uncertain neighborhood effects and restrictive covenants abstract this paper provides a theoretical model and empirical analysis of private land use contracts in an urban housing market one contribution of our analysis lies in the explicit treatment of neighborhood externalities as uncertain processes the potential resident views the contractual obligation established by deed restrictions as credible commitment by unknown future neighbors to utilize their own property within the defined bounds thereby reducing the uncertainty or riskiness of future externality effects following this view we present a hedonic valuation model for deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants to tie housing consumption risk theory to the empirical hedonic method we then use a unique land use contracts data set to test the model implications

short run strategies for attracting foreign direct investment this paper empirically investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of two fdi policies fiscal incentives and deregulation aimed at improving the attractiveness of a country in the short run using disaggregated data on sales by us mnes foreign affiliates in 43 developed and developing countries over the 1982 94 period results show that the provision of fiscal incentives or the deregulation of the labour market would exert a positive impact on total fdi given the drawbacks frequently associated with the use of incentive packages economy wide policies which ease firing procedures and reduce severance payments would certainly be the best policy option this paper also highlights the different aggregation and omitted variable biases that have affected results of previous studies and provides some support to recent theoretical models of fdi by showing that third country effects and spatial interdependence influence respectively the location of export platform fdi and vertical fdi

earnings effects of labor organizations in 1890 analyzing data from extensive surveys of u s nonfarm families in 1889 90 predominantly families from eastern states the authors of this paper show that workers affiliated with labor organizations had earnings that were 22 percent higher than the earnings of other workers an effect comparable in magnitude to estimates for modern unions wage differentials varied considerably across the eight industries studied and across skill levels within each industry

contracting contingencies and single family house prices this paper investigates the relationship between single family house prices and contingent terms in contracts since contingencies create uncertainty the market should exact a price premium the results indicate that the contracting for property rights affects house prices in the predicted ways

the use of quantile regressions in estimating gender wage differentials a case study of the philippines quantile regressions are used to analyse the size components and nature of the gender earnings differentials as well as the returns to education by gender in the philippines over the entire conditional distribution of earnings using data from the 1999 apis survey this approach allows more focused conclusions about the nature of gender earnings differentials incorporating the quantile regression approach to the oaxaca blinder decomposition allows the localization of gender discrimination to particular quantiles of the earnings distribution and permits more targeted policy intervention

decomposing intergenerational income elasticity the gender differentiated contribution of capital transmission in rural philippines summary using longitudinal data from rural philippines we decompose intergenerational income elasticity ige into five distinct pathways intergenerational transmissions of health education land and spouse education capital plus residual correlation in productivity intergenerational human capital transmissions from mothers are stronger than those from fathers maternal education is the parental capital most strongly associated with ige while naive ige estimates are indistinguishable for sons and daughters the pathways that generate these results differ strikingly for sons ige is entirely explained by parent to child capital transmission by contrast strong income correlation exists between daughters and parents even after controlling for parent and child capital endowments

on decomposing the wage gap a critical comment on blinder s method many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible

taxes and bank capital structure this paper shows that a reduction in tax discrimination between debt and equity funding leads to better capitalized financial institutions the paper exploits exogenous variation in the tax treatment of debt and equity created by the introduction of a tax shield for equity the results demonstrate that a more equal treatment of debt and equity increases bank capital ratios driven by an increase in common equity the change also leads to a significant reduction in risk taking for ex ante low capitalized banks overall the findings suggest that tax shields could be a valuable and innovative policy tool for bank regulators

rent seeking over time the continuity of capture recently in this journal skaggs and wasserkrug 1983 presented a model of bureau monitoring and related it to federal reserve behavior central to their argument was that bureau constituencies may pressure congressmen in maintaining the monitoring status quo if competition is to be expected between self interested parties for the property rights associated with regulation and regulatory commissions then bureau monitoring or lack of it should have value the capture of a commission by others is made more costly when information on a bureau s activities is restricted in general the issues surrounding bureau monitoring bring out the dynamic nature of the capture theory of regulation once captured commissions must remain captured if benefits are to accrue to rent seekers over time empirical support for the capture perspective however only relates personal characteristics of the appointed regulators commissioners to characteristics preferred by the regulated to reveal the dynamic nature of capture one must also account for the continuity of commission membership a captured regulatory body can only remain captured if there is a continuity of desirable characteristics by compiling characteristics of appointed members previous studies have examined the output of the appointment process that resulted from competition for positions on regulatory boards however the lack of synchronization between appointments to federal regulatory commissions and presidential elections suggests that the distribution of influence among self interested groups in the selection process may vary over time thus continuous successful capture is more easily achieved if appointees remain on boards for full terms and if possible land reappointments but the process is complicated further because regulators

rewards to academia the remuneration of vice chancellors and principals this paper models the financial remuneration to vice chancellors and principals at uk higher education institutions after describing the alternative theoretical underpinnings for the determination of pay an earnings function is estimated utilizing institutional and personal characteristics the model suggests only a partial linkage of managerial and performance related indicators to remuneration levels this suggests substantial scope for reorientation of rewards towards such indicators rather than relying on an efficiency wage this would appear particularly appropriate given the present and continued disclosure of this information together with the increased focus on performance indicators relating to teaching and research within the uk higher education sector

minimum wages and the gender wage gap estimates are made of the effect of minimum wages on the size and composition of the gender wage gap in canada in 1986 it is found that minimum wages close the wage gap substantially for young workers and less so for adults the reduction in the gap is most attributable to the adverse employment effects of minimum wages the results also indicate that most of the reduction in the gap is realized through a fall in the discriminatory component

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

underpaid or overpaid wage analysis for nurses using job and worker attributes the nursing labor market presents an apparent puzzle hospitals report chronic shortages yet standard wage analysis shows that nursing wages have increased over time and greatly exceed those received by other college educated women this paper addresses this puzzle data from the current population survey cps are matched with detailed job content descriptors from the occupational information network o net nursing jobs require higher levels of skills and more difficult working conditions than do jobs for other college educated workers a standard cps only wage regression shows a registered nurse rn wage advantage of 22 log points compared to a pooled male female group of college educated workers control for o net job attributes reduces the rn gap to 08 while an arguably preferable nonparametric estimator produces a wage gap estimate close to zero we conclude that nurses receive compensation close to long run opportunity costs narrowing if not resolving the rn wage shortage puzzle

towards a new trade policy between the usa and middle east countries estimating trade resistance and export potential at the time of the conclusion of free trade areas ftas between the usa and middle east and north african mena countries there is a lack of literature concerning the measurement of the current us export position with regards to these countries and the us export potential in this area from recent developments of gravity models this paper derives an estimable equation which includes various trade resistance variables notably border effects multilateral resistance as well as specific bilateral effects the model is tested in order to scrutinise the impact of these variables on us exports to mena countries as well as the us export potential in this area to that end a selection of panel data specifications is proposed mainly hausman and taylor models as well as arellano and bond dynamic models results unambiguously indicate that as compared to the other oecd countries the usa suffers from a substantial trade integration deficit with mena countries this is reflected by the strongly negative values of the us mena bilateral fixed effects as well as the high bilateral border effects in addition the estimated actual potential us export ratio to these countries is only 0 76 therefore implementing an fta between the usa and mena countries may allow the former to progressively improve its export position in this area this would also help mena countries diversify their supplying sources

the economic effects of withdrawn antidumping investigations is there evidence of collusive settlements abstract this paper analyzes the effects of antidumping cases initiated from 1990 to 1997 that ended in withdrawn petitions without a suspension agreement or voluntary restraint agreement monthly import data are used to estimate the price and quantity effects of the withdrawn cases the estimated effects of the petition being withdrawn do not support the accepted wisdom that withdrawn petitions are a signal of collusion this is an important issue since out of court settlements of unfair trade cases which restrict quantities or increase prices are not only welfare reducing but are also actionable under the antitrust laws they are not exempt under the noerr pennington doctrine

expert opinion and cuisine reputation in the market for restaurant meals as food is an experience good the market for restaurant meals is a market where the cost of acquiring information regarding quality is relatively high in such markets consumers often turn to reputation measures to guide purchase decisions as australia does not have a longstanding cuisine style of its own and given australia has been open to substantial immigration inflows since federation it represents an especially appropriate market to study regarding the impact of individual restaurant reputation and collective cuisine reputation on meal prices the following study uses the hedonic price approach to investigate the implicit price of individual reputation indicators cuisine type reputation indicators and other objective indicators in the market for restaurant meals the empirical findings presented suggest that both individual restaurant reputation and cuisine type reputation are important other important factors are shown to include the quality of the restaurant wine list the availability of pr

equity and time to sale in the real estate market evidence from the boston condominium market of the early 1990s reveals that an owner s equity position determines his experience as a seller an owner of a property with a high loan to value ratio sets a higher asking price has a higher expected time on the market and if he sells receives a higher price than an owner with proportionately less debt the down payment requirement for purchasers but not incumbent owners provides a simple explanation for this phenomenon among owner occupants the results provide supporting evidence for equity based aggregate theories of price volume movements in the housing market copyright 1997 by american economic association

do corporations sell houses for less a test of housing market efficiency this paper examines the popular notion that houses sold by corporations as a part of the employee relocation process sell at a discount we argue that such discounts conradict the notion of an efficient market in which indentical houses have the same expected sales price we test for corporate individual owned house price homogeneity using data from a metropolitan area in the us the evidence supports our single price hypothesis corporate houses do not sell for less than they would if sold by individuals

hedonic price indexes for residential housing a survey evaluation and taxonomy every house is different it is important that house price indexes take account of these quality differences hedonic methods which express house prices as a function of a vector of characteristics such as number of bedrooms and bathrooms land area and location are particularly useful for this purpose i consider here some developments in the hedonic methodology as it is applied in a housing context that have occurred in the last three decades a number of hedonic house price indexes are now available however it is often difficult to see how these indexes relate to each other for this reason i attempt to impose some structure on the literature by developing a taxonomy of hedonic indexes and then show how existing indexes fit into this taxonomy also discussed are some promising areas for future research in the hedonic field in particular greater use needs to be made of spatial econometric and nonparametric methods to exploit the increased availability of geospatial data the main criticisms of the hedonic approach are evaluated and compared with those of the repeat sales and stratified median methods the overall conclusion is that the advantages of the hedonic approach outweigh its disadvantages

glass ceiling and double disadvantage effects women in the us labour market gender pay issues in the us labour market are examined using 1990 and 2000 us census data for three groups the native born immigrants from english speaking countries and immigrants from non english speaking countries quantile regression estimates reveal different patterns of wage effects across the wage distribution females have lower rates of pay across the entire wage scale there is minimal evidence of glass ceiling effects immigrant women from non english speaking countries are argued to experience a double disadvantage effect

a market for institutions assessing the impact of restrictive covenants on housing residential community associations rcas are quick becoming a common but controversial feature of the housing market supporters of rcas point to the rapid growth as a clear sign of their success in improving upon market failures rcas provide additional restrictions that can limit neighborhood externalities and reduce future consumption risk however critics contend that rcas create additional conflicts and push problems into other neighborhoods previous published empirical work on the impact of rca zoning has been limited in institutional detail and has not corrected for spatial autocorrelation this paper uses 1 487 single family sales in 2000 from greeley colorado and a unique dataset that includes information on rcas various use restrictions building restrictions and voting rules to investigate the impact of private zoning on the housing market a spatially corrected semi log hedonic model is employed to estimate the marginal price impacts the main model of interest finds that building restrictions no impact on prices while use restrictions increase prices furthermore the optimal voting decision rule is at an 80 percent supermajority but voting rights to first mortgage holders significantly reduces prices

willingness to pay of committed citizens a field experiment in this paper we propose a behavioral approach to determine the extent to which the consumer citizen distinction affects interpretations of monetary values in stated preferences methods we perform a field experiment dealing with air pollution where some randomly selected subjects are given the opportunity to behave politically by signing a petition for environmental protection prior to stating their private preferences in a standard contingent valuation exercise we show that signing has the potential to influence respondents willingness to pay values results indicate that even market like situations are not immune to citizen behavior

trade deflection and trade depression this is the first paper to empirically examine whether a country s use of an import restricting trade policy distorts a foreign country s exports to third markets we first develop a theoretical model of worldwide trade in which the imposition of antidumping and safeguard taris or trade remedies by one country causes significant distortions in world trade flows we then empirically test this model by investigating the eect of the united states use of such import restrictions on japanese exports of roughly 4800 products into 37 countries between 1992 and 2001 our estimation yields evidence that us restrictions both deflect and depress japanese export flows to third countries imposition of a us antidumping measure against japan deflects trade as the average antidumping duty on japanese exports leads to a 5 7 increase in japanese exports of the same product to the average third country market the imposition of a us antidumping measure against a third country depresses trade as the average us duty imposed on a third country leads to a 5 19 decrease in japanese exports of that same product to the average third country s market we also document the substantial variation in trade deflection and trade depression across dierent importing countries and exported products

evidence on the glass ceiling effect in france using matched worker firm data in this article we investigate the relevance of the glass ceiling hypothesis in france according to which there exist larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution using a matched worker firm data set of about 1 30 000 employees and 14 000 employers we estimate quantile regressions and rely on a principal component analysis to summarize information specific to the firms our different results show that accounting for firm related characteristics reduces the gender earnings gap at the top of the distribution but the latter still remains much higher at the top than at the bottom furthermore a quantile decomposition shows that the gender wage gap is mainly due to differences in the returns to observed characteristics rather than in differences in characteristics between men and women

does remuneration affect the discipline and the selection of politicians evidence from pay harmonization in the european parliament we study the harmonization of the base pay for the members of the european parliament meps prior to this reform implemented in 2009 base pay was aligned with that of national parliamentarians causing large differences in pay between the meps representing 27 member states based on detailed information on individual meps between 2004 and 2011 we find that the reform which introduced an exceptional base pay increase of 200 per national delegation on average has a positive incentive effect on in office effort proxied by the number of speeches written declarations and reports drafted however more generous remuneration is associated with higher rates of absenteeism with respect to political selection we find that higher pay also raises reelection rates the composition of the pool of meps in terms of ex ante quality approximated by formal education previous political experience in elected office and occupational background is however unaffected if we restrict our attention to newly elected meps a salary increase is related to fewer meps with previous political experience at the highest national level

contamination and incomplete information bounding implicit prices using high profile leaks incomplete information can lead households to underprice environmental disamenities in the housing market to bound true implicit prices researchers sometimes turn to high profile cases involving significant media and community attention however prior research also finds that high profile cases can lead to stigma effects that may confound interpretation of implicit prices this study compares these opposing effects at the highest profile underground storage tank releases across the united states over the last thirty years we utilize covariate matching and estimate difference in differences hedonic regressions at each site and then conduct a cross site meta analysis to estimate the average treatment effects we find an average housing price depreciation of 2 to 6 upon discovery of a release which is an upper bound on the implicit price of contamination at more typical sites following cleanup we find a housing price appreciation of a similar magnitude suggesting that even in high profile cases surrounding neighborhoods do not experience persistent stigma

labour productivity in the british and south wales coal industry 1874 1914 naked to the waist hot and grimy with labour they squatted on their heels for a few minutes and talked seeing each other dimly by the light of the safety lamps while the black coal rose jutting around them and the props of wood stood like little pillars in the low black very dark temple the day passed pleasantly enough there was an ease a go asyou please about the day underground a delightful camaraderie of men shut off alone from the rest of the world in a dangerous place and a variety of labour holing loading timbering and a glamour of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere d h lawrence 1955 the above quote from d h lawrence while perhaps over emphasizing glamour and adventure illustrates one important aspect of colliery work the intensity of a collier s effort was primarily self imposed it was the work intensity combined with other factors that determined labour productivity in the coal mines a number of articles have addressed the problem of labour productivity in coalmining during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries two of the most important being a j taylor s 1961 examination of productivity and technological change in britain and r h walters 1975 analysis of the same topic for south wales 1 in addition there is a rich and growing literature on the broader problem of the existence of a climacteric a downward shift in the performance of the british economy in the late nineteenth century often attributed to the failure of british entrepreneurs as represented by their seeming unwillingness to adopt the best available techniques of production 2 the purpose of this paper is to specify and estimate an empirical model of labour productivity in coalmining as well as to provide some suggestive evidence regarding the performance of entrepreneurs in this major industry 3 we believe our results provide added insight into the determination of labour productivity during this period lending support to those who argue that the failure of british entrepreneurs has yet to be proved while providing mixed evidence regarding conclusions drawn by economic historians

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

adaptation to an irrigation water restriction imposed through local governance abstract we estimate how farmers adapted to a water restriction imposed through local governance the restriction imposed a uniform quota on water use with a 5 year allocation and allowed trading of the quota within the restricted area our analysis exploits unique micro level data on irrigated water use irrigated acreage and crops we use a difference in differences econometric strategy that also includes farmer time fixed effects to estimate the response to the restriction where we exploit water rights between 2 and 5 miles of the policy boundary as a control group results indicate that farmers reduced water use by 26 due to the policy with most of the response due to reductions in water use intensity on the same crops rather than through reductions in irrigated acreage or changes in crops the results imply that the short run welfare impact of the policy was smaller than a policy that reduces irrigated acreage

land values in a newly zoned city the introduction of a new zoning ordinance to chicago in 1923 offers a natural experiment that allows us to determine the effects of zoning on relative land value growth rates policymakers claimed at the time that land use zoning would raise aggregate land values by reducing negative externalities associated with mixed land use after controlling for initial land use and the endogeneity of zoning decisions we find that residential zoning led to higher land value growth rates than commercial zoning

gender wage inequality during sri lanka s post reform growth a distributional analysis abstract this paper investigates gender wage inequality in sri lanka during 1992 2014 a period of robust economic growth following pro market reforms the gap in mean wages between men and women decreased steadily over this period unconditional quantile regression reveals the decline in gender wage inequality was driven by the upper half of the distribution and was due to improvements in women s observable human capital yet the pay structure became more unequal indicating widening gender gaps in the returns to labor market characteristics and in unobservable determinants of wages the gender gap in pay structure widened disproportionately in the lower half of the distribution coinciding with falling absolute and relative returns to women in manufacturing industries and production occupations facing greater international competition the study also demonstrates selection bias underestimates the gender wage gap and overestimates the gains in equality over time factors that hinder gender equality in the labor market are discussed along with policy implications

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

the earnings of canadian immigrant and native born males this paper examines the economic attainment of canadian immigrants although foreign born males initially earn less than the native born their earnings rise more rapidly with canadian labour market experience and after 14years their earnings equal and exceed those of the native population it is also shown that the use of mincer s identity leads to biased results when estimating the earnings of the immigrant population

on the use of hedonic regression models to measure the effect of energy efficiency on residential property transaction prices evidence for portugal and selected data issues abstract using a unique dataset of 256 000 residential property sales for portugal this paper reveals a clear sales premium for energy efficiency which is more pronounced for apartments 13 than for houses 5 to 6 price premiums tend to increase from 2009 to 2013 a period in which the portuguese housing market was depressed quantile regression reveals that when compared with the rest of the sample the group of the most energy efficient properties receives a statistically relevant price premium that is mostly stable across the entire spectrum of the conditional price distribution cross country comparisons suggest that energy efficiency price premiums are higher than those found for central and northern european markets illustrations on the effect of data issues in hedonic regression models are provided they show how the use of appraisal prices and explanatory variables with measurement errors may seriously bias energy efficiency partial effect estimates in contrast the omission of variables associated with the quality of the properties has not produced relevant distortions finally it became apparent that the use of smaller datasets would have produced similar results as no significance inflation was produced by the portuguese large scale dataset

revisiting union wage and job loss effects using the displaced worker surveys estimates of union wage effects have been challenged by concerns regarding unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogenous job changes many economists believe that union wage premiums lead to busin

paying for mitigation a multiple country study a contingent valuation study conducted in china sweden and the united states was used to investigate citizens willingness to pay wtp for reducing co2 emissions we find that a majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase the share of americans that believes these statements is smaller and a relatively larger share of americans also believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change sweden has the highest wtp while china has the lowest jel q51 q54

the demonstration and capture of the value of an ecosystem service a quasi experimental hedonic property analysis water management can generate valuable ecosystem services but can be costly to implement we examine this issue using irrigation water storage infrastructure which has the potential to provide desirable services to residential properties affected by the condition of the storage structure we examine a particular prairie setting where concerns regarding fluctuations in water levels of an irrigation storage lake led to an agreement between the irrigation agency and the owners of properties around the lake to stabilize water levels using quasi experimental hedonic property approaches with two different control groups we estimate the subsequent impact of this agreement on shoreline property values using a time series of sales data the methods utilized in this article represent an effective approach to produce plausible estimates of some of the economic values captured by the infrastructure generating ecosystem services we find that property values increased as a result of the agreement and that the additional property tax revenues arising from these values can be used to some extent to offset the annual service fees paid to the irrigation agency to provide the stabilized lake levels this article illustrates the potential for irrigation infrastructure management to provide increases in ecosystem service values beyond irrigation and also that these values can be captured to pay for the costs of providing these increased values

hedonic imputation and the price index problem an application to housing in this study we show how use of the hedonic imputation method complicates the price index problem in addition to the usual choice between formulas such as fisher and tornqvist the fact that index compilers have some discretion over which prices are imputed implies that it is necessary to choose as well between different varieties of each formula the functional form of the hedonic model must also be taken into account we illustrate the importance of these issues in a housing context using house price data for three regions in sydney over a 3 yr period jel c43 e31 o47 r31

when quality signals talk evidence from the turin hotel industry abstract this study analyzes the relationship between quality signals and price setting through the application of hedonic price functions the model proposals also include variables relating to land use policies and tourism development strategies a simultaneous equation model endogenously estimates quality signals this method is appropriate for analyzing emerging urban destinations as characterized by the presence of an expanding hotel industry the results are based on a dataset of 145 hotels in turin italy the empirical findings reveal that reputation based quality signals help explain tariff levels price proposals also include a premium for quality assured hotels defining some limits of the current hotel classification system the empirical evidence has significant marketing implications for the hospitality industry s competitiveness since the results clarify the impact of quality signals on price level

post injury work outcomes revisited we use data for ontario workers with permanent impairments resulting from work related injuries to investigate the complex relationships among post injury work outcomes wages accommodations returning to the same or different employer and duration of work absence we argue the different aspects of post injury work experience may be jointly determined making post injury job characteristics endogenous in a duration model to explore the endogeneity issues we instrument post injury job variables from first stage equations and compare results from this informed model to a naive model that treats the variables as exogenous we find that returning to one s pre injury employer is associated with more favorable post injury work outcomes including higher wages greater likelihood of job accommodations and shorter durations of work absence relative to workers who change employers we also find substantial differences between the naive and informed models with accommodations having the predicted negative effect on duration only after we control for endogeneity

a distributional analysis of the gender wage gap in bangladesh this article empirically investigates the gender wage gap in bangladesh during the period 2005 2009 applying unconditional quantile regression models the article demonstrates that women are paid less than men throughout the wage distribution and the gap is higher at the lower end of the distribution discrimination against women is the primary determinant of the wage gap the article also demonstrates that the observed gender wage gap is likely to be underestimated if we ignore selection in full time employment a number of policy implications are discussed

the elusive quest for supply response to cash crop market reforms in sub saharan africa the case of cotton little cross cutting conclusions emerge from comparative studies on the impact of structural adjustment on sub saharan african agricultural performance this paper aims to illuminate this long standing debate by adopting a novel quantitative sectoral and long term approach controlling for country specific determinants it incorporates detailed information on the pace of reforms and the nature of post reform market structure pre reform policies and weather conditions at the cultivation zone level the cotton sector is the focus of this paper because of its particularly interesting institutional history the authors find that the changes in market structure brought about by reforms have had very different impacts in francophone west and central africa and in the rest of sub saharan africa in the former region production has been higher but productivity lower on average in regulated markets than in monopolistic markets conversely in the liberalized markets of the rest of sub saharan africa productivity has been higher in than in monopolistic markets but highly competitive markets seem to have produced less than monopolistic sectors

bad karma or discrimination male female wage gaps among salaried workers in india summary we use nationally representative data from the employment unemployment surveys in 1999 2000 and 2009 10 to explore gender wage gaps among regular wage salaried rws workers in india both at the mean as well as along the entire wage distribution to see what happens where the gender log wage gap at the mean is 55 in 1999 2000 and 49 in 2009 10 but this change is not statistically significant the blinder oaxaca and the machado mata melly decompositions indicate that in both years the bulk of the gender wage gap is unexplained i e possibly discriminatory they also reveal that over the decade while the wage earning characteristics of women improved relative to men the discriminatory component of the gender wage gap also increased in fact in 2009 10 if women were paid like men they would have earned more than men on account of their characteristics in both years we see the existence of the sticky floor in that gender wage gaps are higher among low wage earners and lower for high wage earners over the ten year period we find that the sticky floor became stickier for rws women machado mata melly decompositions reveal that in both years women at the lower end of the wage distribution face higher discriminatory gaps compared to women at the upper end

women wages and discrimination some evidence from taiwan in 1982 male employees in taiwan earned an average monthly salary of nt 11 008 us 275 women earned under two thirds of this at nt 7 087 this paper examines whether the male female earnings differential in taiwan can be explained by different endowments between the sexes of productivity related characteristics such as education and work experience if men and women are paid according to the same wage structure different endowments will account for all the observed earnings differential any wage gap that remains as a residual after adjustment for endowments can be interpreted as evidence of wage discrimination between the sexes following the work of oaxaca and malkiel and malkiel there is now a large number of american studies that use human capital theory as the basis for decomposing sex specific earnings into an endowment component and a discrimination component estimates also exist for canada and britain 2 house in his calculations for cyprus has provided the first estimates for a developing country 3 a case study for taiwan is particularly interesting not only because of the role of female employment in taiwan s industrial growth but also because the quality of the data makes possible a sharper test of discrimination than most other studies

estimating bargaining power in the market for existing homes although bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods it has largely been ignored in the hedonic literature in a break from that tradition we establish sufficient conditions that permit one to identify the effect of buyer and seller bargaining on hedonic models our model is estimated using a previously overlooked feature of the american housing survey that permits us to observe characteristics of both buyers and sellers results suggest that household wealth gender and other demographic traits influence bargaining power in addition variation in bargaining power arising from the presence of school age children accounts for anomalous seasonal patterns reported in various widely cited indices of quality adjusted house prices

the charity of the extremely wealthy our experience worldwide is that first generation wealth is actually more generous than dynastic wealth both here in india and u s and other countries the biggest givers are those who are receivers of first generation wealth bill gates quoted in thakur lee and frye 2011 i introduction in this article we study the charitable behavior of billionaires focusing on the impact of the source of their wealth on their charitable donations and pledges while billionaires play a leading role in both the economy and in philanthropy and they are watched closely by journalists and the public at large econometric studies that focus on the behavior of billionaires are rare 1 understanding the charitable behavior of the extremely wealthy is important because they are responsible for a disproportional share of overall giving directly through the amounts of money they give and also because their public status makes their behavior an example for others to follow while the determinants of individual giving have already been studied in experimental settings and using surveys reinstein and riener 2012 steinberg et al 2011 this article documents charitable behavior of a larger magnitude than that typically studied in experiments and of people who do not participate in experiments or fill out surveys 2 our analysis focuses on the question of whether self made billionaires are more charitable than billionaires who inherited their money as bill gates suggested in the quote above it is well documented that people s decisions on how to spend money often depend on how they received that money epley mak and chen idson 2006 for example show that the propensity to consume is bigger if income received is framed as a bonus rather than a rebate arkes et al 1994 show that windfall gains are more readily consumed than nonwindfall gains such evidence has been found both inside and outside the laboratory but in this article we investigate whether treatment of income varies depending on its source when the amounts at stake are much larger than previously studied in the literature in this article amounts range from millions to billions of dollars in comparison with the tens or hundreds of dollars in experimental literature or the tens of thousands of dollars studied in the research on decisions in every day life moreover studies that investigate how spending varies with the source of money typically conclude that earned income is spent more carefully than windfall gains however in the case of charitable giving self made money seems to be more rather than less likely to be spent on charity than inherited money steinberg et al 2011 indeed show using data from the charitable giving module of the panel study of income dynamics psid that the presence of inherited wealth increases giving but also that income held constant an increase in the proportion of income coming from an inheritance is associated with a decrease in charitable giving 3 to study the charitable behavior of the extremely wealthy we use data from the giving pledge a global public pledge to give away at least half of one s fortune during one s lifetime http givingpledge org which by now has been signed by more than 100 extremely wealthy people typically current billionaires in addition we use data on the presence of u s billionaires in the philanthropy top 50 and in the million dollar list a list of those who have given grants of 1 million or more since 2000 we find evidence that self made billionaires are three to four times more likely to sign the giving pledge and to enter the philanthropy top 50 list of biggest pledges compared with those who inherited their wealth at the same time we find that the gap in probabilities between self made and inherited wealth is much smaller at about 28 when looking at the presence in the million dollar list we also find that self made billionaires give more on average than inherited billionaires do when measuring total gifts using the million dollar list or the philanthropy top 50

scanner data and the treatment of quality change in nonrevisable price indexes the recently developed rolling year geks procedure makes maximum use of all matches in the data to construct nonrevisable price indexes that are approximately free from chain drift a potential weakness is that unmatched items are ignored in this article we use imputation tornqvist price indexes as inputs into the rolling year geks procedure these indexes account for quality changes by imputing the missing prices associated with new and disappearing items three imputation methods are discussed the first method makes explicit imputations using a hedonic regression model which is estimated for each time period the other two methods make implicit imputations they are based on time dummy hedonic and time product dummy regression models and are estimated on bilateral pooled data we present empirical evidence for new zealand from scanner data on eight consumer electronics products and find that accounting for quality change can make a substantial difference

on the short and medium term effects of formalisation panel evidence from vietnam abstractthis paper analyses the consequences of formalisation on the performance of informal firms using a panel dataset from vietnam we find that switching firms before switching have higher profit and value added compared to non switching firms suggesting heterogeneity becoming formal leads to an additional increase in switching firms profit and value added the benefits of formalisation materialise in the short term one year and persist in the longer term three or more years these benefits run through various channels such as better access to powered equipment or higher business association membership but not better access to credit

the race is to the swift socioeconomic origins adult education and wage attainment the winners in today s winner take all labor markets are differentiated by advanced levels of educational attainment especially higher degrees this article applies a sociological model of cumulative dis advantage to the baby boom cohort to examine whether life course timing differences in educational attainment help explain wage differentials by midlife it finds that advantaged social origins lead to early postsecondary completion of degrees which in turn yield higher wages a pathway of cumulative disadvantage is also evident where those least advantaged exit schooling early in life do not return as adults and earn low wages in a middle path advantaged social origins promote adult school attainment primarily for those without degrees but generally without the wage boosts associated with attainment earlier in life

room in the kitchen for the melting pot immigration and rental prices this paper studies the response of housing markets to immigration shocks following card 1990 i examine the changes in rental prices in miami and three comparison groups after the mariel boatlift this exogenous immigration shock added an extra 9 to miami s renter population in 1980 i find that rents increased from 8 to 11 more in miami than in the comparison groups between 1979 and 1981 by 1983 the rent differential was still 7 rental units of higher quality were not affected by the immigration shock units occupied by low income hispanic residents in 1979 experienced an extra 8 differential hike with respect to other low income units relative housing prices moved in the opposite direction from rents in the short run

effectiveness of rca institutions to limit local externalities using foreclosure data to test covenant effectiveness residential community associations rcas are said to be an efficient institutional agreement to limit local spillovers while several studies have identified a positive marginal effect of rca rules none have explicitly measured the effectiveness of these institutions to limit local externalities this study measures this effectiveness by estimating how the direct and spillover price impacts caused by foreclosure differ by rca status using a spatial hedonic model that controls for selection bias using propensity score methods and coarsened exact matching we find that foreclosed rca properties experience smaller direct foreclosure discounts and produce smaller spill over effects than their non rca counterparts

look who s talking the impacts of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones on agricultural prices abstract using data from the philippines we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop we first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones we find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5 to 8 per cent increase in price

does unmeasured ability explain the wage premium associated with technological change quantile regression analysis by using the quantile regressions of earnings equation we find that the educational wage premium is higher in industries with rapid technological change than in industries with slower technological change at every decile in the distribution of wage residuals the wage premium associated with the technological change is mostly explained by the returns to workers unobserved heterogeneities which are correlated with education rather than the rents of high tech industries

does price dispersion increase with quality evidence from the online diamond market this article empirically investigates the relationship between price dispersion and price level searches seem more valuable for products of high quality but buyers may have little incentive to search since such products are less frequently purchased the extent of price dispersion is examined using a sample of around 160 000 diamonds offered for sale online estimates from a two stage econometric strategy show that price dispersion increases significantly with quality an explanation is that buyers of high quality gemstones pay little attention to the price of these diamonds and even more so if they perceive high prices as signals of quality and rarity of the diamonds they intend to purchase

why do diplomas pay an expanded mincerian framework applied to mexico we compare four explanations for the value of diplomas each of which has implications for unemployment and wage variation amongst graduates most of which have not previously been tested for when seeking to explain the effects of diplomas we test for these implications using a refined econometric framework exploiting idiosyncrasies in mexican labour market and educational institutions premiums in mexico appear to result from diplomas tied to jobs with downwards rigid wages an uncommon but simple explanation the standard explanations including screening are not suggested by mexican data our results illuminate how labour markets segmented by diplomas clear this depends upon the nature of the labour market rigidities exactly as predicted by neoclassical theory

environmental amenities as a source of market power site specific environmental amenities can provide a source of product differentiating market power using estimates from hedonic price equations and residual demand models our analysis recovers firm specific estimates of price markups as measures of market power and uses these markups to estimate the implied marginal value for access to coastal beaches the application involves rental price and occupancy data for several thousand beach properties along a portion of the north carolina coastline during the 1987 to 1992 rental seasons

large redevelopment initiatives housing values and gentrification the case of the atlanta beltline this paper examines the announcement effects on property values of a large multipurpose development initiative in atlanta georgia called the beltline which has received substantial public attention the project involves the redevelopment of an abandoned rail line that encircles the central area of atlanta the 6500 acre project will be funded by tax increment financing bonds and will include the development of light rail greenspace and real estate projects by examining home sales from 2000 to 2006 the paper identifies changes in price premiums for locations in various geographical buffers around the beltline and compares the timing of such changes with coverage in the local newspaper it is found that there are large increases in premiums for homes near the lower income southside parts of the beltline tif district between 2003 and 2005 which corresponds to the initial media coverage of the planning process the findings suggest that planning for the beltline induced substantial speculation and ge

unions industrial concentration and wages a re examination market structure or industrial concentration has long been recognized as an important influence on industrial output employment and profits it has also been recognized that some proportion of the profits from concentration may be diverted into wages through collective bargaining yet the precise nature of these relationships has received little attention although it has important implications for the evaluation of wage structure and the welfare loss arising from monopoly empirical studies of the impact of unions and industrial concentration on wages weiss 1966 jones and laudadio 1975 dalton and ford 1977 long and link 1983 follow a similar format after a brief verbal justification for the ability of unions to win higher wage increases when the employer is earning oligopoly profits these studies specify a wage equation of the general form

the returns to education in africa some new estimates abstractwe estimate the rate of return to education for 12 african countries using recent data and a range of methodologies which we apply consistently across all countries our findings confirm that the return to basic education is the lowest 7 10 the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education are similar to one another 25 30 accounting for the risk of joblessness increases these rates of return particularly for basic education and for women at tertiary level our results at the country level suggest that great care should be taken in choosing the appropriate methodology to estimate rates of return

economic volatility and returns to education in venezuela 1992 2002 preliminary evidence suggests that the rates of return to education in venezuela have been declining since the 1970s this study rigorously estimates the returns to education in venezuela for the period 1992 to 2002 and links them to earlier available estimates from the 1980s consistent cross sections from the encuesta de hogares por muestro are used to document falling returns to schooling and educational levels until the mid 1990s followed by increasing returns thereafter quantile regression analysis is used to provide further insight into the within skill group changes in returns over time

towards a differentiated modelling of origin effects in hedonic analysis an application to auction prices of specialty coffee abstract origin matters this has been shown by numerous studies using either discrete choice or hedonic approaches to derive implicit prices for origin as a product attribute in most of the hedonic studies intercept dummies were introduced for specific regional origins and statistically significant coefficients of those variables were seen as an indication of either a superior or inferior reputation compared to products from other origins we argue that hedonic pricing models of this type may be too simple to detect the true origin effects if assessments of a product s sensory quality are available and interact with prior beliefs about reputation based on a supply and demand framework to explain auction prices a reduced form hedonic pricing model is suggested that includes intercept as well as slope dummy effects of the regional origin because reputation and the objective product quality are particularly important for markets of differentiated high quality foods and beverages we analyze electronic auction markets for specialty coffees the findings for the cup of excellence data reveal that it is important to distinguish reputation sensory quality and their interaction as determinants of coffee auction prices as well as varying origin impacts across market segments

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

payment source and the cost of hospital care evidence from a multiproduct cost function with multiple payers abstract this study investigates the capacity of hospitals to vary the intensity of their services based on patients expected sources of payment while the concept of price discrimination by hospitals based on payer generosity cost shifting has been discussed extensively the notion that hospitals can adjust payer specific marginal costs to reflect differences in reimbursement policies has not been studied in depth to examine this issue this analysis employs a multiproduct cost function with hospital outputs defined as admissions by payment source controlling for the distribution and severity of illness casemix for each payer marginal costs of casemix adjusted discharges are obtained and compared for medicare medicaid private payers and a residual category that includes uncompensated care we find that indeed payer specific marginal costs generally reflect payer generosity

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

the effect of ama membership on physicians earnings this study explores earnings differences between physicians who are members of the american medical association and physicians who are not ama members nonmembers earn on average about 22 percent less per hour of medical practice than members an estimate of the earnings effect of ama membership incorporating the simultaneous determination of earnings and membership suggests however that membership per se increases physicians hourly practice earnings only by about 2 7 percent

the response of household incomes to stock price and gdp growth by income quantile how household incomes respond to gdp and stock price growth is important for an understanding of the economic costs of business cycles and the driving forces of income inequality over time this article examines to what extent household incomes react differently across income distribution quantiles and time it employs u s panel study of income dynamics data for the period 1979 2000 and quantile regression techniques significant differences are found in how household incomes respond across income quantiles for the same income quantiles large differences are identified when the time period 1979 1987 is compared to 1988 2000 the content of the article reflects the personal opinion of the authors and should not be associated with fedex services or any of its affiliated companies

education policy reform local average treatment effect and returns to schooling from instrumental variables in the philippines a nationally representative dataset from the philippines is used to derive returns to schooling estimates from instrumental variables utilizing a supply side intervention in the education market capable of generating significant changes in schooling these estimates apply to a subgroup of mainly liquidity constrained individuals in the spirit of the local average treatment effect late literature returns to schooling estimates which apply to a subgroup of individuals affected by policy intervention may be more interesting from a policy perspective than the return to the average individual the findings are consistent with other recent evidence suggesting that the causal effect of education at least for certain subgroups of individuals is as big or bigger than what is suggested by ols estimates

can microfinance reach the poorest evidence from a community managed microfinance intervention summary reaching the poorest is an important objective in many development interventions and microfinance is no exception we review performance indicators for effectiveness of targeting described in the literature and suggest a new metric in order to account for extent and severity of poverty as well as the income distribution among the poor when applying this to a panel dataset from a community managed microfinance intervention in northern malawi we find regressive targeting participants are less poor than the general population in the area in addition we provide suggestions as to when and why the poor exit the project

does the jack of all trades hold the winning hand comparing the role of specialized versus general skills in the returns to an agricultural degree this paper examines the roles of specialized versus general skills in explaining variation in the returns to an agriculture degree among graduates working both inside and outside the agricultural industry the focus on returns by sector of employment is motivated by our finding that most agricultural graduates are employed in non agricultural jobs in that study a sample of alumni graduating from a large midwestern public university between 1982 and 2006 shows that alumni with majors more specialized in agriculture earned a premium from working in the agriculture industry but this advantage has diminished over time agricultural graduates with more general training earn more outside than inside agriculture higher ability graduates in more industry focused curricula tend to sort into the agricultural industry while higher ability graduates in broader curricula tend to choose jobs outside of agriculture all graduates are more likely to accept agricultural employment when the farm economy is strong but agricultural graduates who enter agricultural jobs when the farm economy is weak suffer lifetime earnings reductions these findings suggest that greater levels of specialization may limit a graduate s ability to adjust to changing economic circumstances agriculture degree programs could benefit from curriculum innovations that focus on developing more generalized skills