labor supply at the extensive and intensive margins the eitc welfare and hours worked some previous studies have emphasized differences between labor supply responses on the extensive margin participation and intensive margin hours worked e g james j heckman 1993 jean kimmel and thomas j kniesner 1998 recent tax and welfare policy changes provide a potentially more convincing way of identifying these responses than is available in other nonexperimental data the earned income tax credit eitc changes during the 1990 1996 period sharply altered the budget sets of single mothers over a short period of time these changes in incentives are likely to be unrelated to differences across individuals in the desire to work and thus are likely to be exogenous to labor supply decisions this lack of exogeneity is harder to claim for wage differences across people which are the main alternative source of identifying variation in addition to preference heterogeneity wages are driven by supply and demand factors that one must account for to obtain valid estimates using wage variation the eitc unequivocally encourages single parents to work at least some hours during a year because it shifts out the budget set at all positive hours points this first prediction is clearly confirmed by the data in addition theory implies that the eitc will decrease hours worked among those already working because most recipients are on the plateau or phase out portions of the credit schedule for these recipients the eitc reduces or does not affect the after tax wage while at the same time discouraging work through the income effect of the credit payment however recent hours worked patterns for eitc eligible individuals do not appear to fit this second prediction hours and weeks worked by likely recipient groups have not fallen this paper analyzes this puzzling finding building on earlier work by nada eissa and jeffrey liebman 1996 and meyer and dan t rosenbaum 1999 this study shows that nearly all of the laborsupply adjustment of single mothers occurs at the extensive margin not the intensive margin this finding raises the issue of what model features are needed to explain both participation and hours but leaves the answer to be provided in future work this finding also suggests that the large literature simulating alternative policies for low wage workers such as the eitc may be misleading because nearly all work has used models that imply similar responses on participation and hours margins

economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries this study provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal of development studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries in addition to providing a conceptual framework it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature a series of regularities emerge across these studies the poor consist of those who are always poor poor at all dates and those who move in and out of poverty with the latter group tending to be strikingly large such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes finally seemingly transitory shocks can have long term consequences the study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities

the effects of welfare and tax reform the material well being of single mothers in the 1980s and 1990s abstract the tax and welfare programs that provide income and in kind benefits to single mothers have changed dramatically in recent years these changes began as far back as the mid 1980s and culminated with the 1996 welfare law that ended welfare as we knew it these tax and welfare changes have sharply increased the employment of single mothers and cut welfare rolls however little is know about the effects of these policy changes on the material well being of single mothers and their children studies of those leaving welfare have found that a substantial percentage have problems paying rent purchasing enough food and paying utility bills other studies found a decline in income among the worst off single mothers after 1994 or 1995 the goal of this paper is to examine the material well being of single mothers and their families before and after recent welfare and tax reforms using data from two nationally representative household surveys we examine the consumption patterns of single mothers and their families from 1984 2000 we find that the material conditions of single mothers did not decline in recent years either in absolute terms or relative to single childless women or married mothers this pattern holds for the average single mother as well as for low educated single mothers at both the 15th and 25th percentiles of the consumption distribution in most cases our evidence suggests that the material conditions of single mothers have improved slightly

buyer collusion and efficiency of government intervention in wheat markets in northern india an asymmetric structural auctions analysis this paper uses auction theory to analyze wholesale markets for wheat in northern india this approach enables us not only to characterize the market in terms of buyer asymmetries but also to detect the existence of collusion and to quantify its impact on market prices we show that buyer asymmetries exacerbate the downward impact of collusion on prices the paper also demonstrates the use of auction theory to analyze questions of government efficiency it considers whether the government paid too much for the wheat it procured at the minimum support price and shows that for our sample it did not the paper is based on a primary survey of two wholesale markets in north india

reforming taxes and raising revenue part of the fiscal solution this paper reviews the fiscal outlook in the united states discusses why revenue increases are a critical aspect of any enduring fiscal solution and outlines constructive policies to reform the tax system and simultaneously raise revenues in particular this paper highlights the merits of curtailing income tax expenditures introducing a value added tax and imposing levies on consumption and production of non renewable energy copyright 2011 oxford university press

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

new evidence on labor supply employment versus hours elasticities by sex and marital status using the tri annual micro panel data of the survey of income and program participation we estimate fixed effects labor supply models separating the extensive and intensive margins the employment elasticity is 0 6 for single men versus 1 1 for married men the employment elasticity is 2 4 for single women versus 1 8 for married women the compensated hours worked elasticity is 0 4 for employed single and married men and 0 7 for employed single and married women the implied aggregate employment elasticity of 1 5 and hours per employee elasticity of 0 5 indicate employment fluctuations account for three fourths of wage induced variation in labor hours

nonparametric estimation of the impact of taxes on female labor supply this paper proposes a simple extension of nonparametric estimation methods for nonlinear budget set models derived in blomquist and newey 2002 to censored dependent variables the nonparametric method is applied to estimate female labor supply elasticities using data on married women from the 1985 and 1989 waves of the panel study of income dynamics exploiting the substantial variation in budget sets caused by the tax reform act of 1986 as a source of identification the estimated wage elasticities from this new method are 0 56 overall and 0 27 on the intensive margin the income elasticity estimates are close to 0 67 overall and 0 13 on the intensive margin compared with the linear labor supply model the estimated elasticities are usually larger for the nonparametric specifications that account for nonlinear budget sets copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

generating enhanced fishery rents by internalizing product quality characteristics this paper demonstrates howadditional rents are generated in a fisherycharacterized by intraseasonal variation infish characteristics including size condition and composition based on anexpanded conceptual model of the optimalharvest rule fish characteristics affect preand post harvest production yields and outputprices a dynamic empirical model which uses asystem of quality characteristics and anhedonic equation illustrates the complexrelationships and management choices associatedwith internalizing seafood qualitycharacteristics in a hake fishery the modelretains the regulated open access managementsystem but controls intertemporal andintersectoral quotas production portfolios and total allowable catch results demonstratethat including revenue side effects frominternalizing fish quality can generatesignificantly greater rents and reduce therelative benefits of increased productionyields if excluded bioeconomic models canunderestimate the level of regulatory rentdissipation and overemphasize managementobjectives such as full utilization whichcould misdirect processing decisions and resultin a suboptimal resource management plan implications for data collection multidisciplinary analysis and improvements inmarine resource management are discussed

what has been learned about labor supply in the past twenty years the main advance in the study of labor supply in the past 20 years has come in recognizing and interpreting the variety of different labor supply functions that coexist in the empirical literature a crucial theoretical distinction with important empirical payoff is that between labor supply choices at the extensive margin i e labor force participation and employment choices and choices at the intensive margin i e choices about hours of work or weeks of work for workers another important distinction is the one between a descriptive labor supply function and a structural supply function that can be the basis for out of sample policy investigations concerning responses to tax and welfare programs and evaluations of welfare losses a full understanding of the participation hours dichotomy leads to an appreciation of the importance of the problem of selection bias what is the wage to impute to a nonworking person these distinctions are a legacy of the research conducted on labor supply over the past 20 years many important empirical questions have been addressed i how strong are the effects of taxes welfare and transfer programs on labor supply ii how important is intertemporal substitution can life cycle labor supply models explain business cycle labor supply behavior iii has the consensus view of the 1960 s of high labor supply elasticities for married women and low labor supply elasticities for married men held up all of the empirical evidence assembled on labor supply must be called into question in the light of important research on the basic quality of the data conducted by analysts at the university of michigan i discuss this evidence in a concluding section except for my discussion of measurement issues i focus only on the major discoveries about which a general consensus has emerged

pricing of eco labels with retailer heterogeneity abstract eco labels are important features of many natural resource and food markets they certify that a product has some desirable unobserved quality typically related to a public good such as being sustainably produced two issues that have received limited attention are whether pricing varies across different eco labels that may compete with each other and to what extent different retailers charge different prices using a unique data set of salmon prices in eight different united kingdom retail chains we investigate these issues by estimating a price attribute model that includes two eco labels and one country of origin label results show substantial variation in the prices of the different eco labels and that eco label premiums vary across retail chains specifically salmon certified with the marine stewardship council msc label has a high premium in low end retail chains but no statistically significant premium in the high end chains these findings question the ability of the msc label to transmit consumer willingness to pay for public goods through the supply chain to incentivize sustainable management in contrast premiums for organic certification are similar in magnitude across retailer types in general failure to account for retailer heterogeneity will over or under estimate a label s premium

growth and chronic poverty evidence from rural communities in ethiopia abstract what keeps some people persistently poor even in the context of relative high growth in this article we explore this question using a 15 year longitudinal data set from ethiopia we compare the findings of an empirical growth model with those derived from a model of the determinants of chronic poverty we ask whether the chronically poor are simply not benefiting in the same way from the same factors that allowed others to escape poverty or whether there are latent factors that leave them behind we find that this chronic poverty is associated with several initial characteristics lack of physical assets education and remoteness in terms of distance to towns or poor roads the chronically poor appear to benefit from some of the drivers of growth such as better roads or extension services in much the same way that the non chronically poor benefit however they appear to have lower growth in this period related to time invariant characteristics and this suggests that they face a conside

weather shocks coping strategies and consumption dynamics in rural ethiopia summary rural households adopt a broad range of strategies to cope with adverse weather shocks previous studies have examined the effectiveness of individual coping strategies in mitigating the impact of adverse weather shocks but no study to date has presented a comprehensive evaluation of alternative coping strategies we employ household panel data spanning 15 years to estimate the impact of weather shocks on consumption and poverty dynamics in rural ethiopia along with the effectiveness of household coping strategies in alleviating the impact of shocks we find that rainfall increases are positively associated with per adult equivalent consumption while high temperatures are negatively associated with consumption in terms of household coping strategies formal social safety net transfers mitigate the impact of adverse rainfall shocks on consumption and off farm employment mitigates the impact of high temperature shocks simulations suggest that rainfall shocks and formal social safety net transfers significantly influence household poverty dynamics by contrast high temperature shocks and off farm employment have less impact on poverty dynamics the results highlight the need for social protection programs that support existing household coping strategies and that can rapidly respond to weather shocks

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

policies for agricultural productivity growth and poverty reduction in rural ethiopia summary increasing the productivity of smallholder agriculture holds the key to poverty reduction the empirical literature is limited to ascertain the linkages and the implications for policy uptake in ethiopia we examine the impact of growth in agricultural productivity on household poverty dynamics in rural ethiopia using a panel dataset 1994 2009 findings suggest that government policies aimed at reducing poverty should adopt a growth plus approach designing policy interventions to support agricultural productivity growth plus to protect assets and enhance market access for rural households in the country

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

the local effects of an innovation evidence from the french fish market in this paper we investigate the effect on quality quantity and prices of an innovative fishing gear introduced for a subsample of vessels on a single wholesale fish market in france estimations are conducted using transaction data over the 2009 2011 period during which the innovation was introduced using a difference in differences approach around the discontinuity we find that for the treated the innovation has a large effect on quality 29 2 percentage points and prices 23 2 percentage points a shift in caught fish species is observed and new targeted species are fished very intensively we also quantify the treatment effect on the treated market from aggregate market data using factor models and a synthetic control approach we find a sizable effect of the innovation on market quality which is consistent with non treated vessels adapting their fishing practices to remain competitive the innovation has no effect on market quantities and prices

too certain to invest public safety nets and insurance markets in ethiopia researchers efforts to introduce index insurance in developing countries have met with little demand despite its great potential to help farmers mitigate economic risk i argue that researchers have overlooked institutional context s critical role in the formation of private markets when designing insurance contracts using micro level evidence from ethiopia i show that recipients of a preexisting effective large scale public safety net fail to take up a new highly subsidized private insurance offer government safety net programs can decrease demand for private index insurance forming an additional barrier to index insurance take up a direct implication of this research is that policymakers should design private and public insurance products that account for or even complement each other

hedonic prices for fish tuna prices in hawaii over the past two decades the marketing of fish has recognized the importance of quality yet empirical analysis of market transactions could give us little insight into the value of different qualities of fish because market data are typically aggregated we exploit a dataset on the auction price of tuna sold in hawaii to estimate a hedonic model the model provides empirical estimates of price increments due to species quality of the fish such as size or fat content method of handling and market conditions the empirical results are also used to estimate price flexibilities for landings in hawaii

sealed bid auction of netherlands mussels statistical analysis this article presents an econometric analysis of the many data on the sealed bid auction that sells mussels in yerseke town the netherlands the goals of this analysis are obtaining insight into the important factors that determine the price of these mussels and quantifying the performance of an individual purchase manager besides a case study the article is a general study on the role of auctions in supply chains and on hedonic price factors

the impact of agricultural extension and roads on poverty and consumption growth in fifteen ethiopian villages this article investigates whether public investments that led to improvements in road quality and increased access to agricultural extension services led to faster consumption growth and lower rates of poverty in rural ethiopia estimating an instrumental variables model using generalized methods of moments and controlling for household fixed effects we find evidence of positive impacts with meaningful magnitudes receiving at least one extension visit reduces headcount poverty by 9 8 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 7 1 percentage points access to all weather roads reduces poverty by 6 9 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 16 3 percentage points these results are robust to changes in model specification and estimation methods

how robust is a poverty profile comparison of poverty such as when poverty is greatest typically matter far more for policy choices than do aggregate measures of poverty such as how many people are deemed poor the authors examine alternative methods for constructing poverty profiles focusing on their internal consistency and appropriateness for guiding policy none is perfect but some methods appear to be preferable to others when the aim is to inform policies for fighting absolute consumption poverty a case study on indonesia reveals that the country s regional and sectoral poverty profile is highly sensitive to some aspects of measurement but quite robust to others

is transient poverty different evidence for rural china we define transient poverty as the component of time mean consumption poverty at household level that is directly attributable to variability in consumption this can be thought of as a measure of vulnerability to falling consumption the non transient component then depends solely on mean consumption over time and we call this chronic poverty using robust semi parametric methods and household panel data for rural china we test whether transient poverty is determined by a process that is similar to chronic poverty commonly identified causes of poverty in this setting have weak explanatory power for transient poverty and some of the factors determining transient poverty do not matter to chronic poverty or even have the opposite effect successful policy responses to chronic poverty may still leave considerable transient poverty

optimal income transfer programs intensive versus extensive labor supply responses this paper analyzes optimal income transfers for low incomes labor supply responses are modeled along the intensive margin intensity of work on the job and along the extensive margin participation into the labor force when behavioral responses are concentrated along the intensive margin the optimal transfer program is a classical negative income tax program with a substantial guaranteed income support and a large phasing out tax rate however when behavioral responses are concentrated along the extensive margin the optimal transfer program is similar to the earned income tax credit with negative marginal tax rates at low income levels and a small guaranteed income carefully calibrated numerical simulations are provided

estimating market demand for fresh yam characteristics using contingent valuation implications for crop breeding and production choices this study uses the box cox bc transformations to examine nonlinearity in price modeling and compare results from several functional specifications in hedonic price analysis of yam in togo based on a sample of 6 402 observations on price and produce characteristics generated through a market experiment it is found that the bc quadratic asymmetric specification is the most suitable function several characteristics are valued more than others and prices vary across species time and market sites some residual symptoms of pest and disease damages on yam tubers reduce their market values tuber weight exhibits a diminishing marginal value and price per kilogram decreases above an optimum size therefore producers do not derive additional reward from extra large tubers we conclude that to effectively access and benefit from urban markets producers should focus on small size low weight and conical shaped tubers which are easy to process and meet the esthetic qualities preferred by urban consumers the implications for research on improved variety development to reduce poverty and for crop and resource management practices are drawn

is poverty in africa mostly chronic or transient evidence from synthetic panel data absent actual panel household survey data this paper constructs for the first time synthetic panel data for more than 20 countries accounting for two thirds of the population in sub saharan africa in this process the analysis employs repeated cross sections that span on average a six year period for each country the analysis suggests that all these countries as a whole have had pro poor growth one third of the poor population escaped poverty during the studied period which is larger than the proportion of the population that fell into poverty in the same period the region also saw a 9 percent reduction in poverty and a 28 percent increase in the size of the middle class however chronic poverty remains high and a considerable proportion of the population is vulnerable to falling into poverty there is some limited evidence that most resource rich and middle income countries have more upward mobility than downward mobility post secondary education is especially strongly associated with higher upward mobility and less downward mobility which holds to some extent for female headed and urban households

exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in south africa using qualitative and quantitative data abstract recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like south africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty to explore these ideas this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993 98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of south africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998 2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low level poverty trap in addition the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships while finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks these are more helpful for non poor households for the poor social capital at best helps sta

global ex vessel fish price database revisited a new approach for estimating missing prices the global ex vessel fish price database ex vessel db reported in sumaila et al j bioecon 9 1 39 51 2007 was the first comprehensive database that presents average annual ex vessel prices for all commercially exploited marine fish stocks by nationality of the fishing fleet it contained over 30 000 reported price items covering the period from 1950 to the present and supplemented missing prices with estimates based on prices from a different year species group or fleet nationality this paper describes a revised missing price estimation approach focused on the computation of annual average international prices for each species group adjusted to domestic prices using the real exchange rate based on national purchasing power parity key advantages of the new approach are that it allows a larger number of reported prices to be used in the price estimation and accounts for relative price level differences that exist between countries our new approach should improve the estimates in regions where reported prices are scarce or non existent by linking domestic prices to the trends in international prices our analysis based on the revised ex vessel price estimates in real 2005 usd shows that the global marine fisheries landings have generated total value of usd 4 2 trillion since 1950 including usd 100 billion in 2005

affect or information labeling policy and consumer valuation of rbst free and organic characteristics of milk abstract using a labeling policy framework we answer the question of whether attitude has an impact on consumers valuation of rbst free and organic characteristics of milk we utilize 2 years of consumer survey data and a hedonic model to estimate marginal effects of attitude on consumer valuation of rbst free and organic milk findings indicate that in 2001 milk value was impacted by attitude regardless of whether attitude was measured using an opinion based or behavioral construct in 2004 the contribution of attitude to value was insignificant implications for labeling policy are discussed

blending top down federalism with bottom up engagement to reduce inequality in ethiopia donors increasingly fund interventions to counteract inequality in developing countries where they fear it can foment instability and undermine nation building efforts to succeed aid relies on the principle of upward accountability to donors but federalism shifts the accountability of subnational officials downward to regional and local voters what happens when aid agencies fund anti inequality programs in federal countries does federalism undermine aid does aid undermine federalism or can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal system resolve the contradiction internally this study explores this paradox via the promotion of basic services program in ethiopia the largest donor financed investment program in the world using an original panel database comprising the universe of ethiopian woredas districts the study finds that horizontal geographic inequality decreased substantially donor financed block grants to woredas increased the availability of primary education and health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that vertical inequality across wealth groups within woredas also declined implying that individuals from the poorest households benefit disproportionately from increasing access to and utilization of such services the evidence suggests that by combining strong upward accountability over public investment with extensive citizen engagement on local issues ethiopia s federal system resolves the instrumental dissonance posed by aid funded programs to combat inequality in a federation

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

the integration of child tax credits and welfare evidence from the national child benefit program abstract in 1998 the canadian government introduced a new child tax credit the innovation in the program was its integration with social assistance welfare some provinces agreed to subtract the new federally paid benefits from provincially paid social assistance partially lowering the welfare wall other provinces did not integrate benefits providing a quasi experimental framework for estimation we find large changes in social assistance take up and employment in provinces that provided the labour market incentives to do so in our sample the integration of benefits can account for between 19 and 27 of the decline in social assistance receipt between 1997 and 2000

efficient estimation of hedonic inverse input demand systems this article is concerned with efficient estimation of characteristics demand we derive and estimate an inverse input demand system for quality characteristics by using 172 946 observations over 881 trading days in the icelandic fish auctions an improved estimation method based on an expanded random coefficient model is suggested as an alternative to the currently used two stage method of brown and rosen the estimates demonstrate the improved efficiency of the suggested method a number of empirical results emerge including a general increase in the demand for quality the purpose of hedonic price analysis is to determine how the price of a unit of a commodity varies with its characteristics that is to estimate the hedonic price function some recent examples of the estimation of hedonic price functions are nerlove combris lecocq and visser and mcconnell and strand however theory predicts that shifts in supply or demand affect the implicit price relationships between the overall price of the good and its individual characteristics and so we need to estimate the underlying demand and supply functions for the characteristics rosen developed a two stage method for analyzing hedonic markets in the first stage of this method the hedonic price function is estimated and in the second stage a system of demand and supply functions for characteristics is estimated using the shadow prices of the characteristics from the first stage as variables brown and rosen showed that this procedure could yield estimates of demand and supply functions that are mere transformations of the coefficients in the hedonic function they suggested the currently used two stage method using data from multiple markets this method utilizes the within market variation to iden

vulnerability seasonality and poverty in ethiopia most studies examining the dynamics of welfare have found large fluctuations in consumption over relatively short periods suggesting substantial short run movements in and out of poverty the consequence is that cross section poverty research may not be able to identify the poor in this study we explore this short run variability further we use a data set on a panel of 1450 households in different communities in rural ethiopia surveyed thrice over 18 months on average year to year poverty is very similar however we find high variability in consumption and poverty over the seasons and year by year econometric analysis suggests that consumption is affected by idiosyncratic and common shocks including rainfall and household specific crop failure while households respond to seasonal incentives related to changing labour demand and prices the results imply that a larger number of households are vulnerable to shocks than implied by the standard poverty statistics while some of the non poor in the

welfare impacts of improved chickpea adoption a pathway for rural development in ethiopia we analyse the impact of improved chickpea adoption on welfare in ethiopia using three rounds of panel data first we estimate the determinants of improved chickpea adoption using a double hurdle model we apply a control function approach with correlated random effects to control for possible endogeneity resulting from access to improved seed and technology transfer activities to instrument for these variables we develop novel distance weighted measures of a household s neighbours access to improved seed and technology transfer activities second we estimate the impact of area under improved chickpea cultivation on household income and poverty we apply a fixed effects instrumental variables approach where we use the predicted area under cultivation from the double hurdle model as an instrument for observed area under cultivation we find that improved chickpea adoption significantly increases household income while also reducing household poverty finally we disaggregate results by landholding to explore whether the impact of adoption has heterogeneous effects adoption favoured all but the largest landholders for who the new technology did not have a significant impact on income overall increasing access to improved chickpea appears a promising pathway for rural development in ethiopia s chickpea growing regions

a cure for discrimination affirmative action and the case of california s proposition 209 proposition 209 enacted in california in 1996 and made effective the following year ended state affirmative action programs not only in education but also for public employment and government contracting this paper uses cps data and triple difference techniques to take advantage of the natural experiment presented by this change in state law to gauge the labor market impacts of ending affirmative action programs employment among women and minorities dropped sharply a change that was nearly completely explained by a decline in participation rather than by increases in unemployment this decline suggests that either affirmative action programs in california had been inefficient or that they failed to create lasting change in prejudicial attitudes

stochastic wealth dynamics and risk management among a poor population we use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern ethiopia to study stochastic wealth dynamics among a poor population although covariate rainfall shocks plainly matter household specific factors including own herd size account for most observed variability in wealth dynamics we find no support for the tragedy of the commons hypothesis past studies may have conflated costly self insurance with stocking rate externalities biophysical shocks move households between multiple dynamic wealth equilibria the lowest suggesting a poverty trap according to nonconvex path dynamics these findings have broad implications for development and relief strategies among a poor population vulnerable to climatic shocks a vast economic literature on risk management rests explicitly or implicitly on the classic friedmanite permanent income hypothesis studies of portfolio management consumption smoothing social insurance and the like all depend on the canonical assumption that stochastic income realisations are drawn from a stationary income distribution leading to consumption smoothing off a stable asset base the possibility of asset accumulation connects this literature to the immense literature on the theory and empirics of economic growth

new estimates of labour supply elasticities for married women in canada 1996 2005 in this article we estimate income and substitution labour supply and participation elasticities for canadian married women using data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1996 2005 we use the canadian tax and credit simulator ctacs and detailed information on the structure of income at the household level to compute the marginal tax rates faced by each individual we then use these marginal tax rates to compute net own wage spouse wage and nonlabour income we show how the magnitude of the estimated elasticities varies depending on whether net or gross wages and income are used in the estimation procedure and quantify biases caused by using average tax rates instead of marginal tax rates finally because marginal tax rates vary significantly over the sample we use quantile regressions to compare elasticities at different points of the hours distribution overall our results show that public policies now have on average less scope for influencing hours of work than 10 years ago howev

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs