where has all the bias gone detecting gender bias in the intrahousehold allocation of educational expenditure abstract the reliability of the household consumption based engel curve methodology in detecting gender bias has been called into question because it has generally failed to confirm bias even where it exists this article seeks to find explanations for this failure by exploiting a data set that has educational expenditure information at the individual level and also by aggregation at the household level i find that in the basic education age groups the discriminatory mechanism in education is via differential enrollment rates for boys and girls education expenditure conditional on enrollment is equal for boys and girls the engel curve method fails for two reasons first it models a single equation for the two stage process second even when we make individual and household level expenditure equations as similar as possible the household level equation still fails to pick up gender bias in about one third of the cases where the individual level equation shows significant bias this article

airline market power and intertemporal price dispersion this paper analyzes the empirical relationship between market structure and price dispersion in the airline markets connecting the u k and the republic of ireland price dispersion is measured by the gini coefficient calculated using fares posted on the internet at specific days before takeoff we control for passengers heterogeneity in their purpose of travel as well as for such peak periods as christmas and easter our finding of a negative correlation between competition and price dispersion suggests that competition is likely to hinder the airlines ability to price discriminate although this effect appears to be lessened in peak periods

business models for model businesses lessons from renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries against the background of mounting research suggesting entrepreneurship as a means of increasing the uptake of renewable energy technologies rets in developing countries this paper presents the findings of an exploratory investigation into the business models used by renewable energy entrepreneurs in such countries forty three entrepreneurs were interviewed in 28 developing countries and secondary information about country and regional conditions was analysed we chose the business model canvas as an analytical tool and the findings shed new light on established renewable energy business types three different types of businesses were identified consultants distributors and integrators yet there is also some overlap between these types these business types appeared to parallel the life cycle progression of the business but this requires further research a key component of the study was to assess whether the types of businesses were related to country level conditions to assess the impact of regional differences these comparisons revealed consistencies between country level characteristics and the entrepreneurs choice of business model conclusions suggest that different regions may support certain business models more than others due to differing levels of government interest in renewables governance and policy support and the relative ease of doing business

towards a sustainable electrification in ghana a review of renewable energy deployment policies abstract ghana has been facing perennial power rationing over the years due to fuel supply challenges the country s energy system is likely to suffer additional strain from rising energy demand fueled by population growth rapid urbanization and economic development fortunately there are enormous renewable energy resources which can provide sustainable electrification as backbone to socioeconomic development while curbing global warming ghana s energy strategy targets 100 access to electricity and 10 share of sustainable power in national generation mix by 2020 despite the existence of numerous policies and a renewable energy act current contribution of non conventional renewable energy to electricity generation is less than 1 the right mix of policies to address the unique domestic conditions and achieve its specific development goals remains insufficient this study reviews the regulatory framework financing incentives and other provisions of ghana s renewable energy act it critically examines the policy s strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats based on comparative analysis and lessons drawn from failed and successful implementation of similar policies around the world the study also assesses the impact of policy on project development it was found that the performance of ghana s renewable energy policy on grid connected electricity has been poor compared to its target the fundamental reasons for this unsatisfactory performance may be attributed to partial implementation of policies lack of market driven support schemes lack of pricing policy framework weak grid network limited access to funds and inconsistencies in renewable energy development strategies this study proposes the following countermeasures i ghana should comprehensively harmonize renewable energy regulatory and fiscal policies with domestic electricity pricing regime ii market driven support schemes should be prioritized for cost effectiveness and minimum governmental influence these reforms can help eliminate some of the major barriers to sustainable electrification in ghana while the lessons provide a learning curve for other african countries

price discrimination in the airline market the effect of market concentration we test the hypothesis that price discrimination increases with competition in the airline market using a large cross section of tickets offered by several carriers on various routes we approximate price discrimination with marginal implicit prices of ticket restrictions that carriers typically use to price discriminate saturday night stayover re quirements and advanced purchase discounts we find that the restrictions are associated with lower airfares but that the discounts are smaller on routes with higher market concentration the results suggest that price dispersion attributed to ticket restrictions increases as markets becomemore competitive

renewable energy policies in promoting financing and investment among the east asia summit countries quantitative assessment and policy implications many countries have implemented various policies for renewable energy development ranging from setting power purchase agreements and the legislation of renewable energy requirements to providing incentives and imposing carbon taxes the evaluation of the effectiveness of such policies however is fragmented which raises a need for a comprehensive analysis this paper aims to assess whether and how policies promoting renewable energy investment have achieved the intended goals it employs five broadly defined criteria market uncertainty profitability technology and financial resources to build an index to assess respectively if such policies have helped create a market for renewable energy maximize potential profits reduce risks relating to the investment develop and adopt new technologies and improve the access to financial resources each criterion is reflected by three indicators values of each indicator are converted into ordinal values for analysis the index not only scans comprehensively all relevant renewable energy investment policies in the east asia summit countries but also provides systematic and quantitative measures to compare the effectiveness of policies in these countries with respect to the creation of market the degree of uncertainty the potential of profitability the development and adoption of technology and the accessibility of financial resources

retail price cycles and the presence of small firms abstract in many canadian cities retail gasoline prices remain unchanged for weeks at a time while in other cities retail prices cycle increasing sharply and declining slowly in maskin and tirole econometrica 56 1988 571 both price cycles and rigid prices can exist in equilibrium in this article i demonstrate that the existence of these equilibria is dependent on the number of retail outlets operated by the firms constant price equilibria are found to exist only when firms are of similar size however cycle equilibria can be constructed for a wide range of relative sizes

renewable energy policies for sustainable development in cambodia in line with sustainable development path electrification with the aid of renewable energy resources is a key element for the developing countries cambodia with almost 85 rural population is one of the countries with high renewable energy resources but at the same time has a low installed capacity in the context of this study the potential and status of sustainable energy generation in cambodia are studied in detail the renewable energy policies strategies and programs are investigated and the implemented projects based on the determined policies are reviewed considering the existing governmental policy of enabling 70 of rural households to reach reliable electricity services by 2030 the renewable energy resources are found as the best option for rural electrification the economic regulatory financial and institutional barriers are shown as the main cause of the significant deviation between the potential and installed capacity it is essential to overcome the challenges in order to achieve a sustainable development in rural electrification in cambodia

reconsidering gender bias in intrahousehold allocation in india abstract finding evidence of gender discrimination among children in the intrahousehold allocation of goods has often proven to be difficult this article uses data on education expenditures in india to test whether data aggregation data reliability and the statistical method used help explain this pattern results suggest that discrimination against girls is increasing in age and robust to the statistical method and the expenditure measure at the all india level although state level results are more sensitive i find that data aggregation and statistical method are important factors in detecting gender bias while data reliability does not seem to play a major role

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

barometric price leadership abstract barometric price leadership refers to situations in which a price leader acts as a barometer of prevailing market conditions for other firms in the industry in this paper a model of price setting with costly information acquisition is analyzed it is shown that the unique equilibrium outcome is for one firm to acquire information and become a price leader while the other firm does not purchase information and becomes a follower in contrast to most previous work leadership in this model is due to the informational setting not the price setting mechanism as with symmetric information the unique outcome is the symmetric bertrand equilibrium

airline pricing behavior under limited inter modal competition this paper empirically analyzes airline pricing for short haul flights in contexts with no credible threat of inter modal competition to this end we explore the southern italian market since it is less accessible by other transport modes and thus fares are the direct outcome of air related competition we show in fact that market power matters depending on the level of intra modal competition and that airlines apply differentiated mark ups besides consistent with the implementation of inter temporal price discrimination ipd we find a non monotonic inter temporal profile of fares with a turning point included in the interval of the 43rd to 45th days before departure finally we provide evidence that in more competitive markets airlines are more likely to engage in ipd jel l11 l13 l93

looking for boy girl discrimination in household expenditure data the ability to test for discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls is hampered by a lack of data on intrahousehold distribution the analysis presented here allows inferences about intrahousehold allocation to be made from householdlevel expenditure data for a given level of income families with children will spend less on adult goods in order to purchase children s goods if household purchasing favors boys over girls smaller expenditures on adult goods would be made by families with boys as compared with those with girls a method for determining adult goods is described and the procedure for detecting gender bias is applied to data from c6te d lvoire and thailand the data show no evidence of discriminatio n between boys and girls in c6te d lvoire and a small and statistically insignificant bias in favor of boys in thailand how commodities are allocated among the members of a household has recently occasioned a good deal of interest assessments of poverty and income distribution based on household incomes or expenditures will be misleading if allocation within the household is unequal the position of women and girls has been of particular concern and there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence much of it from the indian subcontinent that documents discrimination against females see in particular bhagwati 1973 sen 1984 sen and sengupta 1983 miller 1981 bardhan 1982 and kynch and sen 1983 as well as survey papers by behrman 1987 and harriss 1987 much of the evidence is concerned with measurements of nutritional outcomes mortality and health status rather than with the direct allocation of goods by gender the difficulty in trying to determine the intrahousehold allocation of goods is that household budget surveys the obvious source of data record consumption not of individuals but of households and while attempts can be made to the author is a professor of public affairs and of economics and international affairs at princeton university and is a consultant to the population and human resources department of the world bank the author thanks dwayne benjamin who provided for excellent research assistance he is grateful to him and to members of the economic growth center at yale university for helpful comments this is a revised and shortened version of living standards measurement study working paper 39 the allocation of goods within the household adults children and gender june 1987 the results from thailand were not included in the working paper 1989 the international bank for reconstruction and development the world bank

identifying and characterising price leadership in british supermarkets price leadership is a concept that lacks precision we propose a deliberately narrow falsifiable definition then develop it illustrate its feasibility and test it using the two leading british supermarket chains we find both firms engaging in leading prices upward over a range of products with the larger being initially more dominant but the smaller increasing leadership activity to take overall leadership over time however more price leadership events are price reductions than price increases consistently led by the smaller firm nevertheless the increases are of larger monetary amounts than the falls so average basket price increases over time

second mover advantage and price leadership in bertrand duopoly we consider the issue of first versus second mover advantage in differentiated product bertrand duopoly with general demand and asymmetric linear costs we generalize existing results for all possible combinations where prices are either strategic substitutes and or complements dispensing with common extraneous and restrictive assumptions we show that a firm with a sufficiently large cost lead over its rival has a first mover advantage for the linear version of the model we invoke a natural endogenous timing scheme coupled with equilibrium selection according to risk dominance the analysis yields as the unique equilibrium outcome sequential play with the low cost firm as leader

a theory of dynamic oligopoly ii price competition kinked demand curves and edgeworth cycles we provide game theoretic foundations for the classic kinked demand curve equilibrium and edgeworth cycle we analyze a model in which firms take turns choosing prices the model is intended to capture the idea of reactions based on short run commitment in a markov perfect equilibrium mpe a firm s move in any period depends only on the other firm s current price there are multiple mpe s consisting of both kinked demand curve equilibria and edgeworth cycles in any mpe profit is bounded away from the bertrand equilibrium level we show that a kinked demand curve at the monopoly price is the unique symmetric renegotiation proof equilibrium when there is little discounting we then endogenize the timing by allowing firms to move at any time subject to short run commitments we find that firms end up alternating thus vindicating the ad hoc timing assumption of our simpler model we also discuss how the model can be enriched to provide explanations for excess capacity and market sharing keiiwords tacit collusion markov perfect equilibrium kinked demand curve edgeworth cycle excess capacity market sharing endogenous timing

pricing strategies who leads and who follows in the air and rail passenger markets in italy abstractin this paper we aim at empirically uncovering the existence of price leadership in the passenger transport market whose oligopolistic structure facilitates the strategic interaction amon

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

renewable energy policy and electricity market reforms in china the article examines the potential effectiveness of the renewable energy policy in china and its regulatory law framework it frames the option of renewable energy technology within the background of the long lasting electricity problems that china has faced including serious supply shortages reliance on coal and severe environmental contamination its dual administrative and ownership system based on state and privately owned industry is discussed together with the market reform measures adopted in the sector current renewable energy policy is analysed and the scope of the 2005 renewable energy promotion law is investigated this is conducted within the context of the electricity sector reform that china adopted and its effects upon the prospects of encouraging as well as expanding the development of renewable energy this study draws upon primary information collected from interviews with stakeholders on the policy adequacy and identifies three main types of shortcomings that have interfered with a more successful expansion of renewable energy in china

global policy of rural electrification energy poverty and lack of electricity in the rural area exacerbate the poverty of the developing countries the sustainable renewable technologies can be considered as efficient tools to reduce energy poverty whenever they are conducted based on an appropriate policy electricity can improve the human s lifestyle by increasing the level of health education welfare and technology currently sub sahara africa with only 14 2 of rural electrification has the first rank in the world with lowest access to electricity in that region around 585 million citizens has almost no access to electricity the present study focuses on the general global policies to electrify the rural areas in this regard variety of plans and programs conducted by governmental and private institutes are investigated in the year 2011 the international energy agency iea has developed three global strategies based on the world energy market that defines the overall world energy approach in the present work different technologies for rural electrification are taken into account in two major categories of grid connected and off grid systems furthermore based on sustainable development with emphasis on environmental consideration the feasibility of electrification by using different types of renewable energies such as solar biomass hydro wind and wave have been studied despite reliability of grid connection results indicate that renewable energy sources are the best choice especially in areas far from grid connections challenges between financial institutes and executive agencies result in resource management and technology development in order to overcome existing barriers and issues

intrahousehold allocation of education expenditure the case of sri lanka abstract this article uses conventional engel curve demand analysis as well as a double hurdle model to explore whether there are intrahousehold differentials in the allocation of education expenditure between boys and girls in rural sri lanka contrary to the case in most developing countries in sri lanka there was a significant bias favoring girls for 1990 91 and 1995 96 for age group categories 8 9 14 16 and 17 19 and in 2000 for age group categories 14 16 and 17 19 significant differences in enrollment favoring girls aged 17 19 explain part of the girl bias observed in 1990 91 and 2000 2001 but most of the bias is driven by positive expenditure given enrollment the biases favoring girls are observed at critical stages of the schooling career in the run up to key national exams the 8 9 age group captures the run up to the year 5 scholarship exams that are used to gain entry to the better performing secondary schools the 14 16 and 17 19 age groups capture those who read for important nationa

collusive price leadership with capacity constraints abstract in this paper collusive price leadership in homogeneous good capacity constrained repeated price competition is examined in the stage game firms choose their timing of price setting although setting a price early is disadvantageous per se a large firm has an incentive to move early in order to demonstrate its commitment not to deviate if the discount factor is not too large this behavior raises the collusive price compared to that arising in collusion with simultaneous moves as a result all firms obtain strictly higher profits

why have some indian states done better than others at reducing rural poverty the unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of india since the 1950s allowed the authors to study the causes of poverty they modeled the evolution of average consumption and various poverty measures using pooled state level data for 1957 91 they found that poverty was reduced by higher agricultural yields above trend growth in nonfarm output and lower inflation rates but these factors only partly explain relative success and failure in reducing poverty initial conditions also mattered states that started the period with better infrastructure and human resources with more intense irrigation greater literacy and lower infant mortality rates had significantly greater long term rates of consumption growth and poverty reduction by and large the same variables that promoted growth in average consumption also helped reduce poverty the effects on poverty measures were partly redistributive in nature after controlling for inflation the authors found that some of the factors that helped reduce absolute poverty also improved distribution and none of the factors that reduced absolute poverty had adverse impacts on distribution in other words there was no sign of tradeoffs between growth and pro poor distribution

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

hubs and high fares dominance and market power in the u s airline industry this article estimates the importance of route and airport dominance in determining the degree of market power exercised by an airline the results indicate that an airline s share of passengers on a route and at the endpoint airports significantly influences its ability to mark up price above cost the high markups of a dominant airline however do not create much of an umbrella effect from which carriers with smaller operations in the same markets can benefit the article suggests a number of possible explanations for this asymmetry

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

price leadership and coordination in retail gasoline markets with price cycles abstract this study examines the coordination mechanism used by gasoline stations in the midwestern united states where prices exhibit highly cyclical fluctuations known as edgeworth cycles stations in these markets repeatedly coordinate large marketwide price increases following periods of aggressive price undercutting by studying these periodic price jumps both over time and across cities i find that a particular retail chain in each city acts as a price leader initiating each price restoration the leader signals the new price level to competitors by simultaneously jumping prices at all its stations to a single price competitors follow quickly with a large majority of stations jumping to the exact same price within a 24 hour period the characteristics of the leading firms and the nature of observed price coordination suggest that successful price jumps may be facilitated by the existence of a retailer controlling the prices of a significant number of stations in a city identifying the important role of these firms in the market contributes to a broader understanding of price leadership and coordination and highlights another potential reason why price cycles exist in some in retail gasoline markets and not others

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

edgeworth price cycles evidence from the toronto retail gasoline market i exploit a new station level twelve hourly price dataset to examine the strong retail price cycles in the toronto gasoline market the cycles appear similar to theoretical edgeworth cycles strongly asymmetric tall rapid and highly synchronous across stations i test a series of predictions made by the theory about how firm behaviors would differentially evolve over the path of a cycle the evidence is consistent with the existence of edgeworth cycles and inconsistent with competing hypotheses while the cycles are an interesting phenomenon for study in their own right the evidence has important policy and welfare implications

family decision making for educational expenditure new evidence from survey data for nigeria this study examines the determinants of educational expenditures by households in nigeria data from the nigerian general household survey panel 2012 2013 wave 2 was used and a double hurdle mode

collusion and leadership abstract the paper explores the role of price or quantity leadership in facilitating collusion it extends the standard analysis of tacit collusion by allowing firms to make their strategic choices either simultaneously or sequentially it is shown that price leadership indeed facilitates collusion by making it easier to punish deviations by the leader in case of pure bertrand competition price leadership restores the scope for perfect collusion in markets where collusion would not be sustainable otherwise when firms face asymmetric costs or offer differentiated products price leadership can also enhance the profitability of collusion in case of asymmetric costs the less efficient firm must act as the leader finally such leadership is less effective in case of cournot competition since following an aggressive deviation by the leader the follower would rather limit its own output making it more difficult to punish the deviation still quantity leadership may enhance collusion when it is already somewhat effective in a simultaneous move setting