do greens drive hummers or hybrids environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice this paper uses several california data sets to test for differences in consumption patterns between greens and browns a person s environmentalism is rarely observed in consumer data sets in california a community s share of green party registered voters is a viable proxy for community environmentalism environmentalists are more likely to commute by public transit purchase hybrid vehicles and consume less gasoline than non environmentalists

externality and literacy a note abstract kaushik basu and james foster 1998 have opened up an interesting approach to the measurement of literacy in which the phenomenon of externality has an important role to play the externality these authors examine is what one may call a material externality and they demonstrate that reckoning such an externality in the measurement of literacy provides an instrumental justification for horizontal equity the present note elucidates this link through a specific formulation of the basu foster thesis it also suggests that apart from a material externality there is also a psychic externality to be considered the psychic externality runs in a direction somewhat orthogonal to that of the material externality postulated by basu and foster and it is shown that reckoning such an externality in the measurement of literacy provides an instrumental justification for being sensitive to levels of literacy attainment in comparisons of literacy improvements in a broad sense the note suggests

has the internet increased trade developed and developing country evidence developing countries export more to developed but not other developing countries when internet penetration is higher although this could be because internet penetration stimulates exports it could also be because trade openness encourages internet use to test the direction of causation we allow internet use to be determined endogenously using countries regulation of data services as an instrument the results suggest that access to the internet does improve export performance in developing countries although not in developed countries in other words improving internet access in a developing country will stimulate exports from that country to rich countries jel f15

increasing consumer participation rates for green pricing programs a choice experiment for south korea abstract this study examines the factors that can increase consumer participation rates in green pricing programs by conducting a choice experiment in south korea estimation results were obtained from a conditional logit conditional logit with interaction terms random parameter logit random parameter logit with correlation and individual level coefficient models a novelty of our analysis was the consideration of monetary and non monetary incentives as factors influencing consumer uptake in green pricing programs the estimation results show that increased consumer participation in green pricing programs is positively linked with green energy sources that produce fewer externalities more jobs and monetary incentives such as tax credits or green mileage however there is an inverted u shaped relationship between participation rates and the share of green electricity in total electricity supply mean willingness to pay for fuel cells is highest followed by solar and wind energy estimation from the random parameter logit with allowing for correlations among random coefficients of attributes reveals that consumers are divided into green pro environment consumers and blue growth oriented consumers green consumers prefer a higher green electricity share solar or fuel cell to wind a greater proximity of green power plants to their homes and green mileage or green parks to tax credits in comparison blue consumers favor a lower green electricity share green power plants that are far from their homes and monetary incentives rather than non monetary incentives the results of this study suggest guidelines for the design of successful green pricing programs green pricing programs that are designed with information on types of green energy sources consider the distance of power plants to consumers residences focus on the share of green electricity and incorporate monetary incentives are likely to have increased consumer participation rates

economic growth and poverty reduction measurement issues using income and non income indicators summary this paper first reviews the debate on the definition of pro poor growth and argues that a relative definition has merits when defining the state of pro poor growth while an absolute definition is most suitable when analyzing the rate of pro poor growth the second contribution is to extend the pro poor growth toolbox to non income indicators the analysis applied to bolivia shows that this extension greatly improves our understanding of the distribution of change in non income indicators of the linkages between progress in income and non income dimensions of poverty and on the incidence of progress in non income outcomes along the income distribution

deregulation consolidation and efficiency evidence from the spanish insurance industry this paper provides new information on the effects of deregulation and consolidation in financial services markets by analyzing the spanish insurance industry the sample period 1989 98 spans the introduction of the european union s eu third generation insurance directives which deregulated the eu insurance market deregulation has led to dramatic changes in the spanish insurance market the number of firms declined by 35 average firm size increased by 275 and unit prices declined significantly in both life and non life insurance we analyze the causes and effects of consolidation using modern frontier efficiency analysis to estimate cost technical and allocative efficiency as well as using malmquist analysis to measure total factor productivity tfp change the results show that many small inefficient and financially underperforming firms were eliminated from the market due to insolvency or liquidation as a result the market experienced significant growth in tfp over the sample period consolidation not only reduced the number of firms operating with increasing returns to scale but also increased the number operating with decreasing returns to scale hence many large firms should focus on improving efficiency by adopting best practices rather than on further growth

social indicators and comparisons of living standards abstract construction of an international index of standards of living incorporating social indicators and economic output typically involves scaling and weighting procedures that lack welfare economic foundations revealed preference axioms can be used to make quality of life comparisons if we can estimate the representative household s production technology for the social indicators this method is applied to comparisons of gross domestic product gdp and life expectancy for 58 countries neither gdp rankings nor the rankings of the human development index hdi are consistent with the partial ordering of revealed preference a method of constructing a utility consistent index incorporating both consumption and life expectancy is suggested

do landowners respond to land retirement incentives evidence from the conservation reserve enhancement program previous research on incentive responsivness in voluntary land retirement programs has utilized either hypothetical contingent response methods or actual aggregate enrollment data both of which suffer from potential biases in this paper we analyze program participation in the binary choice setting of the conservation reserve enhancement program crep using data from six states our results suggest that landowners react positively to the incentives that are offered and that increases in one time incentives offered at the time of signup are a more cost effective means to increase enrollment than increases in the incentives offered on an annual basis

granting preferential market access in services sequentially versus jointly with goods while most trade agreements were about goods up until 2000 many countries have been and are now adopting services provisions they do so by adding them to prior goods only agreements or by concluding new agreements jointly for goods and services this paper shows that high unilateral services trade costs deter the likelihood of joint preferential liberalization of goods and services

interrelationships between income health and the environment extending the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract this paper examines the link between the health indicators and the environmental variables for a cross section of countries widely dispersed on the economic development spectrum while environment and income are seen to have an inverted u shaped relationship environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis it is also well established that environment and health are positively related our study focuses on the implications of this for the relationship between health and income in the early phases of income growth the gains in health and the losses in environmental quality could cancel each other out and this challenges the idea that as incomes increase health would always improve to empirically analyse these issues we estimate a two stage least squares model that focuses on the impact of income and the environment on health status with environment being an endogenous variable our results show that the environmental stress variable has a significant negative effect on health status at the same time gross national product gnp levels are shown to vary positively with health status variables we find that the health gains obtained through improved incomes can be negated to a significant extent if the indirect effect of income acting via the environment is ignored research findings in this regard would be a useful policy instrument towards maximising both the environmental and health gains that come with economic growth and development

the effect of female education on fertility and infant health evidence from school entry policies using exact date of birth this paper uses age at school entry policies to identify the effect of female education on fertility and infant health we focus on sharp contrasts in schooling fertility and infant health between women born just before and after the school entry date school entry policies affect female education and the quality of a woman s mate and have generally small but possibly heterogeneous effects on fertility and infant health we argue that school entry policies manipulate primarily the education of young women at risk of dropping out of school

services trade regulation and regional integration evidence from sectoral data we use new world bank services trade restrictiveness indices stris to measure the impact of regulation on cross border services trade at the sectoral level we find that policy barriers as measured by the overall stri for each sector have a negative and significant effect on total services trade as well as trade in business and financial services the effect in other sectors is not statistically significant however disaggregating the policy data by mode produces stronger results policy restrictiveness negatively impacts trade in all sectors except wholesale and retail trade there is thus considerable evidence of cross sectoral heterogeneity in the impact of regulations in addition we find evidence of cross modal substitution in total services trade but complementarity in business financial and insurance services finally we find that regional trade agreements tend to promote trade overall and in business and financial services however the effect seems to be primarily driven by the impact of the european union

modelling health income and income inequality the impact of income inequality on health and health inequality a framework is developed to analyse the impact of the distribution of income on individual health and health inequality with individual health modelled as a function of income and the distribution of income it is demonstrated that the impact of income inequality can generate non concave health production functions resulting in a non concave health production possibility frontier in this context the impact of different health policies are considered and it is argued that if the distribution of income affects individual health any policy aimed at equalising health which does not account for income inequality will lead to unequal distributions of health this is an important development given current uk government attention to reducing health inequality

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

on measuring aggregate social efficiency abstract cross country comparisons of social indicators controlling for income and or social spending have been widely used to measure and explain social efficiency analogously to technical efficiency in production the article argues that these methods are clouded in ambiguities about what is being measured standard methods of measuring technical efficiency require assumptions that are unlikely to hold for social indicators in the context of a simple parametric model of life expectancy conditions are identified under which there will be a systematic pattern of bias in estimates of efficient public health spending

decomposing world health inequality this study explores global inequality in health status and decomposes it into within and between country inequality we rely on standardized height as our health indicator since it avoids the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity mortality and life expectancy it also avoids measurement problems associated with using monetary variables such as income or expenditure across time or place to compare welfare our calculation of world height inequality indicates that in contrast with similar research on income inequality within country variation is the source of most inequality rather than the differences between countries

the eurasian landbridge and china s belt and road initiative demand supply of services and public policy rail links between china and europe are typically analysed in the context of china s belt and road initiative focusing on china s economic rise and the implications for international relations this paper argues that establishment of the china europe landbridge predated the bri and has been market driven as service providers identified and responded to demand for efficient freight services along pre existing railway lines governments role was trade facilitating that is reducing delays and costs at border crossing points rather than investing in hard infrastructure service providers responded by linking european and asian value chains e g in automobiles and electronic goods and reducing costs for traders shipping between china and europe the eurasian landbridge provides a case study of servicification as a component of increased trade in the twenty first century

the distribution of health and income a theoretical framework a general framework is developed to analyse variations in the distribution of population health where individual health is modelled as a function of income conditional upon the level of another factor such as health related behaviour results are derived for the response of the level of average health in a population and the degree of health inequality to alternative health promotion policies and equiproportionate income growth qualitative results are shown to depend on characteristics of the individual health production functions and the frequency distribution of the other factor at each income level these results are independent of the distribution of income the discussion focuses on the implications of these results for contemporary research into inequalities in health and income

investing in health the long term impact of head start on smoking i introduction there is a strong evidence that early childhood socioeconomic conditions have long term economic consequences reinforcing and sustaining disparities over the lifecourse 1 this observation provides a compelling rationale for public investments targeted toward disadvantaged children to expand opportunities and break the cycle of poverty head start is the principal federally funded program through which the united states invests directly in the human capital of disadvantaged preschool children since its inception in 1965 as part of president lyndon johnson s war on poverty head start has provided services to more than 23 million preschool children in 2005 there were more than 900 000 children enrolled in the program at a total cost of 6 8 billion office of head start 2006a to achieve its overall goal of increasing the school readiness of participants head start provides a comprehensive set of services including education health nutritional and social services to participants and their families research has shown that head start has positive impacts on participants human capital both in childhood and in adulthood 2 in recent years questions have arisen about the relative effectiveness of head start and whether it should be continued in its present form u s department of health and human services 2003 much of the debate has centered on the magnitude and persistence of the cognitive achievements of head start participants however given the link between education and health 3 and the comprehensive nature of head start with substantial health components one could reasonably expect it to have a favorable impact on participants health as well as education if significant health effects were found to persist into adulthood this in itself could alter the evaluation of head start and have important implications for the associated policy debate smoking is the leading preventable cause of mortality in the united states mokdad et al 2004 it is linked to an extensive list of diseases chaloupka and warner 2000 and imposes large economic costs on society centers for disease control and prevention 2002 tobacco use generally begins before individuals graduate high school and as an addictive behavior youth smoking is linked to adult smoking u s department of health and human services 1994 adolescents from low socioeconomic status households with low academic achievement are more likely to use tobacco products u s department of health and human services 1994 thus comprehensive development programs targeted toward disadvantaged youths that are designed to improve child outcomes have the potential to influence smoking improve health over the lifecourse and reduce the social costs from smoking suggestive evidence that head start might influence the smoking behavior of participants comes from evaluations of other preschool programs that targeted low income children participants in both the carolina abecedarian preschool program and the high scope perry preschool program were much less likely to smoke as adults barnett and masse 2007 belfield et al 2006 in this article we assess the impact of head start participation on adult smoking behavior using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid and its supplements on early childhood education and health we examine the cohort of adults above age 21 in 1999 whose age is low enough to have potentially participated in a head start program following currie and thomas 1995 and garces thomas and currie 2002 we employ a sibling based model to control for unobservable family characteristics that may affect smoking or the decision to participate in head start our results show that head start participation significantly influences smoking related behavior we estimate that if head start participants had not enrolled in the program these individuals would be approximately 20 percentage points more likely to smoke cigarettes beyond age 25

regulatory barriers to trade in services a new database and composite indices this paper presents new data on services trade regulation for 46 countries in 22 services sectors over 6 years 2014 2019 the data consist of qualitative information which is scored and weighted to produce composite indices they cover market access and national treatment restrictions with respect to all gats modes of supply but also behind the border domestic regulation such as licensing non transparent regulatory procedures and competition policy the database is updated annually the trade restrictiveness indices stris are significantly correlated with services trade flows but also with the performance of the sectors subject to the restrictions including logistics performance indicators interest spreads density of atms and secure servers broadband penetration and outcomes such as legal rights and the time to resolve insolvency

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

firm heterogeneity in services trade micro level evidence from eight oecd countries this paper shows that smaller and less productive firms as well as first time exporters are overproportionally affected by services trade barriers using micro data from belgium finland germany italy japan sweden the united kingdom and the united states for these firms both the propensity to export and export volumes to less restrictive destinations are significantly higher than to more restrictive destinations in contrast policy barriers measured by the oecd services trade restrictiveness index stri do not affect export decisions of the largest most productive and experience services firms the pattern holds for two major modes of supply cross border services exports and foreign affiliate sales of services firms the findings are consistent with firm sorting mechanisms in trade models with heterogeneous firms and hysteresis of export participation in the presence of sunk export costs

improving human development a long run view abstract the pessimistic flavour of the human development reports appears to be in contradiction with their own numbers as developing countries fare comparatively better in human development than in per capita gdp terms this paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing a new improved human development index ihdi informed by welfare economics the ihdi is presented here alongside the united nations development programme s undp hdi for the world and its main regions since the late 19th century social dimensions in the ihdi are derived following kakwani journal of development economics 41 1993 pp 307 336 with a convex achievement function whereas a geometric average is employed to combine its dimensions longevity knowledge and income thus the ihdi does not conceal the gap between rich and poor countries and casts a much less optimistic view than the conventional undp index while it fits with the undp concern for international differences the paper s findings highlight main weaknesses in human development dimensions of present day developing countries

using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy a comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles abstract this study uses a split sample dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1574 u s residents to explore willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy under collective and voluntary payment vehicles and under government and private provision of the good we also evaluate the impact of participation expectations on stated wtp we find some evidence that when confronted with a collective payment mechanism respondents state a somewhat higher wtp than when voluntary payment mechanisms are used similarly private provision of the good elicits a somewhat higher wtp than does government provision we also find that contingent valuation responses are strongly correlated with expectations for the wtp of others our results shed light on strategic response behavior and the incentive compatibility of different cv designs and offer practical insight into u s household preferences for how to support renewable energy

why are some people healthy and others not the determinants of health of populations each topical chapter in this volume crystallizes the findings of a five year study under the auspices of the population health program of the canadian institute for advanced research that probed the links between social hierarchy the macroenvironmental factors in illness patterns the quality of the microenvironmental and other determinants of health in its aggregate this volume will prove essential to an understanding of the underlying public health issues for the next several decades

the impact of services trade restrictiveness on trade flows this paper uses recent oecd data on services trade restrictions stri to analyse the relationship between services trade policies and cross border trade in services a standard gravity model is en

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

health and income a robust comparison of canada and the us abstract this paper uses sequential stochastic dominance procedures to compare the joint distribution of health and income across space and time it is the first application of which we are aware of methods to compare multidimensional distributions of income and health using procedures that are robust to aggregation techniques the paper s approach is more general than comparisons of health gradients and does not require the estimation of health equivalent incomes we illustrate the approach by contrasting canada and the us using comparable data canada dominates the us over the bottom part of the bi dimensional distribution of health and income though not generally over the uni dimensional distributions of health or income the paper also finds that welfare for both canadians and americans has not unambiguously improved during the last decade over the joint distribution of income and health in spite of the fact that the uni dimensional distributions of income have clearly improved during that period

do liberal home owners consume less electricity a test of the voluntary restraint hypothesis using a unique data set that merges an electric utility s residential customer monthly electricity consumption in 2008 with household level data on demographics structure and neighborhood characteristics and the political party of registration for the head of household this paper documents that liberal households consume less electricity than observationally identical households in the absence of first best carbon pricing such voluntary restraint helps to mitigate the challenge of climate change

maximizing human development the human development index hdi is widely used as a measure of well being we examine the allocations implied by the maximization of this index using a standard growth model maximization leads to consumption excluding education and health expenditures being pushed to minimal levels it also leads to the overaccumulation of education and or health capital and possibly physical capital relative to the standard golden rule we propose an alternative specification for the hdi where consumption replaces income as a proxy for decent standard of living maximization of this alternative implies a human development golden rule which balances consumption education and health expenditure we advocate the method of optimization subject to constraints for revealing the policy implications of taking an achievement measure and its underlying philosophy seriously

changes in compulsory schooling and the causal effect of education on health evidence from germany in this paper we investigate the causal effect of years of schooling on health and health related behavior in west germany we apply an instrumental variables approach using as natural experiments several changes in compulsory schooling laws between 1949 and 1969 these law changes generate exogenous variation in years of schooling both across states and over time we find evidence for a strong and significant causal effect of years of schooling on long term illness for men but not for women moreover we provide somewhat weaker evidence of a causal effect of education on the likelihood of having weight problems for both sexes on the other hand we find little evidence for a causal effect of education on smoking behavior overall our estimates suggest significant non monetary returns to education with respect to health outcomes and not necessarily with respect to health related behavior

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

a comment on growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience by bhalla and glewwe the inaugural issue of this journal contained an article by bhalla and glewwe which addresses some problems that arise in attempting to assess the relative success or failure of policies in different countries or policy regimes bhalla and glewwe 1986 p 36 their conceptual framework contrasts two approaches to raising economic welfare the direct or basic needs approach and the indirect or economic growth approach p 61 from 1960 to 1977 sri lanka is seen as approximating the first regime while the subsequent period following the change of government in 1977 is cast as having a closer correspondence to the second the general conclusion invited by the paper is that the change in policy orientation has been for the better the evidence suggests that the post 1 977 policies have not been detrimental to equity objectives and may offer more promise than those which they replaced p 62 in what follows i will suggest that bhalla and glewwe have exceeded the interpretations which their data will support accordingly their case cannot be sustained much as one would like to have answers to the questions they raise for my own part i share the majority view that sri lanka s system of food subsidies was and to some extent remains inefficient but it is surprising to find that bhalla and glewwe also question performance in the social field between 1960 and 1977 and that they totally ignore sri lanka s current state of disruption in their optimistic prognosis

the private provision of public goods altruism and voluntary giving abstract a unique data set on exact giving by individual households for the support of a rural health care facility is used to examine the determinants of charitable giving including the role of altruism we examine whether a household s decision to give or not give and the amount it gives are influenced in the same or different ways by the household s characteristics and economic circumstances we also examine whether a household s altruistic history affects its current giving decisions

conservation from voluntary restraint to a voluntary price premium this paper investigates how concern for the environment translates into predictable patterns of consumer behavior two types of behavior are considered first individuals who care about environmental quality may voluntarily restrain their consumption of goods and services that generate a negative externality second individuals may choose to pay a price premium for goods and services that are more environmentally benign a theoretical model identifies a symmetry between such voluntary restraint and a voluntary price premium that mirrors the symmetry between environmental policies based on either quantities quotas or prices taxes we test predictions of the model in an empirical study of household electricity consumption with introduction of a price premium green electricity program we find evidence of voluntary restraint and its relation to a voluntary price premium the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical model of voluntary conservation

the effect of income growth and inequality on health inequality theory and empirical evidence from the european panel governments of eu countries have declared that they would like to couple income growth with reductions in social inequalities in income and health we show that theoretically both aims can be reconciled only under very specific conditions concerning the type of growth and the income responsiveness of health we investigate whether these conditions were met in europe in the 1990s using panel data from the european community household panel we demonstrate that i in most countries the income elasticity of health was positive and increases with income and ii that income growth was not pro rich in most eu countries resulting in small or negligible reductions in income inequality the combination of both findings explains the modest increases we observe in income related health inequality in the majority of countries

trade in services and regional trade agreements do negotiations on services have to be specific trade in services has been on a substantial positive trend since the last decades and the number of regional trade agreements rta in force has increased regularly overtime however negotiations on services remain hesitant even at the bilateral level to evaluate the impact of rtas on trade in services a general classi cation as balassa s classi cation is not exactly appropriate to go through the 211 rtas noti ed to the wto permits a data analysis and then to sort rtas according to the own level of liberalization in services of every agreement i estimate a gravity equation using panel data covering the period 1999 2007 adding time varying dummies country and time

privatization and renationalization what went wrong in bolivia s water sector summary this paper investigates the impact of water service privatization in bolivia it compares the performance of cities in which the service was privatized la paz and el alto with a city in which it is managed as a cooperative santa cruz de la sierra and one where the service is publicly provided cochabamba we find that access to water by low income consumers increased under private provision however the concessionaire failed to meet the targets stipulated in the contract the tariff increases required for full cost recovery eventually led to public outrage that forced the government to renationalize the company

the economic effects of the uk government s proposed brexit deal the focus of our analysis is on how the uk government s proposed brexit deal is likely to affect the economy first we assess how trade migration foreign direct investment productivity and contributions to the eu budget might change by reviewing current proposals against historical evidence second we use the national institute global econometric model nigem to analyse the macroeconomic effects our assessment is that trade with the eu especially in services would be more costly after brexit this would be likely to have adverse effects on living standards in the uk our central estimate is that if the government s proposed brexit deal is implemented then gdp in the longer term will be around 3 lower per head than it would have been had the uk stayed in the eu if the uk were to stay in a customs union with the eu or if the irish backstop position was to be invoked there would still be a hit to gdp per capita of 2 these estimates represent our considered view of the economic impact of the government s proposed brexit deal but they are themselves uncertain as there is no historical precedent of a country leaving a major trading block such as the eu

good and bad growth the human development reports abstract the 1996 human development report undp 1996 is about economic growth and human development in keeping with past reports in the series it emphasizes the diversity of country performance in improving human development indicators at given rates of growth this article reviews what the human development reports have said on this topic looking at how well the main messages have been supported by data and analysis and how compelling they are as a basis for public action

determinants of demand for green products an application to eco label demand for fish in europe abstract in this paper we confront the theoretical motivations of the consumption of eco friendly products and the factors influencing the european perceptions regarding the fact that fish caught using an environmentally friendly technique may carry a special label we take advantage of the recent integration of non economic elements in the microeconomic analysis of consumers behavior in order to highlight the factors leading to their demand for green products thanks to an original european survey on seafood product carried out on more than 5000 consumers we test the influence of intrinsic motivation information localization and socio economic factors on the demand for an eco label for fish our results show a significant connection between the desire for eco labeling and seafood features especially the freshness of the fish the geographical origin of the fish and the wild vs farmed origin of the fish moreover we prove the major role played by the fish price we also demonstrate that the ecological issue regarding fisheries is highly connected to consumer information intrinsic motivation and socio economic status the typical green fish consumer is a young woman well educated well informed on the state of marine resources and not very trusting of the regulation of the fisheries consumers who are aware of the importance of marine resource preservation have the same profile

how much does geography deflect services trade canadian answers we estimate geographic barriers to trade in nine service categories for canada s provinces from 1997 to 2007 with novel high quality bilateral provincial trade data the border directly reduces average provincial trade with the united states relative to interprovincial trade to 2 4 of its borderless level incorporating multilateral resistance reduces foreign trade relative to interprovincial to 0 1 of its frictionless potential geography reduces services trade some seven times more than goods trade overall surprisingly intraprovincial local trade in services and goods is equally deflected upward implying that the border increases interprovincial trade much more in services than goods

factors affecting trade in services evidence from panel data in the course of economic development nations have typically progressed through stages in which agriculture then manufacturing and finally services predominate concerns around the sustainabili

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

defining health inequality why rawls succeeds where social welfare theory fails while there has been an important increase in methodological and empirical studies on health inequality not much has been written on the theoretical foundation of health inequality measurement we discuss several reasons why the classic welfare approach which is the foundation of income inequality analysis fails to provide a satisfactory foundation for health inequality analysis we propose an alternative approach which is more closely linked to the who concept of equity in health and is also consistent with the ethical principles espoused by rawls a theory of justice harvard university press cambridge ma 1971 this approach in its simplest form is shown to be closely related to the concentration curve when health and income are positively related thus the criteria presented in our paper provide an important theoretical foundation for empirical analysis using the concentration curve we explore the properties of these approaches by developing policy scenarios and examining how various ethical criteria affect government strategies for targeting health interventions

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

policy barriers to international trade in services evidence from a new database surprisingly little is known about policies that affect international trade in services previous analyses have focused on policy commitments made by countries in international agreements but in many cases these commitments do not reflect actual policy this paper describes a new initiative to collect comparable information on trade policies for services from 103 countries across a range of service sectors and relevant modes of service delivery the resulting database reveals interesting policy patterns although public monopolies are now rare and few services markets are completely closed the authors observe numerous second generation restrictions on entry ownership and operations even in instances in which there is little explicit discrimination against foreign providers market access is often unpredictable because the allocation of new licenses remains opaque and highly discretionary in many countries across regions some of the fastest growing countries in asia and the oil rich gulf states have restrictive policies in services whereas some of the poorest countries are remarkably open across sectors professional and transportation services are among the most protected industries in both industrial and developing countries whereas retail telecommunications and even finance tend to be more open

the importance of the logistics performance index in international trade logistics and transport increasingly play a pivotal role in international trade relations the logistics performance index lpi analyses differences between countries in terms of customs procedures logistics costs and the quality of the infrastructure for overland and maritime transport the aim of this article is to analyse the impact that each of these components has on trade in emerging economies using a gravity model furthermore the study also attempts to detect possible advances in logistics in developing countries which are grouped into five regions africa south america far east middle east and eastern europe by comparing the first lpi data published in 2007 with the most recent data released in 2012 the results obtained reveal that improvements in any of the components of the lpi can lead to significant growth in a country s trade flows specifically lpi components are becoming increasingly important for international trade in many countries in africa south america and eastern europe

the internet and international trade in services the scope for growth of trade in services is vast although services currently make up over 60 percent of world production they account for only about 20 percent of world trade a primary reason why international trade in services has been limited is that the performance of many services necessitates physical contact between producers and consumers a condition that renders service provision to distant locations infeasible new technology in particular the internet provides a medium of exchange that overcomes such historical trading hurdles for many services effectively reducing transport costs from infinity to virtually nothing there is ample anecdotal evidence that the internet is having just this sort of an effect on services trade the accounting firm netlink maintains the books for 6 000 employees in reyanosa mexico from their offices in manhattan infosys of india provides softwareconsulting services to international clients including apple computers lucent technologies and microsoft a medical transcription company in south africa its receives digital recordings from abroad electronically and returns a transcribed text file the next day still the question remains as to whether electronic sharing of information is an important enough development to alter significantly the geography of service provision indeed many services need to be tailored to the consumer s needs and monitored for quality and these are likely to be more effective if the provider is close by and speaks the same language in addition in the event of a dispute resolution will be less complicated if both parties are subject to the same legal system finally there may be security concerns with allowing foreign access to some documents or systems thus for some services especially those where familiarity communication and non standardization contribute to quality the internet would not be expected to have a large impact on international trade to determine whether the internet has significantly affected international service provision in practice we estimate a general model of services trade across countries and examine whether the inclusion of data on internet penetration as measured by the number of internet hosts in a country is statistically significant overall our results offer evidence that the internet is related to growth in services trade after controlling for gdp and exchange rate movements we find that a 10 percent increase in internet penetration in a foreign country is associated with about a 1 7 percentage point increase in export growth and a 1 1 percentagepoint increase in import growth the results are robust to a number of alternative specifications

basic human needs the plateau curve abstract the satisfaction of basic human needs in developing countries follows a nonlinear curve relative to per capita income asymptotically approaching a limiting level within this general relationship some countries are more efficient than others in improving basic needs at lower per capita income levels infant mortality rates in 116 countries from 1950 to 1980 are analyzed to identify factors affecting a country s efficiency in reaching infant mortality targets relative to its gross domestic product per capita the determinants of efficiency include export structure internal distribution late development and access to education implications for development policy are discussed

poverty human development and growth an emerging consensus this paper considers several issues relevant to the debate on the extent to which poverty or development progress in general should be measured by income or by a broader set of objectives issues covered here are practical implications of the two approaches for poverty reduction efforts the impact of growth on basic social indicators and how national achievement on social indicators is best measured sri lanka and pakistan countries often cited in this debate are used as examples

rising inequalities in income and health in china who is left behind during the last decades china has experienced double digit economic growth rates and rising inequality this paper implements a new decomposition on the china health and nutrition panel survey 1991 2006 to examine the extent to which changes in level and distribution of incomes and in income mobility are related to health disparities between rich and poor we find that health disparities in china relate to rising income inequality and in particular to the adverse health and income experience of older wo men but not to the growth rate of average incomes over the last decades these findings suggest that replacement incomes and pensions at older ages may be one of the most important policy levers in combating health disparities between rich and poor chinese

do economic conditions influence environmental policy evidence from the us senate abstract this paper investigates whether economic conditions influence environmental policy by examining how policymakers voting on environmental legislation respond to changes in their state s unemployment rate the outcome of interest is a us senator s league of conservation voters score which reflects how often a senator voted for the environmentally favorable outcome on bills related to the environment in a given year i find evidence that a higher unemployment rate is associated with reduced support for environmentally favorable policies and that the estimated response is largest for republicans counterfactual estimates indicate that if each state had experienced its lowest observed unemployment rate throughout the sample then the proportion of votes taking the environmentally favorable outcome would have increased from 36 to 41

performance in living standards abstract our ultimate objective is to enhance the standard of living of our societies but the standard of living has different meanings for different people a thorough investigation of the concept of the standard of living has been made only recently by sen who defines it in terms of functioning and capabilities functioning is an achievement whereas capability is the ability to achieve the main objective of the present paper is to compare achievements levels and improvement changes in the standard of living across countries using an axiomatic approach an achievement index is derived which accomodates the view that a further increase in the standard of living of a country when it is already at a higher level signifies an achievement greater than that of another with an equal increase but from a lower base the paper also tests for the statistical relationship between indicators of the countries standards of living so derived in their capita gdp the question posed is whether the aggregate income which provides people with the means to achieve a better life can be used as proxy measure of the standard living and extent to which the country s improvement in the standard of living can be explained by the levels and changes in the per capita income the analysis presented in the paper is based on the data from 80 developing countries

schooling health knowledge and obesity the connection between schooling and health is well documented an important empirical issue that needs to be examined however is whether schooling s effects are due to individual health knowledge differences this empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator obesity since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis the results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese schooling s effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge this result may imply that schooling s effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour the result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits a

explaining demand for green electricity using data from all u s utilities abstract green electricity programs enable households to voluntarily contribute to the development of renewable electricity by purchasing green electricity through their local utility using a dataset of all utilities in the united states this paper explores the utility consumer and program characteristics that influence participation levels in green electricity as well as whether a utility chooses to offer a program among other results we find that the key determinants of program participation are the education of the consumer base and the affordability of the green electricity program our results enhance understanding of private provision of environmental public goods and could aid in ex ante evaluations of whether a green electricity program is likely to cover its administrative costs or be a cost effective way of improving environmental quality

measuring pro poor growth in non income dimensions current concepts and measurement of pro poor growth is entirely focused on the income dimension of well being this neglects non income dimensions of poverty and the multidimensionality of poverty and wellbeing in this paper we introduce the multidimensionality of poverty into the measurement of pro poor growth measurement by applying the growth incidence curve to non income indicators we develop growth incidence curves and calculate the associated ravallion chen pro poor growth measures for a range of non income indicators such as education mortality vaccinations stunting and a multidimensional wellbeing measure and are thereby able to study improvements in these dimensions of well being at various points of the distribution of those indicators as well as at various points of the income distribution this way we can determine whether improvements in non income indicators were pro poor in an absolute or relative sense we illustrate this empirically for bolivia between 1989 and 1998 and find that growth was relatively pro poor in the non income dimension results for absolute improvements are less clear

priceless the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 by the american economic association permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of american economic association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation including the name of the author copyrights for components of this work owned by others than aea must be honored abstracting with credit is permitted the author has the right to republish post on servers redistribute to lists and use any component of this work in other works for others to do so requires prior specific permission and or a fee permissions may be requested from the american economic association administrative office by going to the contact us form and choosing copyright permissions request from the menu copyright 2016 aea

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience in the important debate between the proponents of direct basic needs and indirect economic growth measures of promoting welfare sri lanka has frequently been cited as one country which has successfully pursued the direct approach it has raised living standards without much cost in terms of reduced growth this conclusion however is based on analyses which do not account for the initial conditions of the countries being compared after methodologically incorporating these concerns neither the improvement in living standards nor the 2 0 percent per capita growth rate during the period of direct policy measures 1960 78 was exceptional in contrast during the period of more indirect growth promoting policies 1977 84 i economic growth more than doubled to an average rate of 4 3 percent per capita per annum ii expenditure inequality did not significantly change iii consumption expenditures of the population and the poor generally increased and iv several living standard indicators continued to improve

green power voluntary purchases price elasticity and policy analysis abstract green power schemes offer electricity from renewable energy sources to customers for a higher price than ordinary electricity this study examines the demand characteristics of green power in australia and policies which could increase its sales a sample of 250 pooled time series and cross sectional observations was used to estimate a statistically significant elasticity of demand for green power with respect to price of 0 96 with a 95 confidence interval of 68 the wide variation in market penetration between jurisdictions and between countries for green power and the low awareness of green power found by surveys indicate that green power sales could be increased by appropriate marketing and government policies the most cost effective means to increase sales was found to be advertising campaigns although only one australian example was found in the state of victoria in 2005 it was also found that full tax deductibility of the green power premium to residential customers exemption from the goods and services tax and a tax rebate for green power are all probably less cost effective for promoting sales than direct government purchase of green power in terms of cost per unit of increased sales