the retirement behaviour of the self employed in britain we analyze the retirement behaviour of older self employed workers using a life cycle framework and a multinomial logit model of dynamic employment and retirement choices using data from the two wave retirement survey we find that greater actual or potential earnings decrease the probability of retirement among the self employed in contrast to employees none of gender health or family circumstances appear to affect self employed retirement decisions the dynamic analysis reveals that relatively few employees and virtually no retirees switch into self employment in later life the switches that do occur are motivated less by attempts to use self employment as a bridge job or stepping stone to full retirement than by self employment being a last resort for less affluent workers with job histories of weak attachment to the labour market we compare self employed and employee retirement behaviour and discuss the policy implications of our results

activity choice labor allocation and forest use in malawi this article examines the determinants of activity choice affecting forest use among low income households in malawi data from three villages are used to estimate a system of household labor share equations for maize production forest employment and non forest employment a system estimation approach is used to identify factors influencing the competing and synergistic livelihood strategies which households undertake at the forest margin results from constrained maximum likelihood estimation indicate heightened incentives to degrade forests when returns to forest use are high factors reducing forest pressure include favorable returns to non forest employment secondary education of the household head and wealth

fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

dynamics of health and labor market risks while there is little doubt that the probability of poor health increases with age and that less healthy people face a more difficult situation on the labor market the precise relationship between facing the risks of health deterioration and labor market instability is not well understood using 12 years of data from the german socio economic panel we study the nature of the relationship between poor health and non employment on a sample of german men aged 30 59 we propose a joint model of health and labor market risks which identifies the mechanism through which poor health contributes to the probability of being jobless and vice versa we find an important role of unobserved heterogeneity and evidence for correlation in the unobservable characteristics determining the two processes the results also show strong persistence in the dynamics of health and labor market risks

disability and self employment evidence for the uk this article examines the self employment decision for disabled and nondisabled workers in the uk using labour force survey lfs data it is found that self employment may provide an important means by which those with work limiting disabilities can accommodate their impairment

the effect of labor market performance on deforestation in developing countries under open access an example from rural nepal abstract this research examines the deforestation behavior of smallholder agriculturalists as off farm labor market conditions change a model of a representative village is proposed which incorporates dependence on open access forests for fuelwood and animal raising dynamic simulations are then presented which compare time paths of forest stocks deforestation levels and household labor supply under a variety of conditions despite the open access regime assumed in the model with a perfect albeit low wage off farm labor market the agro forestry system in nepal is basically stable an alternative model where there is no off farm labor market eliminates the important features of adjustment to deforestation which generate forest stability suggesting that the availability of off farm opportunities is an important determinant of deforesting behavior and equilibrium forest stock levels

ethanol production food and forests this paper investigates the direct and indirect impacts of ethanol production on land use deforestation and food production a partial equilibrium model of a national economy with two sectors and two regions one of which includes a forest is developed it analyses how an exogenous increase in the ethanol price affects input allocation land and labor between sectors energy crop and food the total effect of ethanol prices on food production and deforestation is decomposed into three partial effects first the well documented effect of direct land competition between rival uses arises it increases deforestation and decreases food production second an indirect displacement of food production across regions possibly provoked by the reaction of international food prices increases deforestation and reduces the food sector s output finally labor mobility between sectors and regions tends to decrease food production but also deforestation the total impact of ethanol production on food production is negative while there is an ambiguous impact on deforestation

do increased premium subsidies affect how much health insurance is purchased evidence from the self employed abstract this paper estimates the effect of recent federal and state level increases in the deductibility of health insurance premiums for self employed individuals which reduced the after tax price of health insurance on both the take up of coverage and the amount of insurance purchased using a panel of tax returns filed by self employed taxpayers from 1999 to 2004 we estimate a take up elasticity of 0 316 overall with significantly higher elasticities for single taxpayers on the intensive margin we find an elasticity of 0 733 overall

public health insurance individual health and entry into self employment we investigate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into self employment health insurance systems that distinguish between the two sectors of employment create incentives or disincentives to start a business for different individuals we estimate a discrete time hazard rate model of entry into self employment based on representative household panel data for germany which include individual health information the results indicate that an increase in the health insurance cost differential between self employed workers and paid employees by 10 per month decreases the probability of entry into self employment by 1 7 of the annual entry rate this shows that entrepreneurship lock which an emerging literature describes for the system of employer provided health insurance in the usa can also occur in a public health insurance system therefore entrepreneurial activity should be taken into account when discussing potential health care reforms

agricultural expansion and deforestation modelling the impact of population market forces and property rights abstract this paper compares four different modelling approaches to agricultural expansion and deforestation and explores the implications of assumptions about the household objectives the labour market and the property rights regime a major distinction is made between population and market based explanations many of the popular policy prescriptions are based on the population approach assuming subsistence behaviour and limited market integration within a more realistic particularly for the long term effects market approach well intentioned policies such as agricultural intensification programmes may boost deforestation many forest frontier contexts are also characterized by forest clearing giving farmers land rights deforestation becomes an investment to the farmer and a title establishment strategy land titling and credit programmes may therefore increase deforestation

tax incentives and the decision to purchase health insurance evidence from the self employed the tax reform act of 1986 introduced a new tax subsidy for health insurance purchases by the self employed we analyze the changing patterns of insurance demand before and after tax reform to generate new estimates of how the after tax price of insurance affects the discrete choice of whether to buy insurance we employ both traditional regression models and difference in difference methods that compare changes in insurance coverage across groups around tra86 the results from our most carefully controlled comparison suggest that a 1 percent increase in the cost of insurance coverage reduces the probability that a self employed single person will be insured by 1 8 percentage points

the impact of increased tax subsidies on the insurance coverage of self employed families evidence from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey the share of health insurance premiums that self employed workers can deduct when computing federal income taxes rose from 30 percent in 1996 to 100 percent in 2003 data from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey are used to show that the increased tax subsidy was associated with substantial increases in private coverage among self employed workers and their spouses estimated effects on public coverage and the coverage of children were smaller in magnitude and less precisely estimated simulation results show that much of the post 1996 subsidy increase represented an inframarginal transfer to persons who would have had held private insurance anyway nevertheless increased subsidization expanded private coverage by 1 1 to 1 7 million persons at a cost per newly insured person less than 2 300 in all simulations a cost below that found in simulations of more broadly based subsidies

does price framing affect the consumer price sensitivity of health plan choice this paper provides field evidence on how price framing affects consumers decision to switch health plans in 2009 german federal regulation required insurers to express premium differences between standardized health plans in absolute euro values relative to a federal reference price rather than in percentage point payroll tax differences representative individual level panel data and aggregated health plan level panel data on the universe of health plans show that the reform strongly increased enrollees willingness to switch plans with demand elasticities increasing fourfold the salience of premium differences and the default premium are obviously key driving forces in the decision to switch insurers

startup costs and the decision to switch from firewood to gas fuel firewood remains a key source of energy for households in developing countries contributing to forest degradation and deforestation the adoption of alternative fuels may be hindered by high startup costs and this problem may be compounded by restrictions in credit availability we use survey data to examine how credit access affects firewood consumption in guatemala our results suggest that access to credit plays a statistically significant role in determining firewood consumption through its effect on the ability to purchase a gas stove however simulations suggest that these effects are small and that subsidizing stoves would be amore promising policy for reducing firewood consumption

the impact of employer provided health insurance on dynamic employment transitions we estimate the impact of employer provided health insurance ephi on the job mobility of males over time using a dynamic empirical model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity previous studies of job lock reach different conclusions about possible distortions in labor mobility stemming from an employment based health insurance system a few authors find no evidence of job lock although most find reductions in the mobility of insured workers of between 20 and 40 percent we use data from the national longitudinal survey of youth which includes variables describing the health insurance an individual holds as well as whether he is offered insurance by his employer this additional information allows us to model the latent individual characteristics that are correlated with the offer of ephi the acceptance of ephi and employment transitions our results provide an estimate of job lock unbiased through correlation with positive job characteristics and individual specific turnover propensity we find no evidence of job lock among married males and produce small estimates of job lock among unmarried males of between 10 and 15 percent

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

general equilibrium tragedy of the commons many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods households in resource based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities as a result factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change this has two important implications first it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non resource sectors second it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors we construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons this model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock we use the model to illustrate medium run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in honduras simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy wide impacts on prices and wages managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

employment based health insurance and job mobility is there evidence of job lock the majority of privately insured americans obtain their health insurance through their own or a family member s employment the rationale for employers to provide health insurance is straightforward by pooling the risks of individuals employers can reduce adverse selection and lower administrative expenses in addition they benefit from tax laws allowing businesses to deduct their health insurance costs these advantages of employer provision however must be weighed against the distortions they may generate in individual labor market decisions in particular health insurance may distort job mobility if employees decide to keep jobs they would rather leave for fear of losing coverage for preexisting conditions a possibility that has been termed job lock this paper attempts to quantify the effect of employer provided health insurance on the labor market mobility of individuals the link between employer provided health insurance and

health status and health dynamics in an empirical model of expected longevity expected longevity is an important factor influencing older individuals decisions such as consumption savings purchase of life insurance and annuities claiming of social security benefits and labor supply it has also been shown to be a good predictor of actual longevity which in turn is highly correlated with health status a relatively new literature on health investments under uncertainty which builds upon the seminal work by grossman grossman m 1972 on the concept of health capital and demand for health journal of political economy 80 223 255 has directly linked longevity with characteristics behaviors and decisions by utility maximizing agents our empirical model can be understood within that theoretical framework as estimating a production function of longevity using longitudinal data from the health and retirement study we directly incorporate health dynamics in explaining the variation in expected longevities and compare two alternative measures of health dynamics the self reported health change and the computed health change based on self reports of health status in 38 of the reports in our sample computed health changes are inconsistent with the direct report on health changes over time and another 15 of the sample can suffer from information losses if computed changes are used to assess changes in actual health these potentially serious problems raise doubts regarding the use and interpretation of the computed health changes and even the lagged measures of self reported health as controls for health dynamics in a variety of empirical settings our empirical results controlling for both subjective and objective measures of health status and unobserved heterogeneity in reporting suggest that self reported health changes are a preferred measure of health dynamics

the effect of self employed health insurance subsidies on self employment abstract this paper estimates the effect of an increase in the deductibility of health insurance premiums for self employed individuals on the probability of being self employed using a panel of tax returns from 1999 to 2004 we estimate fixed effects instrumental variable regressions for the probability of being self employed entering into self employment and exiting from self employment our results suggest that this policy increased the probability of being self employed by 1 5 percentage points and increased the probability that a taxpayer would be primarily or exclusively self employed by 1 1 and 0 35 percentage points respectively these effects explain about a third to a half of the total increase in self employment by these definitions over the sample period we also find that the probability of entering self employment increased by 0 8 percentage points and find suggestive evidence that the probability of exit decreased by 2 8 percentage points

private and public health insurance in the uk abstract this paper investigates the interaction between state health provision and private medical insurance in the uk regional data on private insurance and national health service waiting lists are used to assess whether higher levels of private insurance can affect performance of the public health sector

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

a game theoretic explanation of the administrative lattice in institutions of higher learning abstract we provide a game theoretic model of academic organizations focusing on the strategic interaction of prototypical overseers administrators and professors by identifying key principal agent games routinely played in colleges and universities we begin to unpack the black box typically used to conceptualize these institutions our approach suggests an explanation for the seemingly inevitable drift of institutions of higher education into such well documented phenomena as academic ratchet and administrative lattice and builds an understanding of the organizational conditions in which drift would be restrained

does health reform affect self employment evidence from massachusetts this paper evaluates whether the implementation of the 2006 massachusetts health reform law affected the decision of taxpayers to be self employed using both difference in differences and synthetic control methods on a panel of tax returns that spans 1999 2010 though tenuous our results suggest that the reform led to a decline in the rate of taxpayers earning a majority of income from self employment in addition it appears to have had a positive impact on earning some self employment income among joint filers and earning the majority of income from self employment among older taxpayers but these were offset by negative impacts on single filers and taxpayers age 35 49