women s suffrage political responsiveness and child survival in american history women s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men this paper presents new evidence on how suffrage rights for american women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution consistent with standard models of electoral competition suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large sudden increases in local public health spending this growth in public health spending fueled large scale door to door hygiene campaigns and child mortality declined by 8 15 or 20 000 annual child deaths nationwide as cause specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

a comparative study of u s and japanese patent systems in an era of global competition adequate protection of intellectual property in triad regions of the world particularly in japan has become increasingly important this study focuses on the differences and similarities in patent practices between japan and the united states british and german patent practices are also examined to offer a balanced comparison findings indicate that the japanese patent practices seem to discriminate against foreign applicants with longer pendency periods than for domestic applicants while the u s german and british patent practices appear to discriminate against foreign applicants with lower patent grant ratios than for domestic applicants

too much ado about two part models and transformation comparing methods of modeling medicare expenditures many methods for modeling skewed health care cost and use data have been suggested in the literature this paper compares the performance of eight alternative estimators including ols and glm estimators and one and two part models in predicting medicare costs it finds that four of the alternatives produce very similar results in practice it then suggests an efficient method for researchers to use when selecting estimators of health care costs

moving to opportunity in boston early results of a randomized mobility experiment this paper examines the short run impacts of a change in residential neighborhood on the well being of low income families using evidence from a program in which eligibility for a housing voucher was determined by random lottery we examine the experiences of households at the boston site of moving to opportunity mto a demonstration program in five cities families in high poverty public housing projects applied to mto and were assigned by lottery to one of three groups experimental offered mobility counseling and a section 8 subsidy valid only in a census tract with a poverty rate of less than 10 percent section 8 comparison offered a geographically unrestricted section 8 subsidy or control offered no new assistance but continued to be eligible for public housing our quantitative analyses of program impacts uses data on 540 families from a baseline survey at program enrollment a follow up survey administered l to 3 5 years after random assignment and state administrative data on earnings and welfare receipt 48 percent of the experimental group and 62 percent of the section 8 comparison group moved through the mto program one to three years after program entry families in both treatment groups were more likely to be residing in neighborhoods with low poverty rates and high education levels than were families in the control group however while members of the experimental group were much more likely to be residing in suburban communities than were those in the section 8 group the lower program take up rate among the experimental group resulted in more families remaining in the most distressed communities households in both treatment groups experienced improvements in multiple measures of well being relative to the control group including increased safety improved health among household heads and fewer behavior problems among boys experimental group children were also less likely to be a victim of a personal crime to be injured or to experience an asthma attack there are no significant impacts of either mto treatment on the employment earnings or welfare receipt of household heads in the first three years after random assignment

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

differences and similarities between ecological and economic models for biodiversity conservation abstract in this paper we investigate an important obstacle which substantially complicates co operation between ecologists and economists but which has received little attention so far differences between the modelling approaches in economics and ecology to understand these differences 60 models addressing issues relevant to biodiversity conservation have been selected randomly from eight international economic and ecological journals the models have been compared according to a number of criteria including the models level of generality the mathematical techniques employed for formulation and solution of the models the level of complexity and the way time space and uncertainty are taken into account the economic models sampled are formulated and analysed analytically tend to be relatively simple and are mostly used to investigate general questions furthermore they often ignore space dynamics and uncertainty although some ecological models have similar properties there is also a substantial number of another type of ecological models that are relatively complex and analysed by simulation these models tend to be rather specific and often explicitly consider dynamics space and uncertainty the integrated ecological economic models are observed to lie in the middle between ecological and economic models an unexpected result is that they are not more complex than ecological and economic models as one could have expected from a simple merger of models from both disciplines but have an intermediate complexity

biodiversity and optimal policies towards r d and the growth of genetically modified crops in this paper we provide a simple model illustrating the possible nature ofgovernment policy with regards to genetic modification taking into accountits impact on the environment we show that it is necessary not only tointervene in the growing of crops but also to intervene in r d througha tax on the adoption of new gm technology without intervention at bothlevels both the cultivation of gm crops and the rate of innovation in gm willexceed their socially optimal levels

contraception as development new evidence from family planning in colombia there has been considerable debate in the last decade about whether or not family planning programmes in developing countries reduce fertility or improve socio economic outcomes this article provides new evidence by studying the expansion of one of the worlds oldest and largest family planning organisations profamilia of colombia it finds that family planning explains less than 10 of colombias fertility decline during its demographic transition as in wealthy countries however lowering the costs of first birth postponement produced important socio economic gains enabling young women to obtain more education and to work more and live independently later in life

school inputs and educational outcomes in south africa we examine the relationship between educational inputs primarily pupilteacher ratios and school outcomes in south africa immediately before the end of apartheid government black households were severely limited in their residential choice under apartheid and attended schools for which funding decisions were made centrally by white controlled entities over which they had no control the allocations resulted in marked disparities in average class sizes controlling for household background variables we find strong and significant effects of pupilteacher ratios on enrollment on educational achievement and on test scores for numeracy

the impact of foreign patents on national economy a case of the united states japan germany and britain in an earlier study the focus was on the differences and similiarities in patent practices and their discriminatory implications among the united states japan germany and britain from a corporate perspective here the impact of foreign patents on each national economy is examined from a macroeconomic point of view findings suggest that discriminatory patent practices in these countries have affected their economic growth in some predictable ways given their respective domestic technological infrastructure

alimony rights and intrahousehold allocation of resources evidence from brazil can family policy affect well being of individuals without altering the resources available to their families this article examines the extension of alimony rights and obligations to cohabiting couples in brazil for women in intact relationships alimony rights upon dissolution should improve outside options strengthening their negotiating positions and increasing their influence over intrahousehold allocation of resources robust econometric evidence indicates that more decision power in the hands of women impacts hours worked by female adults and investments in the education of children this suggests that family policy and models of family decision making should take intrahousehold heterogeneity of preferences into account

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

innovation in pollution control comparisons of the various institutional arrangements for controlling pollutant emissions from individual sources effluent fees effluent control subsidies marketable permits and direct command and control regulation have usually focused on their static efficiency properties and institutional feasibility e g dales 1968 zerbe 1970 baumol and oates 1975 kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 spence and weitzman 1978 russell 1979 a relatively neglected area has been the study of how each arrangement influences innovation in pollution control a few studies e g kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 russell 1979 have casually claimed that the control methods that rely on economic incentives provide superior incentives for innovation but there have been few systematic studies of the question this paper provides a simple model of pollution control innovation by a profitmaximizing polluter who is subject to the various control methods the consequences of the methods will be explored in three major contexts first we assume that the polluter and the innovation is a small enough part of the overall pollution problem so that none of the important marginal conditions are changed by the innovation second we assume that the polluter and the innovation are important enough so that marginal conditions are changed by the innovations but that the governmental authority determining pollution control incentives or levels fails to make the appropriate adjustments third we again assume that the innovation causes marginal conditions to change but in this case the governmental authority makes the appropriate adjustments we use the term ratcheting to describe this last phenomenon in all cases we assume that the innovating polluter correctly predicts the reactions of the governmental authority and bases his innovation decisions on that prediction a profit maximizing entrepreneur would normally be expected to adopt any innovation that promised gains present discounted value to him in excess of initial

more power to the pill the impact of contraceptive freedom on women s life cycle labor supply the release of enovid in 1960 the first birth control pill afforded u s women unprecedented freedom to plan childbearing and their careers this paper uses plausibly exogenous variation in state consent laws to evaluate the causal impact of the pill on the timing of first births and extent and intensity of women s labor force participation the results suggest that legal access to the pill before age 21 significantly reduced the likelihood of a first birth before age 22 increased the number of women in the paid labor force and raised the number of annual hours worked

industrial and intellectual property rights in the uruguay round and beyond the current uruguay round of negotiations in gatt is considering the issues of industrial and intellectual property rights iiprs trade in services and direct foreign investment although these issues are not linked conceptually they have come to be integrated in a single policy initiative in which the us government is particularly active the major reason for targetting iiprs for reform is that there are major changes in technology which render the inherited regime anachronistic this article considers these changes in technology describes the implications for property rights and discusses the current policy negotiations in gatt it concludes by pointing to the key role being played by the usa and questions whether this is likely to endure given the undermining of the technologically dominant position of the us economy

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest

missing women and the price of tea in china the effect of sex specific earnings on sex imbalance economists have long argued that the sex imbalance in developing countries is caused by underlying economic conditions this paper uses exogenous increases in sex specific agricultural income caused by post mao reforms in china to estimate the effects of total income and sex specific income on sex differential survival of children increasing female income holding male income constant improves survival rates for girls whereas increasing male income holding female income constant worsens survival rates for girls increasing female income increases educational attainment of all children whereas increasing male income decreases educational attainment for girls and has no effect on boys educational attainment