a multivariate sample selection model estimating cigarette and alcohol demands with zero observations heckman s sample selection model is generalized to the multivariate case and used to estimate demands for cigarettes beer and wine by individuals in the united states the specification allows correlations between the error terms of multiple selection and level equations and nests the popular bivariate sample selection model and two part model empirical results suggest that the proposed model performs better than the restricted specifications differentiated effects of variables on probabilities and levels of consumption also suggest rejection of the tobit system gender differences are present and demographic variables are more important than income in determining consumption of cigarettes beer and wine

the uk demand for cigarettes 1954 1986 a double hurdle approach the double hurdle perspective suggests that it is crucial to distinguish between per capita and per smoker consumption when estimating the demand for cigarettes this paper presents a two equation model which identifies consumption and participation as two separate decisions the model is estimated with annual data on u k cigarette expenditure and participation rates highlighting the differing influence of prices income and health scares on the participation rate and on smokers demand for cigarettes

uncovering spatial productivity centers using asymmetric bidirectional spillovers abstract the principal contribution of this paper is to present the first method to sift through a large number of firms in an industry to uncover which firms act as large spatial total factor productivity tfp growth centers we define a large spatial tfp growth center as a firm that is a large net generator of spatial tfp growth spillovers i e it is a source of large tfp growth spill outs to other firms vis a vis the size of the tfp growth spill ins that permeate to the firm from other firms we use this definition because other things being equal firms would want to locate near a firm that is a net generator of tfp growth spillovers in the process of presenting the above method we make three further contributions two of which are methodological and the other relates to our application first rather than follow the literature on spatial frontier modeling by considering spatial interaction between firms in a single network we introduce a more sophisticated model that is able to account for spatial interaction in multiple networks second we obtain bidirectional spatial tfp growth decompositions by complementing a unidirectional decomposition in the literature where the spillover components are spill ins to a firm with a decomposition that includes spill out components third from a spatial revenue frontier for u s banks 1998 2015 we find a number of cases where banks that represent large spatial tfp growth centers have branches that cluster together while in several states we find no such clusters

individual heterogeneity and censoring in panel data estimates of tobacco expenditure a panel of households is used to test the rational addiction model of becker et al 1994 these data raise problems of measurement errors censoring and unobservable heterogeneity we use sample separation information to exclude those households who never purchase tobacco to deal with the remaining zeros we compare specifications based on infrequency of purchase and on censoring gmm and system gmm are used to deal with errors in variables and unobservable heterogeneity within groups two step within groups three step gmm and minimum distance methods are used to allow for censoring there is evidence that the rational addiction specification is sensitive to unobservable heterogeneity and censoring copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

zero observations and gender differences in cigarette consumption censoring mechanisms and gender differences are investigated for cigarette consumption by individuals in the usa the gaussian single hurdle model is proposed which generalizes the specifications of cragg 1971 and heckman 1979 and allows examination of the empirical relevance of the two censoring mechanisms in the existing double hurdle model the proposed model performs better than cragg s and heckman s models but not as well as the double hurdle model and also produces different elasticity estimates the hypothesis of equal consumption parameters is rejected and demand elasticities found to differ between men and women income does not play a role and age has conflicting effects on the probability and level of cigarette smoking older individuals are less likely to smoke but conditional on smoking consume more cigarettes than their younger counterparts education has negative effects on the probability and level of smoking and can be an effective tool to curtail cigarette smoking

using stochastic frontier analysis to measure the impact of weather on the efficiency of electricity distribution businesses in developing economies abstract this paper analyses the influence of weather variables on the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in argentina brazil chile and peru covering 82 firms which represent more than 90 percent of the distribution market of energy delivered for the period 1998 2008 stochastic frontier analysis sfa is applied using a translog input distance function two different approaches are evaluated weather in the production function and weather in the inefficiency term the efficacy of one over the other is determined using nested models weather data are collected from meteorological stations 429 and nasa 3423 coordinates a geographic information system gis is used for locating the firms service areas and their weather conditions a combination of cost only and cost quality models is proposed for cost only models the results suggest that on average there is a significant increase in measured efficiency when weather is incorporated in the production function under the cost quality models on average the effect of weather is much lower this suggests that firms have internalised the effects of weather and have adapted their networks to the environment in which they operate a company level analysis indicates that across models a significant number of companies are affected by weather regulators are advised to make proper adjustments of efficiency scores when specific firms face important efficiency changes due to weather

the role of nonfarm income in coping with the effects of drought in southern mozambique to reduce their dependence on subsistence agriculture farm households in rural africa may diversify their income sources by participating in the nonfarm sector in years of drought nonfarm income can also be part of the coping strategies a multivariate sample selection model was used to analyze three years of data from a nationally representative household survey in mozambique the analysis was guided by the following three questions during a drought year 1 do households increase their participation in nonfarm activities 2 are poorer households as likely as others to participate in and benefit from nonfarm activities and 3 which factors are associated with higher nonfarm incomes the results suggest that households are more likely to engage in at least one nonfarm income generating activity during a drought year although poorer households are more likely to engage in nonfarm activities they are less likely to participate in nonfarm activities of high return the results suggest that policies reducing entry barriers e g improved road infrastructure micro credit schemes and livestock promotion programs and increasing education levels can facilitate income diversification thus allowing rural households to better cope with the effects of drought when designing polices care must be taken to avoid exacerbating income inequality by targeting measures toward poorer and female headed households

a double hurdle approach to modelling tobacco consumption in italy this article analyzes the determinants of tobacco expenditures for a sample of italian households a box cox double hurdle model adjusted for heteroscedasticity is estimated to account for separate individual decisions concerning smoking participation and tobacco consumption and to correct for nonnormality in the bivariate distribution of the error terms nested univariate and bivariate models are found to be excessively restrictive supporting the adequacy of a generalized specification estimation results show that consumption decisions are significantly affected by income and demographic characteristics in particular income positively impacts tobacco expenditure while participation probability substantially declines as age increases the existence of significant gender differences in both smoking participation and tobacco consumption patterns is found while high education and white collar occupation reduces the likelihood to smoke and tobacco expenditure levels single adult households have a lower

estimation of censored demand equations from large cross section data the article develops an alternative econometric methodology to estimate a system of censored demand equations using a large cross section data from colombian urban households the approach preserves the behavioralinformation expressed by zero expenditures and conforms with the requirements imposed by consumer theory in a way consistent with the random utility hypothesis we motivate the choice of the tobit modelas a statistical representation of consumer behavior and introduce the methodology by specifying the aids model modified according to both a translating and scaling demographic transformation we propose to estimate each demand equation in unrestricted form using the jackknife technique we then recover the demand parameters imposing the cross equations restrictions by using minimum distance estimation the empirical results of the censored demand system for specific households of policy relevance are reported copyright 2000 oxford university press

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

profit maximisation vs agency an analysis of charitable giving by uk firms the charitable giving of a large sample of publicly quoted uk firms is analysed within a model that explores the profit maximisation and managerial utility enhancement motives for giving the empirical method draws a distinction between the decision to participate in giving and the determination of the amount of corporate contributions firm size and advertising intensity are found to be positively associated with the probability of participation in giving stricter corporate governance and the rate of directors remuneration are negatively related to the probability of participation among givers the rate of giving is related positively to r d intensity the rate of directors remuneration and corporate profitability and negatively to firm indebtedness

a spatial productivity index in the presence of efficiency spillovers evidence for u s banks 1992 2015 abstract we present the methodology for a new spatial decomposition of total factor productivity tfp growth the relevant literature is underdeveloped as there is just one short study which proposes a partial spatial tfp growth decomposition we develop this literature in four respects the first two developments are methodological to go from a partial decomposition to a complete one first we augment the partial decomposition with a cost efficiency spillover growth component second we introduce own and spillover allocative efficiency growth components third we provide a more detailed coverage of the spatial decomposition of tfp growth fourth in contrast to the traditional application to geographical areas e g countries in the relevant literature we apply our decomposition using firm level data which suggests that there can be an important role for spatial productivity analysis in or our application is to large u s banks over the period 1992 2015 among other things we find for the average large u s bank that tfp growth since the financial crisis has become much more dependent on the bank itself and less so on spatial spillovers

welfare dominance and the design of excise taxation in the cote d ivoire governments in developing countries are continuously searching for new and improved tax bases existing methods of taxation in these countries frequently fall short of meeting acceptable criteria of efficiency equity and administrative ease this paper argues that there is a compelling fiscal rationale for encouraging greater reliance on taxing the consumption of electrical and telephone et services greater emphasis on this selective commodity tax base would contribute to the achievement of taxpayer equity and would be administratively easy to impose in addition the efficiency characteristics of this form of taxation may also add to the attractiveness of the et base

an investigation of the increasing prevalence of nonpurchase of meat by british households the purpose of the analysis has been to investigate the determinants of the household s decisions regarding the purchase of meat in great britain the approach using a box cox generalization of the double hurdle model has depicted the household making two choices namely whether or not to purchase the product the participation decision and then for those households which do purchase how much to buy the expenditure decision the determinants considered are socioeconomic variables such as the total expenditure of the household market prices characteristics of the householder age gender education type of employment and characteristics of the household location presence of children etc by conducting the analysis over several years of survey data 1975 1993 it is possible to investigate whether the influence of these variables has changed over time the bulk of the empirical analysis has concerned single adult households with or without children

public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures this article studies the determinants of the willingness to pay wtp for long term care ltc insurance coverage two alternatives are considered one compulsory financed through taxes the other purchased on a voluntary basis and paid through a premium wtp was elicited through open ended contingent valuation within a survey conducted in the italian region emilia romagna about ltc population needs we model information on individual wtp as a two stage process where respondents first establish their interest for ltc cover then state their wtp results show that interest and wtp are influenced by different variables and that differences arise also between the wtp for public and private coverage

estimating the environmental impact of land and production decisions with multivariate selection rules and panel data we propose an estimation procedure dealing with multivariate selection and dynamics in land choice and unobserved heterogeneity in structural and crop selection equations the method is applied to a multi output profit function with multiple corner solutions and farm level panel data estimation results reveal that the single selection rule associated with the tobit procedure is rejected in favor of our multivariate selection treatment inconsistent estimates are expected with the tobit procedure or if farmer fixed effects are omitted which can have important consequences for policy recommendations as illustrated in an evaluation of nitrogen runoff elasticities with respect to economic variables copyright 2011 oxford university press

household consumption of cheese an inverse hyperbolic sine double hurdle model with dependent errors the dependent double hurdle model is generalized by an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of the dependent variable the resulting specification features a flexible parameterization accommodates heteroskedastic errors and nests a range of common limited dependent variable models results for u s household cheese consumption suggest that the homoskedastic and normal double hurdle model is misspecified income elasticities are small and vary across household groups foodstamp recipients are more responsive to income changes than nonrecipients foodstamp recipients are also less likely to consume cheese but conditional on consumption spend more than nonrecipients

cross section estimation of us demand for alcoholic beverage a flexible limited dependent variable model is used to examine us demand for alcoholic beverage parameterization and distributional assumptions of the double hurdle model cragg 1971 and tobit model tobin 1958 are rejected findings suggest that price income household composition and other characteristics have significant effects on alcohol consumption income and own price elasticities are significant but relatively small

on bias correction in the multivariate sample selection model heien and wessells two step estimator for the multivariate sample selection model has been used extensively during the past 15 years a modified version of it with slightly different selectivity regressors has also appeared in the empirical literature both estimators are unfounded and generally do not correct for the sample selectivity bias as intended but have continued to gain popularity in empirical applications the properties of the modified heien wessells procedure are investigated in both the bivariate and multivariate contexts and the conditions under which this estimator fails to correct for sample selectivity are examined the theoretical properties are demonstrated with a simulated random sample

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

wine consumption by us men wine consumption is modelled by focusing on three decisions the first is whether to consume any alcoholic beverages setting aside the teetotalers the second decision is whether to consume wine and the third choice is how much to consume we model these decisions using a double hurdle approach our econometric results indicate that the probability a man drinks wine increases if he is under age 65 has a high income and is a high school graduate heavy wine consumers are over age 65 are well educated physically active and have high incomes

non parametric tests of consumer behaviour the neoclassical model of consumer behaviour postulates that a consumer s choice behaviour can be described as deriving from utility maximization subject to a budget constraint one is then naturally led to ask what this model implies about observed behaviour this question has been addressed from two quite distinct approaches the first approach originating in the work of slutsky 1915 and antonelli 1886 derives necessary and sufficient conditions involving the derivatives of the demand functions the second approach originating in the work of samuelson 1938 1947 1948 derives algebraic conditions on the demand functions implied by maximizing behaviour

an econometric analysis of smoking prevalence among lone mothers this paper uses panel data to examine the determinants of smoking among lone mothers over the period 1991 1996 consideration is given to the initial conditions problem encountered when modelling dynamic panel probit models and a recently suggested approach is applied to address this problem

breakfast lunch and dinner expenditures away from home in the united states abstract this study investigates the differentiated effects of economic and socio demographic variables on food away from home fafh expenditures by type of meal among different types of households in the united states using data from the 2008 and 2009 consumer expenditure surveys the systems of expenditures on breakfast lunch and dinner are estimated with a multivariate sample selection procedure statistical significance of error correlations among equations justifies estimation of the sample selection systems income work hours race education geographic region and household composition are important determinants of fafh expenditures income contributes to fafh expenditures of all meal types implying that the future of fafh industry is tied to macroeconomic conditions more education is associated with increased expenditures for fafh lunch and dinner effects of the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap are negligible

margins of multinational labor substitution multinational labor demand responds to wage differentials at the extensive margin when a multinational enterprise mne expands into foreign locations and at the intensive margin when an mne operates existing affiliates across locations we derive conditions for parametric and nonparamtric identification of an mne model to infer elasticities of labor substitution at both margins controlling for location selectivity prior studies rarely found foreign wages or operations to affect employment our strategy detects salient adjustments for german mnes with a one percent increase in german wages german mnes add 2 000 manufacturing jobs in eastern europe at the extensive margins and 4 000 jobs overall a converse one percent drop in eastern european wages is associated with an overall withdrawal of 730 mne jobs from germany

productivity and efficiency estimation a semiparametric stochastic cost frontier approach this paper proposes a flexible stochastic cost frontier panel data model where the technology parameters are unknown smooth functions of firm and time effects which non neutrally shift the cost frontier the model decomposes inefficiency into firm and time specific components and productivity change into inefficiency change technical change and scale change we then apply the proposed methodology to the norwegian salmon production data and analyze technical efficiency as well as productivity changes

the revenue and welfare effects of cigarette taxes 1988 the revenue and welfare effects of cigarette taxes applied economics vol 20 no 9 pp 1223 1232

modelling milk purchasing behaviour with a panel data double hurdle model in this study the double hurdle model typically used in cross sectional data is extended to panel data structures the new double hurdle model can account not only for the censored nature of commodity purchases but also for the dynamics of the purchase process in this model a flexible error structure is assumed to account for state dependence and household specific heterogeneity in the empirical application for milk purchases it is found that generic advertising increases the probability of market participation as well as the purchase quantity and incidence temporal dependence is also found in both purchase and participation equations

sample selection and treatment effect estimation of lender of last resort policies this article develops a framework for estimating multivariate treatment effect models in the presence of sample selection the methodology deals with several important issues prevalent in policy and program evaluation including application and approval stages nonrandom treatment assignment endogeneity and discrete outcomes this article presents a computationally efficient estimation algorithm and techniques for model comparison and treatment effects the framework is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of bank recapitalization programs and their ability to resuscitate the financial system the analysis of lender of last resort lolr policies is not only complicated due to econometric challenges but also because regulator data are not easily obtainable motivated by these difficulties this article constructs a novel bank level dataset and employs the new methodology to jointly model a bank s decision to apply for assistance the lolr s decision to approve or decline the assistance and the bank s

at home consumption of cheese a purchase infrequency model for many commodities zero purchases are recorded in household budget surveys even though positive consumption occurs this may reflect a survey period that is shorter than the purchase cycle the present study estimates a purchase infrequency model for cheese using the 1987 bls consumer expenditure survey appropriateness of the tobit specification is examined along with the assumption of independence of the two stage expenditure decision process applied consumption analyses often use household budget surveys with little concern as to survey period length relative to the length over which consumption can occur many of these analyses use the tobit model to account for censoring associated with use of this type of model are underlying assumptions that first the same stochastic process affects both purchase decisions and consumption levels and second a zero value of the dependent variable represents a true comer solution however when the commodity in question has a purchase cycle longer than the survey period length a zero expenditure level may not correspond to zero consumption and the tobit specification may be inappropriate blundell and meghir p 197 as a commodity cheese may exhibit characteristics precluding use of a tobit demand model for many cheese varieties consumption may occur many weeks after purchase as evidence the 1972 and 1987 consumer expenditure surveys report that 48 and 42 of surveyed households respectively had purchased cheese over a one week survey period in contrast the 1977 usda household food consumption survey indicates over 75 of surveyed households had consumed cheese at home over a one week period this large difference

a two step econometric estimation of covariates of side selling the case of coffee cooperatives in southwest ethiopia despite their apparent economic benefit to smallholder farmers cooperatives are vulnerable to the problem of side selling using cross sectional household data and cragg s regression model we ide

health insurance and the demand for medical care evidence from a randomized experiment we estimate how cost sharing the portion of the bill the patient pays affects the demand for medical services the data come from a randomized experiment a catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out of pocket price the price elasticity is approximately 0 2 we reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure for example by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization

cigarette demand health scares and education in turkey the purpose of this paper is to examine the demand characteristics of cigarettes in turkey aggregate time series date for the 1960 88 period are used in estimation income and price elasticities of cigarette demand are obtained the effect of health warning is estimated to reduce cigarette consumption by about 8 since the inception of warnings in 1982 imports of cigarettes have been allowed since 1984 in addition to advertising of cigarettes in the non electronic media the effect of health warnings are found to be stronger than the opposing effect of advertising the results also suggest that public education about adverse health effects of smoking may be more effective in reducing consumption and less regressive on consumer incomes than raising the price of cigarettes

household food demand in turkey a two step demand system approach abstract demands for sixteen food products are investigated using data from the turkish household expenditure survey the linear approximate almost ideal demand system laids is estimated with shonkwiler and yen s two step procedure all own price elasticities are negative and expenditure elasticities positive bread other cereals bovine mutton giblets and cheese have high expenditure elasticities mutton bovine and several other protein rich products are price elastic results suggest a mix of gross substitutes and complements while net substitution is the dominant pattern demographic characteristics also play important roles in shaping food demand the elasticity estimates can inform policy deliberations

the theory of reform and indian indirect taxes abstract given a set of value judgements an initial state and a model of the economy one can ask whether some feasible tax change would increase welfare we do this by defining the marginal cost in terms of welfare of raising an extra rupee from the i th good the inverse optimum problem is the calculation of non negative welfare weights on households which imply that the initial state is optimum if no such welfare weights exist then a pareto improvement is possible we illustrate the concepts and results using data from the indian economy for 1979 1980 directions of tax reform for a number of specific social welfare functions and for pareto improvements are presented

demand for cigarettes a mixed binary ordered probit approach this study analyses the demand for cigarettes fitting observed zero outcomes with a trivariate model consisting of an equation for the starting smoking decision an equation for the quitting decision and an equation that models the level of cigarettes consumed five competing specifications are considered to explain level with the ordered probit which accommodates pile ups of counts in the dependent variable providing the best fit marginal effects of explanatory variables are calculated providing strong evidence of race and gender differences in consumption patterns the estimated marginal effects are robust to alternative categorizations of the level of cigarettes

a modified implicit directly additive demand system a recently developed demand system nicknamed aidads an implicit directly additive demand system offers an approach to capturing consumer preferences across a wide range of expenditure levels aidads generalizes the les by assuming marginal budget shares vary with utility and hence with expenditure like the les aidads includes subsistence parameters that define minimum consumption levels here we present a modified aidads maidads that replaces the constant subsistence parameters with functions that also vary with utility these transformed subsistence levels are referred to as minimum consumption quantities this model is applied to the 1996 international consumption project data as these data span a wide range of expenditure levels maidads offers a viable alternative for the estimation of a global demand system results suggest minimum consumption quantities for staple grains livestock other food products alcohol and tobacco clothing and footwear and transport and transport services vary

a box cox double hurdle model of wildlife valuation the citizen s perspective abstract a stated preference approach is used to elicit the attitudes of the general public towards coyote conservation the payment vehicle is presented in a way that explicitly prompts respondents to adopt a citizen perspective rather than a consumer perspective when responding to the survey to deal with the large numbers of zero responses a box cox double hurdle specification is used to model separately individuals choices about whether to support conservation or not and their choice about the level of support the results show that simpler analyses that do not account explicitly for these two different decisions would lead to misleading conclusions in the study of nuisance wildlife the study uses primary data from prince edward island canada

a pooled dynamic analysis of interfuel substitution in industrial energy demand by the g 7 countries a dynamic version of considine s 1990 linear logit model is used to obtain theoretically consistent estimates of long run price elasticities from pooled intercountry data on industrial energy consumption this model also provides a rare direct estimate of the important rate of dynamic adjustment revealing a median lag of ten years the long run demands for oil and coal are the most elastic and the strongest channels for interfuel substitution are between oil and natural gas with no significant evidence of complementarity between fuels

are frequency and intensity of participation decision bearing aspects of consumption an analysis of drinking behaviour analysing quantity consumed per period implies a restriction on decisions about how frequently and intensely to consume this quantity hypothesis is rejected based on estimated equations for the frequency and intensity of spirit consumption consequently a simultaneous equation system for frequency and intensity is estimated as they enter the budget constraint as a multiplicative term income and education levels are found to be negatively related to intensity but not frequency this may reflect differences in the shadow prices of frequency and intensity for different socioeconomic groups or heterogeneous preferences for intoxication and health distinguishing between these aspects of drinking patterns is important for the evaluation of the price responsiveness of harmful drinking restrictions on availability and the causes of inequalities in health

off farm labour allocation decisions in small scale rural households in zimbabwe the double hurdle model is used to analyse the off farm labour decisions of small scale agricultural household members in the shamva district of zimbabwe the approach permits the joint modelling of the decision to participate in the labour market and the decision regarding the amount of time allocated to work results indicate that a number of variables notably gender education and assets indeed have effects which are qualitatively and quantitatively different in terms of participation and hours worked overall the empirical analysis confirms the importance of individual characteristics such as gender and education and household farm characteristics e g land area accessible to the household productive assets remittances and the agricultural terms of trade in influencing the labour market decisions of rural household members

alcohol consumption censorship and misjudgement in the study of the economic determinants of alcohol consumption there is an under appreciated issue of sample selectivity as consumption is often not fully observed sample selectivity involves i

cigarette consumption in spain empirical evidence and implications for public health policy the partial adjustment habit persistence model is used to analyse the behaviour of the demand for cigarettes in spain over the period from 1964 to 1988 on that basis the short and long run elasticities of demand with respect to price income and advertising intensity are estimated the model also provides and estimation of the effects that the anti smoking policies implemented during the period might have had on consumption the results are used to anticipate the probable impact on sales of a total ban on advertising and to design a suitable method to finance a health education campaign about the risks of smoking

monetary policy surprises and interest rates evidence from the fed funds futures market abstract this paper estimates the impact of monetary policy actions on bill note and bond yields using data from the futures market for federal funds to separate changes in the target funds rate into anticipated and unanticipated components interest rates response to anticipated target rate changes is small while their response to unanticipated changes is large and highly significant these responses are generally consistent with the expectations hypothesis of the term structure surprise target rate changes have little effect on expectations of future actions however which helps to explain the lack of empirical support for the expectations hypothesis at the short end of the yield curve

selection criteria for a microeconometric model of labour supply the wide variety of observed behaviour that is displayed in survey data suggests that microeconometric models should allow a reasonable degree of flexibility in specification however since these models are generally used for policy analysis they are required to satisfy some degree of theoretical consistency this requirement has generally led to the adoption of rather simple inflexible models based on additive preferences or linear labour supply responses we estimate and test a sequence of models for the labour supply of married working women emphasizing the importance of testing both the thecretical and statistical assumptions underlying the models

imf lending programs participation and impact abstract participation in imf programs has been an option that more and more developing countries have exercised in recent years in this paper a detailed analysis of such participation over the period 1976 1986 provides a number of insights into the motivations for and the macroeconomic effects of such participation participation is driven by a combination of past performance present external influences and sluggish adjustment of developing countries the ability to predict which countries will participate in the imf program is quite good with nearly 90 percent of variation in such choices accounted for by the explanatory variables employed increased participation has as contemporaneous effects a reduction in economic growth and domestic investment and an improvement in the current account lagged effects of increased participation on economic growth and domestic investment are positive and in most estimates quantitatively greater than the contemporaneous effects there is also evidence of significantly lower public investment an increased budget surplus and real depreciation of the exchange rate with increased participation results for domestic credit creation and government current expenditure although they have a sign consistent with more austere policy cannot be shown to be significantly different from those not participating

constrained choice sets in the u k demand for private medical insurance abstract the paper examines the demand for a privately supplied good private medical insurance in a market dominated by a large public supplier it is argued that the high political visibility of the public alternative means that individual demand for private medical insurance is the outcome of two processes the first process is one of choice set generation the second process is that of the choice between the insurance and the no insurance prospects the factors affecting these processes are discussed and an econometric specification suggested the estimation results indicate the importance of political belief in determining choice sets and of income and health in determining choice between the two prospects

studying household purchasing and nonpurchasing behaviour for a frequently consumed commodity two models a panel data double hurdle model is developed to analyse household purchasing behaviour the model a time series extension of cragg s conventional double hurdle model of censored consumption is able to account not only for the censored nature of commodity purchases but also for the temporal linkage of the purchase process the panel data double hurdle model is compared with the marked renewal model that has also been used for studying household purchasing behaviour the empirical results of the double hurdle model show that for household milk purchases hurdle due to noneconomic reasons exists the results of the marked purchase renewal model showed that the duration dependence is positive both models fit the data well the views presented in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of usda ers

microfoundations for stochastic frontiers the purpose of the paper is to propose microfoundations for stochastic frontier models previous work shows that a simple bayesian learning model supports gamma distributions for technical inefficiency in stochastic frontier models the conclusion depends on how the problem is formulated and what assumptions are made about the sampling process and the prior after the new formulation of the problem it turns out that the distribution of the one sided error component does not belong to a known family moreover we find that without specifying a utility function or even the cost inefficiency function the relative effectiveness of managerial input can be determined using only cost data and estimates of the returns to scale the point of this construction is that features of the inefficiency function u z can be recovered from the data based on the solid microfoundation of expected utility of profit maximization but the model does not make a prediction about the distribution

the demand for alcoholic beverages in spain the objective of this study is to analyze the main determinants of alcoholic beverages consumption at home data comes from the latest spanish household national survey which provides information on expenditure and quantities of different food products by household because households are interviewed only 1 week a large number of zeros have been recorded among the existing censured demand models the double hurdle dh model the purchase infrequency model and the tobit purchase infrequency model among others and after carrying out model selection tests the dh model has been finally estimated all expenditure elasticities are positive corresponding the highest value to spirits own price elasticities are negative and also in this case the spirits exhibit the highest value socio economic variables also play an important role in explaining consumer purchase and consumption decisions

smallholder participation in vegetable exports and age disaggregated labor allocation in northern tanzania modern agricultural supply chains have been playing an increasingly important role in developing countries and have had significant effects on rural labor markets this article analyses the effects of smallholder farmer participation in export vegetable supply chains in northern tanzania on both household hired labor demand and off farm labor supply using an age disaggregated approach in our sample neither separability nor exogeneity of smallholder farmer participation in export supply chains can be rejected hence we apply lognormal double hurdle models and find that participation in export supply chains positively affects households decision to hire labor from all age groups we also find that it increases the unconditional overall level of hired labor demand while the age disaggregated analysis shows that these effects mostly benefit rural youth however our sample does not allow us to establish statistically significant evidence of an effect on household off farm labor supply although the point estimates point to nonnegligible positive effect sizes

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

regional effects of monetary policy in the u s an empirical re assessment abstract this paper provides an empirical re assessment of the regional effects of monetary policy in the u s we use the narrative series of romer and romer 2004 as a measure of monetary policy shocks and impulse response functions estimated directly from a single equation spatial model we find that monetary policy tightening leads to a persistent decrease in regional real personal income and employment with asymmetric effects across regions that are magnified by spatial spillovers the magnitude of the effects depends on the period under analysis and on the direction of the monetary policy shock we also provide evidence of the existence of the interest rate and the housing market channels although there is weak support for the presence of the credit channels at the regional level

supermarkets and agricultural labor demand in kenya a gendered perspective abstract many developing countries are experiencing a rapid expansion of supermarkets new supermarket procurement systems could affect farming patterns and wider rural development while previous studies have analyzed farm productivity and income effects possible employment effects have received much less attention special supermarket requirements may entail intensified farm production and post harvest handling thus potentially increasing demand for hired labor this could also have important gender implications because female and male workers are often hired for distinct farm operations building on data from a recent survey of vegetable farmers in kenya a double hurdle model of hired labor use is developed and estimated farmer participation in supermarket channels increases the likelihood of hiring labor by 20 and demand for hired labor by 61 a gender disaggregation shows that positive employment effects are especially pronounced for female laborers who often belong to the most vulnerable population groups rural employment generation can be an important vehicle for poverty reduction

tobacco consumption and taxation in italy an application of the quaids model estimates are presented of the demand for tobacco in italy in the context of a demand system approach the grouping of goods is based on varian s non parametric test for weak separability the parametric demand model is banks blundell and lewbel s quaids model which combines the empirical flexibility of quadratic logarithmic engel curves with integrability estimation is by iterative gmm procedure the estimates are used in an analysis of welfare improving tax reforms which incorporates distributional data the results are discussed with respect to the special features of the italian tobacco market

a sample selection approach to censored demand systems the multivariate sample selection model is extended to a nonlinear equation system with partial selection and applied to household meat consumption in china elasticity estimates differ from those obtained from conventional maximum likelihood and tobit estimates chinese meat products are gross complements while net substitution also exists in some cases the use of micro survey data has been popular in estimating consumer demand equations important features of microdata include censored dependent variables estimation procedures for censored consumer demand systems include the primal kuhn tucker approach of wales and woodland 1983 dual virtualprice approach of lee and pitt 1986 and the tobit system amemiya 1974 estimated by generalized maximum entropy golan perloff and shen 2001 and maximum simulated likelihood dong gould and kaiser 2004 yen lin and smallwood 2003 procedures less efficient alternatives include the quasi maximum likelihood estimator yen lin and smallwood 2003 the generalized method of moments estimator meyerhoefer ranney and sahn 2005 and a number of two step estimators heien and wessells 1990 perali and chavas 2000 shonkwiler and yen 1999 yen 2005 recently proposed a maximum likelihood ml procedure for the multivariate sample selection model mssm an extension of the bivariate sample selection model heckman 1979 which had motivated the procedures of heien and wessells 1990 and shonkwiler and yen 1999 the mssm was developed in the context of linear equations and in addition is not strictly applicable for a partially selective equation system viz

investment choice and asset allocation of italian households the discrete continuous approach financial and monetary policies are considered to be effective depending on the reaction of financial markets which are increasingly populated by households in this article from intertemporal settings i derive a financial almost ideal fai demand system and i estimate it by highlighting the determinants of both limited participation to financial markets and asset substitutability complementarity in the allocating stage finally the wealth elasticities provide some further insights on the low diffusion of the newer and more complex financial instruments across italian households

do input subsidy programs crowd in or crowd out commercial market development modeling fertilizer demand in a two channel marketing system many governments in developing countries distribute fertilizer at subsidized prices in an effort to stimulate small farmers agricultural productivity and food security prior fertilizer demand studies have largely failed to account for the effects of government programs on farmers commercial purchases using a double hurdle model and nationally representative rural household panel data in zambia we distinguish between these sources and measure the contemporaneous crowding in and crowding out effects of government input programs on commercial fertilizer sales where the private sector is relatively active and average wealth is higher areas seemingly more likely to be targeted by government programs results indicate that subsidies have substantially crowded out the private sector in some cases to the point that such programs could actually lower overall fertilizer use on the other hand in poorer areas where the private sector is relatively inactive subsidies help to generate demand and crowd in private sector retailers empirical studies explicitly modeling farmers fertilizer purchase behavior within a dual marketing framework can provide important insights for agricultural policy discussions in developing countries

semiparametric estimation of consumer demand systems with micro data maximum likelihood and two step estimators of censored demand systems yield biased and inconsistent parameter estimates when the assumed joint distribution of disturbances is incorrect this paper proposes a semiparametric estimator that retains the computational advantage of the two step approach but is immune to distributional misspecification the key difference between the proposed estimator and the two step estimator is that the parameters of the binary censoring equations are estimated using a distribution free single index model we implement the proposed estimator using household level data obtained from the hainan province in china specification test lends support to our approach

panel data estimation techniques and farm level data models econometric models wishing to estimate relevant parameters for agricultural policy analysis are increasingly relying on unbalanced panels of farm level data since in the agricultural economics literature such models have often been estimated through simplified approaches in this paper we try to verify whether the adoption of more sophisticated panel data techniques may impact the estimation results for this reason the policy model by moro and sckokai 1999 has been re estimated using techniques recently developed in the econometric literature the preliminary results show a strong impact on the estimations this seems to suggest that the adoption of proper panel data techniques is likely to be very important in order to obtain reliable estimates of some key policy parameters

endogeneity and sample selection in a model for remittances abstract we estimate a remittance model in which we address endogeneity and reverse causality relationships between immigrants remittances pre transfer income and consumption in order to take into account the fact that a large share of individuals do not remit instrumental variable variants of the double hurdle and heckit selection models are proposed and estimated by limited information ml semiparametric extensions are considered as robustness checks our results for a sample of recent immigrants to australia show that endogeneity is substantial and that estimates obtained by the methods previously employed in the literature may be misleading if given a behavioral interpretation

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

a frontier measure of u s banking competition the three main measures of competition hhi lerner index and h statistic are uncorrelated for u s banks we investigate why this occurs propose a frontier measure of competition and apply it to five major bank service lines fee based banking services comprise 35 percent of bank revenues so assessing competition by service line is preferred to using a single measure for traditional activities extended to the entire bank as the lerner index and the h statistic together explain only 1 percent of hhi variation and the hhi is similarly unrelated to the frontier method developed here current merger acquisition guidelines should be adjusted as banking concentration seems unrelated to likely more accurate competition measures

information and consumer perception of the organic attribute in fresh fruits and vegetables using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3 200 danish households monthly observations for 2002 2007 we study the effects of health related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables we find that negative information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market positive information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process our dataset includes information about consumers media habits which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption

a censored system of cigarette and alcohol consumption many previous studies of us cigarette and alcohol consumption have focused on single equations however the addictive nature of consumption suggests that it is more appropriate to model these products as a system we propose a two step estimation procedure and apply the procedure to a system of equations for cigarette beer and wine consumption results differ from those derived from an existing two step procedure findings suggest that consumption of cigarettes beer and wine is responsive to income changes but the elasticities are rather small personal physiques education age race ethnicity health gender employment status and regions also play significant roles in consumption

determinants of the price premium for green energy evidence from an oecd cross section using data from a survey of households in 11 oecd countries this paper investigates the determinants of preferences for a completely green residential electricity system three important questions are addressed i how much are households willing to pay to use only renewable energy ii does willingness to pay wtp vary significantly across household groups and countries and iii what drives the decision to enter the hypothetical market for green energy and given entry what drives the level of wtp the analysis here differs from previous studies on green energy in two ways first data and analyses are comparable across countries and second a comprehensive attempt is made to understand 0 wtp and to accommodate using a censored quantile regression cqr framework unobserved heterogeneity the survey data indicate a low wtp at 11 12 of current electric bill this study also addresses a key question how important is income for understanding wtp relative to more attitudinal determinants the effect of income overall appears ambiguous with tobit like models indicating that income is not significant while the cqr indicates that income exerts a significant effect near the center of the distribution of wtp across all frameworks used a key determinant of wtp appears to be environmental attitudes particularly membership in an environmental organization

the impact of decoupled payments on farm choices conceptual and methodological challenges abstract in this paper we review the methodological framework for analysing decoupled payments in models of agricultural production market and technological uncertainty farm efficiency credit constraints farm household choices involving extra agricultural decisions policy uncertainty and long run impact of decoupling on investment and land values are the relevant issues that should be pursued by methodological and empirical analysis future research should refine the analysis of decoupled payments mainly trying to provide results that can be useful for policy simulation to bridge the gap between analysis at the individual level and sector policy models

farmers perceptions and adoption of new agricultural technology evidence from analysis in burkina faso and guinea west africa economists investigating consumer demand have accumulated considerable evidence showing that consumers generally have subjective preferences for characteristics of products and that their demand for products is significantly affected by their perceptions of the product s attributes however the role of farmers preferences in adoption decisions have received very limited attention in adoption studies conducted by economists this paper tests the hypothesis that farmers perceptions of technology characteristics significantly affect their adoption decisions the analysis conducted with tobit models of modern sorghum and rice varietal technologies in burkina faso and guinea respectively strongly supports this hypothesis our results provide a strong case for future adoption studies to expand the range of variables used away from the broad socio economic demographic and institutional factors to include farmers subjective perceptions of the characteristics of new agricultural technologies

semiparametric smooth coefficient stochastic frontier model this paper proposes a semiparametric smooth coefficient spsc stochastic production frontier model where regression coefficients are unknown smooth functions of environmental factors z technical inefficiency is specified in the form of a parametric scaling function which also depends on the z variables thus in our spsc model the z variables affect productivity directly via the technology parameters as well as through inefficiency a residual based bootstrap test of the relevance of the environmental factors in the spsc model is suggested an empirical application is also used to illustrate the technique

u s cigarette consumption the case of low income women we use double hurdle or cragg models to test whether decisions about smoking participation and consumption levels are separate endogenous choices we also estimate several dominance models which assume that standard corner solutions are not applicable a complete dominance model with independence between the participation and consumption decisions is the preferred specification for our data the most important variables influencing participation are region number of children education and ethnicity region age race ethnicity and health status most affected consumption levels

same but different testing monetary policy shock measures abstract in this study we determine the reliability and exogeneity of four popular monetary policy shock measures namely the narrative series of romer and romer 2004 the high frequency series of barakchian and crowe 2013 the high frequency series of gertler and karadi 2015 and the hybrid series of miranda agrippino and ricco 2018b to this end we employ the proxy svar model and different empirical diagnostic tools to determine the shock measures information content we find that the measure of miranda agrippino and ricco 2018b combining the insights from the narrative approach and high frequency identification outperforms the other three series