training and employee mobility in the british private and public sectors the realization of the value of training for employees can take time as the training contributes dynamically to an extended development process this research examines the empirical returns to training in three post training situations when the employee remains in the same job and with the same employer when the employee transfers to a different job but remains with the same employer internal mobility and when the employee moves to a different employer external mobility panel data and fixed effects fe methodology are used to quantify the joint effects of in job training and mobility while minimizing the potentially biasing effect of unobserved ability in a period when public sector employment in britain was contracting sharply the short term returns to training are nonetheless greater in the public sector while the medium term returns for both public sector and private sector employees depend on remaining within sector the general specific training mix institutional influences adverse selection and the concept of transferable training all contribute to interpretation

valuing nuclear energy risk evidence from the impact of the fukushima crisis on u s house prices abstract behavioral economics suggests that individuals overweight recent unexpected and or rare events when updating beliefs this study investigates the effect of such an event the fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011 on the learning process of a local environmental risk by evaluating how perceptions of the risk of a nuclear accident are capitalized into house prices near nuclear power plants npps in the u s our results provide new evidence on the dynamics of the effect spatially the impact was concentrated in a 4 km radius around npps and temporally it peaked a half year later and dissipated one year after the crisis

assessing the impact of crop diversification on farm poverty in india summary crop diversification into high value crops hvcs can be a strategy to improve livelihood outcomes for farmers using data from a nationally representative survey we establish that households diversifying toward hvcs are less likely to be poor the biggest impact being for smallholders furthermore using continuous treatment matching we establish the relationship between degree of diversification share of area dedicated to hvc and poverty growers of hvcs need to allocate at least 50 area to hvcs to escape poverty effect of diversification on poverty is in general positive but it withers after a threshold probably because of constraints i e capital on smaller farms and labor on larger ones

the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts beatty c and fothergill s 2005 the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts regional studies 39 837 854 around 2 7 million non employed adults of working age in the uk claim sickness related benefits and the numbers have risen steeply over time the very large variation in the numbers across districts and regions points strongly to extensive hidden unemployment especially in older industrial areas affected by job losses this paper builds on two previous papers by the same authors one dealing with the theoretical framework and the other with a local case study to present wholly new estimates of the scale of the diversion across all parts of the country it also questions contemporary perceptions of the uk labour market and the validity of current approaches to re engaging sickness claimants with employment

job seeker s allowance jsa benefit sanctions and labour market outcomes in britain 2001 2014 the dominant view among british policy makers is that benefit sanctions for the unemployed who are claiming the job seeker s allowance jsa are effective at increasing flows from unemployment into sustainable employment this paper tests this theory using aggregate cross sectional data for great britain for the period may 2001 to december 2014 descriptive analysis found the relationship between sanctions and labour market outcomes was ambiguous while trends in labour market outcomes were highly correlated with labour market demand multivariate svar time series analysis controlling for labour market demand found evidence that changes in the threat and use of sanctions had a positive impact on flows into work in the short run but not in the long term and had no definitive impact on ilo unemployment at all interrupted time series analyses suggest we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the impact of introduction of a new jsa sanctions regime in october 2012 with higher financial penalties associated with being sanctioned had no impact on flows into work from jsa in britain intensifying the use of sanctions and introducing harsher penalties associated with being sanctioned has been largely ineffective at increasing flows from jsa into sustainable employment given the negative financial and social impacts of sanctions on those affected and the lack of evidence of a sustained positive impact on employment the basis for the new sanctions policy is unclear

the illusory effects of saving incentives on saving the authors evaluate research on how tax based saving incentives iras and 401 k s affect saving previous research overstates the impact of the incentives on saving by failing to account for several issues households with saving incentives have stronger tastes for saving than others saving incentives have interacted with debt nonfinancial assets financial markets and pensions and saving incentives represent pretax balances whereas taxable accounts represent posttax balances accounting for these issues essentially eliminates the impact of saving incentives on saving the authors conclude that little if any of the contributions to existing saving incentives have raised saving

formative experiences and portfolio choice evidence from the finnish great depression we trace the impact of formative experiences on portfolio choice plausibly exogenous variation in workers exposure to a depression allows us to identify the effects and a new estimation approach makes addressing wealth and income effects possible we find that adversely affected workers are less likely to invest in risky assets this result is robust to a number of control variables and it holds for individuals whose income employment and wealth were unaffected the effects travel through social networks individuals whose neighbors and family members experienced adverse circumstances also avoid risky investments

intra household gender disparity in school choice evidence from private schooling in india abstractthis paper explores gender inequality within households in the decision of private versus government school choice in india using a three period longitudinal dataset on rural households from uttar pradesh a northern state of india this paper estimates a household fixed effects model and finds that there is an intra household gender bias of 6 percentage points in private school enrolment among children aged 6 16 years contrary to the trend in overall enrolment the gender gap in private school choice is rising over time and is more pronounced in villages with a larger cost difference between private and government schooling this finding remains robust even after controlling for average school quality and considering potential endogeneity of the cost variables

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

stabilization of emissions of co 2 a computable general equilibrium assessment a multisector computable general equilibrium model is used to study economic development perspectives in norway if carbon dioxide emissions were stabilized the effects discussed include impacts on main macroeconomic indicators and economic growth sectoral allocation of production and effects on the market for energy the impact of pollutants other than carbon dioxide on emissions is assessed along with the related impact on noneconomic welfare the results indicate that carbon dioxide emissions might be stabilized in norway without dramatically reducing economic growth sectoral allocation effects are much larger a substantial reduction in emissions to air other than carbon dioxide is found yielding considerable gains in noneconomic welfare copyright 1992 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals performance evidence from the english national health service abstract this paper examines the impact of a government programme which facilitated the entry of for profit surgical centres to compete against incumbent national health service hospitals in england we examine the impact of competition from these surgical centres on the efficiency measured by pre surgery length of stay for hip and knee replacement patients and case mix of incumbent public hospitals we exploit the fact that the government chose the broad locations where these surgical centres independent sector treatment centres or istcs would be built based on local patient waiting times not length of stay or clinical quality to construct treatment and control groups that are comparable with respect to key outcome variables of interest using a difference in difference estimation strategy we find that the government facilitated entry of surgical centres led to shorter pre surgery length of stay at nearby public hospitals however these new entrants took on healthier patients and left incumbent hospitals treating patients who were sicker this paper highlights a potential trade off that policymakers face when they promote competition from private for profit firms in markets for the provision of public services

disproportional control rights and the governance role of debt we examine the governance role of debt in the context of u s based dual class ownership structures we hypothesize that the use of debt alleviates the conflict between shareholder classes by balancing the power of controlling insiders we document that dual class firms have higher leverage and a greater propensity to issue private debt they also more frequently use cash sweeps and performance based covenants dual class firms with greater agency conflicts and a greater need to access the capital market appear to rely more extensively on debt these findings are consistent with controlling insiders bonding against the agency costs associated with dual class ownership the governance role of debt is further corroborated by the valuation effect of debt for dual class companies private debt issuances trigger greater positive market reactions to the inferior dual class stock in relation to both the superior dual class stock and a matched sample of single class firms further leverage attenuates the previou

the economic impacts of climate change evidence from agricultural output and random fluctuations in weather fisher et al 2012 hereafter fhrs have uncovered coding and data errors in our paper deschenes and greenstone 2007 hereafter dg we acknowledge and are embarrassed by these mistakes we are grateful to fhrs for uncovering them we hope that this reply will also contribute to advancing the literature on the vital question of the impact of climate change on the us agricultural sector fhrs main critiques of dg are as follows i there are errors in the weather data and climate change projections used by dg ii the climate change projections are based on the hadley 2 model and scenarios rather than the more recent hadley 3 model and scenarios iii standard errors are biased due to spatial correlation iv the inclusion of state by year fixed effects does not leave enough weather variation to obtain meaningful estimates of the relationship between agriculture profits and weather v storage and inventory adjustment in response to yield shocks invalidate the use of annual profit data and vi fhrs argue that a better specified hedonic model produces robust estimates unlike the results reported in dg four of these critiques have little basis and we respond to them here in the introduction specifically with respect to ii the more recent daily climate predictions were not available when we wrote dg nevertheless the most important issue is providing the reliable estimates of climate change and in this note we report estimates based on the climate model we used in dg and a more recent one that we gained access to in the meantime iii in the primary table on agricultural profits dg reports two sets of standard errors with the first clustered at the county level and the second based on a variance covariance matrix that accounts for spatial correlation using the method proposed in conley 1999 thus the claim of fhrs 2012 seems overblown nevertheless to ease comparisons of papers in this literature this note will adopt the fhrs convention of reporting estimated standard errors clustered at the county and state levels we find that inference is largely unaffected by the choice between these different assumptions about the variance covariance matrix

peer effects in financial decision making abstract peer effects might play an important role in complex financial decisions because many consumers lack experience with them and the costs of thinking through such decisions can be very high we study peer effects in retirement savings life insurance purchase and two charitable giving programs in a military setting with plausibly exogenous assignment of individuals to social groups peers defined broadly as social groups which may include members of different ranks appear to play an important role in the charitable giving programs but not in the other outcomes we assess a number of potential reasons for the disparate findings and provide suggestive evidence that the observability of individuals choices is key

pride and prejudice using ethnic sounding names and inter ethnic marriages to identify labour market discrimination labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic sounding names we use non random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between sephardic and ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of sephardic affiliation on wages using the 1995 israeli census we estimate the effect of a sephardic sounding surname on wages we first compare the wages of israeli jewish males born to sephardic fathers and ashkenazi mothers sa who are more likely to carry a sephardic surname with the wages of israeli jewish males born to ashkenazi fathers and sephardic mothers as we find that israeli labor markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity sa workers earn significantly less than their as counterparts we then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames we find that it is father in law s ethnicity rather than father s ethnicity that shapes female wage rates finally we find that labor markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity when ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages

the legacies of forced freedom china s treaty ports abstract this paper investigates the long run development of china s treaty ports from the mid eighteenth century until today focusing on a sample of prefectures on the coast or on the yangtze river i document the dynamic development paths of treaty ports and their neighbors in alternate phases of closedness and openness i also provide suggestive evidence on migration and sector wise growth to understand the advantage of treaty ports in the long run

chief executive officer equity incentives and accounting irregularities this study examines whether chief executive officer ceo equity based holdings and compensation provide incentives to manipulate accounting reports while several prior studies have examined this important question the empirical evidence is mixed and the existence of a link between ceo equity incentives and accounting irregularities remains an open question because inferences from prior studies may be confounded by assumptions inherent in research design choices we use propensity score matching and assess hidden omitted variable bias within a broader sample in contrast to most prior research we do not find evidence of a positive association between ceo equity incentives and accounting irregularities after matching ceos on the observable characteristics of their contracting environments instead we find some evidence that accounting irregularities occur less frequently at firms where ceos have relatively higher levels of equity incentives

workers of the world unite franchise extensions and the threat of revolution in europe 1820 1938 abstract we test the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise in europe was related to the threat of revolution we contend that international diffusion of regime contention and information about revolutionary events happening in neighboring countries generate the necessary variation in the perceived threat of revolution using two samples of european countries covering the period from 1820 to 1938 we find robust evidence which is consistent with the threat of revolution hypothesis we also find some evidence that war triggered suffrage reform

endogeneity bias modeling using observables this paper proposes an alternative solution to the endogeneity problem by explicitly modeling the joint interaction of the endogenous variables and the unobserved causes of the dependent variable as a function of additional observables we derive identification of the parameters develop an estimator and establish its consistency and asymptotic normality

a general equilibrium assessment of rebound effects in this paper we use a general equilibrium model applied to a national economy norway to explore the potential for energy efficiency improvements to trigger economic forces that offset potential savings from using more efficient technologies rebound effects two types of energy efficiency improvements electricity and oil are introduced into various sectors of the economy our results suggest significant and surprising differences across sectors concerning both energy use and consequences for the build up of greenhouse gases rebound effects are found to be quite significant for manufacturing sectors since long term consumption of energy undergoes minor reductions or increases in response to efficiency improvements in other sectors rebound effects appear to be weak or almost absent

balanced variable addition in linear models this paper studies what happens when we move from a short regression to a long regression in a setting where both regressions are subject to misspecification in this setup the least squares estimator in the long regression may have larger inconsistency than the least squares estimator in the short regression we provide a simple interpretation for the comparison of the inconsistencies and study under which conditions the additional regressors in the long regression represent a balanced addition to the short regression

promotional reviews an empirical investigation of online review manipulation abstract firms incentives to manufacture biased user reviews impede review usefulness we examine the differences in reviews for a given hotel between two sites expedia com only a customer can post a review and tripadvisor com anyone can post we argue that the net gains from promotional reviewing are highest for independent hotels with single unit owners and lowest for branded chain hotels with multiunit owners we demonstrate that the hotel neighbors of hotels with a high incentive to fake have more negative reviews on tripadvisor relative to expedia hotels with a high incentive to fake have more positive reviews on tripadvisor relative to expedia jel l15 l83 m31

lobbying political competition and local land supply recent evidence from spain abstract we analyze whether local land supply is influenced by the degree of political competition and interpret the findings as indications of the influence wielded by land developer lobbies we use a new database including both political and land supply data for more than 2 000 spanish municipalities for the period 2003 2007 in spain land use policies are largely a local responsibility with municipalities needing periodically to pass comprehensive land use plans the main policy variable in these plans and the one analyzed here is the amount of land classified for potential development we measure local political competition as the margin of victory of the incumbent government this variable is however potentially endogenous since not only do votes affect policy but also policy is expected to affect votes to deal with this problem we instrument this variable using the votes at the first national legislative elections following the re establishment of democracy and votes actually obtained regionally at the same type of election the results indicate that stiffer political competition does indeed reduce the amount of new land designated for development this effect is found to be most marked in suburbs in towns with a high percentage of commuters and homeowners and in municipalities governed by the left

structural change under new labour the paper examines specific features of structural change in the uk since 1997 contrasting the decline in industrial jobs with the rise in a variety of service jobs it examines the proximate causes of structural change in particular whether the chronically slow growth of manufacturing output in the 1980s has persisted the implications of this structural change are considered particularly the effects on the balance of payments and regional employment patterns the paper suggests that the main impact of government policies on regional employment may have been through the direct and multiplier effects of public expenditure

the effect of male migration on employment patterns of women in nepal what is the impact of male migration on the labor market behavior of women in nepal the instrumental variable full information maximum likelihood method is applied to data from the 2004 nepal household survey to account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously affect men s decision to migrate and women s decision to participate in the labor market the results indicate that male migration has a negative impact on the level of the labor market participation by women in the migrant sending household there is evidence of substantial heterogeneity based on both observable and unobservable characteristics in the impact of male migration the findings highlight the important gender dimension of the impact of predominantly male migration on the well being of sending households strategies for economic development in nepal should take into account such gender aspects of the migration dynamics

the economic consequences of unwed motherhood using twin births as a natural experiment social scientists have long concluded that premarital childbearing exacerbates problems of both poverty and family instability out of wedlock and adolescent childbearing may reduce a mothers educational attainment lower the probability of her eventual marriage increase her probability of welfare recipiency and decrease family income the authors use an exogenous fertility event the birth of twins to estimate the economic effects of unplanned births the approach compares the economic outcomes of women experiencing premarital twin first births to those experiencing premarital single first births in the attempt to identify the consequences of an unplanned birth upon womens future fertility and marital decisions education labor force participation labor earnings welfare receipt and poverty status 1970 and 1980 us census micro data are used to identify twin births to unmarried women analysis found large short term effects of unplanned births on labor force participation poverty and welfare recipiency among unwed mothers but not among married mothers furthermore most adverse economic effects of unplanned motherhood dissipate over time for whites but larger and more persistent negative effects weigh upon black unwed mothers

the geographical concentration of labour market disadvantage this paper argues that british welfare to work policies are inadequate given the geographical concentration of worklessness in northern regions and in cities and former coalfields while unemployment has been converging geographically inactivity has not all the welfare to work target groups youth unemployed long term unemployed lone parents the long term sick and partners of the unemployed have closely similar geographical distributions official arguments that there are adequate job vacancies everywhere are shown to be flawed the geography of worklessness is largely explained by the weakness of adjustment through migration and commuting to the loss of jobs in manufacturing and mining the cities being particularly affected by urban rural manufacturing shift policy needs to promote more relevant employment in high unemployment areas through increased spending on derelict land reclamation transport and other infrastructure the case for more supportive policies towards manufacturing should also be considered

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

watta satta bride exchange and women s welfare in rural pakistan in a setting where husbands wield considerable coercive power forms of marriage should adapt to protect the interests of women and their families the authors study the pervasive marriage custom of watta satta in rural pakistan a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation they show that watta satta may be a mechanism to coordinate the actions of two sets of in laws each of whom wish to restrain their sons in law but who only have the ability to restrain their sons the authors empirical results support this view the likelihood of marital inefficiency as measured by estrangement domestic abuse and wife s mental health is significantly lower in watta satta arrangements as compared with conventional marriages but only after properly accounting for selection

working in family firms paid less but more secure evidence from french matched employer employee data the authors study compensation packages in family owned and nonfamily owned firms using french matched employer employee data they first show that family firms pay on average lower wages part of this wage gap is attributable to low wage workers sorting into family firms and high wage workers sorting into nonfamily firms however they also find evidence that company wage policies differ according to ownership status so that the same worker is paid differently under family and nonfamily firm ownership in addition family firms are characterized by lower job insecurity as measured by lower dismissal rates family firms also appear to rely less on dismissals and more on hiring reductions than do nonfamily firms when they downsize the authors show that compensating wage differentials account for a substantial part of the inverse relationship between the family nonfamily gaps in wages and job security

negative publicity and catholic schools i introduction catholic education makes up a large part of the united states k 12 educational system catholic schools educate over one third of all private school students more elementary and secondary students than all other religious schools combined national center for education statistics nces 2007 however catholic education is becoming less prevalent between 1990 and 2007 the number of catholic schools decreased by 14 from 8 719 to 7 498 while enrollment declined by 7 from 2 498 870 to 2 320 651 1 the mainstream media has covered this trend beginning with closings in the early 1990s foderaro 1990 private schools enroll 11 of elementary and secondary school students 39 of private school students enroll in catholic schools 2 catholic schools historically have served a predominantly urban minority population with some success research generally finds modest gains in educational attainment particularly for minority students e g altonji et al 2005 evans and schwab 1995 neal 1997 there is evidence that catholic schools raise student academic achievement and reduce adolescent risky behaviors figlio and ludwig 2000 figlio and stone 2000 3 the current decline in catholic schooling reflects diminished opportunities for students to enroll in alternatives to public schools this decline is particularly troubling for the low income urban minority students who have particularly benefited from catholic schools in the past neal 1997 the decline in private schooling options also lowers the level of competition among schools the decrease in competition may worsen the outcomes of public school students hoxby 1994 we consider potential explanations for the decline in catholic schooling in the united states changing demographics changing income levels and public awareness of sexual abuse and allegations immigration into and within the united states particularly of the traditionally catholic hispanic population likely affected demand for catholic schooling o keefe 1996 suggests that falling income per capita near existing catholic schools led to school closings further the negative publicity from the sexual abuse crisis in the catholic church may have impacted the availability of and demand for catholic schooling using diocese level panel data on catholic schooling we empirically examine the importance of each of these factors we develop two proxy measures of negative publicity based on the press coverage and on plausibly public notifications of abuse allegations we find that negative publicity is associated with a reduction in the availability of catholic schools however its effect is small allegations related to the abuse cases account for about 5 of the decline in catholic schools changing demographics particularly increases in the hispanic population explain a larger proportion of the current decline in catholic schooling ii an overview of catholic school enrollment and catholic schools in the united states the catholic church is organized into dioceses and archdioceses each administered by a bishop or archbishop there are 175 of these in the united states with each state and the district of columbia having at least one dioceses for the most part follow county lines texas with 14 is the state that has the most dioceses the average state has approximately 3 5 dioceses catholic schools tend to be operated with financial backing from the local diocese in combination with revenue from tuition and direct donations diocesan support ranges from a low of around 5 of school funding coming from dioceses in the south and west to a high of about 50 in the midwest gero and meitler 2003 figure 1 presents the percent of school aged children enrolled in catholic schools and the number of catholic schools for 1990 to 2007 4 the number of catholic schools declined in the early 1990s the decline slowed in the mid 1990s and accelerated again around 2004

does a cassava research for development program have impact at the farm level evidence from the democratic republic of congo this paper evaluates the impact of a cassava research for development program on farm level outcomes the program was implemented in the democratic republic of congo from 2001 to 2009 we apply propensity score matching rosenbaum bounds on treatment effects altonji et al method of selection on observables and unobservables and endogenous switching regression to farm survey data collected during the 2009 cropping season we use these methods to test whether the r4d program has a statistically significant effect on outcomes of interest and if these are not driven by selection on unobservables using propensity score matching we find statistically significant positive effects on household participation in cassava markets adoption of improved varieties and crop management practices and household food adequacy and no statistically significant effects on yields and profits the results show that bias due to selection on unobservables is not severe enough to invalidate the impact estimates bias may still be a problem that is present in the analysis but there is evidence that it is not substantial although the program does not have a statistically significant positive effect on yields and profits the significant program effects on market participation variety adoption and food adequacy merit further promotion of the program since these positive outcomes tend to be pre conditions for realizing long term yield and profit benefits

supply chains and economic development insights from the indian dairy sector with almost three quarters of the labor force depending on agriculture in india kick starting agricultural growth is considered crucial for pro poor development more specifically dairy production which is labor intensive but does not heavily rely on access to land is generally expected to offer better prospects for income growth to the poorest among rural households however most policies aimed at increasing dairy production are based on ad hoc observations with hardly any micro level evidence using a unique primary dataset on 1000 rural households in andhra pradesh this paper investigates the dairy production system addressing three main research questions first we look at the typical profile of a dairy farmer and we find that both family traditions in dairy and owning even a small piece of land play a role in determining participation in dairy while land size does not matter second we show that dairy production is strongly and positively associated with improvement in rural livelihoods in terms of income per capita but that this positive relation only holds for larger dairy farms in a third step we look at the determinants of farm growth and we find that households having higher shares of graded dairy animals have grown more after 2005

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas

catholic schooling and further education abstract using new estimation methods and data i find that catholic schooling substantially increases years of schooling by 0 42 to 0 47 the estimates are robust to various specifications that account for potential selection bias

life cycle schooling and dynamic selection bias models and evidence for five cohorts of american males this paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education we examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive behavioral interpretation often used to rationalize it we show that the implicit economic model assumes myopia the intuitive interpretive model is identified only by imposing arbitrary distributional assumptions onto the data we produce an alternative choice theoretic model with fewer parameters that rationalizes the same data and is not based on arbitrary distributional assumptions

every catholic child in a catholic school historical resistance to state schooling contemporary private competition and student achievement across countries nineteenth century catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling we show that countries with larger shares of catholics in 1900 but without a catholic state religion tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today we use this historical pattern as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of contemporary private competition on student achievement in cross country student level analyses our results show that larger shares of privately operated schools lead to better student achievement in mathematics science and reading and to lower total education spending even after controlling for current catholic shares

the chance to work in britain matching unemployed people to vacancies in good times and bad taulbut m and robinson m the chance to work in britain matching unemployed people to vacancies in good times and bad regional studies giving people the chance to work has been a key justification for welfare reform in britain over the last 15 years the approach is underpinned by the belief that there are sufficient vacancies available to absorb the unemployed into the labour market this paper tests this proposition by using the most comprehensive estimates of vacancies available from the employers skills surveys and two measures narrow and broad of unemployment by occupation geography and time period it also questions whether current approaches to worklessness in britain are adequate to the task given the scale of the challenge

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

trust and the market for technology abstract conditional on the decision to enter the market for immature technology we test for the effects that trust proxied by the context in which the negotiating parties first met has on the likelihood that these negotiations are successful using survey responses from 860 university firm and firm firm technology transactions we find that trust matters parties with high levels of trust i e know each other from a previous business are between 6 and 23 per cent more likely to conclude a transaction compared with those with low levels of trust i e cold callers we also find that patents can effectively substitute for a lack of trust and that trust is more important in upstream stages basic or applied science

the effects of child bearing on married women s labor supply and earnings using twin births as a natural experiment we use exogenous variations in fertility due to twin births to measure the impact of an unplanned child on married women s labor supply and earnings although the overall effects of an unplanned birth on labor supply are small we find significant effects in the years immediately following the unplanned birth especially in 1970 we estimate that declining fertility explains between 6 and 13 percent of the increase in married women s labor supply between 1970 and 1980 twin births are also associated with a substantial short run loss in earnings this effect persists longer than the labor supply effects though it does eventually disappear

land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures theoretical and empirical analyses this article develops a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between land tenure arrangements and households investment in soil improving and conservation measures it then analyzes this relationship with a multivariate probit model based on detailed plot level data from villages in the brong ahafo region of ghana a major hypothesis tested is that investment in productivity enhancing and conservation techniques are influenced by land tenure arrangements the theoretical analysis and empirical results generally reveal that land tenure differences significantly influence farmers decisions to invest in land improving and conservation measures the findings also show that tenure security does affect farm productivity

the place premium bounding the price equivalent of migration barriers large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility we use migrant selection theory and evide

children and their parents labor supply evidence from exogenous variation in family size although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work family nexus this study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply in the united states instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares ols estimates moreover unlike the ols estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high wage husbands we also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child bearing and husbands labor supply excerpt

norwegian emissions of co2 1987 1994 a study of some effects of the co2 tax several countries have introduced taxes on fossil fuels with the aim of reducing atmospheric emissions partly because of local environmental goals so2 nox and partly to participate in a global effort to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases many macroeconomic studies based on both global and national models have been made of how emissions can be reduced with the help of taxes and the consequent reduction in gdp following the introduction of such taxes norway has had a co2 tax for five years thereby providing a unique opportunity to evaluate the effects of this tax on emissions the paper provides a counterfactual analysis of energy consumption and emissions if no co2 taxes had been introduced compared with the actual situation in which such taxes exist the effect of a co2 tax on oil consumption and thus co2 emissions is studied on the basis of partial economic models for various sectors of the norwegian economy the study indicates that the co2 tax has had an impact on co2 emissions in norway

incentives and the supply of effective charter schools charter school funding is typically set by formulas that provide the same amount for all students regardless of advantage or need in this paper i present evidence that this policy skews the distribution of students served by charters towards low cost populations by influencing where charter schools decide to open and whether they survive i develop and estimate an empirical model of charter school supply and competition to evaluate the effects of funding policies that aim to correct these incentives to do this i recover estimates of cost differentials across student populations by linking charter school effectiveness at raising student achievement with unique records of charter school expenditures gathered from florida i then leverage revealed preference with the exit and location choices of charter schools in an entry game to uncover how charter schools respond to competitive and financial incentives the results indicate that a cost adjusted funding formula would significantly increase the share of charter schools serving disadvantaged students with little reduction in the aggregate effectiveness of the sector

the twin instrument fertility and human capital investment twin births are often used as an instrument to address selection of women into fertility however recent work shows selection of women into twin birth such that while ols estimates tend to be downward biased twin iv estimates will tend to be upward biased this is pertinent given the emerging consensus that fertility has limited impacts on women s labour supply or on investments in children using data for developing countries and the united states to estimate the trade off between fertility and children s human capital we demonstrate the nature and size of the bias in the twin iv estimator and estimate bounds on the true parameter

unlocking amenities estimating public good complementarity abstract public goods may exhibit complementarities that are essential for determining their individual value our results indicate that improving safety near parks can turn them from public bads to goods ignoring complementarities may lead to i undervaluing the potential value of public goods ii overestimating heterogeneity in preferences and iii understating the value of public goods to minority households recent reductions in crime have unlocked almost 7 billion in property value in chicago new york and philadelphia still two fifths of the potential value of park proximity 10 billion remains locked in

union dissolution and well being in uruguay abstract this article provides evidence for uruguay on the impact of union dissolution divorce and separation on a wide set of maternal and household well being outcomes based on two waves of a longitudinal study that follows up children that were first graders at public primary schools in 2004 to control for the potential selectivity of union dissolution we carry out a combined psm difference in difference estimation and also include a wide set of robustness checks we find that for custodial mothers and children union dissolution entails in average a net per capita household income loss of 16 a 20 decrease in command over durable goods and a 20 increase in monetary poverty incidence the income loss is partly mitigated but not completely offset by public and private transfers including child support and behavioral responses from mothers mainly through repartnering and increased labor earnings the period under study was characterized by rapid economic growth so behavioral responses among separated women had room to be effective this research contributes to the existing literature on the effects of union dissolution by providing new quantitative estimations for a developing country at the same time it carries out a comprehensive analysis of the channels explaining and offsetting the potential net well being loss

bank privatization finance and growth abstract this paper examines whether privatizing state owned banks improves finance and economic growth to do so we exploit regional banking variations in russia induced by the idiosyncratic creation of specialized banks in the last years of the soviet union 1988 91 that were subsequently privatized starting in 1999 private banks including surviving spetsbanks emerged as an important source of external finance for private firms and households we document that the regional concentration of spetsbanks in the early years of the russian federation is orthogonal to economic fundamentals that are related to growth after the emergence of bank finance results indicate that while privatized banking increased lending significantly it did not increase economic growth however privatization did increase growth when banks retained fewer political connections and when regional property rights were better protected highlighting the importance of both factors

vouchers for private schooling in colombia evidence from a randomized natural experiment colombia used lotteries to distribute vouchers which partially covered the cost of private secondary school for students who maintained satisfactory academic progress three years after the lotteries winners were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade primarily because they were less likely to repeat grades and scored 0 2 standard deviations higher on achievement tests there is some evidence that winners worked less than losers and were less likely to marry or cohabit as teenagers benefits to participants likely exceeded the 24 per winner additional cost to the government of supplying vouchers instead of public school places

the true scale of the regional problem in the uk this article argues that the scale of unemployment in the uk and the differences between regions are severely understated by claimant unemployment data it explains how unemployment becomes hidden in particular by a major diversion of older and less healthy workers from unemployment related benefits and how this process is especially marked in the traditional industrial parts of northern britain the true scale of regional differences in joblessness is also underlined by employment rates in different parts of the country

household inequality entrepreneurial dynamism and corporate financing economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism to empirically investigate its impact we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents home equity and 1880 farmland we identify its effects on entrepreneurship by instrumenting it with land distribution under the 1862 homestead act or us states removal of death taxes wealth inequality decreases firm entry and exit and the proportion of high tech businesses across metropolitan statistical areas there is also less redistribution into public goods supportive of entrepreneurship such as schooling and the judiciary income per capita consequently grows more slowly

is low priced primary care bad for quality evidence from australian general practice we examine whether patients perceptions of general practitioner gp care varies by the price paid for consultations australian consumer survey data from 2275 individuals were used to analyse the relationship between price and patient experience of gp care using both standard models for count data and a latent class model that distinguishes between patients with high and low quality experiences we find no evidence that lower prices have a negative impact on patients perceptions of gp quality nevertheless some patient characteristics such as age gender and health status play a significant role in quality of care perceptions the results show that australian patients have not had to compromise gp quality as expressed in terms of patient experience when seeking low priced care this supports the view that there are sufficient checks and balances on the gp sector in australia to ensure positive patient experiences even for low cost gp consultations

bank recapitalization regulatory intervention and repayment we use prudential supervisory data for all german banks during 1994 2010 to test if regulatory interventions affect the likelihood that bailed out banks repay capital support accounting for the selection bias inherent in nonrandom bank bailouts by insurance schemes and the endogenous administration of regulatory interventions we show that regulators can increase the likelihood of repayment substantially an increase in intervention frequencies by one standard deviation increases the annual probability of capital support repayment by 7 sturdy interventions like restructuring orders are effective whereas weak measures reduce repayment probabilities intervention effects last up to 5 years

a second great depression in the uk regions can anything be done moore b and rhodes j 1982 a second great depression in the uk regions can anything be done reg studies 16 323 33 this is a revised version of a paper given to the regional studies conference in glasgow in may 1981 the authors were asked to put forward the views of the cambridge economic policy group cepg on the economy as a whole and to draw out any implications for the uk regions a diagnosis of the uk economic problem and its regional manifestation is followed by a discussion of the macro economic strategy favoured by the group which aims to ensure that the economy can be expanded at a permanently faster rate without running into balance of payments problems only a strategy of this kind could make a significant impact on the very high rates of unemployment in the depressed regions

estimating the distortionary effects of ethnic quotas in singapore using housing transactions abstract desegregation is a key policy issue in many countries i investigate a residential desegregation program in singapore the ethnic housing quotas i show that choice restrictions imposed on apartment blocks above the quota limits constrained could have distortionary effects causing price and quantity differences for constrained versus unconstrained blocks i test these predictions by hand matching more than 500 000 names in the phonebook to ethnicities to calculate ethnic proportions at the apartment block level i can then investigate differences for constrained and unconstrained blocks close to the quota limits and test for sorting around the limits i find that price differences are between 3 and 5 quantity effects are economically significant translating to longer time on market durations selection cannot fully explain these results my results point to challenges in achieving desegregation using quantity restrictions

finishing high school and starting college do catholic schools make a difference in this paper we consider two measures of the relative effectiveness of public and catholic schools finishing high school and starting college these measures are potentially more important indicators of school quality than standardized test scores in light of the economic consequences of obtaining more education single equation estimates suggest that for the typical student attending a catholic high school raises the probability of finishing high school or entering a four year college by thirteen percentage points in bivariate probit models we find almost no evidence that our single equation estimates are subject to selection bias

out of the ashes into the fire the consequences of u s weapons sales for political violence abstract we examine the effect of u s weapons purchases on political violence in 191 countries during the period 1970 2008 our identification strategy exploits exogenous shifts in the cost of purchasing u s commercial weapons through a combination of time variation in u s inflation and cross sectional variation in a country s historical frequency of purchases we find that weapons purchases reduce the likelihood of political repression but increase the likelihood of onset of civil war in purchasing countries the results suggest that state investment in military capability incites civil war in countries where state repression of an aggrieved opposition would have otherwise prevailed