women s work sibling competition and children s school performance this research offers an interpretation of the relationship between fertility child spacing family resources and market work by mothers and the subsequent cognitive skills of grade schoolers as reported by their teachers first an approach to fertility as the outcome of a deliberate choice process is developed and then empirical evidence from a small panel of u s households first interviewed in 1975 76 when they had preschool children is presented in a 1981 82 reinterview a supplementary project was that of obtaining teacher ratings of school performance of individual children large family size as measured by the number of siblings of given age and sex in the household during preschool years in 1975 76 has an important negative impact on the child s subsequent grade school performance boy siblings in nearby age ranges have the most negative impact on performance while teenage siblings of either sex have no systematic adverse effect parental resources as measured by income education child care time and a mother s reduced market time are associated with greater cognitive skills and can offset the apparent disadvantage of having siblings in nearby age intervals there appears to be a significant tradeoff between a market career and a home career for women women who have more children spaced over wider age intervals and who devote more time to child care and less to market work presumably get more benefits from their home career in the form of enhanced child development on the other hand full time market work i e hours in the labor market for pay is important for earnings growth of the mother mary corcoran greg duncan and michael ponza 1983 and family income has a favorable effect on school performance so the apparent choices facing women are more equivocal

the effectiveness of child care subsidies in encouraging the welfare to work transition of low income single mothers in recent years public attitudes toward single mothers have changed dramatically and policymakers are being pressed to devise reforms that will reduce their welfare dependency in the summer of 1994 at least 11 separate welfare reform proposals were being debated by congressional committees because child care is relatively expensive compared to potential earnings for single mothers extensions to current child care assistance programs will be an integral component of any welfare reform package very little evidence exists regarding child care utilization patterns and links to employment for low income mothers exceptions include mark berger and dan black 1992 and the recent congressional testimony given by jane ross 1994 of the gao contributing to the changing attitudes toward welfare recipients is the change in the demographic makeup of the labor force overall female labor force participation rates have grown dramatically in the past 30 years from 45 percent in the mid 1960 s to 75 percent in the early 1990 s as a result subsidizing poor single mothers so that they can stay at home with their children while more and more married mothers are working for pay has become less popular this has led to the encouragement of work particularly full time work as a means of poverty reduction for single mothers unfortunately child care costs represent a significant employment barrier on average child care costs 63 per week overall and 44 per week for care by a relative for the typical single mother child care costs range between 15 percent and 30 percent of earned income depending on the mode of care and hourly wage 2

regulation and the cost of childcare abstractfemale labour market choices depend on the availability affordability and quality of childcare in this article we evaluate different regulatory measures and their effect on both the quality and the cost of childcare first we analyse data on regulations and costs to estimate the effect of regulatory measures on the cost of childcare next we summarize the existing literature on the effect of regulation on childcare quality we find that regulation intended to improve quality often focuses on easily observable measures of the care environment that do not necessarily affect the quality of care but that do increase the cost thus we find that the regulatory environment could be improved by eliminating costly measures that do not affect quality of care

child care prices and maternal employment a meta analysis the literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying while some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies others find insignificant effects to determine the causes of the variance this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer reviewed articles and working papers in the literature we start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs paying special attention to sample characteristics methodological aspects and macro level factors we conclude by providing a meta regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates as research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works elasticity estimates have become smaller over time this decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics in countries with high rates of part time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation we find elasticity rates to be smaller

price of high quality daycare and female employment using local variation between municipalities i analyze the degree to which the price of high quality publicly subsidized childcare affects female employment following maternity leave importantly prices are income dependent and thus likely endogenous yet by exploiting information on minimum income compensation during non employment i bypass this problem the results show that the price negatively affects employment a price increase of 1 per month decreases employment by 0 08 which corresponds to a price elasticity of 0 17 these effects prevail during the first 12 months after childbirth i also find that availability of childcare increases employment

immigrant specificity and the relationship between trade and immigration theory and evidence studies routinely document that immigrant employment concentrates in non traded goods sectors and that many immigrants have low inter sectoral mobility we consider these observed characteristics of immigrant employment with regard to the question of how immigration affects a nation s pattern of production and trade we model an economy producing three goods one is non traded domestic labor and capital are domestically mobile but internationally immobile allowing that some new immigrants will become specific to the non traded goods sector the model indicates that the effects of immigration on output and trade depend importantly on the sectoral pattern of employment of both new and existing immigrants empirical investigation in a panel data set of oecd countries supports the model s prediction that immigration raises the output of non traded goods consistent with the model we also find that immigration and trade are complements given its empirical support the model s implications for immigration policy are then discussed

the international negotiation game some evidence from the tokyo round this paper examines the tokyo round negotiation 1973 1979 under various cooperative game solution concepts out of the many tariff cutting proposals in the tokyo round the swiss proposal was finally agreed upon by all major players the choice of the swiss proposal suggested that egalitarian considerations are important for this type of cooperative game since the kalai smorodinsky solution the shapley value modified and the nucleolus solution have this egalitarian property they all predict the outcome of the negotiation very well this paper investigates the types of cooperative game solution concepts that best describe the tariff reduction negotiations in the tokyo round 1973 1979 since the objective is to infer the type of game that can closely model the actual negotiation the best game concept for our purposes is the one which predicts the actual outcome the swiss tariff cutting formula most successfully under periodic resurgence of protectionist ideology as occurred during the tokyo round negotiations there are various cooperative solution concepts some emphasize the egalitarian nature of the outcome some the efficiency nature of the outcome and some emphasize both aspects see section ii the present paper concludes that when the change in a country s trade balance becomes an important consideration for negotiators the egalitarian aspect emerges as the most important cooperative game solution concepts an interesting finding of the present paper is the bargaining powers of the four major players united states eec japan and canada were roughly equal as shall be explained this is because each of these players was equally destructive to the tokyo round negotiation there are currently four simulation studies on the impacts of the tokyo round deardorff and stern 1983 baldwin et al 1980 brown and whalley 1980 and cline et al 1978 the present paper uses the simulation studies by cline et al for our analysis for three reasons 1 the brookings study is based on keynesian short run impacts of the tokyo round which seems to fit the objectives of negotiators 2 it represents the most complete welfare analysis of various proposals and 3 it was the most influential study done around that time perhaps it can reflect the conventional wisdom of negotiators in that period the present paper is organized as follows section i discusses the basic assumptions section ii examines various game solution schemes or concepts section iii presents the case of the five major proposals section iv extends the result of section iii to twelve proposals section v discusses the robustness of various assumptions followed by a conclusion in section vi

illegal immigration and resource allocation this paper studies the effects of illegal immigration and the associated expansion of the underground economy on the allocation of resources commodity prices and wages of workers both in the short run when occupational mobility is restricted and in the long run when the skill composition of the labor force is endogenous the paper goes on to consider some of the fiscal implications of illegal immigration and the related expansion of underground activity effects of sanctions against employers hiring illegal aliens and measures to legalize the status of clandestine foreign workers are also examined the geographical focus is on developed countries primarily the united states and europe excerpt

implications of immigration policies for the u s farm sector and workforce i background in 1942 the united states and mexico signed the bracero program a formal agreement to draw seasonal labor to work in u s agriculture which provided employment opportunities to poor rural mexicans 1 however this program was abolished in 1964 ending the legal seasonal labor supply to u s agriculture in the southwestern states concurrently the united states passed the immigration act of 1965 establishing a quota of 120 000 legal immigrants per year the abandonment of the bracero program the new legal immigrants quota limits and economic inequality between the united states and mexico paved the way for steady entry of illegal laborers and led to eventual insurmountable illegal immigration population in the united states because illegal immigration was not a serious problem in the 1960s and 1970s legislation addressed only the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter the united states but in the 1980s illegal immigration began to emerge as a national problem and extensive debates entrenched around issues such as preventing the entry of unauthorized workers providing public services to illegal immigrants and even legalizing these workers consequently the u s congress attempted to address the immigration problems by enacting the 1986 immigration reform and control act irca the goals of irca were to eliminate the stock of undocumented workers through amnesty 2 and domestic enforcement of employer sanctions and curb the influx of illegal immigrants by increasing the border surveillance amnesty failed to eliminate the stock of illegal immigrants because only about half of the illegal immigrants filed for citizenship and it created future expectation of amnesty and more illegal unauthorized entry furthermore domestic sanctions on employers of undocumented workers and deportation of these workers were scantly enforced to stop the influx of immigrants irca focused heavily on tightening border control the irca also legislated the h 2a program which allowed agricultural employers to bring in guest workers during seasonal operations ers 2007 however farmers complained that the cumbersome paperwork of h 2a and bureaucratic delay were not conducive to procure seasonal laborers at the time of peak farm operations such as vegetable and fruit picking 3 in spite of irca s amnesty provision and strengthened control measures illegal immigration continued to rise about 12 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the united states in 2007 martin 2007 which is reaffirmed by many popular press reports leading to an extended congressional debate that began at the start of this decade to solve the illegal immigration problem several bills were proposed by the house of representatives the senate and the white house addressing issues related to increased domestic and border enforcements 4 paths to citizenship and guest worker programs montgomery 2006 these bills were not passed because of major disagreements among lawmakers over providing citizenship and guest worker programs as a result of the failed legislations and the september 11 attack the government primarily focused on border security accordingly funding for border enforcement has steadily increased 5 and resources were diverted from domestic to border enforcement however boucher and taylor 2007 documented that increased funding to secure the border did not deter undocumented workers from crossing the border because determined immigrants eventually find a way to enter the country by repeated attempts following september 11 2001 the u s immigration and customs enforcement ice further decreased the number of human hours devoted to worksite inspection because monitoring critical infrastructure took priority gao 2005 for example from 1999 to 2003 the number of human hours for domestic enforcement decreased from 480 000 to 18 000 6 7 but by late 2005 the u

the econometrics of kinked budget constraints in the last several years a branch of applied econometrics has developed which is devoted to the development of techniques for the estimation of demand and other functions when the budget constraint is piecewise linear or kinky that is when the constraint consists of a number of segments joined together at kink points such constraints most frequently arise from government tax and transfer programs for example the federal income tax imposes a piecewise linear schedule by the use of constant marginal tax rates within brackets a problem analyzed by hausman 1981 the payroll tax in the social security system likewise generates a kinked schedule inasmuch as the marginal tax rate on earnings is zero above a certain earnings maximum federal and state transfer programs for the poor result in piecewise linear constraints because transfer benefits are taxed in the sense of a negative income tax as income rises and because that tax rate falls to zero at the kink point where an individual or family loses eligibility for the benefit altogether many government transfer programs impose additional nonlinearities by altering this tax rate by discrete amounts over the range of positive benefits as well but kinked constraints sometimes arise in nongovernment contexts a well known example being the block pricing schedule commonly set by utilities and volume discounting in general kinked budget constraints create two difficulties that have several interesting facets one difficulty is that changes in tax and transfer schedules can have unexpected effects that can be exactly the opposite in sign to those expected from economic theory examples of this phenomenon are given below the second difficulty that with which this paper is mostly concerned relates to the implications of kinked budget

who remits an examination of emigration by education level and gender employing data on emigration rates by education level this study finds that primary and secondary qualified emigrants contribute positively and significantly to remittances tertiary qualified emigrants however do not contribute significantly to remittances remittances in turn contribute significantly to home country income there is some evidence of both an altruistic and self interested motive to remit gender disaggregated results suggest that females remit more than males and are more altruistic

child care and the labor supply of married women reduced form evidence this paper empirically analyzes family demands for market and nonmarket child care services and the impact of these demands on the work effort of married women the paperfirst develops a general model of child care and labor force participation the model predicts that higher wages increase the likelihood of labor force participation and that higher costs decrease the likelihood of child care utilization the paper then develops a threeequation reduced form econometric specification of the general model the equations in the specification are estimated simultaneously using 1985 data from the survey of income program participation the estimates reveal that the cost of market child care has a strong negative effect on the labor supply of married women

evaluating the effects of childcare policies on children s cognitive development and maternal labor supply to explore the role of childcare policies in the development of early cognitive skills this paper jointly estimates a cognitive achievement production function and a dynamic discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and childcare decisions using counter actuals from the model i investigate how the designs of two childcare programs head start and childcare subsidies affect the formation of cognitive skills through maternal work and childcare decisions the results suggest large impacts on cognitive skills from expanding head start to current noneligibles and negligible impacts of subsidies on cognitive skills of current eligibles abstract from author

accounting for urban china s rising income inequality the roles of labor market human capital and marriage market factors this paper analyzes china s rising family income inequality since the early 1990s when the urban labor market started its transformation from a centrally controlled to a market driven one we document the trends in income inequality over the period of 1992 2009 using the urban household survey data and adopt the approach recently proposed by eika et al 2014 to decompose changes in income inequality we find that labor market factors accounted for about three quarters of the overall increases in income inequality while falling marriage rate contributed the other quarter changes in human capital levels and marital assortativeness have not contributed to the rising inequality jel d31 i26 j12

illegal immigration a supply side analysis abstract this paper analyzes the supply side determinants of illegal immigration using a three sector general equilibrium model of the source country agricultural liberalization raises illegal immigration while liberalization of the high tech sector reduces it in contrast capital mobility in the source country renders trade policy ineffective for controlling illegal immigration paradoxically increased enforcement by the host country may raise source country unskilled wages although illegal immigration falls finally under capital mobility a rise in the source country restrictions on capital inflow raises the level of illegal immigration and reduces the effectiveness of border enforcement efforts by the host country

unemployed immigrants and voter sentiment in the welfare state abstract adverse voter sentiment can arise when immigrants are unemployed and receive tax financed income transfers the explanation for unemployment however determines the consequences for the local population and an efficiency wage explanation for unemployment is consistent with mutual benefit to national workers and employers from the presence of unemployed immigrants receiving tax financed income transfers the mutual benefit requires credible labor market disciplining through job offers to immigrants and willingness of immigrants to accept job offers acceptance of job offers results in displacement in employment of national workers by immigrants which can compromise the effectiveness of efficiency wages as a counter to anti immigrant voter sentiment in the welfare state

maternal labor supply and the availability of public pre k evidence from the introduction of prekindergarten into american public schools in the 1980s and 1990s many states began to provide funding for prekindergarten programs for the first time this paper takes advantage of the staggered timing in program funding to investigate the effect that increased availability of prekindergarten programs has on the labor supply of mothers with four year olds i find that mothers with a four year old and no younger children were significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed once prekindergarten became available and that these effects were largest for single low educated mothers and married college educated mothers mothers with a four year old and other younger children were also significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed although these effects were smaller in magnitude and not significant for specific subpopulations

the supply of child care labor this article presents estimates of the elasticity of supply of labor to child care this parameter is an important determinant of the effects of child care subsidies and regulations on the cost of child care using data from the current population survey there is evidence of an elasticity in the range of 1 2 1 9 this implies that the majority of the benefits of child care subsidies accrue to consumers of child care it is also consistent with the fact that child care workers wages remained flat in real terms in recent years despite rapid growth in the demand for child care

optimal policies with an informal sector abstract this paper characterizes optimal policies in the presence of tax evasion and undocumented workers in equilibrium domestic workers may work exclusively in the formal sector or also in the informal sector surprisingly in equilibrium wages are always equalized between domestic and undocumented workers even if they do not work in the same sectors of the economy this is driven by the interaction of firm level decisions with optimal government policy we also find that enforcement may not always be decreasing in its cost and that governments will optimally enforce labour market segmentation if enforcement costs are not too high

work costs and nonconvex preferences in the estimation of labor supply models abstract works costs have not been adequately handled in labor supply estimation likely due to their complexity we show that if work costs are not accounted for in the budget and time constraints in a structural labor supply model they will be subsumed into the data generating preferences even if underlying preferences over consumption and leisure are convex the presence of unobservable work costs can make these preferences appear nonconvex however we show that under plausible conditions policy relevant calculations such as estimates of the effect of tax changes on labor supply and deadweight loss measures are not affected by the fact that estimated preferences incorporate work costs

on the macroeconomic and welfare effects of illegal immigration abstract this paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model with labor market frictions to explore the economic consequences of illegal immigration in the baseline model native workers and illegal foreign workers compete for jobs in the same market but serve as imperfect substitutes in production the calibrated model generates a u shaped relationship between long run domestic consumption and the population share of illegal immigrants after taking into account both consumption and leisure i found that an increase in illegal immigration can generate significant welfare gains for the natives the baseline model is then extended to include heterogeneous workers in the domestic population

maquiladoras and market mamas women s work and childcare in guatemala city and accra abstract this paper analyses work childcare and earnings of mothers in the slums of guatemala city and accra similar factors affect decisions to work and to use formal daycare but the importance of childcare varies with the role of the formal labour sector in guatemala where formal sector work is important higher prices for informal care increase formal daycare use however daycare prices and proximity to daycare centers do not significantly affect earnings in guatemala city and accra respectively providing formal daycare may be more important to mothers decision to work in cities where formal sector work dominates

women s labour force participation and child care in romania abstract this paper models household demand for childcare and mothers labour force participation in romania the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household characteristics on household behaviour with respect to childcare and maternal employment we find that both the maternal decision to become employed and the decision to use out of home care are sensitive to the price of childcare a decrease in the price of care can increase the number of working mothers and thus can reduce poverty in some households we also find that the potential market wage of the mother has a significant positive effect on the decision to purchase market care and on the decision to engage in paid employment the level of household non wage income has little effect on maternal employment and on the demand for childcare

explaining the decline in the u s employment to population ratio a review of the evidence this paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment to population ratio between 1999 and 2018 population aging has had a large effect on the overall employment rate over this period but within age group declines in employment among young and prime age adults also have played a central role among the factors with effects that we can quantify based on existing evidence labor demand factors in particular increased import competition from china and the penetration of robots into the labor market are the most important drivers of observed within group declines in employment labor supply factors most notably increased participation in disability insurance programs have played a less important but not inconsequential role increases in the real value of state minimum wages and in the share of individuals with prison records also have contributed modestly to the decline in the aggregate employment rate in addition to the factors whose effects we roughly quantify we identify a set of potentially important factors about which the evidence does not yet allow us to draw clear conclusions these include the challenges associated with arranging child care improvements in leisure technology changing social norms increased use of opioids the growth in occupational licensing and declining labor market fluidity our evidence driven ranking of factors should be useful for guiding future discussions about the sources of decline in the aggregate employment to population ratio and consequently the likely efficacy of alternative policy approaches to increasing employment rates

the effect of household structure on women s economic activity and fertility evidence from recent mothers in urban mexico this study examines the effect of the presence of a mother substitute in the household on urban womens participation in the labor force and fertility in mexico in 1982 data were obtained from the 1982 mexican national demographic survey on reproductive history educational status employment status and household structure for a subsample of 2746 urban women who were married 90 or in a consensual union 10 and had had a child within the prior 5 years theoretically women with higher value of market time lower household income and lower value of nonmarket time will more likely be working women women had 3 4 surviving children 83 used contraceptives and 15 were employed analysis involved use of reduced form equations to model the joint determination of labor force participation and fertility justification of this method is given husbands education was a proxy for income level cost of child rearing is figured as the mothers number of children 5 years and household structure mother substitute was an additional unemployed female aged 13 years an imputed wage for all women in the sample is used to measure the value of time in the labor force probit regression estimation methods revealed that mothers were more likely to be working when their wage offers were higher those with a caretaker in the household and with a less well educated husband are also more likely to work those more likely to be employed also had few children 6 12 years and more children 13 years in the fully reduced form of the equation determinants of the wage offer education age region were substituted for the instrumental variable the results were consistent an additional woman in the household was significantly positively related to the likelihood of women working in the reduced form fertility equation women who were younger better educated with more children and with better educated partners were less likely to have more than 1 child born within the last 5 years the implication from the negative coefficient of the household structure variable is that women with additional caretakers are less likely to have more than 1 young child the causes are explained mother substitutes increase the likelihood of working women and do not increase the likelihood of having more children particularly among nonemployed mothers which differs from us results future research should refine the measure of mother substitute and account for her presence in the household

prospects of trade liberalization between the developed and the developing countries abstract this paper analyzes the theoretical and policy aspects of various possible approaches multilateral preferential and others toward new initiatives for liberalizing trade relations between the developed and the developing countries the increasing differentiation between the newly industrializing countries nics and the less developed countries ldcs suggests that a multidimensional framework allowing flexibility in dealing with different subsets within the developing countries would be more relevant the paper analyzes the probable outcomes and constraints of the various trade liberalizing options with regard to their effects on trade flows welfare and terms of trade

the effect of child care costs on married women s labor force participation the effect of child care costs on the probability that married women with children will participate in the labor market is examined child care costs are estimated using a generalized tobit specification corrected for selection estimates of a structural probit model of labor force participation provide evidence to support the prediction that increased child care costs lower the probability of participation it is also shown that the lower rate of labor force participation among mothers of preschoolers is entirely the result of the higher child care costs faced by these women and endogeneity of the number of young children in the participation equation copyright 1992 by mit press

economic transition and the motherhood wage penalty in urban china investigation using panel data china s economic transition has fundamentally changed the mechanisms for allocating and compensating labour this paper investigates how the economic transition has affected the wage gap between mothers and childless women in urban china using panel data for the period 1990 2005 the results show that overall mothers earned considerably less than childless women additionally the wage penalties for motherhood went up substantially from the gradualist reform period 1990 96 to the radical reform period 1999 2005 the results also show that that although motherhood does not appear to have a significant wage effect for the state sector it imposes substantial wage losses for mothers in the non state sector these findings suggest that the economic transition has shifted part of the cost of childbearing and rearing from the state and employers back to women in the form of lower earnings for working mothers copyright oxford university press

child care costs as a barrier to employment for single and married mothers because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care while some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs this paper uses an improved sipp survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers employment behavior with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status empirical technique and equation specification this permits linking this paper to the existing evidence drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers employment behavior significantly with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than marri

joint labor supply and childcare choice decisions of married mothers this paper examines the impact of childcare prices and wage rates on the joint employment and childcare mode center sitter relative and husband choice decisions of married mothers by estimating both a mixed logit and universal logit choice model data are drawn from the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the estimation results show that wages have a positive impact on the probability of choosing any of the working states and that childcare prices for center sitter and relative care reduce the probability of working and using each respective mode of care sensitivity analyses reveal that the wage elasticity for employment is fairly robust across model specifications while the own price elasticity of childcare is sensitive to model specification differing identifying assumptions in the estimation of childcare price equations and sample selection the simulation results show that differences exist in the degree to which government subsidies in the form of wage subsidies targeted childcare subsidies or unconditional childcare subsidies impact on labor supply decisions and decisions to substitute across different modes of care by those mothers already in the labor market

the econometrics of piecewise linear budget constraints a survey and exposition of the maximum likelihood method in this article maximum likelihood techniques for estimating consumer demand functions when budget constraints are piecewise linear are exposited and surveyed consumer demand functions are formally derived under such constraints and it is shown that the functions are themselves nonlinear as a result the econometric problems in estimating such functions are exposited and the importance of the stochastic specification is stressed in particular the specification of both unobserved heterogeneity of preferences and measurement error econometric issues in estimation and testing are discussed and the results of the studies that have been conducted to date are surveyed

an analysis of women s return to work decisions following first birth women s labor force participation has increased sharply over the last two decades particularly for married women with young children this suggests women are spending less time out of the labor force for child bearing and rearing using the detailed information available in the nlsy i explore women s decisions to return to work within one year of their first child s birth focusing on the effect of child care costs consistent with economic theory women facing lower child care costs are more likely to return to work as are women with higher potential wages and lower family income from other sources jel j0

structural estimation of family labor supply with taxes estimating a continuous hours model using a direct utility specification this paper proposes a new method for estimating family labor supply in the presence of taxes this method accounts for continuous hours choices measurement error unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for work the nonlinear form of the tax code and fixed costs of work in one comprehensive specification estimated on data from the 2001 psid the resulting elasticities for married males are consistent with those found elsewhere in the literature but female wage elasticities are substantially smaller than those found in most of the literature simulations of recent tax acts predict small effects on the labor supply of married couples

child care subsidies quality of care and the labor supply of low income single mothers the authors examine the effects of child care subsidies on the labor supply decisions of low income mothers and o n the quality of care their children receive using newly gathered data on two programs that subsidize the child care expenditures of families in kentucky they find that single mothers who receive child care subsidies are more likely to be employed and are generally more satisfied with the care their children receive but subsidies have little effect on hours worked copyright 1992 by mit press

price quality and income in child care choice recent legislation may substantially expand federal assistance in paying for child care this paper examines the potential effects of three aspects of federal assistance reducing child care price through vouchers or grants to providers improving its quality through incentives or regulation and increasing family income through tax credits on the child care choices employed mothers make the data come from the 1985 wave of the national longitudinal survey of youth ohio state university both multinomial and universal logit models are used the results suggest that price is a critical variable in child care choice the higher the price the lower the probability a mode of care will be chosen parents do not consistently select high quality care although overall quality improvements may increase the use of family day care mothers who earn more per hour and families who have higher incomes other than the mother s earnings are more likely to select center care over other modes consequently subsidizing child care expenditures directly through vouchers and reduced fees or increasing other family income through tax credits consistently increases the use of center based programs all else equal

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

the effect of child care costs on the employment and welfare recipiency of single mothers 1 introduction for all mothers of young children entering the labor market is strongly linked with the need for child care opportunities for caring for children while in the labor market are few in a developed economy in many cases the husband or another family member serves as caregiver but approximately 50 ic of preschoolers with a working mother are cared for by nonrelatives casper 1997 some of these arrangements involve a substantial amount of money in 1993 the average weekly cost of care was 59 for home based care 68 for center based care and 48 for care provided by a relative this can represent one fourth of earnings for single mothers working full time at the minimum wage kimmel 1994 such substantial money expenditures coupled with transportation needs both to work and to day care as well as the uncertainty of many child care arrangements are expected to keep many mothers of young children out of the labor market thus the relationship between employment and child care for these mothers is thought to play a strong role in the link between welfare recipiency and child care welfare programs before and after welfare reform have targeted child care as a barrier to employment 1 before welfare reform child care subsidies were available to some recipients through federal title iv a funding sources for child care afdc jobs at risk transitional child care and through the child care development block grant these funds often came with matching requirements from the states the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 prwora consolidated all these funds into state block grants thereby permitting the states to design their own child care assistance schemes states may supplement federal child care block grants with state dollars but there is no longer a required state match thus while the total federal dollar amount allocated to child care in temporary assistance for needy families tanf exceeds former federal aid to families with dependent children afdc child care commitments because tanf requires less in state matching expenditures it is unclear what will happen to total child care expenditures as welfare reform evolves early postreform evidence suggests that while overall child care spending at the state level has increased the increase is less than would have occurred had the matching requirements been retained a recent study of welfare leavers reports that few are receiving subsidies schumacher and greenberg 1999 and only 1 24 million of the approximately 10 million children eligible for federally funded support received assistance in 1997 u s department of health and human services 1999 underlying states expenditures on child care subsidies are their subsidy eligibility guidelines participation in such subsidy programs by the eligible population and availability of subsidized slots or funds for those families applying for such funds only a small percentage of families eligible for subsidies based on the federal maximum income limits receive such support federal guidelines as outlined in prwora stipulate that federally financed child care subsidies can be made available to families with incomes up to 85 of the state s median income however as of july 1999 only five states had set their eligibility guidelines at the federal maximum in addition participation by the state defined eligible group is quite low partially because of a lack of information city officials in san francisco have used an innovative peer outreach program to increase participation by the eligible population and by the start of 2000 the city was enrolling 50 of the estimated eligible population an enrollment rate twice the statewide average heymann 2000b extensive data on post tanf behavior are not yet available nor will they be for some time however there is some evidence that workers continue to report that availability and cost of child care are barriers to self sufficiency

the econometrics of nonlinear budget sets traditional empirical analysis of consumer demand has usually made the assumption of linear budget sets that is the consumer is assumed to purchase any desired quantity at a constant price subject to a budget constraint the major exception to this framework is the analysis of demand when some goods are rationed 2 in the rationed case the price is constant up to a quantity limit in contrast to the rationed case here i consider the situation where the price varies with the amount of the good purchased empirical situations with nonconstant prices come readily to mind and of course they have received much recent attention from theorists since mirrlees 44 paper on optimal nonlinear taxation the following examples are meant to give a partial listing of cases when nonlinear budget sets occur i electricity prices many electric utilities engage in declining block pricing that is the marginal price of successive kwh s of electricity decrease at a given number of points determined by total demand thus the budget set is piecewise linear houthakker 36 was the first to propose an approach to this problem taylor 51 analyzes the problem at length and hausman kinnucin and mcfadden 31 use an instrumental variables estimator to provide consistent estimates of the demand function

women s employment and child care choices in urban china during the economic transition abstractchina s transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has substantially eroded governmental support for child care raising the concern about how the change of child care provision may affect women s labor market participation this article examines the impact of child care availability and affordability on the employment and child care choices of urban chinese women with preschool children during the transition the analysis shows that the presence of day care in the community is positively associated with a mother s labor force participation and labor hour supply and that the rising costs of hired caregivers reduce the mother s labor hour supply the analysis also finds that both the costs of hired caregivers and family income have important effects on the use of out of home care services simulations indicate that the decline in day care presence would account for 46 of the decrease in mothers labor force participation during the public sector restructuring between 1997 and 2000

marital status and full time part time work status in child care choices using recent sipp data this study estimates two econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status and differences in the mode of child care used controlling for employment status for both married and single women full time employment is more elastic with respect to changes in the price of child care than part time employment and employment elasticities are larger for single than married mothers in the model of child care modal choice we find that an increased probability of full time employment is associated with an increase in the use of centre care for both married and single mothers and that price elasticities of modal choice are larger for single than married mothers

childcare subsidies wages and employment of single mothers this paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part time and full time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers the results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare the part time wage effects are found to be too small to have significant behavioral implications an analysis of cost effectiveness indicates that the additional hours of work generated per dollar of government expenditure is larger for a childcare subsidy than a wage subsidy

tax credits labor supply and child care we explore the impact of the child care tax credit in the u s income tax system on the labor supply decisions of married women with young children by incorporating the cost of child care into a st

two birds with one stone female labor supply fertility and market childcare abstract the correlation between the female labor force participation rate fpr and the total fertility rate tfr has switched from negative to positive in some developed countries in this paper we show how increasing the substitutability between maternal time and market childcare can raise both fpr and tfr and provide an explanation for the change in the tfr fpr correlation simulations of a life cycle model of married women s work and fertility decisions indicate that the fpr increases whereas the tfr is u shaped with regard to substitutability the dynamic relationship depends on the relative strength of behavioral and composition effects greater substitutability allows working women to have more children but it also attracts less productive women to enter the labor force who trade childbirths for labor supply the findings imply that raising substitutability to a sufficiently high level can achieve the two seemingly conflicting goals increasing female labor force participation and fertility rates

why do women have longer durations of unemployment than men in post restructuring urban china this paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post restructuring urban china this analysis is based upon data obtained from a national representative household survey rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for re employment this analysis shows that women s job search efforts are handicapped by a lack of access to social networks unequal entitlement to social re employment services higher earnings losses from job separations for women and unfair treatment of women with respect to mandatory retirement

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

the demand for quality in child care we estimate a model of demand for quality related attributes of child care group size staff child ratio and provider training the model is estimated jointly with equations for mode expenditure on and hours of care and the mother s labor supply the results show that a lower price of child care in a particular mode leads to substitution toward that mode and an increase in the use of paid child care a decrease in the price of care causes an increase in hours of care demanded and a decrease in the demand for qualityrelated attributes income effects on demand for quality are small

child care costs and the employment decision of women canadian evidence the authors estimate the joint decision for women with preschool children to engage in paid employment and to purchase market forms of child care the results confirm those found in most u s studies indicating that child care costs exert a significant negative effect on the labor supply of women with children and on their decision to purchase child care as well the expected wage of the mother exerts a significant positive impact on both the decision to purchase market forms of child care and the decision to engage in paid unemployment

economic effects of the tokyo round the conclusion of the tokyo round of multilateral trade negotiations mtn in april 1979 was an important milestone in international commercial diplomacy it marked the seventh round of multilateral reductions in international trade barriers negotiated under the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt since world war ii tariffs on industrial products had last been reduced on a major scale in the kennedy round which concluded in 1967 and was implemented over the following five years tariffs are being reduced even further by the tokyo round the reductions being phased in over eight years beginning 1980 an even more noteworthy accomplishment of the tokyo round is the negotiation of a series of codes covering nontariff barriers ntbs depending on how these codes are interpreted and adhered to they will mean some significant reductions in ntbs and will clarify and harmonize government policies involving international trade this paper provides an economic analysis of the effects of the tokyo round it is organized as follows in section ii we examine the tokyo round negotiations including the initial tariffs by country and sector the tariff cutting procedure and tariff offers and the ntb codes in section iii we present the combined effects of the reductions in tariffs and ntbs calculated using the michigan model of world production and trade that we have developed for this and related purposes in section iv we consider the possible effects of ntb codes that we were unable to quantify and also look at trade policies that were excluded from the tokyo round in section v we offer concluding comments

political economy sectoral shocks and border enforcement in this paper we examine the correlation between sectoral shocks and border enforcement in the united states enforcement of national borders is the main policy instrument the u s government uses to combat illegal immigration the motivation for the exercise is to see whether border enforcement falls following positive shocks to sectors that are intensive in the use of undocumented labor as would be consistent with political economy models of how enforcement policy against illegal immigration is determined the main finding is that border enforcement is negatively correlated with lagged relative price changes in the apparel fruits and vegetables and slaughtered livestock industries and with housing starts in the western united states this suggests that authorities relax border enforcement when the demand for undocumented workers is high

us immigration policies and dynamics of cross border workforce in agriculture given the contentious debate on immigration this study develops a dynamic model to analyse the effects of stricter border and domestic enforcement and streamlining the guest worker programme on cross border migration from mexico employment and production in us labour intensive and mexican agriculture and the us and mexican wage rates the model incorporates labour leisure decisions of mexican workers and labour market dynamics and linkages the findings show stricter border and domestic controls exacerbate the labour shortage problems and reduce the us agricultural production streamlining the guest worker programme provides a steady supply of farm workers and has negligible impact on the us wage

employment and child care choices in canada and the united states in this paper we examine employment and child care choices of two parent families with young children in the united states and canada using a pooled data set based on recent national surveys in each country we find that the employment and child care choices of canadian families are similar to those of u s families estimates of a model of employment and child care choices indicate significant effects of child care subsidies child care prices and wage rates on employment and child care choices however none of these factors helps to explain the differences in employment and child care choices between the two countries ce memoire examine le choix de l emploi et du soin des enfants dans les familles ou il y deux parents aux etats unis et au canada en utilisant des donnees d etudes recentes dans les deux pays il appert que les choix des familles canadiennes sont semblables a ceux des familles americaines les calibrations d un modele de ces choix montrent les effets significatifs des subventions au soin des enfants du prix des soins des enfants et des taux de salaires sur ces choix cependant aucun de ces facteurs n explique les diffrences dans les patterns de choix entre les deux pays

foreign aid and illegal immigration abstract we develop a two country model of illegal immigration we analyse the effect of foreign aid on illegal immigration and consider both exogenous and endogenous income repatriation in the former an increase in aid increases illegal immigration if the total amount of aid is small a transfer of resources from border control to aid increases illegal immigration when the total amount of aid is small under endogenous income repatriation aid has no effect on illegal immigration when the preferences of the immigrants and their family members are the same if the preferences are different aid may increase illegal immigration

a structural explanation of recent changes in life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states abstract this study documents and explains important changes in the life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states from the 1950s to more recent cohorts the younger cohorts relative to the 1950s supply more labor at earlier stages of the life cycle delay motherhood to later stages without reducing the fertility rate and upon childbearing show a greater tendency to stay out of the labor force in a life cycle model for married couples in which a household makes decisions on fertility as well as labor supply consumption and savings all the behavioral changes are jointly and quantitatively explained by a combination of changes in various labor supply fertility determinants with the increased returns penalties to work non work experience being the dominant contributor the results survive a series of robustness tests including endogenizing education choice and assortative marriage

child care subsidies and labor supply in sweden this paper utilizes data from a swedish household survey for 1984 the hus data in combination with data on public child care fees and spaces per child by community we argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household the joint out of home child care and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit and ordered probit choice models we find that the high quality public child care in sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when the spouse s income is high and that when spaces are not rationed a lower price encourages use

a structural model of child care and the labor supply of married women this article empirically examines married women s labor supply and child care expenditures the article uses winter 1984 85 data from the survey of income and program participation to estimate a fu

child care costs and family labor supply this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of child care costs on family labor supply and the demand for market child care the model is a framework for cross section estimation of the effects of child care costs on labor supply and child care use it applies to households having young children requiring continuous care and in which both the mother and 1 other potential child care provider are present the 3 potential sources of child care are the mother the potential informal provider and the market using data from the 1980 baseline household survey of the employment opportunity pilot projects this empirical analysis uses a subsample of 6170 households in which there is a married woman under age 45 with her spouse present at the time of the survey at least 1 child under age 14 and nonmissing data on key variables results show that 1 higher market child care costs discourage women from working even when an informal source of care is available indicating that such informal care is an imperfect substitute for market care 2 a higher wage rate for the mother encourages her to work thus a higher wage rate increases the probability of using market child care 3 the number of children requiring care has a negative impact on the probability of the women working with the largest impact caused by younger children 4 nonwage income has a negative impact on the probability of the woman working and 5 black women are more likely to work than whites and are statistically more likely than whites to use market child care if they do work this family labor supply model predicts that the cost of market child care will affect household decisions on labor supply and child care use estimates of a qualitative choice model provide strong confirmation that child care costs affect such decisions the responsiveness of the labor supply of mothers to child care costs demonstrated in this study indicate that such subsidies do have their intended effect of encouraging labor supply the fact that a large proportion of current child care subsidies benefit primarily middle and upper income families via the income tax credit suggests that the labor supply effets of such subsidies may in practice be stronger for less needy families than for low income families employer subsidized child care may become an increasingly popular tool for attracting mothers into the labor force

should day care be subsidized in the presence of distortionary taxes on labor can subsidies on childcare flnanced by a further increase in taxes raise welfare by encouraging women with small children to work we approach this question in two difierent ways first we consider a set of stylized models where we prove analytically that under some conditions the ramsey optimal policy consists in making childcare expenses tax deductible then we construct a calibrated stochastic dynamic life cycle model of household decision making designed to capture some facts about labor supply in germany we flnd that the welfare gains associated with subsidizing childcare are considerable and that the maximum gains are realized when childcare is subsidized to an even greater extent than what tax deductibility implies

household childcare choices and women s work behavior in russia the author models mothers participation in the labor force their working hours and household demand for childcare in russia the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household income on household behavior and well being the theoretical model yields several predictions to test these reduced form equations of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of semi parametric full information maximum likelihood this method controls for the correlation of error terms across outcomes and the correlation of error terms that can result when panel data are used the results of this analysis indicate that the extent to which mothers participate in the labor force and for how many hours depends on the costs of childcare and on what level of hourly wage is available to them and to other members of the household the author s simulations show that family allowances intended to reduce poverty do not significantly affect the household choice of childcare arrangements replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies might have a strong positive effect on women s participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty