paternity deferments and the timing of births u s natality during the vietnam war i background during the conflict in vietnam men between 18 5 and 25 yr of age were subject to the draft several exemptions to this rule existed for example students were exempt importantly for the purposes of this study married men with dependents could also obtain a deferment from the draft and the particulars of this policy underwent substantial changes in the 1960s in august 1965 president johnson issued executive order 11241 which formally eliminated deferments for childless men who got married after august 26 1965 and in october 1965 the selective service declared that childless married men irrespective of the date of marriage were to be called up both announcements came as a surprise new york times 1965a since married men with children remained exempt the declarations provided a strong incentive for young couples to conceive a first born child before august 1965 marriage had been a sufficient condition for a deferment even just a few hours before the august 26 midnight deadline desperate couples tried to make use of this provision by quickly scheduling their wedding between august and october couples who had missed the deadline had to satisfy an additional condition conceiving a child childless men who got married in this period were still subject to the draft and so had an incentive to conceive a child in october 1965 the risk of induction was further extended to all couples who had remained childless finally in april 1970 the family deferments were entirely eliminated by executive order 11527 the selective service system office of public and intergovernmental affairs 2004 past research has demonstrated that taxes and expenditure programs can affect fertility e g whittington alm and peters 1990 see also milligan 2005 for an excellent review as well as the timing of delivery dickert conlin and chandra 1999 the goal of this article was to provide additional evidence on the responsiveness of childbearing to incentives embedded in public policy by studying a dramatic yet unexamined government intervention the effects of the vietnam war paternity deferments on the decision to conceive a first born child as discussed in the popular press vice president dick cheney s first daughter elizabeth was born 9 mo 2 d after the selective service system announced that childless married men were to be drafted boston globe 2000 slate chatterbox 2004 did draft eligible men strategically react to the announcement and if so how widespread and fast was the response to my knowledge no one has investigated the impacts of the vietnam draft on natality using the vietnam draft rules to identify a causal effect however i build on several prior studies angrist for example uses the exogeneity of the vietnam draft rules to identify the effects of military service on lifetime earnings angrist 1990 angrist and chen 2007 and to measure the racial differences in the value of military service angrist 1991 gullason 1989 and card and lemieux 2001 2002 estimate the effects of the vietnam draft on schooling explicitly recognizing that college attendance often served as a vehicle to avoid the draft both studies find a significant effect of the probability of being drafted on school enrollment the fact that the changes in the selective service rules were both unexpected and widely publicized makes this an ideal example to study the effects of policy on fertility decisions milligan 2005 argues that the assumptions made about the timing of the response to policy are arbitrary since a reaction will be delayed not only by a 9 mo gestational lag but also by the time necessary for the diffusion of information about the change in policy in the case examined here however the criticism seems less relevant newspaper clippings from august 27 1965 suggest that the issuance of the executive order 11241 did receive broad attention for example the story was listed on the front pages of new york times 1965c and washington post 1965b

time preference and international lending and borrowing in an overlapping generations model two economies represented by diamond type overlapping generations models and differing only in their pure rates of time preference are joined together capital formation balance of payments behavior and welfare are compared under autarky and openness with a positive natural rate of growth the low time preference country runs a current account surplus in the steady state but not necessarily outside it if preexisting capital is not shiftable between countries integration in the world economy makes the high time preference country worse off in the short run the ranking of stationary utility levels under autarky and openness is ambiguous

linking migration and mobility individual and contextual effects in housing markets in the uk clark w a v and huang y 2004 linking migration and mobility individual and contextual effects in housing markets in the uk regional studies38 617 628 most migration work continues to separate long and short distance moves and their outcomes but clearly they are part of a complex process of relocation across different scales while we know that long distance moves are largely driven by labour market differences and moves at the local scale are the way in which households translate those long distance moves into residential satisfaction in local housing markets we know very little about the link between the two processes and their likelihoods some studies have suggested that long distance moves are followed by local adjustment moves at an early point after the relocation this paper evaluates those empirical findings in the context of the british housing market it takes up a number of previously unexamined issues related to these linkages and to the timing of the links between the two moves

heckscher ohlin revisited implications of differential population dynamics for trade within an overlapping generations framework abstract this paper investigates the implications of the addition of differential population dynamics to a simple 2 2 2 model of international trade within an overlapping generations framework the two regions considered are assumed to be identical in every respect except for the way their populations evolve over time the effects of these demographic differences are explored by comparing autarky and trade on the basis of i the analytical solutions obtained for the steady state values of key variables and ii the paths of these variables plotted using numerical results from simulation experiments carried out under two different demographic scenarios unequal population dynamics are shown to affect the relative abundance of the factors of production in each region giving rise to differentials in wage rates and rentals for capital under autarky conditions this in turn causes costs of production and relative prices to differ creating the grounds for trade in the sense of heckscher ohlin ho yet the results reveal that static ho results cannot be generalized to hold in a dynamic setting where differences in demographics cause factor proportions to evolve independently of trade over time

recognition redistribution and liberty abstract this paper examines the relationship between redistribution recognition and liberty in particular it critiques the existing approaches in the critical literature that either reduces redistribution to a simple subset of recognition or insists that recognition is both necessary and sufficient for redistribution to occur it argues instead that the introduction of the relatively weak assumption of minimal individual liberty is required for recognition and that while recognition is necessary it is insufficient for redistribution it also considers the sustainability of voluntary redistribution in a liberal society and voluntary recognition in an authoritarian society finally the approach is applied to the problems of discrimination genocide and ethnic conflict

utility maximization in models of discrete choice abstract in this paper i construct a direct utility function that has as its counterpart an indirect utility function that is commonly used in models of product differentiation

welfare payments and other economic determinants of female migration this article investigates the effects of welfare payments wages and unemployment on women s probability of interstate migration in the united states it also investigates if the income attraction of locations varies with recency of labor market experience welfare gains increase the probability of interstate migration welfare effects are largest for single mothers with small children and stronger among women with no recent labor market experience the welfare effects albeit small are larger than the wage effects the wage effects are weaker among women with no recent work experience ethnic specific analyses suggest differences in migration behavior among anglos african americans and puerto ricans

students perceptions of teacher biases experimental economics in schools we put forward a new experimental economics design with monetary incentives to estimate students perceptions of grading discrimination we use this design in a large field experiment which involved 1 200 british students in grade 8 classrooms across 29 schools in this design students are given an endowment they can invest on a task where payoff depends on performance the task is a written verbal test which is graded non anonymously by their teacher in a random half of the classrooms and graded anonymously by an external examiner in the other random half of the classrooms we find significant evidence that students choices reflect perceptions of biases in teachers grading practices our results show systematic gender interaction effects male students invest less with female teachers than with male teachers while female students invest more with male teachers than with female teachers interestingly female students perceptions are not in line with actual discrimination teachers tend to give better grades to students of their own gender results do not suggest that ethnicity and socioeconomic status play a role

should america save for its old age fiscal policy population aging and national saving he federal government has recently seen an abrupt turnaround in its budget balance from years of deficits to the now predicted years of surpluses this switch has been widely hailed since many analysts believe that the united states saves too little and that the switch to government budget surpluses can help to address that problem indeed concern about low u s saving and the long term budget outlook has increased of late as the retirement of the baby boom generation draws closer and the financial pressures associated with population aging loom larger in this paper we cite a collection of arguments for why u s fiscal policy should be used to increase national saving then we focus on whether the aging of the u s population adds force to these arguments for boosting national saving and conclude perhaps surprisingly that it may not the potential role of fiscal policy in preparing the country for the coming demographic change is at the center of recent budget proposals although the sudden emergence of budget surpluses is to a large extent based on economic and other factors beyond the government s direct control one can argue that the political will to maintain these surpluses stems in part from a desire to prepare for the retirement of the baby boomers moreover the question of whether the projected surpluses should be devoted to new spending tax cuts or debt reduction is entangled with arguments over what portion of the surpluses should go to saving social security and medicare yet the appropriate saving response to population aging is not clear cut while aging boosts the demands on future resources it also changes the rate of return the u s economy can expect from saving the net effect of aging on desired saving is

housework wages and the division of housework time for employed spouses while the popular press may have declared housework passe with the advent of the two income household see housework is obsolescent by barbara ehrenreich 1993 for one such example the facts indicate that housework continues to consume a substantial amount of time particularly for women while estimates vary widely depending on the sample examined and the methods used to generate the information representative values of housework time range around 6 14 hours per week for men and 20 30 hours for women since wages are likely to be influenced both directly and indirectly by the time and effort devoted to other activities and since gender differences in household responsibilities are significant and often assumed to be a driving force behind gender earnings differentials decisions regarding the overall amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time within the household are important ones the goal of this paper is to shed some light on these allocation decisions we begin by discussing the various methods by which time and effort spent on housework may affect wages and summarize the available empirical evidence overall the empirical evidence indicates that time spent on housework has a negative effect on wages an effect which is most pronounced for women we next examine the amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time between working spouses to do so we draw upon the human capital literature and the bargaining literature to construct simple regression equations for time spent on housework by each spouse as well as the share of housework time contributed by the husband the results indicate that husbands do less housework than their wives as their relative earnings and hours spent in the labor market increase

the consumption value of schooling an empirical estimate of one aspect the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate by example that human capital is more than just a capital good in the strictest sense of the term certain forms of human capital have consumption value in addition to the value of the increased stream offuture monetary and nonmonetary benefits a methodfor empirically estimating the consumption value of schooling as a vehicle to avoid the vietnam war draft is presented

identity and the economics of organizations on plebes first day at west point called r day they strip down to their underwear their hair is cut off they are put in uniform they then must address an older cadet with the proper salute and with the statement sir new cadet doe reports to the cadet in the red sash for the first time as ordered plebes must stand and salute and repeat and stand and salute and repeat until they get it exactly right all the while being reprimanded for every tiny mistake in the summary of david lipsky 2003 pp 145 154 who spent four years tracking a company of cadets at west point on r day you surrender your old self in stages but r day is just the beginning of the training and personal re engineering that is to come so that west point graduates emerge four years later as loyal officers in the u s army lipsky shows that despite some failure this tough program is remarkably successful in creating officers with the will to lead in battle economists current picture of organizations and work incentives has no place for the west point program and the motivations it seeks to inculcate in recruits in a standard economic model an individual s preferences are fixed and utility depends only on pecuniary variables the army s aim at west point is to change cadets preferences they wish to inculcate non economic motives in the cadets so that they have the same goals as the u s army alternatively stated the goal of west point is to change the identity of the cadets so they will think of themselves above all else as officers in the u s army they will feel bad about themselves they will lose utility if they fall short of the ideals of such an officer this change in identity

modelling heterogeneity in patients preferences for the attributes of a general practitioner appointment this paper examines the distribution of preferences among respondents to a discrete choice experiment on the choice of general practitioner appointments in addition to standard logit mixed and latent class logit models are used to analyse the data from the choice experiment it is found that there is significant preference heterogeneity for all the attributes in the experiment and that both the mixed and latent class models lead to significant improvements in fit compared to the standard logit model moreover the distribution of preferences implied by the preferred mixed and latent class models is similar for many attributes

the incentive effects of inequality an experimental investigation author affiliation hyejin ku hku fsu edutimothy c salmon tsalmon smu edu acknowledgment the authors would like to thank the national science foundation for research support in funding these experiments we also thank participants at the cornell edinburgh conference on relativity inequality and public policy the international esa meeting in washington d c the european esa meeting in innsbruck and the conference on aspirations and poverty at the university of warwick as well participants in seminars at virginia commonwealth university carnegie mellon university helmut schmidt university and goethe university in frankfurt 1 introductioneconomists have established many ways in which initial inequality may influence the paths of economic development in a series of historical studies engerman and sokoloff 1997 2002 2005 argue that the initial differences in factor endowments between north and south america contributed to the emergence of different institutions between the two regions which in turn led to the divergence in the rates of growth persson and tabellini 1994 examine more recent data and argue that there is a significant and large negative relation between inequality and growth while banerjee and duflo 2003 argue that the relationship between growth and inequality is an inverted u shaped function understanding the relationship between inequality and economic growth is important in the design of a broad range of economic development policies and there is a substantial literature that investigates the mechanics behind the linkages between growth and inequality loury 1981 galor and zeira 1993 banerjee and newman 1993 durlauf 1996 benabou 1996 2000 and mookherjee and ray 2003 are well established studies in the literature and the typical nature of the proposed linkage between inequality and either growth or persistent inequality in these papers is differential endowment or investment opportunities of agents often in the form of human capital and occupational choice we propose a new possible linkage between inequality and growth which may also be useful in explaining the persistence of inequality the linkage we propose is the incentive effects of inequality from a behavioral perspective specifically we argue that individuals may respond not just to the absolute return on their effort but also to their return relative to that of others if present this effect can lead to inequality having a direct impact on the decisions of individuals unlike in the existing literature wherein it only alters aggregate societal outcomes to explain the nature of the effect we investigate suppose that as a result of identity marks such as gender caste or race an individual receives lesser rewards than others in society for the same amount of effort provided then one can envision this individual eventually becoming discouraged by repeatedly facing disadvantageous inequality and this could result in the individual exhibiting a variety of responses ranging from decreased on the job work effort to decreased human capital acquisition and decreased contributions to public goods if such a behavioral response to inequality exists then there are a number of important consequences associated with it first this effect ceteris paribus would generate a negative relationship between inequality and economic growth there are a number of forces at play in an aggregate economy so this is not to claim that the overall relationship between inequality and growth must be negative if this effect exists but the partial effect of inequality on growth due to this behavioral effect would be negative second separately or in addition to the theoretical models cited above this effect could generate persistent inequality from initial idiosyncratic inequality the reason is that even if the initial inequality were idiosyncratic if a worker responds by exerting less effort or investing less in human capital then this response has the potential to legitimize and then perpetuate the initially low rewards for that individual or group

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

schooling and economic well being the role of nonmarket effects standard estimates of the economic value of additional schooling based on earnings differences associated with differences in the level of schooling attained cover only a portion of the total effects of education that are valued by citizens we first identify a catalog of nonmarketed effects many of which have been recently studied by economists and then propose a procedure for estimating a willingness to pay value for these effects using empirical estimates of the magnitude of a selection of these effects found in the literature we calculate willingness to pay values using our proposed procedure these illustrative calculations suggest that standard estimates of the benefit of incremental schooling substantially understate the full value of such investments

social identity and inequality the impact of china s hukou system abstract we conduct an experimental study to investigate the causal impact of social identity on individuals performance under incentives we focus on china s household registration hukou system which favors urban residents and discriminates against rural residents in resource allocation our results show that making individuals hukou identity salient significantly reduces the performance of rural migrant students relative to their local urban counterparts on an incentivized cognitive task and consequently significantly lowers their relative ranking in the earnings distribution under the piece rate regime however the impact of hukou identity salience is insignificant in the tournament regime suggesting that its negative effect on migrant students performance may be mitigated when competition is introduced the results demonstrate the impact of institutionally imposed social identity on individuals economic performance and potentially on inequality

discrimination social identity and durable inequalities what are the mechanisms by which societal discrimination affects individual achievement and why do the effects of past discrimination endure once legal barriers are removed we report the findings of two experiments in village india that suggest that the mechanisms of discrimination operate in part within the individuals who are members of the groups who have been discriminated against we demonstrate that publicly revealing an individual s membership in such a group alters his behavior in ways that make the effects of past discrimination persist over time a growing literature in social psychology on stereotype threat finds that stereotyped based expectations affect individual performance in the domain of the stereotype a study by jeff stone et al 1999 is illustrative when college students were asked to perform a task described as diagnostic of natural athletic ability blacks stereotyped as better athletes but worse students than whites performed better than whites when the same test was presented as diagnostic of sports intelligence the performance of blacks declined that of whites improved and the racial gap was reversed evidence suggests that a mediating factor in stereotype threat is a change in self confidence mara cadinu et al 2005 in our studies we investigated whether the public revelation of social identity caste affects cognitive task performance and responses to economic opportunities by young boys in village india subjects were sixth and seventh graders drawn from the two ends of the caste hierarchy we asked subjects to learn and then perform a task under incentives and we manipulated whether their peers in the experimental session knew their caste caste is well suited to this manipulation because unlike race gender and ethnicity there are no unambiguous outward markers of caste among young boys six subjects generally from six different villages participated in each experimental session in the control condition the subjects were anonymous within the six person group in the experimental conditions the experimenter publicly revealed subjects names and caste in the task solving mazes in which performance was studied here the low caste subjects in the anonymous condition did not perform significantly differently from high caste subjects but when caste identity was publicly revealed in a mixed caste group a significant caste gap emerged the caste gap was due to a 20 percent decline in the average number of mazes solved by the low caste the study shows that publicly revealing the social identity of an individual can change his behavior even when that information is irrelevant to payoffs our results are a generalization of the literature on stereotype threat like that literature we find that individuals performance is more in accordance with the stereotype of the group when group membership is made salient in some way unlike that literature salience in our experiments depends on the public revelation of social identity and more importantly we do not argue that the domain of the tasks undertaken by discussants rachel croson university of pennsylvania iris bohnet harvard university stefano dellavigna university of california berkeley

hierarchical choice in economics abstract the paper examines the relevance for economic issues of choice which is not characterized by unlimited substitutability after showing that hierarchical choice is common in other social sciences like psychology the paper proceeds with an examination of such choice and of its different categories subsequently the implications for hierarchical choice for specific economic issues are analysed in particular there is discussion and literature review of demand theory engel curves the theory of the firm and social choice theory finally some suggestions for the application to other economic problems are considered

adam smith may have been right after all a new approach to the analysis of compensating differentials abstract if workers with low wages compared to their level of human capital exaggerate their workplace disamenities estimates of compensating differentials will be biased evidence of such a bias is found in a matched employee employer survey

population aging and economic growth political economy and open economy effects abstract this paper addresses population aging in the context of both open economy and endogenous fiscal policy response the analysis explores the role of these modeling features and discusses how this framework differs from closed economy and other open economy models

don t touch my road evidence from india on affirmative action and everyday discrimination summary this article investigates whether affirmative action in the form of electoral quotas affects group based discrimination the redistributive effect of quotas is subject to debate and their ultimate target is discrimination to identify the effect of electoral quotas i take advantage of their rotation across space and over time in india to proxy discrimination i use a measure of caste based exclusion from a public infrastructure namely streets in 2006 44 5 household members of the marginalized castes labeled scheduled castes sc still suffered from caste based exclusions i document that ongoing sc quotas reduce the likelihood of caste based exclusion for members of the scs by about one fifth the results also imply that the effect is not persistent it disappears with the end of the sc quota from a policy maker s perspective these results are mixed since electoral quotas do affect everyday discrimination even if the effect does not last these results are consistent with a temporary change in the behavior of members of the dominant castes after a one shot electoral quota these results are inconsistent with either a change in the stereotypes held by members of the dominant castes or a change in the aspirations of members of the lower castes

preference for the workplace investment in human capital and gender we use a hypothetical choice methodology to estimate preferences for workplace attributes from a sample of high ability undergraduates attending a highly selective university we estimate that women on average have a higher willingness to pay wtp for jobs with greater work flexibility and job stability and men have a higher wtp for jobs with higher earnings growth these job preferences relate to college major choices and to actual job choices reported in a follow up survey four years after graduation the gender differences in preferences explain at least a quarter of the early career gender wage gap

displacement and immigrant workers responsiveness to regional labour market opportunities evidence from norway roed m and schone p displacement and immigrant workers responsiveness to regional labour market opportunities evidence from norway regional studies this paper answers two main questions first are immigrants more mobile than natives following job displacement the results show that immigrants are indeed more mobile than natives following job displacement however the difference is fully explained by a compositional effect immigrants have much shorter potential work experience in norway than natives second are immigrants more responsive than natives to differences in regional labour market opportunities following job displacement the results show that displaced western immigrants are more responsive to differences in regional labour market opportunities compared with both non western immigrants and natives the greasing effects are limited to immigrants with low mobility costs

an economic analysis of identity and career choice standard economic models which focus on pecuniary payoffs cannot explain why there are highly able individuals who choose careers with low pecuniary returns therefore financial incentives are unlikely to be effective in influencing career choices of these individuals based on akerlof and kranton 2000 we consider a model of career choice and identity where individuals derive non pecuniary identity payoffs using factor analysis on a range of attitude questions we find two factors related to identity career orientation and social orientation which are important for educational choices the implication is that policymakers and institutions of higher education need to focus on identity related issues rather than just improved financial incentives if they aim at attracting the high ability youth to occupations with excess demand for labor

backlash the unintended effects of language prohibition in u s schools after world war i do forced assimilation policies always succeed in integrating immigrant groups this article examines how a specific assimilation policy language restrictions in elementary school affects integration and identification with the host country later in life after world war i several u s states barred the german language from their schools affected individuals were less likely to volunteer in world war ii and more likely to marry within their ethnic group and to choose decidedly german names for their offspring rather than facilitating the assimilation of immigrant children the policy instigated a backlash heightening the sense of cultural identity among the minority

the spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior we conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of affirmative action policies in the context of castes in india we test a if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of affirmative action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed and b whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy we find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members however we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once affirmative action is withdrawn any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out furthermore the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by affirmative action except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition

profit or patients health benefit exploring the heterogeneity in physician altruism abstract this paper investigates physician altruism toward patients health benefit using behavioral data from hennig schmidt et al s 2011 laboratory experiment in the experiment medical students in the role of physicians decide on the provision of medical services the experimental setup allows us to identify the influence of profits and patients health benefit on the choice of medical treatment we estimate physician altruism the weight individuals attach to patients health benefit by fitting mixed logit and multinomial logit regression models to the experimental data estimation results provide evidence for physician altruism we find however substantial variation in the degree of physician altruism we also discuss some implications of our results for the design of physician payment schemes in the light of the theoretical literature

social identity and preferences social identities prescribe behaviors for people we identify the marginal behavioral effect of these norms on discount rates and risk aversion by measuring how laboratory subjects choices change when an aspect of social identity is made salient when we make ethnic identity salient to asian american subjects they make more patient choices when we make racial identity salient to black subjects non immigrant blacks but not immigrant blacks make more patient choices making gender identity salient has no effect on intertemporal or risk choices

ethnic enclaves and the economic success of immigrants evidence from a natural experiment recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic enclaves within metropolitan areas the economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue we use an immigrant policy initiative in sweden when government authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way that may be considered exogenous this policy initiative provides a unique natural experiment which allows us to estimate the causal effect on labor market outcomes of living in enclaves we find substantive evidence of sorting across locations when sorting is taken into account living in enclaves improves labor market outcomes for instance the earnings gain associated with a standard deviation increase in ethnic concentration is in the order of four to five percent

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

cultural identities and resolution of social dilemmas we report an experiment on payoff equivalent sequential provision and appropriation games with high and low caste indian villagers a central question is whether caste identities affect resolution of social dilemmas making caste salient elicits striking changes in behavior compared to baseline treatment with no information about others castes homogenous groups with high caste villagers are more successful in resolving social dilemmas than homogenous groups with low caste villagers the success of mixed caste groups is somewhere between which is inconsistent with a group identity model absent salient information on caste behavior is inconsistent with unconditional social preferences but as predicted by reciprocity jel c93 h41 z13

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

consumer price evaluations through choice experiments we collect experimental choice data and estimate preferences for mobile phones with a special focus on measuring consumer price evaluations when consumers face difficult choice tasks for this purpose we employ a heteroskedastic random coefficient logit model in which the variance of the extreme value error term depends on variables that affect the consistency with rational behavior of choice we specify the price of some products in the choice experiment with discount and seek to answer the question how consumers evaluate these we find evidence in our data that the prices specified with discount significantly compromise the consistency of choice copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

immigrants in the american labor market quality assimilation and distributional effects this paper provides evidence on immigrants performance and impact in the u s labor market we document that new immigrants do bring fewer marketable skills to the united states than did earlier cohorts and that changes in the source countries of recent immigrants account for all of this decline in immigrant quality we find no important evidence that quality has declined within immigrant ethnic groups we also show that immigrants assimilate rapidly in the u s market 10 years of u s experience offsets most of the earnings disadvantage of new immigrants and that assimilation is more rapid for groups who start with lower initial wages excerpt

eliciting gps preferences for pecuniary and non pecuniary job characteristics abstract this study examines general practitioners preferences for pecuniary and non pecuniary job characteristics in the context of choosing a general practice in which to work a discrete choice experiment is used to test hypotheses about the nature of the utility function marginal rates of substitution between income and non pecuniary characteristics are calculated the results suggest that policies aimed at influencing general practitioners location choices should take account of both non pecuniary and pecuniary factors particularly out of hours work commitments

nonpecuniary rewards in the workplace demand estimates using quasi market data lack of explicit markets and associated data have impeded measurement of nonpecuniary rewards in the workplace most of the published literature employs hedonic models that permit estimation of market clearing prices but do not allow for identification of demand schedules in an alternative approach used successfully by environmental economists the author develops quasi market data and uses it to estimate demand for the nonpecuniary rewards associated with leadership in addition to price responsiveness individuals exhibit tastes for the amenities of leadership that differ substantially and in expected directions with their personal and professional characteristics copyright 1991 by mit press

fee for service payment and consultation length in general practice a work leisure trade off model for french gps this article presents an adaptation of the labour supply model applied to the independent medical sector first we model simultaneous general practitioner gp decisions on both the leisure time and the consultation length for two payment schemes fixed fees and unregulated fees the objective of this econometric study is to validate the theoretical prediction that doctors under unregulated fees may make choices about the length of patient consultations independent of their personal leisure decision indeed according to our empirical results the bidirectional link between leisure choice and consultation length verified with fixed fees does not hold any longer under unregulated fees our findings can be seen as a necessary but not a sufficient condition to legitimize unregulated fees in general practice

work norms social insurance and the allocation of talent abstract this paper challenges the view that weak work norms make generous welfare states economically unsustainable i develop a dynamic model of family transmitted values that has a laissez faire equilibrium with strong work norms coexisting with a social insurance equilibrium with weak work norms while the former has better incentives the latter induces more intergenerational occupational mobility which improves the allocation of talent and fuels growth strong work norms arise as a way for parents to protect their children from the risk of lacking talent i present evidence from microdata showing that generous social insurance correlates with high intergenerational occupational mobility and that more mobile individuals endorse weaker work norms

estimating workers marginal willingness to pay for job attributes using duration data this paper develops and applies a method for estimating workers marginal willingess to pay for job attributes when workers job choices are characterized by imperfect information and labor market search as an application this paper analyzes the job durations of white males using data from the national longitudinal survey youth cohort and the dictionary of occupational titles estimates of workers willingness to pay derived from the job duration model are compared with those derived from an hedonic wage model

using a discrete choice experiment to estimate health state utility values in this study we explored a novel application of the discrete choice experiment dce that resembles the time trade off tto task to estimate values on the health utility scale for the eq 5d the dce was tested in a survey alongside the tto in a sample of english speaking canadians recruited by a market research company the study found that the dce is able to derive logical and consistent values for health states valued on the full health dead scale the dce overcame some issues identified in the version of tto currently used to value eq 5d notably allowing for fewer data exclusions and incorporating values considered worse than dead without introducing a separate valuation procedure this has important implications for providing robust values that represent the preferences of all respondents

jumping and sniping at the silents does it matter for charities abstract despite its popularity as a fundraiser for charities very little research has been done on the bidding and revenue properties of the silent auction this paper examines the consequences of two behaviors common in silent auctions jump bidding and sniping in laboratory experiments with endogenous participation our results suggest that deliberative jumping the result of impatient bidders attempting to telescope time tends to increase revenue while deliberative sniping by experienced bidders tends to decrease it we also show that when charities can encourage jumping and discourage sniping silent auctions can perform as well as their sometimes more entertaining but more expensive alternative the english auction

identity and schooling some lessons for the economics of education abstract this review culls noneconomic literature on education by sociologists anthropologists and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools this theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis first is the student as decision maker whose primary motivation is her identity second is a conception of the school as a social institution this framework suggests a new perspective on questions such as resource allocation and school reform it explains why some educational policies succeed and others fail we show how sociological variables may affect outcomes and suggest ways economists can incorporate them into theoretical and empirical research

jobs off the farm wealth human capital and social group in rural eastern india abstractthis study examines the effects of wealth human capital and social group on the occupational choice and income of farm households to gain an understanding of the mechanism underlying the

male female wage differentials in job ladders much of the male female wage differential exists because men and women are assigned to different jobs within narrow job categories there is no male female differential only a tortured taste theory of discrimination can reconcile these facts we argue that differential movement along job ladders entails comparative advantage so the ability standard for promotion is higher for women this implies that more able women will be passed over in favor of less able men women assumed to have the same ability distribution as men earn less the differential reflects females lower promotion probability not within job discrimination

valuing risk in the workplace market price willingness to pay and the optimal provision of safety the theory of compensating wage differentials attributable to adam smith suggests that jobs with disagreeable characteristics will command high wages ceteris paribus most empirical tests of this theory with hedonic wage equations implicitly assume that workers willingness to pay for risk reduction safety in the workplace through diminished wages and market valuations of the price of these reductions are equivalent it is shown that this is not the case within the manufacturing sector where willingness to pay exceeds the price cost of risk reduction at current levels of risk exposure implications for implied value of life estimates are also examined copyright 1990 by mit press

the mobility of immigrants and natives evidence from internal migration following job displacement boman a the mobility of immigrants and natives evidence from internal migration following job displacement regional studies in times of change in the labour market differences in migratory behaviour between groups affect the labour market outcome of these groups one important group in society is that of immigrants for which human capital migration theory presents two potentially conflicting hypotheses one is based on immigrants having less location specific human capital increasing their probability of migration the other is based on ethnicity immigrants living in ethnic enclaves have higher costs of leaving the enclave reducing their probability of migration this paper disentangles and finds support for both hypotheses using high quality data on a wide range of variables for essentially all individuals involuntarily displaced due to closures or substantial cutbacks of swedish workplaces in 1987 and 1988 boman a la mobilite des immigres et de la population autochtone des preuves provenant

measurement of travel time values and opportunity cost from a discrete choice model section 1 of the paper introduces discrete choice models which contain elements of becker and deserpa theories section 2 outlines the concepts of quality adjusted value of travel time and the uniform or unadjusted shadow price of time sections 3 and 4 explain how values and shadow price of time can be measured using the discrete choice models described in section 2 section 5 explains the importance of the so called model specific constants in a mode choice model in the light of the empirical results of sections 3 and 4 trrl

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

the incentive effects of affirmative action in a real effort tournament abstract affirmative action policies bias tournament rules in order to provide equal opportunities to a group of competitors who have a disadvantage they cannot be held responsible for its implementation affects the underlying incentive structure which might induce lower performance by participants and additionally result in a selected pool of tournament winners that is less efficient in this paper we study the empirical validity of such concerns in a case where the disadvantage affects capacities to compete we conducted real effort tournaments between pairs of children from two similar schools who systematically differed in how much training they received ex ante on the task at hand contrary to the expressed concerns our results show that the implementation of affirmative action did not result in a significant performance loss for either advantaged or disadvantaged subjects instead it rather enhanced the performance for a large group of participants moreover affirmative action resulted in a more equitable tournament winner pool where half of the selected tournament winners came from the originally disadvantaged group hence the negative selection effects due to the biased tournament rules were at least partially offset by performance enhancing incentive effects

caste stratification and wealth inequality in india summary we analyze the relationship between wealth inequality and caste divisions in india using nationally representative surveys on household wealth conducted during 1991 92 and 2002 03 according to our findings the groups in india that are generally considered disadvantaged known as scheduled castes or scheduled tribes have as one would expect substantially lower wealth than the forward caste groups while the other backward classes and non hindus occupy positions in the middle using the anogi decomposition technique we estimate that between caste inequality accounted for about 13 of overall wealth inequality in 2002 03 the stratification parameters indicate that the forward caste hindus overlap little with the other caste groups while the latter have significantly higher degrees of overlap with one another and with the overall population using this method we are also able to comment on the emergence and strengthening of a creamy layer or relatively well off group among the disadvantaged groups especially the scheduled tribes

financial literacy information flows and caste affiliation empirical evidence from india abstract this paper empirically investigates the relevance of social interaction and caste affiliation for individual awareness of financial instruments and investment behavior of households in india the results of our empirical analysis which is based on a large scale survey on saving patterns of indians suggest a positive relationship between financial literacy and social interaction however especially backward caste people living in regions with a large fraction of backward castes have a lower probability of being aware of various financial instruments in contrast we find only weak empirical evidence for a direct effect of caste affiliation and social interaction on investment behavior