rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

marriage bequest and assortative matching in rural ethiopia abstract this article examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage using detailed data from rural ethiopia we find that assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner for first unions assets brought to marriage are positively associated with parents wealth indicating that a bequest motive affects assets at marriage parental wealth affects the inheritance of neither groom nor bride sibling competition from brothers affects grooms inheritance but sisters have no effect the marriage market is a major conduit for rural and gender inequality although avenues do exist for couples to accumulate wealth over their life cycle

impact of access to credit on labor allocation patterns in malawi summary this paper uses data from the malawi financial markets and household food security survey to examine the impact of gendered access to credit on labor allocation patterns within the household the paper corrects for potential endogeneity of access to credit in the estimations access to credit relies on the credit limit concept thus an individual has access to credit from a particular source if he she is able to borrow a positive amount from that source results suggest that the impact of access to credit depends upon both the gender of the recipient and whether it is formal or informal credit

specific experience household structure and intergenerational transfers farm family land and labor arrangements in developing countries data from indian rural household survey was used to test th hypothesis that the coexistence in traditional rural societies of extended intergenerational families infrequent land sales and high reliance on family members as farm laborers is the result of the economic advantages which accrue from the knowledge gained by farming a particular ploy of land over a long period of time the land specific experience of elderly members of a intergenerational household who farmed the land as a child and then as an adult are expecially critical in adverse weather years most previous investigators attributed the existence of multigenerational households the use of family members rather than hired laboreds and the infrequency of land sales to deficiencies in the market i e labor market imperfections and an absence of capital insurance and asset markets in the present investigations these same characteristics are viewed as having an economic advantages a model for estimating the contribution of the experience of the elderly household members to agricultural profits was developed and applied to data from a 3 year panel study of 2900 indian rural farm households the data was collected between 1968 71 by the national council of applied economic research the survey collected information on farm profits farm inputs demographic characteristics and the effects of weather conditions on profits a major limitation of the study was a lack of information on the duration of land ownership age of household members was substituted as a proxy for duration of ownership findings were consistent withe the hypothesis in poor agricultural years gross returns for households which contained an elderly household member were greater than the gross returns for comparable households which did not contain an elderly member the economic advantages of specific knowledge embodied in the experienced elderly farmer were comparable to the economic advantages which accrued to households whose members were more educated the hypothesis cannot fully explain the existence of intergenerational families since there is a relatively large proportion of such families among nonfarm families in many countries including india findings suggest that intergenerational families may provide for more occupational diversity and thereby reduce income risks the specific experience hypothesis has policy implications if technological changes are introduced the value of specific experience may be lost and the frequency of intergenerational households may decline the hypothesis may also explain why farmers are reluctant to agree to land redistribution and consolidation schemes this reluctance may disappear after sufficient technological change has occurred

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

women don t run election aversion and candidate entry to study gender differences in candidate emergence we conduct a laboratory experiment in which we control the incentives potential candidates face manipulate features of the electoral environment and measure beliefs and preferences we find that men and women are equally likely to volunteer when the representative is chosen randomly but that women are less likely to become candidates when the representative is chosen by an election this difference does not arise from disparities in abilities risk aversion or beliefs but rather from the specific competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections thus we find evidence that women are election averse whereas men are not election aversion persists with variations in the electoral environment disappearing only when campaigns are both costless and completely truthful

decomposing intergenerational income elasticity the gender differentiated contribution of capital transmission in rural philippines summary using longitudinal data from rural philippines we decompose intergenerational income elasticity ige into five distinct pathways intergenerational transmissions of health education land and spouse education capital plus residual correlation in productivity intergenerational human capital transmissions from mothers are stronger than those from fathers maternal education is the parental capital most strongly associated with ige while naive ige estimates are indistinguishable for sons and daughters the pathways that generate these results differ strikingly for sons ige is entirely explained by parent to child capital transmission by contrast strong income correlation exists between daughters and parents even after controlling for parent and child capital endowments

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

is women s ownership of land a panacea in developing countries evidence from land owning farm households in malawi our analysis of a rich representative household survey for malawi where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist suggests that in matrilineal societies the likelihood of high value crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned by males while the income generated from high value crop production decreases with the amount of land owned by females and the cultivation of high value crops increases household welfare the policy implication is that facilitating female ownership of assets through informal and formal institutions does not on its own increase welfare when appropriate complementary resources and institutions are absent

control and ownership of assets within rural ethiopian households this article investigates how the control and devolution of productive assets are allocated among husband and wife theory predicts that bargaining power within marriage depends on the division of assets upon divorce and on control over assets during marriage using detailed household data from rural ethiopia we show that assets brought to marriage ownership of assets control within marriage and disposition upon death or divorce are only partly related productive resources are controlled by the household head disposition upon death or divorce only loosely depends on individual ownership during marriage but control is associated with larger claims upon divorce assets brought into marriage have little impact on disposition upon death but matter in case of divorce

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

optimally differentiated carbon prices for unilateral climate policy abstract economic thought on climate policy as an instance of environmental regulation is strongly influenced by the principle of a uniform carbon price economists acknowledge that this principle breaks down in a second best world with other distortions such as taxes and market power in domestic and international markets however systematic analysis of this point in the economic climate policy literature is scarce in the present paper a computable general equilibrium cge set up is chosen in order to examine what pattern of differentiated carbon prices emerges as optimal in a second best world the cge model worldscan which is considered to be representative of the class of models routinely used for numerical climate policy analysis produces three main results first the optimal pattern of carbon prices is highly differentiated ranging from almost prohibitive taxes to high subsidies with a range of more than 1700 euros per ton of co 2 second the welfare gain from switching from a uniform price to optimally differentiated prices is enormous equivalent to a 27 emission reduction for free third the most important drivers of carbon price differentiation are market power in export markets as well as taxes on consumption intermediate inputs and domestic output this shows that carbon price differentiation cannot be dismissed as a policy option lightly however before translating these findings into concrete policy advice the relevant features of modelling pre existing distortions in cge models need close revision

do competitive workplaces deter female workers a large scale natural field experiment on job entry decisions an important line of research using laboratory experiments has provided a new potential reason for gender imbalances in labour markets men are more competitively inclined than women whether and to what extent gender differences in attitudes toward competition lead to differences in naturally occurring labour markets remains an open question to examine this we run a natural field experiment on job entry decisions where we randomize almost 9000 job seekers into different compensation regimes by varying the role that individual competition plays in setting the wage and the gender composition we examine whether a competitive compensation regime by itself can cause differential job entry the data highlight the power of the compensation regime in that women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings yet there are important factors that attenuate the gender differences including whether the job is performed in teams whether the position has overt gender associations and the age of the job seekers we also find that the effect is most pronounced in labour markets with attractive alternative employment options furthermore our results suggest that preferences over uncertainty can be just as important as preferences over competition per se in driving job entry choices

empowering women inheritance rights female education and dowry payments in india this paper examines the impact of gender progressive reforms to the inheritance law in india on women s outcomes despite stipulating that daughters would have equal shares as sons in ancestral property i find that the reform failed to increase the actual likelihood of women inheriting property instead parents appear to be gifting their share of land to their sons in order to circumvent the law however parents also appear to be compensating their daughters for such disinheritance by giving them alternative transfers in the form of either higher dowries or more education following the reform

carbon abatement and international spillovers carbon abatement policies in large open economies affect both the allocation of domestic resources and international market prices a change in international prices implies an indirect secondary burden or benefit for all trading countries based on simulations with a large scale computable general equilibrium model of global trade and energy use we show that international spillovers have important welfare implications for carbon abatement policies designed to meet exogenous emission reduction targets we present a decomposition of the total welfare effect of carbon abatement policies into a primary domestic market effect at constant international prices and a secondary international spillover impact as a result of changes in international prices this decomposition reveals the extent to which domestic abatement costs are increased or decreased as a result of the impact of carbon abatement on international prices

the effect of women s bargaining power on child nutrition in rural senegal summary we examine how women s bargaining power affects child nutritional status using data from rural senegal in order to correct for the potential endogeneity of women s bargaining power we use information on a mother s ethnicity relative to that of the community she resides in order to construct an arguably exogenous exclusion restriction while standard ols estimates suggest that if a mother has more bargaining power her children will have a better nutritional status our iv estimates indicate that the true impact is underestimated if the endogeneity of bargaining power is not taken into account

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

higher price lower costs minimum prices in the eu emissions trading scheme this paper examines the introduction of a price floor in an emissions trading system ets when some emissions are regulated outside of the ets we theoretically characterize the conditions under which a price floor enhances welfare using a numerical simulation model of the european union we find that moderate minimum prices in the eu ets can reduce the costs of eu climate policy by up to thirty percent we also find that due to tax interaction effects the optimal minimum price in the eu ets should be about four times higher than the average marginal abatement cost in non ets sectors this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

the family as an incomplete annuities market families can self insure against uncertain dates of death through implicit or explicit agreements with respect to consumption and interfamily transfers interfamily transfers need have nothing to do with altruistic feelings they may simply reflect risk sharing behavior of completely selfish family members although family annuity markets are incomplete even small families can substitute by more than 70 percent for perfect market annuities given adverse selection and transaction costs family risk pooling may be preferred to public market annuities in the absence of public annuities these risk sharing arrangements provide powerful incentives for marriage and family formation

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

gender and competition at a young age gender gaps may be observed in a variety of economic and social environments one of the possible determining factors is that men are more competitive than women and so when the competitiveness of the environment increases the performance of men increases relative to that of women we test this hypothesis in a field study conducted with 9 year old children running on a track they first run alone and then in pairs over a short distance with different gender composition of the pairs the results support the hypothesis that performance in competition varies according to gender when children ran alone there was no difference in performance in competition boys but not girls improved their performance this finding relates to the discussion regarding single sex schools the outcomes of examinations in a mixed sex school can show a gender gap in favor of boys even when this gap does not reflect actual abilities girls who are as talented as boys will end up performing worse just because they are not as competitive and will not achieve as high scores in examinations as boys

effects of carbon taxes in an economy with prior tax distortions an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre existing taxes first we examine the extent to which costs of a u s carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes such use of revenues significantly reduces but does not eliminate the overall policy costs the positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes we also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax s costs to the level of pre existing taxes for any given use of revenues welfare costs rise significantly with pre existing tax rates indicating that models disregarding pre existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives

the formation of risk sharing networks this paper examines the formation of risk sharing networks in the rural philippines we find that geographic proximity possibly correlated with kinship is a major determinant of mutual insurance links among villagers age and wealth differences also play an important role in contrast income correlation and differences in occupation are not determinants of network links reported network links have a strong effect on subsequent gifts and loans gifts between network partners are found to respond to shocks and to differences in health status from this we conclude that intra village mutual insurance links are largely determined by social and geographical proximity and are only weakly the result of purposeful diversification of income risk the paper also makes a methodological contribution to the estimation of dyadic models

schooling search and spouse selection testing economic theories of marriage and household behavior the implications of the economic theories of marriage and of household fertility behavior are tested in a framework in which educational investment marital search and marital matches are responsive to marriage market conditions and the personal traits of individual agents some of which are unobserved by the econometrician implications are also derived and tested for the effects of longevity attractiveness preferences and labor and marriage market conditions on schooling marriage age and spouse choice the empirical results indicate that inattention to heterogeneity and martial selection leads to a false rejection of the economic theory of marriage but to a false acceptance of the value of time fertility hypothesis

procrastinating reform the impact of the market stability reserve on the eu ets abstract we study the impact of the market stability reserve msr on price and emission paths of the eu ets from 2019 onwards the msr will adjust the number of allowances auctioned as a function of the size of the surplus i e in times of a large surplus it shifts the issue date of allowances into the future in a perfectly competitive allowance market the msr only affects price and emission paths if the baseline equilibrium becomes unfeasible if the msr is binding prices increase in the short run but drop in the medium run relative to the baseline the msr increases price variability if uncertainty over future allowance demand is resolved while there is a surplus the long run cap is unaffected by both the msr and overlapping climate policies this contrasts the eu s objectives of improving the resilience of the eu ets and increasing synergies with overlapping climate policies

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

birth order and the intrahousehold allocation of time and education this paper develops a model of intrahousehold allocation with endogenous fertility which captures the relationship between birth order and investment in children it shows that a birth order effect in intrahouse hold allocation can arise even without assumptions about parental preferences for specific birth orders of children or genetic endowments varying by birth order the important contribution is that fertility is treated as endogenous a possibility that other models of intrahousehold allocation have ignored the implications of the model are that children with higher birth orders that is who are born later have an advantage over siblings with lower birth orders and that parents who are inequality averse will not have more than one child the model furthermore shows that not taking account of the endogeneity of fertility when analyzing intrahousehold allocation may seriously bias the results the effects of a child s birth order on its human capital accumulation are analyzed using a longitudinal

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

extending the sectoral coverage of an international emission trading scheme in a model inspired by the eu emissions trading scheme non cooperative countries allocate their emissions to internationally trading and non trading sectors each country is better off with trading than without and aggregate welfare is maximized with all sectors in the trading scheme we analyze the effects of extending the sectoral coverage of the trading scheme in a two country model with quadratic abatement costs if only the original trading sector is asymmetric between countries the welfare change is always positive and the same in both countries if the original and additional trading sectors are asymmetric one country might lose but there is an aggregate welfare gain if the original trading sector and the non trading sector are asymmetric both countries always gain

economic interpretations of intergenerational correlations science itself for example see galton s 1869 study of the eminence of relatives or his 1889 analysis of the heights of parents and children but extensive use of economic theory to interpret these correlations is much more recent using basic economic concepts such as supply demand investment incentives missing markets and so on theorists hope to explain how and why status is correlated across generations economic theory might provide a unified treatment of a variety of socioeconomic indicators such as earnings income occupation or wealth or it might predict how taxes subsidies and economic regulation affect intergenerational mobility and the operation of markets however while the subject matter earnings consumption wealth occupa tion is clearly interesting to economists it could nonetheless be the case that beyond basic questions of measurement economic theory has not improved our understanding of intergenerational mobility goldberger 1989 is quite explicit in this contention by emphasizing the distinction between genes and environment and by using statistical theory as its main analytical tool the paper by samuel bowles and herbert gintis in this issue implicitly concurs with goldberger we take this challenge very seriously what characterizes an economic approach to mobility while biologists and bowles and gintis distinguish endowments and investments by their source genetic versus environmental factors one focus of economic theorists is motiva

combining price and quantity controls under partitioned environmental regulation abstract this paper analyzes hybrid emissions trading systems etss under partitioned environmental regulation when firms abatement costs and future emissions are uncertain we show that hybrid policies that introduce bounds on the price or the quantity of abatement provide a way to hedge against differences in marginal abatement costs across partitions price bounds are more efficient than abatement bounds as they also use information on firms abatement technologies while abatement bounds can only address emission uncertainty using a numerical stochastic optimization model with equilibrium constraints for the european carbon market we find that introducing hybrid policies in eu ets reduces expected excess abatement costs of achieving targeted emission reductions under eu climate policy by up to 89 we also find that under partitioned regulation there is a high likelihood for hybrid policies to yield sizeable ex post cost reductions

parental preference heterogeneity and human capital inequality abstract in this article i provide an empirical account of the human capital investment behavior of parents in the face of endowment differences among siblings the data set used contains a three wave panel of 4 030 individuals the article presents a rare case in which endowments are measured explicitly health endowments are estimated from dynamic health production functions while educational endowments are obtained from test scores the simple score of the standard raven s colored progressive matrix cpm test is used to measure educational endowments i use estimation procedures that combine an instrumental variables method with panel data estimators to control for endogeneity and heterogeneity the results suggest that parents compensate for initial differences in health but reinforce initial educational differences among siblings hence an educational subsidy aimed at reducing inequality may end up reinforcing the inequality that might exist in the absence of such subsidy when parents invest mor

economic and mechanical models of intergenerational transmission the author critically examines gary beckers attempt to integrate the theory of income distribution intragenerational differences with the theory of mobility intergenerational differences in an economic model of the family he assesses beckers claims of distinctiveness integration explanatory power and surprise and arrives at a rather skeptical view of the contribution that the core of microeconomics has made to this study of the family a reply by becker is included pp 514 8 excerpt

emissions trading systems with cap adjustments abstract emissions trading systems etss with fixed caps lack provisions to address systematic imbalances in the supply and demand of permits due to changes in the state of the regulated economy we propose a mechanism which adjusts the allocation of permits based on the current bank of permits the mechanism spans the spectrum between a pure quantity instrument and a pure price instrument we solve the firms emissions control problem and obtain an explicit dependency between the key policy stringency parameter the adjustment rate and the firms abatement and trading strategies we present an analytical tool for selecting the optimal adjustment rate under both risk neutrality and risk aversion which provides an analytical basis for the regulator s choice of a responsive ets policy

combining price and quantity controls to mitigate global climate change abstract uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently and leads to divergent welfare consequences although most of the debate on global climate change policy has focused on quantity controls due to their political appeal this paper argues that price controls are more efficient simulations based on a stochastic computable general equilibrium model indicate that the expected welfare gain from the optimal price policy is five times higher than the expected gain from the optimal quantity policy an alternative hybrid policy combines both the political appeal of quantity controls with the efficiency of prices using an initial distribution of tradeable permits to set a quantitative target but allowing additional permits to be purchased at a fixed trigger price even sub optimal hybrid policies offer dramatic efficiency improvements over otherwise standard quantity controls for example a 50 trigger price per ton of carbon converts the 3 trillion expected loss associated with a simple 1990 emission target to a 150 billion gain these results suggest that a hybrid policy is an attractive alternative to either a pure price or quantity system

the income earned by women impacts on welfare outcomes abstract this paper provides an updated review of the evidence on income pooling across household members income pooling is one of the main predictions of the unitary model of the household new studies come to much the same conclusion as do past studies income pooling and the unitary model are rejected the paper then looks beyond the mere rejection of the unitary model and explores some of the issues that arise first what is the progress in testing the restrictions imposed by non unitary models of the household second what are the implications of rejection of the unitary model for policy and program design finally what are some of the challenges faced by programs and policies that internalize the rejection of income pooling in terms of impact evaluation

land inheritance and market transactions in uganda studies on the role of nonmarket land transactions remain limited this paper addresses two questions is land inheritance driven by underdeveloped land markets how does land inheritance influence land disposal and acquisition we use a switching regression model on household data from rural uganda we find that the initially landless or near landless households due to little or no land inheritance obtain land through land markets while those that are land rich dispose of land through land sales and bequests the results suggest that a process of land equalization is unfolding within the sample

dowry and intrahousehold bargaining evidence from china this paper analyzes the relationship between a woman s intrahousehold bargaining position and her welfare within marriage using household data from rural china simultaneity problems are overcome by using dowry to proxy for bargaining position omitted variable bias is addressed by using grain shocks in the year preceding marriage as an instrument for dowry instrumented dowry positively impacts numerous measures of a wife s welfare including household purchases the time allocation of household members and the woman s satisfaction with life offering strong evidence in support of collective models of the household

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

land inheritance and schooling in matrilineal societies evidence from sumatra abstract this paper explores statistically the implications of the shift from communal to individualized tenure on the distribution of land and schooling between sons and daughters in matrilineal societies based on a sumatra case study the inheritance system is evolving from a strictly matrilineal system to a more egalitarian system in which sons and daughters inherit the type of land which is more intensive in their respective work effort while gender bias is either non existent or small in land inheritance daughters tend to be disadvantaged with respect to schooling the gender gap in schooling however appears to be closing for the generation of younger children

testing among models of intrahousehold resource allocation households are the locus for much economic decision making households function as producers investors in human and physical capital managers of risk and as consumers many resources are allocated within households and the effects of many policies depend on the dynamics of household decision making for example household decisions about allocating food among individual household members may determine who benefits from programs to improve health nutrition or welfare in many microeconomic studies the household is treated as an individual for analytical purposes in other words it is assumed that a household acts as a single entity with a single set of preferences recently however a number of economists have recognized that households are sites of conflict as well as cooperation and have begun to use new classes of models to explain how resources are allocated among household members this literature has especially improved our understanding of households in which income is not completely pooled in such a setting standard household models may offer misleading conclusions about the effects of policies on individual household members i this paper goes beyond recent surveys of intrahousehold issue by explicitly examining the assumptions predictions and empirical implications of different intrahousehold models in particular it analyzes empirical tests that distinguish among competing models by clarifying the similarities and differences among alternative models this paper also clarifies what has actually been demonstrated and what has not been demonstrated by previous empirical studies in so doing the paper points to specific topics in need of further research this paper is organized as follows section 2 analyzes the assumptions and predictions of each of the five main classes of intrahousehold resource allocation models section 3 describes empirical tests of these assumptions along with an analysis of empirical work that has been generated sections 4 and 5 discuss the questions that remain unanswered and directions for future research

gender property rights and natural resources abstract attention to gender differences in property rights can improve the outcomes of natural resource management policies and projects in terms of efficiency environmental sustainability equity and empowerment of resource users although it is impossible to generalize across cultures and resources it is important to identify the nature of rights to land trees and water held by women and men and how they are acquired and transmitted from one user to another the paper particularly examines how the shift from customary tenure systems to private property in land trees and water has affected women the effect of gender differences in property on collective action and the implications for project design

why women don t run experimental evidence on gender differences in political competition aversion abstract women s underrepresentation in leadership positions has been well documented but the reasons behind it are not well understood we carry out a field experiment to test a prominent theory about the source of the gender gap in leadership ambition women s higher aversion to competitive environments using politics as a context for our study we employ two distinct subject pools highly politically active individuals and workers from an online labor market we find that priming individuals to consider the competitive nature of politics has a strong negative effect on women s interest in political office but not on men s interest hence significantly increasing the gender gap in leadership ambition

the economic effects of climate change greenhouse gas emissions are fundamental both to the world s energy system and to its food production the production of co2 the predominant gas implicated in climate change is intrinsic to fossil fuel combustion specifically thermal energy is generated by breaking the chemical bonds in the carbohydrates oil coal and natural gas and oxidizing the components to co2 and h2o one cannot have cheap energy without carbon dioxide emissions similarly methane ch4 emissions an important greenhouse gas in its own right are necessary to prevent the build up of hydrogen in anaerobic digestion and decomposition one cannot have beef mutton dairy or rice without methane emissions climate change is the mother of all externalities larger more complex and more uncertain than any other environmental problem the sources of greenhouse gas emissions are more diffuse than any other environmental problem every company every farm every household emits some greenhouse gases the effects are similarly pervasive weather affects agriculture energy use health and many aspects of nature which in turn affects everything and everyone the causes and consequences of climate change are very diverse and those in low income countries who contribute least to climate change are most vulnerable to its effects climate change is also a long term problem some greenhouse gases have an atmospheric life time measured in tens of thousands of years the quantities of emissions involved are enormous in 2000 carbon dioxide emissions alone and excluding land use change were 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide tco2

women s empowerment in agriculture what role for food security in bangladesh summary using a nationally representative survey from bangladesh we examine the relationship between women s empowerment in agriculture measured using the women s empowerment in agriculture index and per capita calorie availability dietary diversity and adult body mass index bmi accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment we find that increases in women s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level overall household wealth education and occupation are more important than women s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male bmi suggest that intrahousehold trade offs may exist

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

gender competitiveness and career choices gender differences in competitiveness have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for gender differences in education and labor market outcomes we examine the predictive power of a standard laboratory experimental measure of competitiveness for the later important choice of academic track of secondary school students in the netherlands although boys and girls display similar levels of academic ability boys choose substantially more prestigious academic tracks where more prestigious tracks are more math and science intensive our experimental measure shows that boys are also substantially more competitive than girls we find that competitiveness is strongly positively correlated with choosing more prestigious academic tracks even conditional on academic ability most important we find that the gender difference in competitiveness accounts for a substantial portion about 20 of the gender difference in track choice

control of resources bargaining power and the demand of food evidence from progresa abstract i use a structural model of households to recover how much resources each individual controls in the context of the mexican progresa program i find that the eligibility to receive the cash transfers induces a redistribution of resources from the father to both the mother and children although the mother is the one benefiting the most with these information i compute individual poverty rates and quantify to what extent the program reduces within household inequality i also combine these measures to construct a proxy for women s bargaining power and using causal identification techniques i estimate its direct effects on household demand for food exploiting random assignment of the cash transfers as an instrumental variable for the treatment of interest i show that mothers having majority control of household resources relative to fathers increase food consumption as a share of the household budget by 6 5 8 3 i use these estimates to argue that by knowing i the distribution of pre program resources inside the household and ii how much influence each decision maker can have on the desired policy outcome a policymaker can improve the cost effectiveness of a cash transfer program by targeting the cash to resource shares in addition to gender

rationality in psychology and economics the task i shall undertake here is to compare and contrast the concepts of rationality that are prevalent in psychology and economics respectively economics has almost uniformly treated human behavior as rational psychology on the other hand has always been concerned with both the irrational and the rational aspects of behavior in this paper irrationality will be mentioned only obliquely my concern is with rationality economics sometimes uses the term irrationality rather broadly e g becker 1962 and the term rationality correspondingly narrowly so as to exclude from the domain of the rational many phenomena that psychology would include in it for my purposes of comparison i will have to use the broader conception of psychology one point should be set immediately outside dispute everyone agrees that people have reasons for what they do they have motivations and they use reason well or badly to respond to these motivations and reach their goals even much or most of the behavior that is called abnormal involves the exercise of thought and reason freud was most insistent that there is method in madness that neuroses and psychoses were patients solutions not very satisfactory solutions in the long run for the problems that troubled them the assumption that actors maximize subjective expected utility economic rationality supplies only a small part of the premises in economic reasoning and that often not the essential part the remainder of the premises are auxiliary empirical assumptions about actors utilities beliefs expectations and the like making these assumptions correctly requires an empirically founded theory of choice that specifies what information decision makers use and how they actually process it this behavioral empirical base is largely lacking in contemporary economic analysis and supplying it is essential for enhancing the explanatory and predictive power of economics

intrahousehold inequalities in child rights and well being a barrier to progress this paper uses unicef s multiple indicators cluster surveys cross country data to shed light on unequal investments in the wellbeing of children boys and girls within the household the paper proposes a new methodology to measure the extent of gender intrahousehold inequality and its contribution to overall levels of inequality using an l theil index decomposition the individual and joint distribution of inequality in four key indicators of child wellbeing is analyzed stunting birth registration school attendance and time spent on work and chores working hours in the search for evidence of gender bias evidence from various separate county studies had shown that the direction of the gender bias is not universal such conclusion holds when using a consistent methodology and comparable cross country datasets this paper shows that disparities inside households do not follow the same bias toward one or the other gender in all countries and the direction of the bias is not the same across indicators of wellbeing while progress in improving child wellbeing has occurred in many countries inequalities remain intrahousehold inequalities might still be considered a priority in an agenda focused on closing these progress gaps

alternative approaches to cost containment in a cap and trade system we compare several emissions reduction instruments including quantity policies with banking and borrowing price policies and hybrid policies safety valve and price collar using a dynamic model with stochastic baseline emissions the instruments are compared under the design goal of obtaining the same expected cumulative emissions across all options based on simulation analysis with the model parameterized to values relevant to proposed us climate mitigation policies we find that restrictions on banking and borrowing including the provision of interest rates on the borrowings can severely limit the value of the policy depending on the regulator chosen allowance issuance path although emissions taxes generally provide the lowest expected abatement costs a cap and trade system combined with either a safety valve or a price collar can be designed to provide expected abatement costs near those of a tax but with lower emissions variance than a tax consistently a price collar is more cost effective than a safety valve for a given expected cumulative emissions outcome because it encourages inexpensive abatement when abatement costs decline

income distribution in rice growing villages during the post green revolution periods the philippine case 1985 and 1998 this paper aims to examine changes in household income sources and its impact on household income distribution in the post green revolution periods in 1985 and 1998 in the rural philippines we found that there has been a structural shift of household income away from farm in favor of nonfarm labor income sources this finding indicates that rural development is being led by nonfarm sectors such a shift has resulted in an increase in household income inequality as the distribution of nonfarm income has become less equal over time and was markedly more unequal than that of farm income in 1998

gender differences in land inheritance schooling and lifetime income evidence from the rural philippines this article examines the difference in lifetime incomes arising from parental preferences in the allocation of land inheritance and investments in schooling between sons and daughters in the rural philippines sons are preferred with respect to land inheritance receiving 0 15 additional hectares of land while daughters are treated more favourably in schooling investments receiving 1 5 more years of schooling however differences in both current and life cycle incomes between sons and daughters are insignificant this suggests that filipino parents allocate intergenerational transfers to equalise incomes among their children without sacrificing efficiency

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

differentiated carbon prices and the economic cost of decarbonization employing a numerical general equilibrium model with multiple fuels end use sectors heterogeneous households and transport externalities this paper examines three motives for differentiated carbon pricing in the context of swiss climate policy fiscal interactions with the existing tax code non hbox co 2 related transport externalities and social equity concerns interaction effects with mineral oil taxes reduce carbon taxes on motor fuels and transport externalities increase them we show that the cost effective overall carbon tax on motor fuels should be lower than the one on thermal fuels this is found in spite of the fact that pre existing taxes on motor fuels are well below our estimate of the transport externality per unit of transport fuel consumption differentiating taxes in favor of motor fuels yields only slightly more equitable incidence effects among households suggesting that equity considerations play a minor role when designing differentiated carbon pricing policies

the effects of risk on education in indonesia abstract we study the effects of risk and uncertainty on education in indonesia households that face more uncertainty and that have limited or no access to formal insurance will have a higher motive for self insurance and this may have adverse consequences for investment in child education a key contribution of the article is to decompose risk into village and household level components and to estimate whether they have different effects on education we find no evidence of household risk affecting child education however there is evidence that village risk adversely affects investment in education