rent seeking and rent dissipation a neutrality result abstract we consider rent seeking contests between at least two agents who might value the prize differently we capture a wide range of institutional aspects of contests by analyzing a class of contest success functions fulfilling several properties the main properties are anonymity and a condition on the elasticity of a rent seeker s win probability with respect to her effort we show the existence of a mixed strategy equilibrium and establish equilibrium payoffs in this equilibrium complete rent dissipation holds our results imply a partial robustness result for the all pay auction

a life cycle consumption model with liquidity constraints theory and empirical results a structural consumption model incorporating endogenous liquidity constraints is fit to a cross section of 798 u s families liquidity constrained families are estimated to constitute 19 4 percent of the population sampled a group that accounts for 16 7 percent of consumption in the population sampled in sample simulations of the model suggest that a temporary tax has three to four times more impact on aggregate consumption than it would if liquidity constraints were not in effect copyright 1987 by the econometric society

changes in food purchases at retirement in france abstract we estimate the impact of retirement on food expenditure and food quantities purchased using detailed home scan panel data on food purchases and household characteristics in france we identify a causal relationship by exploiting the french legal minimum age for retirement as an exogenous shock to retirement behavior upon retirement households significantly decrease their expenditure on food and the amount of food purchased households with lower pre retirement income appear to be more severely affected our results indicate that the decrease in food quantities purchased at the aggregate level is driven by a decline in purchases of food from animal origins a reduced consumption of animal based food products is likely to undermine the diet balance of retirees

changing labor market conditions and economic development in hong kong the republic of korea singapore and taiwan china in the newly industrializing economies nies of hong kong the republic of korea singapore and taiwan china the entire working population has benefited from labor market institutions the east asian nies attained and maintained generally full employment improved their job mixes raised real earnings and lowered their rates of poverty this article reaches two principal conclusions first labor market conditions continued to improve in all four economies in the 1980s at rates remarkably similar to their rates of aggregate economic growth second labor market repression was not a major factor in the growth experiences of these economies in the 1980s it thus appears that labor market repression is neither necessary nor desirable for outward oriented economic development

wage setting institutions and economic growth abstract wage setting institutions in several asian and latin american economies are compared and contrasted the asian economies have relied more on market wage determination whereas the latin american economies have encouraged institutions which push wages in key sectors up above market clearing levels market wage determination combined with exportled growth has resulted in rapidly rising real wages in the context of full employment in the asian

consumption during retirement the missing link in the life cycle this study presents the first evidence on the relation of consumption to lifetime wealth based on data from the 1973 and 1975 retirement history survey that have been linked to social security earnings records nearly 500 white married fully retired couples ages 62 69 form the basis of the analysis on average their consumption early in retirement exceeds by 14 percent the income that their financial pension and social security wealth can generate this implies that their saving both private and through social security is insufficient to sustain consumption throughout the rest of their lives additional evidence based on changes in spending between 1973 and 1975 shows that these households respond by reducing their real consumption at a rate sufficient to generate positive changes in net financial worth within a few years after retirement these two pieces of evidence can be rationalized by a rate of time preference much higher than the interest rate coupled with either a bequest motive or uncertainty about the length of life they also imply that even when combined with private pensions and savings social security in the united states today does not enable most recipients to maintain their living standard at the levels they enjoyed before they retired this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

export led development labour market conditions and the distribution of income the case of singapore the newly industrialising countries nics of east asia have attracted considerable attention in recent years and the impressive economic performance of the gang of four hong kong taiwan singapore and south korea in particular has played an important part in what little 1982 describes as the resurgence of neo classical economics in development thinking the experience of these outward looking export oriented economies is contrasted with the record of the more inward looking import substituting policies adopted by many other less developed countries ldcs and is interpreted as confirmation of the neoclassical thesis that economies which permit the market mechanism to establish a structure of equilibrium prices and incentives can expand in accordance with their comparative advantage generating significant employment gains rapid economic growth and improvements in income distribution the employment gains represent the predictable consequences of the expansion of labour intensive manufactured exports as little 1981 notes in his comparative study of south korea taiwan hong kong and singapore the major lesson is that labour intensive export oriented policies were the prime cause of an extremely rapid and labour intensive industrialisation p 42 the employment intensity of the export oriented industrialisation eoi strategy is in turn seen as the central factor behind improvements in income distribution thus balassa 1982 argues that gains in employment may also be obtained as exports increase the demand for labour and thereby improve income distribution p 59 fields 1984 reiterates the point quite simply if everyone in the labour force is employed at a market clearing wage inequality is less than if some are employed at higher than market clearing wages and others are unem ployed and earn nothing p 81 minimum government intervention has facilitated the efficient operation of the market fields 1984 for example regards the difference in wage setting processes supply and demand in the east asian nics institutional wage

employment income distribution and economic growth in seven small open economies resurgent interest has been manifested among development economists in trickle down i e the view that the more rapid the rate of economic growth the more rapid the improvement in employment and income distribution throughout this paper the term income distribution will refer to the location and dispersion of the pattern of incomes i e to absolute incomes and poverty and to relative income inequality empirical evidence supports trickle down in some cases but the evidence is contrary to trickle down in others the evidence from my own study of six countries experiences2 is summarised in tables i and 2

growth distribution trade offs the role of capacity utilisation previous empirical studies of the impact of economic growth on income distribution have consistently found statistically insignificant impact this paper empirically reexamines this impact for a cross section of thirty nine advanced and developing countries focusing on a new critical factor i e the presence or absence of economic slack with this factor included growth becomes significantly unequalizing in a capital taut economy while the presence of slack capacity plays a significantly equalizing role this suggests that the insignificant finding of previous studies stems from an averaging out of these two opposite impacts when this factor is omitted copyright 1988 by oxford university press

retirement consumption insights from a survey abstract prior research has established that consumption falls significantly at retirement what is not known is the extent to which this fall is anticipated during the working years using data from a new survey we show that many working households do expect a considerable fall in consumption when they retire in fact those who are already retired report significantly smaller falls in consumption than are expected by those who are still working

the retirement consumption conundrum evidence from a consumption survey abstract recent studies have shown that food consumption declines at retirement we use broader definitions of consumption from the consumer expenditure survey and find that the so called retirement consumption puzzle is solved by using comprehensive consumption data

the retirement consumption puzzle evidence from a regression discontinuity approach in this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in italy we use micro data on food and total non durable household spending covering the period 1993 2004 and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in pension eligibility to correct for the endogenous nature of the retirement decision we take a regression discontinuity design approach and make the identifying assumption that consumption would be the same around the threshold for pension eligibility if individuals would not retire we check in our data that a non negligible fraction of individuals retire as soon as they become eligible and estimate at 9 8 the part of the non durable consumption drop that is associated with retirement induced by eligibility we show that such fall is not driven by liquidity problems for the less well off in the population and can be accounted for by drops in goods that are work related expenses or leisure substitutes however we also show that retirement induces a significant drop in the number of grown children living with their parents and this can account for most of the retirement consumption drop

the retirement consumption puzzle in china abstract using data from china s urban household survey and exploiting china s mandatory retirement policy we use the regression discontinuity approach to estimate the impact of retirement on household expenditures retirement reduces total non durable expenditures by 20 percent among the categories of non durable expenditures retirement reduces work related expenditures and expenditures on food consumed at home but has an insignificant effect on entertainment expenditures after excluding these three components retirement does not have an effect on the remaining non durable expenditures it suggests that the retirement consumption puzzle might not be a puzzle if a life cycle model with home production is considered

the lottery blotto game in this paper we relax the colonel blotto game assumption that for a given battle the player who allocates the higher measure of resources wins that battle we assume that for a given battle the colonel who allocates the higher measure of resources is more likely to win we have a simpler model for which we are able to compute all nash equilibria in pure strategies for any valuations profile that players might have something that is not possible for the original blotto game

the newly industrializing countries in the international system explanations of the growth of the newly industrializing countries nics by neoclassical economists and dependency theorists neglect the role of politics in shaping development strategies different social configurations state structures and ideas about development help explain the divergent policy choices made by the export oriented east asian nics korea and taiwan and the more inward looking countries of latin america particularly mexico and brazil these different strategic choices in turn account for variations in the patterns of external dependency that characterize countries in the two regions

the retirement consumption puzzle and involuntary early retirement evidence from the british household panel survey this article uses data from the british household panel survey bhps to shed further light on the fall in consumption at retirement the retirement consumption puzzle comparing food spending of men retiring involuntarily early through ill health or redundancy with spending of men who retire voluntarily it finds a significant fall in spending only for those who retire involuntarily this is consistent with the observed fall in spending being linked to a negative wealth shock for some retirees

distributive politics and electoral competition abstract within the framework of pure redistribution dividing one unit of a homo geneous good among identical individuals the paper analyses the redistribution that arises from downsian two party electoral competition it appears that the strategic behavior of vote maximizing parties leads them to propose divisions which are not far from the egalitarian one journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d63 d72

what accounts for the variation in retirement wealth among u s households even among households with similar socioeconomic characteristics saving and wealth vary considerably life cycle models attribute this variation to differences in time preference rates risk tolerance exposure to uncertainty relative tastes for work and leisure at advanced ages and income replacement rates these factors have testable implications concerning the relation between accumulated wealth and the shape of the consumption profile using the panel study of income dynamics and the consumer expenditure survey we find little support for these implications the data are instead consistent with rule of thumb mental accounting or hyperbolic discounting theories of wealth accumulation jel di d91 e21

real wage rigidity and optimal commercial policy in less developed countries abstract this paper examines optimal commercial policy in an ldc in which there is a rigid real wage and imports consist of both final and non competitive intermediae inputs the nature of optimal commercial policy depends sensitively upon the composition of imports when export promotion is hampered by import quotas abroad or difficulties in extending export subsidies protection will often be optimal in economies that import intermediates but not in economics that import only final goods the results for the full optimization case establish that there is a general presumption trade policy should be biased in favor of export promotion although there are well defined conditions under which an import substituting regime is optimal

changes in subjective well being with retirement assessing savings adequacy does retirement represent a state of relative prosperity or unanticipated hardship to assess whether individuals are successful in smoothing their well being across the transition to retirement we analyse measures of subjective well being swb in the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey specifically this research examines retirees current standard of living financial security and overall happiness relative to their pre retirement levels it is found swb either improves or remains constant for the large majority of individuals as they retire from the labour force however there are significant disparities in changes in well being with retirement among the group of retirees in particular the subset of individuals who are forced to retire early due to job loss or their own health and who find their income in retirement to be much less than expected report marked declines in their swb with retirement

food expenditure and involuntary retirement resolving the retirement consumption puzzle international research has shown that household expenditure on nondurables significantly decreases at retirement a finding that is inconsistent with the standard life cycle model of consumption if retirement is anticipated we analyze australian panel data and find that the decline in grocery and food expenditure is explained by households forced to retire earlier than planned due to a health event or job loss which represent unanticipated wealth shocks for most households retirement is anticipated and there is no decline in basic expenditures however for an important minority retirement is involuntary and these households experience a marked decline across the basic expenditure categories

is there a retirement consumption puzzle evidence using subjective retirement expectations abstract previous research finds a systematic decrease in consumption at retirement a finding that is inconsistent with the life cycle permanent income hypothesis if retirement is an expected event in this paper we use workers subjective beliefs about their retirement dates as an instrument for retirement after demonstrating that subjective retirement expectations are strong predictors of subsequent retirement decisions we still find a consumption decline at retirement for workers who retire when expected however our estimates of this consumption fall are about a third less than those found when we instead rely on the instrumental variables strategy used in prior studies

is there a retirement savings puzzle in this paper we ask whether households are saving enough for their retirement we use data on income expenditure and expenditure components to analyse patterns of behaviour at and around the time of retirement for successive date of birth cohorts we compare periods of unemployment to periods of retirement and separate expenditures into categories reflecting work related expenditures basic necessities and other goods we find that income typically falls by more at unemployment than retirement but the reverse is true for expenditure we observe falls in expenditure at retirement for all expenditure categories using a stochastic life cycle model including mortality rates we assess the anticipated impact of retirement on consumption against that of unemployment the inter relationship between goods and leisure explains a large part of the persistent fall in expenditure at retirement we argue that the only way in which the life cycle hypothesis could be reconciled with the remaining unanticipated dip in consumption would be with the systematic arrival of unexpected adverse information at the time of retirement