long term intergenerational persistence of human capital an empirical analysis of four generations most previous studies of intergenerational transmission of human capital are restricted to two generations how parents influence their children in this study we use a swedish data set that links individual measures of lifetime earnings for three generations and data on educational attainment for four generations we find that estimates obtained from data on two generations severely underestimate long run intergenerational persistence in both labor earnings and educational attainments long run social mobility is hence much lower than previously thought we attribute this additional persistence to dynastic human capital the influence on human capital of more distant family members than parents

attention misallocation social welfare and policy implications we examine how agents allocate attention between private and public signals to reduce the uncertainty about observation noises when coordination is an important concern in this setting the attention allocation may not be monotone in endowed attention capacity agents may decrease their attention on or even ignore the more accurate signal when capacity increases as a result social welfare may decrease when they have more attention to process information and it can be even higher when agents possess a finite amount of capacity than when they have an infinite amount of capacity we derive sufficient and necessary conditions under which multiple equilibria emerge and study the implications of equilibrium multiplicity for macroeconomic policies

the political economy of customs and culture informal solutions to the commons problem chapter 1 faciliting cross disciplinary understanding of the commons chapter 2 property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis chapter 3 the tragicomedy of the commons chapter 4 contracting into the commons chapter 5 capturing the commons legal and illegal strategies chapter 6 the political economy of changing property rights dismantling a kenyan commons chapter 7 analyzing institutional successes and failure a millennium of common mountain pastures in iceland chapter 8 covenants with and without a sword self enforcement is possible chapter 9 economic principle in the emergence of humankind

language and the earnings of immigrants several studies most of them employing straightforward regression analysis have concluded that immigrants proficiency in the language of their adopted country is correlated with their productivity as measured by earnings two weaknesses of these studies are potential unobserved heterogeneity which could result in over estimated effects if overall ability is linked with language acquisition and potential measurement error in the language proficiency measures which would probably result in under estimation of language effects the present study which uses panel data for a 10 year period in germany yields evidence that the latter bias tends to be much larger than the former implying that language proficiency is far more important than suggested by the existing literature

social class family background and intergenerational mobility abstract this research examines the various approaches taken by economists and sociologists for analyzing intergenerational mobility social mobility models based on social classes arising from an occupational classification scheme are analysed a test for the statistical validity of classification schemes is proposed and tested using danish sample survey data that was first collected in 1976 and augmented in 2000 this is referred to as a homogeneity test and is a likelihood ratio test of a set of linear restrictions which define social classes for denmark it is shown that this test fails for an erikson goldthorpe classification system raising doubts about the statistical validity of occupational classification systems in general we also estimate regression models of occupational earnings household earnings and educational attainment using family background variables as covariates controlling for unobservables measurement error and simultaneous equation bias in these models homogeneity tests are also rejected we conclude from these results that the individual s family background has a small but significant impact on lifetime chances which is not captured by the erikson goldthorpe classification scheme

intergenerational economic mobility in the united states 1940 to 2000 we estimate trends in intergenerational economic mobility by matching men in the census to synthetic parents in the prior generation we find that mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980 while our estimator places greater weight on location effects than the standard intergenerational coefficient the size of the bias appears to be small our preferred results suggest that earnings are regressing to the mean more slowly now than at any time since world war ii causing economic differences between families to become more persistent however current rates of positional mobility appear historically normal

early decision and financial aid competition among need blind colleges and universities abstract this paper presents a stylized theoretical model of competition among need blind colleges and universities that implement early decision admissions under need blind admissions an applicant s financial aid status cannot affect their likelihood of admission in the model a need blind school can use early decision admissions as a screening mechanism to indirectly identify a student s ability to pay while superficially maintaining a need blind policy as a result in equilibrium non financial aid students are more likely to be admitted than financial aid students of comparable quality

correlations of brothers earnings and intergenerational transmission correlations between parent and child earnings reflect intergenerational mobility and more broadly correlations between siblings earnings reflect shared community and family background these earnings relationships capture important aspects of relations in socioeconomic status more generally we estimate intergenerational transmission and sibling correlations of life cycle earnings jointly within a unified framework that nests previous models using data on the danish population of father first son second son triads we find that intergenerational effects account for on average 72 percent of sibling correlations this share is higher than all previous studies because we allow for heterogeneous intergenerational transmission between families sibling correlations exhibit a u shape over the working life consistent with differences in human capital investments between families

intergenerational linkages in consumption behavior consumption is partly a social activity yet most studies of consumer behavior treat households in isolation we investigate familial relationships in consumption patterns using a sample of parents and their children from the panel study of income dynamics we nd a positive and statistically signi cant parent speci c eect on children s consumption even after controlling for the eect of parental income and we nd similar eects for sibling pairs child consumption responds negatively to large post retirement shortfalls in consumption of the parents this behavior holds up even after allowing for the possibility of smaller parent to child transfers made necessary by the parental consumption shortfalls these results suggest that although income is an important source of the intergenerational correlation parental choices and experiences also aect consumption behavior of the children

estimation of sons intergenerational earnings mobility in the presence of censoring based on intergenerational data from the panel study of income dynamics i provide estimates of income mobility across generations for men special attention is paid to issues of censoring caused by a son s unemployment employing non parametric bounds estimates i illustrate that previous income mobility estimates rely heavily on unjustified assumptions of exogenous selection assuming a son s potential income is instead a function of his reason for unemployment and work history i re estimate mobility allowing for sampling variability the range of feasible slopes consistent with these modified bounds restrictions is 0 27 to 0 55 copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

property rights to multi attribute fishery resources abstract the united nations code of conduct for responsible fisheries urges governments to manage multiple yield bycatch and habitat attributes of fishery resources the information and enforcement costs of multi attribute management are high however as a result relatively few attributes generally stock biomass age structure and growth are specified in yield targets exposing others e g localized abundance sex to excessive use in the public domain spillovers caused by fishing gear e g gear conflicts bycatch habitat damage generally are regulated with catch limits and area closures that artificially divide or exclude activities which interact due to attribute jointness total fishery income is compromised because tradeoffs are not evaluated at the margin alternative arrangements that bundle fishery resource attributes are suggested bundled property rights could evolve from a comprehensive assignment of usufruct rights which reduce the transaction costs of gathering information on unspecified attributes and of contracting for spillovers markets for harvest rights could resolve the simpler gear conflict and bycatch problems other interactions e g predation habitat requirements would require corporate or collective property rights and governance arrangements that make harvesters and other interested parties the residual claimants of their harvest decisions subject to government restrictions that protect public goods

slipping into and out of poverty the dynamics of spells this paper examines the dynamics of poverty previous analyses have examined either fluctuations in the male heads earnings or the frequency of poverty periods over a fixed time frame our approach depends on a definition of spells of poverty using this methodology we find that the majority of poor persons at any time are in the midst of a rather long spell of poverty the methodology also allows us to estimate that less than 40 percent of poverty spells begin because of a drop in the heads earnings while 60 percent of the spells end when the heads earnings increase thus researchers must focus on household formation decisions and on the behavior of secondary family members there has been a dramatic resurgence recently of discussion of the underclass the discussion is reminiscent of debates about poverty during the 1960s when the notions of a culture of poverty particularly as popularized by michael harrington s other america 1962 dominated both intellectual and policy thinking the idea of an underclass seems inconsistent however with much of the research on the dynamics of poverty during the 1970s that research using new longitudinal data seemed to show that the bulk of the poor were poor for only a few years the research also showed that the poor were a very heterogeneous group including a small minority of persistently poor the persistence of poverty is of interest both for understanding the phenomenon and for developing policy claims about dependency and separate life styles among the poor rest on assumptions about the long term nature of poverty questions

knowing what others know coordination motives in information acquisition we explore how optimal information choices change the predictions of strategic models when a large number of agents play a game with strategic complementarity information choices exhibit complementarity as well if an agent wants to do what others do they want to know what others know this makes heterogeneous beliefs di cult to sustain and may generate multiple equilibria in models with substitutability agents prefer to difierentiate their information choices we use these theoretical results to examine the role of information choice in recent price setting models and to propose modeling techniques that ensure equilibrium uniqueness

trends in intergenerational income mobility previous studies of recent u s trends in intergenerational income mobility have produced widely varying results partly because of large sampling errors by making more efficient use of the available information in the panel study of income dynamics we generate more reliable estimates of the recent time series variation in intergenerational mobility our results which pertain to the cohorts born between 1952 and 1975 do not reveal major changes in intergenerational mobility

the determinants of earnings a behavioral approach we survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success we suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the benefits of superior education the inheritance of wealth or the genetic inheritance of cognitive ability we suggest that noncognitive personality variables such as attitudes towards risk ability to adapt to new economic conditions hard work and the rate of time preference affect both earning and the transmission of economic status across generations

centralization fiscal federalism and private school attendance a cge model is used to analyze the impact of public school financing on private school attendance the common perception that public school finance centralization will necessarily lead to greater private school attendance is not correct in such a model even when that centralization involves an extreme equalization as in california furthermore if centralization is less dramatic as in most states declines in private school attendance are even more pronounced this weakens the speculation that low exit rates to private schools in centralizing states imply that general public school quality does not drop as a result of such centralization

portfolio management of wild fish stocks abstract managing fish stocks in terms of a portfolio of economic assets is likely to significantly increase benefits for society relative to single species approaches a portfolio framework systematically combines fish stocks that are joined by ecology e g predation competition and unspecialized fishing technologies e g mixed species trawls into a portfolio which balances expected aggregate returns against the risks associated with stock attribute and other uncertainties to be productive however this framework must be combined with property rights institutions that clearly state management objectives create long run time horizons among harvesters internalize spillovers caused by ecological and technological jointness and reduce uncertainty through research and adaptive management although the cost of reducing scientific uncertainty about ecological interactions may limit the portfolio approach to intensive management of relatively few species its scope can be broadened to integrate tradeoffs among more types of marine resources such as nature preserves and oil and gas deposits

wealth inequality and intergenerational links previous work has had difficulty generating household saving behaviour that makes the distribution of wealth much more concentrated than that of labour earnings and that makes the richest households hold onto large amounts of wealth even during very old age i construct a quantitative general equilibrium overlapping generations model in which parents and children are linked by accidental and voluntary bequests and by earnings ability i show that voluntary bequests can explain the emergence of large estates while accidental bequests alone cannot and that adding earnings persistence within families increases wealth concentration even more i also show that the introduction of a bequest motive generates lifetime savings profiles more consistent with the data

biases in standard measures of intergenerational income dependence abstract estimates of the most common mobility measure the intergenerational elasticity can be severely biased if snapshots are used to approximate lifetime income however little is known about biases in other popular dependence measures using long swedish income series we provide such evidence for log linear and rank correlations and rank based transition probabilities attenuation bias is considerably weaker in rank based measures life cycle bias is strongest in the elasticity moderate in log linear correlations and small in rank based measures however there are important exceptions persistence in the tails of the distribution is considerably higher and long distance downward mobility lower than estimates from short run income suggest

education and ethnicity in canada an intergenerational perspective ethnic and intergenerational aspects of human capital investment are explored levels of and cross sectional returns to education across ethnic groups in canada are estimated and large differences observed for men a positive correlation exists between ethnic group average years of education and its return we also find large negative correlations between ethnic group average educational outcomes and the previous generation s fertility suggesting a role for home production as a complement to formal education and supporting models of child quantity quality trade offs very slow intergenerational convergence in ethnic group level educational and labor market outcomes is also observed

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

does education expansion increase intergenerational mobility education expansion may lead to over education where the social connections of parents may exert more significant influence on the return to education of children with the assumption of a positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income in the presence of over education we show that i the expansion of education may cause horizontal inequity in education opportunities and inefficiency in human capital accumulation ii the positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income causes a more persistent intergenerational immobility iii an expansion of education especially higher education leads to more persistent intergenerational immobility

racial differences in patterns of wealth accumulation making use of psid data for 1984 1989 and 1994 we examine race differences in patterns of asset accumulation our results indicate as expected that inheritances raise the rate of wealth accumulation of whites relative to that of african americans but while whites devote a greater share of their income to saving racial differences in saving rates are not significant once we control for income though our results may be period specific we also do not find evidence that the rate of return to capital is greater for whites than for african americans simulations suggest that african americans would have gained significant ground relative to whites during the period if they had inherited similar amounts saved at the same rate had comparable income levels and more speculatively had portfolios closer in composition to those of whites

the intergenerational persistence of lifetime earnings abstract this paper proposes a new method for estimating the intergenerational persistence of lifetime earnings from data that contain only short sections of individual earnings histories the approach infers lifetime earnings persistence from the persistence of short earnings averages together with information about the stochastic process governing individual earnings i find that lifetime earnings are substantially more persistent than previous estimates based on short panel data suggest about 54 of lifetime earnings differences between fathers persist into their sons generation this persistence estimate exceeds previous estimates based on five year earnings averages by one third these findings are robust against alternative assumptions about the data generating process for earnings

regression toward mediocrity in economic stature this paper provides estimates of the correlation in lifetime earnings between fathers and sons intergenerational data from the national longitudinal survey are used earlier studies conducted for the united states report elasticities of children s earnings with respect to parent s earnings of 0 2 or less suggesting extensive integenerational mobility these estimates however are biased downward by error contaminated measures of lifetime economic status estimates presented in this paper correct for the problem of measurement error and find the intergenerational correlation in income to be on the order of 0 4 this suggests considerably less intergenerational mobility than previously believed jel j62

intergenerational earnings mobility in norway levels and trends using longitudinal data for norwegian children born in 1950 1955 1960 and 1965 we find a relatively high degree of earnings mobility there is no tendency toward decreasing mobility over the cohorts conditioning on the position in the earnings distribution the analysis indicates quite high mobility in the middle of the distribution and somewhat more persistence at the top and bottom this approach also reveals increased mobility over time for sons but a less clear picture for daughters

the political economy of intergenerational income mobility the intergenerational elasticity of income is considered one of the best measures of the degree to which a society gives equal opportunity to its members while much research has been devoted to measuring this reduced form parameter less is known about its underlying structural determinants using a model with exogenous talent endowments endogenous parental investment in children and endogenous redistributive institutions we identify the structural parameters that govern the intergenerational elasticity of income the model clarifies how the interaction between private and collective decisions determines the equilibrium level of social mobility two societies with similar economic and biological fundamentals may have vastly different degrees of intergenerational mobility depending on their political institutions we offer empirical evidence in line with the predictions of the model we conclude that international comparisons of intergenerational elasticity of income are not particularly informative about fairness without taking into account differences in politico economic institutions jel e24 j62 j68 p16

educational vouchers and cream skimming educational vouchers and cream skimming epple and romano 1998 show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most able students and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming here we study voucher design that injects private school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming however by adding restrictions like tuition constraints such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification this is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases

economic and mechanical models of intergenerational transmission the author critically examines gary beckers attempt to integrate the theory of income distribution intragenerational differences with the theory of mobility intergenerational differences in an economic model of the family he assesses beckers claims of distinctiveness integration explanatory power and surprise and arrives at a rather skeptical view of the contribution that the core of microeconomics has made to this study of the family a reply by becker is included pp 514 8 excerpt

the role of the urban non urban cost of living difference in measured intergenerational earnings mobility abstract in light of a substantial compensating urban non urban wage gap a documented strong intergenerational persistence of urbanicity could produce a higher intergenerational association in nominal than in real earnings controlling interarea cost of living differences i find that the estimated elasticity for real earnings is less to a statistically significant degree

does parents money matter abstract this paper asks whether parents income per se has a positive impact on children s abilities previous research has established that income is positively correlated across generations this does not prove that parents money matters however since income is presumably correlated with ability this paper estimates the impact of parents income by focusing on income variation due to factors union industry and job loss that arguably represent luck i find that changes in parents income due to luck have a negligible impact on children s human capital for most families although parents money does matter for families whose father has low education

how important is human capital a quantitative theory assessment of world income inequality we develop a quantitative theory of human capital investment in order to evaluate the magnitude of cross country dierences in total factor productivity tfp that explains the variation in per capita incomes across countries we build a heterogeneousagent economy with cross sectional variation in ability schooling and expenditures on schooling quality in our theory the parameters governing human capital production and random ability process have important implications for a set of cross sectional statistics mincer return variance of earnings variance of schooling and intergenerational correlation of earnings these restrictions of the theory and u s household data are used to pin down the key parameters driving the quantitative implications of the theory our main finding is that human capital accumulation strongly amplifies tfp dierences across countries in particular we find an elasticity of output per worker with respect to tfp of 2 8 a 3 fold dierence in tfp explains a 20 fold dierence in output per worker we argue that the cross country dierences in human capital implied by the theory are consistent with a wide array of evidence including earnings of immigrants in the united states average mincer returns across countries and the relationship between average years of schooling and per capita income across countries the theory implies that using mincer returns to measure human capital understates dierences across countries by a factor of 2

education choice endogenous growth and income distribution this paper studies an economy where parents can choose between public or private schools and can vote on taxes used to fund public schools the model is calibrated to us data and studied using simulations a bimodal income distribution emerges where public education students converge to a low income equilibrium while private education students experience endogenous growth with higher incomes however public education students experience long run growth through a spillover from private education students possible problems with the existence of a private alternative to pubic education such as the emergence of a education based class structure are identified

intergenerational persistence of earnings the role of early and college education recent empirical evidence from the united states indicates a high degree of persistence in earnings across generations designing effective public policies to increase social mobility requires identifying and measuring the major sources of persistence and inequality in earnings we provide a quantitative model of intergenerational human capital transmission that focuses on three sources innate ability early education and college education we find that approximately one half of the intergenerational correlation in earnings is accounted for by parental investment in education in particular early education we show that these results have important implications for education policy

family economics and macro behavior in this 1987 presidential address to the american economic association the author explores the contributions of the field of family economics to macroeconomic analysis the focus is on family behavior as an active endogenous factor that both affects and is affected by the evolution of the economy much of the time is spent on long term economic growth although i also discuss short and long cycles in economic activity and the interaction between overlapping generations through social security transmission of inequality and in other ways many conclusions in these and presumably other macro areas change radically when family choices get the attention they deserve excerpt

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

unobservable family and individual contributions to the distributions of income and wealth this paper uses combinations of full brothers half brothers and fathers and sons to measure the effect of common family background on a household s income and wealth while the data are drawn from a nineteenth century population the intraclass correlation for income ranges from 13 to 18 which is similar to that found in modern samples intraclass correlations for wealth are significantly higher 18 35 than are those for income intraclass correlations of half brothers compared to those for full brothers suggest that fathers play a dominant role in the transmission of the common family effect when unobserved background is decomposed into individual and family effects the individual effect dominates the family effect for income while the family effect dominates the individual effect for wealth

the structure of a contract and the theory of a non exclusive resource the process of arriving at a useful concept of analysis is not only slow and painful but also may go astray and attain nothing useful someone begins with one example or observation followed by a theory which is intuitively plausible a theoretical term associated with a vague concept is coined examples of a seemingly different type emerge which call for another theory the process goes on as examples and theories continue to accumulate the different categories under the same heading of analysis serve only to confuse and each associated theory becomes ad hoc such has been the fate of the concept of externality a more useful approach i think is via contractual conditions the example chosen for illustration is marine fisheries where the fishing right is taken

voting education and the great gatsby curve abstract high inequality goes hand in hand with low intergenerational earnings mobility across countries little is known about why the us is characterized by high inequality and low mobility while the opposite tends to hold for scandinavian countries in an overlapping generations model calibrated to the us education policies are endogenized via probabilistic voting by exploiting cross country variation in the bias in voter turnout towards the educated and elderly the model replicates the negative relation between inequality and public education expenditures and accounts for more than a quarter of the variation in inequality and mobility for the us i find that compulsory voting could foster mobility whereas inequality would be hardly affected

earnings mobility in times of growth and decline argentina from 1996 to 2003 summary in recent years argentina s economy has experienced both rapid growth and severe decline in this paper we use a series of one year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted various considerations led us to expect that mobility would be divergent that is that the individuals who started with the highest initial earnings would enjoy the largest earnings gains in pesos contrary to expectations and for a wide range of specifications mobility is found to be mostly convergent sometimes neutral and never divergent

more equal but less mobile education financing and intergenerational mobility in italy and in the us a centralised and egalitarian school system reduces the cost of education for poor families and so it should reduce income inequality and make intergenerational mobility easier in this paper we provide evidence that italy compared to the usa displays less income inequality as expected given the type of school system but also less intergenera tional upward mobility between occupations and between education levels we explore some of the reasons which can explain this puzzling result and conclude that in a world in which family background is important for labor market success a centralised and egalitarian tertiary education does not necessarily help poor children and may take away from them a fundamental tool to prove their talent and to compete with rich children 1999 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

information choice technologies theories based on information costs or frictions have become increasing popular in macroeconomics and macro finance the literature has used various types of information choices such as rational inattention inattentiveness information markets and costly precision using a unified framework we compare these different information choice technologies and explain why some generate increasing returns and others particularly those where agents choose how much public information to observe generate multiple equilibria the results can help applied theorists to choose the appropriate information choice technology for their application and to understand the consequences of that modeling choice

another problem in the estimation of intergenerational income mobility abstract the current econometric model of intergenerational income mobility is premised on a simplified notion of permanent income analytical results and empirical evidence suggest that estimates are not robust to failure of this assumption

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

progressive taxation in a dynastic model of human capital abstract we develop a quantitative theory of economic inequality to investigate the effects of replacing the current u s progressive income tax system with a proportional one the cross sectional implications of the theory are used to discipline the assessment of the effects of tax policy and circumvent the lack of conclusive micro evidence on the parameterization of the human capital production technology we find that the elimination of progressive taxation increases steady state level of output by 12 6 capital by 21 8 and consumption by 13 2 moreover it increases economic inequality and its persistence across generations

snapshots versus movies empirical studies of the intergenerational inheritance of economic status should use observations on complete lifetime status profiles of parents and children to be consistent with underlying theory but they cannot only snapshots rather than movies on status are currently available in samples estimates of the degree of intergenerational inheritance may therefore be subject to lifecycle biases the paper investigates these in the context of a lifecycle earnings model and shows that these biases may be large that their direction varies and that correction methods suggested hitherto have questionable reliability until more complete data sets become available researchers should be more temperate in the conclusions they draw

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

intergenerational mobility among the rich and poor results frm the national child development survey using data from the uk national child development survey we look at the relationship between sons and fathers and their position in the population income distribution particular attention is paid to those who start or end up near the top or bottom of the distribution people at these extreme ends of the distribution are found to be particularly subject to immobility across the generations among those whose fathers are at the bottom of the distribution a clear positive relationship between test scores at age seven and likelihood of moving up the distribution appears evident copyright 1996 by oxford university press

factors affecting the transmission of earnings across generations a quantile regression approach in this paper we estimate intergenerational earnings mobility models using quantile regressions quantile regression is a less restrictive estimation approach than more commonly used methods such as ordinary least squares and instrumental variables which only estimate the mean effects of intergenerational earnings correlation further we investigate the role of education as an intergenerational transmission mechanism for earnings we find that the intergenerational earnings correlation is greater at the bottom of the son s conditional earnings distribution than at the top and that controlling for son s education reduces the intergenerational earnings correlation we also find that education is relatively more valuable at the bottom of the conditional earnings distribution and thus tends to compress the distribution

house price growth when children are teenagers a path to higher earnings abstract this paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering college have an impact on their earnings as adults higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funding to invest in their children s human capital but also raise housing costs the results show that a 1 percentage point increase in house prices when children are 17 years old results in roughly 0 9 percent higher annual income for the children of homeowners and 1 5 percent lower annual income for the children of renters house price appreciation at age 17 also leads to higher college enrollment rates at age 19 and an increased likelihood of attendance at higher ranked post secondary institutions for children of homeowners as well as lower college enrollment rates for children of renters

consumer inertia choice dependence and learning from experience in a repeated decision problem abstract understanding when and how individuals think about real life problems is a central question in economics this paper studies the role of inertia inattention state dependence and learning the empirical setting is a tariff experiment when optional measured tariffs for local telephone calls were introduced unanticipatedly we find that consumers tend to align their choices of tariff and telephone use levels correctly despite low potential savings mistakes are not permanent as individuals actively engage in tariff switching in order to reduce the monthly cost of telephone service ignoring unobservable heterogeneity and the endogeneity of past choices would have reversed these results

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

intergenerational mobility and the process of development this paper offers an explanation for some evidence that intergenerational earnings mobility is higher in more developed economies and that mobility is positively correlated with wage equality in the model mobility promotes economic growth via its effect on the accumulation and allocation of human capital growth influences mobility via its effect on incentives to acquire education and its effect on liquidity constraints upon such acquisition in the process of development mobility increases and the distribution of education becomes better correlated with ability redistributive policy has a negative effect on growth in developed economies and a positive effect in developing economies

endogenous information acquisition in coordination games in the context of a beauty contest coordination game in which payoffs 1 depend on the quadratic distance of actions from an unobserved state variable and 2 from the average action players choose how much costly attention to pay to vari 3 ous informative signals each signal has an underlying accuracy how precisely it 4 identifies the state and a clarity how easy it is to understand the unique linear 5 equilibrium has interesting properties the signals which receive attention are the 6 clearest available even if they have poor underlying accuracy the number of sig 7 nals observed falls as the complementarity of players actions rises and if actions 8 are more complementary the information endogenously acquired in equilibrium 9 is more public in nature the consequences of rational inattention constraints on 10

optimal sticky prices under rational inattention this paper presents a model in which price setting firms decide what to pay attention to subject to a constraint on information flow when idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to aggregate conditions when we calibrate the model to match the large average absolute size of price changes observed in micro data prices react fast and by large amounts to idiosyncratic shocks but only slowly and by small amounts to nominal shocks nominal shocks have strong and persistent real effects we use the model to investigate how the optimal allocation of attention and the dynamics of prices depend on the firms environment jel e 3 e5 d8

intergenerational health mobility an empirical approach based on the echp despite the importance of the study of health mobility few attempts have been made to measure intergenerational mobility not only in the european union but also in other countries such as united states this article is focused on the study of intergenerational health mobility using data from the european community household panel echp in particular the relationships between self assessed health of parents and their sons are analysed the evidence obtained suggests that in spain sons reported health depends significantly on the self assessed health of their fathers

implications of rational inattention abstract a constraint that actions can depend on observations only through a communication channel with finite shannon capacity is shown to be able to play a role very similar to that of a signal extraction problem or an adjustment cost in standard control problems the resulting theory looks enough like familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting

stochastic monotonicity in intergenerational mobility tables summary the aim of this paper is to test for stochastic monotonicity in intergenerational socio economic mobility tables in other words we question whether having a parent from a high socio economic status is never worse than having one with a lower status using existing inferential procedures for testing unconditional stochastic monotonicity we first test a set of 149 intergenerational mobility tables in 35 different countries and find that monotonicity cannot be rejected in hardly any table in addition we propose new testing procedures for testing conditional stochastic monotonicity and investigate whether monotonicity still holds after conditioning on a number of covariates such as education cognitive and non cognitive skills based on the ncds cohort data from the uk our results provide evidence that monotonicity holds even conditionally moreover we do not find large differences in our results when comparing social class and wage class mobility copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

strategic pricing with rational inattention to quality this paper studies both theoretically and experimentally the pricing strategy of a rm that faces a consumer who is rationally inattentive to product quality sims 2003 in a standard sequential pricing game rational inattention to quality produces two types of mixed strategy perfect bayesian equilibria one where sellers pool at a low price and buyers are fully inattentive to quality and one where there is semi pooling at a high price and buyers are selectively attentive to quality i characterize these

informational frictions and commodity markets this paper develops a model with a tractable log linear equilibrium to analyze the effects of informational frictions in commodity markets by aggregating dispersed information about the strength of the global economy among goods producers whose production has complementarity commodity prices serve as price signals to guide producers production decisions and commodity demand our model highlights important feedback effects of informational noise originating from supply shocks and futures market trading on commodity demand and spot prices our analysis illustrates the weakness common in empirical studies on commodity markets of assuming that different types of shocks are publicly observable to market participants

family background and economic status in finland the importance of family background for economic outcomes is analyzed using a finnish data set the estimates for intergenerational and sibling correlations in earnings are comparatively low by estimating the magnitude of family influence conditional on parental earnings children with poor parents are found to have lower intergenerational elasticities while the sibling resemblance is higher children with rich parents have higher intergenerational elasticities and the sibling resemblance is also higher except for daughters the results also indicate that the largest share of the intergenerational correlation is transmitted through observed characteristics such as education and in particular occupation jel classification d1 d3 j6