strategic pricing with customer rationing the case of primary metals firms in primary metal industries often charge subcompetitive prices and in periods of high demand they may ration their customers a model is developed to ex plain these empirical regularities in the model firms with market power are aware that the price they charge today affects their demand tomorrow in addition the strategic interaction among firms reinforces this intertemporal effect in the equilibrium of the two stage game oligopolists can price below marginal cost and when capacity constraints are introduced the equilibrium can involve rationing model predictions are assessed using market structure and technology data for several primary metal industries

gasoline taxes and revenue volatility an application to california this paper examines how applying different combinations of excise and sales taxes on motor fuels impact the volatility of retail fuel prices and tax revenues two features of gasoline and diesel markets make the choice of tax mechanism a unique problem first prices are very volatile second demand for motor fuels is extremely inelastic as a result fuel expenditures vary substantially over time tying state revenues to these expenditures as is the case with a sales tax results in a volatile stream of revenue which imposes real costs on agents in an economy on july 1 2010 california enacted assembly bill x8 6 the gas tax swap increasing the excise tax and decreasing the sales tax on gasoline purchases while the initial motivation behind the revenue neutral swap was to provide the state with greater flexibility within its budget we highlight that this change has two potentially overlooked benefits it reduces retail fuel price volatility and tax revenue volatility simulating the monthly fuel prices and tax revenues under alternative tax policies we quantify the potential reductions in revenue volatility the results reveal that greater benefits can be achieved by going beyond the tax swap and eliminating the gasoline sales tax entirely

the emergence of rural transport strategies in response to rising fuel costs abstract rising and sometimes volatile fuel prices pose a challenge for rural organizations reliant on long distance transport to understand the coping mechanisms used by such organizations we survey rural business strategies in israel where fuel prices are high and urban development is concentrated in the country s geographic center the businesses surveyed are operated by kibbutzim historically collective communities that are now in various stages of privatization analysis of the transport strategies employed by nearly 100 organizations in three regions of varying remoteness and isolation shows that firms rely on distinct strategies such as localization and high value density localization was found to be prevalent in all regions as it requires little capital investment strategies exploiting high value density including information based services were prevalent in remote and isolated regions where sensitivity to transport costs is acute non remote firms were less inclined toward strategic adaptation preferring non disruptive changes such as cheaper shipping modes the development implications of these transport strategies are consistent with rural economic trends observed throughout the developed world if transport costs continue to rise rural firms may shrink the radius of their sales and labor pools or search for more lucrative products to reduce their relative transport costs

caveat emptor cross country data on education and the labor force abstract cross country data on education and the labor force frequently are used to describe important dimensions of development and to estimate models of economic growth and growth determinants the impact of education and related phenomena this investigation finds 1 there are serious intertemporal and inter country comparability problems with these data that may importantly affect inferences about labor force size trends and productivity and schooling investments and impact 2 data gaps are systematically related to levels of development and literacy and 3 conclusions about the determinants or consequences of development based on constructed data that have been made available to fill data gaps can be seriously misleading

cooperatives as entrants a potential shortcoming of game theoretic models in industrial organization is their failure to consider consumers as players we introduce a customer coalition a cooperative as a potential entrant and compare the cooperative entry threat with that posed by the usualforprofit entrant we identify four fundamental distinctions between cooperative andfor profit entrants and demonstrate that the strategic interplay between a cooperative and an incumbent firm may differ markedly from that between the incumbent and a for profit entrant the results impart a prospectively powerful role to potential cooperatives in beneficially regulating free market performance

does increasing women s schooling raise the schooling of the next generation the positive cross sectional relationship between the schooling of mothers and their children is substantially biased upward due to correlations between schooling and heritable ability as well as assortative mating an increase in the schooling of women would not have beneficial effects in terms of the schooling of children increased maternal schooling leads to reduced home time for mothers anticipating the consequences of investing in women s schooling requires attention to the role that schooling plays in the marriage market as well as to opportunities in the labor market for women

gasoline taxes or efficiency standards a heterogeneous household demand analysis abstract using detailed consumer expenditure survey data and a flexible semiparametric dynamic demand model this paper estimates the price elasticity and fuel efficiency elasticity of gasoline demand at the household level the goal is to assess the effectiveness of gasoline taxes and vehicle fuel efficiency standards on fuel consumption the results reveal substantial interaction between vehicle fuel efficiency and the price elasticity of gasoline demand the improvement of vehicle fuel efficiency leads to lower price elasticity and weakens consumers sensitivity to gasoline price changes the offsetting effect also differs across households due to demographic heterogeneity these findings imply that when gasoline taxes are in place tightening efficiency standards will partially offset the strength of taxes on reducing fuel consumption

lifecycle analysis of gasoline expenditure patterns abstract the work presented here demonstrates the existence of statistically identifiable groups of consumers within the population with differentiable gasoline expenditure levels the existence of these differences in gasoline expenditure levels is demonstrated through examination of urban consumers in the southern region of the usa and us rural consumers as a proxy for southern regional rural consumers current work in the analysis of energy end use patterns indicates that changes in socioeconomic characteristics can lead to substantial changes in the demand for energy the groups identified in this work have been linked to a developmental description of the formation and maturation of the family unit known as a lifecycle the majority of previous studies of consumer demand for gasoline have been performed with aggregate data on a state regional or national basis as a result household characteristics such as age distribution within the household which have been shown to play an important role in the determination of levels of other transport services have not been included in previous analyses of the derived household demand for gasoline incorporating these factors into an analysis should be useful from a policy perspective as well as from the perspective of improving forecast reliability

the impact of primary schooling on economic development a review of the evidence abstract the contribution of primary schooling to economic development is greater than has conventionally been percieved this review of recent research shows that primary schooling increases labour productivity in both urban and rural sectors and that the economic returns to such investment are typically high in addition it reduces fertility improves health and nutrition and promotes other behavioural and attitudinal changes which are helpful to economic development investment strategies which give primary schooling an important place would be more conducive of growth with equity than many alternatives priorities for government and donor policies are indicated as are those for future research

noncooperative behavior by a cartel as an entry deterring signal recent work has investigated the effect of a potential entrant s uncertainty about postentry profits on the likelihood of his entering the market it has always been assumed that the potential entrant knows the type of postentry solution but lacks information on cost or as to whether the postentry solution will be cooperative or noncooperative we find that entry is more likely the greater is the preentry profit rate in equilibrium the threat of entry then forces the incumbent firms to act more competitively to deter entry

car buyers and fuel economy abstract this research is designed to help researchers and policy makers ground their work in the reality of how us consumers are thinking and behaving with respect to automotive fuel economy our data are from semi structured interviews with 57 households across nine lifestyle sectors we found no household that analyzed their fuel costs in a systematic way in their automobile or gasoline purchases almost none of these households track gasoline costs over time or consider them explicitly in household budgets these households may know the cost of their last tank of gasoline and the unit price of gasoline on that day but this accurate information is rapidly forgotten and replaced by typical information one effect of this lack of knowledge and information is that when consumers buy a vehicle they do not have the basic building blocks of knowledge assumed by the model of economically rational decision making and they make large errors estimating gasoline costs and savings over time moreover we find that consumer value for fuel economy is not only about private cost savings fuel economy can be a symbolic value as well for example among drivers who view resource conservation or thrift as important values to communicate consumers also assign non monetary meaning to fuel prices for example seeing rising prices as evidence of conspiracy this research suggests that consumer responses to fuel economy technology and changes in fuel prices are more complex than economic assumptions suggest the us department of energy and the energy foundation supported this research the authors are solely responsible for the content and conclusions presented

are flexible taxation mechanisms effective in stabilizing fuel prices an evaluation considering wholesale fuel markets in this paper we study the incidence of specific taxes in the italian fuel markets and exploit these findings to simulate the effects of fiscal policies aimed at mitigating oil price fluctuations we estimate several reduced form specifications using as dependent variables the equilibrium wholesale prices for gasoline and motor diesel over the period 1996 2007 in particular we assess the impact on wholesale gasoline and motor diesel prices stemming from the creation of an automatic fiscal mechanism consisting of reductions in specific taxes matching the rise in oil prices our simulations suggest that flexible taxation mechanisms could not be a proper policy for stabilizing price levels in fuel markets a more effective control on prices can be obtained by focusing on the market structure of these industries where antitrust authority could play a significant role

public inputs and child schooling in brazil household data from a one percent sample of the 1970 brazilian census are used to analyze the effect of public inputs i e the supply of schooling on children s school attainment in brazil the household data are combined with measures of school availability and quality derived directly from the same census data the measures are based on the number and education of schoolteachers in each of 169 different areas of the country elasticities of demand with respect to these public inputs are estimated these elasticities are high in both rural and urban areas in urban areas the positive effect of public inputs is greater for children from households with poorer and less educated parents in rural areas the positive effect of public inputs is greater if anything for children from households that are relatively better off at least compared to other rural households

estimates from a consumer demand system implications for the incidence of environmental taxes abstract most studies suggest that environmental taxes are regressive making them less attractive policy options we consider the distributional effects of a gasoline tax increase using four incidence measures and under three scenarios for gas tax revenue use to incorporate behavioral responses we use consumer expenditure survey data to estimate a consumer demand system that includes gasoline other goods and leisure our estimates confirm that when revenues are not recycled a gasoline tax is regressive use of incidence measures that ignore demand responses however will substantially overstate this regressivity in contrast the differences between the equivalent variation and easier to implement consumer surplus measures are relatively small in addition our results suggest that using the additional gas tax revenue to fund labor tax cuts makes the policy substantially less regressive while using the revenue to fund lump sum transfers actually makes it progressive

labour market impacts of school expenditure and class size evidence from china this study is a first attempt to estimate the impact of school resources on students subsequent labour market earnings in china combining unprecedented school data from the early 1950s to the 199

gasoline and diesel demand in the eu implications for the 2030 emission goal abstract methodologically consistent demand estimates are necessary to analyze and forecast the effect of a common fuel policy across the eu 28 this study estimates short run and long run price and income elasticities for gasoline and diesel demands using the ardl bounds approach that also tests the existence of a long run relationship using data from 1978 to 2013 the results show that elasticity estimates between the eu 28 countries vary and the estimated long run elasticities are higher than their short run counterparts which is in line with expectations based on the existing literature the short run and long run income elasticities of gasoline and diesel demand are found to be more elastic than their price equivalents implying that if a charge on fuel is designed to decrease emissions by increasing the price the charge needs to rise at a higher rate than income an analysis of the eu s 2030 emission and fuel consumption reduction targets using the estimated long run elasticities shows that with the current tax scheme it cannot be guaranteed that emission targets will be achieved and thus a more stringent fuel tax policy is essential

driving for fun comparing the effect of fuel prices on weekday and weekend fuel consumption abstract focusing on individual motorists in car owning households in germany this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and person level attributes on travel conducted over a five day week and weekend our analysis is predicated on the notion that car use is an individual decision albeit one that is dependent on intra household allocation processes thereby building on a growing body of literature that has identified the importance of socioeconomic factors such as employment status gender and the presence of children in determining both access to and use of the car to capture this two stage decision process we employ the two part model which consists of probit and ols estimators and derive elasticity estimates that incorporate both the discrete and continuous choices pertaining to car use with fuel price elasticity estimates ranging between 0 45 and 0 50 our results suggest raising prices via fuel taxes to be a promising energy conservation and climate protection measure

strategic entry deterrence in analyzing deterrence of large scale entry two classes of entry barriers may be distinguished an innocent entry barrier is unintentionally erected as a side effect of innocent profit maximization in contrast a strategic entry barrier is purposely erected to reduce the possibility of entry two types of innocent barriers may also be distinguished a postentry absolute advantage has the property that if entry did occur the established firm would be at a profit advantage over the entrant examples are superior technology or product design patents and lower input prices a preentry asymmetry advantage arises from the fundamental preentry asymmetry between established firm and potential entrant before the entrant makes his entry decision the established firm has already committed resources this prior existence gives first move advantages the preentry asymmetry is independent of symmetry or asymmetry in the rules the equilibrium concept of the postentry game that might ensue even if the postentry game will be played according to nash cournot or entrant as leader rules the preentry leadership

collusion and predation under almost free entry abstract this study investigates the degree of cooperation that firms can support in the absence of significant barriers to entry a free entry subgame perfect equilibrium is defined by q n where q is the collusive output rate and n is the number of active firms such that there is no incentive for an active firm to deviate output from q and there is no incentive for a potential entrant to enter the industry it is shown that for all n 1 if the discount factor is sufficiently high there exists a free entry equilibrium in which active firms sustain a non trivial degree of cooperation cooperation is supported by active firms credibly threatening to respond to entry with a period of aggressive competition

consumer and competitor reactions evidence from a field experiment abstract in response to a price change by a single seller it is common for the density of sellers in the market to influence both the quantity response of consumers and the price response of other sellers using field experiment data collected around a series of exogenously imposed price changes we find that an individual retailer with a larger number of competitors faces a more responsive demand this finding is fundamental to a predicted inverse relationship between market prices and the number of competitors we also examine the reaction of rival stations to exogenous price changes and find that the magnitude of a competitor s response is inversely related to the density of stations in the market

modeling gasoline demand in the united states a flexible semiparametric approach abstract the focus of this paper is on the modeling and estimation of quarterly state level gasoline demand in the united states the existing literature may not appropriately evaluate the price elasticity and income elasticity of gasoline demand most studies fail to address the possible heterogeneity in gasoline demand elasticities that may arise from a variety of sources the endogeneity issue of gasoline price has remained redundant throughout the literature i address these challenges using a flexible demand model and a recently developed estimation technique the econometric approach allows for functional coefficients to accommodate the heterogeneity in demand elasticities several instrumental variables are used to investigate the endogeneity of gasoline price the estimation results provide strong evidence of heterogeneous gasoline demand elasticities across states and over time some state level attributes along with income and macroeconomic shocks are the potential sources of heterogeneity

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

a bayesian sampling approach to measuring the price responsiveness of gasoline demand using a constrained partially linear model partial linear models provide an intuitively appealing way to examine gasoline demand because one can examine how response to price varies according to the price level and people s income however despite their intuitive appeal partial linear models have tended to produce implausible and or erratic price effects blundell et al 2012 propose a solution to this problem that involves using slutsky shape restrictions to improve the precision of the nonparametric estimate of the demand function they propose estimating a constrained partially linear model through three steps where the weights are optimized by minimizing an objective function under the slutsky constraint bandwidths are selected through least squares cross validation and linear coefficients are estimated using profile least squares a limitation of their three step estimation method is that bandwidths are selected based on pre estimated parameters we improve on the blundell et al 2012 solution in that we derive a posterior and develop a posterior simulation algorithm to simultaneously estimate the linear coefficients bandwidths in the kernel estimator and the weights imposed by the slutsky condition with our proposed sampling algorithm we estimate a constrained partially linear model of household gasoline demand employing household survey data for the united states for 1991 and 2001 and for canada for 2006 2009 and find plausible price effects

heterogeneity in the rebound effect further evidence for germany rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements using both panel estimation and quantile regression methods on household travel diary data collected in germany between 1997 and 2009 this study investigates the heterogeneity of the rebound effect in private transport with the average rebound effect being in the range of 57 to 62 our results are in line with a recent german study by frondel peters and vance 2008 but are substantially larger than those obtained from other studies furthermore our quantile regression results indicate that the magnitude of estimated fuel price elasticities from which rebound effects can be derived depends inversely on the household s driving intensity households with low vehicle mileage exhibit fuel price elasticities and hence rebound effects that are significantly larger than those for households with high vehicle mileage

the effect of population density road network density and congestion on household gasoline consumption in u s urban areas abstract this paper applies both semiparametric and parametric approaches to explore the effect of population density freeway road density and congestion on household gasoline consumption in u s urban areas while controlling for household demographic and economic characteristics regression results indicate that households living in those urban areas with higher freeway densities higher levels of congestion or lower population densities consume more gasoline

excise tax avoidance the case of state cigarette taxes we conduct an applied welfare economics analysis of cigarette tax avoidance we develop an extension of the standard formula for the optimal pigouvian corrective tax to incorporate the possibility that consumers avoid the tax by making purchases in nearby lower tax jurisdictions to provide a key parameter for our formula we estimate a structural endogenous switching regression model of border crossing and cigarette prices in illustrative calculations we find that for many states after taking into account tax avoidance the optimal tax is at least 20 smaller than the standard pigouvian tax that simply internalizes external costs our empirical estimate that tax avoidance strongly responds to the price differential is the main reason for this result we also use our results to examine the benefits of replacing avoidable state excise taxes with a harder to avoid federal excise tax on cigarettes

principles of analysis of internal structures of aggregate demands demand estimation problem arises each time when there is need for forecasting of the sales volume optimal price settlement for profit maximization or for empirical studies of the market for demand because there is a relationship between price and quantity demanded it is important to understand the impact of pricing on sales by estimating the demand curve for the product the current paper introduces new method of analysis of demand internal structure and compound nature depended on the contribution of various groups of customers direct and inverse problem of estimation of elementary and aggregate demands parameters are defined aggregate demand structure is represented as a multidimensional dummy variables regression model the theoretical results are verified by means of corresponding numerical example

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

labor force participation and earnings determinants for women in the special conditions of developing countries abstract little systematic analysis exists regarding hypothesized special labor market conditions for women in developing countries this study explores such conditions in nicaragua major results are i small children affect participation less than in developed countries due to child care from extended families or while on informal sector jobs and the necessity for poor mothers to work ii schooling and experience have major roles affecting work sector and earnings but the primary school return is half that cited by the world bank iii other human capital variables particularly nutrition have some impact

gasoline demand and car choice estimating gasoline demand using household information in recent years calls for carbon taxes as a policy tool to combat global warming have kept a discussion of the price and income elasticities of gasoline demand alive to date gasoline demand elasticity estimates are almost exclusively based on aggregate data that are subject to aggregation problems and make distributional concerns impossible to address by using household level data from the panel study of income dynamics psid and imputed fuel efficiency measures and gasoline prices i estimate household demand for gasoline and the corresponding price and income demand elasticities an attempt is made to include data on the car stock in the estimation since car portfolio and gasoline demand decisions are closely related empirical results from a selection corrected gasoline demand regression suggest low short run price and income elasticities and clear differences in gasoline demand across the population these results suggest that a gasoline tax is not likely to result in large decreases in gasoline consumption while potentially imposing hardship on identifiable segments of the population

how entry threats induce slack abstract profits of incumbent firms are often observable to potential entrants and signal profit opportunities in a market incumbents therefore have an incentive to strategically manipulate profit reports since owners of firms typically derive utility only from profits incumbent firms have to balance the benefit of large profits against the possibility of entry it is shown that owners will generally accept below maximum profit performance i e tolerate slack in order to deter entry and furthermore that such entry deterring behaviour is successful even if it is anticipated by rational entrants

elasticities of transport fuels at times of economic crisis an empirical analysis for spain abstract this paper provides an updated calculation of the price and income responsiveness of spanish consumers of transport fuels with an explicit exploration of the effects of the recent economic crisis we examine separate gasoline and diesel demand models using a set of estimators on a panel of 16 spanish regions over the period 1999 2015 the paper confirms the persistence of low own price elasticities both for diesel and gasoline in the short and long runs it also shows that the crisis of 2008 2013 slightly increased the price elasticity of demand for transport fuels with a higher effect on diesel than on gasoline by contrary the crisis slightly reduced the income elasticity of transport fuel demand given the intensity and length of the economic recession in spain the results of this paper may be useful to anticipate the effects of domestic public policies that impact transport fuel prices as well as to advance some of the potential consequences of crises elsewhere

a semiparametric model of household gasoline demand gasoline demand studies typically generate a single price and income elasticity for a country it is however possible that these elasticities may differ among various socio economic groups at the same time parametric gasoline demand models may not be flexible enough to capture the changes in price elasticities with different levels of income this paper models us gasoline demand using more flexible semiparametric techniques accommodating the possibility of differences in responses among households the econometric model employs a non parametric bivariate smoothing for price and income and a parametric representation of other explanatory variables possible heterogeneity in price and income elasticities is modelled through interacting price and income with demographic variables results show that price responses do vary with demographic variables such as income multiple vehicle holding presence of multiple wage earners or rural or urban residential locations households responses to a price change decrease with higher income multiple vehicle and multiple earner households also show higher sensitivity to a price change households located in urban areas reduce consumption more than those in rural areas in response to an increase in price comparison of the flexible semiparametric model with a parametric translog model however reveals no significant differences between results and the parametric models have the advantage of lower computational requirements and better interpretability

a meta analysis of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a sur approach abstract automobile gasoline demand can be expressed as a multiplicative function of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership this implies a linear relationship between the price elasticity of total fuel demand and the price elasticities of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership in this meta analytical study we aim to investigate and explain the variation in empirical estimates of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a methodological novelty is that we use the linear relationship between the elasticities to develop a meta analytical estimation approach based on a seemingly unrelated regression sur model with cross equation restrictions this approach enables us to combine observations of different elasticities and thus increase our sample size furthermore it allows for a more detailed interpretation of our meta regression results the empirical results of the study demonstrate that the sur approach leads to more precise results i e lower standard errors than a standard meta analytical approach we find that with mean short run and long run price elasticities of 0 34 and 0 84 respectively the demand for gasoline is not very price sensitive both in the short and the long run the impact of a change in the gasoline price on demand is mainly driven by responses in fuel efficiency and mileage per car and to a slightly lesser degree by changes in car ownership furthermore we find that study characteristics relating to the geographic area studied the year of the study the type of data used the time horizon and the functional specification of the demand equation have a significant impact on the estimated value of the price elasticity of gasoline demand

metaanalisis de las elasticidades ingreso y precio de la demanda de energia algunas implicaciones de politica publica para america latina the aim of this paper is to analyze the variation in empirical estimates of the income and price elasticities of energy demand the evidence presented through a meta analysis allows identification of the weighted average of the income and price elasticities shows that the estimates are very heterogeneous that there is publication bias and that factors such as region energy sector among others affect its volatility the evidence also indicates that income elasticity in latin america is greater than in the oecd countries and that the price elasticity of energy demand is lower in latin america than in the oecd countries therefore continued economic growth in latin america will be accompanied by a growth in energy demand moreover the establishment of a tax in latin america under the current elasticities is less effective and will be insufficient to control the increase in energy consumption

migration selectivity and the effects of public programs abstract a model of the spatial distribution of mobile heterogeneous agents is formulated to assess how a price change or program subsidy that is location specific affects the composition of local residents via selective migration and thus biases evaluations of the effectiveness of the program based on its local consequences longitudinal data from colombia are used to test the implications of migration selectivity the findings confirm the existence of selective migration suggesting that local subsidies to human capital attract high income but within income groups low fertility households and those with low human capital endowments these migration patterns are shown to be consistent with the dominance of endowment over tastes heterogeneity in the population under plausible behavioral assumptions

schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in indonesia evidence from an unusual policy experiment between 1973 and 1978 the indonesian government engaged in one of the largest school construction programs on record combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program suggests that each primary school constructed per 1 000 children led to an average increase of 0 12 to 0 19 years of education as well as a 1 5 to 2 7 percent increase in wages this implies estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6 8 to 10 6 percent

the effects of education and family planning programs on fertility in indonesia abstract numerous studies indicate that female education is a major determinant of fertility and that the estimated effects are large relative to other variables including family planning program variables there are however two serious deficiencies in the research relating educational attainment to fertility that could give rise to invalid inferences first many public programs including health and family planning programs may influence a woman s decisions about education and these indirect programmatic effects might be large second nearly all existing studies of the impacts of education on fertility assume that a woman s educational attainment is exogenous education could be serving as a proxy for such unobservable determinants as ability motivation and parental background as these factors most likely are important determinants of a woman s educational attainment we use the 1993 indonesian family life survey to compare the estimated impacts of education on fertility from a simple model tha

career and marriage in the age of the pill genuine change in the economic and social status of u s women did not emanate simply from their increased labor force participation but rather from their increase in professions and as career women those changes first began in the late 1960 s and early 1970 s we examine here one factor of momentous importance in this break with the past the economist 31 december 1999 recently named it the greatest science and technology advance in the twentieth century it is the oral contraceptive known worldwide by its moniker the pill in 1960 18 4 percent of professionals were women as were 4 7 percent of high powered professionals by 1998 36 4 percent of professionals and 25 1 percent of the high powered subset were women we explore in this article a series of connections that link the birth control pill to the increase of women in professional occupations our evidence for the impact of the pill relies largely on the timing of various changes changes in laws giving minors certain adult rights and lowering the age of majority enabled young and unmarried women to obtain the pill young women s control over their fertility directly reduced the costs to them of engaging in long term career investments the pill also served to increase the age at first marriage and thus indirectly reduced a potential penalty of delaying marriage to pursue professional education and training all of these changes began in the late 1960 s and early 1970 s the late 1960 s and early 1970 s were years of tumultuous social and political change how can we separate the impacts of affirmative action the resurgence of feminism changes in social norms and abortion reform from the impact of the pill the simple answer is that the timing of several of these changes is far less convincing than is that of the pill in affecting career investment but that is not the complete answer the economic impact of the pill did not occur in isolation legal change made it possible for young women to obtain contraceptives these changes paradoxically did not stem primarily from concerns regarding access to contraception they were instead part of the larger political movement of the 1960 s the pill moreover unleashed social change by enabling an increase in the age at first marriage there is also no doubt that the rebirth of feminism long in the making served to complement and reinforce the pill s impact our argument for the importance of the pill in affecting women s career decisions relies on the correspondence among breaks in various time series and in the logic of the relationships among the pill career and marriage we will begin with the time series on career and marriage which can be viewed as the dependent variables the evidence on the diffusion of the pill the independent variable is taken up next the logic of our argument relating pill use career and marriage follows and finally we present our defense for why we believe the pill packed considerable power in altering the social and economic status of american women

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

identification and panel data models with endogenous regressors this paper provides sufficient conditions for the identification of both static and dynamic models containing endogenous regressors from panel data by utilizing the restrictions across time periods on the parameters it is shown that identification is achieved under quite weak conditions even in the presence of a general pattern of correlation between the errors and the time varying variables efficient estimation procedures for the models considered and some specification tests are outlined finally static formulations relating individuals intakes of nutrients in the previous 24 hours to household incomes are estimated using icrisat panel data from rural india

optimal oligopoly pricing and the threat of entry in earlier work we tested stochastic dynamic limit pricing using u s data we replicate these tests using canadian data the results are weak but consistent with the earlier tests along the way we deal with several methodological problems how does the new rational limit pricing relate to the test how might oligopoly influences be integrated into limit pricing how should existing concentration affect entrant behavior might factors which suppress industry profitability not ceteris paribus deter entry what might one do with correlated proxy variables should weak results be interpreted the same in a replication test as in a de novo test

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes