a theory of socio economic disparities in health over the life cycle motivated by the observation that medical care explains only a relatively small part of the ses health gradient we present a life cycle model that incorporates several additional behaviours that potentially explain jointly a large part of observed disparities as a result the model provides not only a conceptual framework for the ses health gradient but more generally an improved framework for the production of health we derive novel predictions from the theory by performing comparative dynamic analyses more generally our comparative dynamic method can be applied to models of similar form e g human capital health deficits firm investment to name a few

booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

aggregate income shocks and infant mortality in the developing world health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial the authors investigate whether short term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1 7 million births in 59 developing countries the authors show a large negative association between per capita gdp and infant mortality female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns

electricity market integration decarbonisation and security of supply dynamic volatility connectedness in the irish and great britain markets abstract this study investigates the volatility connectedness between the irish and great britain electricity markets and how it is driven by changes in energy policy institutional structures and political ideologies we assess various aspects of this volatility connectedness including static unconditional vs dynamic conditional symmetric vs asymmetric characteristics between 2009 and 2018 we find that the volatility connectedness is time varying and it is significantly affected by important events policy reforms or market re designs such as brexit oil price slump an increasing share of renewables and fluctuations in the exchange rates our asymmetric analysis shows that magnitude of the good volatility connectedness is marginally larger than that of the bad volatility connectedness our result suggests that good volatility levels would be even higher once the irish market adopts the carbon price floor therefore supporting renewable generation by setting an appropriate price of carbon in interconnected wholesale electricity markets will improve market integration

short versus long run implications of trade liberalization for poverty in three developing countries the impacts of global trade reform on poverty are a key concern in the current trade negotiations under the doha development agenda the aggregate poverty impacts of trade reform are in turn strongly linked to the impacts of such reforms on the rural population as they constitute the overwhelming majority of the poor in almost all developing countries this paper uses a new micro simulation methodology designed to analyze this critical issue the methodology is first explained and then applied to three developing countries of particular interest chile malawi and vietnam a key feature is the distinction between the short run impacts of reform where many factors most importantly selfemployed labor of the poor tend to be immobile between sectors and the longer run impacts when factors find their highest return regardless of the sector of employment this distinction makes an enormous difference and

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

world product and income international comparisons of real gross product the volume reports on the third phase of the united nations international comparison project icp the main results provide comparisons of real gross domestic product gdp per capita for thirty four countries in 1975 quantity and price comparisons are given also for personal consumption capital formation and public consumption and further subdivisions of final expenditures on gdp are estimated

the impact of renewable energy forecast errors on imbalance volumes and electricity spot prices abstract this paper contributes to the general consideration of whether a policy of incentivising system operators to improve the quality and market availability of forecasts for renewable energy outputs would be beneficial using data from the german electricity market we investigate the effect of wind and solar energy forecasts errors on imbalance volumes and subsequent spot electricity prices we use ordinary least squares regression quantile regression and autoregressive moving averages to identify these relationships using variables that have a quarter hourly data granularity the results show that higher wind and solar forecast errors increase the absolute values of imbalance volumes and that these can pass through into higher spot prices we find that wind forecast errors in germany impact spot prices more than solar forecasting errors policy incentives to improve the accuracy and availability of renewable energy forecasts by the system operators should therefore be encouraged

the price of gold dowry and death in india abstract we provide evidence that dowry costs motivate son preferring behaviors in india since gold is an integral part of dowry we study parental responses to shocks in the world gold price exploiting monthly variation in gold prices across 35 years we find that monthly changes in gold prices lead to an increase in girl relative to boy neonatal mortality and that surviving girls are shorter after the introduction of prenatal sex determination technology we find that gold price shocks during pregnancy increase female foeticide

children of war the long run effects of large scale physical destruction and warfare on children this paper provides causal evidence on the long term consequences of large scale physical destruction on educational attainment health status and labor market outcomes of children i exploit the plausibly exogenous region by cohort variation in the intensity of world war two wwii destruction as a unique quasi experiment i find that exposure to destruction had long lasting detrimental effects on the human capital formation health and labor market outcomes of germans who were at school age during wwii an important channel for the effect of destruction on educational attainment is the destruction of schools whereas malnutrition is partly behind the estimated impact on health

forecasting electricity prices and their volatilities using unobserved components abstract the liberalization of electricity markets more than ten years ago in the vast majority of developed countries has introduced the need of modelling and forecasting electricity prices and volatilities both in the short and long term thus there is a need of providing methodology that is able to deal with the most important features of electricity price series which are well known for presenting not only structure in conditional mean but also time varying conditional variances in this work we propose a new model which allows to extract conditionally heteroskedastic common factors from the vector of electricity prices these common factors are jointly estimated as well as their relationship with the original vector of series and the dynamics affecting both their conditional mean and variance the estimation of the model is carried out under the state space formulation the new model proposed is applied to extract seasonal common dynamic factors as well as common volatility factors for electricity prices and the estimation results are used to forecast electricity prices and their volatilities in the spanish zone of the iberian market several simplified alternative models are also considered as benchmarks to illustrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of them in terms of explanatory and predictive power

nutrition information and household behavior experimental evidence from malawi incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health this paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural malawi that over a six month period provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in kind resources a simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition and other household choices including labor supply may change in response to the improved nutrition knowledge observed in the intervention areas we then show empirically that the intervention improved child nutrition household food consumption and consequently health we find evidence that labor supply increased which might have contributed to partially fund the increase in food consumption this paper is the first to study whether non health choices particularly parental labor supply might be affected by parents knowledge of the child health production function

greener more integrated and less volatile a quantile regression analysis of italian wholesale electricity prices abstract this paper provides estimates of quantile regression models of the relationship between italian day ahead electricity prices the supply of renewables and the inception of a new cable sapei linking sardinia with the italian peninsula in the 2006 2015 time window the results confirm the merit order effects detected in the existing literature both for photovoltaics and wind power more strongly in market conditions characterised by moderately low price levels and with some implied increase in volatility the new cable has apparently challenged the ability of power generating companies to extract value through price spikes has mitigated volatility and its effects have been complementary with those of renewables effects from photovoltaics are more sensitive to robustness checks differences across zonal markets are nonetheless detected

cointegration analysis of spot electricity prices insights on transmission efficiency in the western us abstract the us energy policy act of 1992 promoted the development of spot markets for electric power by requiring utilities to open their transmission systems to wholesale power sales in this paper we specify and estimate a vector error correction model using peak and off peak electricity spot prices during 1994 1996 covering 11 regional markets in the western united states and test these prices for evidence of market integration the results show evidence of an efficient and stable wholesale power market

the role of marriage in the causal pathway from economic conditions early in life to mortality this paper analyzes the interplay between early life conditions and marital status as determinants of adult mortality we use individual data from dutch registers years 1815 2000 combined with business cycle conditions in childhood as indicators of early life conditions the empirical analysis estimates bivariate duration models of marriage and mortality allowing for unobserved heterogeneity results show that conditions around birth and school going ages are important for marriage and mortality men typically enjoy a protective effect of marriage whereas women suffer during childbearing ages however having been born under favorable economic conditions reduces female mortality during childbearing ages

housing markets in third world cities research and policy into the 1990s abstract a review of analyses of urban housing markets is timely to suggest directions for research and policy in the next decade the neoclassical approach to housing economics is contrasted with a political economy framework with respect to the production or supply of housing and consumption or demand an argument is advanced for increased attention to the analysis of citywide housing markets using insights from both theoretical approaches and for research into processes of exchange such analyses should form the basis for policies which focus neither on selected income groups or residential areas in isolation from wider housing market processes nor on housing output targets but primarily on ensuring the provision of essential inputs

the contribution of environmental amenities to low income housing a comparative study of bangkok and jakarta central and local governments and their creditors are increasingly interested in cost recovery for public services these strategies have two aims increasing revenues and making a better connection between benefits received and consumer bills this paper estimates a hedonic model for household level data in a rare contrast of slums in two asian mega cities to provide comparative information about how the poor value environmental amenities and basic infrastructure access the results suggest that slum housing prices do reflect differentials in public service access and that rough estimates of the value of access can be cheaply and usefully obtained for planning purposes

realized volatility and the influence of market measures on predictability analysis of nord pool forward electricity data abstract this is the first paper to utilize intra daily high frequency data and to apply known market measures for the prediction of volatility in the nord pool electricity forward market the work is based on recent methods of separating realized volatility into two components continuous and jump volatilities in addition the link between future price volatility and current observable economic variables is examined the measures trading volume time to maturity asymmetric effect from negative shocks and intra week seasonality are assessed to identify improvements in day ahead predictions the model where the total variation is separated into its continuous and jump components is compared with the simpler heterogeneous autoregressive model of realized variation both in and out of sample the results show a strong degree of persistence in realized volatility and significant impacts from the mentioned market measures when predicting nord pool forward price volatility hence there is a clear preference for models accounting for the systematic impact of market measures to improve volatility assessment for tomorrow moreover separating the total variation into continuous and jump components seems potentially useful when predicting day ahead volatility

evaluating the market splitting determinants evidence from the iberian spot electricity prices abstract this paper aims to assess the main determinants on the market splitting behaviour of the iberian electricity spot markets iberia stands as an ideal case study where the high level deployment of wind power is observed together with the implementation of the market splitting arrangement between the portuguese and the spanish spot electricity markets logit and non parametric models are used to express the probability response for market splitting of day ahead spot electricity prices as a function of the explanatory variables representing the main technologies in the generation mix wind hydro thermal and nuclear power together with the available transfer capacity and electricity demand logit models give preliminary indications about market splitting behaviour and then notwithstanding the demanding computational challenge a non parametric model is applied in order to overcome the limitations of the former models results show an increase of market splitting probability with higher wind power generation or more generally with higher availability of low marginal cost electricity such as nuclear power generation the european interconnection capacity target of 10 of the peak demand of the smallest interconnected market might be insufficient to maintain electricity market integration therefore pro active coordination policies governing both interconnections and renewables deployment should be further developed

the effect of pensions on longevity evidence from union army veterans this study uses changes in pension laws for union army veterans as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of pensions on longevity and to examine potential pathways underlying such a relationship we examine the effects of the pension laws of 1907 and 1912 which granted old age pensions to union army veterans life expectancy for veterans who received such a pension increased by 0 5 years and 2 7 years respectively the effect of veteran pensions on longevity was large across wealth groups and size of city pensions reduced mortality for both acute and non acute causes of death

health and wealth of elderly couples causality tests using dynamic panel data models a positive relationship between socio economic status ses and health the health wealth gradient is repeatedly found in many industrialized countries this study analyzes competing explanations for this gradient causal effects from health to wealth health causation and causal effects from wealth to health wealth or social causation using six biennial waves of couples aged 51 61 in 1992 from the us health and retirement study we test for causality in panel data models incorporating unobserved heterogeneity and a lag structure supported by specification tests in contrast to tests relying on models with only first order lags or without unobserved heterogeneity these tests provide no evidence of causal wealth health effects on the other hand we find strong evidence of causal effects from both spouses health on household wealth we also find an effect of the husband s health on the wife s mental health but no other effects from one spouse s health to health of the other spouse

the impact of macroeconomic conditions in childhood on adult labor market outcomes this study examines the influence of business cycles in childhood on economic performance later in life i relate unemployment rates between the year before one s birth and the year of one s 15th birthday to schooling employment and income as an adult the analysis exploits variation in macroeconomic conditions across states over time i address a number of identification challenges related to cohort effects linear trends current events and economic persistence the caregiving behaviors and background characteristics of parents are also studied the average unemployment rate in childhood normally has a negative effect on human capital in adulthood jel j11 j24 j31

what impact does the choice of formula have on international comparisons in this paper an empirical comparison of a number of alternative multilateral index number formulae is undertaken the magnitude of the effect of choosing one formula over another is ascertained using an appropriate cross sectional data set constructed under the auspices of the eurostat oecd purchasing power parity programme to this end a new indicator is proposed that facilitates the measurement of the difference between two sets of bloc consumption shares each computed using a different multilateral comparison method jel classification c31 c43 c81 e31 f31 o57 quel impact est ce que le choix des formules a sur les comparaisons internationales ce memoire propose une comparaison empirique d un certain nombre de formules de nombres indices multilateraux on tente de jauger la magnitude de l impact du choix d une formule plutot qu une autre en utilisant une base de donnees transversales appropriee construite sous l egide du programme de parite du pouvoir d achat eurostat ocde on propose un nouvel indicateur qui facilite la mesure de la difference entre deux ensembles de patterns de consommation chacun calculea l aide d une methode de comparaison multilaterale differente

the increasingly mixed proportional hazard model an application to socioeconomic status health shocks and mortality we introduce a duration model that allows for unobserved cumulative individual specific shocks which are likely to be important in explaining variations in duration outcomes such as length of life and time spent unemployed the model is also a useful tool in situations where researchers observe a great deal of information about individuals when first interviewed in surveys but little thereafter we call this model the increasingly mixed proportional hazard imph model we compare and contrast this model with the mixed proportional hazard mph model which continues to be the workhorse of applied single spell duration analysis in economics and the other social sciences we apply the imph model to study the relationships among socioeconomic status health shocks and mortality using 19 waves of data drawn from the german socio economic panel soep the imph model is found to fit the data statistically better than the mph model and unobserved health shocks and socioeconomic status are shown to play

structural change and poverty in africa a decomposition anakysis for cote d ivoire abstract this paper provides evidence that economic destabilization and the absence of managed structural change in an economy can be more harmful to the welfare of the poor than the process of adjustment itself evidence comes from four consecutive years of household survey data from cote d ivoire spanning both a period of adjustment and destabilization these constitute a unique data base in africa to assess the impact of structural change on the poor the analytic methodology used is that of static and dynamic decomposition of poverty measures along policy relevant dimensions

dependence structure in the australian electricity markets new evidence from regular vine copulae abstract in this study regular vine copula was used to investigate the dependence structure of electricity prices at the state level in the australian national electricity market nem during three periods related to the adoption and abolition of the carbon tax in the pre carbon period we found evidence of tail dependence separately in the northern and southern nem but not across them during the carbon period the joint spike in the northern nem disappeared and the tail dependence in the southern nem decreased in the post carbon period the best dependence structure turned out to be a flexible structure of the regular vine which exactly matches the geographical infrastructure connectedness of transmission wires besides both upper and lower tail dependences were found in all adjacent states after the abolition of the carbon tax suggesting a more integrated market regarding tail dependence our findings have substantial implications for risk management in the nem especially for those participants exposed to multiple states

urban squatting and community organization in developing countries abstract it is estimated that up to 30 35 percent of the total urban population of the third world about 185 million people live in squatter settlements this paper presents from an economic perspective of tenure choice under uncertainty a unified and consistent theoretical framework of this phenomenon which has heretofore been studied mainly by other social scientists the model is able to explain why land invasions occur furthermore it provides some insights as to why the number of squatters in an urban area depends on a squatter community s ability to form coalitions to fully protect its members rights it is shown in the paper that if a community is successful in controlling its size government efforts which are meant to reduce the number of squatters may lead to the opposite results in particular the imposition of heavier fines or the increase of government expenditures on eviction activity threat campaigns eviction in other jurisdictions etc will likely lead to an increase in the optimal number of squatters unless the decline in expected utility caused by these efforts is so great that squatting no longer becomes viable at any community size

the effect of a new power cable on energy prices volatility spillovers abstract in this paper we estimate volatility spillovers before and after the introduction of a new cable linking different electricity market zones using wholesale electricity prices for sardinia and two neighbouring italian market zones for the period 2005 2015 we focus on the effects of the sapei cable fully operational since march 2011 var garch estimates indicate that the sapei cable allowed for stronger volatility transmission towards sardinia a smaller zone and a net importer from its new neighbour the central southern zone albeit the effect was significant only off peak higher conditional correlations between zonal prices are also observed after the cable was introduced some implications are drawn about the interaction between market size export positions congestion and volatility transmission

integration of regional electricity markets in australia a price convergence assessment abstract from an electricity market design perspective it is relevant and practical to know which market structures allow for price convergence and how long this takes to achieve this study employs the phillips and sul 2007 2009 methodology to test for the convergence of wholesale electricity prices across the australian states we identify a long run common price growth pattern that applies to a cluster formed by three eastern states that share common market characteristics and limited physical interconnection we also find another cluster with less competitive market structures that although not interconnected strongly converge towards their own trend these findings confirm theoretical expectations while quantifying the rate of convergence finally we also investigate the role that the carbon tax regime has played in the convergence process with new empirical showing that the previous results are not affected with the notable exception being the case of south australia

transitory shocks and birth weights evidence from a blackout in zanzibar abstract do transitory economic shocks affect neonatal outcomes i show that an unexpected month long blackout in tanzania caused a sharp but temporary drop in work hours and earnings for workers in electricity dependent jobs using records from a maternity ward i document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout and an increase in the probability of low birth weight the reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout the blackout also increased fertility for teenage and first time mothers but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights

measuring the welfare effects of slum improvement programs the case of mumbai this paper evaluates the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading and relocation programs using data for 5000 households in mumbai india we estimate a model of residential location choice in which households value the ethnic composition of neighborhoods and employment accessibility in addition to housing characteristics the importance of neighborhood composition and employment access implies that relocation programs must be designed carefully if they are to be welfare enhancing the value of our model is that it allows us to determine the magnitude of these effects it also allows us to determine the value households place on in situ improvements which policymakers need to know if they are to design housing programs that permit cost recovery

the long run labor market consequences of civil war evidence from the shining path in peru abstractthis study exploits district level variation in the timing and intensity of civil war violence to investigate whether early life exposure to civil wars affects labor market outcomes later in life in particular we examine the impacts of armed conflict in peru a country that experienced the actions of a tenacious brutally effective war machine the shining path between 1980 and 1995 this study finds that the most sensitive period to early life exposure to civil war violence is the first 36 months of life a 1 standard deviation increase in civil war exposure leads to a 5 fall in adult monthly earnings 3 5 reduction in the probability of working in formal jobs and 6 reduction in the probability of working in large firms substantial heterogeneity in the earnings impacts emerges when considering variation in the type of civil war violence overall forced disappearances emerge as the most hurtful measure of violence in the long run sexual violations disproportionately affected the wages of

economic information versus quality variation in cross country data data quality in the penn world tables varies systematically across countries that have different growth rates and are at different stages of economic development thus intro ducing measurement error correlated with variables of economic interest we explore this problem with three examples from the literature showing that the problem appears to be minor in growth convergence regressions but serious in estimating the effect of income volatility on growth and in a cross country lest of the permanent income hypothesis the results suggest at the least a need for performing appropriate sensitivity tests before draw

asymmetric volatility in european day ahead power markets a comparative microeconomic analysis this paper uses high frequency spot price data from fourteen wholesale electricity markets in europe to analyze asymmetric volatility in european day ahead power markets with exponential garch e garch and tarch models our data set ranges from 1992 to 2015 and consists of approximately 926 000 observations as such this paper constitutes the most extensive and comprehensive work conducted so far on european power markets to the best of our knowledge unlike most of the literature that treats price as a continuous variable and attempts to model its trajectory this paper adopts a unique approach and regards each hour in a day a separate market the results show in post 2008 period the most expensive electricity is consumed in turkey ireland and uk while the cheapest power is in russia nordic countries and czech republic russia poland and czech republic have the least volatile markets while france ireland and portugal have the most volatile ones volatility has decreased in many european countries in post 2008 period besides we find magnitude effect is usually larger than the leverage effect meaning that the absolute value of price change is relatively more important than the sign of the change whether it is an increase or a decrease to explain volatility in european day ahead power markets moreover the results imply there is not a uniform inverse leverage effect in electricity prices that is price increases are more destabilizing in some european markets e g poland slovenia ireland netherlands than comparable price decreases but vice versa also holds true in some other countries e g portugal and france leverage or inverse leverage effect in post 2008 period is relatively stronger in portugal france and ireland but its impact is quite limited in turkey and germany furthermore although the impact of seasonality on prices is obvious a specific pattern cannot be identified finally large changes in the volatility will affect future volatilities for a relatively longer period of time in nordic countries ireland and the uk while changes in current volatility will have less effect on future volatilities in czech republic russia and turkey

infant health during the 1980s peruvian crisis and long term economic outcomes summary in 1988 peru entered a severe economic crisis as a corollary of unfavorable external economic conditions high levels of debt and heterodox policies the so called debt crisis of 1980s this paper investigates the short term health shock experienced by infants during the crisis and its long term impact on human capital accumulation because no longitudinal data are available the estimation of causal effects is performed using multiple cross section surveys that are representative of the same population over time the short term and the long term effects are estimated exploiting the heterogeneous impact of the crisis across and within birth cohorts results indicate that the peruvian crisis significantly affected the health of infants particularly that of children born to low educated mothers from 1988 to 1990 vaccination declined 12 percentage points and infant mortality increased 2 3 percentage points among children born to low educated mothers in the long run the children who suffered the most severe health shocks during the economic downturn of the 1980s performed worse in school they had 0 12 fewer years of formal education and their probability of completing primary education by age 15 was three percentage points lower in relation to similar children born after the crisis the results have strong policy implications children in developing countries should be safeguarded against health shocks during economic crises to avoid a decline in the accumulation of human capital in the long run

stochastic price modeling of high volatility mean reverting spike prone commodities the australian wholesale spot electricity market it is commonly known that wholesale spot electricity markets exhibit high price volatility strong mean reversion and frequent extreme price spikes this paper employs a basic stochastic model a mean reverting model and a regime switching model to capture these features in the australian national electricity market nem comprising the interconnected markets of new south wales queensland south australia and victoria daily spot prices from 1 january 1999 to 31 december 2004 are employed the results show that the regime switching model outperforms the basic stochastic and mean reverting models electricity prices are also found to exhibit stronger mean reversion after a price spike than in the normal period and price volatility is more than fourteen times higher in spike periods than in normal periods the probability of a spike on any given day ranges between 5 16 in nsw and 9 44 in victoria

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

public private mix of health expenditure a political economy and quantitative analysis this paper constructs a simple model to examine decisions on public and private health spending under majority voting in the model agents with heterogeneous incomes choose how much to consume and spend on health care and vote for public health expenditure the health status of an agent is determined by a ces composite of public and private health expenditure the existence and uniqueness of the voting equilibrium are established a quantitative exercise reveals the importance of the relative effectiveness of public and private health expenditure and their substitutability in determining the public private mix of health expenditure and in accounting for the observed differences across a sample of 22 advanced democratic countries

forecasting the joint distribution of australian electricity prices using dynamic vine copulae abstract we consider the problem of modelling and forecasting the distribution of a vector of prices from interconnected electricity markets using a flexible class of drawable vine copula models where we allow the dependence parameters of the constituting bivariate copulae to be time varying we undertake in sample and out of sample tests using daily electricity prices and evidence that our model provides accurate forecasts of the underlying distribution and outperforms a set of competing models in their abilities to forecast one day ahead conditional quantiles of a portfolio of electricity prices our study is conducted in the australian national electricity market nem which is the most efficient power auction in the world electricity prices exhibit highly stylised features such as extreme price spikes price dependency between regional markets correlation asymmetry and non linear dependency the developed approach can be used as a risk management tool in the electricity retail industry which plays an integral role in the apparatus of modern energy markets electricity retailers are responsible for the efficient distribution of electricity while being exposed to market risk with extreme magnitudes

the effects of aggregate and gender specific labor demand shocks on child health we estimate the relationship between local labor market opportunities and child health using state unemployment rates and demand induced changes in mothers and fathers employment opportunities in contrast with studies of adult health we find little evidence that aggregate economic conditions are correlated contemporaneously with children s health however we find important patterns by gender in particular improvements in women s employment opportunities are consistently associated with worse child health while better labor market conditions for men have positive effects these patterns suggest that both family income and maternal time are important inputs to child health abstract from author

modelling interregional links in electricity price spikes abnormally high price spikes in spot electricity markets represent a significant risk to market participants as such a literature has developed that focuses on forecasting the probability of such spike events moving beyond simply forecasting the level of price many univariate time series models have been proposed to dealwith spikes within an individual market region this paper is the first to develop a multivariate self exciting point process model for dealing with price spikes across connected regions in the australian national electricity market the importance of the physical infrastructure connecting the regions on the transmission of spikes is examined it is found that spikes are transmitted between the regions and the size of spikes is influenced by the available transmission capacity it is also found that improved risk estimates are obtained when inter regional linkages are taken into account

a formalisation and test of the factor productivity explanation of international differences in service prices this paper extends and integrates previous models of the determinants of international differences in the prices of services relative to tradable commodities the authors provide a model capable of identifying the effects of differences in total factor productivity on service price differences separately from the effects of factor endowment differences they propose a method for measuring these factor productivity difference effects and apply this to a sample of sixty countries in 1980 the authors results provide support both for the endowment difference and productivity difference explanations suggesting that in this context at least the two hypotheses are complements rather than competitors copyright 1996 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

intergenerational persistence in health in developing countries the penalty of gender inequality this paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes this paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health it uses comparable microdata on as many as 2 24 million children born of about 0 6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period 1970 2000 mother s health is indicated by her height bmi and anemia status child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure we find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non linearities in these relationships the results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent averaging across the sample persistence shows a considerable decline over time disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in latin america persistence has remained largely constant in asia and has risen in africa the paper provides the first cross country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends

economic conditions early in life and individual mortality this paper analyzes the effect of economic conditions early in life on the individual mortality rate later in life using business cycle conditions early in life as an exogenous indicator we have individual data records from dutch registers of birth marriage and death certificates covering an observation window of unprecedented size 1812 2000 these are merged with historical data on macro economic and health indicators we correct for secular changes over time and other mortality determinants we nonparametrically compare those born in a recession to those born in the preceding boom and we estimate duration models where the individual s mortality rate depends on current conditions conditions early in life age individual characteristics including individual socio economic indicators and interaction terms the results indicate a significant negative effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rates at all ages

electricity pool prices a case study in nonlinear time series modelling this paper considers modelling the behaviour of prices in the english and welsh wholesale electricity pool since the creation of this spot market in 1990 the process turns out to be nonlinear and a logistic smooth transition autoregressive model is fitted and shown to be superior to a linear alternative the behaviour of the estimated model is discussed and it is seen that nonlinearity is needed to describe the institutional characteristics and historical path of pool prices

poverty and survival a recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival but equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant using state level panel data for india we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival we identify a significant within state relationship which persists conditional upon state income indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line the poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981 it is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education fertility and state health expenditure and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends

modelling price and volatility inter relationships in the australian wholesale spot electricity markets this paper examines the inter relationships of wholesale spot electricity prices among the four regional electricity markets in the australian national electricity market nem namely new south wales queensland south australia and victoria using the constant conditional correlation and tse and tsui s tse y k tsui a k c 2002 a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time varying correlations journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 351 362 and engle s engle r 2002 dynamic conditional correlation a sample class of multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 339 350 dynamic conditional correlation multivariate garch models tse and tsui s tse y k tsui a k c 2002 a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time varying correlations journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 351 362 dynamic conditional correlation multivariate garch model which takes account of the student t specification produces the best results at the univariate garch 1 1 level the mean equations indicate the presence of positive own mean spillovers in all four markets and little evidence of mean spillovers from the other lagged markets in the dynamic conditional correlation equation the highest conditional correlations are evident between the well connected markets indicating the presence of strong interdependence between these markets with weaker interdependence between the not so well interconnected markets

the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families lleras muney we estimate the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families on children s longevity educational attainment nutritional status and income in adulthood to do so we collected individual level administrative records of applicants to the mothers pension program the first government sponsored welfare program in the united states 1911 1935 and matched them to census wwii and death records male children of accepted applicants lived one year longer than those of rejected mothers they also obtained onethird more years of schooling were less likely to be underweight and had higher income in adulthood than children of rejected mothers jel i12 i14 i18 i32 i38 j16 n32

the impact of income shocks on health evidence from cohort data we study the eect of permanent income innovations on health for a prime aged population using information on more than half a million individuals sampled over a twenty five year period in three dierent cross sectional surveys we aggregate data by date of birth cohort to construct a synthetic cohort dataset with details of income expenditure socio demographic factors health outcomes and selected risk factors we then exploit structural and arguably exogenous changes in cohort incomes over the eighties and nineties to uncover causal eects of permanent income shocks on health we find that such income innovations have little eects on health but do aect health behaviour and mortality

user cost and housing tenure in developing countries abstract this paper reports on research conducted at the world bank to increase understanding of developing country housing markets in particular of housing demand behavior the objectives of the paper are 1 to briefly review recent evidence on housing demand parameters in developing countries including new estimates for colombia egypt el salvador ghana india jamaica korea and the philippines and 2 to examine similarities and differences among cities in housing demand the analysis emphasizes differences in housing demand by tenure particularly for renters and owners but also for squatters and non squatters and paralleling the literature in developed countries stresses the importance of accounting for the impact of income and relative prices on housing demand

intergenerational transmission of human capital is it a one way street studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one way spillover from parents to children however children may also affect their parents human capital using exogenous variation in education arising from a swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s we address this question by studying the causal effect of children s schooling on their parents longevity we first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross sectional relationship between children s education and their parents longevity our instrumental variables estimates are not statistically different from zero however they hide substantial heterogeneity by the gender of the child and the parent female schooling is found to affect longevity of fathers and especially those from low socio economic background taken together our results point to the importance of daughters schooling for parental health and to the importance of considering heterogeneous impacts

long run impacts of childhood access to the safety net a growing economics literature establishes a causal link between in utero shocks and health and human capital in adulthood most studies rely on extreme negative shocks such as famine and pandemics we are the first to examine the impact of a positive and policy driven change in economic resources available in utero and during childhood in particular we focus on the introduction of a key element of the u s safety net the food stamp program which was rolled out across counties in the u s between 1961 and 1975 we use the panel study of income dynamics to assemble unique data linking family background and county of residence in early childhood to adult health and economic outcomes the identification comes from variation across counties and over birth cohorts in availability of the food stamp program our findings indicate that the food stamp program has effects decades after initial exposure specifically access to food stamps in childhood leads to a significant reduction in the incidence of metabolic syndrome obesity high blood pressure and diabetes and for women an increase in economic self sufficiency overall our results suggest substantial internal and external benefits of the safety net that have not previously been quantified

the social costs of higher food prices some cross country evidence abstract this paper uses cross country data from 34 developing countries to examine the correlation between the real cereal price paid by consumers aggregate calorie intake and the infant mortality rate the results suggest that higher cereal prices across countries are associated with higher infant mortality the elasticity is between 0 2 and 0 6 however this correlation does not exist using time series data for individual countries the results require further investigation nevertheless they suggest that although the short run costs of higher farm prices may not immediately be evident there may be important long run social costs

correlations and volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology companies abstract in this paper multivariate garch models are used to model conditional correlations and to analyze the volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy companies and technology companies four different multivariate garch models bekk diagonal constant conditional correlation and dynamic conditional correlation are compared and contrasted the dynamic conditional correlation model is found to fit the data the best and generates results showing that the stock prices of clean energy companies correlate more highly with technology stock prices than with oil prices on average a 1 long position in clean energy companies can be hedged for 20 cents with a short position in the crude oil futures market

transmission of prices and price volatility in australian electricity spot markets a multivariate garch analysis this paper examines the transmission of spot electricity prices and price volatility among the five regional electricity markets in the australian national electricity market namely new south wales queensland south australia the snowy mountains hydroelectric scheme and victoria a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is used to identify the source and magnitude of price and price volatility spillovers the results indicate the presence of positive own mean spillovers in only a small number of markets and no mean spillovers between any of the markets this appears to be directly related to the physical transfer limitations of the present system of regional interconnection nevertheless the large number of significant own volatility and cross volatility spillovers in all five markets indicates the presence of strong autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity effects this indicates that shocks in some markets will affect price volatility in others finally and contrary to evidence from studies in north american electricity markets the results also indicate that australian electricity spot prices are stationary

the impact of australian ets news on wholesale spot electricity prices an exploratory analysis this article investigates the impact of news concerning the development of emissions trading in australia such as the carbon pollution reduction scheme cprs on wholesale electricity spot prices by using a database of 117 news announcements from december 1 1998 to july 1 2009 as power producers constitute the bulk of the participants of the proposed australian emissions trading scheme regulatory changes about allocation banking coverage targets are indeed likely to affect the five interconnected electricity markets in new south wales queensland south australia victoria and tasmania we assess these effects with an arma 1 1 garch 1 1 model where daily electricity spot prices are regressed against exogenous variables in the mean and variance equations this article constitutes the first empirical analysis of australian ets news effects on electricity wholesale spot prices our results show two asymmetric types of news effects depending on their information content

can maternity benefits have long term effects on childbearing evidence from soviet russia this paper quantifies the effects of russia s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing the program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfe

factor endowments nontradables prices and measures of openness abstract the familiar dollar index of country openness is obtained essentially by attempting to remove the influence of nontradables prices from data on country price levels with residual price differences hypothesised to measure trade impediments differences in nontradables prices are in turn hypothesised to reflect differences in factor endowments which dollar proxies by gdp per capita this paper examines both the theoretical and empirical biases introduced to estimates of nontradables prices by using this proxy we show that while the approach provides a reasonable approximation on average relatively agricultural land or labour abundant countries are particularly poorly captured by gdp per capita

the hedging performance of electricity futures on the nordic power exchange the nordic power exchange nord pool the first multinational exchange for electricity trading has existed since january 1996 spot and futures contracts are traded on this exchange and its typical characteristics are very high volatilities as well as non normally distributed returns this article looks at electricity futures and how they can be used for short term hedging of positions taken in the spot market it studies the minimum variance hedge ratio and how it can be estimated in different ways the traditional naive hedge and the ols hedge are compared out of sample to more elaborate moving average and garch hedges and the empirical results indicate some gains from hedging with futures despite the lack of straight forward arbitrage possibilities in the electricity market furthermore we find a slightly better performance of the simple ols hedge compared to the conditional hedges

parental income lifetime income and mortality this article studies the relation between parental economic resources and mortality later in life we use a data set on a cohort of individuals born in 1928 in the county of malmo in southern sweden which contains exceptionally detailed measures of parental household income from five years during the individuals childhood between 1929 and 1942 the data also contain very rich information on individual earnings throughout these individuals entire life cycle that allows us to construct a measure of lifetime earnings date and cause of death are obtained from national registers using cox proportional hazard models we find an inverse relationship between parental income and mortality also when controlling for individual lifetime income and when studying those with high education separately a competing risk analysis shows the relation between parental income and mortality to apply to cancer as the cause of death jel d31 i10 i12 j10

theory and estimation in the economics of housing demand the main purpose of this paper is to review recent theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of housing demand in particular we ask what is known concerning the permanent income elasticity of housing demand vis a vis the current or measured income elasticity what is known concerning price elasticities what is the appropriate functional form for housing demand equations what is the role of demographic variables what is known concerning dynamic aspects of housing demand what appear to be the major sources of bias in existing estimates of demand equations

long run returns to education does schooling lead to an extended old age while there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not firmly established we exploit a dutch compulsory schooling law to estimate the causal effect of education on mortality the reform provides a powerful instrument significantly raising years of schooling which in turn has a significant and robust negative effect on mortality for men surviving to age 81 an extra year of schooling is estimated to reduce the probability of dying before the age of 89 by almost three percentage points relative to a baseline of 50 percent

does inflation affect real behavior the case of housing an important tradition in economics is to assume that demand depends upon relative prices and is homogenous of degree zero for the most part this has been interpreted as meaning inflation changes in the price level leaves demand unchanged recent work by a number of economists has challenged this position for the case of housing demand two arguments have been made that inflation acting in concert with existing institutions alters the quantity of housing demanded and the decision to rent or own a house the first argument states that inflation and the standard fixed payment mortgage combine to reduce the size of the mortgage loan a household can obtain for the purpose of buying a home this works to reduce the quantity of owner occupied housing demanded given the importance of mortgage finance to the demand for owner occupied housing the second argument focuses on the inflation adjusted after tax cost of owner occupied housing it simply states that an increase in the rate of anticipated inflation of the general price level reduces the after tax cost of housing thus increasing the demand for housing and the demand for homeownership there has been little empirical testing of these two arguments the purpose of this paper is to formulate and estimate a model which will give an indication of the quantitative significance of the two arguments a housing demand equation and a tenure choice equation own versus rent are estimated using a sample of about 6000 households from the 1975 annual housing survey 10 the estimates suggest that inflation dampens housing demand and homeownership opportunity for most households even though the inflation adjusted after tax cost of owner occupied housing declines as inflation heats up the paper consists of six sections including the introduction section two examines the ways inflation affects housing choices in more detail the third section contains the specification of the econometric model that forms the basis of the study section four is a discussion of econometric problems and the data used the results of the estimates are discussed in the fifth section the paper concludes with a presentation of the major conclusions and policy implications of the study

non separable time preferences novelty consumption and body weight theory and evidence from the east german transition to capitalism abstract this paper develops a dynamic model to illustrate how diet and body weight change when novel food products become available to consumers we propose a microfounded test to empirically discriminate between habit and taste formation in intertemporal preferences moreover we show that novelty consumption and endogenous preferences can explain the persistent correlation between economic development and obesity by empirically studying the german reunification we find that east germans consumed more novel western food and gained more weight than west germans when a larger variety of food products became readily accessible after the fall of the wall the observed consumption patterns suggest that food consumption features habit formation

good volatility bad volatility what drives the asymmetric connectedness of australian electricity markets efficient delivery of network services and the electricity infrastructure to meet the long term consumer s interests are the main objectives and the strategies of a national electricity market while the main interests of generators are to maximize their profit through pricing strategies therefore the objective of this study is to explore whether electricity prices across the four australian states display symmetric price volatility connectedness the study is the first attempt in the literature to make use of intraday 5 min australian dispatch electricity prices spanning the period december 8th 1998 to may 5th 2016 to quantify asymmetries in volatility connectedness emerging from good and bad volatility the results provide supportive evidence that the australian electricity markets are connected asymmetrically implying the presence of some degree of market power that is exercised by generators across regional electricity markets

germany s nuclear power plant closures and the integration of electricity markets in europe this paper examines the potential implications of national policies that lead to a sudden increase of wind power in the electricity mix for interconnected european electricity markets more specifically it examines market integration before and after the closures of eight nuclear power plants that occurred within a period of a few months in germany during 2011 the short and long run interrelationships of daily electricity spot prices from november 2009 to october 2012 in apx endex belpex epex de epex fr nordpool omel and swissix and wind power in the german system are analysed two mgarch multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models with dynamic correlations are used to assess spot market behaviour in the short run and a fractional cointegration analysis is conducted to investigate changes in the long run behaviour of electricity spot prices results show positive time varying correlations between spot prices in markets with substantial shared interconnector capacity a negative association between wind power penetration in germany and electricity spot prices in the german and neighbouring markets and for most markets a decreasing speed in mean reversion

civil war crop failure and child stunting in rwanda economic shocks at birth have lasting effects on children s health several years after the shock the authors calculate height for age z scores for children under age five using data from a rwandan nationally representative household survey conducted in 1992 they exploit district and time variation in crop failure and civil conflict to measure the impact of exogenous shocks that children experience at birth on their height several years later they find that boys and girls born after the shock in regions experiencing civil conflict are both negatively affected with height for age z scores 0 30 and 0 72 standard deviations lower respectively conversely only girls are negatively affected by crop failure with these girls exhibiting 0 41 standard deviation lower height for age z scores and the impact is worse for girls in poor households results are robust to using sibling difference estimators household level production and rainfall shocks as alternative measures of crop failure

renewable energy regulation and structural breaks an empirical analysis of spanish electricity price volatility abstract international experience proves that electricity prices have undergone major changes in volatility since the entry of green technologies the intermittency of renewable sources is one of the reasons for these changes as it leads to higher volatility in periods of higher participation by renewables we argue that the development of the regulatory system promoting renewable electricity also plays a crucial role we raise a question that deserves attention could an incentive scheme induce higher share of renewables and lower volatility simultaneously in this paper we conduct an empirical analysis with spanish data we analyze possible ensuing structural changes in spanish electricity spot price volatility from january 2002 to december 2017 we identify two structural breaks linked to important measures related to renewable electricity i the abolishment of the feed in tariff scheme and ii the establishment of a more market oriented regulation based on investment and operating costs we conclude that stable regulatory policies reduce volatility even though the presence of renewable sources is greater furthermore market based policy measures achieve lower volatility encouraging good integration of intermittent renewable electricity

the impact of positive and negative income changes on the height and weight of young children we estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children in a developing country as a source of income variation we use a change in the eligibility criteria

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

privatization and economic growth an empirical investigation from a sample of developing market economies this paper explores the economic determinants of privatization programmes and the macroeconomic impact of this institutional reform on the growth rate of the gdp a sample of thirty five developing market economies is considered over the 1988 92 period probit and tobit models are used to identify the determinants of successful privatization programmes then regressions are run where probabilities probit and expected values tobit are successively included as additional regressors beside the potential influence of other economic policy variables a significant positive effect is highlighted giving evidence of the importance of divestiture the economic effect is found to be stronger when this institutional reform took place in industry or infrastructure

fatal fluctuations cyclicality in infant mortality in india this paper investigates the impact of aggregate income shocks on infant mortality in india and investigates likely mechanisms a recent oecd dominated literature reports the provocative finding that mortality at most ages is pro cyclical similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce and both income risk and mortality risk are greater in poor countries this paper uses data and methods designed to avoid some of the specification problems in previous studies and it explores mechanisms and extensions that have not been previously considered it uses individual data on infant mortality for about 150 000 children born in 1970 1997 merged by cohort and state of birth with a state panel containing information on aggregate income identification rests upon comparing the effects of annual deviations in income from trend on the mortality risks of children born at different times to the same mother conditional upon a number of state time varying covariates including rainshocks and state social expenditure rural infant mortality is counter cyclical the elasticity being about 0 33 this is despite the finding that relatively high risk women avert birth or suffer fetal loss in recessions it seems in part related to recessions stimulating distress labor amongst mothers in contrast to the case in richer countries where they discourage labor market participation health care seeking declines in recessions and this appears to be related to the opportunity cost of maternal time disaggregation reveals that the average results are driven by rural households in which the mother is uneducated or had her first birth in teenage and that it is only girls that are at risk boys are protected from income shocks exposure to poor conditions in the fetal and neonatal period appears to have a larger effect on infant mortality than similar exposure in the postneonatal period

a dynamic network analysis of spot electricity prices in the australian national electricity market abstract this study applies dynamic network analysis to the power sector examining the relationship between regional spot electricity prices in the australian national electricity market nem in particular we employ principal component analysis and generate granger causality networks to examine the degree of interconnectedness of the nem in a time varying setting we find that the derived measures of interdependence can be related to actual market events such as price spikes unexpected high demand for electricity sudden increases in price volatility rebidding of dominant generators the temporary or permanent outage of major power stations and upgrades and limitations in transmission capacity in the analysed network we find that stronger dependence is exhibited by regional markets that are linked through interconnectors while the direction of granger causality can be related to interregional trade we further examine the usefulness of the derived measures for forecasting distributional characteristics of spot prices such as the maximum price volatility price spreads or upcoming periods of price spikes our results suggest that the derived network measures have predictive power albeit limited for the behaviour of spot electricity prices in the nem

tenure security and urban squatting while recent studies have shown that up to 35 of the total urban population of the third world live in squatter settlements there is a dearth of economic analysis on the phenomenon of squatting this paper attempts to fill this gap the equilibrium model argues that the difference in unit housing prices between the non squatting formal sector of a city and its squatting informal sector reflects the premium associated with a secure tenure status the empirical portion of this paper uses hedonic price techniques to derive the average premium on tenure security in a medium sized philippine city davao results show that formal sector unit dwelling prices are about 18 renters to 58 owners more than in the informal sector these equilibrium price differentials were found to be greater for lower income groups larger household sizes and households with older heads for renters and younger heads for