amenities factor mobility and market prices policy usefulness of empirical studies examining market responses to amenity levels rests on how accurately willingness to pay wtp for amenities can be derived from these responses recent research into hedonic market techniques has focused on econometric questions of accuracy when estimating demand for amenities this paper contributes to the investigation of accuracy using a perspective distinct from strict issues of econometric methodology use is made of a general equilibrium approach to explore the implications of factor migration and multiple market price responses to amenity endowment change amenities are modeled as one component of a location specific factor bundle factor prices output levels and housing services prices are allowed to adjust in response to a one region amenity endowment increase emphasis throughout is on a stylized representation of a simplified regional economic structure

the earnings and human capital of american jews this paper analyzes the earnings and returns from human capital investments of second generation american jews compared with non jews jewish men have 16 percent higher earnings other things the same a 20 percent higher rate of return from schooling and a steeper experience earnings profile these patterns persist even after controlling for occupation self employment status and geographic concentration in the new york area there are no systematic differences among jews by parents country of birth the findings suggest that american jews are more productive in creating and using human capital and that this has encouraged greater investments in human capital

structural changes in the uk energy market abstract energy use in the uk has undergone substantial structural changes since the rapid rise in the price of oil in 1979 this paper traces the effect of the second round of oil price increases on the adoption of effective energy saving methods in industry and in private households in the uk the analysis shows the largest decrease of energy consumption occurred in industry which is both the most energy intensive as well as the most sensitive to energy prices

ethnicity neighborhoods and human capital externalities the socioeconomic performance of today s workers depends not only on parental skills but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parents generation or ethnic capital this paper investigates the link between the ethnic externality and ethnic neighborhoods the evidence indicates that residential segregation and the external effect of ethnicity are linked partly because ethnic capital summarizes the socioeconomic background of the neighborhood where the children were raised ethnicity has an external effect even among persons who grow up in the same neighborhood when children are exposed frequently to persons who share the same ethnic background copyright 1995 by american economic association

an economic theory of avant garde and popular art or high and low culture artists face choices between the pecuniary benefits of selling to the market and the nonpecuniary benefits of creating to please their own tastes we examine how changes in wages lumpsum income and capital labor ratios affect the artist s pursuit of self satisfaction versus market sales using our model of labor supply we consider the economic forces behind the high low culture split why some artistic media offer greater scope for the avant garde than others why so many artists dislike the market and how economic growth and taxation affect the quantity and form of different kinds of art

rates of time preference and valuations of the duration of life abstract this paper develops a multi period markov model of the lifetime choice of occupational fatality risks the empirical model analyzes the wage effects of job risks using the 1982 university of michigan panel study of income dynamics in conjunction with death statistics from the u s national traumatic occupational fatality survey evidence regarding workers intertemporal choices with respect to risks with long term implications is broadly consistent with rational behavior workers implicit real rate of time preference with respect to future life years equals approximately 11 percent this rate of time preference decreases with education

the effects of religion and denomination on earnings and the returns to human capital the effects of religious and denominational background on earnings and the returns to human capital are examined when religious differences are constrained to be additive apart from a jewish differential there is virtually no evidence that religious or denominational background affects earnings this contrasts with greeley s claims of sizable catholic advantage in separate earnings regressions we find that the marginal returns to catholics from college education exceed those to similar protestants this offsets the disadvantage of lower precollege returns earnings differences between protestant denominations appear to reflect the sorting of protestants into denominations according to schooling and income

the role of husband s and wife s economic activity status in the demand for children abstract the existing literature on household demand for children in developing countries focuses on women s choice of different types of market activity many types of work in the informal sector are considered to be more compatible with child care because they put less demands on women s time the presence of such compatibility effects is used to explain why women s wage rates or labor force participation rates are not always negatively related to the fertility rates however households in the informal sector may own a family business which can lead them to have a greater demand for children because child labor can be more productively employed in the family enterprise consequently not only is wife s choice of market activity type important in determining fertility demand but so is husband s choice the new emphasis is on men s role micro data from the urban sector of hong kong are used to test for the presence of both the compatibility and child labor effects on fertility demand with positive results our study shows that incorporating husband s choice of market activity type can be important in the analysis of fertility demand in developing countries

school board politics school district size and the bargaining power of teachers unions this paper presents a public choice theory of the bargaining power of teachers unions the theory predicts that the power of the unions rises with the size of a district the theory is tested by examining the relationship between district size and various bargaining outcomes for a sample of 771 california school districts in 1999 2000 as hypothesized teachers salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size the paper also considers several alternative explanations for these results

world product and income international comparisons of real gross product the volume reports on the third phase of the united nations international comparison project icp the main results provide comparisons of real gross domestic product gdp per capita for thirty four countries in 1975 quantity and price comparisons are given also for personal consumption capital formation and public consumption and further subdivisions of final expenditures on gdp are estimated

note on international differences in service prices and some related empirical phenomena abstract this paper provides an alternative explanation of some important stylized facts of development including the phenomenon of international differences in service prices in terms of differences in factor endowments between countries in so doing this paper advances a general equilibrium model of a small open economy which features non traded goods as well as demand factors thereby incorporating important economic aspects which were neglected by many others an interesting finding which emerges from this exercise is that many puzzles in development can be explained simply in terms of differences in factor endowments between countries

beyond implicit prices recovering theoretically consistent and transferable values for noise avoidance from a hedonic property price model using a two stage hedonic pricing methodology we estimate a system of structural demand equations for different sources of transport related noise in the first stage we identify market segments using model based clustering techniques and estimate separate hedonic price functions hpfs for each segment in so doing we show how a semiparametric spatial smoothing estimator outperforms other standard specifications of the hpf in the second stage we control for non linearity of the budget constraint and identify demand relationships using techniques that account for problems of endogeneity and censoring of the dependent variable our estimated demand functions provide welfare estimates for peace and quiet that we believe to be the first derived from property market data in a theoretically consistent manner

religion and income heterogeneity between countries this paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income the violation of the homogeneity assumption would have two consequences first results based on country studies might not be applicable to other countries second one should be careful when pooling cross country data in this type of research data at household level from the european and world values survey are pooled for 25 western countries we estimate simultaneously an income and a religion equation to correct for the endogeneity of religiousness we find that estimation outcomes are different for low and high income countries whereas church membership is found to have a positive effect on income for high income countries this effect is negative for low income countries this result is robust to denominational distribution participation effects and alternative measures of religiousness

comparative statics for utility maximization models with nonlinear budget constraints this paper investigates the properties of demand functions generated by nonlinear budget constraints and relates them to those of demand functions generated by linear budget constraints the analysis shows that the properties of nonlinear and linear demand functions in some respects are similar but in other respects differ substantially the study gives conditions under which properties of the linear demand functions carry over to the nonlinear ones the implications for the nonlinear demand functions of various separability assumptions are also studied copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

religious adherence and county economic growth in the us abstract we estimate a barro type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the american religious data archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the united states at the county level per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income initial human capital stock and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence religious diversity and regional indicator variables we also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations namely catholics evangelical christians and mainline christians on county economic growth our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for us county income growth we find mixed results for effects of various denominations

a hedonic prices approach to hospitalization costs the case of israel the paper suggests a hedonic prices approach to estimate the cost of hospital services it applies this approach to israeli data as a first approximation of hospitalization costs in that country in the absence of accounting data this approach enables us to estimate the relative cost of basic hospital services how hospital characteristics affect cost and how cost changes with time moreover it provides for a standardized measure to view the relative efficiency of a cross section of hospitals several findings based on israeli data demonstrate the potential of the approach and may be of general interest first controlling for department mix bigger hospitals which are usually also teaching hospitals and may have a different case mix incur higher cost per admission than smaller hospitals second by institution general sick fund hospitals are more expensive but also experience in terms of budget allocations less discrimination than government hospitals hence provision of equitable service may be less efficient than in services where there is budgetary discrimination to induce specialization etc third hospitals have been subject to inflationary pressures over and above the general inflation level in israel as may be the case in most other western countries fourth a comparison of cost per admission across hospitals and over time shows that cost has been consistently increasing in particular hospitals and falling in others beyond the average increases warranted by growth in size changes in composition and hospitalization specific inflation more research is needed in order to explain these unexplained but consistent trends

the earnings of male immigrants in england evidence from the quarterly lfs in this paper we estimate earnings functions for native born and foreign born white and non white males in the english labour market using data from the quarterly labour force survey our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between native born and foreign born males when investigating the labour market experience of ethnic minorities furthermore the earnings performance amongst white immigrants varies considerably

the estimation of a joint wage hours labor supply model in this paper the standard cross sectional static model of labor supply is modified to make the wage endogenous and a joint wage hours model is estimated the econometric technique addresses the non linearity of the budget constraint by approximating the constraint by a series of discrete points the results show that the budget constraint is indeed nonlinear that hours affect the wage quadratically that true wage elasticities are lower as a result and that the model fits the hours distribution much better than the standard tobit model

education and ethnicity in canada an intergenerational perspective ethnic and intergenerational aspects of human capital investment are explored levels of and cross sectional returns to education across ethnic groups in canada are estimated and large differences observed for men a positive correlation exists between ethnic group average years of education and its return we also find large negative correlations between ethnic group average educational outcomes and the previous generation s fertility suggesting a role for home production as a complement to formal education and supporting models of child quantity quality trade offs very slow intergenerational convergence in ethnic group level educational and labor market outcomes is also observed

pattern of uk fuel use abstract this paper provides an analysis of the historical development of the uk primary energy market more specifically of coal gas and heavy fuel oil the period considered for this investigation is 1960 83 a theoretical framework is set up and the significant shifts in the market are traced accordingly as it turns out the shifts in the energy market of the uk have been similar to those in other european countries despite indigenous oil and gas resources

parental background educational attainments and returns to schooling and to marriage the case of israel this paper investigates the effect of family background attainments and on returns to own and wife s schooling for jewish males israel three dimensions of paternal background are referred to father s education the prestige of the father s occupation and whether the father is of a western origin an advantage in the western oriented israeli society for each of these types of segmentation it is found that both the level of and the returns to own and wife s schooling after some years of marriage are higher for those coming from a more favourable background these empirical findings are consistent with an investment in schooling model in which differences in demand productivity of own and wife s schooling vary more than differences in supply of investment funds

from the cradle to the labor market the effect of birth weight on adult outcomes lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes both short run in terms of one year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings however recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard to measure characteristics by applying within twin techniques using an unusually rich dataset from norway we examine the effects of birth weight on both short run and long run outcomes for the same cohorts we find that birth weight does matter despite short run twin fixed effects estimates that are much smaller than ols estimates the effects on longer run outcomes such as adult height iq earnings and education are significant and similar in magnitude to ols estimates

intergenerational correlations in labor market status a comparison of the united states and germany this paper uses data from the panel study of income dynamics and the german socioeconomic panel to calculate comparable measures of the intergenerational correlations of earnings hours and education in the us and germany the results indicate that there is remarkable similarity across the two countries in the correlations of earnings and of annual work hours of fathers and sons all of the correlations which involve women appear to be weaker in germany than the us perhaps due to the greater integration of women in the us into the labor market they find weak correlations in earnings and work hours for parent child pairs of different sexes in both countries they also find that intergenerational correlations in educational attainment are considerably stronger in the us authors

regression toward mediocrity in economic stature this paper provides estimates of the correlation in lifetime earnings between fathers and sons intergenerational data from the national longitudinal survey are used earlier studies conducted for the united states report elasticities of children s earnings with respect to parent s earnings of 0 2 or less suggesting extensive integenerational mobility these estimates however are biased downward by error contaminated measures of lifetime economic status estimates presented in this paper correct for the problem of measurement error and find the intergenerational correlation in income to be on the order of 0 4 this suggests considerably less intergenerational mobility than previously believed jel j62

nullity restrictions and comparative static analysis while homogeneity restrictions of optimal choice functions are well known in the context of neoclassical economic theory the existence and implications of homogeneity like restrictions in more general optimization models have not received much attention in the literature the authors call such restrictions nullity restrictions since they involve the null space of the matrix of slopes of choice functions the existence nature and implications of nullity restrictions are investigated in the context of a general optimization problem this contributes to closing a major gap in the analysis of the implications of optimization for economic behavior copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

why are services cheaper in the poor countries in their important work on international comparisons of national incomes and of comparative price structure kravis heston and summers i982 p 8 have noted that services are much cheaper in the relative price structure of a typical poor country than in that of a rich country this phenonomen has been documented now fairly systematically by the data gathered under their guiding hand of the united nations international comparison icp which covers 34 countries table i reproduced from their work i982 and fig i based on rows 3 and ii 13 indeed show this tendencyfor the relationship between relative service prices and real per capita gdp in this kravis heston summers 34 country 6 group sample the tendency is strongly evident except for the intermediate groups iii and iv

the performance of immigrants in the canadian labor market in this article we examine the economic assimilation of immigrants to canada we provide new evidence on immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and document an increase in the dispersion of labor market outcomes across immigrants of different vintages over time our results confirm u s evidence of permanent differences across immigrant cohorts what distinguishes the canadian experience is small or negative rates of assimilation for most cohorts over the sample period finally we test the overidentification of the assimilation process specified in previous studies and fail to reject the usual cohort fixed effect specification

the utility maximizing self employed physician we estimate a model of utility maximizing physician behavior our model accounts for the interdependence of physician input output and work leisure choices and includes an endogenous virtual wage for physician own time in the medical practice we find that solo practitioners respond to increases in marginal hourly earnings and nonpractice income by allocating less time to medical practice activities our results also suggest that fee reductions induce the substitution of physician own time for auxiliaries and the net effect of this adjustment is reduced patient loads and a decrease in supply from the existing stock of solo practitioners

religion religiosity and educational attainment evidence from the compulsory education system in england this paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in england the results show that pupils that identify with any re

environmental policies market responses and incentives abstract environmental degradation cannot be cured by relying solely on the public sector debating and introducing policies and control to prompt the market to develop the technology for reducing emission there has to be a more tangible evidence of an economic gain and a much higher return than currently prevails for new investment there is a tendency within industry to favour revenue generation projects against those for cost reduction by requiring shorter gestation and payback periods for the latter even though the former is the dual of the latter thus energy efficiency projects tend to receive low priorities by industry by requiring much higher return and faster payback periods for them sometimes as low as three months it is possible that a supply shock may need to occur to induce the market to invest and develop the required technology in order to redress some of the current environmental imbalance

the effect of fertility on the time use of working wives by applying data from the panel study of income dynamics to a household utility maximization model it was found that number and presence of young children tend to increase whereas quality of children tends to decrease the time wives devote to household production including child care

marital status and earnings of young men a model with endogenous selection it is a matter of course in applied labor economics to presume that marital status is a predetermined contributor to earnings among young males we find no evidence to support that proposition we estimate a model of earnings determination that permits endogenous selection of marital status our estimates are based on a sample of young employed males from the michigan panel survey of income dynamics they indicate that marital status viewed in this manner does not significantly shift the mean earnings profile our sensitivity tests indicate that this conclusion is robust with respect to a variety of alternative specifications excerpt

understanding preferences for income redistribution abstract recent research suggests that income redistribution preferences vary across identity groups we employ statistical learning methods that emphasize pattern recognition classification and regression trees cart and random forests randomforests to uncover what these groups are using data from the general social survey we find that out of a large set of identity markers only race gender age and socioeconomic class are important classifiers for income redistribution preferences further the uncovered identity groupings are characterized by complex patterns of interaction amongst these salient classifiers we explore the extent to which existing theories of income redistribution can explain our results but conclude that current approaches do not fully explain the findings

ethnicity and educational achievement in compulsory schooling this article documents that at the start of school pupils from most ethnic groups substantially lag behind white british pupils however these gaps decline for all groups throughout compulsory schooling language is the single most important factor why ethnic minority pupils improve relative to white british pupils poverty in contrast does not contribute to the catch up our results also suggest the possibility that the greater than average progress of ethnic minority pupils in schools with more poor pupils may partly be related to teacher incentives to concentrate attention on particular pupils generated by the publication of school league tables

reconsidering the economics of demand analysis with kinked budget constraints this paper has two objectives first we identify a problem with the ability of the discrete continuous choice framework and conditional demand functions to fully describe consumer preferences in the presence of kinked budget constraints second we propose and illustrate an alternative preference based method for estimating consumer responses to price changes under these conditions this framework recognizes that commitments to commodities such as pools or outdoor landscaping influence how water consumption responds to price changes as part of the long run consumption adjustments with microdata on household choices this approach could be used to design increasing block rate structures that recognize the differences in water consumption responses with these commitments

the theory of the family and intergenerational mobility an empirical test from a probit model of enrollments estimates of the expected net present value of postsecondary education are developed for a sample of high school graduates based exclusively on individual expectations of the relevant costs and benefits at the time of

the church versus the mall what happens when religion faces increased secular competition recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation an unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation in this paper we identify a policy driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on sunday known as blue laws many states have repealed these laws in recent years raising the opportunity cost of religious participation we use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well these results do not seem to be driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change nor do we see comparable declines in membership in or giving to nonreligious organizations after a state repeals its laws we then assess the effects of changes in these laws on drinking and drug use behavior in the nlsy we find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws the effect is economically significant for example the gap in heavy drinking between religious and nonreligious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed

does wealth imply secularization and longevity we develop a simple life cycle model with endogenous longevity where religious firms influence religious beliefs using donations as an input the model suggests that either wealth and economic development or competition by religiousfirms can explain cross countryvariationinreligiousbeliefs buttoexplaincross countryvariationinreligiousbeliefs longevity and consumption both development and competition are required our results depend on the wealth and substitution effects that accompany economic development and religious market competition

does religion constrain the risky sex behaviour associated with hiv aids this article examines the likely effectiveness of public health interventions designed to change the risky sexual behaviour associated with human immunodeficiency virus acquired immune deficiency syndrome hiv aids by faith based organizations fbos we utilize data from the general social survey gss to estimate an economic model of sexual behaviour our theoretical approach proceeds by rationalizing on evolutionary grounds the existence of sexual activity in individual preference functions with unobservable costs imposed by religious beliefs and participation given the objective of utility maximization we justify the existence of demand functions for sexual activity that generate empirically testable hypotheses about the effects of religion and religious participation on risky sexual activity our results suggest that at least in the case of heterosexuals fbos can indeed influence the risky sexual behaviour that is associated with the transmission of hiv aids

religion and economy religion has a two way interaction with political economy with religion viewed as a dependent variable a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs with religion viewed as an independent variable a key issue is how religiosity affects individual characteristics such as work ethic honesty and thrift and thereby influences economic performance in this paper we sketch previous studies of this two way interaction but focus on our ongoing quantitative research with international data

does the labour supply of wives respond to husbands wages canadian evidence from micro data and grouped data using micro data and grouped data we assess the extent to which canadian wives adjusted their labour supply in response to changes in husbands wages during the period 1980 2000 grouped data parameters based on weighted least squares and the unbiased error in variables estimator developed by devereux 2004 2007a b yield cross wage elasticities that are substantially higher in absolute value than those derived from ols regressions run on micro data both grouping estimators indicate that the labour supply of canadian wives responded strongly to changes in husbands wages during the 1980s for the 1990s our estimates of wives cross wage elasticity display greater dispersion a l aide de micro donnees et de donnees groupees on etablit jusqu a quel point les epouses canadiennes ont ajuste leur offre de travail en reponse aux changements dans les salaires de leurs epoux au cours de la periode 1980 2000 les parametres pour les donnees groupees derives par la methode des moindres carres ponderes et de l estimateur developpe par devereux 2004 2007a b engendrent des elasticites croisees qui sont substantiellement plus grandes en termes absolus que ceux derives par la methode des moindres carres ordinaires en utilisant des micro donnees les deux estimations montrent que l offre de travail des epouses canadiennes a repondu fortement aux changements dans les salaires des epoux au cours des annees 80 pour les annees 90 les evaluations des elasticites croisees des salaires montrent une plus grande dispersion

ethnic capital and intergenerational mobility this paper analyzes the extent to which ethnic skill differentials are transmitted across generations i assume that ethnicity acts as an externality in the human capital accumulation process the skills of the next generation depend on parental inputs and on the quality of the ethnic environment in which parents make their investments or ethnic capital the empirical evidence reveals that the skills of today s generation depend not only on the skills of their parents but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parent s generation

ambiguous changes in product quality economic goods are frequently sold according to a price per unit quantity where the quantity characteristic does not measure all the economically important characteristics of the good milk is sold by the quart automobiles rented by the mile physicians services bought by the visit and tennis lessons by the hour in all cases heterogeneous units are available in the market and the price per unit quantity depends upon the amount of the unpriced characteristic contained in each unit the per quart price of milk depends upon the butterfat content the mileage costs of automobile rentals on the cars make and the price per unit time for personal services on the providers skill and training the common distinction made between these variants of the same good is that they differ in quality where quality refers to the amounts of the unpriced attributes contained in each unit of the priced attribute thus milk is packaged according to the attribute milk liquid and the quality of milk refers to the ratio of butterfat per unit of liquid 2 this paper considers some of the unique aspects of the economics of supply and demand under this situation where products contain at least two desired attributes only one of which is quantified and measured prior to purchase product quality is here defined by the ratio of the second quality attribute per unit of the measured quantity attribute 3 this simple specification of quality allows a direct link between standard economic models of related products and the economics of variable product quality previous analyses which treat quality simply as a shift parameter in the demand function are shown to obscure the actual subtleties of supply and demand with variable endogenous quality 4 the paper proceeds by first examining the efficient quality and quantity and the competitive equilibrium the market equilibrium under monopoly is then contrasted in the second section the general theme of the

family labour supply and fertility a two regime model the central hypothesis of the new micro economics of fertility was examined i e because children are female time intensive fertility is inversely related to the mothers wage a theoretical model of lifetime family labor supply and completed fertility which forms the basis for the subsequent empirical investigation is presented empirical estimates of the model are provided using 1971 canadian census data the 1 period model of completed family size and lifetime labor supply indicates that fertility and labor supply behavior of families where the wife participates in the labor market will differ from that of families with never participating wives the systematic differences arise because families with nonworking wives face the additional binding constraint of an inflexible supply of wifes time to the home a comparison of these 2 regimes allows inferences concerning the female time intensity of children and the substitutability of husbands and wifes time in the context of the 1 period model the relevant criterion for separating families into the 2 regimes is the lifetime rather than current participation status the evidence suggests that when this procedure is followed much doubt is cast on the conventional wisdom that children are female time intensive the usual inverse relation found between wifes wage or education and completed family size appears to be the result of a complex interaction between wage rates lifetime labor force participation and fertility some support is found for complementarity between the home time of the husband and wife but the evidence is not totally consistent results of the female participation equation strongly suggest complementarity proxies for the husbands lifetime labor supply suggest weak or zero complementarity when the sample is split by current participation of the wife rather than lifetime participation then the results support conventional wisdom concerning the female time intensity of children and replicate kneisners finding of complementarity between husband and wifes time reconciling these differences within the framework of the 1 period model is difficult since it yields no predictions concerning current variables yet since the wifes lifetime participation is the correct criterion for allocating families to the 2 regimes under the 1 period model doubt must remain concerning the female time intensity of children until the current lifetime results are reconciled

incentives predestination and free will i introduction max weber s 1930 the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism argues that the protestant reformation set the stage for post medieval economic growth using an occupational study of germans from 1895 weber shows that protestants dominate the mercantile or capitalist occupations in that country at that time period weber also argues that between 1600 and 1900 protestant countries advanced faster than their catholic neighbors and that this was the result of calvin s urging acceptance of material success and the dogma of predestination 1 an ocean of work beginning with rachfahl 1909 and sombart 1913 has since attacked weber s theological generalizations see giddens 1992 for a review tawney 1926 and robertson 1933 argue weber s causal interpretation is wrong and that economic growth laid the framework for protestantism not protestantism for economic growth samuelsson 1961 disputes the very correlation between protestantism and economic success which is the basis of the weberian hypothesis the correlation between protestantism and economic success is certainly weaker than weber suggests even in the german data that weber himself uses furthermore more modem data tends to find only a modest link between protestantism and economic success as in winter 1974 and tomes 1994 2 however for centuries there were gaps in economic success between protestant and catholic nations and new findings on early modem data tend to confirm differences between protestants and catholics at least within the u s as weber s arch critic samuelsson himself writes there is some truth in the contention that the protestant countries and especially those adhering to the reformed church were particularly vigorous economically given that there was some correlation between protestantism and economic success before the mid to late 20th century the question then becomes why this correlation existed some elements of protestant theology clearly encourage capitalism usury doctrines became less rigid under calvinism nelson 1972 avarice was de emphasized as a sin weber claims that luther s concept of a calling includes worldly success and that this is a prominent difference with catholic doctrine although this theological claim has been subject to much debate e g sombart 1915 there still appears to be some basic truth to this point one of the largest theological gaps between the denominations is that calvinism accepts the dogma of predestination while catholicism argues for a dogma of free will 3 for the purposes of this paper we will follow weber and accept broad brush definitions of doctrine rather than getting mired in the more subtle features of the two doctrines under predestination a spiritual elite is preordained before the beginning of time and will receive eternal life 4 under free will it is only through a lifetime of good actions that individuals are accepted into heaven 5 weber argues that predestination creates a more lasting basis for economic growth than the dogma of free will in this paper we present a model that formally treats weber s claim under particular circumstances and show how predestination could create the correlation between protestantism and growth that existed in the pre modern era our model also suggests conditions under which a more successful society would favor the doctrine of predestination which can be seen as a formalization of tawney s and robertson s view that economic growth created the reformation in this essay both free will and predestination create incentives which spur good behavior 6 under the doctrine of free will good behavior is motivated by an increased probability of getting into heaven under the doctrine of predestination this incentive is irrelevant because individual actions do not determine spiritual outcomes instead an individual s actions are motivated by a desire to receive positive behavior from others by convincing them that he is part of the spiritual elite

a comparison of the labor force behavior of married women in the united states and canada with special attention to the impact of income taxes estimation results are presented for the probability of working the hourly wage rate and the annual hours of work for wives in seven different age groups in both the u s and canada federal and state or provincial taxes are incorporated into the analysis an iterative estimation method is employed to circumvent the statistical problems resulting from the dependence of the hours of work on the tax rate and the dependence of the tax rate on the hours of work authors

the bicausal relation between religion and income in this article the relation between religion and income is investigated using a micro dataset for the netherlands religion is measured by religious membership and by participation instead of estimating a religion equation and an income equation separately joint regression is preferred since this generally yields more efficient estimates following the single equation approach both religious measures are found to decrease income significantly and income is found to affect religion negatively however these cross effects become insignificant once the equations are estimated simultaneously in contrast the effects of socio economic characteristics on religion and income hardly differ between the approaches

economic policy and the relative price of services in ldcs abstract low relative prices of nontraded services are a feature of developing economies recent explanations focus on structural issues such as factor endowments and returns to scale this paper argues that economic policy may also contribute to low ldc service prices in a three sector model with wage differentials financial repression unambiguously depresses both per capita real income and the price of nontraded goods in contrast to most current models tariffs and production subsidies can also depress nontraded goods prices

differences in education and earnings across racial and ethnic groups tastes discrimination and investments in child quality viewing the united states as comprising many racial and ethnic groups it is shown that group differences in earnings schooling and rates of return from schooling are striking and that the groups with higher levels of schooling also have higher rates of return these data are shown to be consistent with a child quality investment model but they are not consistent with the hypotheses that the primary determinants of schooling level are discrimination minority group status differences in time preference discount rates or tastes for schooling group differences in fertility and female labor supply are examined as partial determinants of investment in child quality policy implications are discussed this paper was originally presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the population association of america see population index vol 53 no 3 fall 1987 p 443 excerpt

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

financial repression and the relative price of non traded goods abstract the financial structure of ldcs affects differences in relative prices among nations we show empirically that financial repression depresses the relative price of non traded goods

the skills and economic status of american jewry trends over the last half century the general social surveys cumulative data file is used to analyze the schooling occupational status and earnings of american jews jews are identified by a question on religion at age 16 the analysis focuses on trends within the survey period and intergenerational changes from the father to the respondent ceteris paribus jews have significantly higher levels of schooling occupational status and earnings than other whites and within the survey period there is no trend in the differential the jewish fathers also had higher levels of achievement than other fathers but the differentials increased from the father s to the respondent s generation

the impact of repealing sunday closing laws on educational attainment adolescents face daily tradeoffs between human capital investment labor and leisure this paper exploits state variation in the repeal of sunday closing laws to examine the impact of a distinct and plausibly exogenous rise in the quantity of competing diversions available to youth on their educational attainment the results suggest that the repeals led to a significant decline in both years of education and the probability of high school completion i explore increased employment and risky behaviors as potential mechanisms further i find a corresponding decline of the repeals on adult wages

the more the merrier the effect of family size and birth order on children s education there is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family however there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory using a rich dataset on the entire population of norway over an extended period of time we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the educational attainment of children while we find a negative correlation between family size and children s education when we include indicators for birth order and or use twin births as an instrument family size effects become negligible in addition birth order has a significant and large negative effect on children s education we also study adult earnings employment and teenage childbearing and find strong evidence for birth order effects with these outcomes particularly among women these findings suggest the need to revisit economic models of fertility and child production focusing not only on differences across families but differences within families as well

the economics of polygyny in sub saharan africa female productivity and the demand for wives in cote d ivoire polygyny is still practiced throughout much of sub saharan africa with important social consequences this paper makes the first attempt to link african polygyny directly to the productivity of women in agriculture using micro data i develop a structural model of the demand for wives that disentangles wealth and substitution effects using a large household survey from cote d ivoire i find that marked geographic diversity in cropping patterns leads to regional variation in female labor productivity i also find that conditional on wealth men do have more wives when women are more productive that is cheaper this substitution effect may explain why polygyny declined in rural areas of cote d ivoire during agricultural development

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

catholic schools dropout rates and educational attainment this paper examines the effect of catholic schooling on high school dropout rates and educational attainment particular attention is given to the effect of selection into the catholic school sector after adjusting for self selection we find that sophomores in the catholic schools are still substantially more likely to graduate with their class it is also shown that seniors in the catholic schools are not more likely to acquire more schooling than other seniors if selection is taken into account

the trade off between child quantity and quality an empirical investigation of trade offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children s achievement though parents show no favori

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

religion and earnings is it good to be an atheist with religious parental background abstract using german employee data we find that being raised by two religious parents and having no current religious affiliation is associated with higher earnings this conforms to the hypothesis that people who are raised religiously and reject religion as adults are economically more successful as they combine a strong internalized work ethic with an increased interest in present consumption as opposed to afterlife consumption

simple analytics of productive consumption productive consumption adds to utility and income at the same time the shadow price of a productive good is equal to its money price less its marginal product as more of the good is consumed its shadow price rises because of diminishing productivity and the consumer s full income also rises because the marginal product is positive this paper uses a simple method to derive the comparative statics of the demand system when shadow prices and full income are endogenous the direction of the overall bias induced by endogenous prices and income is found to be determinate we demonstrate that the demand for productive goods tends to be relatively unresponsive to exogenous changes in prices and income we also show that labor supply will be relatively unresponsive to wage and unearned income if market work causes fatigue

blacks hispanics and white ethnic groups are blacks uniquely disadvantaged despite the impression that the federal statistical system has been starved for resources the record over the last decade or so judged by conventional deflation methods has been one of rough stability the quality of u s international data on commodity and service trade direct investment and export and import prices has improved but there has been a serious deterioration in data on portfolio capital flows stocks and income where improvements have taken place the main source has been computerization both inside and outside the federal statistical system the standard deflators for expenditures do not adequately take account of the decline in the cost of computing and therefore impart a downward bias to the estimates of input despite the gains in some areas serious deficiencies remain for the increasingly important international sector the improvements that have occurred have resulted mainly from congressional and outside pressures while successive administrations have shown little concern with the quality of the data they produce and presumably use for policy making this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item