limited participation and exchange rate dynamics does theory meet the data the paper explores the empirical dimensions of a new open economy macronomy model characterized by credit market frictions we find that these frictions are essential for the model to match a large set of moments of german data moreover the simulated impulse response functions to supply and nominal shocks are consistent with var findings since the model is estimated on moments rather than on conditional irfs this underlines the ability of the model to match the data finally monetary shocks do not seem to be the primary driving force behind the aggregate dynamics which is consistent with the var literature

the effectiveness of child care subsidies in encouraging the welfare to work transition of low income single mothers in recent years public attitudes toward single mothers have changed dramatically and policymakers are being pressed to devise reforms that will reduce their welfare dependency in the summer of 1994 at least 11 separate welfare reform proposals were being debated by congressional committees because child care is relatively expensive compared to potential earnings for single mothers extensions to current child care assistance programs will be an integral component of any welfare reform package very little evidence exists regarding child care utilization patterns and links to employment for low income mothers exceptions include mark berger and dan black 1992 and the recent congressional testimony given by jane ross 1994 of the gao contributing to the changing attitudes toward welfare recipients is the change in the demographic makeup of the labor force overall female labor force participation rates have grown dramatically in the past 30 years from 45 percent in the mid 1960 s to 75 percent in the early 1990 s as a result subsidizing poor single mothers so that they can stay at home with their children while more and more married mothers are working for pay has become less popular this has led to the encouragement of work particularly full time work as a means of poverty reduction for single mothers unfortunately child care costs represent a significant employment barrier on average child care costs 63 per week overall and 44 per week for care by a relative for the typical single mother child care costs range between 15 percent and 30 percent of earned income depending on the mode of care and hourly wage 2

workers remittances and the equilibrium real exchange rate theory and evidence economic integration in the early twenty first century is coninternational ventionally thought of in terms of increased openness to trade in goods and services as well as a dramatic increase in the volume of capital flows the twenty first century experience is sometimes contrasted with that of the last wave of globalization at the end of the nineteenth century when increased integration in both of those dimensions was also accompanied by large waves of international migration however this contrast is probably overdrawn as increases in international flows of labor services have also been characteristic of the current wave of globalization and the impact of these factor movements is increasingly being felt in the international economy a particularly dramatic manifestation of this fact is the sharp recorded increase in flows of worker remittances to the large number of developing countries that have been the source of these flows of labor services in recent years many such countries have witnessed significant increases in remittance flows to the point that their scale has come to dwarf that of other types of resource inflows whether development assistance foreign direct investment or other types of capital flows in 2007 remittance flows to sub saharan africa were equal in magnitude to flows of official development assistance for example remittance flows now account for some 17 percent of gdp and 77 percent of exports in el salvador and over 20 percent of gdp and nearly 50 percent of exports in honduras in these countries remittance flows are more than five times larger than foreign direct investment flows unlike capital flows remittances do not entail the creation of external debt with future repayment obligations unlike foreign development assistance they do not come encumbered with a variety of political and economic conditions with which the recipient country must comply despite these virtues however large inflows of worker remittances have been perceived as posing 45

child care policy and the labor supply of mothers with young children a natural experiment from canada in 1997 the provincial government of quebec the second most populous province in canada initiated a new child care policy licensed child care service providers began offering day care spaces at the reduced fee of 5 00 per day per child for children aged 4 by 2000 the policy applied to all children not in kindergarten using annual data 1993 2002 drawn from statistics canada s survey of labour and income dynamics the results show that the policy had a large and statistically significant impact on the labor supply of mothers with preschool children

child care prices and maternal employment a meta analysis the literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying while some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies others find insignificant effects to determine the causes of the variance this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer reviewed articles and working papers in the literature we start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs paying special attention to sample characteristics methodological aspects and macro level factors we conclude by providing a meta regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates as research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works elasticity estimates have become smaller over time this decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics in countries with high rates of part time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation we find elasticity rates to be smaller

price of high quality daycare and female employment using local variation between municipalities i analyze the degree to which the price of high quality publicly subsidized childcare affects female employment following maternity leave importantly prices are income dependent and thus likely endogenous yet by exploiting information on minimum income compensation during non employment i bypass this problem the results show that the price negatively affects employment a price increase of 1 per month decreases employment by 0 08 which corresponds to a price elasticity of 0 17 these effects prevail during the first 12 months after childbirth i also find that availability of childcare increases employment

remittances and the dutch disease abstract using data for el salvador and bayesian techniques we develop and estimate a two sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of remittances on emerging market economies we find that whether altruistically motivated or otherwise an increase in remittance flows leads to a decline in labor supply and an increase in consumption demand that is biased toward non tradables the higher non tradable prices serve as incentive for an expansion of that sector culminating in reallocation of labor away from the tradable sector a phenomenon known as the dutch disease quantitative results also indicate that remittances improve the welfare of households because they smooth income flows and increase consumption and leisure levels a bvar analysis provides results that are consistent with the dynamics of the model

child care and the labor supply of married women reduced form evidence this paper empirically analyzes family demands for market and nonmarket child care services and the impact of these demands on the work effort of married women the paperfirst develops a general model of child care and labor force participation the model predicts that higher wages increase the likelihood of labor force participation and that higher costs decrease the likelihood of child care utilization the paper then develops a threeequation reduced form econometric specification of the general model the equations in the specification are estimated simultaneously using 1985 data from the survey of income program participation the estimates reveal that the cost of market child care has a strong negative effect on the labor supply of married women

remittances financial development and growth abstract despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied this paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth in particular how local financial sector development influences a country s capacity to take advantage of remittances using a newly constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints this finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used and is robust to a number of robustness tests including threshold estimation we also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population

remittances monetary policy and partial sterilization author affiliation diego e vacaflores dv13 txstate edu acknowledgment the author thanks dennis w jansen for his insightful contributions and continuous guidance i also thank the editor kent kimbrough and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions 1 introductionremittances have increased over the last several decades international estimates of official remittance flows suggest that the total amount of worker remittances have increased to us 300 billion in 2010 inter american development bank 2012 this increase may in part be attributed to the rapid growth of money transfer institutions which has reduced the average transaction cost and has made them more visible however it may also be indicative of an actual increase in these monetary transfers due to increased migration flows which now represent approximately 45 of net private capital flows to developing countries the importance of remittances for remittances receiving developing countries does not just come from their size but mainly from its potential and actual effects on both the society and the individual remittances affect labor market decisions school retention export sector competitiveness and financial deepening funkhouser 1992 glytsos 2002 cox edwards and ureta 2003 amuedo dorantes and pozo 2004 chami fullenkamp and jahjah 2005 giuliano and ruiz arranz 2009 in terms of consumption remittance flows have gone from satisfying basic needs to providing a vast array of durable goods for recipient households they can thus potentially promote economic growth and development through higher domestic demand if motivated by altruism or through enhanced productive capacity if motivated by self interest most of the literature on remittances focuses on the microeconomic implication of such flows for the sender and for the receiver of these funds on the basis of survey data this trend in the literature has examined the motivations to remit such as contractual arrangements altruism repayment of migration costs and so on and the uses of these funds in the home country e g for education health care entrepreneurial initiatives social works etc at the macro level the literature on the impact of remittances on the recipient country is sparse but growing as researchers realize that it could have important effects on the overall economy however economists have overlooked the examination of the potential influence that higher levels of remittances can have on the implementation of monetary policy and thus its understanding is still limited since remittances provide a secondary income to households they would affect decisions with respect to labor supply and consumption which can alter the effectiveness of monetary policy when this additional income is a significant portion of a household s income additionally although domestic governments usually try to sterilize capital flows to sustain a given policy the high levels of informality in some developing countries and the significant portion of remittances that continue to flow through informal channels make monetary targeting problematic given these potential complications monetary policy could potentially have a differential impact depending on the remittances share of gdp and fluctuations in remittances can affect the amount of money in circulation and therefore economic performance accounting for such influences thus became imperative for stabilization policy this study examines the potentially different impact that monetary policy can have on output depending on the relative share of remittances as a percentage of gdp and the differential effect that remittances shocks can have on the main macroeconomic aggregates when economies do not fully sterilize such inflows channels never explored before it builds on the theoretical model developed by jansen vacaflores and naufal 2010 explicitly incorporating remittances in a small open economy framework and is able to show that monetary policy has a differential effect on output depending on the relative size of these remittances

is the household demand for in home services sensitive to tax reductions the french case our paper examines the impact of tax reductions on the demand for services in the home for that purpose we estimate a structural model of demand for such services by using household individual data collected by insee paris in 1996 in this model the net hourly wage paid to the domestic employee the household preferences for consumption of in home services and the decision to take advantage of the tax reduction are considered as endogenous variables estimation of the econometric model uses the fact that some households are observed to consume domestic services and to take advantage of the tax reduction while others either consume such services but do not take advantage of the tax reduction or do not consume these services at all its identification relies on an exclusion restriction resulting from the tax credit schedule results show that the probability of consuming in home services increases with age and income a 10 increase in the tax reduction would increase from 45 9 to 50 8 the proportion of households benefiting from the tax reduction among those who consume paid in home services moreover 13 5 of households who do not actually consume such services would do so after the 10 increase in the tax reduction these simulated variations would mainly concern high income households

employment transitions of women in india a panel analysis abstract this study analyses employment transitions of working age women in india the puzzling issue of low labour force participation despite substantial economic growth strong fertility decline and expanding female education in india has been studied in the recent literature however no study so far has looked into the dynamics of employment in terms of labour force entry and exit in this context using a nationally representative panel dataset we show that women are not only participating less in the labour force but also dropping out at an alarming rate we estimate an endogenous switching model that corrects for selection bias due to initial employment and panel attrition to investigate the determinants of women s entry into and exit from employment we find that an increase in wealth and income of other members of the household leads to lower entry and higher exit probabilities of women along with the effects of caste and religion this result reveals the importance of cultural and economic factors in explaining the low workforce participation of women in india we also explore other individual and household level determinants of women s employment transitions moreover we find that a large public workfare program significantly reduces women s exit from the labour force our study indicates that women s entry and exit decisions are not necessarily symmetric and it is important to consider the inter temporal dependence of labour supply decisions

macroeconomic interdependence under incomplete markets this paper uses a two country flexible price model with overlapping generations of infinitely lived households to study the role of net foreign asset dynamics in the propagation of productivity shocks absence of ricardian equivalence ensures existence of a unique steady state level of net foreign assets to which the economy returns following temporary shocks model dynamics are significantly different from those of a setup in which terms of trade movements perform all the international adjustment and net foreign assets do not move the difference relative to a complete markets economy in which net foreign asset movements play no role in shock transmission is smaller it is amplified if the substitutability across goods rises and if shocks are permanent

evaluating the effects of childcare policies on children s cognitive development and maternal labor supply to explore the role of childcare policies in the development of early cognitive skills this paper jointly estimates a cognitive achievement production function and a dynamic discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and childcare decisions using counter actuals from the model i investigate how the designs of two childcare programs head start and childcare subsidies affect the formation of cognitive skills through maternal work and childcare decisions the results suggest large impacts on cognitive skills from expanding head start to current noneligibles and negligible impacts of subsidies on cognitive skills of current eligibles abstract from author

do remittances induce inflation fresh evidence from developing countries the goal of this article is to examine the determinants of inflation in both the short run and the long run for 54 developing countries using a panel data set covering the 1995 2004 period apart from the commonly used economic determinants of inflation we model the impact of remittances and institutional variables on inflation using the arellano and bond panel dynamic estimator and the arellano and bover and the blundell and bond system generalized method of moments estimator we find evidence that in developing countries remittances generate inflation the effect of remittances on inflation is more pronounced in the long run moreover we find that openness debt current account deficits the agricultural sector and the short term u s interest rate have a positive effect on inflation we also find that improvements in democracy reduce inflation

trading off positive and negative service changes in childcare a choice experiment using a latent class modelling approach theoretically the choice of childcare mode should be influenced by the quality of the childcare attributes however such preference relations have been difficult to identify in past studies one

maternal labor supply and the availability of public pre k evidence from the introduction of prekindergarten into american public schools in the 1980s and 1990s many states began to provide funding for prekindergarten programs for the first time this paper takes advantage of the staggered timing in program funding to investigate the effect that increased availability of prekindergarten programs has on the labor supply of mothers with four year olds i find that mothers with a four year old and no younger children were significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed once prekindergarten became available and that these effects were largest for single low educated mothers and married college educated mothers mothers with a four year old and other younger children were also significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed although these effects were smaller in magnitude and not significant for specific subpopulations

money for nothing universal child care and maternal employment abstract the strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades we analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in norway our precise and robust difference in differences estimates reveal that there is little if any causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment despite a strong correlation instead of increasing mothers labor supply the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies

aid volatility and real business cycles in a developing open economy this article analyzes the impact of the unpredictability of foreign aid on macroeconomic fluctuations in the recipient country i build a small open economy business cycle model that accounts for foreign aid shocks with no preference shocks the model is calibrated to reflect the structural empirical regularities of cote d ivoire a typical aid dependent developing country the parameters of the exogenous shocks are estimated using bayesian methods and time series data for cote d ivoire the model produces business cycle patterns that are consistent with the data and key stylized facts specifically the excess volatility of consumption with respect to output is successfully replicated the results suggest that the unpredictability of foreign aid contributes to explain the volatility of business cycles in the recipient economy and has negative welfare effects

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

workers remittances and the real exchange rate a paradox of gifts abstract we test the impact of workers remittances on the real exchange rate using a panel of 13 latin american and caribbean countries the analysis reveals that workers remittances have the potential to inflict economic costs on the export sector of receiving countries by reducing its international competitiveness our findings raise concerns parallel to those raised by dutch disease or resource boom models where resource discoveries result in real exchange rate appreciation and shifting of resources from the traded to the nontraded sectors of the economy

maquiladoras and market mamas women s work and childcare in guatemala city and accra abstract this paper analyses work childcare and earnings of mothers in the slums of guatemala city and accra similar factors affect decisions to work and to use formal daycare but the importance of childcare varies with the role of the formal labour sector in guatemala where formal sector work is important higher prices for informal care increase formal daycare use however daycare prices and proximity to daycare centers do not significantly affect earnings in guatemala city and accra respectively providing formal daycare may be more important to mothers decision to work in cities where formal sector work dominates

household search choice theory and evidence since the work by stigler 1961 on the economics of information in the early 1960s economists have paid closer attention to the role of search for information however search methods are not considered in the theory of portfolio choice we present a model of investor search behaviour in order to provide a framework by which to evaluate our empirical evidence on the role of search in portfolio selection and performance we study two types of search methods informal and professional we show that the income wealth and risk preference of households influence their search choice

social interaction and stock market participation we propose that stock market participation is influenced by social interaction in our model any given social investor finds the market more attractive when more of his peers participate we test this theory using data from the health and retirement study and find that social households those who interact with their neighbors or attend church are substantially more likely to invest in the market than non social households controlling for wealth race education and risk tolerance moreover consistent with a peer effects story the impact of sociability is stronger in states where stock market participation rates are higher

the impact of child care costs on the labour supply of married mothers evidence from canada this paper provides estimates for canada of the impact of childcare costs on the labor supply of married mothers this is done by linking two microdata sources the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the key results show that the market wage and childcare costs have respectively a significant positive and negative impact on both hours of work and the labor force participation decision by married mothers the childcare cost elasticities for labor force participation and hours of work are reported to be 0 38 and 0 32 respectively

migration from nicaragua some recent evidence abstract i utilize two unique data sources to examine migration from and remittance flows to the capital city of managua nicaragua approximately 10 12 of the population has emigrated these emigrants tend to be disproportionately of working age better educated and more often white collar workers than nonmigrants in addition emigrants are more likely to come from larger premigration households and higher income households remittance flows to managua are quite large the second largest source of foreign exchange earnings after coffee in addition remittances have a negative income effect on labor force participation and a positive effect on self employment of nonmigrants

the effect of child care costs on married women s labor force participation the effect of child care costs on the probability that married women with children will participate in the labor market is examined child care costs are estimated using a generalized tobit specification corrected for selection estimates of a structural probit model of labor force participation provide evidence to support the prediction that increased child care costs lower the probability of participation it is also shown that the lower rate of labor force participation among mothers of preschoolers is entirely the result of the higher child care costs faced by these women and endogeneity of the number of young children in the participation equation copyright 1992 by mit press

child care costs as a barrier to employment for single and married mothers because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care while some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs this paper uses an improved sipp survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers employment behavior with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status empirical technique and equation specification this permits linking this paper to the existing evidence drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers employment behavior significantly with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than marri

women s career choices social norms and child care policies our model explains the observed gender specific patterns of career and child care choices through endogenous social norms we study how these norms interact with the gender wage gap we show that via the social norm a couple s child care and career choices impose an externality on other couples so that the laissez faire is inefficient we use our model to study the design and effectiveness of three commonly used policies we find that child care subsidies and women quotas can be effective tools to mitigate or eliminate the externality parental leave however may even intensify the externality and decrease welfare

joint labor supply and childcare choice decisions of married mothers this paper examines the impact of childcare prices and wage rates on the joint employment and childcare mode center sitter relative and husband choice decisions of married mothers by estimating both a mixed logit and universal logit choice model data are drawn from the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the estimation results show that wages have a positive impact on the probability of choosing any of the working states and that childcare prices for center sitter and relative care reduce the probability of working and using each respective mode of care sensitivity analyses reveal that the wage elasticity for employment is fairly robust across model specifications while the own price elasticity of childcare is sensitive to model specification differing identifying assumptions in the estimation of childcare price equations and sample selection the simulation results show that differences exist in the degree to which government subsidies in the form of wage subsidies targeted childcare subsidies or unconditional childcare subsidies impact on labor supply decisions and decisions to substitute across different modes of care by those mothers already in the labor market

remittances and the migration development nexus challenges for the sustainable governance of migration abstract this paper argues that possible effects of international migration on the environment have to be analysed with respect to both the three dimensions of sustainability and the migration stakeholders it has recently been put forward that immigration has to be reduced for environmental reasons in contrast this paper embarks from the view that reducing immigration is costly ineffective and ethically troublesome it argues that there are strong interrelations between development and migration suggesting that one has to consider development problems when discussing migration in this context the enormous amount of remittances of migrant workers could yield considerable potential for promoting sustainable development sustainable governance is needed to manage this potential wisely in doing so it is essential to consider the migration stakeholders sending and receiving countries and the migrants themselves and balance the three dimensions of sustainability

the demand for child care quality an hedonic price theory approach i use an hedonic price theory approach to estimate the demand for child care quality two complementary surveys the national child care survey 1990 nccs and the profile of child care settings study pcs allow me to derive an implicit price for staff to child ratio i use this price as an explanatory variable in a demand equation for this quality attribute direct purchase of service contracts or voucher programs by subsidizing only those providers that satisfy state regulatory requirements effectively lower the implicit price of regulated attributes such as staff to child ratio results of this study suggest that such tied subsidies have almost no influence on the demand for child care quality

an up to date joint labor supply and child care choice model abstract norwegian parents of preschool children base their care choices on a completely different choice set from their predecessor now there is essentially only one type of nonparental care center based care and on the parental side fathers take a more pivotal role in early childhood care in the present paper we develop and estimate a joint labor supply and child care choice model that takes account of these new characteristics on the assumption that this model points to current and future modeling directions for several other economies too estimations suggest that the average wage elasticity for mothers is 0 25 0 30

child care subsidies quality of care and the labor supply of low income single mothers the authors examine the effects of child care subsidies on the labor supply decisions of low income mothers and o n the quality of care their children receive using newly gathered data on two programs that subsidize the child care expenditures of families in kentucky they find that single mothers who receive child care subsidies are more likely to be employed and are generally more satisfied with the care their children receive but subsidies have little effect on hours worked copyright 1992 by mit press

price quality and income in child care choice recent legislation may substantially expand federal assistance in paying for child care this paper examines the potential effects of three aspects of federal assistance reducing child care price through vouchers or grants to providers improving its quality through incentives or regulation and increasing family income through tax credits on the child care choices employed mothers make the data come from the 1985 wave of the national longitudinal survey of youth ohio state university both multinomial and universal logit models are used the results suggest that price is a critical variable in child care choice the higher the price the lower the probability a mode of care will be chosen parents do not consistently select high quality care although overall quality improvements may increase the use of family day care mothers who earn more per hour and families who have higher incomes other than the mother s earnings are more likely to select center care over other modes consequently subsidizing child care expenditures directly through vouchers and reduced fees or increasing other family income through tax credits consistently increases the use of center based programs all else equal

job search by employed and unemployed youth analysis of data from the new youth cohort of the national longitudinal survey yields evidence that young unemployed job seekers chose higher levels of search effort as measured by number of methods used and time spent per method and lower reservation wages relative to offered wages than did comparable employed job seekers in 1981 these differences in search choices at least partly explain differences in search outcomes between the two groups unemployed searchers apparently were more likely than employed searchers to gain new employment and the wages they obtained were slightly lower the author argues that the greater search effort by unemployed job seekers is due to the higher costs of search they bear because of foregone earnings

childcare quality and pricing evidence from wisconsin childcare prices vary dramatically both between and within states we identify the effects of demographic and provider characteristics on childcare pricing but focus primarily on whether unique government provided information on childcare quality has an effect on pricing using provider level observations across three adjacent counties in southern wisconsin we find that this government provided information on childcare quality does not significantly affect pricing recognizing that information asymmetry may be the root cause of the insignificant relationship we test the relationship further within multiple subsamples and with alternative models only the lowest quality childcare providers are significantly associated with lower prices in areas that we hypothesize suffer from greater information asymmetry

overshooting and the exchange rate disconnect puzzle a reappraisal transitions to floating exchange rate regimes have led to sharp increases in exchange rate volatilities with no corresponding changes in the distribution of macroeconomic fundamentals in the spirit of dornbusch 1976 we assess whether nominal exchange rate overshooting is responsible for this phenomenon as long as uncovered interest rate parity holds nominal exchange rate overshooting is linked to a persistent fall in the spread between domestic and foreign nominal interest rates we thus develop a limited participation model in a small open economy setting with small adjustment costs on money holdings overshooting substantially contributes to the nominal exchange rate volatility

international migration remittances and schooling evidence from el salvador abstract we examine the effect of remittances from abroad on households schooling decisions using data for el salvador following the massive war related emigration of the 1980s remittances became a significant source of household income throughout the 1990s we use the cox proportional hazard model to examine the determinants of school attendance measuring income from a source that is uncorrelated with parental schooling remittances we find that remittances have a large significant effect on school retention we estimate that while household income net of remittances has a small though significant impact on the hazard of leaving school in rural and urban areas remittances have a much larger impact on the hazard of leaving school in urban areas the effect of remittances is at its smallest 10 times the size of the effect of other income in rural areas the effect of remittances is about 2 6 times that of other income our finding is of interest in that it suggests that subsidizing school attendance particularly in poor areas may have a large impact on school attendance and retention even if parents have low levels of schooling

women s employment and child care choices in urban china during the economic transition abstractchina s transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has substantially eroded governmental support for child care raising the concern about how the change of child care provision may affect women s labor market participation this article examines the impact of child care availability and affordability on the employment and child care choices of urban chinese women with preschool children during the transition the analysis shows that the presence of day care in the community is positively associated with a mother s labor force participation and labor hour supply and that the rising costs of hired caregivers reduce the mother s labor hour supply the analysis also finds that both the costs of hired caregivers and family income have important effects on the use of out of home care services simulations indicate that the decline in day care presence would account for 46 of the decrease in mothers labor force participation during the public sector restructuring between 1997 and 2000

marital status and full time part time work status in child care choices using recent sipp data this study estimates two econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status and differences in the mode of child care used controlling for employment status for both married and single women full time employment is more elastic with respect to changes in the price of child care than part time employment and employment elasticities are larger for single than married mothers in the model of child care modal choice we find that an increased probability of full time employment is associated with an increase in the use of centre care for both married and single mothers and that price elasticities of modal choice are larger for single than married mothers

childcare subsidies wages and employment of single mothers this paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part time and full time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers the results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare the part time wage effects are found to be too small to have significant behavioral implications an analysis of cost effectiveness indicates that the additional hours of work generated per dollar of government expenditure is larger for a childcare subsidy than a wage subsidy

tax credits labor supply and child care we explore the impact of the child care tax credit in the u s income tax system on the labor supply decisions of married women with young children by incorporating the cost of child care into a st

remittances and labor force participation in mexico an analysis using propensity score matching summary about 2 5 million mexicans migrated to the united states during 1997 2002 and 1 6 million of them sent remittances to their families did recipients change their labor force status in response to these remittances this question has been examined before unlike the previous studies we separate persistent from sporadic remittances and we use propensity score matching to measure differences in behavior we find limited evidence of labor force participation effects of persistent remittances which is broadly consistent with remittances being an integral part of household s income generation strategy

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

why do so few hold stocks the authors investigate why 75 percent of u s households do not hold stocks despite the equity premium and predictions of expected utility models the question is relevant for privatization asset pricing and tax progressivity issues they show that risk aversion per se heterogeneity of beliefs habit persistence time nonseparability and quantity constraints on borrowing do not account for the phenomenon a wedge between borrowing and lending rates and minimum investment requirements are plausible but empirically weak factors more promising explanations are inertia and departures from expected utility maximization there is also qualified support for nondiversifiable income risk as a contributing factor copyright 1995 by royal economic society

the demand for quality in child care we estimate a model of demand for quality related attributes of child care group size staff child ratio and provider training the model is estimated jointly with equations for mode expenditure on and hours of care and the mother s labor supply the results show that a lower price of child care in a particular mode leads to substitution toward that mode and an increase in the use of paid child care a decrease in the price of care causes an increase in hours of care demanded and a decrease in the demand for qualityrelated attributes income effects on demand for quality are small

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

why are fertility rates and female employment ratios positively correlated across o e c d countries we develop a quantitative theory of fertility and labor market participation de cisions in order to investigate the role of labor market frictions to understand the positive association between fertility and employment among o e c d countries we nd that unemployment induces females to postpone and space births which in turn reduces the total fertility rate moreover diferences in female labor outcomes across the u s and spain can account for the low fertility rate in spain relative to the u s we also nd that labor market frictions low probability of nding a job determine how employment and fertility are associated across economies in particular fertility and employment are positively associated across economies with low employment ratios low probability of nding a job on the other hand fertility and employment are negatively associated across economies with a high probability of nding a job

child care costs and the employment decision of women canadian evidence the authors estimate the joint decision for women with preschool children to engage in paid employment and to purchase market forms of child care the results confirm those found in most u s studies indicating that child care costs exert a significant negative effect on the labor supply of women with children and on their decision to purchase child care as well the expected wage of the mother exerts a significant positive impact on both the decision to purchase market forms of child care and the decision to engage in paid unemployment

remittance outflows and inflation the case of the gcc countries abstract we examine the effect of remittance outflows on inflation in the remitting countries the growth of remittance outflows depresses inflation rate

employment and child care choices in canada and the united states in this paper we examine employment and child care choices of two parent families with young children in the united states and canada using a pooled data set based on recent national surveys in each country we find that the employment and child care choices of canadian families are similar to those of u s families estimates of a model of employment and child care choices indicate significant effects of child care subsidies child care prices and wage rates on employment and child care choices however none of these factors helps to explain the differences in employment and child care choices between the two countries ce memoire examine le choix de l emploi et du soin des enfants dans les familles ou il y deux parents aux etats unis et au canada en utilisant des donnees d etudes recentes dans les deux pays il appert que les choix des familles canadiennes sont semblables a ceux des familles americaines les calibrations d un modele de ces choix montrent les effets significatifs des subventions au soin des enfants du prix des soins des enfants et des taux de salaires sur ces choix cependant aucun de ces facteurs n explique les diffrences dans les patterns de choix entre les deux pays

what s different about monetary policy transmission in remittance dependent countries abstract despite welfare and poverty reducing benefits for recipient households remittance inflows have been shown to entail macroeconomic challenges producing dutch disease type effects reducing the quality of institutions delaying fiscal adjustment and having an indeterminate effect on long run growth this paper explores an additional challenge for monetary policy although remittances expand bank balance sheets providing a stable flow of interest insensitive funding they tend to increase banks holdings of liquid assets this both reduces the need for an interbank market and severs the link between policy rate and banks marginal cost of funds thus shutting down a major transmission channel we develop a stylized model based on asymmetric information and a lack of transparent borrowers and undertake econometric analysis providing evidence that increased remittance inflows are associated with weaker transmission as independent monetary policy becomes impaired this result is consistent with earlier findings that recipient countries tend to favor fixed exchange rate regimes

labour underutilisation in metropolitan labour markets in australia individual characteristics personal circumstances and local labour markets there has been a growing awareness that the issue of labour market disadvantage is substantially greater than merely considering unemployment and the ability to find a job there is an increasing l

new estimates of labour supply elasticities for married women in canada 1996 2005 in this article we estimate income and substitution labour supply and participation elasticities for canadian married women using data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1996 2005 we use the canadian tax and credit simulator ctacs and detailed information on the structure of income at the household level to compute the marginal tax rates faced by each individual we then use these marginal tax rates to compute net own wage spouse wage and nonlabour income we show how the magnitude of the estimated elasticities varies depending on whether net or gross wages and income are used in the estimation procedure and quantify biases caused by using average tax rates instead of marginal tax rates finally because marginal tax rates vary significantly over the sample we use quantile regressions to compare elasticities at different points of the hours distribution overall our results show that public policies now have on average less scope for influencing hours of work than 10 years ago howev

a structural model of child care and the labor supply of married women this article empirically examines married women s labor supply and child care expenditures the article uses winter 1984 85 data from the survey of income and program participation to estimate a fu

child care costs and family labor supply this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of child care costs on family labor supply and the demand for market child care the model is a framework for cross section estimation of the effects of child care costs on labor supply and child care use it applies to households having young children requiring continuous care and in which both the mother and 1 other potential child care provider are present the 3 potential sources of child care are the mother the potential informal provider and the market using data from the 1980 baseline household survey of the employment opportunity pilot projects this empirical analysis uses a subsample of 6170 households in which there is a married woman under age 45 with her spouse present at the time of the survey at least 1 child under age 14 and nonmissing data on key variables results show that 1 higher market child care costs discourage women from working even when an informal source of care is available indicating that such informal care is an imperfect substitute for market care 2 a higher wage rate for the mother encourages her to work thus a higher wage rate increases the probability of using market child care 3 the number of children requiring care has a negative impact on the probability of the women working with the largest impact caused by younger children 4 nonwage income has a negative impact on the probability of the woman working and 5 black women are more likely to work than whites and are statistically more likely than whites to use market child care if they do work this family labor supply model predicts that the cost of market child care will affect household decisions on labor supply and child care use estimates of a qualitative choice model provide strong confirmation that child care costs affect such decisions the responsiveness of the labor supply of mothers to child care costs demonstrated in this study indicate that such subsidies do have their intended effect of encouraging labor supply the fact that a large proportion of current child care subsidies benefit primarily middle and upper income families via the income tax credit suggests that the labor supply effets of such subsidies may in practice be stronger for less needy families than for low income families employer subsidized child care may become an increasingly popular tool for attracting mothers into the labor force

a structural model of labor supply and child care demand this paper specifies and estimates a structural model in which the decision to purchase market child care and the quality purchased is made simultaneously with the employment decision of the mother separate analyses are performed for married mothers and single mothers the structural estimates are used to simulate the effects and costs of changes in the federal child care tax credit the simulations indicate that a refundable child care tax credit would distribute child care benefits more equally across the population by increasing the shares of subsidies received by low income families and would induce a considerable increase in expenditures on market child care labor supply also increases but by considerably less than child care expenditures a surprising result is that despite large increases in child care

consumption smoothing and portfolio rebalancing the effects of adjustment costs abstract a household s response to income and return shocks depends on the costs of portfolio adjustment in particular the extent of portfolio rebalancing and consumption smoothing are influenced by the presence of non convex portfolio adjustment costs suppose bonds can be adjusted costlessly while adjustments to stock accounts entail adjustment costs due to these portfolio adjustment costs the household demands both stocks and bonds a household can buffer some income fluctuations without incurring adjustment costs and engage in costly portfolio rebalancing less frequently using the estimated preference parameters and portfolio adjustment costs the response to income and return shocks is nonlinear and reflects the interaction of portfolio rebalancing and consumption smoothing

remittances output and exchange rate regimes theory with an application to latin america immigrant remittances have a broad effect on the receiving economies we show this impact on the main macroeconomic aggregates is dependent on the policy arrangements in place that manage capital flows we look at remittance inflows in a small open economy to examine their influence on output under alternative exchange rate regimes using a simple stochastic limited participation model we are able to reproduce dynamics consistent with the empirical literature we find that the dynamics of labor inflation and output are dependent on the parameterization of the utility function and on the monetary rule governing the evolution of the interest rate and in particular with respect to the response of interest rates to exchange rate movements we find that the initial drop of output resulting from a remittances shock is similar under alternative exchange rate regimes but the subsequent recovery of output is faster and stronger under more flexible exchange rate regimes we provide suggestive empirical evidence from a panel vector autoregression specification for 17 latin american countries that corroborates our results