what determines female autonomy evidence from bangladesh abstract this paper examines the determinants of female autonomy within households in a developing country in particular we investigate the relative contributions of earned versus unearned income in enhancing women s autonomy and the role of employment outside of their husband s farm in a simple theoretical model it is demonstrated that earned income could be more important than unearned income in empowering women using data from rural bangladesh empirical estimations confirm this prediction and also reveal the surprising fact that it is not employment per se but employment outside their husbands farms that contributes to women s autonomy the data also point to the importance of choosing the correct threat point in theoretical analyses of female autonomy

total factor carbon emission performance of the chinese transportation industry a bootstrapped non radial malmquist index analysis this paper proposes a non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index nmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time this index enables the consideration of non radial slacks in the conventional malmquist co2 emission index mcpi the nmcpi is calculated based on a non radial directional distance function derived by several data envelopment analysis dea models furthermore nmcpi could be decomposed into an efficiency change ec index and technological change tc index a bootstrapping approach is conducted to introduce statistical inferences into the nmcpi and its decompositions based on the proposed indices the dynamic co2 emission performance change and its decompositions of the chinese regional transportation industry from 2002 to 2010 are investigated the empirical results demonstrate that the total factor carbon emission performance of the transportation industry as a whole decreased by 32 8 over the period and this reduction was primarily caused by technological decline

women s empowerment and domestic abuse experimental evidence from vietnam abstract intimate partner violence is an important global health problem that policy makers seek to address by a variety of interventions including efforts to promote women s empowerment we use data from a randomized control trial in vietnam and find that this strategy may backfire women who participated in a gender and entrepreneurship training program suffer more frequent abuse than women in the control group we conjecture that increased female income is the mechanism linking the training program to domestic violence we also make a methodological contribution and show that the outcomes of our impact analysis depend on how we measure intimate partner violence

domestic violence a nonrandom affair in this paper we develop and estimate a model of domestic violence we extend a noncooperative model of the family to include violence as a source of gratification and an instrument for controlling behavior we estimate the model by robust methods since the violence process appears to have a heavy tailed nonnormal error distribution we find that the properties of the equilibria depend on family income for low middle income families our results indicate an equilibrium in which one person s reservation utility constraint is binding whereas for higher income families both individuals may gain from the relationship

women s access to labor market opportunities control of household resources and domestic violence evidence from bangladesh summary while there are many positive societal implications of increased female labor force participation working may increase a woman s risk of domestic violence using data i collected from bangladesh i document a positive correlation between work and domestic violence but only among women with low education or young age at marriage these results suggest that women with low bargaining power face increased risk of domestic violence upon entering the labor force as their husbands seek to counteract their increased bargaining power consequently policies that increase women s baseline bargaining power will decrease the risk that they face domestic violence upon beginning work

labor market opportunities and women s decision making power within households abstract despite the perceived importance of labor market opportunities in shaping married women s outside option and their bargaining power within households as a result this link has received very little empirical attention using longitudinal data on who makes the decision on a wide range of issues within mexican households and data from the administrative records of the mexican social security institute this paper identifies the effects of relative changes in labor market opportunities for men and women on both working and non working women s decision making power i find that increases in labor market opportunities improve women s decision making power as well as children s health using differential labor demand shocks across mexican industries caused by china s admission to the wto gives similar results

a novel approach to identifying hedonic demand parameters abstract this note presents a new solution to the classic problem with using hedonic price functions to recover demand curves unexpected changes in the composition of a differentiated product can generate instruments that support a simple reduced form approach to demand estimation

multilateral productivity comparisons with undesirable outputs in a recent paper in this journal caves christensen and diewert i982 hereafter ccd derive what they term multilateral superlative indexes for use in the comparison of output input and productivity across economic entities the indexes derived are distinguished both by transitivity and by a high degree of characteristicity a term introduced by dreschler i 973 to refer to the degree to which the weights used in a comparison are specific to the observations being compared though the indexes are presented with the application to multicountry comparisons of output input and productivity foremost in mind the authors note that they may be useful in a number of other contexts as well i e firms and industries time series and pooled time series and cross section all of the applications mentioned or implied however have this in common they involve the comparison of productive entities all of whose outputs are sold for positive prices this is not surprising of course since most products with which economists are concerned possess this characteristic however it does render incomplete or potentially misleading the comparison of productive entities which produce significant amounts of undesirable outputs such as water and air pollution since the list of such entities is rather long and includes industries critical to many national and regional economies e g chemicals paper petroleum refining copper and steel the omission of this factor from consideration may be a matter of some importance 2 consider for example a comparison of the productivity of the steel industries

the gender wage gap and domestic violence three quarters of all violence against women is perpetrated by domestic partners this study exploits exogenous changes in the demand for labor in female dominated industries to estimate the impact of the male female wage gap on domestic violence decreases in the wage gap reduce violence against women consistent with a household bargaining model these findings shed new light on the health production process as well as observed income gradients in health and suggest that in addition to addressing concerns of equity and efficiency pay parity can also improve the health of american women via reductions in violence

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

hyperbolic efficiency and return to the dollar abstract this paper after establishing the relations between hyperbolic graph measure of technical efficiency and the radial measures of technical efficiency shows that the dual cost and revenue interpretation of the hyperbolic efficiency measure is related to georgescu roegen s notion of return to the dollar n georgescu roegen in koopmans t ed activity analysis of production and allocation wiley new york 1951 pp 98 115 once this relation is established it leads to a derivation of an allocative efficiency index which measures the price distortions using data on observed costs and revenues without requiring information on prices

heterogeneity and fine wine prices application of the quantile regression approach this study addresses the price heterogeneity of the five first growths of bordeaux we apply the quantile regression qr approach with market segmentation based on wine bottle price quantiles we

strategic corporate social responsibility and economic performance this article proposes a novel corporate social responsibility csr index based on a data envelopment analysis dea model acknowledging the argument that companies might favour those csr dimensions that provide strategic competitive advantages we argue that the index can capture companies strategic approach to csr furthermore our findings reveal a neutral relationship between this strategic csr index and economic performance as measured by return on assets roa and tobin s q when controlling for firm unobserved heterogeneity and past economic performance by contrast an equally weighted index of the same csr indicators is found to be negatively related with roa which reinforces our claim that this specific dea based index is a measure of strategic csr

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

consumer sorting and hedonic valuation of wine attributes exploiting data from a field experiment this article uses a novel experimental approach to measure consumer willingness to pay wtp for wine attributes we invited customers of a local supermarket who had selected a bottle of wine to purchase to participate in a valuation experiment integrating their original wine choice into the experiment each participant evaluated six alternative wines generating a rich set of data on willingness to pay and consumer characteristics the data from the experiment allow us to compare standard shelf price based wine attribute valuation estimates with estimates using wtp data and an increasing amount of information about individual consumers the full model employs individual fixed effects to estimate wtp parameters without bias from consumer sorting or supply side influences our wtp estimates for wine attributes differ markedly from previous attribute value estimates consumers in our sample display clear and stable preferences for wine varieties but less clear preferences for appellations our results suggest caution is needed in using market prices to estimate parameters of the consumer valuation function for product attributes

do labor market opportunities affect young women s work and family decisions experimental evidence from india do labor market opportunities for women affect marriage and fertility decisions we provided three years of recruiting services to help young women in randomly selected rural indian villages get jobs in the business process outsourcing industry because the industry was so new at the time of the study there was almost no awareness of these jobs allowing us in effect to exogenously increase women s labor force opportunities from the perspective of rural households we find that young women in treatment villages were significantly less likely to get married or have children during this period choosing instead to enter the labor market or obtain more schooling or postschool training women also report wanting to have fewer children and to work more steadily throughout their lifetime consistent with increased aspirations for a career copyright 2012 oxford university press

prices of american pinot noir wines climate craftsmanship critics pinot noir a variety originating from burgundy in france is the most expensive category of table wine produced in north america this article is aimed at analyzing its price determinants and focuses on climate critical scores and variables related to the winemaker the main findings are as follows 1 pinot noir prices are mainly determined by temperature and precipitation general temperature increases are not beneficial in fact the optimal climate is similar to that in burgundy 2 the second most important variable is the winemaker his or her skill and reputation have a significant impact on prices 3 expert knowledge in the form of critical scores has little explanatory value

issue in pollution control interplant cost differences and economies of scale debate on interplant pollution control cost differences focuses on the question of whether a system of taxes or transferable discharge permits should require those plants with low treatment costs to control a higher share of effluents another issue under debate is whether those industries with a large minimum size may be effectively barred by pollution control requirements evidence of the inefficiency of present institutional arrangements is shown by studying production function estimations of 30 pulp and paper mills in wisconsin and michigan a more efficient reallocation of pollution control resources could be effected with more market oriented regimes 58 references 6 tables dck

human capital investment and the gender division of labor in a brawn based economy we use a model of human capital investment and activity choice to explain facts describing gender differentials in the levels and returns to human capital investments these include the higher return to and level of schooling the small effect of healthiness on wages and the large effect of healthiness on schooling for females relative to males the model incorporates gender differences in the level and responsiveness of brawn to nutrition in a roy economy setting in which activities reward skill and brawn differentially empirical evidence from rural bangladesh provides support for the model and the importance of the distribution of brawn

wine market prices and investment under uncertainty an econometric model for bordeaux crus classes this paper describes an econometric assessment of wine market prices for 21 of the crus classes ch teaux in the bordeaux region of france the model developed in the analysis attempt to define the relationship between factors that influence wine quality and those that influence wine prices characteristics of the models are 1 climate influences on grape composition acid and sugar levels 2 grape composition influences on market prices 3 subjective quality evaluations parker points on market prices and 4 the effects of age of the wine on market prices the results indicate that composition levels of merlot dominated wines are more climate sensitive than those from cabernet sauvignon dominated wines overall warm dry summers result in high sugar and low acid levels at harvest which in turn lead to higher quality wines wine market price sensitivity to parker point ratings indicates that properties with high cabernet sauvignon dominated wines are highly dependent on the external ratings while merlot dominated wines have a decreased rating sensitivity smaller properties tend to gain over proportionally from high ratings indicating great jumps in price from year to year additionally ch teaux that have experienced high ratings for past vintages exhibit great sensitivity to point steps in ratings for current vintages aging has a positive effect on bordeaux wine pricing this is due to the increasing maturity as well as the increasing absolute scarcity absolute scarcity of product is expressed by the size of the property with small properties producing less per vintage and therefore having less in the market additionally merlot dominated wines exhibit more maturing potential and profit more from aging than cabernet sauvignon dominated wines average per ch teau real annual profit ranges from 1 to 10 high levels of grape ripeness absolute scarcity and smaller properties that are dominated by merlot in their blend lead to the highest profits forecasts for a vintage not yet on the market indicates that 1995 is better than 1994 for both cabernet sauvignon and merlot dominated wines but that 1996 and 1997 are not as good as 1995 especially for merlot dominated wines 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

climate grapevine phenology wine production and prices pauillac 1800 2009 this paper analyzes 19th and 20th century data from a well known chateau in bordeaux the dataset includes information on weather conditions starting dates of three phenological stages of grapevine prices and yields we discuss how these variables have evolved over the last two centuries we also study to what extent the impact of climate on yields and prices has changed over time our regression analysis suggests that the effect of temperature on yields has become weaker since the 19th century the influence on prices has on the contrary become stronger

predicting the quality and prices of bordeaux wine bordeaux wines have been made in much the same way for centuries this article shows that the variability in the quality and prices of bordeaux vintages is predicted by the weather that created the grapes the price equation provides a measure of the real rate of return to holding wines about 2 3 per annum and implies far greater variability in the early or en primeur wine prices than is observed the analysis provides a useful basis for assessing market inefficiency the effect of climate change on the wine industry and the role of expert opinion in determining wine prices

spousal control and intra household decision making an experimental study in the philippines i elicit causal effects of spousal observability and communication on financial choices of married individuals in the philippines when choices are private men put money into their personal accounts when choices are observable men commit money to consumption for their own benefit when required to communicate men put money into their wives account these strong treatment effects on men but not women appear related more to control than to gender men whose wives control household savings respond more strongly to the treat ment and women whose husbands control savings exhibit the same response changes in information and communication interact with underlying control to produce mutable gender specific outcomes

forecasting bordeaux wine prices using state space methods generic bordeaux red wine basic claret can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity production volumes are substantial they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the

the price of wine abstract using historical price records for bordeaux premiers crus we examine the impact of aging on wine prices and the long term investment performance of fine wine in line with the predictions of an illustrative model young maturing wines from high quality vintages provide the highest financial returns past maturity famous ch teaus deliver growing non pecuniary benefits to their owners using an arithmetic repeat sales regression over 1900 2012 we estimate a real financial return to wine investment net of storage costs of 4 1 which exceeds bonds art and stamps returns to wine and equities are positively correlated finally we find evidence of in sample return predictability

alternative methods for environmentally adjusted productivity analysis abstract advances in the productivity with which food is produced around the world have been made possible through the intensive use of industrial inputs that have important environmental impacts like standard measures of macroeconomic performance however commonly used measures of agricultural efficiency and productivity account only for marketed commodities and inputs but ignore the environmental effects of these production processes a more complete analysis of trends in the sector s productivity requires the use of models that incorporate these environmental effects to provide better measures of the contributions of the sector from the social point of view this paper compares the conceptual merits and empirical performance of alternative approaches that can be employed for this purpose input distance functions output distance functions nonparametric methods and index number approaches each of the methods has relative strengths and weaknesses the methods are empirically illustrated using data from the canadian pulp and paper industry

wine prices and quality ratings a meta regression analysis this article examines the empirical support for the hypothesized hedonic theoretical relation between the price of wine and its quality the examination considers over 180 hedonic wine price models developed over 20 years covering many countries the research identifies that the relation between the price of wine and its sensory quality rating is a moderate partial correlation of 0 30 this correlation exists despite the lack of information held by consumers about a wine s quality and the inconsistency of expert tasters when evaluating wines the results identify a moderate price quality correlation which suggests the existence of strategic buying opportunities for better informed consumers strategic price setting possibilities may also exist for wine producers given the incomplete quality information held by consumers the results from the meta regression analysis point to the absence of any publication bias and attribute the observed asymmetry in estimates to study heterogeneity the analysis suggests the observed heterogeneity is explained by the importance of a wine s reputation the use of the 100 point quality rating scale the analysis of a single wine variety style and the employed functional form the most important implication from the analysis is the relative importance of a wine s reputation over its sensory quality inferring that producers need to sustain the sensory quality of a wine over time to extract appropriate returns the reputation of the wine producer is found not to influence the strength of the price quality relationship this finding does not contradict the importance of wine producer reputation in directly influencing prices

do it service centers promote school enrollment evidence from india abstract globalization has changed job opportunities in much of the developing world in india outsourcing has created a new class of high skill jobs which have increased overall returns to schooling existing evidence suggests education may broadly respond to this change we use microdata to evaluate the impact of these jobs on local school enrollment in areas outside of major it centers we merge panel data on school enrollment from a comprehensive school level administrative dataset with detailed data on information technology enabled services ites center location and founding dates using school fixed effects we find that introducing a new ites center causes a 5 increase in the number of children enrolled in primary school this effect is localized to within a few kilometers we show the effect is driven by english language schools consistent with the claim that the impacts are due to changes in returns to schooling and is not driven by changes in population or income resulting from the ites center supplementary survey evidence suggests that the localization of the effects is driven by limited information diffusion

exploring the existence of kuznets curve in countries environmental efficiency using dea window analysis abstract this paper using data envelopment dea window analysis and generalized method of moments gmm estimators examines the existence of a kuznets type relationship between countries environmental efficiency and national income specifically it measures the environmental efficiency of 17 oecd countries by constructing environmental efficiency ratios for the time period 1980 2002 the analysis with the application of dynamic panel data reveals that there isn t a kuznets type relationship between environmental efficiency and income allowing for dynamic effects we find that the adjustment to the target ratio is instantaneous we also find that increased economic activity does not always ensure environmental protection and thus the path of growth is important in addition to the growth itself

the timing of welfare payments and intimate partner violence i examine transfer schedules for the temporary assistance for needy families tanf program and find a causal relationship between the time directly after welfare payments and intimate partner violence against women this study supports the hypothesis that the husband uses threats of violence as an instrument to gain control over the allocation of household resources and suggests that the increased incidence in physical violence after welfare payments is associated with alcohol use additionally i find that states that pay tanf recipients twice a month do not have this effect on threats of violence this suggests that smaller more frequent payments may reduce the husband s incentive to use verbal violence as a bargaining tool jel i38 j18 j12

women as agents of change female income and mobility in india economic globalization will give many women in developing countries access to steady and relatively remunerative employment for the first time potentially shifting bargaining power within their households and changing the choices that are made for their children this paper exploits a unique setting a group of tea plantations in south india where women are employed in permanent wage labor and where incomes do not vary by caste to anticipate the impact of globalization on mobility across social groups in the future the main result of the paper is that a relative increase in female income weakens the family s ties to the ancestral community and the traditional economy but these mobility enhancing effects are obtained for certain historically disadvantaged castes alone although the paper provides a context specific explanation for why the women from these castes emerge as agents of change the first general implication of the analysis is that the incentive and the ability of women to use their earnings to influence household decisions depends importantly on their social background the second implication is that historically disadvantaged groups may in fact be especially responsive to new opportunities precisely because they have fewer ties to the traditional economy to hold them back

domestic violence and women s autonomy in developing countries theory and evidence abstract this paper sets out a simple non cooperative model of resource allocation within the household in developing countries that incorporates domestic violence as a vehicle for enhancing bargaining power we demonstrate that the extent of domestic violence faced by women is not necessarily declining in their reservation utilities or necessarily increasing in their spouses using the national family health survey data of india for 1998 99 we isolate the effect of domestic violence on female autonomy taking into account the possible endogeneity of domestic violence through the choice of appropriate instruments we provide some evidence for the evolutionary theory of domestic violence which argues that such violence stems from the jealousy caused by paternity uncertainty in our evolutionary past the findings have strong policy implications suggesting that it will take more than an improvement in women s employment options to address the problem of spousal violence

estimation of a hedonic price equation for bordeaux wine does quality matter in this paper the hedonic price technique is applied to bordeaux wine in the hedonic price function we include not only the objective characteristics appearing on the label of the bottle but also the sensory characteristics of the wine our data come from an experimental study in which juries have evaluated and graded a sample of bordeaux wines the estimation of the hedonic price equation shows that the market price is essentially determined by the objective characteristics the estimation of a jury grade equation shows that quality unlike the market price is essentially determined by the sensory characteristics

microfinance and gender issues challenges and the road ahead this special collection examines the claim that microfinance promotes gender equality the focus is on three areas of the debate first the question of how successful microfinance has been in empowering women second whether and how negative gender discrimination operates within the sector third how power relations within and beyond the household shape the context and outcomes of microfinance initiatives the papers in this collection demonstrate the divergence of circumstances and emphasise the need to go beyond the past searches for a simple narrative regarding the impact of microfinance rather as the sector evolves and is incorporated into the mainstream financial system the challenge ahead for researchers is to marshal the evidence on gendered dynamics to ensure that the gains made are built on through deeper understanding of why impact outcomes and processes differ and use this to inform new initiatives to further gender equality