median voters or budget maximizers evidence from school expenditure referenda some readers may have found these results of greater interest were we able to confirm the directional hypotheses of the certainty setter model in addition to finding that spending is related to the reversion the much weaker prediction of the uncertainty model yet the failure of the certainty when base elections were optional their infrequent occurrence might be expected under either a median voter or a setter model for those districts that did hold base elections the observations appear consistent with a setter model but are either inexplicable by or inconsistent with a median voter model finally both a the relationship between the number of budget elections and the presence of base elections and b the outcome of mandatory base elections in 1978 provide a set of observations that are challenging to either model a similar challenge was posed by our investigation of budget elections when we called attention to the inadequacy of static full information models rather than resolving the question of the simple setter model against the simple median voter model our results indicate that both may be inappropriate and that endeavors dealing with complexities omitted here are warranted

jurisdiction size political participation and the allocation of resources this paper analyzes the effect of population size on politicalparticipation and allocative efficiency increasing populationis generally found to reduce political participation however since participation is not evenly spread throughout thepopulation this will have consequences for allocation namely we argue that increasing population size shifts powerto the rich we discuss the consequences for the optimal sizeof jurisdictions the size of government and the measurementof publicness

does financial education impact financial literacy and financial behavior and if so when in a meta analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and to an even larger extent financial literacy these results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments rcts however intervention impacts are highly heterogeneous financial education is less effective for low income clients as well as in low and lower middle income economies specific behaviors such as the handling of debt are more difficult to influence and mandatory financial education tentatively appears to be less effective thus intervention success depends crucially on increasing education intensity and offering financial education at a teachable moment

applying behavioral economics to public policy in canada behavioural economics incorporates ideas from psychology sociology and neuroscience to better predict how individuals make long term decisions often the ideas adopted include present or inattention bias both potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes but these models also point to opportunities for effective low cost government policies that can have meaningful positive effects on people s long term well being the last decade has been marked by a growing interest from governments the world over in using behavioural economics to inform policy decisions this is true of canada as well in this paper we discuss the increasingly important role behavioural economics plays in canadian public policy we first contextualize government policies that have incorporated insights from behavioural economics by outlining a collection of models of intertemporal choice we then present examples of public policy initiatives that are based upon findings in the field placing particular emphasis on canadian initiatives we also document future opportunities challenges and limitations

job quality and the economics of new labour a critical appraisal using subjective survey data this paper assesses the record on job quality during the early term of office of the new labour government by interpreting from a political economy perspective changes in a variety of subjective measures of job quality taken from several different data sources we find some improvements in job quality over the period 1998 2004 however we argue that these improvements have arisen not because of new labour s policies towards the workplace but because of low and falling rates of unemployment despite recent improvements a large number of workers in britain remain in low quality jobs and without a radical change of policy direction sustained and substantial progress in the quality of work will remain elusive

new labour and work time regulation a marxian analysis of the uk economy this paper examines the impact of work time regulation introduced by the uk s new labour governments 1997 to 2010 in doing so we return to marx s hypotheses regarding the length of the working day these include the arguments that class conflict over the length of the working day is inherently distributional in a surplus value sense and that workers often display a preference for reduced hours even with a proportionate reduction in pay our quantitative marxist methodology provides a way of assessing the pattern of surplus value before and during the period of office of the new labour governments and the distributional effects of regulation the impact of such regulations on workers preferences are examined through an investigation of british household panel survey data although many have been sceptical concerning the record of the last labour governments policies such as the working time regulations 1998 and the work life balance campaign 2000 are found to have been noteworthy innovations in the labour market this is all the more important given recent moves by the successor government to weaken work time regulation our results suggest the impact of these policy initiatives was broadly favourable though the effect on men and women was different

the long term impact of matching and rebate subsidies when public goods are impure field experimental evidence from the carbon offsetting market in this paper we investigate both short and long term impacts of financial stimuli on public goods provision when contributions are tied to individual harm related behavior we conduct a large scale field experiment to examine voluntary contributions to a carbon offsetting program during the online purchase of a bus ticket we systematically vary the individual payoff structure by introducing different price rebates 25 50 75 and corresponding matching grants 1 3 1 1 1 3 1 using data on returning customers we investigate the long term effects of the different stimuli both while treatments were in place as well as their persistence for the time after treatment removal in the first bookings our results show that all price rebate schemes increase the participation rate in the offsetting program while we find weaker effects for matching grants when bookers are treated repeatedly only the equal 1 1 matching scheme continues to lead to higher participation rates even after removing the subsidies we report higher participation rates for customers previously facing a 1 1 matching scheme this treatment is also the only one increasing net contributions of customers compared to the control group

do tax incentives for saving in pension accounts cause debt accumulation evidence from danish register data abstract this paper applies a quasi experimental research design on a danish 2010 policy that reduced tax incentives for saving in annuity pension schemes to show significant substitution of savings from retirement accounts to gross debt repayments we find that for every 1 danish currency unit reduction in retirement savings 31 cents goes to debt repayments taking into account all types of savings we find full crowding out consistent with previous findings we document that the effect is driven by a minority about 23 percent who actively rebalance their savings

regulating consumer financial products evidence from credit cards we analyze the effectiveness of consumer financial regulation by considering the 2009 credit card accountability responsibility and disclosure card act we use a panel data set covering 160 million credit card accounts and a difference in differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for consumer credit cards which were subject to the regulations to changes for small business credit cards which the law did not cover we estimate that regulatory limits on credit card fees reduced overall borrowing costs by an annualized 1 6 of average daily balances with a decline of more than 5 3 for consumers with fico scores below 660 we find no evidence of an offsetting increase in interest charges or a reduction in the volume of credit taken together we estimate that the card act saved consumers 11 9 billion a year we also analyze a nudge that disclosed the interest savings from paying off balances in 36 months rather than making minimum payments we detect a small increase in the share of accounts making the 36 month payment value but no evidence of a change in overall payments jel codes d0 d14 g0 g02 g21 g28 l0 l13 l15

pension plan characteristics and framing effects in employee savings behavior abstract defined contribution pensions in many postsecondary institutions are funded by a combination of an employer premium and a mandatory employee premium individuals can also contribute to a supplemental savings account holding constant total compensation standard reasoning suggests that supplemental savings should depend negatively on the sum of the employer and employee pension contributions contrarily we find that the supplementary savings of professors are significantly more sensitive to employee contributions than to employer contributions this asymmetry is consistent with different marginal propensities to save out of the salary and pension components of compensation nevertheless impacts on lifetime utility are relatively modest

relative prices and investment rates abstract we construct a panel for the price of aggregate investment over consumption and report the following observations 1 relative price differences across countries are large over the entire sample period and this conclusion is not affected by excluding non tradable consumption goods 2 relative price dispersion has decreased during the sample period 3 relative price changes are not persistent across periods while average price levels are moreover the persistence in relative price levels is higher for countries at low relative prices we show that the relative price of investment is negatively correlated with investment rates in a cross section of countries the standard one sector growth model is a natural framework to study quantitatively the effects of barriers to capital accumulation since there is a very simple mapping between barriers to investment and relative prices in this environment we simulate a calibrated version of the model in which barriers follow a stochastic process common to all countries and estimated using relative price data and obtain statistics for investment rates that closely resemble what we observe in the data in particular the model accounts for 90 of the 1985 gini index of relative investment rates and the decline in investment rate dispersion over time the model has two limitations as a theory of development first it cannot account for the income disparity in the data unless we assume unmeasured capital with barriers affecting the broad measure of capital second even under these extreme assumptions the model cannot account for the evolution of income disparity over time

the power of active choice field experimental evidence on repeated contribution decisions to a carbon offsetting program we study the effect of a subtle change in the choice architecture on offsetting behavior in a large scale field experiment we examine repeated voluntary contributions to a carbon offsetting program during the online purchase of long distance bus tickets in the control group travelers had the option to offset their carbon emissions resulting from their bus trip but they could also simply ignore the offer in the treatment group travelers were forced to actively choose whether to offset their carbon emissions or not this active choice requirement immediately increased participation in the offsetting program by almost 50 investigating returning customers we find that this treatment remains effective over time we report evidence that some customers tend to keep avoiding active contribution decisions in subsequent booking decisions

libertarian paternalism information production and financial decision making we develop a theoretical model to analyze the effects of libertarian paternalism on information production and financial decision making individuals in our model appreciate the information content of the recommendations made by a social planner this affects their incentive to gather information and in turn the speed at which information spreads across market participants via social learning or formal advice channels we characterize situations in which libertarian paternalism improves welfare and contrast them with scenarios in which this policy is suboptimal because of its negative impact on the production and propagation of information the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

disaggregated capital stock estimation for austria methods concepts and results based on a survey of the appropriate literature and on separate investigations concerning distributions of asset lives and depreciation patterns of vehicles gross and net capital stocks as well as depreciation at constant prices and at replacement cost have been estimated for austria using the perpetual inventory method the problem of the limited length of investment time series has tried to be overcome by assigning a fixed age to each initial stock the level of disaggregation for the calculations is onace 2 digit2 and this has been further broken down to the categories buildings machinery and equipment and vehicles all available a priori knowledge and data have been incorporated all estimates of capital stocks and depreciation based on industry level investment data are subject to uncertainty due to the lack of information at the asset type level in order to give a quantitative assessment of this uncertainty for the public as well as for the private enterprise sector several scenarios have been

accepting market failure cultural worldviews and the opposition to corrective environmental policies abstract to explore whether and why people sometimes reject environmental policies that improve individual and collective outcomes we create an experimental market in which transactions generate a negative externality market participants endogenously determine whether to implement corrective policies we consider three policy instruments pigouvian taxes and subsidies and quantity regulation and two levels of policy efficiency full and half we then explore how individual cultural worldviews might contribute to the rejection of policies that correct the market failure our results indicate that people often oppose policies that improve their material outcomes and we find that such opposition is significantly explained by cultural worldviews interesting connections emerge between individual worldviews and specific policy instruments

nudging the poor and the rich a field study on the distributional effects of green electricity defaults abstract choice defaults are an increasingly popular public policy tool yet there is little knowledge of the distributional consequences of such nudges for different groups in society we report results from an elicitation study in the residential electricity market in switzerland in which we contrast consumers actual contract choices under an existing default regime with the same consumers active choices in a survey presenting the same choice set without any default we find that the default is successful at curbing greenhouse gas emissions but it leads poorer households to pay more for their electricity consumption than they would want to while leaving a significant willingness to pay for green electricity by richer households untapped

the downsian voter meets the ecological fallacy this paper presents evidence that voter participation does not depend on the probability that one vote is decisive an extensive summary of the empirical participation literature is provided which shows that most but not all studies have found that turnout in an electoral district is higher when the race is closer individual level vote regressions for the 1979 and 1980 canadian national elections are estimated using objective measures of closeness as opposed to self reported measures the main finding is that a citizen is no more likely to vote in a close election than in a lands lide election district level turnout regressions for the same elections are also estimated and a significant relation between closeness and turnout is observed this suggests that aggregation bias may generate a spurious closeness turnout relation in district level regressions

the economics of new labour policy and performance this paper reviews the foundations of new labour s economic policies and the performance of the economy since 1997 it argues that new labour s policies have evolved from thatcherism and that it has largely embraced the tenets of neo liberalism new labour has rejected most aspects of keynesianism and its policies have eschewed the use of active demand management policies but it has been the high levels of demand in particular consumption expenditure that have driven economic growth in the uk and which have ensured that as yet new labour has not faced the problems of dealing with a major economic downturn

peer effects in financial decision making abstract peer effects might play an important role in complex financial decisions because many consumers lack experience with them and the costs of thinking through such decisions can be very high we study peer effects in retirement savings life insurance purchase and two charitable giving programs in a military setting with plausibly exogenous assignment of individuals to social groups peers defined broadly as social groups which may include members of different ranks appear to play an important role in the charitable giving programs but not in the other outcomes we assess a number of potential reasons for the disparate findings and provide suggestive evidence that the observability of individuals choices is key

productive labour price value ratio and rate of surplus value theoretical viewpoints and empirical evidence productive labor is defined in the sense of indirect social labor which includes circulation and supervisory labor as well the calculation of the macroeconomic price value ratio provides an easy method to arrive at theoretically correct estimates of the rate of surplus labor at macro or micro levels and to study the evolution of total labor productivity here in the wage good sector the level and general tendencies of the macroeconomic rate of surplus value appear to be fairly similar in eec countries over the period 1970 86 while productivity increases are much more important in the latter copyright 1990 by oxford university press

getting out the vote participation in gubernatorial elections scholarship on electoral turnout has long emphasized two main themes explanations of nonvoting in terms of individual characteristics and in terms of contextual variables these investigations have deeply enriched our understanding of electoral participation but their limitations have also sensitized us to the remaining problems of explanation perusal of the work on american politics exposes a rather striking tendency in studies of participation to ignore or soft pedal the effects of active political mobilization in this article we formulate two models of electoral turnout socioeconomic and political mobilization and apply them to aggregate data on voting in gubernatorial elections of 1978 and 1980 the socioeconomic model of turnout includes such influences as income age and educational attainment to assess the effects of political mobilization we have considered campaign spending partisan competition electoral margin and the presence or absence of a simultaneous race for the united states senate both of the models perform quite well individually producing significant and meaningful coefficients and adequate fits yet in the final analysis we demonstrate that quite apart from major sources of variation in gubernatorial turnout such as region and presidential versus nonpresidential years the mobilizing influences of campaign activism and competitiveness have a strong impact on electoral participation electoral law i e closing date of registration retains a small but significant effect on voting for governor and socioeconomic characteristics included in a fully specified model have little to contribute independently to an explanation of electoral turnout these findings are very much in the same vein as related cross national investigations which emphasize the crucial role of electoral law and political parties and downplay individual characteristics as determinants of electoral participation on the basis of the research reported here we argue that scholars need to pay more attention to political mobilization as an explanation of electoral turnout in the presidential election between cox and harding in 1920 only half of the eligible voters participated this relatively low turnout together with the historically minimal rates of participation in state and local elections created deep concern among those who believed that reasonably high levels of political involvement are crucial in maintaining a healthy democratic politics it was in this atmosphere of worry about low electoral turnout that charles e merriam and harold f gosnell 1924 conducted in the city of chicago the first systematic study of nonvoting subsequently gosnell 1927 went even further and executed the first experimental study in modern political science demonstrating conditions that could stimulate electoral turnout we too worry about low participation in elections today at every level of government and we believe these classic studies

making the implicit explicit a look inside the implicit discount rate implicit discount rates idrs are employed in energy models to capture household investment decisions yet the factors behind the idr and their respective implications for policy making usually remain blurred and fractional the proposed comprehensive framework distinguishes three broad categories of factors underlying the idr for household adoption of energy efficient technologies eets preferences notably over time risk loss debt and the environment predictable ir rational behavior bounded rationality rational inattention behavioral biases and external barriers to energy efficiency existing empirical findings suggest that the factors underlying the idrs that differ across household characteristics and technologies should be accounted for in energy models furthermore the framework allows for a fresh look at the interplay of idrs and policies we argue that a simple observation of high idrs or observing correlations between idrs and socio economic characteristics does not provide guidance for policy making since the underlying sources cannot be identified instead we propose that some of the factors underlying the idr notably external barriers can be changed through directed policy interventions whereas other factors notably preferences and predictable ir rational behavior are innate and can only be taken into account through reactive policy interventions

a testable theory of imperfect perception we provide a new characterization of bayesian expected utility maximization the novel feature of the model is our separation of actions from prizes the signature of the resulting theory is the impossibility of raising utility by switching wholesale from one action to another we provide applications to robustness to the recovery of utility from choice data and to model

the paradox of voter participation a laboratory study it is widely believed that rational choice theory is grossly inconsistent with empirical observations about voter turnout we report the results of an experiment designed to test the voter turnout predictions of the rational choice palfrey rosenthal model of participation with asymmetric information we find that the three main comparative statics predictions are observed in the data the size effect whereby turnout goes down in larger electorates the competition effect whereby turnout is higher in elections that are expected to be close and the underdog effect whereby voters supporting the less popular alternative have higher turnout rates we also compare the quantitative magnitudes of turnout to the predictions of nash equilibrium we find that there is undervoting for small electorates and overvoting for large electorates relative to nash equilibrium these deviations from nash equilibrium are consistent with the logit version of quantal response equilibrium which provides a good fit to the data and can also account for significant voter turnout in very large elections

technology distribution and the rate of profit in the us economy understanding the current crisis this paper offers a synoptic account of the state of the debate among marxist scholars regarding the current structural crisis of capitalism identifies two broad streams within the literature dealing in turn with aggregate demand and profitability problems and proceeds to concentrate on an analysis of issues surrounding the profitability problem in two steps first evidence on profitability trends for the non farm non financial corporate business the non financial corporate business and the corporate business sectors in post war usa are summarised a broad range of profit rate measures are covered and data from both the us bureau of economic analysis nipa and fixed assets tables and the federal reserve flow of funds account are used second the underlying drivers of profitability in terms of technology and distribution are investigated the profitability analysis is used to offer some hypotheses about the current structural crisis copyright oxford university press

saving more in groups field experimental evidence from chile abstract we test the impact of a peer group program on savings in a sample of microcredit clients we conduct two randomized trials among these 2687 microcredit clients the first finds that a savings group treatment which combines public goal setting monitoring in the group and non financial rewards increases savings in a new savings account significantly the number of deposits grows 3 7 fold and the average balance almost doubles in contrast a more classical measure a substantially increased interest rate has no effect for most participants and raises the savings balance only for the very top of the distribution a second experiment conducted a year later tests an alternative delivery mechanism and shows that effects of similar size can be achieved through feedback text messages without meetings rewards or peer pressure given that participants are borrowing at 90 apr we discuss how and when saving more could be harmful or beneficial

can indifference make the world greener we test whether people s tendency to stick with the default option can help save resources in a natural field experiment we switch printers default settings from simplex to duplex printing at a large swedish university the results confirm that roughly one third of all printing is determined by the default alternative and hence daily paper consumption drops by 15 percent due to the change the effect is immediate lasts throughout the experimental period and remains intact after six months we also investigate how the more conventional method of encouraging people to save resources performs and find it has no impact recent theoretical and empirical contributions indicate that the default effect works through recommendation depends positively on the number of alternatives in the choice set and is reinforced for difficult decisions we demonstrate that the default option matter in a simple non dynamic decision task with only two alternatives and where people have been explicitly informed about the recommended course of action

the downsian model of electoral participation formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect this paper applies a game theoretic model of participation under uncertainty to investigate the negative relationship between constituency size and voter turnout rates theconstituency size effect we find that this theoretical model accounts for almost all of the variation in turnout due to size in cross sectional data from school budget referenda

rates of return on capital across the world are they converging this article estimates levels and identifies trends in the profitability of capital in a broad sample of developed developing and post communist transition economies making up over 80 of global output the underlying distributional and efficiency determinants of profitability are considered in the marxian analytical framework for the period of 1995 2007 leading to the great recession our estimates indicate a trend towards convergence of national profit rates largely driven by the convergence of profitability in developing and transition economies during this period the level of profit rates in all groups of countries experienced growth with the global capital weighted rate of profit increasing by approximately 50 the main contributor to this growth in all groups of countries was the increase in average productivity of capital measured by output capital ratio in developed and transition economies the increase in profit shares of national income and the decline in the relative price of capital goods also contributed to profitability growth in the same period for developing countries profit shares and relative prices were relatively stable

dynamic parties and social turnout an agent based model1 the authors develop an agent based model of dynamic parties with social turnout built upon developments in different fields within social science this model yields significant turnout divergent platforms and numerous results consistent with the rational calculus of voting model and the empirical literature on social turnout in a simplified version of the model the authors show how a local imitation structure inherently yields dynamics that encourage positive turnout the model also generates new hypotheses about the importance of social networks and citizen party interactions

behavioral environmental economics promises and challenges environmental issues provide a rich ground for identifying the existence and consequences of human limitations in this paper we present a growing literature lying at the interface between behavioral and environmental economics this literature identifies alternative solutions to traditional economic instruments in environmental domains that often work imperfectly but it also faces a set of challenges including the difficulty of computing welfare effects and the identification of a robust environmental policy based on context dependent socio psychological effects we illustrate our critical discussion with two behavioral schemes that have been widely implemented green nudges and corporate environmental responsibility

the return to capital in ghana we show that the real return to capital in ghana s informal sector is high for farmers we find annual returns ranging from 205 350 in the new technology of pineapple cultivation and 30 50 in well established food crop cultivation we also examine the relative prices of durable goods of varying durability and estimate a lower bound to the opportunity cost of capital of 60 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

choosing what i want versus rejecting what i do not want an application of decision framing to product option choice decisions abstract the authors examine the effects of using a subtractive versus an additive option framing method on consumers option choice decisions in three studies the former option framing method presents consumers with a fully loaded product and asks them to delete options they do not want the latter presents them with a base model and asks them to add the options they do want combined the studies support the managerial attractiveness of the subtractive versus the additive option framing method consumers tend to choose more options with a higher total option price when they use subtractive versus additive option framing this effect holds across different option price levels study 1 and product categories of varying price study 2 moreover this effect is magnified when subjects are asked to anticipate regret from their option choice decisions study 2 however option framing has a different effect on the purchase likelihood of the product category itself depending on the subject s initial inter

testing the effect of defaults on the thermostat settings of oecd employees default options have been shown to affect behaviour in a variety of economic choice tasks including health care and retirement savings less research has tested whether defaults affect behaviour in the domain of energy efficiency this study uses data from a randomized controlled experiment in which the default settings on office thermostats in an oecd office building were manipulated during the winter heating season and employees chosen thermostat setting observed over a 6 week period using difference in differences panel and censored regression models to control for maximum allowable thermostat settings we find that a 1 c decrease in the default caused a reduction in the chosen setting by 0 38 c on average sixty five percent of this effect could be attributed to office occupant behaviour p value 0 044 the difference in differences model shows that small decreases in the default 1 led to a greater reduction in chosen settings than large decreases 2 we also find that office occupants who are more apt to adjust their thermostats prior to the intervention were less susceptible to the default we find no evidence that offices with multiple occupants displayed different patterns in thermostat choices than single occupant offices we conclude that this kind of intervention can increase building level energy efficiency and discuss potential explanations and broader policy implications of our findings

retirement security in an aging population abstract elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income for those in the bottom half of the income distribution social security is the most important source of support program changes would directly affect their well being income from private pensions assets and earnings are relatively more important for higher income elderly individuals who have more diverse income sources the trend from private sector defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans has shifted responsibility for retirement security to individuals a significant subset of the population is unlikely to be able to sustain their standard of living in retirement without higher pre retirement saving

retirement savings a tale of decisions and defaults we examine the behavior of members of an industry wide pension fund to assess both the prevalence of defaults and their impact on retirement savings our empirical investigations show that preferences demographic characteristics and labor mobility matter greatly when it comes to the extent of active plan choice or high defaulting and overall level of pension benefits using a structural dynamic life cycle model we then evaluate the ability of these empirically motivated factors to explain retirement savings patterns in our model individuals decide how much to save in a setting that combines irreversible automatic enrolment with an active decision regime after automatic enrolment there is an initial choice between two pension plans defined benefit vs defined contribution and then members decide possibly by default their voluntary contributions and type of investment allocation we estimate the model using the simulated method of moments on administrative data from a large australian pension fund our results show that default settings strongly influence wealth accumulation such settings are also highly persistent both over time and across decisions overall our findings suggest that if defaults particularly the irreversible ones are not carefully designed retirement savings can be severely affected this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

a group rule utilitarian approach to voter turnout theory and evidence this paper explores a group rule utilitarian approach to understanding voter turnout inspired by the theoretical work of john c harsanyi 1980 and timothy j feddersen and alvaro sandroni 2002 it develops a model based on this approach and studies its performance in explaining turnout in texas liquor referenda the results are encouraging the comparative static predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the data and a structurally estimated version of the model yields reasonable coefficient estimates and fits the data well the structurally estimated model also outperforms a simple expressive voting model

naive diversification strategies in defined contribution saving plans there is a worldwide trend toward defined contribution saving plans and growing interest in privatized social security plans in both environments individuals are given some responsibility to make their own asset allocation decisions raising concerns about how well they do at this task this paper investigates one aspect of the task namely diversification it is shown that some investors follow the 1 n strategy they divide their contributions evenly across the funds offered in the plan consistent with this naive notion of diversification it is found that the proportion invested in stocks depends strongly on the proportion of stock funds in the plan

adolescent time preferences predict lifetime outcomes this study investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic outcomes we use a swedish longitudinal data set that links information from a large survey on children s time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades our results indicate a substantial adverse relationship between high discount rates and school performance health labour supply and lifetime income males and high ability children gain significantly more from being future oriented these discrepancies are largest regarding outcomes later in life we also show that the relationship between time preferences and long run outcomes operates through early human capital investments

why does the law of one price fail an experiment on index mutual funds we conduct an experiment to evaluate why individuals invest in high fee index funds in our experiments subjects allocate 10 000 across four s p 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio s subsequent return subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees we can reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high fee index funds because of bundled non portfolio services search costs for fees matter but even when we eliminate these costs fees are not minimized instead subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception fees paid decrease with financial literacy interestingly subjects who choose high fee funds sense they are making a mistake

a re in statement of the labour theory of value this paper surveys and argues for an account of labor values and prices in the marxian tradition that is not subject to the usual criticisms concerning their conceptual coherence and empirical relevance this reformulation first suggested independently of each other by g dumeenil and d k foley provides a powerful account that overturns almost a century of misconceived orthodoxy in doing so it enables a theoretically coherent account of the value of labor power and an empirical account of the fundamental categories of capitalism copyright 1994 by oxford university press

public protests and policy making technological advances and the development of social media have made petitions public protests and other form of spontaneous activism increasingly common tools for individuals to influence decision makers to study these phenomena in this article i present a theory of petitions and public protests that explores their limits as mechanisms to aggregate information the key assumption is that valuable information is dispersed among citizens through petitions and protests citizens can signal their private information to the policy maker who can then choose to use it or not i first show that if citizens individual signals are not sufficiently precise information aggregation is impossible no matter how large is the population of informed citizens even if the conflict with the policy maker is small i then characterize the conditions on conflict and the signal structure that guarantee information aggregation when these conditions are satisfied i show that full information aggregation is possible as the population grows to infinity when they are not satisfied i show that information aggregation may still be possible if social media are available

working time trends and developments in europe the objective of this paper is to summarise what is known about key trends and developments in working time across europe the european region analysed in this paper includes not only the 27 current member states of the european union eu but extends even beyond its borders this paper review trends and patterns in working hours in the broadest range of countries possible given data limitations especially outside the eu with a focus on average weekly hours of work and the proportion of workers working excessively long hours defined as usual working hours of 48 or more per week developments regarding one unique form of working time arrangement part time work with a focus on the incidence of part time work in each country changes in this incidence over time the female share of part time employment and issues related to the quality of part time jobs and finally considers trends in the organisation of working time across europe with a focus on the incidence of non standard work schedules e g night work and weekend work and shift work as well as the extent to which various types of flexible working time arrangements are being deployed in individual enterprises finally the paper presents some policy suggestions within a broad framework designed to advance the international labour organisation ilo concept of decent work in the area of working time

tests of institutional versus non institutional models of local public expenditure determination are institutional or non institutional factors more important determinants of local public expenditure decisions employing data that allows us to directly identify the entire distribution of voter expenditure demands we estimate models of deviations of actual expenditures from the expenditure demand of defensible benchmarks namely the median voter s expenditure demand and the mean of voters expenditure demands three competing paradigms are employed to specify these models namely a non institutional model the reform government movement s explanation of how institutions affect local government decisions and a transactions cost model of this same phenomenon predictions from these three competing models differ in many respects comparisons of results from estimating models of expenditure deviations are found to be generally more consistent with the non institutional model than with either of the two institutional models these results suggest that a competitive local public service market helps limit the ability of governments to tax and spend in excess of the demands of the median or mean voter

why don t present biased agents make commitments since self control problems were first analyzed by strotz 1956 researchers have frequently emphasized that dynamically inconsistent preferences such as present biased preferences engender a demand for commitment 1 here and throughout this paper i define commitment as a pure restriction on one s choice set with no confounding extrinsic benefits such as tax deferral in a savings plan or intra household strategic advantages 2 commitment is a problematic prediction since we see so little of it in the economy researchers have been able to induce some experimental participants to commit themselves e g ashraf karlan and yin 2006 but across a growing literature it is usually the case that only a minority of experimental subjects choose to tie their own hands 3 moreover subjects rarely express a willingness to pay a significant price to have their choice set reduced 4 most importantly very little commitment has arisen in the marketplace without the direct involvement of behavioral economists or their students 5 in the current paper i quantitatively explore the reasons for the missing commitment extending the present biased procrastination model in carroll et al 2009 i show how equilibrium commitment is related to i the standard deviation of the opportunity cost of time ii the cost of delay iii the degree of partial naivete and iv the direct cost of commitment my quantitative analysis implies that commitment is not a robust implication of present biased discounting once one calibrates the model commitment vanishes in many leading cases in other words the benefits of commitment as perceived by the present biased agent are frequently overwhelmed by the costs of commitment this does not imply that we should never expect to see commitment rather in some natural settings like the one studied here commitment is a hothouse flower that survives only under special parameterizations a demand for commitment is a special case rather than the general case section i explains the basic model with sophisticated beliefs and solves it under the assumption that commitment is not available section ii introduces a free commitment technology and characterizes the cases under which commitment will be chosen section iii extends that analysis under the assumption of partial naivete section iv completes the analysis by studying the case in which commitment has a direct cost i e a hassle cost or a market price for setting up a commitment contract section v concludes an associated nber working paper contains proofs

can simple informational nudges increase employee participation in a 401 k plan we report results from a field experiment in which a randomized subset of newly hired workers at a large financial institution received a flyer containing information about the employer s 401 k plan and the value of contributions compounding over a career younger workers who received the flyer were significantly more likely to begin contributing to the plan relative to their peers in the control group many workers do not participate in their employers supplemental retirement savings programs even though these programs offer substantial tax advantages and immediate returns due to matching contributions from a survey of new hires we find that many workers choose not to contribute to the plan because they have other financial priorities however some nonparticipants lack the financial literacy to appreciate the benefit these findings indicate that simple informational interventions can nudge workers to participate in retirement saving plans and enhance individual well being and retirement income security

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

rates of return on physical and human capital in africa s manufacturing sector in this paper two sets of issues are addressed using panel data from the manufacturing sector of five african countries first how high are the returns to human relative to physical capital second what is the relative importance of technology and endowments of human and physical capital in determining differences in earnings and productivity across the countries evidence from earnings functions shows that the private returns to both experience and education rise with the level of education private returns rise from 3 per cent at the primary level to 10 per cent at the secondary level and 35 per cent for tertiary evidence from the production function gives lower returns on education than from the earnings function rates of return on physical capital exceed 20 per cent and greatly exceed the average return on human capital data is available on the stocks of human and physical capital across the countries productivity and earnings differentials are shown to be large between cameroon and ghana these differences are due almost entirely to differences in physical not human capital endowments this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the welfare economics of default options in 401 k plans default contribution rates for 401 k pension plans powerfully influence choices potential causes include opt out costs procrastination inattention and psychological anchoring using realistically parameterized models we show how the optimal default the magnitude of the welfare effects and the degree of normative ambiguity depend on the behavioral model the scope of the choice domain deemed welfare relevant the use of penalties for passive choice and other 401 k plan features while results are theory specific our analysis provides reasonably robust justifications for setting the default either at the highest contribution rate matched by the employer or contrary to common wisdom at zero jel d14 d91 j26 j32

on the asset allocation of a default pension fund we characterize the optimal default fund in a dened contribution dc pension plan using detailed data on individuals and their holdings inside and outside the pension system we nd substantial heterogeneity among default investors in terms of labor income nancial wealth and stock market participation we build a life cycle consumption savings model incorporating a dc pension account and realistic investor heterogeneity we examine the optimal asset allocation for dierent realized equity returns and investors and compare it with age based investing the optimal asset allocation leads to less inequality in pensions while it moderates the risks through active rebalancing

mental accounting in portfolio choice evidence from a flypaper effect this paper documents a lack of coordination between the asset allocations of different financial accounts in a household portfolio our findings are predicted by the theory of mental accounting richard h thaler 1985 1990 1999 agents sometimes make decisions about individual accounts in their portfolio without considering their other accounts the setting for our analysis is a large u s firm when an employee at this firm makes a 401 k contribution the company makes a matching contribution proportional to the employee s contribution up to a match threshold in march 2003 the firm changed its 401 k matching rules creating a natural experiment both before and after the rule change the initial allocation of participants own contribution flows was determined by the participants 1 the change in march 2003 was to the policy determining the initial asset allocation of the employer match contributions in the first regime before march 2003 the firm directed matching contribution flows entirely into employer stock this was not a binding restriction as participants could freely reallocate their match balances after matching contributions were made although in practice participants rarely did so in march 2003 the company changed its match policy requiring new enrollees to actively choose the asset allocation for both their own and match contribution flows the change between these regimes was economically neutral any allocation of balances in one regime could be replicated in the other nevertheless allocations to employer stock differed vastly across the two regimes employees who enrolled in february 2003 just before the regime change allocated 23 of their own contribution flows to employer stock since all of their match contributions were directed into employer stock this resulted in a 56 total 401 k allocation to employer stock combining the own contribution and match contribution accounts few of these february enrollees made subsequent trades to reduce their employer stock balances in either account employees who enrolled in march 2003 right after the change allocated 23 of their total own plus match contribution flows to employer stock notice that own contribution allocations to employer stock in the first regime precisely match the combined allocation of own and match contributions in the second regime 23 in both cases even though combined allocations differ greatly across the regimes these results imply that each dollar of employer stock contributed to enrollees through the match in the first regime increased the employees total holdings of employer stock by a full dollar rather than being offset by reduced employer stock holdings elsewhere or being sold off directly in other words money sticks where it hits a phrase attributed to arthur okun generating an asset allocation flypaper effect that is akin to the flypaper effects of public finance corporate finance and intra household consumption 2 after considering several explanations for the asset allocation flypaper effect we conclude that it is due in part to mental accounting our results can be explained by the following simple model in the first regime new enrollees actively allocated only their own contribution flows effectively ignoring the fact that their matching contributions were entirely directed into employer stock in the second regime the match allocation became salient because new enrollees were required to choose both their match and own contribution allocations during the enrollment process this caused enrollees to consider their entire 401 k portfolio instead of just their own contribution accounts as a result the fraction of total contributions allocated to employer stock under the second regime equaled the fraction of own contribution flows allocated to employer stock under the first regime the average participant allocated roughly one quarter of assets to employer stock in whatever accounts were salient whether the set of salient accounts was narrow regime one or broad regime two the dependence of portfolio outcomes on account salience is inconsistent with investors having a clear target asset allocation for their entire portfolio which they efficiently implement through their investment choices in accordance with much prior research we also find that investors are quite passive rarely reallocating their portfolios 3 however our central finding concerns asset allocation decisions made at enrollment a point when people have overcome their passivity and are taking action investor passivity thus cannot account for the unresponsiveness of own contribution allocations to the match allocation at enrollment under the first regime although passivity helps explain why these initial decisions are rarely reversed subsequently

large electorates and decisive minorities there are many instances in which even in a democracy the political preferences held by a minority of the electorate are reflected in political outcomes it is shown that for a simple two alternative election environment characterized by costly voting and private information when the expected population is very large the alternative preferred by more expected zealous voters who have either large stakes in the outcome of the election or small costs of participating wins with high probability in any equilibrium even if the expected proportion of the entire electorate that shares that preference is arbitrarily small this is an undersirable outcome under either of two natural but very different normative criteria

decision making approaches and the propensity to default evidence and implications abstract this paper examines heterogeneity in the responsiveness to default options in a large state retirement plan focusing on individuals decision making approaches as well as their economic and demographic characteristics analyses of a survey of plan participants show that procrastination and the need for cognitive closure are important determinants of the likelihood of default this paper also explores an important implication of defaulting individuals who default are significantly more likely to subsequently express a desire to enroll in a different plan the desire to change plans is also correlated with numerous economic and decision making characteristics including procrastination

framing effects earnings expectations and the design of student loan repayment schemes abstract income driven student loan repayment idr plans provide protection against unaffordable loan payments and default by linking loan payments to borrower s earnings despite the advantages idr would offer to many borrowers take up remains low we use a survey experiment investigate how framing affects university of maryland undergraduates take up of idr in a set of hypothetical scenarios students are significantly more likely to choose idr when the insurance aspects of idr are emphasized and significantly less likely to do so when costs are emphasized idr framing interacts with expected labor market outcomes emphasizing the insurance aspects of idr has larger effects on students who anticipate a higher probability of nonemployment and or low earnings at graduation in contrast when costs are emphasized the choice of irdr is uncorrelated with students expected labor market outcomes simulation results suggest that a simple change in the framing of idr could generate substantial reductions in loan defaults with only small decreases in long run federal revenue

excessive wages and the return on capital received wisdom suggests that excessive wages defined as the part of real wages that do not follow labour productivity developments are adversely associated with the return on capital this paper argues that excessive wages and profits are better thought of as responses to changes in the economic political and institutional environment and there is no a priori reason for a negative relationship between them we thus investigate whether there is a causal effect of excessive wages on capital return using aggregate panel data for 19 oecd countries for the period 1970 2000 we account for the endogeneity of excessive wages by exploiting variations in institutional and labour market characteristics our main finding is that excessive wages do not affect the return on capital this result remains robust to alternative empirical specifications and to alternative definitions of profitability and excessive wages and questions the standard advice by international economic organizations on wage moderation copyright the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

can defaults save the climate evidence from a field experiment on carbon offsetting programs individual preferences for environmental policies can be influenced by the frame in which choices and decisions are presented in this paper we present results of a field experiment on the contributions to carbon offsetting programs under two alternative treatments for the default option the opt in treatment asked subjects to pay for the policy proposal while the opt out treatment asked subjects if they wanted to be excluded from payment for the policy proposal the results show that the frame of the default option had a significant effect on the amount of money paid for the policy proposal subjects were more likely to accept the policy proposal if the default option was the opt out treatment the results have implications for the design of environmental policies

what s behind the rise in profitability in the us in the 1980s and 1990s profitability in the us has been rising since the early 1980s and by 1997 was at its highest level since its post world war ii peak in the mid 1960s and the profit share by one definition at its highest point in this paper i examine the role of the change in the profit share and capital intensity as well as structural change on movements in the rate of profit between 1947 and 1997 its recent recovery is traced to a rise in the profit share in national income a slowdown in capital labour growth at the industry level and employment shifts to relatively labour intensive industries copyright 2003 oxford university press

aggregate capital productivity in the us economy 1964 2001 in the decomposition of the us macroeconomic pre tax rate of profit as the product of profit share and capital productivity this paper considers the role of capital productivity over the period 1964 2001 the primary finding is that prior to 1982 capital productivity fell because capital deepening proceeded faster than labour productivity growth whereas from 1982 to 1997 the opposite occured if prior to 1982 the us economy was characterised by marx biased technical progress what requires explanation is why labour productivity continued to grow after 1982 in the absence of sufficient capital deepening the paper explores various hypotheses contrasts neoclassical and classical notions of technical change and investigates the robustness of its results to the productive unproductive distinction and to accounting for changes in capacity utilisation

nudging acceptability for wood ash recycling in forests a choice experiment abstract in this paper our objective is to assess the general french population s acceptability of application of wood ash in forests a measure currently not allowed but under consideration by the government the main originality of our approach is that we test how a nudge can be used as an instrument to increase social acceptability conveying objective information regarding ash recycling furthermore although we do not consider it as a welfare measure we show how the estimation of the willingness to pay can be considered as a complement to the more traditional social acceptability measure three nudges were introduced as three treatments in a discrete choice experiment in the first treatment the options with wood ash application were highlighted to indicate to the respondents that they corresponded to pro environmental measures positive framing in the second treatment we changed the wording of the two non status quo options to highlight the recycling aspect of wood ash application in the last treatment we adopted a productive wording to highlight the fact that wood ash application increases wood production treatments in particular positive framing and productive wording influence the willingness to pay but depend on the attitudes of the respondents

design choices in privatized social security systems learning from the swedish experience in the 2000 u s presidential campaign george w bush advocated a partial privatization of the social security system according to his plan a portion of the payroll tax would be designated for individual savings accounts at the same time as this issue was being debated in the united states sweden was in the process of launching a system that is very similar to president bush s proposal although bush s plan did not get much attention in the early years of his administration the proposal may resurface either in the united states or in other countries if so important lessons can be learned from the swedish experience in particular the swedish plan adopted an interesting mix of design choices that can now be evaluated based on three years of post implementation experience although there is a large literature in economics on the design of social security systems most of that literature is concerned with macroeconomic considerations such as funding in contrast there has been much less attention devoted to the details of how plans might be designed in part because these details do not seem important from a standard economic perspective in this paper we reverse this usual pattern and focus our attention on the design aspects of the swedish plan we find that although most of the design choices are those that might be approved by most economists in some cases these choices produced undesirable consequences

the impact of choice architecture on sustainable consumer behavior the role of guilt companies often encourage consumers to engage in sustainable behaviors using their services in a more environmentally friendly or green way such as reusing the towels in a hotel or replacing paper bank statements by electronic statements sometimes the option of green service is implied as the default and consumers can opt out while in other cases consumers need to explicitly ask opt in for switching to a green service this research examines the effectiveness of choice architecture and particularly the different default policies i e the alternative the consumer receives if he she does not explicitly request otherwise in engaging consumer green behavior in four experiments we show that the opt out default policy is more effective than the opt in because it increases anticipated guilt this effect is stronger for consumers who are less conscious for the environment study 1 we also show that a forced choice policy in which the consumer is not automatically assigned to any condition and is forced to choose between the green and the non green service option is more effective than the opt in policy and not significantly more effective than the opt out policy study 2 finally we show that the role of defaults is weakened enhanced if a negotiated reciprocal cooperation strategy is used study 3 the article contributes to the literature of defaults and provides managerial and public policy implications for the design of green services

social insurance and the marriage market social insurance is often linked to marriage existing evidence suggests small marital responses to financial incentives and stems from settings where benefits are realized in the near future i an

defaults and donations evidence from a field experiment we study the effects of defaults on charitable giving in a large scale field experiment on an online fundraising platform we exogenously vary default options along two choice dimensions the chari

a behavioral model of turnout the so called paradox of voting is a major anomaly for rational choice theories of elections if voting is costly and citizens are rational then in large electrorates the expected turnout would be small for if many people voted the chance of anyone being pivotal would be too small to make the act worthwhile yet many people do vote even in large national elections to address this puzzle we construct a model of adaptive rationality citizens learn by simple trial and error repeating satisfactory actions and avoiding unsatisfactory ones their aspiration levels which code current payoffs as satisfactory or unsatisfactory are also endogenous themselves adjusting to experience our main result is that agents who adapt in this manner turn out in substantial numbers even in large electorates and even if voting is costly for everyone standard conceptions of rational behavior do not explain why anyone bothers to vote in a mass election turnout is the paradox that ate rational choice theory fiorina 1990 334 we would like to thank stephen ansolabehere sorin antohi glenn ellison dedre gentner sunil kumar david laitin tze lai arthur lupia elijah millgram lincoln moses scott page tom palfrey john patty paul pfleiderer adam simon joel sobel carole uhlaner three anonymous referees and the participants in the political economics seminar at the gsb the stanford caltech workshop the unc american politics research group the ucla conference on cognition emotion and rational choice panels at the annual meetings of the mpsa and the apsa the agent 2000 workshop the seventh annual wallis conference the cmu pitt colloquium series and the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences seminar series for their helpful comments this paper was written while ting was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill and he thanks unc s department of political science for its support it was revised while bendor was a fellow at the casbs and he is grateful for the center s financial and intellectual support

how are preferences revealed revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent s observed actions normative preferences represent the agent s actual interests it sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences but there are many cases where this assumption is violated we identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences passive choice complexity limited personal experience third party marketing and intertemporal choice we then discuss six approaches that jointly contribute to the identification of normative preferences structural estimation active decisions asymptotic choice aggregated revealed preferences reported preferences and informed preferences each of these approaches uses consumer behavior to infer some property of normative preferences without equating revealed and normative preferences we illustrate these issues with evidence from savings and investment outcomes

a cross country database for sector investment and capital this article presents a new database of investment and capital in agriculture manufacturing and the overall economy it covers 62 industrial and developing countries for the years 1967 92 a common method is used in the calculations to facilitate comparisons across countries and sectors the sensitivity of the calculations to choices of parameters and estimation methods is tested collectively the data show that as economies grow capital stocks accumulate but the composition of capital changes together and individually capital stocks in agriculture and manufacturing constitute a smaller share of the total capital stock than they did 20 years ago capital labor ratios show that agriculture has become more capital intensive m most countries the composition of agricultural capital has changed as well capital from investments in orchards and livestock has declined relative to capital from fixed investments in machinery irrigation and buildings

follow the leader theory and evidence on political participation using state by state voting data for u s presidential elections the authors observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness to explain the strategic component of political participation they develop a follow the leader model political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal which depends on the expected closeness of the race at both state and national levels and how voters respond to their effort structural estimation supports this model for example a 1 percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders efforts which increases turnout by 0 34 percent

de centralization and voter turnout theory and evidence from german municipalities a vast academic literature illustrates that voter turnout is affected by the institutional design of elections e g compulsory voting electoral system postal or sunday voting in this article we exploit a simple downsian theoretical framework to argue that the institutional framework of public good provision and in particular the distribution of political and administrative competences across government levels likewise affects voters turnout decisions by influencing the expected net benefit of voting empirically we exploit the institutional variation across german municipalities to test this proposition and find supportive evidence

who is a passive saver under opt in and auto enrollment abstract defaults have been shown to have a powerful effect on retirement saving behavior yet there is limited research on who is most affected by defaults and whether this varies based on features of the choice environment using administrative data on employer sponsored retirement accounts linked to survey data we estimate the relationship between retirement saving choices and individual characteristics long term discounting present bias financial literacy and exponential growth bias under two distinct choice environments an opt in regime and an auto enrollment regime consistent with our conceptual model we find that the determinants of following the default and contribution behavior are regime specific under the opt in regime financial literacy plays an important role in predicting total contributions active saving choices and maxing out contributions in the tax preferred account in contrast under the auto enrollment regime present bias is the most significant behavioral predictor of contribution behavior a causal interpretation of the estimates suggests that auto enrollment increases saving primarily among those with low financial literacy

choice of pension management fees and effects on pension wealth abstract to shed light on the effects of individual choice on pension wealth we study a policy change to the management fees of pension funds implemented by peru s government in 2013 the reform established a new balance fee as a default option this fee is calculated as a percentage of the pension balance each individual had the initial option of keeping the previous management fee a load factor fee calculated as a percentage of the individual s salary we use administrative data to simulate pension balances based on the individual s choice of fee and the corresponding counterfactual our results indicate that the reform has been potentially adverse to 63 1 of individuals of whom 41 4 were assigned to the default option and 21 7 voluntarily chose the load fee these results reflect both the potentially negative unintended effects of the policy and an alarming lack of financial literacy among citizens we also detect heterogeneity in the intensity of the losses and gains due to the reform which caused greater losses than gains in particular younger and poorer individuals as well as those automatically assigned to the balance fee experienced higher losses moreover the new fee scheme is also associated with increasing inequality between individuals pension wealth

rational status quo abstract decision makers often stick to a status quo without explicitly reconsidering it yet their observed choices might be compatible with a fully rational model we ask when such a rationalization is possible we assume as observable only the choice of sticking to the status quo vs changing it as a function of a database of cases we state conditions on the set of databases that would make the decision maker change the status quo which are equivalent to the following representation the decision maker entertains a set of theories of which one is that her current choice is the best she is inert as long as that theory beats any alternative theory according to a maximum likelihood criterion

public sector employee voter participation and salaries the hypothesis advanced by downs 1957 that rational utility maximizing citizens would calculate the benefits and costs of voting in deciding whether to vote often has been employed to argue that voter participation rates among government employees should exceed that of comparable private sector individuals the basic rationale for that prediction was laid out by downs 1957 254 who argued that those who stand the most to gain are the men who earn their incomes there higher voter participation rates for government employees coupled with an implied preference for the expansion of the public sector has also played a role in efforts to explain the growth of government borcherding bush and spann 1977 and bush and denzau 1977 in addition to benefiting from the supply of public goods and services as do all voters government employees are seen as benefiting from the expansion of government through an increase in their salaries in this paper the issue of voter participation rates for government employees is reexamined current population survey cps data tapes containing information on individual voter behavior for the 1984 and 1986 national elections are used to estimate a qualitative choice model 1 consistent with previous findings the results presented indicate that government employees as a group are more likely to vote than are private sector workers with similar socioeconomic and demographic characteristics wolfinger and rosenstone 1980 unlike previous studies however we distinguish between federal and state and local employees this distinction is important building on the downsian hypothesis that the cost and benefits of voting matter the arguments offered in the following section lead to the prediction that the probability of voting should be lower for federal employees than for state and local the empirical

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

are experienced people affected by a pre set default option results from a field experiment the objective of the present paper is to investigate the robustness of the well known result that pre set default options determine people s choices we do so by conducting a field experiment among environmental economists attending a large international conference on environmental economics the participants were at the time of registration randomly allocated to different treatments related to carbon offsetting what differs from earlier default studies is that our subjects have good knowledge about the good at hand we investigate whether the choices of these experienced individuals are affected by a pre set default option and we also study the effect of a treatment with no pre set default option our results together with previous findings indicate that the effect of a default option attenuates with experience

distribution of income labour productivity and competitiveness is the thai labour regime sustainable this article takes the case of thailand to present the distribution of income and the evolution of the profit rate in a low wage country that belongs to the second generation of newly industrialising countries it is shown that during the boom years the high rate of profit was not based on a continuous process of modernisation but rather on a redistribution of income in favour of capital the link between the distribution of income and competitiveness is also analysed it is shown that labour income repression is not necessary to maintain competitiveness quite to the contrary in this period of international crisis the labour income share should recover lost ground if thailand and other asian countries want to rebalance growth in favour of domestic demand copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press