smoking drinking and income in an effort to increase understanding of the alcohol income puzzle the finding that drinking appears to lead to higher income this paper presents maximum simulated likelihood estimates of a system of limited dependent variables governing smoking and drinking patterns and income with all else held constant moderate drinking is associated with 10 percent higher income and heavy drinking associated with 12 percent higher income than drinking abstention smoking is associated with larger effects on income than drinking single equation estimates suggest smokers earn 8 percent less than nonsmokers and the smoking penalty rises to 24 percent after correcting for endogeneity

residual load renewable surplus generation and storage requirements in germany abstract i examine the effects of increasing amounts of fluctuating renewable energy on residual load which is defined as the difference between actual power demand and the feed in of non dispatchable and inflexible generators i draw on policy relevant scenarios for germany and make use of extensive sensitivity analyses whereas yearly renewable surplus energy is low in most scenarios analyzed peak surplus power can become very high decreasing thermal must run requirements and increasing biomass flexibility substantially reduce surpluses i use an optimization model to determine the storage capacities required for taking up renewable surpluses allowing curtailment of 1 of the yearly feed in of non dispatchable renewables would render storage investments largely obsolete until 2032 under the assumption of a flexible power system further restrictions of curtailment as well as lower system flexibility strongly increase storage requirements by 2050 at least 10 gw of storage are required for surplus integration of which a sizeable share is seasonal storage results suggest that policy makers should work toward avoiding surplus generation in particular by decreasing the must run of thermal generators concerns about surpluses should not be regarded as an obstacle to further renewable expansion the findings are also relevant for other countries that shift toward fluctuating renewables

similarities and convergence in g 7 cycles this paper examines the properties of g 7 cycles using a multicountry bayesian panel var model with time variations unit specific dynamics and cross country interdependences we demonstrate the presence of a significant world cycle and show that country specific indicators play a much smaller role we detect di erences across business cycle phases but apart from an increase in synchronicity in the late 1990s find little evidence of major structural changes we also find no evidence of the existence of an euro area specific cycle or of its emergence in the 1990s

u s and canadian industrial production indices as coupled oscillators abstract this paper uses ozaki s 1985 variable amplitude coefficient model to explore the impact of different types of dynamical linkages coupling between the indices of industrial production for the u s and canada empirical analysis reveals that for each country the requisite lag structure extends for up to six years and that the coupling linkages are functions of lagged changes in growth rates incorporating these linkages leads to an increased degree of oscillation in the equilibrium paths a marginal improvement in stability and somewhat greater synchronization between the two series the out of sample forecasts for each series are improved by the coupling

what price drug use the contribution of economics to an evidence based drugs policy abstract this paper presents a review of the recent economics literature in the area of illicit drug use particular attention is paid to the economics of addiction and the rational addiction model the welfare economics framework for analysing the social costs of drug use and the attempts that have been made by economists to evaluate recent or proposed policy interventions a dominant theme in this review is the problem of poor data availability this is particularly true when it comes to implementing the rational addiction model but it is also apparent in the literature on estimating the costs of illicit drug use to society as a whole one of the main conclusions of this review is that until recently public policy has not been particularly influenced by research carried out by economists it is not clear whether this is because economists have had to grapple with inadequate data and hence their conclusions are couched in uncertainty or whether it is because drugs researchers have assumed a very limited role for economists in their analysis

a new index of financial conditions we use factor augmented vector autoregressive models with time varying coefficients and stochastic volatility to construct a financial conditions index that can accurately track expectations about growth in key us macroeconomic variables time variation in the models parameters allows for the weights attached to each financial variable in the index to evolve over time furthermore we develop methods for dynamic model averaging or selection which allow the financial variables entering into the financial conditions index to change over time we discuss why such extensions of the existing literature are important and show them to be so in an empirical application involving a wide range of financial variables

the potential of decentralized power to heat as a flexibility option for the german electricity system a microeconomic perspective abstract one fundamental challenge of the german energy transition for the electricity market is the growing imbalance between inflexible generation and generally inelastic load against this background we investigate the future potential of decentralized power to heat p2h as an additional demand side flexibility option for the german electricity system precisely we analyze the case of hybrid systems where conventional gas and oil condensing boiler systems are equipped with an electric heating rod in contrast to previous approaches we set our focus on the economic incentives at household level only if the switch to a p2h hybrid system can reduce individual heating expenses significantly a considerable number of these systems will be installed for this purpose we implemented an integrated approach combining three distinct simulation modules first a stochastic simulation of the electricity spot market prices in 2020 was conducted second average heat load profiles were generated based on a standard bottom up analysis both results were then fed into an optimization model calculating the cost minimizing paths of heat generation at household level during the year 2020 the simulated annual savings prove modest as long as household electricity prices are not heavily reduced through political influence

trade finance specialization and synchronization i investigate the determinants of business cycle synchronization across regions the linkages between trade in goods financial openness specialization and business cycle synchronization are evaluated in the context of a system of simultaneous equations the main results are as follows i specialization patterns have a sizable effect on business cycles most of this effect is independent of trade or financial policy but directly reflects differences in gdp per capita ii a variety of measures of financial integration suggest that economic regions with strong financial links are significantly more synchronized even though they also tend to be more specialized iii the estimated role of trade is closer to that implied by existing models once intra industry trade is held constant the results obtain in a variety of data sets measurement strategies and specifications they relate to a recent strand of international business cycle models with incomplete markets and transport costs and on the empir

the morning after alcohol misuse and employment problems using a rich recent and nationally representative longitudinal survey specifically designed to examine alcohol use and associated problems we investigate the effects of alcohol misuse on a series of understudied and perhaps less common employment problems such problems include being fired or laid off from a job sustained unemployment and conflicts with a supervisor and or co worker after controlling for time invariant omitted variables via fixed effects estimation we find evidence that three measures of alcohol misuse are significantly related to employment problems the results offer new information on the potential adverse labour market effects of alcohol misuse and shed light on potential mechanisms through which alcohol misuse may impact intensive labour supply and or wages

do drinkers know when to say when an empirical analysis of drunk driving this paper presents empirical evidence that an individual s decision to drive while drunk is negatively affected by the expected full price of driving drunk the analysis usa a unique data set containing information on self reported drunk driving matched to state level drunk driving policies as well as to state excise taxes on beer these are hypothesized and found to affect drunk driving further we find interesting racial differences but surprisingly small differences by gender in the effect of socioeconomic and policy variables on drunk driving propensities

sharing a ride on the commodities roller coaster common factors in business cycles of emerging economies fluctuations in commodity prices are an important driver of business cycles in small emerging market economies emes this paper documents how these fluctuations correlate strongly with the business cycle in emes a commodity sector is then embedded into a multi country emes business cycle model where exogenous fluctuations in commodity prices follow a common dynamic factor structure and coexist with other driving forces the estimated model assigns to commodity shocks 42 percent of the variance in income of which a considerable part is linked to the common factor a further amplification mechanism is a spillover effect from commodity prices to risk premia

trade integration and business cycle convergence is the relation robust across time and space in this paper we investigate the relationship between trade intensity and the business cycle correlation using a panel data set taken from 24 countries over the period 1959 2003 most previous studies did not account for the possibility that the business cycle correlation may be influenced by unobservable country pair specific effects our estimates using both fixed and random effects methodologies suggest that trade intensity and the business cycle correlation are positively related to one another however detailed investigation shows that this relationship exists mainly for the european countries

measuring world business cycles using kalman filtering and dynamic factor analysis the authors decompose aggregate output consumption and investment for the g7 countries into factors that are 1 common across all countries and aggregates 2 common across aggregates within a country and 3 specific to each individual aggregate in quarterly data for the period 1970 through 1993 fluctuations in all aggregates contain world and country specific common components that are both statistically significant and quantitatively important the authors find that the world and country specific common components play different roles in different business cycle episodes for each of the seven countries and that either may be dominant during a particular episode copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the impact of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment in england in this study we provide evidence on the effect of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment in england to do this we use samples of employees from the health survey for england between 1992 and 1996 we find that owing to the endogenous nature of alcohol consumption ols estimates may provide a biased picture of the impact of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment using various sets of instrumental variables we find positive and significant returns to moderate levels of drinking for male and female employees which drop off rapidly as consumption increases

an investigation of regime shifts in uk commercial property returns a time series analysis the random walk hypothesis vis a vis asset price suggests that prices traded in a market cannot be predicted based on historical information employing unsecuritized uk commercial property returns we analyse this hypothesis by investigating regime shifts or multiple changes in persistence in the series our results uncover regime shifts in both the aggregate and sector specific data specifically the shifts are less frequent in the industrial sector compared to the office retail and aggregate returns data we highlight some implications for academics practitioners and regulators

the production of functionality by the elderly a household production function approach this paper extends becker s model of the household production function of human capital to the production of elderly functionality in this model elderly functionality is produced with the direct inputs of assistive devices personal assistance and nutritional intake education endowment variables like genetic endowment and sex and health conditions like stroke determine the production function environment data from the survey of asset and health dynamics among the oldest old ahead are used to estimate a production function of bathing functionality using a two stage estimation procedure in the first stage input demands for the endogenous functionality inputs are estimated recognizing health heterogeneity the results suggest that reverses in functionality caused by age and health conditions can be partially compensated for by the use of assistive devices like grab bars and bathing equipment secure nutritional intake and moderate alcohol consumption however non inputs like chronic healt

overview of the special issue on policy implications of and lessons from the global financial crisis this paper reviews the special issue policy implications of and lessons from the global financial crisis and its themes global liquidity and the use of international reserves real and financial economic patterns before and during the global financial crisis

tacking stock of the eu power target model and steering its future course abstract the european union took more than 20 years to start defining a common market design for its internal electricity market a european power target model and a further 10 years to fully implement it meanwhile the reference generation set of that model has shifted from ccgt burning gas to res plants transforming intermittent natural resources could the existing eu target model continue to work well for the short term operation and long term investment if not can the existing eu institutions easily produce an res resilient new power target model

on the sources of business cycles in the g 7 abstract this paper examines sources of cyclical movements in output inflation and the term structure of interest rates in the g 7 it employs a novel identification approach which uses the sign of the theoretical cross correlation function in response to shocks to catalog orthogonal disturbances we find that demand shocks are the dominant source of output and inflation fluctuations in several of the g 7 countries the proportion of term structure variability explained by different structural sources does not depend on the horizon apart from the us and canada structural shocks are nearly uncorrelated across countries

the emergence of regional business cycle in africa a reality or myth a bayesian dynamic factor model analysis this paper examines the evolution and the underlying forces of the business cycle co movements among seven african a 7 countries over the period 1970 2016 these countries accounted for over 60 of regional gdp have abundant natural resources access to the global capital market and widely viewed as potential drivers of regional or african business cycle we model the national business cycle using real output consumption and investment we employ a dynamic factor model to decompose fluctuations in these macro variables into a regional country specific and idiosyncratic components using bayesian methods we also analyse the relative importance of some notable drivers of business cycle fluctuations found in the literature we find that the idiosyncratic component is dominating cyclical fluctuations in the a 7 countries while country specific and regional factors play a negligible role suggesting the inexistence of a common regional cycle despite deepening intra african trade among the driving variables the terms of trade shocks exert greater influence on the a 7 business cycle while exchange rate movements and changes in money supply explain sizeable fluctuations in consumption and investment in most of the a 7 countries shocks associated with changes in relative domestic oil prices monetary and fiscal policies cause large output fluctuations

a framework to evaluate security of supply in the electricity sector security of electricity supply soes has become a major concern for regulators and policymakers over the last decade however most work focusses either more generally on energy security or on a single fuel we develop a comprehensive but flexible framework to assess the soes for a single jurisdiction taking into the account the specificities of electricity this framework has two aims i provide a snapshot of the situation to understand current weaknesses and determine what actions are required ii capture the evolution over time to evaluate progress and identify potential problems before they materialise the framework based on an extensive literature review consists of twelve dimensions that are critical for soes we develop metrics that capture the state and evolution of each dimension this framework is intended to be a management information tool for all stakeholders aimed at organising data and structuring its analysis to enable monitoring the evolution of the soes while also functioning as an early warning system by flagging potential future problems

status and perspectives of renewable energy policy and deployment in the european union what is needed to reach the 2020 targets abstract this article evaluates the status of current res deployment policies and barriers in the eu 27 member states and compares it to the required to meet the 2020 targets the evaluation relies strongly on the quantitative deployment status and policy effectiveness indicators european res deployment and policy has progressed strongly in recent years but the growth here has been mainly driven by effective policies in a small or medium number of top runner countries across europe the highest average policy effectiveness over six years was reached for onshore wind 4 2 biofuels 3 6 and biomass electricity 2 7 while in the heat sector all technologies score below 2 comparing the recent progress to the required growth for meeting the 2020 target it appears that some countries largely exceed the interim targets of the res directive 2009 28 ec despite this europe will need additional policy effort to reach the 2020 target critical success factors include implementing effective and efficient policies that attract sufficient investments reducing administrative and grid related barriers especially in currently less advanced countries upgrading the power grid infrastructure dismantling financial barriers in the heat sector realising sustainability standards for biomass and lowering energy demand through increased energy efficiency efforts

interconnections between eurozone and us booms and busts using a bayesian panel markov switching var model summary the proposed panel markov switching var model accommodates changes in low and high data frequencies and incorporates endogenous time varying transition matrices of country specific markov chains allowing for interconnections an efficient multi move sampling algorithm draws time varying markov switching chains using industrial production growth and credit spread data several important data features are obtained three regimes appear with slow growth becoming persistent in the eurozone turning point analysis indicates the usa leading the eurozone cycle amplification effects influence recession probabilities for eurozone countries a credit shock results in temporary negative industrial production growth in germany spain and the usa core and peripheral countries exist in the eurozone copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

global output growth and volatility spillovers this article examines discernable patterns of real gross domestic product gdp growth co movements across 29 countries using consistent time series data 1912 2008 of these countries only 12 are found to form three statistically significant groupings i e g6 six organization for economic co operation and development oecd european countries g4 four anglo saxon countries and g2 two major asian countries one may then conclude that inter alia geographical proximity cultural ties and the level of socio economic and financial ties among countries determine the global systematic co movements of growth rates our results indicate that any recession in the us initially engulfs other anglo saxon countries as well as g6 and g2 countries before exerting its adverse knock on effects to the rest of the world a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity mgarch model is also used to examine the transmission of gdp growth across these three groups and their corresponding vol

the decoupling of emerging economies theoretical and empirical puzzle with the growing importance of the emerging economies ees in the international scene a lively debate has begun on whether the national economic cycles are converging or the cycles of ees and advanced economies aes are becoming disconnected the so called hypothesis of decoupling of ees from the aes given the important practical implications that decoupling could have for example on the definition of national and international economic policies and on business strategies aimed at investment diversification and risk management the question kindles not only the interest of academics but also policymakers and practitioners are very interested in the issue the decoupling question has been long debated in different circles and from different points of view this survey aims to retrace the steps of this debate and to provide some suggestions for future empirical researches

international business cycles world region and country specific factors the paper investigates the common dynamic properties of business cycle fluctuations across countries regions and the world we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to estimate common components in macroeconomic aggregates output consumption and investment in a 60 country sample covering seven regions of the world the results indicate that a common world factor is an important source of volatility for aggregates in most countries providing evidence for a world business cycle we find that region specific factors play only a minor role in explaining fluctuations in economic activity we also document similarities and differences across regions countries and aggregates jel f41 e32 c11 c32

stock market volatility and international business cycle dynamics evidence from oecd economies abstract how does a surprise movement in stock market volatility affect our forecasts of future output across countries this paper studies the time series and cross sectional responses of output to variation in stock market volatility across 27 countries over 40 years controlling for a number of country specific characteristics high levels of stock market volatility are detrimental to future output growth not only after financial crises as previously emphasized in the literature but also in non crisis periods output growth and interest rates react negatively to a random shock to volatility and revert to their means quickly thereafter moreover these results are robust after controlling for economic policy uncertainty the level of financial development and the direction of the market

common and country specific fluctuations in productivity investment and the current account abstract dynamic factor analysis and kalman filtering are used to construct a measure of common economic activity for the g7 countries we find that the common fluctuations are strongly associated with movements in us investment common fluctuations have substantial impact on fluctuations in both productivity and investment in these countries but very little impact on the current account country specific investment fluctuations have a significant negative impact on the current account while country specific productivity movements have little independent effect these findings are shown to be generally consistent with the predictions of a multi country dynamic model calibrated to the empirical decomposition of productivity shocks

housing cycles and macroeconomic fluctuations a global perspective abstract this paper investigates the international spillovers of housing demand shocks on real economic activity the global economy is modeled using a global var with a novel house price data set for both advanced and emerging economies the impulse responses to an identified u s housing demand shock confirm the existence of strong international spillovers to advanced economies in contrast the response of some major emerging economies is not significantly different from zero moreover the analysis of synchronized housing demand shocks speaks in favor of the recent evidence of increased resilience of emerging economies to shocks originating in advanced economies and it also suggests that a close monitoring of housing cycles in advanced economies as well as in emerging economies should be of interest for policy makers

are correlations of stock returns justified by subsequent changes in national outputs abstract in an integrated world capital market the same pricing kernel is applicable to all securities we apply this idea to the stock returns of different countries we investigate the underlying determinants of cross country stock return correlations first we determine for a given measured degree of commonality of country outputs what should be the degree of correlation of national stock returns we propose a framework that contains a statistical model for output and an intertemporal financial market model for stock returns we then attempt to match the correlations generated by the model with measured correlations our results show that under the hypothesis of market segmentation the model correlations are much smaller than observed correlations however assuming world markets are integrated our model correlations can be matched with observed correlations

from nuclear phase out to renewable energies in the swiss electricity market abstract liberalisation and the ever larger share of variable renewable energies vres e g photovoltaic pv and wind energy affect security of supply sos we develop a system dynamics model to analyse the impact of vres on the investment decision process and to understand how sos is affected we focus on the swiss electricity market which is currently undergoing a liberalisation process and simultaneously faces the encouragement of vres and a nuclear phase out our results show that nuclear production is replaced mainly by pv and imports the country becomes a net importer this evolution points to a problem of capacity adequacy the resulting price rise together with the subsidies needed to support vres lead to a rise in tariffs in the presence of a high share of hydro the de rated margin may give a misleading picture of the capacity adequacy we thus propose a new metric the annual energy margin which considers the energy available from all sources while acknowledging that hydro storage can function as a battery this measure shows a much less reassuring picture of the country s capacity adequacy

international asset allocations and capital flows the benchmark effect this paper studies channels through which well known benchmark indexes impact asset allocations and capital flows across countries the study uses unique monthly micro level data of benchmark compositions and mutual fund investments during 1996 2012 benchmarks have important effects on equity and bond mutual fund portfolios across funds with different degrees of activism benchmarks explain on average around 70 percent of country allocations and have significant impact even on active funds benchmark effects are important after controlling for industry macroeconomic and country specific time varying effects reverse causality does not drive the results exogenous pre announced changes in benchmarks result in movements in asset allocations mostly when these changes are implemented not when announced by impacting country allocations benchmarks affect capital flows across countries through direct and indirect channels including contagion they explain apparently counterintuitive movements in capital flows generating outflows from countries when upgraded and with large market capitalization and better relative performance

the unholy trinity of financial contagion over the last 20 years some financial events such as devaluations or defaults have triggered an immediate adverse chain reaction in other countries which we call fast and furious contagion yet on other occasions similar events have failed to trigger any immediate international reaction we argue that fast and furious contagion episodes are characterized by the unholy trinity i they follow a large surge in capital flows ii they come as a surprise and iii they involve a leveraged common creditor in contrast when similar events have elicited little international reaction they were widely anticipated and took place at a time when capital flows had already subsided

when and how us dollar shortages evolved into the full crisis evidence from the cross currency swap market abstract this paper investigates when and how the us dollar shortages evolved into the full crisis in the cross currency swap market between major european currencies and the us dollar during the turmoil of 2007 2009 using the dynamic factor model with regime switching coefficients of each swap price with respect to the latent common factor the 1 year market entered the high crisis regime soon after the onset of the subprime problem in august 2007 the 10 year market entered that regime following the collapse of bear sterns in mid march 2008 financial credit spreads have significant predictive power for switches between high and low regimes

gender differences in labor market effects of alcoholism little is known about the role of specific health problems in affecting labor market productivity even less is known about gender differences in the labor market effects of such health problems current knowledge of health effects is based largely on samples composed exclusively of men a common practice in both economics and health research in the latter case even a congressional mandate to incorporate females in study samples is reputed to have had little effect patricia schroeder 1990 in this study we attempt to determine the structure of gender differences in labor market responses to alcoholism we use a relatively new data source that allows such comparisons by gender in a large community based sample previous studies have established that there are significant gender differences in labor market behavior differences in prevalence rates of alcoholism by gender are also well established it is estimated that 3 percent of females are currently suffering from alcoholism and twice that many have exhibited symptoms at some time for males the numbers are 10 and 20 percent respectively there is some medical evidence to indicate that physiologically women and men respond differently to alcohol for example a recent study suggests that women have greater vulnerability to the acute and chronic health conditions associated with alcoholism mario frezza et al 1990

emerging economies in the 2000s real decoupling and financial recoupling the paper documents an intriguing development in the emerging world in the 2000s a decoupling from the business cycle of advanced countries combined with the strengthening of the co movements in the main emerging market assets that predates the synchronized sell off during the crisis in addition the paper tests the hypothesis that financial globalization to the extent that it creates a common global investor base for emerging markets could lead to a tighter asset correlation despite the weaker economic ties while an examination of the impact of alternative financial globalization proxies does not yield conclusive results a closer look at global emerging market equity and bond funds shows that the latter indeed foster financial recoupling during downturns reflecting the fact that they trade near their respective benchmarks and respond to withdrawals by liquidating holdings across the board

are emerging market indicators of vulnerability to financial crises decoupling from global factors abstract this paper assesses the extent to which common factors underlie indicators of vulnerability to financial crises in emerging market economies emes and whether this link is changing over time we use a bayesian dynamic common factor model to estimate their common component in a sample of up to 41 countries including both developed as well as emerging economies this permits us to interpret the component in common to both of them as a global factor we introduce time variation into the model to investigate whether indicators are decoupling from global factors over time while decoupling can be observed in a few cases the exposure to global factors in most countries tends to fluctuate around the mean broadly speaking then the answer is no

the time varying characteristics of the chinese financial cycle and impact from the united states abstractalthough there have been many empirical studies about the financial cycle since the financial crisis of 2008 few have analysed the structural changes in the chinese financial cycle over ti

illicit drug use unemployment and occupational attainment in this paper we use data from the british crime survey bcs to examine the effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes we find very little evidence to support any relationship between drug use hard or soft and occupational attainment however we find compelling evidence to suggest that drug use particularly the use of opiates cocaine and crack cocaine is associated with an increased risk of unemployment regardless of age or gender

assessment of the required share for a stable eu electricity supply until 2050 power system balancing will become increasingly important to secure a reliable european energy supply as the share of intermittent supply increases e g variable generation from wind and solar pv this paper shows in a quantitative way the limitations of relying exclusively on flexibility in generation as the future shares of intermittent supply increase literature and data on intermittent supply and existing scenarios are reviewed costs related to increasing shares of intermittent supply are assessed quantifiable indicators relevant for electricity systems with a high share of intermittent supply are developed namely a flexible supply generation units that can quickly change output b balancing need which measures the needed flexibility of the power system as the difference between peak and off peak residual demand net of intermittent supply there is an externality of increasing the share of intermittent supply by increasing the power system balancing costs if the cost of integrating intermittent generation was to be limited to about 25 billion eur per year which is an addition of 24 per unit intermittent generation cost the intermittent supply share cannot reach more than 40 in the european power market the final choice of an acceptable cost increase will be a political choice

gender differences in wage losses from impairments estimates from the survey of income and program participation this article develops a model of the relationships among functional impairments work disability employment participation and wage offers the model is estimated separately for males and females with data from the 1984 survey of income and program participation using estimates of disability and wage equations we rank 25 functional impairments by severity of disability and estimate the wage penalty associated with each impairment the results show that limitations to mobility and strength are relatively more disabling for males than for females while the opposite is true for limitations to sensory capacities and appearance

adolescent alcohol use sociability and income as a young adult we use data from the national longitudinal survey of adolescent health add health to study how sociability and adolescent alcohol use impact personal income as a young adult we find that factors which enhance not only individual sociability but also social interaction at the community level are positively linked to future earnings of adolescents adolescents whose friends and friends of friends have greater sociability reap long term labour market rewards into adulthood after adjusting for individual and community sociability the effect of teenage alcohol consumption on labour market earnings as young adults is reduced our results suggest that earnings premiums associated with adolescent alcohol consumption may be partially explained by social network dynamics

transmission of the u s subprime crisis to emerging markets evidence on the decoupling recoupling hypothesis abstract we find that emerging markets appeared to be somewhat insulated from developments in u s financial markets from early 2007 to summer 2008 from that point on however emerging markets responded very strongly to the deteriorating situation in the u s financial system and real economy our regression event study focusing on 15 types of news indicates that a range of financial and real economic news emanating from the us had statistically and economically large impacts on 14 emerging markets and several news events uniformly moved markets policy measures taken in emerging markets to insulate themselves from global financial developments proved inadequate in the face of the credit crunch and decline in international trade that followed the lehman bankruptcy in september 2008

employment wages and alcohol consumption in russia 1 introductionconcerns regarding the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market productivity are well grounded if problem drinking or alcoholism is considered a disease then it may have depressant effects on labor market productivity causing reductions in employment earnings and other labor market outcomes mullahy and sindelar 1993 1996 kenkel and ribar 1994 however there is a medical literature that documents a u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease according to this literature moderate drinkers have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than do either abstainers or heavy drinkers beaglehole and jackson 1992 doll et al 1994 consistent with this evidence several economists have found a positive association between moderate drinking and earnings berger and leigh 1988 french and zarkin 1995 heien 1996 hamilton and hamilton 1997 zarkin et al 1998 macdonald and shields 2001 this article investigates the impact of alcohol consumption on employment and wages in russia the primary contributions of the article are twofold first it enhances the economic literature on the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market behavior by using data from a longitudinal survey the use of a longitudinal data set enables the estimation of a fixed effects model which helps avoid the potential bias caused by unobserved individual factors not captured in cross sectional models the use of a fixed effects model is an important extension to the literature because the data sets used in previous studies are cross sectional and usually lack adequate variables that could serve as identifying instruments to control for the endogeneity of alcohol consumption 1 furthermore the richness of the data set used in this article allows for the application of three alternative measures of alcohol consumption in the empirical analysis this is important because the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes may be sensitive to the alcohol measure that is used the second notable contribution of this article is that it provides the first empirical evidence on the association between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes in russia excessive alcohol consumption is a widespread problem in russia where per capita alcohol consumption is around 14 liters per year the world health organization who considers 8 liters to be a sign that a country has a critical consumption level for health problems quinn judge 1997 furthermore the dramatic fluctuations in mortality rates experienced in russia over the past 15 years have generated considerable attention to the potential effect of alcohol consumption on the overall health of the russian population it is important to investigate how labor market outcomes would be affected by alcohol consumption in a country which demonstrates such dramatic fluctuations in alcohol consumption and mortality consistent with the previous studies cross sectional results generally support the hypothesis of an inverse u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and wages and employment results from the fixed effect models are found to be quite different from those of cross sectional models the positive effect of alcohol consumption on employment disappears for both males and females once the individual fixed effects are controlled for the results of the wage model lend support to a small and linear return to alcohol consumption but the effects are significant only at the 10 level the fixed effects estimates are smaller in magnitude and estimated with less precision compared with cross sectional estimates section 2 reviews the previous literature section 3 discusses the conceptual issues and empirical strategy section 4 introduces the data set section 5 provides a discussion of the results and sensitivity analyses section 6 concludes the article

sources and propagation of international output cycles common shocks or transmission abstract this paper studies the generation and transmission of international cycles in a multi country model with production and consumption interdependencies two sources of disturbance are considered and three channels of propagation are compared technology disturbances which are mildly correlated across countries are more successful than government expenditure disturbances in reproducing actual data the presence of a common component to the shocks and of production interdependencies appear to be crucial in quantitatively matching the properties of the data

alcohol and earnings does drinking yield a wage premium this paper examines the relationship between alcohol consumption and earnings for prime age males wage differentials for non moderate and heavy drinkers are estimated using a polychotomous choice model which accounts for the endogenous relationship be tween drinking and earnings we find that moderate alcohol consumption leads to increased earnings relative to abstention however heavy drinking leads to reduced earnings relative to moderate drinking heavy drinkers possess flatter age earnings profiles and attain lower returns for higher education than non and moderate drinkers these results are in contrast to previous research on substance abuse which finds no earnings drop off for heavy users

employment unemployment and problem drinking the misuse of alcohol is estimated to result in enormous economic costs composed largely of reduced labor market productivity however there has been debate on this issue the purpose of this paper is to help to resolve this debate by presenting sound structural estimates of the relationship between measures of problem drinking and of employment and unemployment the analysis is based on the 1988 alcohol supplement of the national health interview survey we find that for both men and women problem drinking results in reduced employment and increased unemployment