the demand for lotto the role of conscious selection this article presents estimates of the elasticity of demand for lottery tickets using time series data in which there is variation in the expected value of a lottery ticket induced by rollovers an important feature of our data is that there are far more rollovers than expected given the lottery design we find strong evidence that individuals do not choose their lottery numbers uniformly from a uniform distribution that is conscious selection we use our estimates to derive the inverse supply function for the industry and this enables us to identify the demand elasticity we find the price elasticity to be close to unity which implies that the operator is revenue maximizing which is the regulator s objective

unionization and input flexibility in u s manufacturing 1973 1996 input flexibility as measured by the ability of firms to vary input demand in the face of changes in input prices is an important dimension of labor market flexibility using a new dataset the authors analyze the impact of unionization on input flexibility in u s manufacturing from 1973 to 1996 a period in which production was arguably becoming more flexible due to deep changes in the u s industrial relations system and in the broad macroeconomic environment the authors quantify the effects of unionization on input flexibility by estimating elasticities of substitution between a broad range of labor and non labor inputs controlling for unionization the pattern that emerges is more complex than that suggested by other research in particular low unionization apparently is associated with greater flexibility in the use of labor inputs but less flexibility in the use of non labor inputs

expected utility skewness and the baseball betting market a subjective expected utility model is developed to explain the gambling behaviour of bettors on major league baseball games in the united states betting activity was examined over 15 seasons for the period 1978 1992 the observed overbetting of favourite teams by baseball bettors can be reconciled without abandoning the traditional assumption of risk aversion additionally there is some evidence to suggest that positive skewness has a discernible influence in the decision making process for higher odds contests

the who and why of lottery empirical highlights from the seminal economic literature lotteries operate today in many countries around the world this type of gambling is usually run by governments and is sometimes described as regressive lottery is an unfair bet so explaining the purchase of lottery tickets by risk averse consumers has been a challenge for economic theory lotteries can be analysed from either of two economic perspectives as a source of public revenue or as a consumer commodity in this paper the state of economic research on lotteries is reviewed focusing on its main empirical findings

unions and strategic managerial incentives abstract this paper shows how strategic managerial incentives weaken union power at cournot nash duopoly equilibrium although because of a prisoner s dilemma unions are not averse to those contracts thus one should question whether oligopolists automatically maximize profits when bargaining with trade unions

union nonunion compensation differentials and industry structure abstract this paper examines the impacts of industry output and labor input market structures on workers total compensation in u s manufacturing for empirical analysis cps may 1983 data were matched with 1982 census of manufacturing results indicate that employees in highly concentrated product markets proxied by four firm concentration ratio crr earn more independent of their union membership second union members in the smaller plant sizes have the most to gain and the union advantage disappears for medium to large plants third and perhaps most important the joint effects of unionism and crr on earnings depend on the size of the manufacturing plant in conclusion the paper finds support for dowrick s 1989 conjecture that profits enhancing product market conditions generally tend to increase earnings

factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries this paper explores the factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries in the united states the conceptual framework utilizes a common utility framework in which a representative legislator maximizes utility derived from the current and expected fiscal position of a state subject to a political constraint the empirical results support the theoretical hypotheses including the finding that changes in the fiscal health of the state the predicted profit potential of a lottery and the political climate of the state all affect the likelihood that a lottery is adopted by introducing a sound conceptual framework using better data than used in previous studies utilizing an appropriate estimation technique and obtaining strong results this study advances our knowledge of why states adopt lotteries

substitution between games in the uk national lottery virtually all lottery agencies offer a variety of games to suit the tastes of players in an attempt to maximize revenue to the government using the uk national lottery which offers a variety of on line and scratchcard games the extent to which there is substitution or complementarity between games is evaluated employing weekly data from the three uknl lottery games offered over the sample period it is found that own game characteristics have by far the largest influence on sales some evidence is found suggesting that the lotto and scratchcard games are partial substitutes for one another thunderball sales appear independent of the other two games some evidence is also found that the wednesday and saturday drawings of the lotto game are substitutes the overall conclusion is that camelot has successfully designed and marketed three games that each appeal to bettors in different ways thus sales from one game do not seem to seriously cannibalize the sales of the other games with the exceptions no

buying a dream alternative models of demand for lotto existing lotto demand models utilize effective price computed as the face value of a ticket minus the expected value of prize money per ticket as their primary explanatory variable by contrast this article proposes a key role for consumption benefit or fun in the demand for gambling in general and lotto demand in particular it develops an alternative model of lotto demand that focuses on the maximum possible prize when this is tested against the traditional model using data from the u k national lottery we find that jackpot considerations exert an influence over and above that of variations in effective price

testing for efficiency in lotto markets state sponsored lotto games because they are pari mutuel and because jackpots with no winner are rolled over into the next drawing present an excellent opportunity to test for market efficiency using data from massachusetts kentucky and ohio we investigate bettors responses and test for weak form efficiency lotto bets do not have positive net expected returns thus weak form efficiency exists to evaluate strong form efficiency we utilize the concept of a rational expectations equilibrium we find that in general lotto bettors decisions to play generate a level of sales that conform to their original forecasts of expected value

assessing the impact on food security of alternative compensatory financing schemes a simulation approach with an application to india summary the international monetary fund s compensatory and contingency financing facility ccff provides temporary finance to a country suffering from a temporary shortfall in export receipts or a temporary overrun in cereal import costs the purpose of the present paper is to provide an assessment of the impact of the ccff on the food security of an individual country the focus of the analysis is upon possible interactions between the ccff and the domestic economic policies of a country we construct an illustrative two sector model of a food insecure country and estimate the model using data for india we then simulate the model to study the impact on food consumption of different versions of the ccff we also study the sensitivity of the model to varying assumptions about domestic food policies our results suggest considerable variation in the possible effectiveness of the ccff depending on the exact nature of the scheme and on the assumptions made about domestic food policies

the peculiar scale economies of lotto the best selling lottery game in the united states is lotto a parimutuel game of long odds and large jackpots unlike in the other popular lottery games numbers and instant there is a strong tendency for per capita lotto sales to increase with the size of the population base the fact that the jackpot also tends to increase with population size is not a complete explanation since the probability of winning tends to be inversely proportional to state population our explanation for why the games are more successful in large states is that players tend to judge the likelihood of winning based on the frequency with which someone wins then a larger state can offer a game at longer odds but the same perceived probability of winning as a smaller state this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the union impact on profits evidence from industry price cost margin data this paper uses industry price cost margin data to estimate the extent to which unions reduce profits estimates allowing for the endogeneity of union status are contrasted with estimates that assume union status is exogenous and not determined in part by either profitability or industry structure endogeneity is found to be an important consideration in estimating the union impact on profits two stage estimates are considerably larger than ols estimates the final section explores the total estimated redistribution from capital to labor in the manufacturing sector an important conclusion is that unions raise prices less than was previously believed

the representative bettor bet size and prospect theory abstract models of representative bettors have ignored the decision on the size of bet that a gambler takes by modelling bet size the favourite longshot bias observed in many pari mutuel betting markets is shown to be consistent with both i a representative bettor taking decisions according to prospect theory based on standard shaped value and weighting functions and ii the bettor simply being risk loving for gains and risk averse for losses

the british gambler s fallacy people facing choices under uncertainty and gamblers in particular are often subject to statistical fallacies this paper explores the hypothesis that if lotto players were subject to the gambler s fallacy predictable fluctuations in the number of jackpots would occur evidence based on a poisson regression model in which the number of winning bets is conditional on the history of draws indicates that number selection in the uk is only marginally affected by the history of draws

lottery pricing and price elasticity dispersion in the uk and canada abstractwe estimate effective price elasticities for different quantiles of the demand distribution of the uk national lottery and the canadian lotto 649 we show that price elasticities vary significantly from draw to draw and have a tendency to increase with lottery participation and jackpot size our findings indicate that setting lottery rules on the basis of mean effective price elasticities should be faced with caution because expected profits are negatively related to the evident variation of elasticities among lottery draws we also simulate alternative active rollover distributions and show that limiting the rollover accumulation by withholding portions and ploughing them back in future nonrollover draws is potentially profitable

the effects of unions on employment and productivity an unresolved contradiction the evidence that unions substantially increase productivity is contradicted by the evidence that the effect of unions on employment is small it is shown in this paper that if the union is constrained by the firm s demand function and it is the efficiency units of labor that are in the demand function then essentially the only way to resolve this contradiction is for unions to raise the productivity of capital and not of labor under conditions where the substitutability between labor and capital is very limited but estimates of the substitutability parameter are near unity so that one of these effects must be wrong either unions do not substantially increase productivity or they substantially reduce employment

the welfare effects of lotto evidence from the uk abstract this paper estimates the demand for lottery tickets using pooled cross section data that contain individual incomes and extensive information about characteristics one of the cross sections corresponded to a draw which was a double rollover the jackpot was enhanced by adding the two previous draws jackpots which had not been won together these datasets provide sufficient observations facing different prices to allow us to estimate the price elasticity as well as the income elasticity of demand we estimate tobit and other specifications and use the estimates to evaluate the welfare effects arising from the introduction of the lottery

employment in the british coal industry a test of the labour demand model the authors test the conventional model of labor demand against the alternative that bargaining takes place over both wages and employme nt for a time series cross section data set covering the british coal industry they note the difficulty of identifying the contract curve under the alternative hypothesis and suggest the use of variables affecting the union and management status quo points as instruments for the endogenous wage they find that outside variables such as benefits and manufacturing wages are important in determining the level of employment thus rejecting the labor demand model copyright 1988 by royal economic society

estimation of price cost margins and union bargaining power for belgian manufacturing abstract this paper extends hall s 1988 hall r e 1988 the relationship between price and marginal cost in us industry journal of political economy 96 921 947 methodology to analyze imperfections in both the product and the labor market for firms in the belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988 1995 we investigate the heterogeneity in price cost mark up and workers bargaining power parameters among 18 sectors within the manufacturing industry as well as the relationship between both parameters using a sample of more than 7000 firms our gmm results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labor market leads to an underestimation of the price cost margin evaluated at perfect competition in the labor market these findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis sectors with higher workers bargaining power typically show higher price cost margins

union firm bargaining and the influence of product market power and production technology on systematic risk the relationship between the capm firm beta and the firm s microeconomic decisions is studied by a model under uncertainty which combines the feature of an ex ante inputs substituable production technology and the existence of a union which bargains over various economic dimensions of the firm it is shown that the earlier findings of a relationship between the firm beta the firm product market power and the labor capital ratio may be reinforced through the indirect channel of labor market bargaining but the relationship becomes more complex and heavily depends on the scope of the union firm bargaining process this yields the empirical prediction confirmed for a panel of belgian firms that any proper estimation of the determinants of firm beta must control for firms in the sample being unionized

lotto nothing the budgetary impact of state lotteries lottery revenues are often touted as an independent revenue source for states using 32 years of state financial data the fallacy of such thinking is demonstrated being the first to control for the self selection of being a lottery state it is found that overall tax revenues decline with increased lottery sales moreover it is discovered that this decline is driven by a decrease in revenues from general sales and excise taxes which is only partially offset by increases in income tax receipts such findings are attributed to a combination of behavioural and political responses following the lottery s implementation

insulating countries against fluctuations in domestic production and exports an analysis of compensatory financing schemes abstract for several years the imf has operated a compensatory financing facility cff whose aim is to smooth out the effects of a shortfall in export receipts in a particular country in 1981 the facility was extended to cover imports of foodstuffs with the objective of reducing food insecurity the purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical analysis of the cff interpreted as an international scheme whose object is to stabilise some domestic policy target such as consumption by providing loans based on the value or volume of a country s exports or imports the paper shows that under certain assumptions the imf s cff for exports provides net gains to individual countries the extension of the scheme to include food imports could provide further gains but only if it is appropriately redesigned

trends in the growth and distribution of skills in the u s workplace 1960 1985 using new measures of job skills and standard measures of education and earnings the authors examine the effects of changing occupational and industry employment patterns on the skill composition of work between 1960 and 1985 the results show a strong upgrading of cognitive and interactive skills combined however with a substantial slowdown in the rates of growth of those skills and a declining demand for motor skills the earnings mix of jobs did not show the same high correlation with employment growth as skill and education levels because high wage low skill jobs declined in the goods industries while low wage jobs requiring at least moderate skill levels grew rapidly in the services

wage premia price cost margins and bargaining power in belgian manufacturing abstract an asymmetric nash bargaining model as developed by j svejnar 1986 is empirically tested on industry wage negotiations in belgium union s relative bargaining power emerges from this model as the fraction of firm s profits per worker which the unions are able to capture in excess of the alternative wage the estimates of the bargaining power coefficients for blue as well as white collar workers reject the symmetric split the difference outcome determinants of the cross industry variation of bargaining power are explored as well

a cross section analysis of food insecurity in developing countries its magnitude and sources short term instability in food supplies continues to be a severe problem for many developing countries from the viewpoint of an individual country this problem arises primarily from fluctuations in domestic food production and in foreign exchange availability the present paper aims to establish the magnitude and seriousness of the problem in a sample of 50 food deficit countries it also aims to broaden the scope of discussion of the food security problem by taking into account the possibility that food insecurity may manifest itself in a country in a variety of ways which depend in part on the manner in which the domestic authorities respond to periodic shortfalls in food supplies

insecurity food financing and the imf abstract this article considers the desirability and feasibility of an international food financing facility along the lines of existing lending facilities administered by the imf and under the imf s auspices a prominent proposal is the extention of the compensatory financing facility the authors examine this proposal in the context of the nature and magnitude of food insecurity in developing countries the authors conclude that the establishment of a food facility within the imf is both desirable and feasible but that as suggested by fao it should be separate from the compensatory financing facility

union firm efficient bargaining and test of oligopolistic conduct this paper applies a production function approach to the analysis of imperfection in product and factor markets and develops a test of efficient bargaining for wage and employment determination based on a translog function defined at the firm level estimates for the belgian chemical industry are consistent with the existence of product market power which is significantly eroded by union wage rents

rejecting capital skill complementarity at all costs any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability the standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital skill complementarity hypothesis formulated by griliches 1969 according to this hypothesis the degree of substitutability between skilled labor and capital is lower than that for unskilled labor and capital yet the results of empirical studies investigating this hypothesis are controversial this paper offers a straightforward explanation using a translog approach reduces the issue of actor substitutability or complementarity to a question of cost shares our review of translog studies mentioned in hamermesh s 1993 summary on the demand for heterogeneous labor demonstrates that this argument is empirically relevant all these studies can be reconciled with each other on the basis of the cost share argument

willingness to pay and the demand for lotto why do many bettors participate in an unfair gamble in particular a lotto game while at the same time purchase insurance the willingness to pay for lotto is analysed to find a rational explanation for a local risk averter s participation in an unfair bet a reasonable case is found where bettors preference can be approximately characterized as a locally risk averse and sufficiently prudent cubic function such bettors dislike risk but prefer standard third moment of the payoff the result suggests that the traditional effective price for lotto demand may omit important explanatory variables we thus propose an alternative method to examine the demand for lotto by incorporating the second and the third moments of lotto s payoff evidence from taiwan lotto data supports that lotto bettors could be both locally risk averse and rational

rising food prices and coping strategies household level evidence from afghanistan this paper investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in afghanistan exploiting a unique nationally representative household survey the authors find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods the authors work improves upon country level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world s poorest most food insecure countries

union nonunion compensation differentials across plant sizes evidence from cps 1983 previous empirical work on the relationship between plant size and union nonunion differentials has focused either on wages podgursky 1986 or benefits bramley wunnava and robinson 1989 freeman 1981 this note extends this research by simultaneously focusing on both wages and benefits there are several arguments that can be made in explaining union nonunion differentials across plant sizes 1 union threat effects 2 efficiency wage effects and 3 wage dispersion effects our study focuses on measuring the union nonunion differential in total compensation for this end estimates of total compensation are obtained using mellow s suggestion 1982 for combining hourly wage information with qualitative data on pensions and health insurance and ross s imputations 1989 for holidays and vacations benefits our results based on the may 1983 cps supplemented by bls data on pensions health insurance holidays and vacation benefits indicate significant union nonunion total compensation differentials exist only for workers in establishments with less than 500 workers these results are consistent with podgursky s wage differential findings

customer discrimination and affirmative action i introduction beginning with the work of becker 1957 economists have been concerned with the relationship between competitive market forces and the persistence of labor market discrimination 1 a major insight of becker and the literature that followed is that competition could tend to eliminate discriminatory pay differentials if competitive forces do eliminate discrimination then empirical findings of persistent discrimination are either a result of faulty testing or market imperfections economic analysis of the link between competition and discrimination depends on the origins of prejudice becker identified at least three possible sources employers co workers and consumers 2 in each of these instances the group against which prejudice is directed e g women or minorities which will be termed minorities in this paper may be able to escape discrimination first minorities can work for nondiscriminatory employers if there are any moreover stiglitz 1973 shows that with constant returns to scale such employers will take over markets from the discriminators eliminating any pay gap based on prejudice 3 second if there is co worker prejudice then minorities can work in segregated firms which under constant returns to scale may have a cost advantage over integrated or all majority firms again discrimination will be driven away 4 third minorities can theoretically escape customer discrimination by specializing in the production of goods for which there is no contact between producers and consumers a case discussed by cain 1986 while competitive forces may in some cases erode discriminatory wage differentials the rate of decline of race and sex wage differentials has evidently not been rapid enough in the eyes of policymakers u s anti discrimination policy has been guided by two major vehicles title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the office of federal contract compliance programs ofccp 5 the equal employment opportunity commission eeoc was created to enforce title vii and is empowered to aid plaintiffs or bring suit itself against employers the commission monitors the employment practices of federal contractors not only are contractors barred from discrimination against protected groups these firms are also required to take affirmative action not to discriminate the purpose of this paper is twofold first it demonstrates that in a general equilibrium framework the case of customer discrimination is theoretically distinct from employer or co worker prejudice in particular while constant returns to scale and the existence of nondiscriminatory firms can eliminate the latter two forms of discrimination customer discrimination may persist even under such conditions the persistence of discriminatory wage differentials is shown to depend on consumer demand technology and the relative size of the minority labor force 6 second the general equilibrium framework is then used to evaluate the impact of government anti discrimination policy where customers are the source of discrimination it is shown that if the government requires equal pay and proportional representation for minorities then the resulting allocation of resources will under particular assumptions be the same as if customers did not discriminate i then contrast these theoretical results with the predicted general equilibrium impact of affirmative action when there is employer or co worker prejudice among previous general equilibrium models of affirmative action welch 1976 assumed no discrimination while freeman 1978 did not specify the source of discrimination it is shown here that the source of prejudice markedly affects one s conclusions about affirmative action further even in some cases where segregation has eliminated discriminatory wage differentials the introduction of affirmative action has allocative effects finally evidence from studies evaluating the impact of affirmative action is used to distinguish among the various equilibrium models

unionism and employment behaviour although there exists a large literature on the effects of trade unions upon wages there is no published work that uses microeconomic data on establishments to examine the employment consequences of unionism this paper addresses this issue with a recent british data set and shows that even after the addition of a substantial set of control variables there is a strong association between poor employment performance and the presence of trade unions the union employment growth differential is estimated at approximately 3 percent per annum copyright 1991 by royal economic society

testing for rational expectations in the uk national lottery the concept of rational expectations has typically been assumed without testing in the analysis of consumer demand and market efficiency in betting markets including betting on lottery games lottery games offer an excellent opportunity to test how participants process the information that is available to them using the uk national lottery as our particular case we find that participants in general efficiently process available information specifically they act as if they can on average forecast the level of sales for a given drawing

substitution between production labor and other inputs in unionized and non unionized manufacturing the ease of substitution between labor and other factors of production is an important determinant of the elasticity of demand for labor and thus of the economic effects of unionism all else the same the greater the elasticity of substitution the greater is the elasticity of derived demand and the greater the displacement of labor for a given union induced wage increase in sectors where this elasticity is large unions are likely to be relatively weak and able to win only slight wage gains freeman and medoff 1981 and forthcoming or if they win large gains will have to pay a high price in terms of lost jobs in the sectors where the elasticity is small unions may be able to extract a substantial wage premium at little cost in terms of employment moreover as a simple general equilibrium model indicates the elasticity of substitution between labor and other factors in the unionized sector is a key parameter in determining the impact of the iiunion wage effect on the earnings of nonunion workers and on the efficiency of the economy johnson and mieskowski 1970 despite the importance of the elasticity of labor demand for an analysis of unionism little attention has been given to the absolute and relative magnitude of this elasticity under collective bargaining while there is some discussion of technological change and the substitution of capital and nonproduction workers for organized production workers in the institutional literature e g slichter 1941 slichter healy and livernash 1960 bok and dunlop 1970 modern econometric work provides no estimates of the relevant parameters as a result johnson and mieskowski 1970 rees 1963 lewis 1964 and others have been forced to evaluate union effects with guesstimates of the elasticities of concern in union settings this paper attempts to fill some of the gap in our knowledge by providing estimates for u s manufacturing of the constant output elasticity of demand for unionized and nonunionized production workers and of the elasticity of substitution between these workers and other inputs the analysis concentrates on what we call the relative inelasticity hypothesis which states that the demand for production workers will be more inelastic in the presence of a union for two reasons the likelihood that unions have organized and survived in sectors with low elasticities and the effects of various contract provisions on the ability of management to substitute other factors for production labor the study is divided into four sections section i develops the rationale for the relative inelasticity hypothesis and describes the nature of the empirical analysis conducted to test its validity the second section uses a 1972 state by 2 digit standard industrial classification sic industry data file for manufacturing to estimate the elasticity of substitution between production labor and both nonproduction labor and capital in the union and nonunion sectors of u s manufacturing industries section iii provides estimates based on a 1968 72 sample of manufacturing establishments of the elasticity of substitution between production and nonproduction labor the only two inputs for which information is available the final section briefly summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for understanding the impact of trade unionism on the u s economy to preview the ensuing discussion our main conclusion is substitution between production labor and other inputs is generally lower in union received for publication march 6 1978 revision accepted for publication august 17 1981 both authors are with harvard university and the national bureau of economic research supported by u s department of labor grant no j 9 m 6 0094 national science foundation grant no apt77 16279 and the national bureau of economic research under its program of research on labor economics we are especially grateful to jane mather for her invaluable assistance on this project and to greg bialecki charles brown gary chamberlain kathy coons jon fay martin van denburgh and lori wilson for their significant contributions the study has not been reviewed by the board of directors of the national bureau

the economic analysis of lotteries lotteries determinants of ticket sales and the optimal payout rate this paper considers policy issues arising in the design regulation and taxation of lotteries focusing on the market for an on line lottery game demand determines who buys lottery tickets and in what quantities the design of lotteries affects the terms on which tickets are supplied uk data suggest that its lottery may be priced too high to maximize lottery revenue more revenue might be raised if the proportion of sales allocated to tax and other levies were smaller having established the positive economics of lotteries the paper then assesses their welfare implications pari mutuel lotteries enjoy scale economies and as natural monopolies are invariably run either by government agencies or a regulated licensee i estimate consumer surplus and identify the excess burden that arises from existing over taxation of lotteries the large price elasticity of demand implies that revenue raised from the lottery is raised very inefficiently moreover the demand for lottery tickets is inferior and there is some evidence that such games are contagious and addictive so using lotteries as a vehicle for raising revenue is extremely regressive finally i consider other policy implications induced effects on charitable giving and on other forms of gambling the impact on the government budget perceptions of risk and distributional considerations ian walker

paralegals and substitution among labor inputs in the law firm despite the recent interest in economic analysis of the law firm and the market for legal services 1 little attention has been given by economists to a phenomenon of increasing importance in the markets for inputs to the production of legal services the rise of the paralegal to illustrate between 1972 and 1977 the number of practicing attorneys in the u s increased by 41 percent but the number of paraprofessionals in legal services increased by 135 percent if we look at all law firms in the u s we find the share of labor cost paid to paralegals almost doubled in those five years increasing from 3 7 percent to 6 7 percent on the other hand the cost share of salaried associate lawyers was stable over the same period this raises the questions of how easily substitutable the various labor inputs are for one another in this paper we examine this issue by using a short run labor substitution model estimating cost share equations derived from a translog labor price function data from the 1977 census of service industries are used to derive quantity and price measures for three types of labor inputs associate lawyers paraprofessionals and all others for law partnerships in 65 standard metropolitan statistical areas the primary result is that paralegals seem more closely substitutable with other workers secretarial clerical messengers than with associate lawyers suggesting that wages and employment of lawyers are unlikely to have been significantly affected by the influx of paralegals

what determines the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor a literature review this paper provides the first comprehensive review of the empirical and theoretical literature on the determinants of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor our focus is on the two input constant elasticity of substitution ces production function we start by presenting four concise observations that summarize the empirical literature on the estimation of motivated by these observations the main part of this survey then focuses on potential determinants of capital labor substitution we first review several approaches to the microfoundation of production functions where the elasticity of substitution eos is treated as a purely technological parameter second we outline the construction of an aggregate elasticity of substitution aes in a multi sectoral framework and investigate its dependence on underlying intra and inter sectoral substitution third we discuss the influence of the institutional framework on the extent of factor substitution overall this survey highlights that the effective elasticity of substitution ees which is typically estimated in empirical studies is generally not an immutable deep parameter but depends on a multitude of technological non technological and institutional determinants based on these insights the final section identifies a number of potential empirical and theoretical avenues for future research

on the causes of food insecurity in less developed countries an empirical evaluation abstract this paper provides an empirical analysis of the causes of short run food insecurity it begins with a preliminary investigation of the correlations between two external factors values of food imports real merchandise exports and two internal ones real per capita income domestic food production with instability in food consumption then it attempts to elaborate the variables which are systematically associated with fluctuations in food consumption by applying a regression method both simple and multiple on a cross section basis as a measure of food consumption instability an index based on the consumption theory is used the analysis indicates that although both external and internal factors have a significant bearing on food consumption instability instability in domestic food production is the most important single factor

jackpot promotion model for taiwan lotto lotto was inaugurated in january 2002 and immediately became a popular activity in taiwan as the big craze following its initial introduction has subsided the growth of lotto game sales has slowed to maintain lottery sales momentum operators have conducted numerous jackpot promotions this study examines the effectiveness of various jackpot promotional strategies the analytical results can provide a valuable reference for operators and governmental authorities regarding ways of increasing lottery earnings the empirical findings of this investigation include the following 1 the effective price elasticity of lotto is 0 382 taipei fubon bank can increase the revenue gained from lotto by increasing the effective price 2 operators can significantly increase lottery sales by declaring the jackpot as an unconditional added fixed or variable bonus

the impact of unionization on motor carrier costs i introduction the increasingly competitive markets fostered by the motor carrier act of 1980 have forced motor carriers to focus on cost saving strategies intended to reduce operating miles fuel consumption and capital and labor expenses there are two reasons unions firms may be at a competitive disadvantage in these efforts first although the union nonunion wage differential has decreased following regulatory reform rose 1987 and hirsch 1988 find that union firms still pay higher wages second managers of unionized firms may have less flexibility in the use of inputs since union work rules restrict the activities and substitutability of drivers terminal workers and terminal facilities indeed harrington 1987 reports that post 1980 trucking expenses are still 40 higher for unionized motor carriers than for nonunion firms unionization may affect carrier cost both by increasing the price of labor and by potentially affecting cost function parameters if union rules make labor less productive the entire cost function will shift upwards for a given set of factor input prices further freeman and medoff 1982 argue that work rules may be expected to result in reduced elasticities of substitution between labor and other inputs in the unionized setting indeed they find that substitution between production labor and other labor in manufacturing is generally lower in unionized settings the impact of unionization on production has been investigated in industries such as construction coal mining hospitals and the cement industry by allen 1984 1986a 1986b byrnes et al 1988 and clark 1980a 1980b the results have been inconclusive with unionized firms being more productive than nonunion firms in some instances and less productive in others studies such as allen 1986c and addison and hirsch 1989 have utilized production function methodologies that use restrictive functional forms which impose homogeneity and identical elasticities of substitution between pairs of inputs allen 1986c examines the relative efficiency of union and nonunion firms with a translog cost function allowing for union effects using intercept and slope parameters that vary by union status in his study of different types of construction projects he finds significant differences between the cost functions for union and nonunion firms but no evidence of the inelasticity of factor substitutions as hypothesized by medoff and freeman in fact his estimates of factor demand elasticities show no discernible pattern for union versus nonunion firms leading him to conclude that work rules do not have the anticipated impact on elasticity the purpose of this study is to test whether unionization impacts motor carrier costs and if so to determine the direction of the impact of particular interest is whether the work rules imposed by the teamster s union have had a significant impact on factor substitutability in unionized firms as argued by freeman and medoff 1982 friedlaender and spady 1981 daughety et al 1985 mcmullen and stanley 1988 grimm et al 1989 and ying s 1990 studies of motor carrier industry costs have used translog cost functions which implicitly assume that union and nonunion cost functions arise from the same production technology this is equivalent to accepting the hypothesis that unionization does not affect the production structure of motor carrier firms if unionization does affect a firm s production process the results from these studies could be biased accordingly this study uses a translog cost function to test for differences in the cost structure of union and nonunion carriers not only is the translog cost function standard in the motor carrier literature permitting comparison of these results with those of previous work it also allows the flexibility necessary to examine the differential impact of unions on cost function parameters and elasticities of substitution between factors