the role of ignorance in the emergence of redistribution abstract our study investigates the emergence of redistribution societies when individuals vote on distribution rules with their feet the choice of a distribution rule is a strategic decision since individuals differ in the productivity of their investments and hence total income depends on the types of individuals who have chosen the same distribution rule in our laboratory experiment we find that compared to full information the amount of redistribution increases if individuals face uncertainty about their productivity at the time they choose a distribution rule moreover we find a coexistence of libertarian and redistributive societies as well as imperfect segregation for all degrees of uncertainty so that heterogeneous redistribution societies turn out to be sustainable throughout

individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

testing for employer monopsony in turn of the century coal mining isolated company towns are often cited as likely examples of labor monopsony this article tests for monopsony power by estimating inverse labor supply elasticities using a county level panel dataset on nonunion west virginia coal mining from 1897 to 1932 the model specification incorporates dynamics in such a way that an estimate of the gap between marginal revenue product and the wage can easily be computed as a weighted average of short and long run inverse elasticities modest estimated short run inverse elasticities and very small long run inverse elasticities imply that coal operators enjoyed little if any monopsony power over their workers

welfare magnet hypothesis fiscal burden and immigration skill selectivity in this paper we investigate the effect of welfare state generosity on the difference between skilled and unskilled migration rates and the role of mobility restriction in shaping this effect we utilize the free labor movement within the european union plus norway and switzerland eur and the restricted movement from outside the eur in order to compare the free migration regime to the restricted migration regime we find strong support for the magnet hypothesis under the free migration regime and the fiscal burden hypothesis under the restricted migration regime even after controlling for differences in educational quality and returns to skills in source and host countries

just luck an experimental study of risk taking and fairness choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society this paper reports the results of the first experiment to our knowledge to study fairness views about risk taking specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes we find that even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities most favor some redistribution ex post many participants also make a distinction between ex post inequalities that reflect differences in luck and ex post inequalities that reflect differences in choices these findings apply to both stakeholders and impartial spectators

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

a little fairness may induce a lot of redistribution in democracy we use a model of self centered inequality aversion suggested by fehr and schmidt 1999 to study voting on redistribution we theoretically identify two classes of conditions when an empirically plausible amount of fairness preferences induces redistribution through referenda we test the predictions of the adapted inequality aversion model in a simple redistribution experiment and flnd that it predicts voting outcomes far better than the standard model of voting assuming rationality and strict self interest

choosing justice in experimental democracies with production we examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task produce income and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of the distributive principle particularly for subjects who participate in choosing the principle participation in discussion choice and production increases subjects convictions regarding their preferences for these subjects especially recipients of transfers productivity rises significantly over the course of the experiments no such effect is evident for subjects who do not participate in setting the regime under which they are to labor the results implications for questions of democratic participation and the stability of income support programs are drawn

monopsony power in the market for nurses estimates are presented of the inverse elasticity of supply of nursing services to the individual hospital a quantity which is a natural measure of employer market power the estimates corresponding to employment changes taking place over one year are quite high in the neighborhood of 0 79 and even for changes taking place over three years are substantial in the neighborhood of 0 26 the estimates do not significantly differ for hospitals in major metropolitan areas and do not depend very sensitively on the assumed form of the oligopsony equilibrium this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

individual preferences for political redistribution what drives people s support of governmental reduction of income inequality we employ data from a large international survey in order to evaluate the explanatory power of three competing forces referred to as the homo oeconomicus effect the public values effect and the social rivalry effect the empirical analysis reveals that at the aggregate level all three effects play a significant role in shaping individual preferences for political redistribution attitudes of citizens in formerly socialist countries turn out to differ from those of western citizens in a systematic way 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the elasticity of labor supply at the establishment level monopsonistic wage setting power requires that the supply of labor directed toward individual establishments is upward sloping this study utilizes institutional features to identify the supply curve the elasticity of labor supply is estimated using data for the norwegian teacher labor market in a period where the only variation in the wage level was determined centrally and with information on whether there is excess demand or not at the school level in fixed effects models the supply elasticity faced by individual schools is estimated to about 1 4 and is in the range 1 0 1 9 in different model specification

classic or new monopsony searching for evidence in nursing labor markets the market for registered nurses rns is often offered as an example of classic monopsony while a new monopsony literature emphasizes that firm labor supply is upward sloping independent of market structure using data from multiple sources we explore the relationship between nursing wages in hospitals and measures of classic and new monopsony wage level analysis fails to provide support for classic monopsony the relative wages of rns in 240 u s labor markets being largely uncorrelated with hospital system concentration longitudinal analysis shows nursing wages declining with increases in hospital concentration we interpret these results as providing support for classic monopsony effects in the short run but question whether wage effects are sustained in the long run no relationship is found between nursing wages and a new monopsony measure of mobility but support for new monopsony is found for women elsewhere in the labor market rns display greater interemployer mobility than do women or men in general two conclusions follow first upward sloping labor supply need not imply monopsonistic outcomes second absent more compelling evidence nursing should not be held up as a prototypical example of monopsony classic or new

the effect of the minimum wage on the fast food industry using a longitudinal survey of fast food restaurants in texas the authors examine the impact of recent increases in the federal minimum wage on a low wage labor market less than 5 of fast food restaurants were using the new youth subminimum wage in july august 1991 even though the vast majority paid a starting wage below the new hourly minimum wage immediately before it became effective although some restaurants increased wages beyond the level needed to comply with higher minimum wages in both 1990 and 1991 those federal minimum wage increases greatly compressed the distribution of starting wages in the texas fast food industry two findings at variance with conventional predictions are that 1 employment increased more in those firms likely to have been most affected by the 1991 minimum wage increase than in other firms and 2 price changes were unrelated to mandated wage changes

meritocracy egalitarianism and the stability of majoritarian organizations we gratefully acknowledge support from the severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev 2011 0075 barbera and bevia acknowledge support from grants consolidated group c eco2008 04756 and feder and sgr2014 515 ponsati acknowledges support from grants eco2012 37065 and sgr2009 1142

measuring future grandparents preferences for equality and relative standing individuals aversion to risk and inequality and their concern for relative standing are measured through experimental choices between hypothetical societies it is found that on average individuals are both fairly inequality averse and have a strong concern for relative income the results are used to illustrate welfare consequences based on a utilitarian swf and a modified crra utility function it is shown that the social marginal utility of income may then become negative even at income levels that are far from extreme

is there monopsony in the labor market evidence from a natural experiment recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market however there is little direct empirical support for these models we use an exogenous change in wages at department of veterans affairs va hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market we estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic with short run elasticity around 0 1 we also find that non va hospitals responded to the va wage change by changing their own wages

redistribution and market efficiency an experimental study abstract we study the interaction between competitive markets and income redistribution that reallocates unequal pre tax market incomes away from the rich to the poor majority in one setup participants earn their income by trading in a double auction da with exogenous zero or full redistribution in another setup after trading they vote on redistributive tax policies in a majoritarian election with two competing candidates this results in virtually full redistribution even when participants have the opportunity to influence taxes by transferring money to the candidates we find that the high redistribution reduces trading efficiency but not as much as predicted if market participants trade randomly this is because rather than capitulating to the much lower trading incentives many participants respond to redistribution by asking and bidding more conservatively in the da and in this way help to prevent further efficiency losses

assessing the importance of tiebout sorting local heterogeneity from 1850 to 1990 this paper argues that long run trends in geographic segregation are inconsistent with models where residential choice depends solely on local public goods the tiebout hypothesis we develop an extension of the tiebout model that predicts as mobility costs fall the heterogeneity across communities of individual public good preferences and of public good provision must weakly increase given the secular decline in mobility costs these predictions can be evaluated using historical data we find decreasing heterogeneity in policies and proxies for preferences across i a sample of u s municipalities 1870 1990 ii all boston area municipalities 1870 1990 and iii all u s counties 1850 1990

shortage or surplus economic and noneconomic approaches to the analysis of nursing labor markets the current health care debate creates a sharp contrast between economic and noneconomic approaches to resource allocation many economists believe that resorting to cost containment measures will lead to shortages in health care delivery the definition of and response to such shortages will be critical components of the debate shortages are not new they have characterized the health care labor market for decades 8 11 there are strong differences between the economic and noneconomic views of shortages however medical professionals define shortages in two ways a needbased approach and a ratio technique the former identifies the number of professionals needed to perform certain tasks based on the judgment of a medical professional the latter compares the current professional population ratio to a projected future ratio and identifies a difference as a shortage 2 a variant of the latter is the one used by the office of shortage designations which identifies health professional shortage areas u s policy has been to increase supply by subsidizing the training of medical personnel if they subsequently work a period in the shortage area the economic approach is quite different a shortage exists when quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied at the market price economists analyze the pricing mechanisms of the marketplace and allow for both the substitution of other inputs and technological change 3 in certain circumstances such as if monopsony characterizes the market supply side policies aimed at increasing the supply of medical personnel through federal educational subsidies might worsen the problem this paper shows the differences in outcomes between the two different approaches using the market for nurses as an example we develop an economic model to identify shortage areas and compare this with that derived from the medical literature and used by the federal government

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

a review of the wind power developments in pakistan abstract pakistan is among the 10 countries that face the worst energy crisis of the world as the country struggles with a number of financial political and social issues the transition from a conventional fuels based economy to a green economy is not an easy one pakistan has been blessed with immense potential of clean renewable sources of solar wind and biomass but they have not been exploited yet renewable energy technology sector has not penetrated the energy mix and is currently an emerging market this paper highlights the steps the country has taken in the past and the steps that are being taken at present to emerge out of the prevailing energy crisis when even the most urban areas suffer from power outages of 12 h per day until 2009 no single grid interconnected wind farm existed but now the situation has changed considerably and wind farms contributing to the national grid are a reality now three grid interconnected farms have been inaugurated and many others are in pipeline the national policy regarding wind power systems has recently changed after unexpected setbacks to ongoing projects this paper reviews the developments in the wind power sector of the country and lists some suggestions that can help improve the wind power penetration in the national energy mix