unobserved heterogeneity in stochastic cost frontier models this paper applies a number of stochastic cost frontier models to a panel data set and compares their ability to distinguish unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency variation among firms the main focus is on greene s 2005 panel data model that incorporates firm specific effects in a stochastic frontier framework in cases where the unobserved heterogeneity is correlated with explanatory variables while the random effects estimators can be biased the fixed effects model may overestimate inefficiency in line with mundlak a simple method is proposed to include such correlations in random effects specification the sample includes 36 swiss nursing homes operating from 1993 to 2001 the results suggest that the proposed specification can avoid the inconsistency problem while keeping the inefficiency estimates unaffected

measurement of economic efficiency in pakistani agriculture farm efficiency and the question of how to measure it is an important subject in developing countries agriculture there are three distinct approaches to measurement based on cost profits and production functions farrell developed the concept of technical efficiency based on input and output relationships technical inefficiency arises when actual or observed output from a given input mix is less than the maximum possible allocative inefficiency arises when the input mix is not consistent with cost minimization advances have been made in the frontier cost function literature using flexible functional forms bauer greene 1980 forsund knoxlovell and schmidt and schmidt an approach using systems of equations based on cost profit and distance functions was developed to incorporate all available information on multiproduct farms kumbhakar schmidt fare grosskopf and nelson hayes the present study uses a cost function approach and combines the concepts of technical and allocative efficiency in the cost relationship any errors in the production decision translate into higher costs for the producer at the same time the stochastic nature of production implies that the theoretical cost function is stochastic 2 two distinct approaches are used first we use the stochastic frontier approach in which translog cost function is specified and estimated without using share equations the derived measure of inefficiency is then related to socioeconomic demographic and farm size variables second we use a behavioral approach in which translog cost function again is estimated but this time as a function of the shadow prices of the inputs the cost share equations are estimated jointly with a cost equation incorporating all cross equation restrictions moreover the input use inefficiency is introduced through the parameters and these are related to the structural variables this approach permits us to obtain a farm specific measure of allocative inefficiency

religious participation and children s education a social capital approach abstract based on the argument in both economic and sociological literature that religion is conducive to children s human capital formation this paper provides a model of religious participation and explores a mechanism that social capital affects children s education a la coleman coleman j s 1988 social capital in the creation of human capital american journal of sociology 94 s95 s120 the model generates several interesting implications which help explain some important stylized facts about education and religion further in a dynamic setting the model shows that there exists a steady state in which individuals allocate a positive amount of time and resources to religious activities thus it complements the existing literature to explain why seemingly unproductive religions can be everlasting

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

parental human capital investment and old age transfers from children is it a loan contract or reciprocity for indonesian families abstract this paper proposes two alternative models of intergenerational transfers linking parental investment in human capital of children to old age support the first model formulates these transfers as a pure loan contract and the second model as self enforcing reciprocity both models predict neutrality of intergenerational redistribution of resources within the family also known as the difference in income transfer derivatives property two models however provide different reasons for the failure of this property and yield different policy implications for parental human capital investment and provision of old age support specification tests on the indonesian family life survey data reject the pure loan model in favor of the reciprocity model the estimated difference in income transfer derivatives for this data is found to be significantly higher than the difference estimated by altonji hayashi and kotlikoff altonji et al 1992 altonji j g hayashi f and kotlikoff l j 1992 is the extended family altruistically linked direct tests using micro data the american economic review vol 82 5 1177 98 for the u s psid data

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

technical efficiency of french nuclear energy plants this article analyses the efficiency of french nuclear energy plants belonging to edf electricity of france from 2004 to 2008 with a dea data envelopment analysis model the convexity model is used to investigate the technical efficiency of a representative sample of nuclear plants the results indicated that some plants have undergone an improvement in technical efficiency while others have regressed in terms of technical efficiency policy implications related to the results are discussed

technical and scale efficiencies of meat goat farms in the usa abstractthis study determines i scale and technical efficiencies ii marginal productive contributions for inputs and outputs and iii efficiency drivers of meat goat farms in the usa we estimate an input distance function idf using a stochastic production frontier spf technique the average technical efficiency te for the usa meat goat whole farm was 0 74 the operator education level percentage of annual net farm income from the goat operation regional differences and holding of an off farm job are the efficiency drivers of usa meat goat farms we find increasing returns to scale rts for usa meat goat farms our results suggest that usa meat goat farms can be scale efficient if their optimal size of operation is greater than approximately 64 goats or greater than 40 breeding does empirical monte carlo mc simulation techniques show the consistency of finite sample properties for the input distance function

technical efficiency of us dairy farms and federal government programs in this article technical efficiency te of dairy farms is estimated and analysed with two methodologies data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier analysis sfa using dea the te scores for different states are determined further logistic regression is applied to te scores to explain how known technical and policy variables affect a farm s probability of being efficient the second methodology employs sfa to estimate and analyse te scores two federal milk policies are considered in this research marketing policy and milk income loss policy federal milk marketing program has shown a significant and negative impact on te with both methods payments under the milk income loss program have shown a positive significant impact in sfa analysis both methodologies produced similar outcomes on regional impacts and on the significance of several considered variables categorical representation of some variables in graphs provided some additional insights of their effects on te

language training language proficiency and earnings of immigrants in norway this paper uses a simple probit model to determine the impact of language training on the language proficiency of third world immigrant men in norway it also estimates the labour market returns to norwegian language proficiency the results show that immigrants who participate in language training programme are more likely to acquire speaking and reading proficiencies in norwegian language than those who do not contrary to expectation language proficiency has no significant effect on immigrants earnings a probable explanation may be that immigrants need norwegian language proficiency to get into jobs in the norwegian labour market once they are in employment their wages are not necessarily determined by their proficiency in norwegian consistent with the assimilation hypothesis earlier waves of immigrants have higher earnings than do more recent waves and part of the initial earnings deficit experienced by more recent immigrants can be attributed to language deficiency there was no evidence of s

the family as an incomplete annuities market families can self insure against uncertain dates of death through implicit or explicit agreements with respect to consumption and interfamily transfers interfamily transfers need have nothing to do with altruistic feelings they may simply reflect risk sharing behavior of completely selfish family members although family annuity markets are incomplete even small families can substitute by more than 70 percent for perfect market annuities given adverse selection and transaction costs family risk pooling may be preferred to public market annuities in the absence of public annuities these risk sharing arrangements provide powerful incentives for marriage and family formation

pay as you go social security and the distribution of altruistic transfers this paper studies the impact of an unfunded social security system on the distribution of altruistic transfers in a framework where savings are due to both life cycle and random altruistic motivations we show that the effect of social security on the distribution of these transfers depends crucially on the strength of the bequest motive in explaining savings behaviour we measure this strength by the expected weight that individuals attach to the utility of future generations on the one hand if the bequest motive is strong then an increase in the social security tax raises the bequests left by altruistic parents on the other hand when the importance of altruism in motivating savings is sufficiently low the increase in the social security tax could result in a reduction of the bequests left by altruistic parents under some conditions on the attitude of individuals toward risk and on the relative returns associated with private saving and social security some implications concerning the transitional effects of introducing an unfunded social security scheme are also discussed

systematic departures from the frontier a framework for the analysis of firm inefficiency departures from a production or cost frontier may reflect the systematic effect of conditions that contribute to inefficiency to test whether some portion of frontier function departures can be systematically explained the frontier inefficiency error component is modeled as a function of various causal factors and a random component the functional form of the inefficiency error term model is chosen to assure strict one sidedness preliminary empirical results generated from electric utility data suggest the superiority of including both systematic and random components in the inefficiency error term

the wealth age relation among the aged aged people face the problem of allocating over the rest of their lifetimes the wealth that they have accumulated during their working years this problem is fairly complex because they are uncertain about the dates of their death and because they may wish to use their wealth to finance general consumption or hold it to meet emergencies leave estates or maintain power or status whether skilled at dynamic programming or not aged people effectively do make these decisions what are the results some studies of the entire lifetime pattern of saving and wealth tend to support the simple life cycle model in which the aged use up their wealth to help finance consumption harold lydall for example found saving rates to increase and then decrease with age in the whole population and to be negative for the group aged 65 and over guarded support for the theory was found by franco modigliani and albert ando in britain and by dorothy projector in the united states more recently a f shorrocks examined the lifetime pattern of wealth holding in estate tax data for a single cohort and found the hump pattern that is characteristic of life cycle saving other evidence on wealth holding runs contrary to this however in a study of estate tax returns in washington d c james d smith found that wealth increased with age among the aged after controlling for other demographic variables examining national estate tax data john brittain found wealth to increase with age in the united states and a b atkinson and a j harrison reported the same pattern in england and wales in a sample of tiaa annuity recipients analyzed by james mulanaphy over half reported that their total savings had increased during retirement and another quarter reported that their savings had remained about the same in this paper i examine wealth holding patterns among aged married couples using survey data representing the entire aged population of the united states in 1968 the statistical analysis serves as a test of the hypothesis that emerges from life cycle theory and provides some further exploration into the economic behavior of the aged i find that the aged tend to increase their wealth over time

the saving of the elderly in micro and macro data examination of household micro data on the elderly has generally concluded that they do not dissave significantly whereas estimates using aggregate macro data have shown that the presence of a large elderly population leads to a lower saving rate this paper shows that if interactions between generations are important one would not expect these estimates to be the same the paper presents new evidence that bequests are plausibly the source of this discrepancy examination of data from young households that have received or expect bequests confirms that bequests are indeed an important factor determining the saving of the young

allocative and scale efficiency among maize farmers in zambia a zero efficiency stochastic frontier approach the commonly used stochastic frontier model assumes that all firms are inefficient in this specification inefficiency is non negative and the probability of inefficiency being exactly zero is al

the endogeneity between language and earnings international analyses this study is concerned with the determinants of dominant language fluency its effects on earnings and its endogeneity with earnings among immigrants dominant language fluency is hypothesized to

do private transfers displace the benefits of public transfers evidence from south africa abstract this paper investigates whether government transfer programs displace or crowd out private support focusing on a large increase in state old age pensions in south africa using data spanning the period of the expansion we find that each rand of public pension income to the elderly leads to a 0 25 0 30 rand reduction in private transfers from children living away from home however despite the large increase in income there were no significant changes in migration labor supply or household composition we also show that evaluations of the distributional effects of the pension are overstated when crowding out is ignored

uncertainty and optimal social security systems this paper examines the annuity aspect of social security within the framework of an overlapping generations model the duration of life is assumed to be uncertain under a fully funded system demand for social security is determined by each generation so as to maximize expected lifetime utility taking into account the welfare of future generations under a pay as you go system with intergenerational transfers demand for retirement benefits by the working population takes into account taxes paid by descendants it is shown that the two modes of finance are equivalent in terms of all real aggregates effects of changes in expected lifetime and in the birth rate are analyzed starting at the optimal level a compulsory balanced increase in social security taxes and benefits is shown to increase short run savings

migration and technical efficiency in cereal production evidence from burkina faso this article uses a double bootstrap procedure and survey data from burkina faso in a two stage estimation to explore ways in which continental and intercontinental migration determine efficiency in cereal production of rural households findings suggest that continental migration has a positive relation and intercontinental migration no relation with technical efficiency for continental migrant households migration has removed surplus male labor a cause for inefficiency in production intercontinental migration leads to a gender imbalance in the household which cannot be compensated for by investments in farm equipment the failure of intercontinental migration to transform cereal production from traditional to modern is attributed to an imperfect market environment

samaritan versus rotten kid another look abstract we set up a two stage game with sequential moves by one altruist and n selfish agents the samaritan s dilemma rotten kid theorem states that the altruist can only reach her first best when the selfish agents move after before the altruist we find that in general the altruist can reach her first best when she moves first if and only if a selfish agent s action marginally affects only his own payoff the altruist can reach her first best when she moves last if and only if a selfish agent cannot manipulate the price of his own payoff

old age government transfers and the crowding out of private gifts the70 and aboveprogram for the rural elderly in mexico old age public transfers and remittances

racial and ethnic differences in wealth in the health and retirement study this paper examines wealth data in the health and retirement study hrs in comparison with asset data in other major surveys the quality of hrs asset data is high missing asset data does remain a problem however to which future hrs analysts must remain sensitive evidence is presented showing that it is no accident that asset data are missing and solutions for imputing missing data are developed finally racial and ethnic wealth disparities are large these minority wealth disparities are due in part to differential inheritances and desired bequests as inequities perpetuate themselves across generations the disparities are also due to lower minority incomes poorer health and an excessively narrow definition of wealth that excludes social security and employer pensions authors

motives for private transfers over the life cycle an analytical framework and evidence for peru abstract this paper tests for the motives for private income transfers we consider two motives altruism and exchange the question of private transfer motives is important because such motivation can influence the effects of public income transfers on the distribution of income using a household survey for peru we find that transfer amounts received increase with recipient pre transfer income which contradicts a key prediction of the strong form of the altruism hypothesis but is consistent with exchange we also find that capital market imperfections are likely to be an important cause of private transfers and that social security benefits crowd out the incidence of private transfers

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

the legacy of immigration labour market performance and education in the second generation previous research finds that the children of immigrants or the second generation earn at least as much as other native born but that there are persistent ethnic differences in the intergenerational transmission of education and wages we explain why these results are not incompatible and extend the empirical evidence in several directions using the canadian survey of labour and income dynamics first we estimate a model of wages earnings and hours worked using modern econometric techniques to corroborate earlier us results of complete integration by the second generation in the labour market we find that ethnic differences in labour market performance are significant but that these difference do not alter conclusions about the relative performance of the second generation second we find a source of superior labour market performance for the second generation in higher educational attainment which constitutes an important legacy of immigration that should not be ignored third we find that the de

as an economy becomes more developed do people become less altruistic abstractinter household private transfers are one of the main informal insurance mechanisms that prevalently implemented in developing countries unfortunately most of the literatures investigates

understanding declining mobility and inter household transfers among east african pastoralists we model interhousehold transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state dependent consequence of individuals strategic interdependen ce resulting from the existence of multiple opposing externalities a public good security ext ernality among individuals sharing a social e g ethnic identity in a potentially hostile en vironment creates incentives to band together self interested interhousehold wealth transfers fro m wealthier herders to poorer ones may emerge endogenously within a limited wealth space as a mea ns to motivate accompanying migration by the recipient the distributional reach and size o f the transfer are limited however by a resource appropriation externality related to the use of com mon property grazing lands when this effect dominates it can induce transfers from households who want to relieve grazing pressures caused by others herds our model augments the extant li terature on transfers and is perhaps more consistent with the limited available empirical evi dence on heterogeneous and changing transfers patterns among east african pastoralists the core principles of our model possibly apply more broadly for example to long distance migrants or e ven among foot soldiers in street gangs

parental wealth and adult children s welfare in marriage abstract many studies find that parental resources importantly determine children s human capital schooling returns and earnings the collective household approach suggests that in addition parental resources of marital partners may importantly affect resource distributions within marriage this paper presents empirical results consistent with this framework they suggest that parental wealth continues to play roles in augmenting welfare of children into adulthood beyond provision of human capital in early life cycle stages or direct financial aid during adulthood and that actual transfers from parents to adult children do not fully measure influences of parental wealth on behaviors and welfare of adult children

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

education language and youth entrepreneurship in chad this study aims to assess the effect of education language arabic or french on the probability of being self employed in chad mainly we make use of a recursive bivariate probit model and matching techniques to assess the effect as well as to remedy to the endogeneity problem overall the analysis suggests that youths with arabic language education are more likely to be self employed however most of them specialise in modest informal micro enterprises these results can help to shed light on the education language implications and then can help policymakers to design appropriate policies to foster youth entrepreneurship in chad

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

the effect of language training on immigrants economic integration empirical evidence from france abstract we examine the impact of language training on the economic integration of immigrants in france the assignment to this training offered by the french ministry of the interior depends mainly on a precise rule the training is provided if the test score of an initial language exam is below a certain threshold this eligibility rule creates a discontinuity in the relation between the test result and the variables of interest which is used to estimate the causal effect of language training through the method of regression discontinuity design we find that the number of assigned hours of training significantly increases labor force participation of the treated individuals the language classes appear to have a larger effect for individuals with higher levels of education while there is no robust differential effect by type of migration gender or age our estimated coefficients are remarkably similar when we rely on local linear regressions using the optimal bandwidth with few observations around the threshold and when we control parametrically for a polynomial of the forcing variable and use the whole estimation sample we conclude with a discussion of the candidate mechanisms for the improved labor market participation of immigrants

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

disparities in the financial performance of agricultural entities according to the legal form the case of slovakia abstractfinancial management in agricultural enterprises is affected by a range of factors that are not present in other sectors one of the factors that affect the performance of enterprises is th

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

early labour market experiences of second generation immigrants in sweden this article investigates second generation immigrant s early labour market performances in sweden to study their labour market success we estimate dynamic transition rate models cox type proportional hazards in a competing risk framework using register based panel data set our results reveal that parental resources affect not only second generation immigrants continuing education but also their later labour market success the study verifies that finding a job is difficult for second generation immigrants and the significant unobserved heterogeneity parameter estimate may indicate discrimination as a whole second generation immigrants have worse labour market performances compared to their native born counterparts

the impact of trade openness on technical efficiency in the agricultural sector of the european union the aim of this study is to analyse the impact of trade openness on technical efficiency of the european union s eu agricultural sector there are no systematic theories linking trade policy to technical efficiency hence the relation between trade liberalization and technical efficiency is fundamentally ambiguous stochastic frontier analysis is used to model the relationship between eu s production resources and agricultural output as well as the importance of trade openness on technical efficiency of a country the data for 16 of the 28 eu members were available for the period 1980 2007 including land capital fertilizer labour agricultural gdp foreign direct investments fdi exports and import data results indicate that trade openness has an immediate negative impact on efficiency in the eu agricultural sector over time however trade openness does increase efficiency the fdi outflows increase efficiency this suggests that an initial reduction in capital supply forces eu nations to uti

do all countries grow alike abstract this paper investigates the driving forces of output change in 77 countries during the period 1970 2000 a flexible modeling strategy is adopted that accounts for i the inefficient use of resources and ii different production technologies across countries the proposed model can identify technical efficiency and input change for each of three endogenously determined regimes membership in these regimes is estimated rather than determined ex ante this framework enables explorations into the determinants of output growth and convergence issues in each regime

the retirement savings puzzle reviewed the role of housing and bequests the so called retirement savings puzzle is a phenomenon by which contrary to what the standard life cycle model predicts households do not run down their wealth significantly during retirement in this review paper we survey the literature on the retirement savings puzzle and we connect it with the literature on housing equity during retirement to establish a link between these two streams of literature we use as a framework the work of nakajima and telyukova 2013a home equity in retirement ucsd working paper and nakajima and telyukova 2017 reverse mortgage loans a quantitative analysis journal of finance 72 911 950 who find that home ownership interacts with factors that explain the retirement savings puzzle notably with the bequest motive we complement the results by nakajima and telyukova by relating them to the literature on altruistic bequests strategic bequests and housing as a commitment device all of which give further insights on the connection between home ownership and bequests we complement our review of the literature with descriptive evidence using the netherlands as a case study

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

trade capital accumulation and structural unemployment an empirical study of the singapore economy the past three and a half decades witnessed a distinctly declining trend in singapore s unemployment rate which dropped from an average annual rate of 7 85 percent in 1966 70 to 2 74 percent in 1991 2000 the authors seek to identify and empirically examine the factors that have influenced singapore s unemployment rate in an environment of low and stable inflation they incorporate a union bargaining framework into a standard factors trade model in which an increase in the relative price or capital stock in the export sector raises the demand wage that firms can afford to pay relative to workers fall back income and consequently lowers equilibrium unemployment the magnitude of the effects depends on the fall back income the weight unions attach to employment and the elasticity of labor demand which the authors estimate using data on singapore the results show that labor unions in singapore care more about employment than wages together with a small fall back income and elastic labor demand the authors show that given the same percentage change in relative export prices and capital accumulation in the export sector the effect on unemployment is larger for the former however the empirical importance of capital accumulation in the export sector dominates increases in relative export prices in reducing unemployment since the manufacturing sector experienced a tremendous increase in capital inputs throughout the sample period whereas the relative price of exports experienced a far smaller increase and only in the early part of the sample period the authors conclude that through a very open trading regime the tremendous increase in capital stock of the exporting sector has been the main reason behind singapore s declining unemployment rate

taxation and wealth transmission in france abstract this paper studies inter vivos transfers and bequests in france and their relation to the french inheritance law and taxation using administrative records and a national households survey transmission behavior is highly responsive to changes in the fiscal system inter vivos gifts increased after a 1992 law made them partly tax free moreover the probability of giving to children is greater ceteris paribus if parents wealth is taxable for children the probability of receiving a gift over the life cycle increases with their permanent income the amount received increases with current income it increases or bears no relation to permanent income depending on the specification thus we find no direct support for the altruistic nor for the exchange motive these results are compatible with a model where parents transfer to the best endowed child

choosing between gifts and bequests how taxes affect the timing of wealth transfers abstract a number of theories have been advanced to explain the size and timing of intergenerational transfers one factor only recently explored is the effects of taxes and in particular the estate tax on such transfers this paper represents the first attempt to explore how capital gains and gift taxes in addition to the estate tax interact to influence incentives in the timing of transfers using estate tax data and exploiting variations in state inheritance gift and capital gains tax rates this paper finds taxes to be an important consideration in the choice between gifts and bequests in particular each of capital gains and gift taxes are found to be important determinants of the timing of transfers these findings are robust to a number of specifications that control for borrowing charitable bequests marital status and the portfolio composition of wealth transfers

homogeneity restrictions on the translog cost model a note benston hanweck and humphrey bhh 1 first applied the translog cost model to empirical analyses of depository institutions cost characteristics subsequent studies by benston berger hanweck and humphrey bbhh 2 murray and white 7 gilligan and smirlock 4 and gilligan smirlock and marshall gsm 5 have employed this type of flexible form cost function as a regularity condition the translog cost model should be linearly homogenous in all input prices that is given the following translog cost function

inheritance patterns in migration prone communities of the peruvian highlands abstract on the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in depth survey of three andean communities of peru and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying the main factors associated with particular patterns of land bequests a central result is that the positive relationship between caring and a favourable access to land bequest indeed exists yet is only observed for migrant children whether urban or rural long distance or short distance migrants combined with other findings and observations this result strengthens the case for an interpretation based on an active role of potential heirs in the determination of inheritance outcomes it therefore calls into question the strategic bequest theory which presumes that parents are the ultimate decision makers in this matter in addition our study shows that inheritance patterns are complex besides migration and caring behavior personal characteristics of potential heirs such as gender birth order and family status having children or not do appear to influence division of parental land

the effect of death tax on the labour supply of donors evidence from tra97 exploiting estate tax cuts from the taxpayer relief act of 1997 tra97 this paper estimates the effect of death tax on the labour supply of living potential donors to this end difference in dif