women s fertility market work and marital status a test of the new household economics with international data since its emergence from the pioneering efforts of becker 1960 and mincer 1962 the new household economics has inspired a wide range of theoretical and empirical models of demographic behaviour with particular emphasis on fertility female labour force participation and marriage a central principle of these models has been to assign critical roles to the values of men s and women s time in the decision making process in the present paper i adhere to that principle while seeking to contribute to the empirical literature in two important respects 1 the econometric model developed in this paper incorporates several improvements over prior models although women s fertility market work and marital status are closely interconnected their endogeneity has not been fully reflected in previous econometric work 2 in the present model all these demographic variables are endogenous and are subject to a common set of incomes and prices another distinctive feature represents an extension of the approach developed by butz and ward 1979 they used interaction termsmen s and women s earnings weighted by female labour force participation to explain variation in us birth rates here earnings are interacted with the endogenous demographic variables in all equations simulation experiments are used to gauge the total impacts of changes in men s and women s pay under alternative sets of initial conditions 2 for the first time so far as known cross national data are used in a direct test of the new household economics although the literature contains

dynamic steam coal market integration evidence from rolling cointegration analysis abstract the aim of the paper is twofold first to assess the dynamics of the integration process of the international steam coal prices and second to investigate the changes in the roles of particular coal prices in this market in the light of changes in the structure of supply and demand the analysis is based on steam coal prices set by the largest world exporters and importers on both the atlantic and the pacific markets we use weekly data spanning from october 5 2001 to march 28 2014 the aim is achieved in two stages during the first one we use the rolling trace test to identify the integration of the steam coal market and during the second one we apply the rolling weak exogeneity test to determine the roles of the participants of the international steam coal market namely price setters and price takers our main findings can be summarized in two observations firstly the main world steam coal prices are integrated and during the period when freight costs are higher the coal market integration is weaker and when the costs are lower the integration is stronger secondly the role of particular coal prices is not stable in time generally price setters appear in the market which covers greater shares in the physical coal trade although indonesia and russia have a great share in the global export their prices remain price takers during the whole period as a consequence although russia remains the largest coal exporter of the steam coal to the european market it cannot dictate its prices in this market

voluntary export restraints on automobiles evaluating a trade policy the authors evaluate the voluntary export restraint that was initially placed on exports of automobiles from japan in 1981 they evaluate the impact this policy had on u s consumer welfare firm profits and foregone tariff revenue from its initiation through 1990

the evolution of hard coal trade in the pacific market abstract this article analyses the evolution of hard coal trade in the asia pacific region known as the pacific market from the 1980s to the present years it investigates the development of the trade pattern the nature of contracts the price setting the supply demand and the future of trade over the last two decades the international trade in the pacific market has achieved dramatic increases in coal commerce this achievement is due to strong demand in japan and north east asian countries and progressive coal export in australia and indonesia it is likely that this market will continue to expand and become a more important market in replacing the atlantic market in this market historically long term supply contracts were usual and concluded between producer and consumer even recently there are still annual contracts but with a small number of deals in contrast spot transactions are now becoming more important previously japan had been influential in price setting by establishing a benchmark price with australian coal suppliers afterward a reference price was becoming a trend nowadays spot price indices such as the barlow jonker the barlow jonker acr and globalcoal have become important to set the price the pacific market growth is not without problems the exporter countries particularly australia and indonesia have some challenges that if they are not resolved at present it would implicate the performance of the coal trade

spatial differentiation and vertical mergers in retail markets for gasoline this paper studies an empirical model of spatial competition applied to gasoline markets the main feature is to specify commuting paths as the locations of consumers in a hotelling style model as a result spatial differentiation depends in an intuitive way on the structure of the road network and the direction of traffic flows the model is estimated using panel data on the quebec city gasoline market and used to evaluate the consequences of a recent vertical merger difference in difference and counterfactual simulation methods are compared and the results to a large extent validate the assumptions of the demand model jel g34 l13 l42 l81 q41 r41

demographic consequences of maternal leave programs in industrial countries evidence from fixed effects models the authors measure the effects of paid maternity leave upon infant mortality the labor force participation of women during their prime childbearing years and fertility rates to reach their conclusions they constructed a simultaneous equations model using the individual fixed effects method and a data set comprising 17 oecd countries and four time periods the extension of maternal leave programs measured in terms of duration of paid leave is shown to reduce infant mortality to raise rates of labor force participation for women in the prime childbearing ages and to increase birth rates the direct plus indirect impacts of extending maternity leave programs as revealed by the reduced form parameters of the authors models however produce a different picture the total impacts upon both infant mortality and female labor force participation conform closely to the structural estimates but the impact upon birth rates almost disappears it seems that the indirect effects of the maternal leave variable via infant mortality and womens labor force participation offset the directly pronatal influence from a policy perspective the benefits of paid maternal leave programs would seem to be unconditionally positive with respect to lowering infant mortality and also positive with respect to raising female labor force participation one should not however expect higher birth rates from such programs the findings also suggest that maternal leave programs can facilitate some increases in womens labor force participation without incurring the reductions in fertility which would otherwise be experienced

increasing convergence among european stock markets a recursive common stochastic trends analysis abstract the degree of convergence among three major european stock markets is analyzed within the framework of a recursive common stochastic trends analysis the results point towards a decreasing number of common stochastic trends influencing the stock markets i e the degree of convergence among european stock markets has been increased during the recent two decades

estimation of random coefficient demand models two empiricists perspective we document the numerical challenges we experienced estimating random coefficient demand models as in berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 using two well known data sets and a thorough optimization design the optimization algorithms often converge at points where the first and second order optimality conditions fail there are also cases of convergence at local optima on convergence the variation in the values of the parameter estimates translates into variation in the models economic predictions price elasticities and changes in consumer and producer welfare following hypothetical merger exercises vary at least by a factor of 2 and up to a factor of 5

the evolution of price dispersion in the european car market car prices in europe are characterized by large and persistent differences across countries the purpose of this paper is to document and explain this price dispersion using a panel data set extending from 1980 to 1993 we first demonstrate two main facts concerning car prices in europe i the existence of significant differences in quality adjusted prices across countries with italy and the u k systematically representing the most expensive markets 2 substantial year to year volatility that is to a large extent accounted for by exchange rate fluctuations and the incomplete response of local currency prices to these fluctuations these facts are analysed within the framework of a multiproduct oligopoly model with product differentiation the model identifies three potential sources for the international price differences price elasticities generating differences in markups costs and import quota constraints local currency price stability can be attributed either to the presence of a local component in marginal costs or to markup adjustment that is correlated with exchange rate volatility the latter requires that the perceived elasticity of demand is increasing in price we find that the primary reason for the higher prices in italy is the existence of a strong bias for domestic brancs that generates high markups for the domestic firm fiat in the u k higher prices are mainly attributed to better equipped cars and or differences in the dealer discount practices the import quota constraints are found to have a significant impact on japanese car prices in italy france and the u k with respect to local currency price stability a large percentage of the documented price inertia can be attributed to local costs and a smaller fraction to markup adjustment that is indicative of price discrimination based on these results we conjecture that the emu will substantially reduce the year to year volatility observed in the car price data but without further measures to increase european integration it will not completely eliminate existing cross country price differences

the effects of domestic merger on exports a case study of the 1998 korean automobile industry abstract this paper examines the economic consequences of a horizontal merger between korean automakers that took place in 1998 with a particular emphasis on export market behavior estimates of structural demand and supply reveal that the merger enhanced production efficiency of the merged party by 3 8 simulations based on these estimates indicate that while the merger increased domestic prices the export volume of the merged party was more than doubled moreover the effects of the merger are found to differ by auto model according to the model s pre merger export status it is shown that efficiency gains from the merger are likely to increase export volumes for models that were already exported prior to the merger and to offset domestic market power for those that were not exported even after the merger finally the paper compares the actual merger s effects to those of alternative counterfactual mergers finding that the actual merger brought greater benefits to producers and fewer to domestic consumers

do oil prices respond to real interest rates abstract we show that the robustness of an inverse relationship between the real interest rate and real oil price depends crucially on how the real interest rate is calculated and the time frame of the sample consistent with earlier studies we find that the oil price falls with an unexpected rise in either u s or international ex ante real interest rates when the ex post real interest rate is used the oil price only falls with rises to short term rates 3 months or less additionally the response of the oil price to long term ex ante real interest rates must include the period through the mid 2000s for the inverse relationship to appear in contrast the oil price consistently falls with unexpected rises in short term real interest rates throughout the entire sample we draw two conclusions from the results the first is that the oil price is consistently responsive to short term u s and international real interest rates underlying the importance of storage second oil prices have become more responsive to long term real interest rates over time

estimation of cost efficiencies from mergers application to us radio this article estimates fixed cost efficiencies from mergers using a dynamic oligopoly model in which mergers and repositioning of products are endogenous the inference is based on revealed preference approach selecting cost synergies that rationalize observed merger decisions the estimates can be used to assess the total welfare impact of retrospective and counterfactual mergers the framework is applied to estimate cost efficiencies after the 1996 deregulation of u s radio industry within the period of 1996 to 2006 the cost savings resulting from mergers amount to 1 2 billion per year equally split across economies of scale and within format cost synergies

taking the dogma out of econometrics structural modeling and credible inference without a doubt there has been a credibility revolution in applied econometrics one contributing development has been in the improvement and increased use in data analysis of structural methods that is the use of models based in economic theory structural modeling attempts to use data to identify the parameters of an underlying economic model based on models of individual choice or aggregate relations derived from them structural estimation has a long tradition in economics but better and larger data sets more powerful computers improved modeling methods faster computational techniques and new econometric methods such as those mentioned above have allowed researchers to make significant improvements while angrist and pischke extol the successes of empirical work that estimates treatment effects based on actual or quasi experiments they are much less sanguine about structural analysis and hold industrial organization up as an example where progress is less dramatic indeed reading their article one comes away with the impression that there is only a single way to conduct credible empirical analysis this seems to us a very narrow and dogmatic approach to empirical work credible analysis can come in many guises both structural and nonstructural and for some questions structural analysis offers important advantages in this comment we address the criticism of structural analysis and its use in industrial organization and consider why empirical analysis in industrial organization differs in such striking ways from that in fields such as labor which have recently emphasized the methods favored by angrist and pischke

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

black gold fool s gold speculation in the oil futures market this paper addresses the question of whether the oil price spike of 2003 2008 was a bubble we document and discuss what is known about the level of speculation in the paper oil market we then analyze the dynamics of the term structure of futures prices both during the earlier period of 1985 2002 and during the spike the dynamics of the term structure changed in important ways during this latter period and we explain how this may have contributed to generating a bubble we also explain how this answers the puzzle of the lack of accumulating above ground inventories finally we discuss the implications for regulatory reform of the paper oil markets

assessing european stock markets co integration abstract this paper examines long run comovements in the uk french and german stock markets using cointegration techniques after fixing the power of the cointegration test no evidence is found of an increasing number of cointegrating vectors an alternative approach to measure increasing integration based on the speed of adjustment coefficients is proposed

market power vertical integration and the wholesale price of gasoline this paper examines empirically the relationship between vertical integration and wholesale gasoline prices we use discrete and differential changes in the extent of vertical integration generated by mergers in west coast gasoline refining and retailing markets to test for incentives to raise rivals costs the research design allows us to test for a relationship between vertical integration and wholesale prices controlling for horizontal market structure cost shocks and trends we find evidence consistent with the strategic incentive to raise competitors input costs this suggests that vertical integration can have a significant impact on wholesale prices

the world price of coal a significant increase in the seaborne trade for coal over the past 20 years has unified formerly separate coal markets into a world market in which prices move in tandem by virtue of its large domestic market the usa has become the residual supplier and price setter in the world coal market changes in multifactor productivity have been the primary cause of the long term fluctuations in coal prices that have been observed in the usa since the end of the second world war and in the world coal market

improving the numerical performance of static and dynamic aggregate discrete choice random coefficients demand estimation the widely used estimator of berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 p roduces estimates of consumer preferences from a discrete choice demand model with random coefficients market level demand shocks and endogenous prices we derive numerical theory results characterizing the properties of the nested fixed point algorithm used to evaluate the objective function of blp s estimator we discuss problems with typical implementations including cases that can lead to incorrect parameter estimates as a solution we recast estimation as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints which can be faster and which avoids the numerical issues associated with nested inner loops the advantages are even more pronounced for forward looking demand models where the bellman equation must also be solved repeatedly several monte carlo and real data experiments support our numerical concerns about the nested fixed point approach and the advantages of constrained optimization for static blp the constrained optimization approach can be as much as ten to forty times faster for large dimensional problems with many markets

product differentiation and oligopoly in international markets the case of the u s automobile industry this paper develops and estimates a model of the u s automobile industry on the demand side a discrete choice model is adopted that is estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey the estimation results are used in conjunction with population weights to derive aggregate demand on the supply side the automobile industry is modelled as an oligopoly with product differentiation equilibrium is characterized by the first order conditions of the profit maximizing firms the estimation results are used in counterfactual simulations to investigate two trade policy issues the effects of the ver and exchange rate pass through