language and the earnings of immigrants several studies most of them employing straightforward regression analysis have concluded that immigrants proficiency in the language of their adopted country is correlated with their productivity as measured by earnings two weaknesses of these studies are potential unobserved heterogeneity which could result in over estimated effects if overall ability is linked with language acquisition and potential measurement error in the language proficiency measures which would probably result in under estimation of language effects the present study which uses panel data for a 10 year period in germany yields evidence that the latter bias tends to be much larger than the former implying that language proficiency is far more important than suggested by the existing literature

evolution of the economics of agricultural policy agricultural economists helped develop farm programs to respond to the dire economic situation of the 1920s and 1930s some early authors appreciated that such policies created problems in markets for commodities and inputs over time our understanding of agricultural issues and policies has deepened through the application of improved models and tools of analysis to more extensive data we have developed better answers to old questions and have responded to changing policy instruments market contexts and policy concerns this article traces the evolution of our deepening economic understanding of the causes and consequences of agricultural policy

estimation of an occupational choice model when occupations are misclassified this paper examines occupational choices using a discrete choice model that accounts for the fact that self reported occupation data is measured with error despite evidence from validation studies which suggests that there is a substantial amount of measurement error in self reported occupations existing research has not corrected for classi cation error when estimating models of occupational choice this paper develops a panel data model of occupational choices that corrects for misclassi cation in occupational choices and measurement error in occupation speci c work experience variables the model is used to estimate the extent of measurement error in self reported occupation data and quantify the bias that results from ignoring measurement error in occupation codes when

switching regression models with imperfect sample separation information with an application on cartel stability an exogenous switching regression model with imperfect reginme classificationi information is specified and applied to a study of cartel stability an efficient estimation method is proposed which takes this imperfect information into account the consequences of misclassification are analyzed the direction of the least squares bias is derived an optimal regime classification rule is obtained and compared theoretically and empirically with other classification rules we then examine the joint executive committee a railroad cartel in the 1880 s the econometric evidence indicates that reversions to noncooperative behavior did occur for the firms in our sample and these reversions involve a significant decrease in market price this article is concerned with the possibility of estimating a switching regression model and its application to a study on cartel stability the switching regression model is the exogenous switching model proposed by quandt 24 which generalized a problem of mixture distributions day 4 the sample in this model is generated from distinct regression equations or regimes for each time period if the investigator has a priori information on how the sample is partitioned into the underlying regimes it is a switching regression model with known sample separation otherwise it is a model with unknown sample separation estimation of these latter models has been considered by quandt 24 goldfeld and quandt 8 and kiefer 14 16 among others a switching regression model is appropriate for the study of cartel behavior when there are price wars as firms will revert from cooperative to noncooperative behavior and so the industry supply function shifts occasionally this model will allow us to exploit the fact that there will be periodic stochastic switches or reversions between cooperative and noncooperative conduct in order to identify collusive episodes

dialect speech and wages abstract our paper studies the causal effect of dialect speech on wages of native dutch workers using an instrumental variable approach we find evidence of a wage penalty of dialect speech for males but not for females

born in britain how are native ethnic minorities faring in the british labour market in spite of the 40 years that have passed since legislation was first introduced to combat racial discrimination british born ethnic minorities fare little better than their immigrant parents in the uk labour market

biomass price developments inhibit biofuel investments and research in germany the crucial future role of high yields abstract the competitiveness of conventional and advanced second generation biofuels is a critical issue for the implementation of a sustainable transport strategy we model biofuel competition under different feedstock cost development scenarios assessing what costs and cost developments can be expected for energy crops in germany and how these feedstock cost developments affect the competitiveness between biofuels perennial poplar was found to be the least cost energy crop with non perennial silage maize being strongly competitive at increasing feedstock price developments assuming increasing feedstock costs for the future neither conventional biodiesel from rape seed nor advanced biodiesel were found to be competitive in the long run feedstock costs were found to overshadow all other factors leading to costs for advanced biodiesel to be between 27 0 and 53 6 gj 1 in 2030 which is above most expectations of the advanced biofuels only synthetic natural gas was cost competitive under some circumstances but biomethane from silage maize and bioethanol from sugar beet were the strongest options as they combine high yields with high conversion efficiencies while avoiding the high upfront costs of advanced biofuels and the risk of switching to perennial crops however such a transition leads to less mobile feedstocks being used than presently and in the case of gaseous fuels requires stimulation of the demand side in order to function the high dependence on and increasing relevance of feedstock costs is characteristic for the biobased renewables only and is detrimental and inhibiting for investments and research and development efforts in contrast to for e g wind and solar photovoltaics and must be considered when designing policy for any sector of the bioeconomy

immigrant language fluency in the low skilled labor market using longitudinal linked employer employee data the author investigates the returns to being a native speaker for immigrant men in the low skilled labor market she compares the two main recent immigrant groups in portugal brazilians who are portuguese native speakers and eastern europeans who are not findings show that both wage level and wage growth of the two groups are similar to better understand this surprising result the author studies two mechanisms through which language fluency may lead to higher wages sorting across occupations and across firms brazilians do sort into occupations that require greater language skills however this does not translate into a wage premium considerable workplace segregation occurs in portugal but brazilians are not less segregated from natives than are eastern europeans evidence in this article suggests that language skills are not a major driver of economic assimilation in the low skilled labor market

the endogeneity between language and earnings international analyses this study is concerned with the determinants of dominant language fluency its effects on earnings and its endogeneity with earnings among immigrants dominant language fluency is hypothesized to

endogenous commodity policies and the social benefits from public research expenditures standard analyses of social benefits of public agricultural research expenditures in the presence of commodity policies take the commodity policy as fixed in reality governments adjust commodity policy levels when the research has important income distributional effects we use two examples of commodity policies to analyze the consequences of endogenizing commodity policies under three alternative decision making models of government relaxing the assumption of fixed commodity policies has important impacts on conclusions regarding the social benefits of research in the presence of commodity policies

industrialization and bilingualism in india bilingualism is a distinct and important form of human capital in linguistically diverse countries when communication among workers increases productivity there can be economic incentives to learn a second language i study how the growth of industrial employment increased bilingualism in india between 1931 and 1961 during that period indian factories were linguistically mixed i exploit industrial clustering and sectoral demand growth for identification the effect on bilingualism was strongest in import competing districts and among local linguistic minorities bilingualism was mainly the result of learning rather than than migration or assimilation and was not a byproduct of becoming literate my results shed new light on human capital investment in developing economies and on the long run evolution of languages and cultures

language fluency and earnings estimation with misclassified language indicators we use panel data to analyze the determinants of speaking fluency and wages of immigrants our model takes account of two problems that may bias ols estimates of the impact of speaking fluency on earnings first subjective variables on an ordinal discrete scale such as self reported language ability can suffer from misclassification errors the model decomposes misclassification errors into a time persistent and a time varying component second the model accounts for correlated unobserved heterogeneity in language and earnings equation the main finding is that these two generalizations of the standard model both lead to substantial changes in the estimated effect of speaking fluency on earnings

impact of perennial energy crops income variability on the crop selection of risk averse farmers abstract the uk government policy is for the area of perennial energy crops in the uk to expand significantly farmers need to choose these crops in preference to conventional rotations for this to be achievable this paper looks at the potential level and variability of perennial energy crop incomes and the relation to incomes from conventional arable crops assuming energy crop prices are correlated to oil prices the results suggests that incomes from them are not well correlated to conventional arable crop incomes a farm scale mathematical programming model is then used to attempt to understand the affect on risk averse farmers crop selection the inclusion of risk reduces the energy crop price required for the selection of these crops however yields towards the highest of those predicted in the uk are still required to make them an optimal choice suggesting only a small area of energy crops within the uk would be expected to be chosen to be grown this must be regarded as a tentative conclusion primarily due to high sensitivity found to crop yields resulting in the proposal for further work to apply the model using spatially disaggregated data

farm level constraints on the domestic supply of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract there are a number of estimates of the land area that could potentially be dedicated to perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus in the uk but little is known about how farmers will respond to the opportunities presented by these relatively novel crops perennial energy crops face competition from other arguably more flexible uses of farmland and if not seen as attractive propositions to individual farmers they will not be grown farmers decisions are therefore a key constraint on potential supply this paper reviews the policy background and considers whether policy is based on any consideration of likely supply response before presenting outcomes of focus groups composed of farmers who already grow or are considering growing perennial energy crops there appear to be a number of barriers to adoption in addition to concerns over the security of contracts the current high wheat price increases the opportunity cost of committing land to perennial energy crops there are also worries about the impact of willow roots on field drains and the cost of returning the land to other uses this paper outlines a number of issues of importance to policy makers and suggests future research needs

english proficiency and labor market performance evidence from the economics profession this article investigates whether the global spread of the english language provides an inherent advantage to native english speakers this question is studied within the context of the economics profession where the impact of being a native english speaker on future publishing success is examined english speakers may have an advantage because they are writing in their native language the quality of writing is a crucial determinant of publishing success and all the top economics journals are published in english using a ranking of the world s top 2 5 of economists this article confirms that native english speakers are ranked 100 spots higher better than similar non native english speakers a variety of extensions examine and dispel many other potential explanations jel a11 j44 f66

the adoption of switchgrass and miscanthus by farmers impact of liquidity constraints and risk preferences lignocellulosic biomass is expected to become a key feedstock for renewable energy production however the potential supply strongly depends on farmers willingness to grow the new perennial energy crops many economic assessments have been led at the farm level all based on the standard net present value approach this paper looks into the effect of farmers liquidity constraints and risk preferences on switchgrass and miscanthus adoption by farmers we study the problem of the land allocation between a traditional cropping system and an innovative one in a static framework using four intertemporal choice models we find that in central france agronomic and economic conditions switchgrass and miscanthus result to be less profitable in terms of annualised net margin than the usual rape wheat barley rotation nevertheless they can be highly competitive as diversification crops when appropriate contracts are offered to farmers despite the additional liquidity they require

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

english deficiency and the native immigrant wage gap using the interaction of language of country of birth and age at arrival as instruments we find strong evidence of a causal effect of english as additional language eal on the native immigrant wage gap for male employees in the uk

an economic assessment of potential ethanol production pathways in ireland abstract an economic assessment was conducted on five biomass to ethanol production pathways utilising the feedstock wheat triticale sugarbeet miscanthus and straw the analysis includes the costs and margins for all the stakeholders along the economic chain this analysis reveals that under current market situations in ireland the production of ethanol under the same tax regime as petrol makes it difficult to compete against that fuel with tax breaks however it can compete against petrol on the other hand even under favourable tax breaks it will be difficult for indigenously produced ethanol to compete against cheaper sources of imported ethanol therefore the current transport fuel market has no economic reason to consume indigenously produced ethanol made from the indigenously grown feedstock analysed at a price that reflects all the stakeholders costs to deliver a significant penetration of indigenous ethanol into the market would require some form of compulsory inclusion or else considerable financial supports to feedstock and ethanol producers

a switching frontier model for imperfect sample separation information with an application to constrained labor supply this paper combines frontier functions and switching regressions this allows economic agents to operate under different efficiency regimes thus relaxing the assumption that all observations are drawn from the same distribution of inefficiency the switch is based on sample separation information that is treated first as perfect then as imperfect or noisy available sample separation information suggests an observation s regime however the information may not be accurate by comparing results across alternative specifications of sample separation information as perfect and noisy this approach provides evidence on the quality of the sample separation information the technique s usefulness is demonstrated via an application to constrained labor supply copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

current and future financial competitiveness of electricity and heat from energy crops a case study from ireland abstract it has been demonstrated that miscanthus and willow energy crop cultivation could be economically competitive with current agricultural land uses at a farm gate biomass price ranging from 70 to 130 t 1 dry matter styles d thorne f jones m b in review energy crops in ireland an economic comparison of willow and miscanthus production with conventional farming systems biomass and bioenergy may 2006 this paper uses the same farm gate prices to calculate the economic competitiveness of energy crop electricity and heat production using a net present value npv approach 20 year period 5 discount rate direct and gasified co firing of willow wood with coal would result in electricity generation 30 or 37 more expensive than coal generation at current coal and co 2 allowance prices and a farm gate biomass cost of 100 t 1 break even co 2 allowance prices are 33 and 37 t 1 respectively however co firing of miscanthus with peat is close to economic competitiveness and would require a co 2 allowance price of 16 t 1 to break even against a current price of 12 t 1 npv analyses indicate that wood heat is significantly cheaper than oil gas or electric heat excluding existing wood boiler installation subsidies discounted annual savings range from 143 compared with gas to 722 compared with electric heating at the domestic scale and from 3454 to 11 222 at the commercial scale inclusion of available subsidies improves the comparative economics of domestic wood heat substantially the economic advantage of wood heat is robust to variation in fuel prices discount rates and heat loads the greatest obstacles to energy crop utilisation include i a reluctance to consider long term economics ii possible competition from cheaper sources of biomass iii the need for a spatially coordinated supply and utilisation network

modelling farmer uptake of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract the uk biomass strategy suggests that to reach the technical potential of perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus by 2020 requires 350 000 hectares of land this represents a more than 20 fold increase on the current 15 546 hectares previous research has identified several barriers to adoption including concerns over security of income from contracts in addition farmers perceive returns from these crops to be lower than for conventional crops this paper uses a farm level linear programming model to investigate theoretical uptake of energy crops at different gross margins under the assumption of a profit maximising decision maker and in the absence of known barriers to adoption the findings suggest that while src willow at current prices remains less competitive returns to miscanthus should have encouraged adoption on a wider scale than at present this highlights the importance of the barriers to adoption recently announced contracts for miscanthus appear to offer a significant premium to farmers in order to encourage them to grow the crops this raises the question of whether a more cost effective approach would be for government to provide guarantees addressing farmers concerns including security of income from the contracts such an approach should encourage adoption at lower gross margins

judging agricultural policies a survey this survey provides a structured picture of 40 years of literature which uses welfare economic tools to judge agricultural policy challenges and developments of normative agricultural policy analysis are discussed in an easily accessible graphical framework it is shown how the literature has gone from examining a very small discrete set of simple policies to a much broader often continuous set of policies that combine policy instruments simultaneously the importance of the pareto criterion used to explore the limits of how government can affect welfare is revealed moreover given the importance of the objective of income redistribution in agricultural policy agricultural economists have often departed from the purely efficiency oriented tradition in economics it is shown that they have tried to incorporate equity considerations by either adding these criteria as constraints to the social welfare function or directly incorporating these criteria in the functional form of the social welfare function

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

the influence of a renewable energy feed in tariff on the decision to produce biomass crops in ireland abstract a target of 30 per cent substitution of biomass for peat in the three peat fired power stations from 2015 has been set by the irish government however a knowledge gap exists on the extent to which irish farmers would actually choose to grow these crops an extension of the renewable energy feed in tariff refit scheme to include the co firing of biomass with peat in electricity generation would enable the power stations to enter into power purchase agreements ppas these offer a fixed price to farmers for biomass feedstock the decision to adopt biomass is represented as a constrained problem under certainty with the objective of profit maximisation the results showed that the price offered under a ppa has a large effect on the economic returns from biomass crops the price that the power stations previously estimated they would be able to pay at 46 and 48 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively was used as a starting point at this price the number of farmers who would choose to adopt biomass production is insufficient to achieve the national co firing target the target could be achieved at 70 and 65 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively

the welfare economics of a biofuel tax credit and the interaction effects with price contingent farm subsidies a framework is developed to analyze the effects of a biofuel consumer tax exemption and the interaction effects with a price contingent farm subsidy ethanol prices rise above the gasoline price by the amount of the tax credit corn farmers gain directly while gasoline consumers only gain from any reduction in world oil prices due to the extra ethanol production domestic oil producers lose historically the intercept of the ethanol supply curve is above the gasoline price hence part of the tax credit is redundant and represents rectangular deadweight costs that dwarf triangular deadweight cost measures of traditional farm subsidies copyright 2007 oxford university press

economic evaluation of short rotation coppice systems for energy from biomass a review abstract since economic profitability is the most important factor for the adoption of short rotation coppice src for energy from biomass our objective was to analyze and summarize published knowledge about the economic evaluation of src of 37 studies 43 reported economic viability of src in comparison to a reference system whereas 19 stated economic disadvantages of src and 38 reported mixed results depending on the underlying assumptions we found a wide variety of underlying assumptions underlying costs process chains and methods used to evaluate src systems of the 37 studies 8 used static approaches of capital budgeting 84 used dynamic approaches and 8 applied approaches in which uncertainties were taken into account due to the long term nature of investment in src and therewith the uncertain development of sensitive assumptions approaches which consider uncertainties were best suited for economic evaluation the profitability of src was found to be most sensitive to the price for biomass and biomass yield but site specific biomass data was lacking despite the wide variation within each cost unit costs for land rent harvesting chipping and establishment consistently made up the largest proportion of overall costs and should therefore be chosen carefully we close with suggestions for improving the economic evaluation of src and enhancing traceability and comparability of calculations

economic evaluation of miscanthus production a review this paper reviews the peer reviewed literature dealing with the economics of miscanthus cultivation to identify factors influencing the adoption of miscanthus and to reveal shortcomings in research in total 51 studies have been identified for this review the majority of these publications are recent i e the majority is published after 2009 and concern case studies in europe particularly the uk and ireland and north america this review reveals that the economic viability of miscanthus depends on largely uncertain assumptions especially concerning yields 10 48 t dry matter per ha and prices 48 134 t dry matter but also concerning the lifespan 10 20 years and different cost items a lack of established markets high establishment costs and uncertainties arising to a large extent from the long term commitment are identified as major barriers to miscanthus adoption in addition the level of support for miscanthus production e g via subsidies is identified as crucial for miscanthus profitability but is found to be highly heterogeneous across countries next to diversity in agronomic and economic assumptions also the assessment criteria and research techniques used to investigate the profitability of miscanthus differ widely while the net present value criterion was most frequently used we identify a lack of approaches that account for risks and uncertainties which seem to potentially play a critical role in the uptake of miscanthus by farmers

eu agri environmental programs and the restaurant table effect the share of agricultural area enrolled in eu agri environmental programs varies significantly between eu member states these national differences are explained based on a model that reflects both that these programs internalize externalities and the political economy we identify six factors that affect the extent to which agri environmental programs are implemented environmental benefits opportunity costs of participation budgetary pressure the share of program expenditures financed by the eu the political weight attributed to farmers at the national and the political influence of each country at the eu level in addition we demonstrate that if the policy decision making process is noncooperative at the eu level countries that contribute less to the eu budget will ceteris paribus implement more programs using data of four years and feasible generalized least square methods we are able to confirm our theoretical results including a noncooperative behavior of eu member states