some evidence on herding behavior of u s banks the authors examine the international lending decisions of u s commercial banks of different sizes from 1977 to 1982 for evidence ofthe ex istence of herding behavior granger sims causality tests for the loans gran ted by the top nine the next fifteen and the remaining u s banks provide no c lear evidence of herding between the top nine and the next fifteen banks there is however evidence that the remaining banks mostly small ones herded behind the top twenty four banks overall the analysis presented here points to a very weak herding behavior copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

natural resources national income and economic growth in africa abstract because standard measures of aggregate income such as gross domestic product gdp do not account for natural resource depletion their use as gauges of economic performance tends to exaggerate the benefits of resource extraction accounting for natural resource depletion in 18 african countries indicates different patterns of growth than those suggested by gdp figures use of the revised measures in analyses of the link between exports and growth suggests that export expansion may generate increases in measured gdp without stimulating increased production in contrast real exchange rate alignment is correlated with growth in both conventional gdp and the revised accounts

tourism as a long run economic growth factor the spanish case this paper examines the role of tourism in the spanish long run economic development the tourism led growth hypothesis is confirmed through cointegration and causality testing the results indicate that at least during the last three decades economic growth in spain has been sensible to persistent expansion of international tourism the increase of this activity has produced multiplier effects over time external competitivity has also been proved in the model to be a fundamental variable for spanish economic growth from the empirical analysis it can be inferred the positive effects on income that government policy in the adequacy of supply as well as in the promotion of tourist activity may bring about

modeling inertia and variety seeking tendencies in brand choice behavior theories of exploratory behavior suggest that inertia and variety seeking tendencies may coexist within the individual implying that the same individual may exhibit inertia and variety seeking at different times depending on his her choice history past research has not allowed for such within consumer variability in these tendencies the purpose of this study is to present a choice model that allows us to identify such hybrid behavior i e a mixture of inertia and variety seeking and to distinguish hybrid behavior from simpler types of behavior such as pure inertia pure variety seeking and zero order behavior the model is estimated at the household level using panel data for three product classes covering a total of 1069 households the empirical analysis shows that more than half the households analyzed exhibited hybrid behavior rather than simpler types of behavior

the empirical relationship between money prices and income revisited this article investigates the relationship between sum divisia and monetary velocity money prices and income using the notion of granger 1969 causality this is achieved by evaluating empirically using dickey fuller unit root tests whether the macroeconomic time series under consideration are trend stationary or difference stationary and by conducting tests using three different ad hoc lag lengths 8 6 and 4 quarters as well as a statistically determined using akaike s 1969a b final prediction error criterion lag structure

exports and economic growth evidence from 19th century europe abstract cointegration and granger causality tests on data for six european countries from around the middle of the 19th century to 1913 show that exports and gnp were cointegrated and granger causally related with export led growth in italy norway and sweden

vector autoregression cointegration and causality testing for causes of the british industrial revolution the existence timing and possible causes of the british industrial revolution are considered by investigating the time series properties of industrial production and various explanatory variables utilising two types of robust cointegration based causality tests we argue that domestic forces notably technological progress shaped the industrial revolution whereas overseas trade expansion was mainly a consequence of industrial growth results from granger type var tests are contrasted with those of toda and phillips working paper 91 07 university of western australia 1991b where the latter manifest some of the potential problems raised by the authors when applied to a data set of this type an understanding of the possible causes of the first industrial revolution may shed more general light on the forces promoting industrialization and growth to the extent that the first industrial revolution offers a template exports appear not to provide a simple pathway to industrialization

did unilateral divorce laws raise divorce rates a reconciliation and new results application of the coase theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from a consent divorce regime to no fault unilateral divorce laws should not affect divorce rates each iteration of the empirical literature examining the evolution of divorce rates across us states has yielded different conclusions about the effects of divorce law liberalization i show that these results reflect a failure to jointly consider both the political endogeneity of these divorce laws and the dynamic response of divorce rates to a shock to the political regime taking explicit account of the dynamic response of divorce rates to the policy shock i find that liberalized divorce laws caused a discernible rise in divorce rates for about a decade but that this increase was substantially reversed over the next decade that said this increase explains very little of the rise in the divorce rate over the past half century both administrative data on the flow of new divorces and measures of the stock of divorcees from the census support this conclusion these results are suggestive of spouses bargaining within marriage with an eye to their partner s divorce threat

the medicaid notch labor supply and welfare participation evidence from eligibility expansions i assess the impact of losing public health insurance on labor market decisions of women by examining a series of medicaid eligibility expansions targeted toward young children these targeted expansions severed the historical tie between afdc and medicaid eligibility the reforms allowed a mother s earnings to increase without losing public health insurance for her young children increasing the income limit for medicaid resulted in a decrease in afdc participation and an increase in labor force participation among these women the effects were large for ever married women and negligible for never married women

incentive effects of the u s welfare system a review the author would like to acknowledge support for prior work on this topic from the u s department of health and human services and helpful comments from three anonymous referees rebecca blank howard chernick john fitzgerald irwin garfinkel peter gottschalk edward gramlich david greenberg judith gueron james heckman v joseph hotz robert hutchens michael keane frank levy larry mead michael murray robert plotnick anuradha rangarajan philip robins howard rolston jeffrey smith and daniel weinberg all opinions and errors are those of the author alone

export led growth and structural change evidence from malaysia many studies have tried to establish the causal link between export expansion and economic growth this contribution is to recognize that structural changes will change the sources of growth and this will affect the export growth relationship a country case study approach is used focusing on malaysia a country with one of the world s highest sustained growth rates and a long history of commodity trade we use var analysis of malaysian quarterly trade and gdp growth from 1965 to 1996 trade data are disaggregated into primary and manufactures exports and causality tests are applied to the entire period as well as two subperiods 150 the 1965 1501980 period when policy emphasis was on import substitution and the 1981 1501996 period when policies favoured export led growth statistical tests confirm export led growth for the full period and for the period to 1980 but tests on the 1981 1501996 period show growth causing exports primary exports had a stronger direct impact on economic growth than manufactu

exports and growth is the export led growth hypothesis valid for provincial economies this paper re examines the export led growth hypothesis using provincial data unlike other studies that concentrate on country level data this study investigates the validity of the hypothesis for four largest provinces in korea seoul kyunggee kyungnam and pusan the causal implication of the export led growth hypothesis is generally supported for all provinces in the sample the framework of analysis is two and four variable autoregressive models that include provincial exports provincial output terms of trade and national output shocks granger causal orderings from exports to output growth are generally supported in bivariate causal models in multivariate models variance decompositions and impulse response functions further indicate that export growth has a significant impact on output growth for all provinces although a feedback effect from output to export growth appears in seoul and the kyungnam province

lag length selection and tests of granger causality between money and income one of the most widely accepred relationships in macroeconomics is the positive relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and the rate of growth of income a diversity of opinion arises however with the attempt to identify a causal relationship between these variables while friedman and schwartz 1963 initiated the empirical investigation of money income causality sims 1972 made the most significant contribution to this literature with a practical application of the criterion developed by granger 1969 for identifying a causal relationship since the appearance of sims s approach and an alternative one advanced by sargent 1976 many researchers have applied these techniques to the investigation of the causal relationship between money and income l with two exceptions hsiao 1981 and mcmillin and fackler 1984 these researchers have arbitrarily chosen the lengths of their distributed lags the purpose of this paper is to test for granger causality between money and income this paper differs from previous work in that considerably more attention is focused on the effect of the lag specification on the test results in particular we investigate the extent to which rules of thumb arbitrary lag specifications and

relating inertia and experience in technology markets an analysis of households personal computer choices this article empirically analyses how households pc purchasing behaviours change with market experience we find that households generally exhibit inertia in their pc purchases the level of inertia is increasing as a function of experience on the pc market and for households switching brands the likelihood of buying a lesser known brand increases with experience regardless of the brand of the previous purchase these findings are consistent with the predictions of a simple learning model and extend our understanding of how market experience affects purchasing behaviour to an important technology product with implications that may apply to other similar products

welfare for the elderly the effects of ssi on pre retirement labor supply abstract this paper studies pre eligibility age labor market disincentives created by the supplemental security income ssi program asset and income limits might induce individuals nearing the eligibility age to work less we exploit states supplementation of federal ssi benefits to estimate the effects of ssi on pre retirement labor supply using sipp data we find some evidence that generous ssi benefits reduce the pre retirement labor supply and earnings of men who are likely to participate in ssi after retirement as they near the eligibility age especially men who are eligible for early social security benefits which may be used to offset their reduced labor income

a model of stochastic variety seeking in this paper we propose and test a stochastic model of consumer choice that incorporates attribute based variety seeking our stochastic variety seeking model svs has nested within it a fixed variety seeking model a zero order model of choice and a first order pure variety model we compare the svs model to alternative models under stochastic variety seeking we examine the nature of the variety sought and provide a test of the satiation hypothesis unlike fixed variety seeking models our model allows variety seeking to vary in intensity and consistency over individuals as well as over purchase occasions we show that the model is equivalent to a random utility model with the features that the attributes of brands relative to those of the brand previously bought influence choice and the extent of variety seeking is random over choice occasions for a given individual the model permits a closed form solution to the conditional switching probabilities parameterized by variety seeking parameters and dependent on brand attributes we apply our model to individual choice data obtained from a field study specifically designed for the purpose at hand

causality between export growth and industrial development empirical evidence from the nics a comment abstract in a recent article chow 1987 argued that his empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that export growth causes industrial development in this comment i point out several serious shortcomings of chow s analysis

export instability and the domestic economy questions of causality the conventional view concerning the impact of export instability on the domestic economies of developing countries is one of pessimism export instability is thought to adversely affect the short run stability and longer run growth of income empirical evidence on these matters is however inconclusive this article applies a granger sims reduced form approach to examining whether export instability generates short run instability in domestic income for each of a sample of 20 trade dependent countries the results obtained strongly support the contention that export instability induces short run macroeconomic instability

decision making under uncertainty capturing dynamic brand choice processes in turbulent consumer goods markets we construct two models of the behavior of consumers in an environment where there is uncertainty about brand attributes in our models both usage experience and advertising exposure give consumers noisy signals about brand attributes consumers use these signals to update their expectations of brand attributes in a bayesian manner the two models are 1 a dynamic model with immediate utility maximization and 2 a dynamic forward looking model in which consumers maximize the expected present value of utility over a planning horizon given this theoretical framework we derive from the bayesian learning framework how brand choice probabilities depend on past usage experience and advertising exposures we then form likelihood functions for the models and estimate them on nielsen scanner data for detergent we find that the functional forms for experience and advertising effects that we derive from the bayesian learning framework fit the data very well relative to flexible ad hoc functional forms such as exponential smoothing and also perform better at out of sample prediction another finding is that in the context of consumer learning of product attributes although the forward looking model fits the data statistically better at conventional significance levels both models produce similar parameter estimates and policy implications our estimates indicate that consumers are risk averse with respect to variation in brand attributes which discourages them from buying unfamiliar brands using the estimated behavioral models we perform various scenario evaluations to find how changes in marketing strategy affect brand choice both in the short and long run a key finding obtained from the policy experiments is that advertising intensity has only weak short run effects but a strong cumulative effect in the long run the substantive content of the paper is potentially of interest to academics in marketing economics and decision sciences as well as product managers marketing research managers and analysts interested in studying the effectiveness of marketing mix strategies our paper will be of particular interest to those interested in the long run effects of advertising note that our estimation strategy requires us to specify explicit behavioral models of consumer choice behavior derive the implied relationships among choice probabilities past purchases and marketing mix variables and then estimate the behavioral parameters of each model such an estimation strategy is referred to as structural estimation and econometric models that are based explicitly on the consumer s maximization problem and whose parameters are parameters of the consumers utility functions or of their constraints are referred to as structural models a key benefit of the structural approach is its potential usefulness for policy evaluation the parameters of structural models are invariant to policy that is they do not change due to a change in the policy in contrast the parameters of reduced form brand choice models are in general functions of marketing strategy variables e g consumer response to price may depend on pricing policy as a result the predictions of reduced form models for the outcomes of policy experiments may be unreliable because in making the prediction one must assume that the model parameters are unaffected by the policy change since the agents in our models choose among many alternative brands their choice probabilities take the form of higher order integrals we employ monte carlo methods to approximate these integrals and estimate our models using simulated maximum likelihood estimation of the dynamic forward looking model also requires that a dynamic programming problem be solved in order to form the likelihood function for this we use a new approximation method based on simulation and interpolation techniques these estimation techniques may be of interest to researchers and policy makers in many fields where dynamic choice among discrete alternatives is important such as marketing decision sciences labor and health economics and industrial organization

tourism trade and growth the case of cyprus although the relationship between international trade and economic growth has found a wide application area in the literature over the years this can not be said about tourism and growth or trade and tourism this study employs the bounds test for cointegration and granger causality tests to investigate a long run equilibrium relationship between tourism trade and real income growth and the direction of causality among themselves for cyprus results reveal that tourism trade and real income growth are cointegrated thus a long run equilibrium relationship can be inferred between these three variables on the other hand granger causality test results suggest that real income growth stimulates growth in international trade both exports and imports and international tourist arrivals to the island furthermore growth in international trade both exports and imports also stimulates an increase in international tourist arrivals to cyprus and finally real import growth stimulate growth in real export

participation and crowd out assessing the effects of parental medicaid expansions abstract in this paper we examine the effects of recent parental medicaid eligibility expansions on medicaid participation and private insurance coverage we present a new approach for estimating these policy effects that explicitly models the particular policy instrument over which legislators have control income eligibility thresholds our approach circumvents estimation problems stemming from misclassification or measurement error moreover it allows us to assess how the policy effects may vary at different initial threshold levels using data from the survey of income and program participation we find three main results first the eligibility expansions result in significant increases in medicaid participation a typical expansion increases medicaid participation by about four percent of baseline coverage rates second the participation effect is larger for lower initial thresholds and the effect decreases as medicaid thresholds increase third we find no statistically significant evidence of crowd out regardless of initial threshold level

the impact of medicaid on labor market activity and program participation evidence from the oregon health insurance experiment united states dept of health and human services assistant secretary for planning and evaluation

the effect of expanding medicaid eligibility on supplemental security income program participation abstract low income adults without dependent children have historically had few paths to obtain public health insurance unless they qualified for supplemental security income ssi cash benefits because of a disability however in states that expand their medicaid programs childless adults may obtain medicaid without undergoing an intensive ssi disability review process and with substantially higher income and assets than the ssi program allows this expanded availability of medicaid coverage independent of ssi participation creates an opportunity to increase earnings and savings without jeopardizing health insurance coverage in this paper we use the natural experiments created by state decisions to expand medicaid to nondisabled nonelderly adults without dependent children to study the effect of decoupling medicaid eligibility and cash assistance using a difference in differences study design we collected data on the income eligibility limits enrollment caps and coverage characteristics of state medicaid expansions to childless adults from 2001 to 2013 we combine these data with the nationally representative american community survey to estimate the effects of state expansion on ssi participation we find relative declines in ssi participation of 0 17 percentage points on average after the introduction of medicaid coverage for childless adults a 7 relative decrease this finding suggests the potential for small but important efficiency gains from separating ssi and medicaid eligibility

variety seeking through brand switching a concept of variety seeking behavior is modeled as a stochastic brand choice model the model yields a measure of variety seeking for each individual consumer panel data for 28 products are analyzed for each household and the possibility of market segmentation by variety seeking behavior is explored

the rise in the disability rolls and the decline in unemployment between 1984 and 2001 the share of nonelderly adults receiving social security disability insurance income di rose by 60 percent to 5 3 million beneficiaries rapid program growth despite improving aggregate health appears to be explained by reduced screening stringency declining demand for less skilled workers and an unforeseen increase in the earnings replacement rate we estimate that the sum of these forces doubled the labor force exit propensity of displaced high school dropouts after 1984 lowering measured u s unemployment by one half a percentage point steady state calculations augur a further 40 percent increase in the rate of di receipt

exports imports and economic growth in south korea and japan a tale of two economies this article investigates the relationship between exports imports and economic growth for south korea and japan by constructing a vector autoregression var model causality is examined between real gross domestic product gdp real exports and real imports several principal results emerge from the empirical work first the three variables are cointegrated for both countries implying that a long run steady state exists second there is evidence of bidirectional causality between imports and economic growth for both countries finally japan seems to experience export led growth while gdp growth in south korea has a negative effect on export growth these contrasting findings could result from export goods in japan exhibiting greater nonprice competitive aspects although their success fails to trigger a virtuous circle since growth fails to lead to increased exports while for south korea output growth leads to a decrease in export growth suggesting a strong domestic market

technical note aggregating individual purchases to the household level household level panel data are the input for many types of marketing studies an interesting but until now unaddressed question is what is the effect of aggregating individual members purchases to the household level under standard assumptions the answer is unambiguous the household brand switching pattern looks more zero order than the typical individual family member s behavior when the standard assumptions are relaxed the overall spirit of the results do not change these conclusions give comfort to those who use brand switching data to partition product categories those looking for variety seeking behavior from household data are given some cause for concern as well as reasons for reinterpreting previous studies

the role of exports fdi and imports in development evidence from sub saharan african countries the disappointing economic performance of sub saharan african ssa economies in the late 1980s prompted reforms in foreign trade and foreign direct investment fdi in the early 1990s using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach and pedroni panel estimation procedures that allow for heterogeneity this study found that exports and fdi have a significant impact on economic growth granger type causality tests show the interrelatedness of exports fdi imports and income variables the results also provide evidence of a two stage causal chain of exports imports and income this article calls for more market oriented policy reforms in ssa countries

using the medicare buy in program to estimate the effect of medicaid on ssi participation aaron s yelowitz this article assesses the importance of receiving supplemental health insurance on participation in supplemental security income ssi for the elderly the implementation of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program offered a substitute for medicaid and expanded health insurance eligibility to a higher income level using a sample of elderly respondents aged 66 to 75 i find that the qmb program reduced ssi participation more than half of the qmb participants were previously covered by ssi and medicaid the calculations suggest that the qmb program was not as expensive as it might first appear because of reductions in ssi expenditure jel h53 138 j14 i introduction the supplemental security income ssi program in the united states provides assistance to elderly blind and disabled individuals who are poor it is federally financed and administered by the social security administration although much more attention has been focused on the former aid to families with dependent children afdc program which primarily targets poor single parent families more money was spent on cash relief for ssi recipients in 1993 23 6 billion compared to 22 3 billion 1 in addition to cash ssi recipients receive supplemental health insurance coverage for medicare similar to private medigap policies through the medicaid program this provides a second important benefit to ssi recipients in fiscal year 1993 medicaid expenditure for elderly categorically needy ssi recipients amounted to 14 1 billion 2 several studies have examined the importance of health insurance for working age adults in the labor market 3 in addition the effects of recent medicaid expansions for younger populations have been extensively studied 4 little is known however about the quantitative importance of medicaid on the ssi participation of the elderly the key obstacle in assessing this effect is that until recently medicaid eligibility had been closely related to ssi eligibility in most states this study analyzes the introduction of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program enacted in different states from 1987 to 1992 which offered supplemental health insurance coverage to the elderly without the need to participate in ssi the qmb program offered some of the same medicare cost sharing benefits that an elderly ssi recipient would receive from medicaid including the payment of medicare premiums deductibles and copayments 5 moreover the qmb program expanded medicaid coverage to individuals with higher inc omes and assets than the ssi program 6 the primary goal of this article is to document the link between the qmb program and the decision to participate in ssi i find that raising the income limit in qmb program significantly reduces ssi participation particularly among african americans and the less educated the coefficient estimates suggest that in the absence of the qmb buy in program ssi participation would have been 45 higher in 1992 than it actually was the caseload growth in the elderly ssi population would have looked very similar to the caseload growth of the disabled 851 population a group not eligible for qmb in addition the qmb program was considerably less expensive than one would infer from simply calculating the increased health care expenditure because of reductions in ssi expenditure for cash benefits the rest of the article is arranged as follows section ii outlines some relevant features of the ssi medicaid and qmb programs in particular it reviews how the income eligibility limits for qmb and ssi are computed the difference between those limits is a measure of how closely are medicaid and ssi linked it will subsequently be used as the key independent variable in the regression analysis this section also shows the cross sectional and time series variation in the qmb program section iii models the potential effects on ssi participation of the introduction of the qmb program and considers the role of information

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs

government decision making and the incidence of federal mandates abstract this paper analyzes the effects of federally mandated program changes on state spending and revenues incorporating and evaluating the predictive value of several common theories of the state decision making process using several sources of exogenous increases in public medical spending i estimate that the entire state portion of the burden of mandated spending is borne by decreases in other public welfare spending while federal mandates may influence the composition of benefits at the state level it is much more difficult for them to change the total level of state transfers comparison of state reactions to different shocks suggests that these reductions are due in part to the substitutability of programs in the voter utility function but also in part to the stickiness of spending within budget categories states with greater racial differences between recipients and voters and states with less generous neighbors reduce other public welfare spending by even more alleviating the burden the medical expansions imposed on their taxpayers mandates may thus serve only to increase inequality across states

can trade liberalization stimulate economic growth in africa abstract this paper examines changes in economic growth that are likely to result from changes in trade policies exports and investment in 12 sub saharan african ssa countries using a vector error correction model vecm our results indicate that trade policies exports and investment rate shocks have a significant impact on economic growth in 10 of the 12 ssa countries this suggests that it is possible to stimulate economic growth in some african countries through an outward looking strategy of export expansion more significantly the results further suggest the importance as well as the need for african countries to embark on trade liberalization policies in order to enhance economic growth in the current world economy

unit roots and cointegration in estimating causality between exports and economic growth empirical evidence from the asean countries abstract this paper utilizes cointegration and error correction representation methodology in estimating the long run behavioral relationship between exports and economic growth in the asean countries

growth and exchange rate volatility a panel data analysis the aim of this article is to assess the role of real exchange rate rer volatility on long run economic growth for a set of 82 advanced and emerging economies using a panel data set ranging from 1970 to 2009 with an accurate measure for exchange rate volatility the results for the two step system generalized method of moments gmm panel growth models show that a more less volatile rer has a significant negative positive impact on economic growth the results are also robust for different model specifications

an investigation into the order of the brand choice process this paper investigates the order of the brand choice process at the individual family level using a variety of tests t likelihood ratio binomial runs and multinomial runs tests the test of stationarity developed permits separate analyses for stationary and nonstationary purchase sequences our analyses indicate that the purchase sequences of a majority of stationary consumers are consistent with the zero order assumption this result is observed for all the nine frequently bought packaged goods studied with the use of panel data and for a product category soft drinks using experimental data

positioning and pricing in a variety seeking market we study competitive positioning and pricing strategies in markets where consumers seek variety variety seeking behavior is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for the product purchased on the previous purchase occasion using a three stage hotelling type model we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers reduces product differentiation offered in equilibrium thereby explaining some otherwise counterintuitive findings in empirical research we find that firms charge higher prices in period 1 and lower prices in period 2 the lower price in period 2 represents the price incentive that firms need to offer to prevent the variety seeking consumers from switching furthermore we find that the observed switching in a market may not fully capture the true magnitude of the underlying variety seeking tendencies among consumers finally we show that the presence of variety seeking consumers leads to lower firm profits and a higher consumer surplus surplus increases for variety seeking consumers as well as regular consumers therefore the presence of variety seeking consumers benefits everyone in the market

exogeneity and the export led growth hypothesis the case of china during the past two decades many empirical studies such as balassa 3 4 emery 7 fajana 11 feder 12 maizels 21 rams 22 23 tyler 26 voivodas 27 williamson 28 and others have found that exports promote economic growth in all of these studies a real output growth variable is regressed on either i export levels ii export shares or iii export growth by using a single equation model the statistical significance of the positive coefficient of the export variables has then been interpreted as evidence supporting the export led growth hypothesis chow 6 hsiao 16 and jung and marshall 17 have recently questioned the validity of the above findings this is because the single equation or so called impact studies using ols regression are from an econometric perspective mostly inadequate in addressing the issue of causality if a bidirectional causality between these two variables exports and output exists the estimation and tests used in the impact studies are inconsistent these concerns have subsequently generated a series of new empirical work aimed directly at resolving the issue of causality between exports and output growth 1 2 14 20 the granger 15 causality tests carried out in these studies have revealed that the causal direction in general depends on the country and commodity group under consideration notwithstanding the important contributions of the above mentioned causality studies there are shortcomings that must be dealt with to permit a better understanding of the subject matter first the impact studies presume that the export variable is exogenous this is a rather restrictive assumption as a feedback from output to exports is very likely 17 20 second the existing causality gtudies do not make a clear distinction between exogeneity and causality as suggested by engle hendry and richard 10 hereinafter ehr causality tests such as the granger 15 method are valid only for testing one component of strong exogeneity because they are concerned with sequential marginalizing feedback effects rather than contemporaneous conditioning

did expanding medicaid affect welfare participation in a widely cited 1995 paper aaron yelowitz concluded that medicaid eligibility expansions for children were associated with increased labor force participation and reduced welfare participation among single mothers the authors of the present study using data from the 1988 96 current population surveys re examine the evidence presented by yelowitz they find that yelowitz s results resulted from two factors he imposed a restriction on the parameter estimates not predicted by theory and rejected in the data and he used only one of two income tests that families must pass to be eligible for welfare the authors conclude that there is no evidence detectable in the cps data of a relationship between welfare or labor force participation and the medicaid income limits

discount rates natural resources and the measurement of aggregate economic growth in africa abstract over the last decade there has been a growing interest in depreciation of natural capital in national income accounts within this literature there has been limited discussion of the sensitivity of measurement to the choice of discount rate and the effect of using depreciated measures of growth in empirical analyses without attempting to estimate or justify a specific discount rate this paper presents alternative sets of growth data for 18 african countries based on different assumptions of the appropriate discount rate to apply to natural capital the data sets are then used in a statistical test of the causes of economic growth results of the statistical analysis indicate sensitivity to the choice of discount rate

the economic case for international labour standards this paper explores the economic case for international labour standards granting workers rights of free association and collective bargaining confers both static and dynamic economic efficiencies static efficiencies refer to one time gains from improvements in economic practice dynamic efficiencies refer to gains from improvements to the growth path resulting from a shift away from a low road development path to a high road path these efficiencies raise wages employment and output in developing countries and they can also benefit workers in developed countries labour standards are an institutional mechanism for raising the quality of growth in both developing and developed countries in this sense they are a win win institution

cointegration causality and export led growth in mexico 1895 1992 abstract cointegration and granger causality tests show that real exports and real gdp in mexico over 1895 1992 were cointegrated and there was a significant and positive granger causal relationship running from exports to economic growth

the effect of means tested income support for the elderly on pre retirement saving evidence from the ssi program in the u s abstract we attempt to draw inferences about behavioral responses to means tested income support for the elderly by examining the effects on saving of the supplemental security income ssi program for the aged in the u s part of this program provides payments to the poor elderly operating as a means tested public retirement program we exploit state level variation in ssi benefits to estimate the effects of ssi on saving using data from the 1984 survey of income program participation we find evidence that high ssi benefits reduce saving among households with heads who are approaching the ssi eligibility age and are likely participants in the program

causality between exports and economic growth abstract this paper utilizes granger causality tests in investigating the relationship between exports and national income from a consistent data set for 47 developing countries in africa new empirical results as well as suggestions for future research are presented

global trade integration and economic convergence of developing countries gerschenkron hypothesized that lower income countries would tend to grow more rapidly than higher income countries and therefore that their average incomes would converge since that time the record indicates that the industrialized nations have had relatively slow growth rates while many less developed countries ldcs have had relatively rapid rates of growth although many others have had slower rates of growth and some have been negative furthermore the rates of growth have varied considerably during the four and one half decades since 1952 both among countries and within a country from one year to the next thus convergence remains an issue among development economists and others interested in the topic with frequent concern being expressed about a growing gap between average incomes in the moreand less developed economies of the world in this article we examine convergence and divergence due to differential rates of growth factors that affect growth the role of international trade in the process the policy frameworks that enhance or detract from growth and the research needs and opportunities for agricultural and resource economists a controversial aspect is the influence of trade on the process since most development economists tend to believe that more

re examining export led growth hypothesis a multivariate cointegration analysis for india this paper re examines the export led growth elg hypothesis using a vector autoregressive var model by considering the relationship between real gdp real exports and terms of trade for india during the period 1961 93 in re examining the elg hypothesis this study perhaps for the first time employs a multivariate framework using johansen s model selection and maximum likelihood cointegration procedure the results sugest that there is one long run equilibrium relationship among the three variables and the causal relationship flows from the growth in gdp and terms of trade to the growth in exports the causality from exports to gdp appears to be a short run phenomenon suggesting that the recent export promotion strategies adopted in india have the potential of bearing growth in the future

disability insurance rejection rates and the labor supply of older workers abstract we investigate the effects of trying to mitigate moral hazard in the disability insurance di program by raising the stringency of the screening process for applicants we do so by studying a dramatic increase in rejection rates for the di program in the late 1970s which varied substantially across the us states we find that each 10 rise in denial rates led to a statistically significant 2 8 fall in labor force non participation among 45 64 year old males we also find that the denial rate increases effectively targeted their incentive effects to more able individuals according to an anthropometric measure of disability

causality between export growth and industrial development empirial evidence from the nics abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between export growth and industrial development in eight newly industrializing countries nics results of sims causality test show that for most of the nics there is a strong bidirectional causality between the growth of exports and industrial development these findings support the export led growth strategy in that expansion in exports not only promote the growth of national income but also lead to structural transformation of the developing countries

effects of the minimum wage on employment dynamics the voluminous literature on minimum wages offers little consensus on the extent to which a wage floor impacts employment we argue that the minimum wage will impact employment over time through changes in growth rather than an immediate drop in relative employment levels we show that commonly used specifications in this literature especially those that include state specific time trends will not accurately capture these effects using three separate state panels of administrative employment data we find that the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years this finding is supported using several empirical specifications

distinguishing income from substitution effects in disability insurance a set of studies conducted over the last 15 years has produced a near consensus that the social security disability insurance system ssdi has substantial disincentive effects on the labor supply of near elderly males diminishing labor force participation increasing the sensitivity of labor force exit decisions to adverse economic shocks and encouraging those nearing retirement to claim disability benefits and subsequently transfer into the social security retirement program yet efforts by the social security administration ssa to encourage labor supply among the disabled by removing the work disincentives built into ssdi have been almost entirely unsuccessful most notably in 1999 congress authorized the ticket to work program which provides an array of inducements for current ssdi beneficiaries to take up employment including permitting a trial work period of up to nine months providing 7 75 years of ongoing medicare eligibility following return to work and providing three years of automatic benefit reinstatement when claimants workplace earnings fall below a threshold level each of these steps reduces the implicit tax placed on labor supply by the ssdi program despite these lures fewer than 1 400 0 01 percent of the 12 2 million tickets issued to date have led to successful workforce integration autor and duggan 2006

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

disability insurance and health insurance reform evidence from massachusetts abstract as health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the affordable care act aca the cost of applying for social security disability insurance ssdi potentially going without health insurance coverage during a waiting period totaling 29 months from disability onset will decline for many people with employer sponsored health insurance at the same time the value of ssdi and supplemental security income ssi participation will decline for individuals who otherwise lacked access to health insurance we study the 2006 massachusetts health insurance reform to estimate the potential effects of the aca on ssdi and ssi applications

does disability insurance receipt discourage work using examiner assignment to estimate causal effects of ssdi receipt abstract we present the first causal estimates of the effect of social security disability insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants we use administrative data to matc

exports export composition and growth cointegration and causality evidence for malaysia this paper comprehensively tests the export led growth elg hypothesis for malaysia for the period 1955 90 using cointegration and causality testing based on hsiao s synthesis of the granger test and akaike s minimum final prediction error criterion the results provide support for the elg hypothesis aggregate exports granger cause real gdp and non export gdp this relationship is found to be driven by manufactured exports rather than by traditional exports

inferring the order of the choice process using consumer purchase histories the small sample properties of the multinomial runs mr test which is often used to test for effects of previous brand choices on current brand choice probabilities are explored in this article through a monte carlo study of different buyer level brand choice probability models the power and the actual size of this test under a null hypothesis of no previous brand choice effects are shown to depend on the nature of the true underlying model length of purchase history and skewness in baseline choice probabilities we provide some guidelines for when the mr test is more useful in empirical research

cointegration causality and export led growth in portugal 1865 1985 abstract this paper considers the relationship between cointegration and causality and uses tests of cointegration as pre tests for granger tests of causality such methods are utilized on portuguese data 1865 1985 where the export led growth hypothesis is rejected in favour of reverse causality

migration the life cycle and state benefits how low is the bottom i show that among women likely to use welfare movers move to higher benefit states i also find that the probability likely welfare users will move at all is lower in higher benefit states this effect is concentrated early in the life cycle as theory predicts i construct a theoretical framework to measure the impact of welfare migration on optimal state benefits simulation results suggest little impact in higher benefit states but possibly a more substantial impact in other states finally evidence suggests little reason for concern due to welfare migration in using cross state variation in welfare generosity to identify incentive effects of the welfare system on other outcome variables

keynes versus wagner public expenditure and national income for three african countries the public expenditure income hypothesis has long been debated in economics following keynes public expenditure is seen as an exogenous factor to be used as a policy instrument to influence growth on the other hand wagner argues that expenditure is an endogenous factor or an outcome not a cause of growth in national income the purpose of this paper is to apply both the granger and holmes hutton statistical procedures to test the income expenditure hypothesis for three african countries ghana kenya and south africa we find that the hypothesis of public expenditure causing national income is not supported by the data for these african countries

causality between foreign investment and spillover efficiency while there is considerable evidence on the observed linkage between foreign investment and technical efficiency of the developing countries the question of causality between them has not been investigated this paper re examines the relationship between foreign direct investment and technical efficiency in mexico brazil chile singapore and zambia using granger causality tests the results suggest that foreign direct investment and labour productivity are causally independent variables however capital formation of the host country is found to exert causal influence on foreign investment

afdc ssi and welfare reform aggressiveness caseload reductions versus caseload shifting welfare reform has made receipt of cash benefits more difficult and less attractive for single mothers we examine whether reforms of afdc affected caseloads of another program supplemental security income ssi we exploit state variation in welfare reform over time and find that female headed households in states aggressively pursuing welfare reform were 21 6 percent more likely to receive ssi this implies that a decrease in caseloads in one program cannot be interpreted as an equal sized decrease in the number of families receiving public assistance in addition our results have policy implications for the well being of families affected by welfare reform time limits

predictive testing of consumer choice models not subject to independence of irrelevant alternatives the probabilistic modeling of the relationship between objective or perceived characteristics of multiattribute alternatives and consumer choice is receiving increased attention in marketing and ot

the impact of economic conditions on participation in disability programs evidence from the coal boom and bust abstract we examine the impact of the coal boom of the 1970 s and the coal bust of the 1980 s on disability program participation these shocks provide clear evidence that as the value of labor market participation increases disability program participation falls for the disability insurance program the elasticity of payments with respect to local earnings is between 0 3 and 0 4 and for supplemental security income the elasticity is between 0 4 and 0 7 consistent with a model where qualifying for disability programs is costly the relationship between economic conditions and program participation is much stronger for permanent than for transitory economic shocks

price competition in markets with consumer variety seeking we investigate price competition between firms in markets characterized by consumer variety seeking while previous research has addressed the effect of consumer inertia on prices there exists no research on the effects of variety seeking on price competition our study fills this gap in the literature using a two period duopoly framework as in klemperer s analysis of inertial markets we show that the noncooperative pricing equilibrium in a market with consumer variety seeking may be the same as the collusive outcome in an otherwise identical market without variety seeking specifically our variety seeking model implies tacit collusion between firms in both periods unlike the inertia model of klemperer that implies tacit collusion between firms only in the second period but implies fierce price competition in the first period when consumers are assumed to have rational expectations about future prices the implied first period prices increase further which is consistent with what klemperer finds in an inertial market to summarize while our variety seeking analyses support two key results pertaining to second period prices and rational expectations previously derived for inertial markets by klemperer they depart from one key result pertaining to first period prices

the employment effects of terminating disability benefits abstract few social security disability insurance di beneficiaries return to the labor force making it hard to assess their likely employment in the absence of benefits using administrative data i examine the employment of individuals who lost di eligibility after the 1996 removal of drug and alcohol addictions as qualifying conditions approximately 22 started working at levels that would have disqualified them for di an employment response that is large relative to their work histories those who received di for 2 3 years had the largest response suggesting that a period of public assistance may maximize the employment of some disabled individuals

asset accumulation and labor force participation of disability insurance applicants abstract this paper provides empirical evidence of the existence of forward looking asset accumulation behavior among disability insurance applicants previously examined only in the theoretical literature using panel data from the rand health and retirement study i show that rejected applicants for social security disability insurance ssdi possess significantly more assets than accepted applicants immediately prior to application and exhibit lower attachment to the labor force these empirical results are consistent with the theoretical prediction in diamond and mirrlees 1978 and golosov and tsyvinski 2006 that certain individuals with high unwillingness to work maximize utility by planning in advance for their future disability insurance application because the existing empirical literature on disability insurance does not account for this intertemporal channel it may underestimate the total work disincentive effect of ssdi

why did the ssi disabled program grow so much disentangling the effect of medicaid the number of participants in the ssi program grew by 1 1 million from 1987 to 1993 this paper examines the role of medicaid on the ssi participation decision i use the rapid growth in average medicaid expenditure as a proxy for its value ols estimates of medicaid s effect may be biased because of omitted variables bias and measurement error i therefore apply two stage least squares to estimate medicaid s effect using average medicaid expenditure for blind ssi recipients as an instrument these estimates show that rising medicaid expenditure significantly increased ssi participation among adults with low permanent incomes explaining 20 of the growth

a model of balanced choice behavior in some product categories consumers appear to alternate among items in a consistent and purposeful though not entirely deterministic fashion such alternation occurs even in the absence of any apparent external influences on choice to explain such balanced choice behavior we present a model based upon the premise that past consumption influences the utility of items on subsequent choice occasions individuals may seek variety on certain product attributes and exhibit loyalty toward others the model specification yields a logit choice model which may be calibrated using consumption diary panel data at the individual or cross sectional level

public health insurance labor supply and employment lock we study the effect of public health insurance on labor supply by exploiting a large public health insurance disenrollment in 2005 approximately 170 000 tennessee residents abruptly lost medicaid coverage using both across and within state variation in exposure to the disenrollment we estimate large increases in labor supply primarily along the extensive margin the increased employment is concentrated among individuals working at least 20 hours a week and receiving private employer provided health insurance we explore the dynamic effects of the disenrollment and find an immediate increase in job search behavior and a steady rise in both employment and health insurance coverage following the disenrollment our results are consistent with a significant degree of employment lock workers who are employed primarily to secure private health insurance coverage jel codes i1 j22 h75