the effects of pension funds on markets performance a review the worldwide reforming process of pension systems triggered by the demographic transition and globalization has led several countries to implement multi pillar pension systems and enhance pension funds for this reason the studies on the effects that pension funds exert on markets performance have been flourishing in the last decades in this paper we provide an updated review of the empirical advances in this field of study with particular focus on the effects that pension funds produce on labour markets financial markets and economic growth

cycles in politics wavelet analysis of political time series spectral analysis and arma models have been the most common weapons of choice for the detection of cycles in political time series controversies about cycles however tend to revolve around an issue that both techniques are badly equipped to address the possibility of irregular cycles without fixed periodicity throughout the entire time series this has led to two main consequences on the one hand proponents of cyclical theories have often dismissed established statistical techniques on the other hand proponents of established techniques have dismissed the possibility of cycles without fixed periodicity wavelets allow the detection of transient and coexisting cycles and structural breaks in periodicity in this article we present the tools of wavelet analysis and apply them to the study of two lingering puzzles in the political science literature the existence of cycles in election returns in the united states and in the severity of major power wars

shifts in the composition of government spending in response to external debt burden abstract this paper examines the effects of external public debt burden on the composition of public spending in a sample of 47 developing countries for 1972 2001 we specify a system of equations for the relative spending shares of six economic categories and estimate it using several estimation methods and samples we find support for the adverse effect of the debt burden on capital expenditure in the full sample and in the middle east north africa and sub saharan africa subsamples where the debt burden was relatively high among components of current expenditure increased debt burden shifted the shares against nonwage goods services and subsidy and transfers while leaving the share of politically sensitive category of wages and salaries unscathed in most cases

self employment and parental leave the main objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which self employment in sweden has an impact on the use of parental leave our results show that during the child s first 2 years swedish female self employed use on average 46 fewer days of parental leave 15 than female wage earners while male self employed use on average 27 fewer days of parental leave 71 than their wage earner counterparts we argue that the shorter average duration of parental leave among male self employed is due both to relatively higher costs of absence and to a parental leave participation effect where some male self employed with high performance related income do not take parental leave at all given that all mothers take parental leave independently of employment status we do not find any significant parental leave participation effect for female self employed instead we find a significant employment selection effect where women with high performance related income choose self employment explaining the shorter average duration of parental leave among female self employed

whose business is it anyway this article examines how gender may account for productivity gaps across enterprises first using data from six countries in sub saharan africa the article demonstrates that the extent and significance of any productivity gap by gender depends critically on the criteria used to classify an enterprise using a definition of female participation in ownership there are few differences in average performance measures however a 12 productivity gap emerges when a tighter definition based on decision making control is used second the article examines which entrepreneurial characteristics education management skills experience and the motivation for being an entrepreneur are most associated with higher productivity the findings reveal that there are some gender gaps in the prevalence of these characteristics but that these do not account for the overall gender productivity gap rather while women benefit as much as men from education and management skills there are non linear impacts by gender in the benefits of having a family background in entrepreneurship sons rather than daughters benefit from having a father that was an entrepreneur or from joining a family enterprise

understanding the family gap in pay for women with children as the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing the family gap in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening one reason may be the institutional structure in the united states which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity policies but not family policies in contrast to other countries that have implemented both the authors now have evidence on the links between one such family policy and women s pay recent research suggests that maternity leave coverage by raising women s retention after childbirth also raises women s levels of work experience job tenure and pay

pay and productivity differences between male and female veterinarians the author uses data from annual wage surveys conducted in 1994 and 1995 by medical economics research group to study differences in pay and productivity between male and female veterinarians in the wage salary sector the gender gap in average earnings was 15 when controls for various observable characteristics are added to the analysis the earnings gap narrows to 9 based on the most conservative estimates using unique revenue production measures in an analysis holding other factors constant the author finds that women s productivity was not statistically different from men s together the findings of gender differences in earnings but not in productivity are consistent with the presence of wage discrimination but the author explores other possible explanations as well

government social spending and gdp has there been a change in social policy government social spending gss is made up of a very heterogeneous range of variables monetary transfers for retirement or illness unemployment benefits family services active labour market policies and health expenditure we believe that each of these components is of enormous importance to the economic development of a country as has often been affirmed however gss is one of the economic aggregates most sensitive to the ups and downs of economic growth in moments of crisis sharp cuts are almost immediate and these may or may not be recovered when times are good in this article we examine the sensitivity of gss to the evolution of gross domestic product gdp in order to reveal the relationship between the two

how does motherhood affect self employment performance this paper analyzes the timing between self employment entry and first child birth among swedish women using register data for the cohort of women born between 1970 and 1975 we use longitudinal d

fungicide use under risk in swiss wheat production abstract the short run effects of fungicide application on economic risk and the effects of risk on fungicide use in swiss wheat production are empirically explored a quadratic production function model is developed with the help of the moment based approach marginal contributions of fungicides representing controlled inputs and of rain representing uncontrolled inputs to the variances of yield and revenue are analyzed it is not possible to show risk reducing effects of fungicides on yield or revenue at low rain quantities during the vegetation period fungicides have a statistically significant risk increasing effect on revenue increasing risk leads swiss wheat growers to use more fungicide this increase is statistically significant at higher levels of revenue for example when risk is doubled fungicide inputs are raised by 44 at the highest revenue quartile

is success hereditary evidence on the performance of spawned ventures a common phenomenon in entrepreneurship is that employees turn away from employment to found their own businesses prior literature discusses the former employers characteristics that influence the creation of entrepreneurial ventures an investigation of whether these characteristics also affect the success of the spawned ventures is missing so far this paper contributes to the literature by showing that entrepreneurial ventures spawned by well performing firms are financially more successful than ventures stemming from poorly performing firms this suggests that spawned entrepreneurs are able to exploit valuable knowledge from their previous employers which impacts their ventures performance positively the analysis is based on a linked employee employer data set for the netherlands for the period 1999 2004

gender differences in labor market decisions evidence from rural mexico this study examines gender employment differences in mexicos rural sector using the 1994 survey of rural entrepreneurs and financial services it employed an approach that separate the effects of initial endowments from the gender differences that can be attributed to preferences available opportunities labor market discrimination and other market conditions all of which referred to as labor market structural issues findings show that higher levels of education are associated with a higher employment propensity although the variable for some secondary schooling is not significant for men as expected married men are more likely to be employed than single men while for females the opposite results ensues which indicate that women in rural areas tend to specialize in non market activities particularly after marriage also gender differences in labor market experience proxied by age seems to influence the self employment choice these results have implications for public policy aimed at reducing gender inequality in labor market outcomes in rural mexico the main lesson is that policies that focus solely on individual endowments could have a limited impact on reducing gender inequality if they are not accompanied by policies addressing structural supply and demand factors that are unique to the study population and that influence the choice of women to enter and remain in the workforce

the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy we investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy using a bayesian structural vector autoregression b svar approach we identify fiscal policy shocks via a partial identification scheme but also i include the feedback from government debt ii look at the impact on the composition of output iii assess the effects on asset markets iv use quarterly data and v analyse empirical evidence from the us the uk germany and italy the results show that government spending shocks in general have a small effect on gross domestic product gdp lead to important crowding out effects have a varied impact on housing prices and generate a quick fall in stock prices government revenue shocks generate a mixed effect on housing prices and a small and positive effect on stock prices the empirical evidence also suggests that it is important to explicitly consider the government debt dynamics in the model

reducing start up costs for new firms the double dividend on the labor market starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high skilled workers if there are labor market frictions this additional option can be seen as reducing the chances of ending up in a low wage job and hence as increasing the incentives for education in a matching model we show that reducing the start up costs for new firms results in higher take up rates of education it also gives rise through a thick market externality to higher rates of job creation for high skilled labor as well as average match productivity we provide empirical evidence to support our argument

does higher government debt link to higher social expenditure new method new evidence abstractscholars believe that higher social expenditures are usually linked with higher government debts whereas higher debts reduce social expenditures however it is reasonable to speculate that higher government debt may contribute to higher social spending while fiscal deficits occur during a recession which commonly creates greater demand for social expenditure for a deeper investigation this paper revisits the dynamic relationship between social spending and public debts in the time frequency domain using the novel wavelet coherency analysis as well as the phase difference technique to derive the co moved and causal relationships between social spending and public debts in 13 oecd countries the evidence identifies a dynamic relationship between variables while higher social expenditures increase government debts the shocks from government debts to social expenditures are conversely uncertain we discover that higher government debt does reduce social expenditures but it may be linked to h

what do we really know about wages the importance of nonreporting and census imputation in the most frequently used microdata sets over a quarter of all respondents now refuse to answer some questions about their incomes the census bureau has dealt with this problem which has been increasing in severity over time by imputing incomes of non respondents their imputation procedure called the hot deck essentially matches nonrespondents with demographically similar donors in this paper we evaluate the census imputation methodology and raise some questions first the census procedure is tied to commonality of events in the population rather than the more appropriate informational content of regressors clearly the census procedure severely understates income in certain occupations because it is based on the apparently invalid assumption that income does not affect reporting propensities it most likely understates average incomes as well

public debt accumulation and fiscal consolidation in this study we analyse the relationship between interest rates on government bonds gb and the fiscal consolidation rule by using an overlapping generation model with endogenous and stochastic growth settings our key findings are summarized as follows first contrary to conventional view we find that interest rates on gb may decline as public debt accumulates relative to private capital second the simulation reveals that the economy may exhibit discrete changes with divergent interest rates implying that the observed trend of relatively low interest rates on gb with public debt accumulation may not continue indefinitely in the future third fiscal consolidation rule plays a key role in determining equilibrium interest rates

inheritance and labor supply using data from the michigan panel study of income dynamics and from federal estate tax returns this paper investigates the labor disincentive caused by inheritance the results are of interest for several reasons whether or not inheritances are a strong labor disincentive figures prominently in the controversy surrounding the relative importance of inheritances and life cycle savings as sources of u s wealth also the size of the disincentive is important in determining the relationship between inheritance and inequality our results indicate that inheritances do not lead to large reductions in the labor supply of men and married women family consumption increases after an inheritance but again the effect is small

the effect of wealth on individual and household labor supply evidence from swedish lotteries abstract we study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of swedish lottery players winning a lottery prize modestly reduces earnings with the reduction being immediate persistent and quite similar by age education and sex a calibrated dynamic model implies lifetime marginal propensities to earn out of unearned income from 0 17 at age 20 to 0 04 at age 60 and labor supply elasticities in the lower range of previously reported estimates the earnings response is stronger for winners than their spouses which is inconsistent with unitary household labor supply models jel d14 j22 j31

time use patterns and women entrepreneurs the twentieth century saw a dramatic increase in the number of women in the labor force as well as a steady increase in the number of selfemployed women during the past three decades this increase in labor force participation represents a striking change in the allocation of women s time between work and home activities despite the growing literature examining self employed women little is known about how self employed women divide their time between work and other life activities the flexibility afforded by self employment is often regarded as a way to better balance work and home activities indeed the existing econometric studies indicate that women choose self employment primarily because of family or lifestyle factors theresa devine 1994 richard k caputa and arthur dolinsky 1998 richard j boden 1999 greg hundley 2000 yet studies outside the economics literature seem to indicate that self employed women do not necessarily experience more family satisfaction holly e buttner and dorothy p moore 1997 saroj parasuraman and claire a simmers 2001 richard demartino robert barbato and paul h jacques 2006 a source of the difference might be that the econometric studies use human capital acquisition and entrepreneurship

bank reforms foreign ownership and financial stability abstract numerous studies have focused on foreign ownership of banks but instead of linkages to financial stability they typically analyzed other issues and used country level data this article fills the gap in the literature by applying the gmm techniques on dynamic panels using bank level data for asian countries to investigate the impact of foreign ownership on financial stability as well as whether the relation between foreign ownership and stability changes under different conditions of bank reforms in the host country specifically we reach five conclusions first the existence of the home field advantage hypothesis is supported nevertheless when considering the effects of bank reforms the global advantage hypothesis holds second an inverse u shaped relation between foreign ownership and stability is supported third a higher degree of credit control liberalization mitigates the negative effect of foreign ownership on stability fourth liberalization of interest rate control and banking supervision do enhance stability fifth and finally we confirm a significantly negative relation between an explicit deposit and stability

the link between life insurance activities and economic growth some new evidence abstract this paper applies the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test to re investigate the stationarity properties of real life insurance premiums per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 41 countries within three levels of income covering 1979 2007 our empirical results first reveal that the variables in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences second for the estimated half lives the degrees of mean reversion are greater in high income countries third there is concrete evidence favoring the hypothesis of a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp and real life insurance premiums after allowing for the heterogeneous country effect the long run estimated panel parameter results indicate that a 1 increase in the real life premium raises real gdp by 0 06 finally we determine that the development of life insurance markets and economic growth exhibit long run and short run bidirectional causalities these findings offer several useful insights for policy makers and researchers

revisiting the relationship between spot and futures oil prices evidence from quantile cointegrating regression article i nfo since most real decisions depend upon current market states or whether it is advantageous to the participants themselves this paper revisits the relationship between spot and futures oil prices of west texas intermediate covering 1986 to 2009 with an innovative approach named quantile cointegration different to previous perspectives we target the issues of cointegrating relationships causalities and market efficiency based on different market states under different maturities of oil futures in our empirical analysis except for market efficiency long run cointegrating relationships and causalities between spot and futures oil prices have significant differentials among futures maturities and the performances of spot oil markets furthermore the response of spot prices to shocks in 1 month futures oil prices is much steeper in high spot prices than in low spot prices this phenomenon is consistent with the prospect theory kahneman and tversky 1979 in that the value function is generally steeper for losses than for gains

the impact of high government debt on economic growth and its channels an empirical investigation for the euro area abstract this paper investigates the average impact of government debt on per capita gdp growth in twelve euro area countries over a period of about 40 years starting in 1970 it finds a non linear impact of debt on growth with a turning point beyond which the government debt to gdp ratio has a negative impact on long term growth at about 90 100 of gdp confidence intervals for the debt turning point suggest that the negative growth effect of high debt may start already from levels of around 70 to 80 of gdp the channels through which government debt is found to have a non linear impact on the economic growth rate are private saving public investment and total factor productivity

is social protection a necessity or a luxury good new multivariate cointegration panel data results the aim of this paper is to test the claim that social protection is a luxury good therefore gdp elasticity of selected social protection expenditure is estimated using a new econometric approach developed first by kao and chiang advances in econometrics 15 179 222 2000 time series properties of selected social expenditure in 18 oecd countries from 1981 to 1998 are examined using panel data cointegration tests and ols fmols and dols estimators results were found which differ from previous analyses reporting substantially higher income elasticities with the fmols selected social expenditure has income elasticities smaller than one but greater than one with the dols it is noteworthy that whether selected social expenditure is stationary or nonstationary may have critical implications for researchers and policy makers desiring to model and explain the impact of this expenditure on a country economic system

the marginal propensity to earn and consume out of unearned income evidence using an unusually large cash grant reform in this paper we use the rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant child support in south africa to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of unearned income we find that the marginal propensity to earn is about 0 3 and that the marginal propensity to consume is about 0 7 nothing of the grant appears to be saved if anything households dissave against future grant payments the marginal propensities estimated here are similar to those reported in comparable papers using us data however they stand in contrast to some results on conditional cash transfers in other developing countries

joint risk preference technology estimation with a primal system applied studies of the firm in a risky environment have concentrated either on the firm s technology or on its risk preferences these models result in generally inconsistent and inefficient parameter estimates a primal model is proposed which allows a firm s preferences and technology to be estimated jointly in the presence of risk the model is applied to iowa corn production and estimated technology parameters are compared with those from other approaches modest risk aversion leads to inelastic even backbending per acre supplies and input demands yield heteroskedasticity in inputs leads to supply heteroskedasticity in prices especially for risk neutral firms

pests and pesticides risk and risk aversion abstract theoretical and applied literature on risk in decision making for agricultural pest control is reviewed risk can affect pesticide decision making either because of risk aversion or because of its influence on expected profit it is concluded that risk does not necessarily lead to increased pesticide use by individual farmers uncertainty about some variables such as pest density and pest mortality does lead to higher optimal pesticide use under risk aversion however uncertainty about other important variables such as output price and yield leads to lower optimal levels of pesticide use neglect of these variables in most studies has led to the false assumption that pesticides are always risk reducing inputs furthermore there is evidence that in general the pesticide dosage which maximises expected profit is lower under risk than under certainty depending on the balance of forces to increase and decrease pesticide use under risk in many circumstances the net effect of risk on optimal decision making for pest control may be minimal the effect on risk of information about pest density and other variables as in integrated pest management programmes is discussed evidence on this issue is mixed a range of analytical techniques for analysing risk in pest control is reviewed throughout the paper gaps in the existing literature are identified

being in someone else s shoes the role of gender in nascent entrepreneurship several studies have shown the existence of significant differences in the rate of new business creation between men and women specifically it has been shown that women are much less likely to be involved in entrepreneurship than men worldwide it is not yet understood however if such differences are the result of personal characteristics of the individual and of her economic environment or are instead the result of universal and perhaps evolutionary phenomena our empirical analysis is conducted using representative samples of population for 37 countries and a special form of bootstrapping that allows us to equalize individuals conditions and as a result analyze the choices of men and women put in identical economic environments and socio economic circumstances

does the law of supply hold under uncertainty a widely held conjecture of economists is that the quantity supplied by pricetaking producers increases with an increase in output price law of supply this cornerstone of economics has been proven repeatedly with many techniques under many different sets of assumptions and is found in all textbooks on principles of economics most of these proofs assume full certainty of production relationships single product technology and or risk neutrality in a world of uncertainty one of the most crucial aspects of economic behaviour is risk aversion with risk aversion diversification is a basic response to economic uncertainty thus models of producer behaviour under uncertainty need to consider multioutput technology where diversification is a possibility this paper points out that the widely held law of supply may fail when these generalities risky multioutput production with risk aversion are introduced simultaneously where diversification is also affected by a capacity constraint in production conditions are developed under which the law fails holds the peculiar result occurs because increasing price can increase profit risk more than proportionally while expected profit increases proportionally this relative increase in risk causes a tendency to shift production capacity into an alternative activity the first section introduces a model of production under uncertainty the second section analyses the behaviour of supply in the special case of additive production risk without price risk the third section shows that similar problems can be encountered with other cases as well empirical examples which demonstrate relevance of the results are also given

explaining international variations in self employment evidence from a panel of oecd countries organisation for economic cooperation and development oecd data from 1972 to 1996 reveals substantial differences in the levels and trends of self employment rates across countries this article uses recently developed panel integration and cointegration techniques to explore the determinants of aggregate self employment rates we find that within the panel self employment rates are positively and significantly related to personal income tax rates and negatively and significantly related to the unemployment benefit replacement rate this accords a central role to government tax and transfer policies in contrast to nonrobust influences from macroeconomic variables which have been widely used in previous studies

interactions between agricultural and resource policy the importance of attitudes toward risk using a method proposed by meyer for deriving comparative statics results in the presence of risk this paper analyzes the effects of various agricultural and environmental policy alternatives on the choices of a risk averse producer with a just and pope production function many commonly held beliefs about policy effects are not supported unambiguously by economic theory for example a tax on pesticides will not necessarily reduce pesticide use or average output and a reduction in price of agricultural output will not necessarily lead to a reduction in use of water or agricultural chemicals

self employment wealth and job creation the roles of gender non pecuniary motivation and entrepreneurial ability this paper uses national child development study data for a large cohort of british individuals to explore the influence of education inheritance and other background characteristics on the propensity to become self employed and also on subsequent success as measured by job and wealth creation for the first time we study the effects of our regressor variables on our success measures via disaggregation of our sample by gender and in this way reveal striking differences between the determinants of male and female entrepreneurial performance

resource management under production and output price uncertainty implications for environmental policy various environmental policies have been proposed to control agricultural runoff of nutrients and pesticides the impacts of these policies on input use are complicated because of the various sources of uncertainty farmers face and the precise nature of farmers risk attitude a risk averse farmer s response to changed profit input and output taxes under output price and production uncertainty is examined the impact of these policies on input use depends on the form of production uncertainty risk input relationships risk attitudes and degrees of output price and production uncertainty these results have implications for the design and implementation of environmental and other production related policies copyright 2002 oxford university press

the effect of immigration on native self employment we examine the impact of immigration on self employed natives in a new general equilibrium model of self employment and wage salary work a range of plausible parameter values implies small negative effects of immigration on native self employment rates and earnings using 1980 and 1990 census microdata we then examine the relationship between changes in immigration and native self employment rates and earnings across 132 of the largest u s metropolitan areas we find evidence suggesting that self employed immigrants displace self employed natives but do not have a negative effect on native self employment earnings the effects are much larger than those predicted by the theoretical model

money and output new evidence based on wavelet coherence abstract we reassess the relationship between money and output using quarterly data from the us economy we use several tools based on wavelets the wavelet power transform and the wavelet coherence with which we analyze this relationship in both time and frequency we find evidence of a weaker relationship within the great moderation as well as a stronger relationship during the great recession

on the regional labour market determinants of female university enrolment in europe casarico a profeta p and pronzato c d on the regional labour market determinants of female university enrolment in europe regional studies this paper empirically investigates how young women s decisions of investing in post secondary education are affected by labour market outcomes of older women living in the same region eu silc data on educational decisions of women who completed secondary schooling are used and indicators of the regional labour market are constructed exploiting regional and time variability it is found that the share of working women with young children of women with managerial positions and the self employed positively affect the probability to enrol significant effects of these variables for men are not found

the lechatelier principle under production uncertainty under production uncertainty it is shown that the lechatelier principle holds for the derived demand of the ith factor if it is technically complementary competing with the riskincreasing risk reducing quasi fixed input and absolute risk aversion is decreasing in addition the lechatelier principle for the output supply function holds if the quasi fixed factor is an inferior normal and risk increasing risk reducing input and partial risk aversion is increasing

stochastic technology risk preferences and adoption of site specific technologies a model of farmer decision making is developed to determine the extent to which uncertainties about soil fertility and weather affect the value of site specific technologies ssts using jointly estimated risk and technology parameters uncertainty can lead risk averse farmers to apply more fertilizers and generate more pollution than in the certainty case ignoring uncertainty and risk aversion would overestimate the economic and environmental benefits of ssts and underestimate the subsidy required to induce adoption accounting for uncertainties and risk preferences might explain the low observed adoption rates of ssts improving the accuracy of ssts would increase the incentives for adoption

do oil spot and futures prices move together abstract this paper investigates the time varying correlation and the causal relationship between crude oil spot and futures prices using a newly developed approach wavelet coherency analysis in time frequency domain first we find evidence of a long run cointegration relationship between oil spot and futures prices moreover the short run causality is more significant in shorter maturity pairs versus longer maturity pairs in the vector error correction framework second the results from wavelet coherency analysis show significant dynamic correlations between variables in the time frequency domain third the illustration of the phase difference series around zero suggests that spot and futures prices contribute to the dynamics of the long run equilibrium fourth and finally we provide reasons for the structural changes in oil prices and also recommend investment strategies corresponding to risk diversification future studies focusing on the behavior of oil prices should consider the characteristics of the time frequency space and lead lag dynamic relationships

constant returns to scale and competitive equilibrium under uncertainty abstract this paper considers the implications of the assumption of constant returns to scale in expected utility maximizing models of the competitive firm or industry in which markets for risk are absent under widely used assumptions about risk preferences it is shown that with constant returns to scale average profits are more than necessary to cover the implicit costs of risk bearing when the free entry of identical firms is possible this assumption about technology is shown to be incompatible with the assumption that entrepreneurs are risk averse

self employed mothers and the work family conflict we analyse how self employed and employed mothers allocate their time throughout the day in order to balance their work and family responsibilities to that end we use time diary information from spain a country with a low level of women s participation in the labour market spanish time use survey stus 2002 2003 we find that self employed mothers devote less time to market work and more time to tertiary e g sleeping eating and leisure activities than employed mothers in a working day we also find differences between employed and self employed mothers in the timing of market work child care and housework throughout the day and we find complementarities between the timing of market work of working mothers and the timing of child care of their male partners our results on timing are consistent with the hypothesis that self employment stands as a possible way for mothers to have greater control over the timing of work flexible hours and that they may therefore be able to work odd shifts