focus re productivity sustainable relations both between society and nature and between the genders abstract the paper is embedded in the multiplicity of discourses concerned with a viable sustainable development of society and its economy it makes a case for a mode of economic activity geared to systematically integrating production and reproduction processes its starting hypothesis is that the persistent constantly changing and expanding crises that weigh so heavily on modern societies above all the ecological crisis and the crisis of reproductive work have their common origin in the separation of production from reproduction constitutive for industrial modernity a reformulation of the category of re productivity the idea of the unity of and at the same time the distinction between production and reproduction in the economic process could set the stage for us to review today s crisis phenomena relocalize problems and in this way to develop new solutions for them a sustainable society would be in a position to grasp and shape the economy as a re productive regulative system with economic space constituted consciously as a socioecological action space

the effect of income taxation on labor supply in the united states the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of prime age married men and women in the united states is examined using econometric methods similar to those used in the influential work of jerry hausman male labor supply is found to be relatively invariant to the net wage and virtual income in all specifications estimated the estimated impact of taxation on the labor supply of married women depends critically on the method used to estimate the labor supply function estimated net wage and virtual income elasticities are considerably larger when data on nonparticipants are included than when the estimation is conducted conditional on hours being greater than zero

bounds on elasticities with optimization frictions a synthesis of micro and macro evidence on labor supply how can price elasticities be identified when agents face optimization frictions such as adjustment costs or inattention i derive bounds on structural price elasticities that are a function of the observed effect of a price change on demand the size of the price change and the degree of frictions the degree of frictions is measured by the utility losses agents tolerate to deviate from the frictionless optimum the bounds imply that frictions affect intensive margin elasticities much more than extensive margin elasticities i apply these bounds to the literature on labor supply the utility costs of ignoring the tax changes used to identify intensive margin labor supply elasticities are typically less than 1 of earnings as a result small frictions can explain the differences between micro and macro elasticities extensive and intensive margin elasticities and other disparate findings pooling estimates from existing studies i estimate a hicksian labor supply elasticity of 0 33 on the intensive margin and 0 25 on the extensive margin after accounting for frictions

labor income responds differently to income tax and payroll tax reforms we estimate the responses of gross labor income with respect to marginal and average net of tax rates in france over the period 2003 2006 we exploit a series of reforms to the income tax and payroll tax schedules affecting individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage our estimate for the elasticity of gross labor income with respect to the marginal net of income tax rate is around 0 2 while we find no response to the marginal net of payroll tax rate the elasticity with respect to the average net of tax rate is not significant for the income tax schedule while it is close to 1 for the payroll tax schedule a plausible explanation is the existence of significant labor supply responses to the income tax schedule combined with sticky posted wages i e the gross labor income minus payroll taxes divided by hours worked finally the effect of the net of income tax rate seems to be driven by participation decisions in particular those of married women

family labor supply and the timing of cash transfers evidence from the earned income tax credit abstract this paper exploits the unique disbursement timing and benefit rules of the earned income tax credit eitc to provide new evidence on how families adjust their labor supply in response to receiving anticipated cash transfers i find that income seasonality caused by eitc receipt leads to changes in the intra year labor supply patterns of married women on average receiving a 1 000 payment significantly reduces the proportion of married women who work by 1 3 percentage points in the month when the eitc is received additionally this labor supply response is mainly driven by those who are secondary earners or liquidity constrained

the employment effects of low wage subsidies abstract low wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled but the empirical evidence on their effects is still scarce this paper examines the employment effects of a finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme which is targeted at the employers of older full time low wage workers the system s clear eligibility criteria open up an opportunity for a reliable estimation of the causal impacts of the subsidy scheme our results indicate that the subsidy system had no effect on the employment rate or wages of the eligible groups but it increased slightly working hours among those already at work

a practice approach to the institutionalization of economic degrowth the degrowth literature is rich in critical debate about the unsustainability of the growth economies and in normative envisioning of a transition it lacks analyses on actual materialization and the nature of the change required there have been calls for research that pay attention to institutional constraints and possibilities of implementing a democratic process of sustainable degrowth this paper introduces a practice approach to institutional agency as a fruitful tool for future studies and politics of degrowth the potential of this approach is demonstrated through a struggle between finnish timebanking activists and the tax authorities the cultural and institutional transition promoted by radical bottom up initiatives requires a disruption of existing institutional arrangements some of which may be very persistent and supported by defenders who want to maintain the present institutional order in the case example the authorities and politicians managed to preserve the mechanisms through which certain sanctions are associated with the non compliance of timebanking with the income tax law a practice approach to institutionalization increases our understanding of institutional persistence and makes visible forces that support the present status quo it also enhances understanding of the opposing dynamics and gives tools to engage in more effective efforts to change institutions

a structural model of multiple welfare program participation and labor supply work on estimating the labor supply effects of high marginal tax rates in welfare programs has been hindered by the difficulty of estimating the effects of participation in multiple welfare programs simultaneously the authors solve this problem by applying methods of simulation estimation to a model of labor supply and multiple program participation the results show asymmetric wage and tax rate effects with fairly large wage elasticities of labor supply but very inelastic responses to moderate changes in cumulative marginal tax rates implying that high welfare tax rates do not necessarily induce major reductions in work effort copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

sweet dreams are made of cellulose sociotechnical imaginaries of second generation bioenergy in the global debate this paper critically examines the sociotechnical imaginaries of second generation bioenergy technology in the global debate exemplified by the deliberations of international organizations special

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

the effects of time limits the eitc and other policy changes on welfare use work and income among female headed families of all of the welfare reforms that were implemented during the 1990s time limits may represent the single greatest break from past policy this paper expands on what is known about this important welfare reform measure by exploiting the predictions from grogger and michalopoulos 2003 to estimate the effects of time limits on welfare use employment labor supply earnings and income among female headed families results based on data from the march current population survey suggest that time limits have had important effects on welfare use and work accounting for about one eighth of the decline in welfare use and about 7 of the rise in employment since 1993 they have had no significant effect on earnings or income however the analysis also shows that the collective effects of other reforms have had important impacts on employment and labor supply furthermore it identifies the earned income tax credit eitc as a particularly important contributor to both the recent decrease in welfare use and t

solutions to the crisis the green new deal degrowth and the solidarity economy alternatives to the capitalist growth economy from an ecofeminist economics perspective this article deals with three approaches conceived as alternative approaches to the capitalist growth economy the green new deal degrowth and the solidarity economy ecofeminist economics has much to offer to each of these approaches but these contributions remain as of yet unrealized the green new deal largely represents the green economy which holds economic success as contingent upon the ecological restructuring of industrial production the degrowth approach more fundamentally raises questions concerning the relationship between material prosperity and individual and social well being the principles of the solidarity economy involve the immediate implementation of the principles of self determination and cooperation none of these approaches takes into account the claims of ecofeminist economics and none of them clearly view gender equity as essential to economic change the three approaches are however deeply gendered in the sense that they are implicitly based on assumptions concerning women s labor in the sphere of social reproduction this article demonstrates how each approach can be improved upon by the integration of ecofeminist economic principles in order to achieve economic change that also meets claims for gender equity

taxes and the labor market participation of married couples the earned income tax credit a distinguishing feature of recent changes to the us system of public assistance is its increasing focus on working families and reliance on the tax system to transfer dollars to needy families after a decade in near total obscurity the earned income tax credit eitc was expanded to become the largest cash transfer program for lower income families with children advocates of the eitc argue that unlike traditional welfare the credit helps promote both the values of family and work indeed empirical evidence consistent with economic theory suggests that the eitc promotes employment among eligible unmarried women with children to target benefits to lower income families however the eitc is based on family income leading to traditional welfare type disincentives for most eligible secondary earners in fact the eitc is likely to reduce overall family labor supply among married couples this paper examines the labor force participation response of married couples to eitc expansions between 1984 and 1996 the effect of the credit is estimated using both quasiexperimental and traditional reduced form labor supply models results from both models show the same qualitative conclusion that the eitc expansions reduced total family labor supply of married couples in all cases we find a decline in labor force participation by married women that more than offsets any rise in participation by their spouses while the labor force participation rate of married men increased by about 0 2 percentage points that of married women decreased by just over a full percentage point these aggregate effects mask substantial heterogeneity in the population women facing the strongest disincentives were more than 2 percentage points less likely to work after the expansions these findings imply that the eitc is effectively subsidizing married mothers to stay home and therefore have implications for the design of the program d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

interpreting the correlation between inflation and the skewness of relative prices a comment on bryan and cecchetti large literature in macroeconomics has examined how the inflation rate is related to the distribution of relative price changes this work has established a striking fact there is a strong correlation between inflation and the skewness of this distribution when inflation is high the distribution of relative price changes is typically skewed to the right when inflation is low it is skewed to the left the oil shocks of the 1970s are one example of this phenomenon inflation rose while a few goods oil products experienced especially large relative price increases but the inflationskewness correlation is not just a result of oil shock years this fact holds for many time periods and many countries e g vining elwertowski 1976 and ball mankiw 1995 for the united states amano macklem 1997 for canada de abreu lourenco and gruen 1995 for australia bryan and cecchetti 1999 argue that this fact need not be a fact at all because of small sample bias if true this is an important claim it would eliminate an apparently robust stylized fact that might otherwise hold a clue to understanding the causes or effects of inflation we are not however convinced by bryan and cecchetti s assertion our goal in this note is to explain why on its face bryan and cecchetti s claim is puzzling their paper presents a model in which there is an underlying true distribution of price changes and the observed distribution is obtained by sampling a subset of these price changes they show that the skewness of the sample distribution may be correlated with the sample mean even if there is no skewness in the population distribution this model however does not capture the reality of how price indices are constructed it is not the case that there are a large number of sectors and the government computes the cpi by sampling a small number of them instead the government measures prices in all sectors of which there may be a small or large number depending on the level of disaggregation the observed correlation of the mean and skewness is based on the full population of sectors so small sample bias does not appear to be possible because the data used to construct price indices are comprehensive one cannot avoid the conclusion that the inflation skewness correlation is a fact 1 if the idea of small sample bias is not relevant here how should one interpret the numerical simulations presented by bryan and cecchetti the substance of their argument we believe is that it is easy to explain the correlation between inflation and skewness previous authors have worked hard to explain this fact ball and mankiw 1995 propose that this correlation can be explained with menu cost models of price adjustment while balke and wynne 1996 argue that it can be explained by a multisector real business cycle model by contrast bryan and cecchetti generate the inflation skewness correlation in a much simpler model although it would be wrong to interpret their results as showing that the correlation doesn t exist one could plausibly interpret them as showing that this correlation doesn t prove anything as they put it such statistics are not useful in distinguishing sticky from flexible price setting behavior in macroeconomic models to evaluate this argument it helps to step back and review the motivation behind the ball mankiw and balke wynne theories the starting point for these authors is the classical theory of price determination central to this theory is the classical dichotomy relative prices are determined by real factors and the aggregate price level is determined by monetary factors specifically if there are n sectors in the economy there are n 1 relative prices real variables such as shifts in demand and costs in the various sectors determine these n 1 prices using any good or combination of goods as the numeraire the aggregate price level is determined by the supply and demand for money this idea is summarized by the quantity equation mv 5 py the n 1 relative prices and the price level which equals the average of all nominal prices together determine the n nominal prices in this classical model there is no obvious reason that the behavior of the aggregate price level is related to the distribution of relative prices if m v and y remain constant then p is constant and any shifts in the distribution of relative prices do not influence the price level to explain the observed inflation skewness correlation one must explain how the economy differs from this classical baseline balke and wynne offer one story for the inflationskewness correlation in their model certain shocks to the economy generate both skewness in the relative price distribution and changes in aggregate output for instance when opec raised oil prices relative prices in energy related sectors rose by 50 or more balanced by smaller relativeprice decreases in the rest of the economy this generated

degrowth taking stock and reviewing an emerging academic paradigm degrowth has evolved within a decade from an activist movement into a multi disciplinary academic paradigm however an overview taking stock of the peer refereed degrowth literature is yet missing here we review 91 articles that were published between 2006 and 2015 we find that the academic degrowth discourse occupies a small but expanding niche at the intersection of social and applied environmental sciences the discourse is shaped by authors from high income mainly mediterranean countries until 2012 articles largely constitute conceptual essays endorsed by normative claims more recently degrowth has branched out into modelling empirical assessments and the study of concrete implementations authors tend to agree in that economic growth cannot be sustained ad infinitum on a resource constraint planet and that degrowth requires far reaching societal change whether degrowth should be considered as a collectively consented choice or an environmentally imposed inevitability constitutes a major debate among degrowth thinkers we argue that the academic discourse could benefit from rigid hypotheses testing through input output modelling material flow analysis life cycle assessments or social surveys by analyzing the potentials for non market value creation and identifying concrete well being benefits the degrowth discourse could receive wider public support and contribute to a paradigmatic change in the social sciences

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

feminism ecology and the philosophy of economics abstract the contemporary discipline of economics pays little heed to either the natural environment or to the work of women a review of the literature on the historical development of western concepts of self and science shows that this is not coincidental rather than suggesting that ecological economics reinforce the identification of women with nature however feminist thought suggests that dualistic thinking about men and women humans and nature can be should be replaced with a fuller picture of human identity and knowledge

collective labor supply and welfare the paper develops a general collective model of household labor supply in which agents are characterized by their own possibly altruistic preferences and household decisions are only assumed to be pareto efficient an alternative interpretation is that there are two stages in the internal decision process agents first share nonlabor income according to some given sharing rule then each one optimally chooses his or her own labor supply and consumption this setting is shown to generate testable restrictions on labor supplies moreover the observation of labor supply behavior is sufficient for recovering individual preferences and the sharing rule up to a constant finally the traditional tools of welfare analysis can be adapted to the new setting

taxes and time allocation evidence from single women and men the classic model of becker 1965 suggests that labor supply decisions should be analyzed within the broader context of time allocation and market good consumption choices but most empirical work on policy has focused exclusively on measuring impacts on market work this paper examines how income taxes affect time allocation during the entire day and how these time allocation decisions interact with expenditure patterns using the panel study of income dynamics from 1975 to 2004 we analyze the response of single women s housework labor supply and other time to variation in tax and transfer schedules across income levels number of children states and time we find that when the economic reward to participating in the labor force increases market work increases and housework decreases with the decrease in housework accounting for approximately two thirds of the increase in market work analysis of repeated cross sections of time diary data from 1975 to 2004 shows that home production decreases substantially when market hours of work increase in response to policy changes data on expenditures from the consumer expenditure survey from 1980 to 2003 show some evidence that expenditures on market goods likely to substitute for housework increase in response to a greater incentive to join the labor force the baseline estimates imply that the elasticity of substitution between consumption of home and market goods is 2 61 the results are consistent with the becker model meanwhile single men show little response to changes in tax policy and we are able to rule out an elasticity of substitution between home and market goods for this group of more than 1 52

women nature and the social construction of economic man abstract this paper argues that the social construction economic man is the product of a hierarchical dualism in western society that has also created rational man and scientific man women and the natural world form the subordinated half of these dualisms central to this paper is the claim that this dualism is not only a cultural theoretical one but also a material one the social construction of economic man is the product of a bifurcated knowledge system and a materially divided society economic man reflects a society in which the embeddedness and embodiedness of humanity is hidden by the division of mind from body and science culture from the natural world for this reason it is not possible to incorporate women and nature into the economy through the commodity form by according them a value as price it is argued that the economic system can only exist if women and nature remain externalised as women form the bridge between an autonomous individualised man and the biological ecological underpinning of his existence central to this analysis is the distinction between social and natural biological time economic man lives in social time clock time while women are responsible for biological time this is not because women are closer to nature biology in an essential sense rather this relationship is imposed upon them by a male dominated society

energy consumption co2 emissions and economic growth an ethical dilemma in this study we examine the dynamic interrelationship in the output energy environment nexus by applying panel vector autoregression pvar and impulse response function analyses to data on energy consumption and its subcomponents carbon dioxide emissions and real gdp in 106 countries classified by different income groups over the period 1971 2011 our results reveal that the effects of the various types of energy consumption on economic growth and emissions are heterogeneous on the various groups of countries moreover causality between total economic growth and energy consumption is bidirectional thus making a case for the feedback hypothesis however we cannot report any statistically significant evidence that renewable energy consumption in particular is conducive to economic growth a fact that weakens the argument that renewable energy consumption is able to promote growth in a more efficient and environmentally sustainable way finally in analysing the case for an inverted u shaped ekc we find that the continued process of growth aggravates the greenhouse gas emissions phenomenon in this regard we cannot provide any evidence that developed countries may actually grow out of environmental pollution in the light of these findings the efficacy of recent government policies in various countries to promote renewable energy consumption as a means for sustainable growth is questioned put differently there seems to be an ethical dilemma between high economic growth rates and unsustainable environment and low or zero economic growth and environmental sustainability

the incredible shrinking elasticities married female labor supply 1978 2002 this paper demonstrates the extent to which married women s labor supply elasticities have changed over the past quarter century estimates from march current population survey data suggest that these elasticities have decreased substantially by 60 percent for the hours wage elasticity from 0 36 to 0 14 70 percent for the hours income elasticity from 0 053 to 0 015 95 percent for the participation wage elasticity from 0 66 to 0 03 and 60 percent for the participation income elasticity from 0 13 to 0 05 changing demographic characteristics explain little of the drop in these elasticities suggesting that preferences toward work have changed across birth cohorts

for love or money or both this paper explores the implications for economic analysis societal well being and public policy of the movement of care services such as child and elder care from home to market a broad empirical overview sets the stage for the argument that this process cannot be properly evaluated using only a priori judgments about the suitability of marketization the context in which markets operate is crucial and while the growth of market provision poses some risks it also offers some potential benefits

future green economies and regional development a research agenda abstractfuture green economies and regional development a research agenda regional studies the past 30 years have seen an explosion of interest and concern over the detrimental impacts of economic and industrial development despite this the environmental agenda has not featured substantially in the regional studies literature this paper explores a range of options for regional futures from a clean tech economy and the promise of renewed accumulation through to more radical degrowth concepts focused on altering existing modes of production and consumption ecological sustainability and social justice in so doing it investigates the potential role of regions as drivers of the new green economy drawing on research into sustainability transitions

water from basic need to commodity a discussion on gender and water rights in the context of irrigation abstract this paper examines the implications of changing water policies for women s water rights and access to water in irrigation systems with growing water scarcity and programs to increase the efficiency of water allocation and delivery the allocation of water rights becomes critical although women often have informal means and mechanisms to obtain and secure access to water in most systems studied there is no recognition of women s specific water needs especially for production as opposed to domestic consumption current policies to privatize and devolve management of irrigation need to increase responsiveness to specific women s water needs and interests if they are to address efficiency as well as equity concerns

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