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

bayesian endogeneity bias modeling we propose to model endogeneity bias using prior distributions of moment conditions the estimator can be obtained both as a method of moments estimator and in a ridge penalized regression framework we show the estimator s relation to a bayesian estimator

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

inward versus outward growth orientation in the presence of country risk the purpose of this paper is to model the role of trade dependency in determining the access of a developing economy to the international credit market and its desirable growth strategy with full integration of capital markets the choice with respect to the inwardness of a technology is irrelevant investment will be channeled to the more productive sectors independently of their trade inwardness with limited capital market integration a given investment will generate two effects the first is the standard direct productivity effect that is associated with the change in future output the second is the trade dependency externality generated by the change in future bargaining outcomes due to the change in the trade dependency of the nation with partial integration investment that increases trade dependency is desirable if the credit markets are disjoint due to partial defaults higher trade dependency is disadvantageous thus higher trade dependency generates a positive externality with partial integration of capital markets and a negative externality with disjoint credit markets we show that credit market integration is determined by the size of the indebtedness relative to the trade dependency as reflected by the repayment burden that is supported by the bargaining outcome the repayment bargaining outcome is determined by the sectoral composition of the economy and by the effective size of the developing and the developed economies this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

is universal child care leveling the playing field abstract we assess the case for universal child care programs in the context of a norwegian reform which led to a large scale expansion of subsidized child care we use non linear difference in differences methods to estimate the quantile treatment effects of the reform we find that the effects of the child care expansion were positive in the lower and middle parts of the earnings distribution of exposed children as adults and negative in the uppermost part we complement this analysis with local linear regressions of the child care effects by family income we find that most of the gains in earnings associated with the universal child care program relate to children of low income parents whereas upper class children actually experience a loss in earnings in line with the differential effects by family income we estimate that the universal child care program substantially increased intergenerational income mobility to interpret the estimated heterogeneity in child care effects we examine the mediating role of educational attainment and cognitive test scores and show that our estimates are consistent with a simple model where parents make a tradeoff between current family consumption and investment in children taken together our findings could have important implications for the policy debate over universal child care programs suggesting that the benefits of providing subsidized child care to middle and upper class children are unlikely to exceed the costs our study also points to the importance of universal child care programs in explaining differences in earnings inequality and income mobility across countries and over time

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

using selection on observed variables to assess bias from unobservables when evaluating swan ganz catheterization distinguishing causal effects from correlations is a key objective of research regardless of field even in medicine controlled experiments are not always practical or ethical in economics and we suspect in most other fields identification strategies based upon observational data are rarely bulletproof in their landmark study a f connors et al 1996 use propensity score matching methods with an extremely rich set of demographic characteristics and health status measures to assess whether swan ganz catheterization 1c 2 a widely used device for monitoring intensive care unit icu patients raises or lowers mortality in their sample of icu patients they find that receiving c within the first 24 hours raises mortality rates casting serious doubt on the value of this procedure for critically ill patients jay bhattacharya azeem m shaikh and edward vytlacil 2007 2008 hereafter bsv observe that since c recipients are sicker on many observed dimensions propensity score matching which ignores selection on unobservables might overstate the negative consequences of c they apply a set of bounds estimators including an extension of shaikh and vytlacil 2004 that incorporates prior information that weekend applications of recent methodology in project evaluation

endogeneity bias modeling using observables this paper proposes an alternative solution to the endogeneity problem by explicitly modeling the joint interaction of the endogenous variables and the unobserved causes of the dependent variable as a function of additional observables we derive identification of the parameters develop an estimator and establish its consistency and asymptotic normality

beyond publication bias abstract this review considers several meta regression and graphical methods that can differentiate genuine empirical effect from publication bias publication selection exists when editors reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically significant results because all areas of empirical research are susceptible to publication selection any average or tally of significant insignificant studies is likely to be biased and potentially misleading meta regression analysis can see through the murk of random sampling error and selected misspecification bias to identify the underlying statistical structures that characterize genuine empirical effect meta significance testing and precision effect testing pet are offered as a means to identify empirical effect beyond publication bias and are applied to four areas of empirical economics research minimum wage effects union productivity effects price elasticities and tests of the natural rate hypothesis

meta analysis of economics research reporting guidelines meta regression analysis mra can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades to improve transparency and to raise the quality of mra the meta analysis of economics research network maer net has created the below reporting guidelines future meta analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta analysis must deviate from them

why are stabilizations delayed when a stabilization has significant distributional implications e g tax increases to eliminate a large budget deficit socioeconomic groups may attempt to shift the burden of stabilization onto other groups the process leading to stabilization becomes a war of attrition each group attempting to wait the others out and stabilization occurring only when one group concedes and bears a disproportionate share of the burden the authors solve for the expected time of stabilization in a model of rational delay and relate it to several political and economic variables they motivate this approach and its results by comparison to historical and current episodes copyright 1991 by american economic association

externalities incentives and failure to achieve national objectives in decentralized economies abstract this paper studies why decentralized economies often fail to achieve national objectives we assume that the central government allocates its tax revenues among a large number of decision makers provincial authorities or ministers decision makers are facing a soft budget constraint because of limited monitoring by the central authorities spending in excess to allocations fuels inflation cooperation to limit aggregate spending occurs when no decision maker can benefit by opportunistic behavior adverse macroeconomic shocks are shown to reduce the likelihood that decentralized decision makers will cooperate in order to achieve national objectives debt relief can induce higher investment because it can promote a shift from opportunistic behavior to cooperation

women s labour force participation and child care in romania abstract this paper models household demand for childcare and mothers labour force participation in romania the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household characteristics on household behaviour with respect to childcare and maternal employment we find that both the maternal decision to become employed and the decision to use out of home care are sensitive to the price of childcare a decrease in the price of care can increase the number of working mothers and thus can reduce poverty in some households we also find that the potential market wage of the mother has a significant positive effect on the decision to purchase market care and on the decision to engage in paid employment the level of household non wage income has little effect on maternal employment and on the demand for childcare

seigniorage and political instability the importance of seigniorage relative to other sources of government revenue differs markedly across countries this paper tries to explain this regularity by studying a political model of tax reform the model implies that countries with a more unstable and polarized political system will have more inefficient tax structures and thus will rely more heavily on seigniorage this prediction of the model is tested on cross sectional data for seventy countries the authors find that after controlling for other variables political instability is positively associated with seigniorage copyright 1992 by american economic association

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

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

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

grand corruption instead of commitment reconsidering time inconsistency of monetary policy abstract this paper suggests that inflation may be affected differently by grand corruption compared to its positive nexus with petty corruption in an extended barro and gordon 1983a model grand corruption may serve as a quasi commitment device a cheating expropriating government may actually deter a monetary authority from cheating reneging furthermore rogoff s 1985 conservative central banker has an unambiguously beneficial effect she reduces the inflationary bias even more while also rendering fiscal policy more effective the model nests the standard fiscal monetary interaction logic with and without expropriation as well as the diametrical symbiosis result obtained by dixit and lambertini 2003a

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

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

the effect of child care costs on the employment and welfare recipiency of single mothers 1 introduction for all mothers of young children entering the labor market is strongly linked with the need for child care opportunities for caring for children while in the labor market are few in a developed economy in many cases the husband or another family member serves as caregiver but approximately 50 ic of preschoolers with a working mother are cared for by nonrelatives casper 1997 some of these arrangements involve a substantial amount of money in 1993 the average weekly cost of care was 59 for home based care 68 for center based care and 48 for care provided by a relative this can represent one fourth of earnings for single mothers working full time at the minimum wage kimmel 1994 such substantial money expenditures coupled with transportation needs both to work and to day care as well as the uncertainty of many child care arrangements are expected to keep many mothers of young children out of the labor market thus the relationship between employment and child care for these mothers is thought to play a strong role in the link between welfare recipiency and child care welfare programs before and after welfare reform have targeted child care as a barrier to employment 1 before welfare reform child care subsidies were available to some recipients through federal title iv a funding sources for child care afdc jobs at risk transitional child care and through the child care development block grant these funds often came with matching requirements from the states the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 prwora consolidated all these funds into state block grants thereby permitting the states to design their own child care assistance schemes states may supplement federal child care block grants with state dollars but there is no longer a required state match thus while the total federal dollar amount allocated to child care in temporary assistance for needy families tanf exceeds former federal aid to families with dependent children afdc child care commitments because tanf requires less in state matching expenditures it is unclear what will happen to total child care expenditures as welfare reform evolves early postreform evidence suggests that while overall child care spending at the state level has increased the increase is less than would have occurred had the matching requirements been retained a recent study of welfare leavers reports that few are receiving subsidies schumacher and greenberg 1999 and only 1 24 million of the approximately 10 million children eligible for federally funded support received assistance in 1997 u s department of health and human services 1999 underlying states expenditures on child care subsidies are their subsidy eligibility guidelines participation in such subsidy programs by the eligible population and availability of subsidized slots or funds for those families applying for such funds only a small percentage of families eligible for subsidies based on the federal maximum income limits receive such support federal guidelines as outlined in prwora stipulate that federally financed child care subsidies can be made available to families with incomes up to 85 of the state s median income however as of july 1999 only five states had set their eligibility guidelines at the federal maximum in addition participation by the state defined eligible group is quite low partially because of a lack of information city officials in san francisco have used an innovative peer outreach program to increase participation by the eligible population and by the start of 2000 the city was enrolling 50 of the estimated eligible population an enrollment rate twice the statewide average heymann 2000b extensive data on post tanf behavior are not yet available nor will they be for some time however there is some evidence that workers continue to report that availability and cost of child care are barriers to self sufficiency

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

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

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

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

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

active labor market policy evaluations a meta analysis this article presents a meta analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labour market policies we categorise 199 programme impacts from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007 job search assistance programmes yield relatively favourable programme impacts whereas public sector employment programmes are less effective training programmes are associated with positive medium term impacts although in the short term they often appear ineffective we also find that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters but neither the publication status of a study nor the use of a randomised design is related to the sign or significance of the programme estimate

viewpoint an extended class of instrumental variables for the estimation of causal effects we examine how structural systems can yield observed variables instrumental in identifying and estimating causal effects we provide an exhaustive characterization of potentially identifying conditional exogeneity relationships and demonstrate how structural relations determine exogeneity and exclusion restrictions that yield moment conditions supporting identification this provides a comprehensive framework for constructing instruments and covariates we introduce notions of conditioning and conditional extended instrumental variables xivs these permit identification but need not be traditional instruments as they may be endogenous we distinguish between observed xivs and proxies for unobserved xivs a main message is the importance of sufficiently specifying causal relations governing the unobservables les auteurs examinent comment des systemes structurels peuvent engendrer des variables observees instrumentales dans l identification et l estimation d effets de causalite on fournit une caracterisation exhaustive des relations d exogeneite conditionnelle potentiellement porteuses d identification et on demontre comment des relations structurelles determinent les restrictions d exogeneite et d exclusion qui engendrent les conditions de moment qui supportent l identification cela fournit un cadre comprehensif pour construire instruments et covariables on introduit des notions de variables instrumentales etendues conditionnantes et conditionnelles xivs celles ci permettent l identification mais n ont pas aetre des instruments traditionnels parce qu elles peuvent etre endogenes on distingue entre les xivs observees et les variables concomitantes avec les xivs non observees un message central est l importance de suffisamment specifier les relations causales qui gouvernent les non observables

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

the competitive externalities and the optimal seignorage this study analyzes the inflation tax in an economy with several competing decisionmakers who can effectively print more money via the central bank the author derives the sequential rational expectation equilibrium and shows that the presence of competing decisionmakers increases the inflation rate and may put the economy on the wrong side of the inflation tax laffer curve the analysis is interpreted for a country consisting of several states or provinces where the centralized government system is weak similar results apply to the case of competing ministers in an economy where the central bank is weak copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

evaluating marginal policy changes and the average effect of treatment for individuals at the margin this paper develops methods for evaluating marginal policy changes we characterize how the effects of marginal policy changes depend on the direction of the policy change and show that marginal policy effects are fundamentally easier to identify and to estimate than conventional treatment parameters we develop the connection between marginal policy effects and the average effect of treatment for persons on the margin of indifference between participation in treatment and nonparticipation and use this connection to analyze both parameters we apply our analysis to estimate the effect of marginal changes in tuition on the return to going to college

child care subsidies and labor supply in sweden this paper utilizes data from a swedish household survey for 1984 the hus data in combination with data on public child care fees and spaces per child by community we argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household the joint out of home child care and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit and ordered probit choice models we find that the high quality public child care in sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when the spouse s income is high and that when spaces are not rationed a lower price encourages use

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