convergence to the law of one price without trade barriers or currency fluctuations using a panel of 51 prices from 48 cities in the united states we provide an upper bound estimate of the rate of convergence to purchasing power parity we find convergence rates substantially higher than typically found in cross country data we investigate some potentially serious biases induced by i i d measurement errors in the data and find our estimates to be robust to these potential biases we also present evidence that convergence occurs faster for larger price differences finally we find that rates of convergence are slower for cities farther apart however our estimates suggest that distance alone can only account for a small portion of the much slower convergence rates across national borders

young in class implications for inattentive hyperactive behaviour of canadian boys and girls using data from the statistics canada national longitudinal survey of children and youth nlscy this paper investigates the impact of school entry age on inattentive hyperactive behaviours we employ both an across provinces and time difference in differences approach and a within province regression discontinuity design we find that being young in class causes greater inattentive hyperactive behaviour exacerbating any inattentive hyperactive behaviour exhibited prior to school entry these results also hold in sibling fixed effect models we do not find gender differences in the effects although since boys are more likely to be inattentive hyperactive at school entry they are more affected these effects persist into early adolescence

price convergence in us cities a cointegration approach with two structural breaks this article investigates how the price indices of major cities of the us respond to the shock from a city and from monetary policy we find that the crisis of bretton woods system in 1968 and the oil crisis in 1974 should be incorporated as structural breaks in monetary policy variables and price indices using cointegration technique with structural break in our aggregated data we find that the average half life is 1 75 years which is closer to what some of others found in disaggregated data and that the interest rate is an effective tool for controlling cities price in short run

child care policy and the labor supply of mothers with young children a natural experiment from canada in 1997 the provincial government of quebec the second most populous province in canada initiated a new child care policy licensed child care service providers began offering day care spaces at the reduced fee of 5 00 per day per child for children aged 4 by 2000 the policy applied to all children not in kindergarten using annual data 1993 2002 drawn from statistics canada s survey of labour and income dynamics the results show that the policy had a large and statistically significant impact on the labor supply of mothers with preschool children

monetary union price level convergence and inflation how close is europe to the usa abstract the pattern of price dispersion across european and us cities from 1990 to 2004 is documented there is a striking decline in dispersion for traded goods prices in europe most of which took place prior to the launch of the euro dispersion in the euro area is now quite close to that of the usa this evidence provides useful facts for future work assessing the importance of various developments in europe harmonization of tax rates convergence of incomes and labor costs liberalization of trade and factor markets and increased coherence of monetary policy

extended generalized purchasing power parity and optimum currency area in east asian countries this article extends the theory of generalized purchasing power parity g ppp by developing a model including foreign variables such as the real money supply output and interest rate a cointegration rank test with two structural breaks in the deterministic trend was adopted to selected asian countries with japan as the base country there were two cointegrating vectors and six common stochastic trends in the model the cointegrating vectors were estimated by the same approach used by pesaran et al 2000 the first cointegrating vector is interpreted as g ppp and the second one is interpreted as the extended g ppp according to g ppp these countries could form a single currency area the first stochastic trend is primarily driven by japan s real money supply the second third and fourth by the real exchange rates of the philippines singapore and thailand respectively the fifth by japan s output and the sixth by japan s government bond yields

annual versus lifetime income redistribution by social security abstract in this study we compare the redistributive impact of the dutch social security on an annual basis with the lifetime redistributive impact the analysis confirms the theoretical notion that the lifetime impact is smaller than the annual incidence studies suggest this holds especially for old age pensions and social assistance and to a lesser extent the disability state pension we also find that for the netherlands the younger the cohort is the larger the difference however employee insurances do not necessarily imply a smaller redistributive impact on a lifetime basis the results are of course affected by the discount rate used and the assumptions with respect to economic growth the discount rate generally appears to be negatively correlated with the redistributive impact whereas the effect of growth is less straightforward

purchasing power parity across mexican cities a panel data analysis this article presents three different unit root tests for panel data the main objective is to find the level of internal integration market through the purchasing power parity ppp evidence based in the balassa samuelson approach thus eight kinds of markets as tradable and nontradable goods for 16 main mexican cities during a 21 year period have been contrasted while two tests showed the ppp validity for seven markets the other rejected it the results obtained moreover feed the present controversy about which test is most appropriate to test the ppp as soon as it is highlighted new elements emerge to explain the half life analysis

capital market effects of the ageing population abstract the present article aims at showing the influences of the ageing of the population on the capital market supply of the pension funds in the long run the analysis covers the period 1990 2025 and makes use of an extended version of an economic and demographic computational model published in huijser and van loo 1986 the calculated scenarios show the relation between a number of assumptions about economic variables and the future development of the pension funds operations

the redistributive impact of the general old age pensions act on lifetime income in the netherlands by means of a simple simulation model we will look at the effect of the general old age pensions act on the distribution of lifetime income in the netherlands in spite of the fact that premiums are proportional to income whereas benefits are only dependent on marital status married or unmarried 1 the redistribution of income is rather limited this is especially true for the vertical income redistribution within a generation this is caused by differences in mortality rates and differences in the duration of working life between income groups

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

increasing earnings inequality and the gender pay gap in canada prospects for convergence this paper retraces the evolution of canadian women s labour force participation and of the gender earnings ratio across the generations to understand better the prospects for gender convergence in pay using data from the public use labour force surveys lfs and administrative annual earnings data from the longitudinal worker files lwf the paper assesses the role of increasing top earnings inequality in the persistence of the gender pay gap having identified a growing role for the under representation of women among top earners the paper then performs an evaluation and critical analysis of existing gender equality policies centred on horizontal occupational gender segregation and discusses alternative policies for the future

price index convergence among united states cities we study the dynamics of price indices for major u s cities using panel econometric methods and find that relative price levels among cities mean revert at an exceptionally slow rate in a panel of 19 cities from 1918 to 1995 we estimate the half life of convergence to be approximately nine years the surprisingly slow rate of convergence can be explained by a combination of the presence of transportation costs differential speeds of adjustment to small and large shocks and the inclusion of nontraded goods prices in the overall price index do price indices in major u s cities share a common trend and if so how quickly do they revert to that trend following a local shock to the price index to answer this question we study the dynamics of consumer price indices for 19 major u s cities over the period from 1918 to 1995 the panel time series methods we employ are now commonly used for studying real output growth rates and levels of real exchange rates across countries we estimate that price index divergences across u s cities are temporary but surprisingly persistent with a half life of nearly nine years our research has two primary motivations first we hope to gain a better understanding of the sources of persistence in the deviations from purchasing power parity ppp found in studies of national price indices and exchange rate data second and more importantly we see the european monetary union as having many similarities to the united states and believe that studying the behavior of prices across u s cities will help us in understanding the likely nature of inflation convergence in the euro area the european central bank s stated inflation objective is a year on year change in the harmonized index of consumer prices hicp of not more than 2 but how large might we expect regional deviations from this euro area wide average to be and how long are they likely to persist the lack of data prevents us from answering this question directly using european prices under monetary union instead we look to the united states a mature common currency area of similar regional diversity size and industrial development

the effects of differential income replacement and mortality on u s social security redistribution we study redistribution via the u s social security retirement system for cohorts of men born during the second half of the 20th century our focus is on redistribution across race and education groups the cohorts we study are younger than cohorts studied in previous similar research and thus more exposed to recent increases in earnings inequality all else equal this should increase the degree of progressivity of social security redistribution due to the structure of the benefit formula however we find that redistribution is only modestly progressive for individuals born as late as 1980 differential mortality rates across race and education groups are the primary explanation while black white mortality gaps have narrowed some in recent years they remain large and dull progressivity mortality gaps by education level are also large and unlike the gaps by race they are widening which puts additional regressive pressure on social security redistribution

in search of a euro effect big lessons from a big mac meal we investigate whether the adoption of the euro was accompanied by an increase in prices in member countries and whether it promoted goods market arbitrage in the form of faster convergence to a common price by comparing the experience of eurozone countries to non euro european countries in a difference in differences specification we net out effects on prices unrelated to the euro we conclude that a there is no evidence of significant price increases associated with the adoption of the euro even for food items and b there is little systematic evidence of a significant improvement in goods market integration following the euro s introduction

effect of lengthening the school day on mother s labor supply this article examines how a policy oriented toward a specific group within the population can have collateral effects on the economic decisions of other groups in 1996 the chilean government approved the extension of the school day from half to full day school this article exploits the quasi experimental nature of the reform s implementation by time municipality and age targeting of the program in order to examine how the maternal labor supply is affected by the childcare subsidy implicit in the lengthening of the school day using data from the chilean socioeconomic household survey and administrative data from the ministry of education for 1990 2011 the authors estimate that on average there is a 5 percent increase in labor participation and employment rates of single mothers with eligible children between 8 and 13 years old with no younger children who are the group that would be mainly affected by the policy no significant labor supply responses are detected among others mothers with eligible children

common stochastic trends in international stock markets abstract this paper presents evidence concerning the number of common stochastic trends in the equity markets of the u s japan england germany and canada monthly and quarterly data from january 1974 through august 1990 on morgan stanley s capital international indices are used to compute johansen 1990 tests for common trends the results indicate the presence of a single common trend driving these countries stock markets estimates of the factor loadings suggest that this trend is most important in the japanese market and least important in the canadian market to interpret this evidence the paper demonstrates that under weak conditions the unit root and cointegration structure of stock prices should mirror the unit root and cointegration structure of their dividend payments the paper tests this prediction by constructing national dividend series from capital international s dividend yield data as well as by using gnp data as with stock prices the evidence points to a single common trend although the stochastic properties and relative importance of this trend differs somewhat from the trend in stock prices

money for nothing universal child care and maternal employment abstract the strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades we analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in norway our precise and robust difference in differences estimates reveal that there is little if any causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment despite a strong correlation instead of increasing mothers labor supply the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies

ppp strikes back aggregation and the real exchange rate we show the importance of a dynamic aggregation bias in accounting for the ppp puzzle we prove that the aggregate real exchange rate is persistent because its components have heterogeneous dynamics established time series and panel methods fail to control for this using eurostat data we find that when heterogeneity is taken into account the estimated persistence of real exchange rates falls dramatically its half life for instance may fall to as low as eleven months significantly below the consensus view of three to five years

taxation pension and saving in a small open economy an overlapping generations model of a small open economy is used to explore several policy options aimed at reducing the burden of income taxes and pay as you go payg contributions on labor income so as to improve the incentives to supply labor including the return of funded collective fc pension plans in the tax base turns out to be counterproductive cutting payg benefits in contrast succeeds in improving efficiency in general and labor market incentives in particular under specific variants of the fc plan reducing payg benefits even proves to be pareto welfare improving

public pensions choices for the future abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent pay as you go government mandated pensions can provide adequate retirement income to future generations this question is particularly relevant at times when the financial viability of public pensions is threatened by demographic aging and possibly declining productivity and when more importantly there is little consensus as to why those programs exist as they are that is mandatory public and unfunded the gist of our argument is that an aging population particularly if combined with declining productivity would jeopardize the financial and political viability of public pensions if individuals behavior doesn t adjust to this new reality and public authorities don t adopt the appropriate reforms as to mandatory retirement age payroll taxes and benefits structure among key individual decisions we focus on saving labor participation retirement education migration and fertility we consider how sensitive each of these is to changes in the environment and to changes in policy parameters then we turn to a number of issues unsolved either because of analytical complexity or because they arise from new realities

welfare effects of unfunded pension systems when labor supply is endogenous abstract a mandatory unfunded pension system can lead to welfare losses if the contributions are levied in such a way that the labor supply decision of the individuals is distorted this is shown in an overlapping generations model for a closed economy furthermore it is shown that under certain conditions a gradual abolition of unfuded pensions using lump sum contributions in the transition phase can lead to an intergenerational pareto improvement thus the paper extends a result recently derived by homburg for a small open economy to the closed economy case

policy reforms and growth in computable olg economies we build a computable general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of agents and an endogenous growth specification a la lucas two main issues are addressed i to what extent does endogenous growth play a significant role in the face of policy reforms and ii are the simulation results robust to various calibrations of the production function of human capital in this purpose we simulate four large policy changes and compare the predictions with endogenous growth under various parameter sets to those with exogenous growth if endogenous growth is important when examining the effects of education reform it does not really matter with pension reforms and plays a minor role in the debt repayment scenario these results are very robust to calibration

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

the impact of child care costs on the labour supply of married mothers evidence from canada this paper provides estimates for canada of the impact of childcare costs on the labor supply of married mothers this is done by linking two microdata sources the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the key results show that the market wage and childcare costs have respectively a significant positive and negative impact on both hours of work and the labor force participation decision by married mothers the childcare cost elasticities for labor force participation and hours of work are reported to be 0 38 and 0 32 respectively

lifetime income redistribution by the old age state pension in the netherlands abstract this paper looks at how the dutch general old age pensions act impacts the distribution of equivalent lifetime income using a dynamic cross sectional microsimulation model considering both vertical and horizontal redistributional effects the paper shows that lifetime redistribution is considerably smaller than the redistribution measured on the basis of a period approach the horizontal lifetime redistribution is more important than the vertical one but this effect is rather limited in particular due to the increasing premium percentages in combination with the regressive nature of the contribution levying

making the transition to prepaid medicare the medicare system is facing a financial crisis brought on by a combination of factors 1 a financing system that relies on intergenerational transfers from workers to the elderly as its major source of revenue 2 a payment scheme that traditionally has provided neither the demand nor the supply side of the market with strong incentives to hold down costs and 3 the penchant of congress to expand the coverage of the system over time every time a worthy cause or group can be identified the expansion of medicare benefits began almost immediately after the passage of the legislation in 1967 just one year after medicare had passed congress increased the number of days of in patient hospital care covered by the program in 1972 payment for the services of interns and residents in podiatry training was added to the benefit package also medicare coverage was extended to disabled persons under age 65 who were eligible for benefits under social security or railroad retirement and to certain other individuals under age 65 suffering end stage renal disease later medicare benefits were extended to state and local government employees not covered by social security and then coverage was extended to spouses of workers who were not yet covered but would be eligible to be covered in 1980 unlimited home health visits were covered as was the use of alcohol detoxification facilities in 1985 medicare provided payment for liver transplant services 1 there is current political pressure to

the quantitative role of child care for female labor force participation and fertility consistent with facts for a cross section of oecd countries i document that the labor force participation rate of west german mothers with children aged zero to two exceeds the corresponding child care enrollment rate whereas the opposite is true for mothers with children aged three to mandatory school age i develop a life cycle model that explicitly accounts for this age dependent relationship through various types of non paid and paid child care the calibrated version of the model is used to evaluate two policy reforms concerning the supply of subsidized child care for children aged zero to two these counterfactual policy experiments suggest that the lack of subsidized child care constitutes indeed for some females a barrier to participate in the labor market and depresses fertility

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

price convergence in the european car market this article examines price convergence in the european union eu car market over the period 1995 to 2005 we find that there is a clear evidence of price convergence among the eu15 countries but not before 1999 moreover countries of the economic and monetary union emu started convergence previously to the eu15 as a whole finally exchange rate changes have significantly contributed to price dispersion over time across countries the results provide significant evidence that trade liberalization and the emu have enhanced the process of regional integration in the european automobile industry even though there is room for further measures to promote integration

children of a policy revolution the introduction of universal child care and its effect on fertility what role does affordable and widely available public child care play for fertility we exploit a major german reform generating large temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three our precise and robust estimates on birth register data reveal that increases in public child care have significant positive effects on fertility the fertility effects are more pronounced at the intensive than at the extensive margin and are not driven by changes in the timing of births or selective migration our findings inform policy makers concerned about low fertility by suggesting that universal early child care holds the promise of being an effective means of increasing birth rates

evidence on the purchasing power parity in a panel of cities evidence is provided on the ppp hypothesis using a sample of 50 spanish cities for a long time period through the application of panel data unit root tests although results suggest non rejection of the ppp short run deviations as measured by half lives indicate that real factors might be causing a slow rate of convergence to a common price index even in highly integrated economies

impulse response analysis of cointegrated systems abstract impulse response or dynamic multiplier analysis of vector autoregressive systems with cointegrated variables is considered the asymptotic distribution of the responses estimated with johansen s 1988 maximum likelihood procedure is derived the results are illustrated with an analysis of a west german money demand system the investigation shows that a direct interpretation of the cointegration relations may be difficult or misleading thereby the virtue of impulse response analysis for applied work is illustrated

does a common currency lead to more price equalization the role of psychological pricing points abstract we analyze prices from four countries around the introduction of the euro prices of a good in two locations are more likely to be identical if prices are psychological and set in the same currency these rounding effects are not important in explaining the size of price differences in the full sample however

what can us city price data tell us about purchasing power parity abstract we study the dispersion of absolute price levels for us cities since 1918 by absolute price levels we mean price indices that measure the cost of a given consumption basket at each point in time we find strong evidence that city price levels converge over time and that the dispersion of price levels is lower for us cities than between oecd countries we argue that price level convergence for us cities will produce bilateral real exchange rate nonstationarity in this case however nonstationarity is not evidence against purchasing power parity ppp rather it is the consequence of improved market integration

rich and healthy better than poor and sick an empirical analysis of income health and the duration of the pension benefit spell i analyze the relationship between duration of the pension benefit spell and pension benefit claims from the german public pension system with a special emphasis on differential results with respect to health this relationship is crucial for a potential structural pattern of redistribution between different income and health groups induced by the public pension system evidence for such redistribution from poor to rich is present for most of the specifications in my analysis the most adequate specification is partially linear does therefore not impose any parametrical restrictions between duration and benefit claims and allows for potential endogeneity the relationship i extract is clearly positive i also find that redistribution from low income individuals to individuals with high income is more pronounced the worse the health status is despite longer benefit spells for pensioners in ill health

purchasing power parity and the role of traded goods evidence from eu states in this paper the debate on purchasing power parity ppp is considered by providing results with disaggregated price data from european countries the disaggregation of the price data is important because it allows for the consideration of goods that are likely tradable e g fruits with goods that are not tradable e g hotel rooms the european focus is important because these results are able to shed light on the effect of the type of exchange rate regime member of exchange rate mechanism erm or not

back to work parental benefits and mothers labor market outcomes in the medium run the authors estimate policy impacts of a generous parental benefit in germany by using a natural experiment and german census data they estimate policy effects for the short run first two years a

sorting through affirmative action three field experiments in colombia the use of affirmative action policies to promote female employment remains debated do affirmative action policies attract female applicants and does that come at the expense of deterring highly

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

social security outcomes by racial and education groups this article evaluates the social security outcomes for different racial and education groups outcomes differ across groups due to the interactions between group specific mortality risks and lifetime earnings the benefit formula and the benefit package which includes life insurance spousal benefits and retirement pensions based on either the rate of return or present value individuals with less education fare better than those with higher educations this holds even before accounting for preretirement survivors benefits which when accounted for reinforce this finding single whites do considerably better than single blacks when outcomes are compared by internal rates of return accounting for survivors benefits reduces regressivity but blacks continue to fare worse than whites in contrast based on present values whites generally do worse than their respective counterparts social security is primarily an intergenerational transfer system providing payments to retired workers and their families financed by payroll taxes on current workers the old age and survivors insurance oasi program also provides life insurance through survivors benefits because longer lives are positively related to income the retirement pension favors workers with higher lifetime incomes other things equal conversely survivors insurance is more likely to be awarded within groups with higher mortality rates at younger ages which happens to be those with lower incomes further the benefit formula replaces a higher percentage of the income of workers with lower lifetime earnings while spousal retirement benefits favor couples in which only one spouse works as a result any particular group s outcome depends on their lifetime earnings their group specific longevity the tax rates they face and the social security benefit formula there have been quite a few studies devoted to calculating the internal rate of return and net present value of social security some consensus has been reached by those studies early generations do better than later generations women do better than men and married couples with a single earner do better than singles or working couples these results are not surprising given that a pay as you go system usually generates a higher return in its start up phase than in the mature phase that women live longer than men and that nonworking spouses receive benefits without making tax payments however to date a consensus has not been reached on some of the more interesting but less obvious issues such as how different income classes or different races fare in the system this article

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

public child care and mothers labor supply evidence from two quasi experiments abstract public child care is expected to assist families in reconciling work with family life yet empirical evidence for the relevance of public child care to maternal employment is inconclusive we exploit the introduction of a legal claim to a place in kindergarten in germany which was contingent on day of birth cut off dates and resulted in a marked increase in kindergarten attendance of three year olds in the following years instrumental variable and difference in differences estimations on two individual level data sets yield positive effects of public child care on maternal employment a set of placebo treatment tests corroborate the validity of our identification strategies

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

the gains from pension reform we classify social security pension systems in three dimensions actuarial versus non actuarial funded versus unfunded and defined benefit versus defined contribution systems recent pension reforms are discussed in terms of these dimensions shifting to a more actuarial system reduces labor market distortions although limiting the scope for redistribution shifting to a funded system may increase saving redistribute income to future generations and distort contermporary labor supply a partial shift to a funded system helps individuals diversify their pension assets a shift from a defined benefit to a defined contribution system means that income risk will be shifted from workers to pensioners

childcare effects on maternal employment evidence from chile abstract using a randomized experiment this study examines whether offering afterschool care for children aged between 6 and 13 has an impact on labor market outcomes for women in chile the results show that program participation increases employment by 5 and labor force participation by 7 while the intervention also generates substantial childcare substitution the results also suggest that the provision of afterschool care for older children triggers the use of free daycare for young ineligible children

does medicare benefit the poor abstract measuring the progressivity of age targeted government programs is difficult because no single data set measures income and benefit use throughout life previous research using zip code as a proxy for lifetime income has found that medicare benefits flow primarily to the most economically advantaged groups and that the financial returns to medicare are often higher for the rich than the poor however our analysis produces the starkly opposed result that medicare is an extraordinarily progressive public program in dollar terms or welfare terms these new results owe themselves to our measurement of socioeconomic status as an individual s education rather than the geographically aggregated measures of income used by previous research we argue that individual education has important practical and conceptual advantages over geographically aggregated measures of income our results suggest the crucial importance of accurate poverty measurement in evaluating the progressivity of complex government programs like medicare or social security

new estimates of labour supply elasticities for married women in canada 1996 2005 in this article we estimate income and substitution labour supply and participation elasticities for canadian married women using data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1996 2005 we use the canadian tax and credit simulator ctacs and detailed information on the structure of income at the household level to compute the marginal tax rates faced by each individual we then use these marginal tax rates to compute net own wage spouse wage and nonlabour income we show how the magnitude of the estimated elasticities varies depending on whether net or gross wages and income are used in the estimation procedure and quantify biases caused by using average tax rates instead of marginal tax rates finally because marginal tax rates vary significantly over the sample we use quantile regressions to compare elasticities at different points of the hours distribution overall our results show that public policies now have on average less scope for influencing hours of work than 10 years ago howev

the educational and labor market returns to preschool attendance in austria preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success mothers labor market participation and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds however the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce particularly in europe using data from the 2011 austrian european union statistics of income and living conditions eu silc we contribute to this literature by studying the effects of having attended preschool for the adult austrian population we find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on later educational attainment the probability of working full time hourly wages and the probability that the mother is in the labor market full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution benefit less than those in the middle women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time other disadvantaged groups second generation migrants people with less educated parents also often benefit more in terms of education and work

analysis of the long term relationships of the underlying rates of inflation in the emu member states the aim of this paper is to analyse whether or not there is a long term stable equilibrium relationship between the underlying rates of inflation of the member states that have adhered to economic and monetary union emu this longterm equilibrium represents an essential requirement for compliance with the convergence criterion of price stability through which it is possible to guarantee the maintenance of the levels of relative competitiveness of these member states to that end the concept of underlying inflation is defined obtained on the basis of the trend cycle component of the consumer price series having first eliminated the calendar and easter effects as well as the outliers from these original series after applying a bivariate cointegration test to these components essentially pessimistic conclusions are obtained with respect to compliance with the said stability criterion

public schooling for young children and maternal labor supply as policy makers have sought to reduce the welfare rolls by increasing labor supply among single mothers much attention has been given to the possible role of expanded child care subsidies including direct provision of public preschool at the same time public interest in child care subsidies for two parent households is high for example former vice president gore not long ago proposed to make high quality pre school fully available to every family for every child in every community in america albert gore 1999 in this paper i use 1980 census data to estimate the effect of public school enrollment for a woman s five year old on measures of labor supply and public assistance receipt this approach has two advantages first i am able to estimate the effect of a large implicit child care subsidy 1 second because public kindergarten is universally available to all age eligible children where it is provided selection problems related to means testing do not arise a difficulty with public school enrollment arises because parents may choose to hold their children back a year or enroll them in private school i deal with this issue by using five yearold s quarter of birth qob variables as instruments for public school enrollment status this strategy works because parents ability to enroll a child in public kindergarten in the academic year when the child turns five typically depends on the calendar date of the child s birth 2 in most states children born in the second quarter april 1 june 30 of 1974 will have been eligible to start kindergarten in the fall of 1979 while children born in the first quarter january 1march 31 of 1975 generally will not eligibility for children born between july 1 and december 31 1974 depends on the rules where they live 3

the effects of differential mortality rates on the progressivity of social security does the old age and survivors insurance portion of social security become regressive once we allow for the shorter lifespan of poor people this paper compares the net returns of poor households to the net returns of other households after taking into account differential longevity earnings and social security tax and benefit histories are simulated for u s families of various income levels in the 1925 birth cohort these tax and benefit profiles are then weighted by the agents probabilities of survival for some plausible values of key mortality parameters differences in mortality eliminate the progressive spread in returns across income categories excerpt

economic consequences of an aging population pip europe and japan are experiencing the aging of their populations aging implies a restructuring of the economy political issues which arise in an aging society include 1 a voting majority for the interests of the elderly 2 a voting majority of females 3 the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies and 4 unemployment or a long wait for promotion for younger people economic issues of an aging society include 1 population aging often occurs under reduced rates of growth of per capita national income 2 the relative economic status of the elderly very much depends on the currently existing tax transfer systems and 3 the income of families whose head is over age 65 has generally been more unequally distributed than the income for younger families issues concerning the labor supply of the elderly include 1 the availability of pension income and health limitations strongly influence decisions to retire and 2 older workers become disheartened and choose early retirement when facing bad reemployment prospects in general population aging is likely to have its most substantive effect on the overall level of productivity in an economy where technical knowledge is changing rapidly and strong competition necessitates a high degree of adaptability of the labor force

the effect of universal child benefits on labour supply using a difference in differences estimator i find the canadian universal child care benefit has significant negative income effects on the labour supply of married individuals the likelihood of lower educated mothers to participate in the labour force is reduced 3 2 percentage points when receiving the benefit median hours worked per week among lower educated mothers is reduced by 1 9 hours the effects on higher educated mothers are substantial with median hours worked among higher educated mothers reduced by nearly one hour per week for men the evidence suggests small but significant income effects on labour supply consistent with the literature on labour supply elasticities

early kindergarten maternal labor supply and children s outcomes evidence from italy abstract we analyze a reform that introduced early access to subsidized childcare for 2 year old children in italy exploring the effects on several measures of maternal labor supply and on children s cognitive outcomes our identification strategy exploits discontinuities in the eligibility rules and the staggered implementation of the reform we find that the policy increased mothers participation in the labor market and lowered the reservation wage of the unemployed thus increasing their likelihood of finding a job at the same time the newly introduced childcare arrangement did not affect children s cognitive development irrespective of their family background

modeling overlapping generations in a complementarity format abstract this paper provides an introduction to numerical simulation of overlapping generations models with perfect foresight and finite lifetimes the exposition presents the fundamental characteristics of this class of problems and gams programs illustrate how models can be formulated in applied research using the complementarity framework issues addressed in the paper include how to calibrate to baseyear data and how to represent international trade bequests government tax and expenditure policies and a labor leisure choice with endogenous retirement

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