policy equilibria in a federal system the effects of higher tax ceilings for unemployment insurance abstract in many federal systems a higher authority imposes changes that may alter lower level policies depending on the type of change and differences among lower level parties for example we model changes in the parameters of american states unemployment insurance ui systems when the federal government raises the ui tax ceiling bargaining among interested parties alters ui benefits and taxes we estimate a difference in differences model describing ui tax payments when federal increases in 1972 1978 and 1983 increased some states ceilings where the federal constraint was binding taxes rose nearly 20 percent the theory and empirical analysis suggest themselves as examples for future research on topics in public finance labor economics and international trade

conceptualising energy use and energy poverty using a capabilities framework in this article we conceptualise energy use from a capabilities perspective informed by the work of amartya sen martha nussbaum and others following them building on this we suggest a corresponding definition of energy poverty as understood in the capabilities space we argue that such an understanding provides a theoretically coherent means of comprehending the relationship between energy and wellbeing and thus conceptualising energy deprivation that makes sense across settings including both the global north and south a coherence which has previously been lacking at the same time it has the flexibility to be deployed in a way that is sensitive to local contexts understanding energy use in the capabilities space also provides a means for identifying multiple sites of intervention including some areas that are currently largely overlooked we argue that this is advantageous for attempts to address energy poverty in the context of climate change and imperatives for the containment of aggregate energy consumption

labor market effects of hawaii s mandatory employer provided health insurance the author analyzes how mandatory employer provision of health insurance in hawaii which became law in 1974 affected workers wages employment and insurance coverage between 1970 and 1990 the

new evidence of energy growth nexus from inclusive wealth abstract gross domestic product gdp has been inappropriately used as the main indicator for assessing the sustainability of economic development for a long time inclusive wealth iw offers a new approach to assess sustainability by comprehensively measuring the productive base of the economy that involves three types of capital assets of nations produced human and natural capital and aggregates them into a single measure of wealth this study proposes an alternative to the literature on the conventional energy growth nexus that widely uses gdp as a proxy of the growth this study aims to investigate the impact of energy consumption on wealth in the iw framework and forecast the growth of iw over the next three decades for this purpose this study uses both parametric and non parametric analyses on 104 countries for 1993 2014 our results indicate that there is a negative and significant impact of energy consumption on iw growth suggesting an unsustainable pattern of world energy consumption using a machine learning technique it is forecasted that increasing the efficiency of energy consumption leads to a higher growth in average per capita iw this study also suggests that a shift to renewables is a precondition for sustainable development

energy consumption and sustainable economic welfare in g7 countries a comparison with the conventional nexus abstract this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between sustainable economic welfare growth and energy consumption for canada france germany italy japan uk and the usa using a multivariate panel framework with variables such as employment capital energy consumption and r d the short and long run relationships are compared with those produced from the commonly known so far energy gdp gross domestic product growth relationship results mainly show that in the long run g7 economies can reduce energy consumption without compromising sustainable economic welfare in the short run though both gdp and economic welfare are very much dependent on energy consumption for their materialization of growth sustainable or not the current paper follows the tendency of new economics that shift their focus therein and propagate the use of sustainable welfare in place of the criticized gdp the calculation of the index for sustainable economic welfare isew reveals that uk closely followed by usa have the largest gap on average 52 and 50 respectively between their gdp and sustainable economic welfare japan is experiencing a steadily widening gap while canada is the most sustainable country among g7

mandate based health reform and the labor market evidence from the massachusetts reform we model the labor market impact of the key provisions of the national and massachusetts mandate based health reforms individual mandates employer mandates and subsidies we characterize the compensating differential for employer sponsored health insurance eshi and the welfare impact of reform in terms of sufficient statistics we compare welfare under mandate based reform to welfare in a counterfactual world where individuals do not value eshi relying on the massachusetts reform we find that jobs with eshi pay 2812 less annually somewhat less than the cost of eshi to employers accordingly the deadweight loss of mandate based health reform was approximately 8 percent of its potential size

the renewable energy growth and environmental kuznets curve in turkey an ardl approach abstract this study examines the potential of renewable energy sources in reducing the impact of ghg emissions in turkey using autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach the relationship between co 2 emissions electricity generated using renewables and gdp in turkey has been investigated during 1961 2010 moreover the validity of environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis has been tested model results show that the coefficient of electricity production from renewable sources hydro power excluded with respect to co 2 emissions is negative and significant in the long run although this effect is positive and statistically significant in the short run since the ecm term is 0 82 it becomes negative around 1 year this means that renewable electricity production will contribute to environmental enhancement with a one year lag our results also suggest a u shaped ekc relationship between per capita ghgs and income estimations from a long run regression show that although the peak point of gdp per capita has been calculated to be 9920 us dollars this turning point was outside of the observed sample period therefore ghg emissions start to decrease with an increase in per capita gdp in the following years model research implies the potential and the importance of renewable energy sources in controlling of emissions in turkey

energy transition poverty and inequality in vietnam this paper investigates energy transition energy poverty and energy inequality in vietnam employing a longitudinal dataset of a nationally representative household survey we use the data on residential energy expenditure of more than 9 000 households over the period 2004 2016 we find a transition from traditional energy to modern energy but this transition varies across regions between ethnic and welfare groups and between rural and urban population the poor and ethnic minority households still rely heavily on traditional energy sources such as coal and biomass to meet their energy demands electricity poverty has decreased but energy cost poverty has increased in addition energy inequality tends to decrease at a more significant rate than income and consumption inequalities we propose a national program for energy poverty alleviation be established to devise policies to lower households energy costs further assistance to the poor and ethnic minority households is also recommended so that they can afford a higher level of electricity consumption

the medicaid notch labor supply and welfare participation evidence from eligibility expansions i assess the impact of losing public health insurance on labor market decisions of women by examining a series of medicaid eligibility expansions targeted toward young children these targeted expansions severed the historical tie between afdc and medicaid eligibility the reforms allowed a mother s earnings to increase without losing public health insurance for her young children increasing the income limit for medicaid resulted in a decrease in afdc participation and an increase in labor force participation among these women the effects were large for ever married women and negligible for never married women

did the affordable care act young adult provision affect labor market outcomes analysis using tax data using a data set of us tax records spanning 2008 to 2013 the authors study the impact of the affordable care act aca young adult dependent coverage requirement on labor market related outcomes including measures of employment status job characteristics and postsecondary education they find that the aca provision did not result in substantial changes in labor market outcomes results show that employment and self employment are not statistically significantly affected although some evidence supports the increased likelihood of young adults earning lower wages not receiving fringe benefits enrolling as full time or graduate students and young men being self employed the magnitudes imply extremely small impacts on these outcomes in absolute terms and when compared to other estimates in the literature the authors find these results to be consistent with health insurance being less salient to young adults compared to other populations when making labor market decisions

state responses to fiscal crises the effects of budgetary institutions and politics this paper explores the dynamics of state taxes and spending during the late 1980s when regional economic downturns and increased expenditure demands led to substantial state budget deficits more restrictive state fiscal institutions such as no deficit carryover rules and tax and expenditure limitations are correlated with more rapid fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits political factors are also important when a single party controls the state house and the governorship deficit adjustment is much faster than when party control is divided in gubernatorial election years tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times

alcohol availability prenatal conditions and long term economic outcomes this study examines how a policy that sharply increased alcohol availability during 8 5 months affected the labor productivity of those exposed to it in utero compared to the surrounding cohorts the prenatally exposed children have substantially worse labor market and educational outcomes and lower cognitive and noncognitive ability effects on earnings are found throughout the distribution but are largest below the median males are more affected than females consistent with growing evidence that boys are less resilient to early environmental insults the long term effects seem primarily driven by changes in prenatal health rather than changes in the childhood environment

electricity consumption and economic growth exploring panel specific differences abstract in this paper we examine the long and short run dynamics between electricity consumption and economic activities using panel data of per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of 160 countries for the period of 1980 2010 accounting for the degree of electricity dependence and the level of urbanization furthermore in order to capture the differences in this relationship the full sample is divided into various subsamples based on countries income levels regional locations and oecd memberships this framework is argued and found to be appropriate since the causal links and inferences arising therefrom differ considerably among the subsamples which led us to conclude that the electricity growth nexus is highly sensitive to regional differences countries income levels urbanization rates and supply risks

capture and the bureaucratic mafia does the revolving door erode bureaucratic integrity does the revolving door phenomenon erode bureaucratic integrity to answer this question we undertake a quantitative case study of a private university in south korea that recruited a former vice minister of education as its president specifically we investigate whether after employing this high ranking former public official the university received favorable treatment from the education ministry in terms of funding estimates from difference in difference triple difference and synthetic control methods all suggest that the high profile public official s recruitment is associated with financial benefits from the official s former employing agency no such advantage however was observed for benefits from other agencies this result offers suggestive but compelling evidence that the revolving door distorts the allocation of government resources the financial benefits the university received are due not to the recruited official s greater competence expertise or knowledge but rather to his implicit collusion with the government

the incidence of medicare abstract the medicare program transfers nearly 300 billion annually from taxpayers to beneficiaries this paper considers the incidence of such transfers in the context of a life cycle model with uncertainty about future health care expenditures we find the distributional consequences of the medicare program are roughly neutral in dollar terms households living in high income neighborhoods pay more in taxes but they also receive more in benefits these dollar flows however ignore the insurance value of the medicare system given the incomplete insurance coverage of lower income elderly households prior to the medicare program the money metric benefits to lower income groups exceed the dollar flows suggesting that medicare redistributes more than a simple accounting exercise would suggest

fast food consumption and the ban on advertising targeting children the quebec experience abstract amid growing concerns about childhood obesity and the associated health risks several countries are considering banning fast food advertising targeting children in this article the authors study the effect of such a ban in the canadian province of quebec using household expenditure survey data from 1984 to 1992 authors examine whether expenditure on fast food is lower in those groups affected by the ban than in those that are not the authors use a triple difference indifference methodology by appropriately defining treatment and control groups and find that the ban s effectiveness is not a result of the decrease in fast food expenditures per week but rather of the decrease in purchase propensity by 13 per week overall the authors estimate that the ban reduced fast food consumption by us 88 million per year the study suggests that advertising bans can be effective provided media markets do not overlap

the renewable energy and economic growth nexus in black sea and balkan countries the aim of this study is to explore the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth within the framework of traditional production function for the period of 1990 2012 in 9 black sea and balkan countries for this purpose we use pedroni 1999 2004 panel cointegration pedroni 2000 2001 co integration estimate methods and dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 heterogeneous panel causality estimation techniques the study has concluded that there is a long term balance relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth and renewable energy consumption has a positive impact on economic growth heterogeneous panel causality analysis results support growth hypothesis in bulgaria greece macedonia russia and ukraine feedback hypothesis in albania georgia and romania neutrality hypothesis in turkey and according to the panel data set including all nine countries the results support feedback hypothesis with the findings it was concluded that there is a significant impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth in balkan and black sea countries

energy justice and the contested petroleum politics of stranded assets policy insights from the yasuni itt initiative in ecuador abstract ecuador s progressive yasuni itt initiative operational 2007 to 2013 would have left almost one billion barrels of crude oil locked in perpetuity beneath one of the most intact and diverse nature reserves on the planet the project attempted to strand these oil assets in order to protect biodiversity respect the territory of indigenous peoples combat climate change and encourage more sustainable economic development the yasuni itt proposal would have had the international community pay ecuador 3 6 billion roughly half the value of the oil found there in exchange for not developing the ishpingo tambococha tiputini itt oilfields funds would have been placed into social and environmental development programs and the promotion of domestic renewable energy instead the project collected only 13 million and succumbed to a series of challenges including limited financing intense political pressure a national commitment to oil and carbon leakage this article summarizes the history benefits and insurmountable obstacles facing the yasuni itt initiative and presents six broader lessons and implications for climate and energy analysts practitioners and policymakers it questions the political viability of and serves as a stark warning against those promoting and advocating policies centered on carbon budgets stranded assets negative emissions and carbon revenue streams

equilibrium taxation and experience rating in a federal system of unemployment insurance abstract this paper seeks to explain why there is apparent redistribution of tax burdens in ui systems from high to low unemployment firms in addition to providing reasons for the direction taken by redistribution the model interprets the accompanying institution of imperfect experience rating defined as the practice of taxing firms by less than a dollar for every dollar of benefits paid a firm s employees the null hypothesis views the design of the ui tax as the result of intentional redistribution of economic rents between industries concluding sections explore the limitations on redistribution imposed by a federal system and discuss alternative explanations for the design of the ui laws empirical evidence is provided on the redistributive hypothesis which generally receives strong support

steady state of energy feedbacks and leverages for promoting or preventing sustainable energy system development abstract while energy demand has been growing over the last few decades and is projected to keep expanding the current energy system is pushing biophysical source and sink limits at the same time growing demand for energy globally is associated with an expansion of welfare to avoid undesired environmental and social implications of energy developments in the long run a systemic understanding of the dynamics promoting or preventing sustainable energy development is needed departing from daly s steady state economics theory this study conceptualizes a sustainable energy system using a systems thinking approach efficiency increase the central element of daly s theory defined as the service throughput ratio is put in the center of a conceptual analysis of a sustainable energy system and is carefully scrutinized meadows leverage points concept is used to facilitate an analysis of different policies that aim at promoting sustainable energy system development this study concludes that energy policies always need to be explored as part of the broader causality structure into which they are embedded otherwise their impacts on other variables in the system may be overlooked such as in the case of efficiency increase which is shown to have undesired side effects for the development of a sustainable energy system

the employment effects of low wage subsidies abstract low wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled but the empirical evidence on their effects is still scarce this paper examines the employment effects of a finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme which is targeted at the employers of older full time low wage workers the system s clear eligibility criteria open up an opportunity for a reliable estimation of the causal impacts of the subsidy scheme our results indicate that the subsidy system had no effect on the employment rate or wages of the eligible groups but it increased slightly working hours among those already at work

the elusive wage benefit trade off the case of employer provided health insurance this study shows that standard regressions estimated to measure a trade off between wages and health insurance are misspecified by insufficiently accounting for establishment and firm size an interactive size corrected specification is more likely to reveal a trade off furthermore because insurance decisions are typically made by firms and wages set by establishments the insurance constraint on establishments in multi establishment firms weakens the trade off we use model generated data to show that both factors contribute to the failure in previous research to identify a trade off and data from a cross section of northern californian establishments to test for a trade off in multi establishment and single establishment firms

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

who pays for public employee health costs abstract we analyze the incidence of public employee health benefits because these benefits are negotiated through the political process relevant labor market institutions deviate significantly from the competitive private sector benchmark empirically we find that roughly 15 percent of the cost of recent benefit growth was passed onto school district employees through reductions in wages and salaries strong teachers unions were associated with relatively strong linkages between benefit growth and growth in total compensation our analysis is consistent with the view that the costs of public workers benefits are difficult to monitor contributing to benefit oriented and often under funded compensation schemes

modeling the causal linkages between nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth in developed and developing countries abstract this article investigates the causal relationship between two types of energy variables and economic growth using dynamic simultaneous equation panel data models for 17 developed and developing countries our results indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running from nuclear consumption to economic growth in belgium and spain while a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to nuclear consumption is supported in bulgaria canada netherlands and sweden a bidirectional relationship appears in argentina brazil france pakistan and the usa while no causality exists in finland hungary india japan switzerland and the u k second the results for the second nexus among renewable energy and economic growth show that there is a unidirectional causality running from renewable consumption to economic growth in hungary india japan netherlands and sweden while there exist a unidirectional running from economic growth to renewable consumption in argentina spain and switzerland a bidirectional relationship is supported in belgium bulgaria canada france pakistan and the usa while no causality exists in brazil finland and switzerland third we find the existence of a bidirectional causality between nuclear consumption and economic and a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to renewable energy consumption for the global panel

backward and forward looking shadow prices in inclusive wealth accounting an example of renewable energy capital abstract attaching weights to the list of capital assets is crucial in inclusive wealth accounting and sustainability assessments these weights or shadow prices can be constructed in theory by looking prospectively at future social profits that the capital in question is expected to yield in practice however both backward and forward looking shadow prices are used this study confirms that these two approaches are theoretically equivalent under strong assumptions and reviews how and why the two approaches are taken the two approaches are then applied to renewable energy capital rec which has rarely been done in either produced or natural capital accounting and sustainability assessments renewable energy capital provides an ideal example with which to compare the two approaches as it is a class of produced capital that substitutes both produced and natural capital the numerical results of both approaches demonstrate that renewable energy capital starts to account for as large a share as natural capital does if not produced capital or inclusive wealth in those countries where natural capital is poorly endowed and investment in renewable energy capital has been witnessed

the feasibility of 100 renewable electricity systems a response to critics abstract the rapid growth of renewable energy re is disrupting and transforming the global energy system especially the electricity industry as a result supporters of the politically powerful incumbent industries and others are critiquing the feasibility of large scale electricity generating systems based predominantly on re part of this opposition is manifest in the publication of incorrect myths about renewable electricity relec in scholarly journals popular articles media websites blogs and statements by politicians the aim of the present article is to use current scientific and engineering theory and practice to refute the principal myths it does this by showing that large scale electricity systems that are 100 renewable 100relec including those whose renewable sources are predominantly variable e g wind and solar pv can be readily designed to meet the key requirements of reliability security and affordability it also argues that transition to 100relec could occur much more rapidly than suggested by historical energy transitions it finds that the main critiques published in scholarly articles and books contain factual errors questionable assumptions important omissions internal inconsistencies exaggerations of limitations and irrelevant arguments some widely publicised critiques select criteria that are inappropriate and or irrelevant to the assessment of energy technologies ignore studies whose results contradict arguments in the critiques and fail to assess the sum total of knowledge provided collectively by the published studies on 100relec but instead demand that each individual study address all the critiques inappropriate criteria we find that the principal barriers to 100relec are neither technological nor economic but instead are primarily political institutional and cultural

the industrial organization of health care markets the u s health care sector is large and growing health care spending in 2011 amounted to 2 7 trillion and 18 percent of gdp approximately half of health care output is allocated via markets in this paper we analyze the industrial organization literature on health care markets focusing on the impact of competition on price quality and treatment decisions for health care providers and health insurers we conclude with a discussion of research opportunities for industrial organization economists including opportunities created by the u s patient protection and affordable care act

dynamic inefficiencies in an employment based health insurance system theory and evidence we investigate the effects of the institutional settings of the us health care system on individuals life cycle medical expenditures health is a form of general human capital labor turnover and labor market frictions prevent an employer employee pair from capturing the entire surplus from investment in an employee s health thus the pair underinvests in health during working years thereby increasing medical expenditures during retirement we provide empirical evidence consistent with the comparative statics predictions of our model using the medical expenditure panel survey meps and the health and retirement study hrs our estimates suggest significant inefficiencies in health investment in the united states

do taxes matter the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 do taxes matter is the first systematic examination of the actual effects of the tax reform act of 1986 the most important u s income tax reform of the last four decades it presents basic information on and an analysis of a variety of different aspects of economic behavior in order to discover whether the observed changes coincide with the predictions of standard public finance models prior to implementation of the new law supporters and opponents made numerous forecasts about its effect on savings corporate investment and other major determinants of the country s economic health the general finding of these original contributions is that the effects of tax reform turned out to be smaller than had been anticipated commissioned by the office of tax policy research of the university of michigan eight of the studies focus on different sectors of the economy reviewing the predictions and carefully analyzing the evidence to determine actual effects the ninth study draws together the results to find lessons for future changes in tax policy joel slemrod is professor of business economics and public policy and director of the office of tax policy research at the university of michigan contents the economic impact of tax reform act of 1986 joel slemrod investment tax policy and the tax reform act of 1986 alan j auerbach kevin hassett the impact of the 1986 tax reform on personal saving jonathan skinner daniel feenberg effects of the tax reform act of 1986 on corporate financial policy and organizational form roger h gordon jeffrey k mackie mason taxation and housing markets preliminary evidence on the effects of recent tax reforms james m poterba the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 on foreign direct investment to and from the united states joel slemrod the impact of tax reform on charitable giving a 1989 perspective charles t clotfelter the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 on state and local fiscal behavior paul n courant edward m gramlich foreign responses to u s tax reform john whalley lessons for tax reform henry j aaron

do private transfers displace the benefits of public transfers evidence from south africa abstract this paper investigates whether government transfer programs displace or crowd out private support focusing on a large increase in state old age pensions in south africa using data spanning the period of the expansion we find that each rand of public pension income to the elderly leads to a 0 25 0 30 rand reduction in private transfers from children living away from home however despite the large increase in income there were no significant changes in migration labor supply or household composition we also show that evaluations of the distributional effects of the pension are overstated when crowding out is ignored

the costs of wrongful discharge laws we estimate the effects on employment and wages of wrongful discharge protections adopted by u s state courts during the last three decades we find robust evidence that one wrongful discharge doctrine the implied contract exception reduced state employment rates by 0 8 to 1 7 the initial impact is largest for female and less educated workers those who change jobs frequently while the longer term effect is greater for older and more educated workers those most likely to litigate by contrast we find no robust employment or wage effects of two other widely recognized wrongful discharge laws the public policy and good faith exceptions i introduction w hat is the price of protection this paper estimates the social costs in possibly lower employment and wages of common law protections designed to protect american workers from wrongful discharge economic the ory suggests that employment protection is a double edged sword it provides employment security to incumbent work ers but makes employers reluctant to hire leading to a less flexible labor market with potentially lower employment and wages it is frequently argued that the stagnant employment performance of many european economies during the 1980s and 1990s eurosclerosis can be attributed in part to the significant employment protection given european workers see lazear 1990 and blanchard and wolfers 1999 krueger and pischke 1998 provide a contrasting view among the obstacles to testing this hypothesis is the difficulty of making reliable inferences using cross country comparisons in this paper we study the effects of employment protec tion in the united states numerous scholars have examined the effects of american federal employment laws on em ployment and unemployment acemoglu and angrist 2001 deleire 2000 and jolls and prescott 2004 present evidence that the americans with disabilities act ada decreased employment of disabled persons oyer and schaefer 2000 2002 conclude that the federal civil rights act of 1991 increased the frequency of mass layoffs and raised the returns to experience for workers who have a downward sloping age litigation profile hahn todd and van der klaauw 2001 also evaluate the costs of federal antidiscrimination laws a major hurdle for each of these studies is that these federal statutes apply all at once to the entire country this makes it difficult to separate the effects of the statute from all other changes occurring simulta neously cf donohue 1998 donohue and heckman

the uniqueness of the energy security justice and governance problem this article argues that among all policy fields exhibiting externalities of a global scale energy stands out on four dimensions vertical complexity horizontal complexity higher entailed costs and stronger path dependency these structural attributes are at odds with contemporary key challenges of energy security energy justice and low carbon energy transition with regard to the latter energy governance challenges occur related to unclear levels of authority and weak resilience this has implications for energy scholarship specifically relating to the political economy of energy transitions discussions about common pool resources systems analysis and other neighboring disciplines

is there job lock evidence from the pre hipaa era we estimate discrete time hazard models of employment duration and standard logarithmic wage equations using the 1987 and 1990 panels of the survey of income and program participation sipp to examine the phenomenon of job lock we test for job lock using differences in differences approaches among those with and without employer provided health insurance and family members with and without health problems we find no statistically significant evidence of job lock on employment duration or wages using this approach we do find some evidence of shorter employment spells for those with employer provided health insurance and spouse provided health insurance and longer employment spells for those with employer provided health insurance and large families others have interpreted these findings as evidence of job lock however the wage equation results using these measures are not consistent with job lock although anecdotal evidence makes it clear that some workers have been locked into less than optimal jobs because of the combination of health problems and employer provided health insurance our results do not suggest that this phenomenon is pervasive in the u s economy

hours layoffs and unemployment insurance funding theory and practice in an international perspective the strikingly different behaviour of important economic aggregates in the united states and other industrial countries has received surprisingly little attention from economists among recent exceptions however gordon i 982 has shown that wages and hours of work are much more flexible in the united kingdom and japan than in the united states such relative hours variability is confirmed in a macro analysis by capdevielle and alvarez i98i and at micro level by sengenberger and kohler i982 the latter authors are concerned with labour market adjustment within the u s and west german automobile industries between i 97 i and i 980 estimates of the german workeroutput elasticity are found to be less than half that of the united states while the german hours elasticity is twice the united states figure at the national aggregate level capdevielle and alvarez also reveal much greater employment variability in the united states than in most other oecd countries in the years following the i973 74 opec supply shock much in line with these employment hours observations moy and sorrentino i98i argue that after

energy for sustainable development a case of developing countries abstract today there are 1 4 billion people around the world that lack access to electricity some 85 of them in rural areas without additional dedicated policies by 2030 the number of people drops but only to 1 2 billion some 15 of the world s population still lack access the majority of them living in sub saharan africa the number of people relying on the traditional use of biomass is projected to rise from 2 7 billion today to 2 8 billion in 2030 addressing these inequities depends upon international recognition that the projected situation is intolerable a commitment to effect the necessary change and setting targets and indicators to monitor progress a new financial institutional and technological framework is required as is capacity building in order to dramatically scale up access to modern energy services at the local and regional levels in this paper we discussed the energy situation of the developing countries for sustainable development

who pays the high health costs of older workers evidence from prostate cancer screening mandates between 1992 and 2009 30 us states adopted laws mandating that health insurance plans cover screenings for prostate cancer because prostate cancer screenings are used almost exclusively by men over age 50 these mandates raise the cost of insuring older men relative to other groups this article uses a triple difference empirical strategy to take advantage of this quasi random natural experiment in raising the cost of employing older workers using integrated public use microdata series data from the march supplement of the current population survey i find that the increased cost of insuring older workers results in their receiving 2 8 lower hourly wages being 2 less likely to be employed and being 0 7 less likely to have employer sponsored health insurance

employment effects of payroll taxes an empirical test for germany this study tests to what degree the incidence of payroll taxes in germany is on employment and whether in consequence payroll taxes in particular social insurance contributions are the culprit behind the growing unemployment problem using industry level data for 18 years 1977 1994 a system of five dynamic factor demand equations is estimated various simulations indicate that the employment effects of payroll taxes are minimal

labor market effects of employer provided health insurance i introduction increasing health insurance coverage is arguably an important policy goal the congressional budget office 2003 estimates that in 1998 20 30 million americans had no health insurance for the entire year approximately 40 million were uninsured at a specific point in time in the year and nearly 60 million were without coverage some time during the year most individuals who have health insurance in the united states obtain it through their employer in 1999 65 8 of nonelderly americans had employer provided insurance also called group insurance or employer sponsored insurance either through their own employer or through the employer of another household member see gruber 2001 employer provided insurance plans generally have lower premiums and offer more benefits than individual insurance plans health insurance providers can offer cheaper and better plans to company employees for at least two reasons first the average administrative cost of such plans is lower than individual plans second employment based plans are typically subject to less adverse selection than individual plans particularly so for large employers furthermore the tax subsidy afforded employment based health insurance renders the effective consumer price substantially lower than the cost see pauly 1986 and gruber 2001 together these various factors give a strong incentive for employers to offer and employees to accept coverage as part of their employment contract as employer provided insurance is by far the most prevalent form of coverage in the private sector policy makers look for further expansion of this base as a way to insure the uninsured while avoiding direct public financing as a way to increase employer based health insurance coverage some states either have or are considering government mandates that require employers to provide insurance to certain types of workers 1 the state of hawaii requires private sector employers to offer health insurance to all workers who work for more than 20 h a week and requires these workers to have insurance the state of california is currently considering a similar mandate there is a considerable interest from policy makers on the effects of such mandates on labor market outcomes in this study we report on an experiment that was designed to provide some insights about possible effects of alternative health insurance regulations on the competitive labor market with a particular focus on mandates since we only considered a competitive market setting with complete contracts and no wage rigidities our results may not be directly applicable to all labor market situations 2 however the study provides useful insights about the interaction of health insurance benefit provision wages and employment structure for labor markets where the competitive wage setting and the complete contracts assumptions are reasonable with these limitations in mind our results can be also generalized to other types of employer provided fringe benefits such as paid vacations or pension plans as any government intervention health insurance regulation may affect the labor market theory predicts that in perfectly competitive labor markets health insurance creates no distortionary effects on the labor market equilibrium as long as the coverage is not mandated and there are no wage rigidities 3 all workers who value insurance above its cost of provision are offered insurance and accept it the wages are adjusted downward see rosen 1986 and gruber 2000 summers 1989 used a simple supply and demand analysis to show that the effect of increases in premiums on equilibrium labor hours and wage depends both on the elasticity of labor demand and labor supply and on how fully workers value changes in the cost of health insurance if the demand or the supply of labor is completely inelastic or if workers fully value the insurance then an increase in the premium would result in an equal decrease shift in wages

the incidence of mandated maternity benefits i consider the labor market effects of mandates which raise the costs of employing a demographically identifiable group the efficiency of these policies will be largely dependent on the extent to which their costs are shifted to group specific wages i study several state and federal mandates which stipulated that childbirth be covered comprehensively in health insurance plans raising the relative cost of insuring women of childbearing age i find substantial shifting of the costs of these mandates to the wages of the targeted group correspondingly i find little effect on total labor input for that group jel 118 j32 h51 in an era of tight fiscal budget constraints mandating employer provision of workplace benefits to employees is an attractive means for a government to finance its policy agenda consequently in recent years there has been a growth of interest in mandated benefits as a tool of social policy for example the centerpiece of president bill clinton s health care proposal is mandated employer provision of health insurance and more than 20 states have man

assessing the effect of payroll taxes on formal employment the case of the 2012 tax reform in colombia in 2013 colombia implemented a tax reform that reduced payroll taxes by a total of 13 5 percentage points of wages this paper evaluates the effects of this component of the 2012 colombian tax reform on firms formal employment and average wages we construct a panel of firms based on their employees administrative records to account for the endogeneity of the treatment we use an instrumental variables technique that exploits the exogenous variation from the decisions of firms that are similar to each other in several dimensions but belong to different economic sectors based on our preferred specification we estimate a positive and significant increase in formal employment as a result of the implementation of the reform of approximately 213 000 jobs in existing pre reform firms in the long run these effects will increase to more than 600 000 jobs the effect of the reform on the average wages paid by firms was also found to be positive for some sizes of firms but the overall effect in the short run is rather small

the incidence of payroll taxation evidence from chile i provide new evidence on the incidence of payroll taxation by examining the experience of chile before and after the privatization of its social security system this policy change led to a sharp exogenous reduction in the payroll tax burden on chilean firms on average payroll tax rates fell by 25 over 6 years using data from a census of manufacturing firms i estimate that the incidence of payroll taxation is fully on wages with no effect on employment this finding is robust to a variety of empirical approaches to the problem of measurement error in firm level measures of taxes worker

the flypaper effect identifying areas for further research the flypaper effect literature dates back three decades it is overwhelmingly neo classical in approach attempting to improve the median voter demand model and or temper it with public choice supply side perspectives whilst this approach provided valuable early substantial analytical insights more recent papers seem to have contributed only marginally to an understanding of the flypaper effect if indeed it exists at all hence as well as providing a long overdue comprehensive review of the literature on the flypaper effect this paper identifies more productive avenues for further research

experience rating of unemployment insurance and the incidence of unemployment among workers who are laid off from their previous jobs more than 70 percent collect benefit payments from the unemployment insurance ui system these benefits are widely asserted to reduce the rate at which unemployed individuals find new jobs so that measured unemployment is increased by unemployment insurance a large body of empirical evidence now exists that shows this effect on the duration of unemployment spells 2 far less attention both in policy debate and in research has been paid to the fact that the unemployment insurance system encourages persons to become unemployed in this paper i focus on the empirical structure and the effects of these incentives the results show that unem

electricity consumption and economic growth in transition countries a revisit using bootstrap panel granger causality analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to revisit the granger causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth for 15 transition economies for the period 1975 2010 using a bootstrap panel causality approach that allows for both cross sectional dependency and for heterogeneity across countries applying this approach we found a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth only in belarus and bulgaria from economic growth to electricity consumption in the czech republic latvia lithuania and the russian federation bidirectional causality only in ukraine while no granger causality in any direction in albania macedonia moldova poland romania serbia slovak republic and slovenia these results show that there is a limited support for the electricity led growth hypothesis nevertheless these different findings provide important implications for energy strategies and policies for transition countries

raising taxes through equalization a simple theory suggests that a common form of federal horizontal equalization grants should cause subnational governments to levy higher tax rates distorting local tax bases and so increasing federal transfers to test this i examine canadian provincial tax policies in the 1972 2002 period consistent with the theory provinces respond to expansions of equalization transfers by increasing their own tax rates i estimate that on average tax rates in grant receiving provinces were substantially and significantly higher as a consequence of the transfer formula jel classification h21 une theorie simple suggere qu une forme usuelle d octrois federaux de perequation horizontale devrait entrainer les gouvernements sub nationaux a imposer de plus hauts taux d imposition modifiant ainsi les bases de fiscalite locale et ce faisant accroissant les transferts federaux pour mettre au test cette hypothese on examine les politiques fiscales des provinces canadiennes pour la periode entre 1972 et 2002 d une maniere qui semble supporter l hypothese les provinces ont repondu a un accroissement des transferts de perequation en accroissant leur propre taux d imposition on estime que les taux moyens d imposition dans les provinces qui recoivent des transferts sont plus eleves de maniere substantielle et significative en raison de la formule de transferts

estimating welfare in insurance markets using variation in prices we provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection we then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance such variation together with quantity data allows us to estimate the demand for insurance the same variation together with cost data allows us to estimate how insurers costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price the slope of this estimated cost curve provides a direct test for both the existence and the nature of selection and the combination of demand and cost curves can be used to estimate welfare we illustrate our approach by applying it to data on employerprovided health insurance from one specific company we detect adverse selection but estimate that the quantitative welfare implications associated with inefficient pricing in our particular application are small in both absolute and relative terms

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

energy justice at the end of the wire enacting community energy and equity in wales energy justice has emerged as a useful lens for understanding and guiding energy decision making however whilst calls for greater energy justice have grown fleeting attention has been paid to the role and agency of the very people at the heart of this agenda clearly given the increasing prevalence of local energy initiatives such projects warrant more sustained focus both to explore how energy justice is constructed between settings and to prompt greater consideration of its associated outcomes this paper seeks to address this gap by using energy justice to assess local ownership of small scale energy generation through a study of the community energy sector in wales in so doing it aids greater understanding of the energy equity dimension understood in terms of accessibility and affordability of the energy trilemma from a conceptual standpoint the research examines how energy justice is negotiated and contested at community scale through a focus on issues of distributive and procedural justice from a policy standpoint the research shows that community energy is often involved in a wide range of local objectives and directs attention to how best to support such initiatives to further stimulate local action and deliver more widespread equity gains

managing the energy trilemma the case of indonesia abstract this article argues that a central challenge for energy governance is how to manage a complex energy trilemma involving the sometimes competing demands of energy security climate change mitigation and particularly in developing countries energy poverty it suggests that tensions between the horns of the trilemma in large part explain indonesia s current profoundly suboptimal energy policy while these tensions are not inherently incapable of resolution such resolution would require good governance at both state and global levels the possibilities for and obstacles confronting such governance are explored and provisional solutions canvassed

heterogeneity and the effect of mental health parity mandates on the labor market health insurance benefit mandates are believed to have adverse effects on the labor market but efforts to document such effects for mental health parity mandates have had limited success i show that one reason for this failure is that the association between parity mandates and labor market outcomes vary with mental distress accounting for this heterogeneity i find adverse labor market effects for non distressed individuals but favorable effects for moderately distressed individuals and individuals with a moderately distressed family member on net i conclude that the mandates are welfare increasing for moderately distressed workers and their families but may be welfare decreasing for non distressed individuals

the craft of labormetrics using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates the author examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics at least as much craft as statistical technique among the subjects discussed are the appropriateness and cleanliness of data problems of extreme observations the validity of attempts to produce exogeneity using instrumental variables natural experiments and structural models and the treatment of selectivity and unobservable individual effects the author stresses the importance of testing empirical results to ensure that they make sense and of presenting them clearly and economically

the dark side of sunshine regulatory oversight and status quo bias abstract as the mortgage foreclosure crisis accelerated in the u s in the late 2000s state level policymakers implemented measures designed to protect consumers and stem the tide of foreclosures one form of policy was simply to require lenders to report on foreclosure prevention activities such policies represented a shift from the status quo for mortgage loan servicing firms operating under incomplete information doing nothing with non paying loans while waiting for more information to be revealed to either foreclosing on the borrower or offering the borrower a modification of loan terms using a difference in difference in differences empirical strategy we exploit one policy implemented in maryland for a subset of mortgage servicers and find evidence that firms perform more loan modifications as well as file more foreclosures increasing foreclosure filings was contrary to the intent of the policy suggesting that policymakers should be aware of how firms exhibit systematic biases much like individuals

do payroll tax breaks stimulate formality evidence from colombia s reform alternative work arrangements have grown rapidly around the world in latin america these alternative work arrangements have long been part of the labor market and have continued to grow the informal sector grew rapidly in latin america over the past few decades comprising up to half of the working population in many countries some attribute the growth in alternative work arrangements and informality to regulations and taxes while others argue that it is precisely the lack of enforcement of regulations that allows unprotected employment arrangements to flourish we examine whether reducing taxes associated with employment stimulates formal sector employment we exploit the fact that the tax reform introduced in colombia in 2012 affected only certain types of workers and not others in particular workers earning less than ten times the minimum wage and self employed workers with more than two employees experienced a reduction of payroll taxes of 13 5 percent between 2013 and 2014 we use the colombian household surveys social security records and the monthly manufacturing sample to conduct difference in differences analyses of the reform we find evidence of increased formal employment for the affected groups after the reform using all three data sets we find that the probability of formal employment and the likelihood of transitioning into registered employment increased for the affected groups after the reform we also find that the level and share of permanent employment relative to temporary employment grew after the reform for those earnings less than ten times the minimum wage the results are greatest for those in smaller firms and for those earnings close to the minimum wage

energy consumption co2 emissions and economic growth an ethical dilemma in this study we examine the dynamic interrelationship in the output energy environment nexus by applying panel vector autoregression pvar and impulse response function analyses to data on energy consumption and its subcomponents carbon dioxide emissions and real gdp in 106 countries classified by different income groups over the period 1971 2011 our results reveal that the effects of the various types of energy consumption on economic growth and emissions are heterogeneous on the various groups of countries moreover causality between total economic growth and energy consumption is bidirectional thus making a case for the feedback hypothesis however we cannot report any statistically significant evidence that renewable energy consumption in particular is conducive to economic growth a fact that weakens the argument that renewable energy consumption is able to promote growth in a more efficient and environmentally sustainable way finally in analysing the case for an inverted u shaped ekc we find that the continued process of growth aggravates the greenhouse gas emissions phenomenon in this regard we cannot provide any evidence that developed countries may actually grow out of environmental pollution in the light of these findings the efficacy of recent government policies in various countries to promote renewable energy consumption as a means for sustainable growth is questioned put differently there seems to be an ethical dilemma between high economic growth rates and unsustainable environment and low or zero economic growth and environmental sustainability

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

unemployment insurance in the united states layoff incentives and cross subsidies we survey unemployment insurance ui in the united states and provide new evidence on the ui payroll tax most ui receipt is due to firms that pay part of the ui costs of their layoffs but weak experience rating leads most firms to pay considerably less than the full costs industries consistently receiving subsidies from the ui system are construction manufacturing and mining finally a large fraction of layoffs resulting in payment of ui are made by firms that are not charged for the costs of the claim because they have employed the individual for less than 2 quarters

a cure for discrimination affirmative action and the case of california s proposition 209 proposition 209 enacted in california in 1996 and made effective the following year ended state affirmative action programs not only in education but also for public employment and government contracting this paper uses cps data and triple difference techniques to take advantage of the natural experiment presented by this change in state law to gauge the labor market impacts of ending affirmative action programs employment among women and minorities dropped sharply a change that was nearly completely explained by a decline in participation rather than by increases in unemployment this decline suggests that either affirmative action programs in california had been inefficient or that they failed to create lasting change in prejudicial attitudes

a review of limitations of gdp and alternative indices to monitor human wellbeing and to manage eco system functionality abstract the misuse of gross domestic product as a measure of public wellbeing results from the idea that economic growth is always synonymous with enhanced quality of life disregarding the fact that the economy profits from natural social and human capital in order to monitor progress towards sustainability and increased well being governments working closely with scientists developed new metrics that go further than income and material wealth there are several candidates for revisions of the gross domestic product based on a comprehensive literature review this paper identified several possible indicators that intend to adjust supplement or substitute for gross domestic product two main approaches were identified the first uses gross domestic product as foundation to build a complete index and includes proposals to greening gross domestic product socializing the indices and including it in a more comprehensive index the second approach relates to efforts to redefine the indicators with the use of environmentally oriented indicators and socially oriented measures challenges to measure development welfare and wellbeing are discussed to provide a wide angle view of efforts to develop measures of social economic ecological status and progress beyond the current very narrow gross domestic product it was recognized an urgent need for guidance for the development of governance regimes designed to change from short term decision making processes to those which support the multi decade planning and implementation processes that are needed to guide the transition to post fossil carbon societies this comprehensive review covers a wide range of topics from problems of gdp to challenges and thoughts about indicators the review shows that if mankind is concerned with the sustainable development of the planet as a whole then progress indicators measured only in monetary or social terms are limited and restricted to the weak or the medium sustainability model and must be complemented by biophysical indicators it is time to change the global knowledge of what progress really is changing the discussion from growth to sustainable development and human well being

who pays for obesity evidence from health insurance benefit mandates is there an obesity externality in the late 1990s and early 2000s many state governments began requiring health insurance plans to cover treatments for diabetes using difference in difference analysis of restricted geocode data from the 1979 national longitudinal survey of youth to compare wages across states with and without diabetes mandates i find that obese people pay for all of their own increased health costs in the form of lower wages rather than passing them on to employers insurers and co workers

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

health insurance market reform and employee compensation the case of pure community rating in new york abstract pure community rating which was enacted to improve access to health insurance in new york s small group market in 1993 prevents carriers from charging different premiums based on the ages of a firm s workers if small firms were adjusting compensation packages prior to reform to offset higher health care costs of older workers then community rating could lead to greater relative wages for older workers post reform and not necessarily induce adverse selection that results in changes in who is insured i present evidence showing that relative wages of older workers in small firms increased in comparison with other states and with large firms within new york following reform