving conditions for artisanal mine operators the concept of transformational exchange wherein a set of business transactions substantially affects societal expectations modifies behavior and promotes sustainable mechanisms frames the proposal

the development of a market for sustainable coffee in the netherlands rethinking the contribution of fair trade in recent years researchers have observed the process of mainstreaming fair trade and the emergence of alternative sustainability standards in the coffee industry the underlying market dynamics that have contributed to these developments are however under researched insight into these dynamics is important to understand how markets can develop to favor sustainability this study examines the major developments in the market for certified coffee in the netherlands it finds that in the creation of a market for sustainable coffee decisions that significantly influence market creation are made in the lead companies retailers and coffee roasters these decisions are made possible by the availability of multiple systems of sustainability standards and by the existence of a small segment of loyal fair trade customers that ensured that sustainability remained an issue on the coffee market in the years before the market creation took off fair trade did not become the new rule in this process but it became the benchmark against which companies could compare themselves and the basis upon which they built in adopting or developing new standards that would be more feasible in their business models

profits and poverty certification s troubled link for nicaragua s organic and fairtrade coffee producers abstract governments donors and ngos have promoted environmental and social certification schemes for coffee producers as certified market channels are assumed to offer higher prices and better incomes additionally it is presumed that these certifications contribute to poverty reduction of smallholders yet gross margins profits and poverty levels of certified smallholder coffee producers have not yet been quantitatively analyzed applying random sampling techniques our quantitative household survey of 327 randomly selected members of conventional organic and organic fairtrade certified cooperatives in nicaragua is complemented by over a hundred qualitative in depth interviews the results show that although farm gate prices of certified coffees are higher than of conventional coffees the profitability of certified coffee production and its subsequent effect on poverty levels is not clear cut per capita net coffee incomes are insufficient to cover basic needs of all coffee producing households certified producers are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers over a period of ten years our analysis shows that organic and organic fairtrade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers we conclude that coffee yield levels profitability and efficiency need to be increased because prices for certified coffee cannot compensate for low productivity land or labor constraints

when to quit narrow bracketing and reference dependence in taxi drivers abstract taxi drivers provide an ideal setting for testing various models of labor supply despite this the literature studying driver behavior has produced mixed evidence of which labor supply model best applies to driver labor supply using a novel analysis and large datasets of taxi trips from two different cities this paper provides a unifying analysis which reconciles previous inconsistencies in evidence for reference dependence in taxi drivers by testing for a particular non linear relationship between shift income and drivers hazard of stopping i identify behavior that is consistent with prospect theoretic s shaped reference dependence as opposed to the more extensively examined loss aversion model of reference dependence this particular model of reference dependence in this setting allows me to estimate individual driver reference points without an explicit functional form or ex ante assumptions about the existence of a reference point

fair trade standards corporate participation and social movement responses in the united states this article examines the development of and contestation over the standards for certified fair trade with particular attention to the u s context it charts fair trade s rapid growth in the united states since the 1999 advent of formal certification explores the controversies generated by the strategy of market mainstreaming in the sector and focuses on five key issues that have generated particularly heated contention within the u s fair trade movement it offers a theoretical framework based in the literatures on agrifood systems social movements and public choice economics for understanding the corporate response to alternative markets such as fair trade the article suggests a typology of responses by social movement actors to this increased corporate participation and assesses the relevance of the u s case for the future prospects of fair trade both in other national contexts and as an international movement

reference dependent preferences and labor supply the case of new york city taxi drivers i develop a model of daily labor supply where preferences are dependent on a reference daily income level and i apply this model to data on the labor supply of new york city taxi drivers i find that there may be a reference level of income on a given day that affects labor supply however there is substantial day to day variation in a given driver s reference level and most shifts end before reaching the reference income level this pattern is inconsistent with an important role for reference dependent preferences

does marriage really make men more productive this paper presents new descriptive evidence regarding marital pay premiums earned by white males longitudinal data indicate that wages rise after marriage and that cross sectional marriage premiums appear to result from a steepening of the earnings profile data from a company personnelfile that includes information on job grades and supervisor performance ratings reveal large marital status pay differences within a narrow range of occupations managers and professionals and environments a single firm married workers tend to be located in higher paying job grades there are very small pay differentials within grades married men receive higher performance ratings than single men as a result they are much more likely to be promoted controlling for rated performance however eliminates the promotion differential sanders korenman is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at princeton university and is a faculty associate of the office of population research at princeton university and a research affiliate of the national bureau of economic research nber david neumark is an assistant professor of economics at the university of pennsylvania and a research affiliate of the nber korenman wishes to acknowledge the hewlett foundation and the harvard university center for population studies for financial support the authors are grateful to james medofffor making available an extract from the company personnelfile questions regarding data availability should be directed to professor james

strategic responses to resource management pressures in agriculture institutional gender and location effects sustainable management of natural resources by farmers is under increasing public scrutiny in australia the case of water unsustainably used and stored by agricultural businesses has gained attention with communities in catchments potentially deprived of water and placed at downstream risk yet sustainable water management institutional policy mechanisms remain disjointed around the country the study reported here applies a strategic response typology to a survey of 404 farmers in four different institutional environments in australia to explore their responses to institutional pressures findings demonstrate a convergence in typologies that relate to farmers organising each other and communities influencing and networking for the benefit of agricultural resource management thereby questioning the traditional continuum of resistance furthermore the mid range typology avoidance emerges as a highly problematic typology for sustainable water management policymakers especially those in weaker institutional environments where there is a need to develop policy instruments that retain farmer water management decision making power and encourage networks the paper also extends the strategic response typology to enable understanding of how gender and location affect strategic responses to institutional pressures findings provide insight for policy design in times of increasing catastrophic flood and drought conditions exacerbated by poor water management practice

wealth distribution in life cycle economies abstract this paper compares the age wealth distribution produced in life cycle economies to the corresponding distribution in the us economy the idea is to calibrate the model economies to match features of the us earnings distribution and then examine the wealth distribution implications of the model economies the findings are that the calibrated model economies with earnings and lifetime uncertainty can replicate measures of both aggregate wealth and transfer wealth in the us furthermore the model economies produce the us wealth gini and a significant fraction of the wealth inequality within age groups however the model economies produce less than half the fraction of wealth held by the top 1 percent of us households

saving puzzles and saving policies in the united states in the past two decades the widely reported personal saving rate in the united states has dropped from double digits to below zero first we attempt to account for the decline in the national income and product accounts nipa saving rate the macroeconomic literature suggests that 40 50 per cent of the drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spending stock market capital gains another 30 per cent is accounting transfers from personal saving into government and corporate saving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes are treated in the nipa second while nipa saving measures are well suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investment and capital accumulation it is not clear that they should be the target of government saving policies finally we emphasize that the nipa saving rate is not useful in judging whether households are preparing for retirement or other contingencies many households have accumulated significant wealth primarily through retirement saving vehicles and capital gains even as the saving rate slid there remains a segment of the population who save little and whose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock market boom or the slide in personal saving we explore reasons and policy options for their puzzling low saving rate copyright 2001 oxford university press

an empirical analysis of the daily labor supply of stadium venors this paper analyzes the daily labor supply behavior of food and beverage vendors at a single stadium over an entire baseball season this labor market is attractive for the study of labor supply both because ofvendors unilateraly decide whether to participate on each game date and because canges in product demand conditions across days are large and highly predictable generating exogenous game to game variation in the vendor wage i exploit the observable shift in product demand conditions across games to esumate the labor supply participation elasticity of stadium vendors estimates that recognize that demand conditions and vendor labor supply decisions simultancously determine the venofdor wage always find substantial labor supply elasticities typically in the 55 65 range in contract estimates that ignore the endoreneity of the ties these results highlight the imporatance of using demand shift markets

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

confronting the coffee crisis can fair trade organic and specialty coffees reduce small scale farmer vulnerability in northern nicaragua summary this paper links changing global coffee markets to opportunities and vulnerabilities for sustaining small scale farmer livelihoods in northern nicaragua changing governance structures corporate concentration oversupply interchangeable commodity grade beans and low farm gate prices characterize the crisis in conventional coffee markets in contrast certified fair trade and organic are two alternative forms of specialty coffee trade and production that may offer opportunities for small scale producers a research team surveyed 228 farmers to measure the impact of sales on organic and fair trade markets the results suggest that participation in organic and fair trade networks reduces farmers livelihood vulnerability 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

part time work gender and job satisfaction evidence from a developing country this paper investigates the relationship between part time work and job satisfaction using a recent household survey from honduras in contrast to previous work for developed countries this paper does not find a preference for part time work among women instead both women and men tend to prefer full time work although the preference for working longer hours is stronger for men consistent with an interpretation of working part time as luxury consumption the paper finds that partnered women with children poor women or women working in the informal sector are more likely to prefer full time work than single women partnered women without children non poor women or women working in the formal sector these results have important implications for the design of family and child care policies in low income countries

tracking the quality premium of certified coffee evidence from ethiopia summary certification of voluntary sustainability standards vss is rapidly increasing in global value chains while consumers mostly in developed countries are willing to pay significant premiums for the certification of such standards it is not well understood how effectively these incentives are transmitted to producing countries we study vss more in particular fair trade and organic certification in ethiopia s coffee sector the country s most important export commodity using a unique census of transaction data at the export level and large scale data at the production level we find that transmission of export quality premiums to coffee producers is limited with only less than one third of this premium being passed on and we find limited evidence of effects due to communal investments moreover as quality premiums are small and average production levels in these settings are low we estimate that these premiums would only lead to an increased income for coffee farmers of 22 usd per year even with a perfect transmission scenario and therefore would have little impact on the welfare of the average coffee farmer given that the vss studied are characterized by the highest premiums among vss schemes it can be assumed that even lower benefits from other vss certification schemes trickle down to producers

making room for smallholder cooperatives in tanzanian tea production can fairtrade do that the objective of this article is to examine the different ways that smallholders are brought into fairtrade certification schemes in the tanzanian tea industry we examine the different ownership relations of processing factories and the perceived benefits of these different arrangements we use descriptive qualitative analysis based on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted between 2008 and 2010 to identify the significance between factory ownership organization and fairtrade certification we find that there is a movement toward innovation in the organizational strategies which includes new ownership arrangements of processing factories and outgrower contracts that have been associated with certified fairtrade production we also suggest that organizational innovation is significant for obtaining scheme success yet perceived benefits of and increased information about fairtrade production is independent from ownership shares in processing

the uk consumption boom of the late 1980s aggregate implications of microeconomic evidence two competing explanations of the uk consumer boom in the late 1980s are the financial liberalisation imperfect housing market hypothesis of muellbauer and murphy and the expectations hypothesis of king we use 15 years of family expenditure surveys and cohort analysis to investigate to what extent these two hypotheses agree with observed changes in consumption patterns we find that the housing markets explanation accounts for much of the increase by older cohorts but cannot be reconciled with the marked rise in expenditure levels of younger households a simple simulation exercise shows instead that the expectations hypothesis can generate increases of expenditure by young consumers of the magnitude observed in our data

the response of expenditures to anticipated income changes panel data estimates standard models of intertemporal allocation predict that the time path of expenditures should be independent of the time path of income recently two papers parker 1999 and souleles 1999 have suggested that u s households have a high marginal propensity to spend within year anticipated income changes we use an expenditure survey panel from spain to re examine this issue we exploit two important features of the spanish data first we have quarterly panel data that follows households for more than four quarters second we use the fact that workers are exogenously sorted into one of two payment schemes some receive the same amount each month of the year and others receive an extra payment in june and december the extra payment is large and predictable we examine the detailed pattern of expenditures over the year to see whether they differ between the two groups we fail to find even weak differences we complement this with a conventional euler equation analysis of excess sensitivity our predicting equation for quarterly earnings growth is much better than usual and is likely to give a powerful test of the hypothesis that predictable changes in income do not lead to changes in expenditure patterns the results of this analysis confirm the graphical analysis we find no evidence of excess sensitivity we conclude that households in normal times do smooth consumption over the year we suggest a reconciliation of our results with those of parker and souleles

is there a retirement savings puzzle in this paper we ask whether households are saving enough for their retirement we use data on income expenditure and expenditure components to analyse patterns of behaviour at and around the time of retirement for successive date of birth cohorts we compare periods of unemployment to periods of retirement and separate expenditures into categories reflecting work related expenditures basic necessities and other goods we find that income typically falls by more at unemployment than retirement but the reverse is true for expenditure we observe falls in expenditure at retirement for all expenditure categories using a stochastic life cycle model including mortality rates we assess the anticipated impact of retirement on consumption against that of unemployment the inter relationship between goods and leisure explains a large part of the persistent fall in expenditure at retirement we argue that the only way in which the life cycle hypothesis could be reconciled with the remaining unanticipated dip in consumption would be with the systematic arrival of unexpected adverse information at the time of retirement

small farmer cooperatives and voluntary coffee certifications rewarding progressive farmers of engendering widespread change in costa rica abstract our research examines the benefits and drawbacks for cooperatives who participate in voluntary coffee certifications we interviewed administrators at twenty costa rican coffee cooperatives about management practices related to voluntary certification voluntary certifications are popular among coffee cooperatives access to certified markets is facilitated by state support of the cooperative sector regulation of the coffee sector and well enforced environmental and social laws however there are no significant or consistent financial incentives for farmers to pursue certification multiple certifications may lower auditing and implementation costs but cooperatives rarely receive the full premium for multiply certified coffee low market demand for certified coffee weak price incentives and high auditing and management costs encourage cooperatives to certify only a portion of their members this strategy rewards compliant farmers rather than inducing widespread change to farming practices among the entire membership though financial incentives are weak certifications offer non financial benefits to both farmers and cooperatives including better management and more resilient cooperatives

uncertain medical expenses and precautionary saving near the end of the life cycle this paper introduces a dynamic structural model of household consumption decisions in which elderly families consider the effects of uncertain future medical expenses when deciding current levels of consumption the model with uncertain medical expenses implies a potentially important role for precautionary saving incentives to explain slow rates of dissaving among elderly americans during retirement rather than just simulating the stochastic dynamic model preference parameters are estimated using panel data on health wealth and expenditures for retired families the health uncertainty model predicts consumption levels closer to observed expenditures than a life cycle model with uncertain longevity however elderly families typically dissave their financial assets more slowly than even the baseline health uncertainty model predicts is optimal

corporate leadership multilevel enforcement and biodiversity regulation globalization incentives the rise of non state actors in unprecedented ways along with the creation of transnational arenas which are neither international intergovernmental nor national domestic but transborder political processes where firms non governmental organizations ngos states and social communities set up rules and provide governance mechanisms to enforce those at local level the article is anchored in the idea that public private governance matters where the primary driver is the market incentive we test the hypotheses that public private cooperation at local level is based on shared knowledge and expertise among firms civil society and state authority dealing with a natural resource which comes from the brazilian biodiversity ngos and companies have developed the ability to act as enforcers as they interpret the public international national regulation and develop an expertise through best practices that are applied to enforce biodiversity regulation at the local level through a multilevel system that operates transnationally

the fair trade movement parameters issues and future research although fair trade has been in existence for more than 40 years discussion in the business and business ethics literature of this unique trading and campaigning movement between southern producers and northern buyers and consumers has been limited this paper seeks to redress this deficit by providing a description of the characteristics of fair trade including definitional issues market size and segmentation and the key organizations it discusses fair trade from southern producer and northern trader and consumer perspectives and highlights the key issues that currently face the fair trade movement it then identifies an initial research agenda to be followed up in subsequent papers

government interventions in sustainable supply chain governance experience in dutch front running cases numerous multi actor governance systems have recently emerged ensuring sustainability of international traded products business and civil society actors play a dominant role in initiating and governing sustainable supply chain governance systems sscg systems within specific product markets we see the emergence of various competing sscg systems this has led to debates on effectiveness transparency and legitimacy of these forms of self governance in the market these developments also call for a debate on appropriate roles for national governments most of the academic literature in this field focuses on methodologies for supply chain governance and their impacts but hardly addresses the roles taken on by governments and effectiveness of possible government interventions this article combines analysis of market dynamics in the timber and coffee product chains with policy analysis integrating approaches from the research fields of sustainable business and policy analysis the article shows how competition between various sustainable supply chain governance systems in the netherlands has resulted in recent market breakthroughs while initially government interventions were very limited and diverse the article suggests an approach for more systematic analysis of these dynamics and the roles of various actors by identifying both the public policy cycle and the private policy cycle

decoupling standards from practice the impact of in house certifications on coffee farms environmental and social conduct in this paper we investigate whether coffee farms that have been granted in house socio environmental certification from a global buyer display better social and environmental conduct compared to non certified farms we perform an econometric analysis using data from an original cross country survey covering 575 farms in various regions of brazil colombia costa rica guatemala and mexico we find that farms that have been granted in house certification demonstrate better environmental but not better social conduct than non certified farms we find also that the positive relationship between in house certification and environmental conduct is stronger if the farm sells to a cooperative and if it is located in an institutionally weak country finally we find that the institutional strength of the farm s home country has a positive influence on its social conduct we discuss how our analysis contributes to the literature on the social and environmental impacts of certifications and to scholarship in global value chains social and environmental upgrading

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

organic agriculture and fair trade a happy marriage a case study of certified smallholder black pepper farmers in india summary this study examines whether the joint adoption of organic and fair trade systems adds additional benefits to smallholders in developing countries we use panel data collected from 300 smallholder rural black pepper growers in kerala india to assess household welfare impacts we apply a multinomial endogenous switching regression model along with a counterfactual analysis to estimate certification effects results show that both certification systems have a significant impact on income compared to conventional black pepper farming however membership in fair trade marketing systems does not increase income of organic farmers but has positive effects on asset accumulation of smallholder farmers

the reaction of household consumption to predictable changes in social security taxes the key implication of rational expectations and the basic life cycle permanent income hypothesis that predictable changes in income have no effect on the growth rate of consumption expenditures is examined this implication is important for understanding the effectiveness and optimal timing of fiscal policy the causes and propagation of business cycles and the effects of income fluctuations on the growth rate of the economy using household level consumption data from the consumer expenditure survey whether expenditures on nondurable goods increase contemporaneously with predictable changes in social security tax withholding is tested it is found that households do change their consumption expenditures in response to the predictable fluctuations in income induced by the social security tax system

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

assessing the impact of fair trade coffee towards an integrative framework this article presents an impact assessment framework that allows for the evaluation of positive and negative local level impacts that have resulted from responsible trade interventions such as fair trade and ethical trade the framework investigates impact relating to 1 livelihood impacts on primary stakeholders 2 socio economic impacts on communities 3 organizational impacts 4 environmental impacts 5 policies and institutional impacts and 6 future prospects it identifies relevant local level stakeholders and facilitates the analysis of conflicting interests the framework was developed in the context of and is applied in this article to the fair trade coffee industry in northern nicaragua it was designed however so that it can be applied across commodity sectors and responsible trade initiatives it is able to do this by accommodating for differences in the social environmental political and institutional contexts of different areas and by taking into account the distinct nature of an initiative s overall objectives different levels of intervention and the full range of stakeholders involved

psychology and savings policies many observers of the current economic scene are concerned about the low rate of personal saving in the united states one well known researcher laurence kotlikoff 1992 calls the situation a crisis he proposes that each american worker receive an annual statement from the social security administration with projected benefits upon retirement arguing that if each of us got this statement our attention would be caught and perhaps our psychology of saving which is in such urgent need of redress would really change p 107 i agree with the thrust of kotlikoff s recommendations and join him in applauding steps that will alter the general public s psychology of saving however as economists we need to recognize that the economic theory of saving is similarly in urgent need of redress if we are to understand why people are saving so little and are to make helpful recommendations as to how to get people to save more we have to incorporate more of the psychology of saving into our economic theories kotlikoff s policy proposal while a sensible one highlights the growing gap between theory and policy prescription in this domain if households are acting in accordance with the life cycle theory of saving then undersaving is impossible so why do they need to have their psychology redressed and how does this psychology fit into the model this example reflects an increasing frustration in the economics community about personal saving many observers have come to the conclusion that the low saving rate represents an important problem on two fronts macroeconomists worry that the low saving rate will produce too little investment and microeconomists worry that individuals particularly the baby boomers are not putting enough away to finance a satisfactory lifestyle in retirement these are serious concerns however the frustration comes from the realization that even if there was agreement that the saving rate needs to go up economic theory offers little help in constructing a solution in the standard life cycle framework the only policy variable is the after tax rate of return to saving yet it is well known that the theory does not specify the sign of the relationship between the saving rate and the interest rate raising the interest rate increases the returns to saving but decreases the amount of saving necessary to yield any given future consumption level furthermore empirical estimates offer little help most studies are unable to reject the hypothesis that the elasticity of personal saving with respect to the interest rate is zero clearly this is frustrating the theory only gives us one lever to use and we don t know whether to push or pull with this background i wish to supply what should be considered good news the theory is misspecified life cycle models of saving fail to describe actual household saving in three important ways this failure of the theory is good news because by incorporating some basic psychology we can enrich the theory and generate specific policy recommendations in this paper i will begin by characterizing the problems with the theory and then go on to discussing the implications of modifying the theory

what do fishermen tell us that taxi drivers do not an empirical investigation of labor supply recent empirical findings have cast doubt on the neoclassical model of labor supply however estimation issues and not workers behavior may be responsible for these findings this paper investigates this possibility by examining the daily labor supply of florida lobster fishermen i invariably find that fishermen work more when earnings are temporarily high behavior that is consistent with a neoclassical model of labor supply furthermore methods that do not control for measurement error and endogeneity of the wage not only produce downward biased estimates of labor supply elasticities but also generate a spurious negative and significant elasticity of daily hours

the effect of specialty coffee certification on household livelihood strategies and specialisation abstract farm certification is rapidly becoming a sine qua non for access to specialty coffee markets at the centre of these changes are smallholder coffee producers responsible for 80 of global coffee production although rural households are known to depend on more than agricultural production alone the literature on specialty coffee and certification has rather narrowly focused on coffee income and production in this study broader impacts are explicitly taken into account household income was decomposed into categories corresponding to specific income generating activities and coffee income was broken down into price yield and area effects results show that coffee certification encourages farmers to specialise in coffee production increasing coffee income but not total household income at least not in the short run the time and effort required to attain the higher coffee income offered by certified production means farmers have to give up other activities this substitution effect cancels out the income effect such that there is no increase in total household income the lack of an effect on total household income suggests the return to the additional labour effort required for certified coffee production is not higher than in other activities questioning the benefits of certification for small scale producers

union contracts and the life cycle permanent income hypothesis this paper isolates households in the psid whose heads can be matched to particular long term union contracts with high confidence the author uses use published information on these contracts to construct a household specific measure of expected wage growth he finds that predictable wage movements are significantly correlated with consumption changes contrary to neoclassical consumption theory the author finds that consumption responds more strongly to predictable income declines than to predictable income increases this asymmetry is inconsistent with liquidity constraints and myopia but is qualitatively consistent with models in which preferences exhibit loss aversion copyright 1995 by american economic association

work welfare and single mothers economic survival strategies past efforts to conceptualize the effects of welfare on work have failed to consider the full range of incentives and disincentives that low skill single mothers perceive and act upon when making the choice between welfare and work they also have neglected the fundamental economic reality of these mothers lives neither welfare nor low wage work gives single mothers enough income to meet their families expenses in depth interviews with 379 low income single mothers in four u s cities show that welfare recipients and low wage workers employ a set of survival strategies to make ends meet the range of strategies available to mothers is shaped by the social structural characteristics of the cities in which they live and by the quality of their private social safety nets the authors argue that because some survival strategies are more compatible with work than others the strategies a mother employs may affect her ability to move from welfare to work most welfare recipients want to leave welfare for work however most also believe that unless they can lower the costs associated with work or increase their earning power through investments in further education they will be unable to meet their expenses by working

are consumers forward looking evidence from fiscal experiments how changes in current and future income affect consumer spending is a perennial question in macroeconomics and public finance theoretical constructs such as the permanent income hypothesis are of limited assistance in resolving this issue because they neglect borrowing constraints and other market imperfections that can significantly affect the marginal propensity to spend out of current income recent empirical work has also proven inconclusive since whether consumption responds to income fluctuations by more or less than the permanent income hypothesis predicts turns critically upon whether disposable income follows a random walk or is stationary around a longrun trend see john campbell and angus deaton 1987 this controversy is unlikely to be resolved conclusively because it is notoriously difficult to distinguish a stationary but highly persistent time series from one that is nonstationary these difficulties suggest the importance of searching for natural experiments income shocks with predictable and well understood effects on future income to test models of consumer behavior changes in federal tax and transfer policy during the last two decades provide several episodes of this type analyzing the effects of these tax changes is also central to understanding the role of fiscal policy in affecting national saving this paper examines two aspects of consumer response to tax changes section i argues that consumption responds to temporary income tax shocks by more than the permanent income hypothesis would suggest results from the 1975 tax rebate in particular suggest that a 1 increase in transitory income raises spending by about 20 cents section ii examines consumption responses to tax announcements although the results are not conclusive they suggest that some consumers do not adjust consumption in anticipation of tax changes the final section sketches some implications for analyzing fiscal policy

a near rational model of the business cycle with wage and price inertia this paper presents a model in which insignificantly suboptimal behavior causes aggregate demand shocks to have significant real effects the individual loss to agents with inertial price wage behavior is second order in terms of the parameter describing the shock while the effect on real economic variables is first order thus significant changes in business activity can be generated by anticipated money supply changes provided that some agents are willing to engage in nonmaximizing behavior which results in small losses

effects of fair trade certification on social capital the case of rwandan coffee producers summary fair trade certification may have important social effects on small scale producers but empirical evidence is limited we conducted logistic regressions using data from a 2009 survey of rwandan coffee farmers to estimate the link between fair trade and social capital measured as farmer trust and participation while controlling for various other factors that could influence social capital particularly membership in a cooperative organization the results show a negative association between fair trade and farmer trust in cooperative leadership and a positive association with a perceived higher level of participation of women social capital is linked most significantly to farmers interaction with their neighbors

humps and bumps in lifetime consumption in this article we argue that the life cycle model that allows demographics to affect household preferences and relaxes the assumption of certainty equivalence can generate hump shaped consumption profiles over age that are very similar to those observed in household level data sources and in particular match the differences in shape across different education groups liquidity constraints or myopia are not required to explain the empirical features of observed life cycle patterns

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

part time work job satisfaction and well being evidence from a developing oecd country abstractwe estimate the effects of part time work on job and life satisfaction using new data for chile while part time work is being promoted to increase female labour participation in many countries there are concerns about its quality and the overall effect on well being of such policies we estimate models for job and life satisfaction addressing for endogeneity and selectivity bias we found that part time work has a negative effect on job satisfaction and well being for men however when looking at just women the negative effect is reversed this should be considered when designing public policies oriented at increasing female labour participation through part time work

do consumers respond to future income shocks evidence from social security reform in taiwan abstract a prediction of the basic permanent income hypothesis life cycle model is that an unexpected increase in future income produces an immediate increase in current consumption this paper tests that prediction using data from taiwan the 1985 labor standards law granted all employees in covered industries a windfall retirement severance benefit my results indicate that consumption did not increase immediately for those who were granted the windfall relative to those who received no windfall moreover consumption for those receiving a greater windfall did not increase relative to those who were granted less

growth and saving among individuals and households the lifecycle theory of saving and consumption predicts that changes in an economy s rate of economic growth will affect its aggregate saving rate by changing the lifetime resources of younger people relative to older people however studies that track the saving behavior of cohorts of household heads over time as they age have yielded estimates of age saving profiles that are too flat for growth to have much effect on the aggregate saving rate one problem with the cohort approach is that multigenerational households are common in many counties and the age saving profiles of households may be quite different from the age saving profiles of individuals that make up households in this paper we propose a method for estimating individual age saving profiles using household data this method is applied to data from taiwan and thailand we find that the individual method yields results that are more favorable to the lifecycle model these results imply that changes in the rate of economic growth may in som

new york city cab drivers labor supply revisited reference dependent preferences with rational expectations targets for hours and income this paper reconsiders whether cabdrivers labor supply decisions reflect reference dependent preferences following botond koszegi and matthew rabin 2006 we construct a model with targets for hours as well as income both determined by rational expectations estimating using henry s farber s 2005 2008 data we show that the reference dependent model can reconcile his 2005 finding that drivers stopping probabilities are significantly related to hours but not income with the negative wage elasticity of hours found by colin camerer et al 1997 and farber 2005 2008 the model yields sensible estimates that avoid farber s 2008 criticism that drivers income targets are too unstable to allow a useful reference dependent model of labor supply

mainstreaming and its discontents fair trade socially responsible investing and industry trajectories over time according to popular and academic accounts alternative trade initiatives such as fair trade organics forest certification and socially responsible investing sri almost invariably lose their oppositional stance and go mainstream that is they lose their alternative usually peripheral and often contrarian character in this paper i argue that this is not always the case and that the path to going mainstream is not always an unproblematic one i observe that while scholars have documented various aspects of specific alternative trade initiatives little comparative work has been done to theorize their different trajectories to advance the scholarship i compare two alternative trade movements fair trade and sri and develop three hypotheses the relation motivations hypothesis the material interests hypothesis and the organization of credibility hypothesis that explain why going mainstream has been so hotly contested in the fair trade movement but not the sri movement i articulate these hypotheses and evaluate their merits

optimal consumption policy under uncertain income this paper considers the consumption behavior of a risk averse consumer with a preference for immediate consumption who faces an uncertain income stream and plans for a finite or infinite number of periods the consumer may borrow up to a limit or save where both saving and borrowing are subject to the same positive rate of interest we derive the optimal consumption policies for both finite and infinite planning horizons investigate their characteristics and analyze their economic and behavioral implications

how does future income affect current consumption this paper tests a straightforward implication of the basic life cycle model of consumption that current consumption depends on expected lifetime income the paper projects future income for a panel of households and finds that consumption is closely related to projected current income but unrelated to predictable changes in income however future income uncertainty has an important effect consumers facing greater income uncertainty consume less the results are consistent with buffer stock models of consumption like those of deaton 1991 or carroll 1992a 1992b where precautionary motives greatly reduce the willingness of prudent consumers to consume out of uncertain future income

the assessment consumer expenditure this article aims to illuminate two sets of consumption puzzles the first concerns the behavior of aggregate saving rates in the 1980s and early 1990s collapse and rebound in scandinavia and the u k and apparently a more secular decline in the u s the second set of puzzles concerns various apparent contradictions of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis e g in time series the excess sensitivity of consumption changes to anticipated income changes and in cross sections the tendency of consumption and income age profiles to follow each other more than standard life cycle theory implies the article discusses in relatively non technical terms the implications both for euler equations and solved out consumption functions of introducing uncertainty credit constraint consumption leisure interactions habits and durability alternative to rational expectations the illiquidity of some assets and financial deregulation it also compares the merits of euler and solved out models of aggregate consumption

social security benefits consumption expenditure and the life cycle hypothesis this paper examines the impact of changes in social security benefits on aggregate consumption expenditure under the null hypothesis there should be no contemporaneous effect at the monthly frequency because increases in benefits have always been announced at least 6 weeks prior to payment the paper develops overwhelming evidence contrary to the null that benefits have affected aggregate spending the results have strong implications for several important issues including ricardian equivalence government policy irrelevance and the excess sensitivity of consumption to changes in income

savings of the elderly and desired bequests cross section data often show that the wealth of the elderly increases with age even at advanced ages these and other results suggest that the life cycle hypothesis of consumption should be augmented to include a bequest motive for saving in this paper the author proposes a model of bequests and a test for a bequ est motive using panel data he finds that over a ten year period the elderly in the data set dissaved in contradiction to most cross section results the test offers no support for a bequest motive copyright 1987 by american economic association

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

social welfare orderings a life cycle perspective life cycle theories emphasize the fact that consumption is allocated intertemporally on the basis of a long term concept of resources that differs from household income because life cycle income is unobserved the distribution of this variable cannot be recovered it is shown that within a suitably defined class a predictor of life cycle income based on household income and expenditure entails a distribution dominated in a social welfare sense by the distribution of life cycle incomes a predictor constructed from socio demographic variables induces a distribution that welfare dominates the distribution of life cycle incomes

the life cycle model of consumption and saving a central implication of life cycle models is that agents smooth consumption we review the empirical evidence on smoothing at frequencies from within the year up to across a lifetime we find that life cycle models particular those which incorporate realistic features of markets and goods have more empirical successes than failures we also show that some apparent deviations from theoretical predictions imply very small welfare losses for agents finally we emphasize that the coherence of life cycle models imposes an important discipline when incorporating new features into models

disentangling the effects of fair trade on the quality of malian cotton the increasing importance of premium segments and private labels raise skepticism about the ability of fair trade to help smallholders compete in high value added markets using panel data collected in mali this paper contributes to the debate by estimating the impact of fairtrade certification on the quality of malian cotton controlling for the nonrandom certification of producers results show a significant impact on the quality of cotton produced by both certified and geographically close noncertified growers via spillover effects the analysis suggests that contract farming enforced by third parties and demonstration effects foster the adoption of innovative agricultural practices

mainstreaming fair trade coffee from partnership to traceability summary this article analyzes the recent growth of fair trade and the mainstreaming of this previously alternative arena focusing on coffee i identify a continuum of buyers ranging from mission driven enterprises that uphold alternative ideas and practices based on social ecological and place based commitments to quality driven firms that selectively foster fair trade conventions to ensure reliable supplies of excellent coffee to market driven corporations that largely pursue commercial industrial conventions rooted in price competition and product regulation using a commodity network approach my analysis illuminates the impacts of diverse buyer relations on producer groups and how relations are in some cases shifting from partnership to traceability

ethical objections to fairtrade the fairtrade movement is a group of businesses claiming to trade ethically the claims are evaluated under a range of criteria derived from the utilitarian ethic firstly if aid or charity money is diverted from the very poorest people to the quite poor or the rich there is an increase in death and destitution it is shown that little of the extra paid by consumers for fairtrade reaches farmers sometimes none it cannot be shown that it has a positive impact on fairtrade farmers in general but evidence suggesting it harms others is presented many of the weaknesses are due to an attempt to impose political views on farmers and others secondly the unfair trading criteria require that sellers do not lie about their product nor withhold information that might alter the decisions of a substantial proportion of buyers it is argued that the system only can exist because of the failure of the fairtrade industry to give the facts on what happens to the money and what it can be proved it achieves this unfair trading compromises the reputation of charities in general much of the trading may constitute the criminal offence of unfair trading in the eu

transforming or reproducing conventional socioeconomic relations introducing a regulationist framework for the assessment of fairtrade summary the certification based fair trade initiative is usually described as an alternative form of organizing production trade and consumption with the goal of advancing the situation of marginalized producers and workers while much of the fair trade literature has analyzed the system s direct impacts on its beneficiaries some strands have sought to determine its transformative potential vis a vis capitalist social relations in an attempt to contribute to the latter debate this paper introduces an analytical framework for the assessment of fairtrade built on the basis of the french regulation approach this perspective which focuses on the specific ways in which fairtrade structures and institutionalizes socioeconomic relations seeks to examine this system from a holistic perspective privileging the analysis of the qualitative changes it produces in economic institutions and structures this article presents the main assumptions and concepts developed by the regulation approach and proposes a case based research design that uses them to analyze how transformative fairtrade proves to be and the impacts it produces on specific economic sectors this methodological exposition is illustrated with examples from the case of fairtrade wine produced in argentina and consumed in the united kingdom

is tomorrow another day the labor supply of new york city cabdrivers the labor supply of taxi drivers is consistent with the existence of intertemporal substitution my analysis of the stopping behavior of new york city cabdrivers shows that daily income effects are small and that the decision to stop work at a particular point on a given day is primarily related to cumulative daily hours to that point this is in contrast to the analysis of camerer et al who find that the daily wage elasticity of labor supply of new york city cabdrivers is substantially negative implying large daily income effects this difference in findings is due to important differences in empirical methods and to problems with the conception and measurement of the daily wage rate used by camerer et al

life satisfaction in latin america a size of place analysis abstract in latin america countries can be divided into two groups those where people in villages and small towns are happier than people in middle sized cities and those where they are less happy four possible reasons for these patterns are explored level of economic development social values public social spending and presence of indigenous population in regressions on happiness of each explanatory factor separately development and public social spending especially on health housing and social security are the most important in a joint regression public social spending is found to be the main explanation of the different happiness patterns

the response of household consumption to income tax refunds a central implication of the life cycle or permanent income theory is that consumption should not respond to predictable fluctuations in income tests of this implication have yielded mixed results especially on micro data angus deaton 1992 martin browning and annamaria lusardi 1996 in large part this might be due to the difficulties of isolating the predictable component of income at the micro level most tests proceed by instrumenting for income but since the available instruments are typically poor such tests might be prejudiced against finding significant excess sensitivity of consumption to income john shea 1995 also it is not clear how closely the resulting econometric predictions of income coincide with agents actual expectations of income to avoid these difficulties this paper examines the response of household consumption to a particular type of income that is both predictable and transitory income tax refunds since a refund depends on events in the previous calendar year it is predictable income as regards consumption in the year of its receipt consequently under the life cycle theory consumption should not increase on receipt of a refund 2 in addition to testing the canonical model of consumption this paper provides estimates interpretable as the marginal propensity to consume mpc out of refunds since federal tax refunds now amount to over 80 billion per year averaging well over 1 000 per refund these estimates are of interest in themselves more generally they bear on the impact of even preannounced and temporary changes in fiscal policy the paper begins by surveying related studies in section i section ii describes the data the consumer expenditure survey cex which of the leading u s micro data sets has the most comprehensive coverage of expenditure the empirical specification is set out in section hi section iv reports the results and section v concludes

intertemporal choice and consumption mobility the theory of intertemporal consumption choice makes sharp predictions about the evolution of the entire distribution of household consumption not just about its conditional mean in the paper we study the empirical transition matrix of consumption using a panel drawn from the bank of italy survey of household income and wealth we estimate the parameters that minimize the distance between the empirical and the theoretical transition matrix of the consumption distribution the transition matrix generated by our estimates matches remarkably well the empirical matrix both in the aggregate and in samples stratified by education our estimates strongly reject the consumption insurance model and suggest that households smooth income shocks to a lesser extent than implied by the permanent income hypothesis jel d52 d91 i30

engel curves for fair trade consumption and development perspectives for producers evidence from data on real fairtrade purchases while fairtrade sales have exhibited two digit growth rates over recent decades their capacity to become large enough to generate substantial gains for producers is still uncertain estimating fai

sustaining inter organizational relationships across institutional logics and power asymmetries the case of fair trade this paper explores an empirical puzzle namely how inter organizational relationships can be sustained between organizations that draw upon distinctive and potentially conflicting institutional logics under conditions of power asymmetry this research analyses cases of these relationships and suggests some key conditions underlying them examining relationships between fair trade organizations and corporate retailers a series of contingent factors behind the dynamic persistence of such relationships are proposed namely the presence of pre existing hybrid logics the use of boundary spanning discourses joint tolerance of conflict and co creation of common rules these four elements are supported by a fifth mediating factor i e the presence and use of a fair trade certification system in the collaboration the latter appears as a central vehicle facilitating cross logic relationships it can be seen as a boundary object embodying a series of narratives and discourses that are open to multiple interpretations corresponding to the dominant institutional logics of each partner organization

are fair trade goods credence goods a new proposal with french illustrations in the literature fair trade ft goods are usually associated with other products differentiated by process attributes such as organic food genetically modified gm food or child labour free clothing all of these products are regarded as credence goods this classification refers to the simplified definition of credence goods which describes product attributes which consumers cannot evaluate even after having consumed the good focusing on the characteristics of ft goods this article proposes a reassessment of the link between ft goods and credence properties as defined by darby and karni we first demonstrate that 1 the usual classification masks important particularities of ft goods compared to other goods with process attributes and 2 the full definition of credence goods may even provide a better description of the quality of ft goods however and this is our second theoretical contribution the lack of consensus among experts concerning ft standards and their level of efficiency encourage us to consider ft goods as indeterminate goods as defined by lupton this result leads us to suggest a new typology of product attributes summarized in an innovative diagram it sheds light on how competition between the different ft approaches works and why the ft market is still confined to a niche if not threatened with collapse we mainly illustrate our theoretical analysis with observations relating to the french ft market and institutions

income targeting and farm labor supply there is considerable anecdotal evidence that farm workers who are paid by piece rate tend to income target or work only until they achieve a certain amount of daily income and then stop work we estimate reduced form and structural models derived from the reference dependent preference model of koszegi and rabin 2006 to test the income targeting hypothesis using data from the national agricultural workers survey naws we find evidence that supports the income targeting hypothesis in both the reduced form and structural econometric models our findings suggest that even higher piece rates may not help the widely reported shortage of agricultural labor on the intensive margin as labor supply curves can be backward bending

mapping research topics and theories in private regulation for sustainability in global value chains the globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited as an alternative private regulation developed and administered by companies industry associations and nongovernmental organizations has emerged to safeguard economic environmental and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain the academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade but currently few major reviews of the research have been undertaken this paper examines peer reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to december 2011 our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature we conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation in a global value chain context is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world s economy we also conclude that agriculture forestry and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors in contrast other sectors such as the information communication and technology with their complex global value chains and often problematic environmental and social conditions are understudied

uncertain lifetime consumption and dissaving in retirement this paper asks whether the continued accumulation or mild dissaving observed among the retired can be explained by uncertain lifetime in the absence of annuities after an initial period influenced by borrowing constraints under constant relative risk aversion uncertain lifetime depresses consumption by a proportion increasing with age if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is small illustrative computations based on actual income and survival data show that plausible elasticities are sufficiently small to give this effect the reduction in consumption is large enough to explain much of the lack of decumulation by the elderly

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

labor supply of new york city cabdrivers one day at a time life cycle models of labor supply predict a positive relationship between hours supplied and transitory changes in wages because such changes have virtually no effect on life cycle wealth previous attempts to test this hypothesis empirically with time series data have not been supportive estimated elasticities are typically negative or nonsignificant such analyses however are vulnerable to measurement error and other estimation problems we use data on daily observations of wages and hours for new york city cab drivers to estimate the supply response to transitory fluctuations in wages cab drivers decide daily how many hours to supply and face wages that are positively correlated within days but largely uncorrelated between days using these data our central finding is that wage elasticities are persistently negative from 5 to 1 in three different samples even after correcting for measurement error using instrumental variables these negative wage elasticities challenge the notion that cab drivers trade off labor and leisure at different points in time and question the empirical adequacy of life cycle formulations of labor supply

unemployment insurance benefit levels and consumption changes abstract we use a canadian survey of the unemployed to examine how household expenditures after a job loss respond to the level of income replacement provided by ui we isolate a liquidity constraint or transitory income effect from the permanent income shock of job loss and from the costs of working we find significant effects of varying the replacement ratio among the third of the sample who did not have assets at the job loss we conclude that the consumption smoothing benefit of ui is concentrated wholly on a sub group of the unemployed

faith and fair trade the moderating role of contextual religious salience normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products that said the question of how religion influences organizational decision makers to purchase fair trade products in a business to business context has remained largely unaddressed this research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual s willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product when buying on behalf of an organization findings from two experimental studies involving 75 and 87 working individuals respectively reveal that the effect of a decision maker s religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization is moderated by the contextual salience of religion specifically when religion is highly salient in the organizational context religious commitment is positively related to the decision maker s willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product when contextual religious salience is low religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated implications for theory and practice are presented