why do u s states adopt public private partnership enabling legislation abstract public private partnerships or ppps have the potential to address a range of urban economic issues as of late 2012 thirty two u s states and puerto rico had enacted legislation enabling the use of ppps ppp enabling laws address such issues as the treatment of unsolicited ppp proposals prior legislative approval of ppp contracts and the mixing of public and private funds we utilize 13 key elements of ppp enabling laws to develop an index reflecting the degree to which a state s law is encouraging or discouraging of private infrastructure investment we examine why states pass such laws and why some states pass legislation that is relatively more favorable to private investment we consider demand side supply side and political institutional drivers of passage vehicle registration growth and greater traffic congestion both increase the likelihood of passage as does political agreement between a state s executive and legislative branches traffic congestion growth in per capita income and the percent of republicans in the state s house of representatives all increase a law s favorability to private investment there is little indication that traditional public finance variables such as federal highway aid affect the likelihood of passage or the favorability of a state s ppp enabling law

booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

adam smith or machiavelli political incentives for contracting out local public services why do some local governments deliver public services directly while others rely on providers from the private sector previous literature on local contracting out and on the privatization of state owned enterprises have offered two competing interpretations on why center right governments rely more on private providers some maintain that center right politicians contract out more because like adam smith they believe in market competition others claim that center right politicians use privatization in a machiavellian fashion it is used as a strategy to retain power by purchasing the electoral support of certain constituencies using a unique dataset which includes the political attitudes of over 8 000 swedish local politicians from 290 municipalities for a period of 10 years this paper tests these ideological predictions together with additional political economy factors which have been overlooked in previous studies such as the number of veto players results first indicate support for the machiavellian interpretation as contracting out increases with electoral competition second irrespective of ideological concerns municipalities with more veto players in the coalition government contract out fewer services

aggregate income shocks and infant mortality in the developing world health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial the authors investigate whether short term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1 7 million births in 59 developing countries the authors show a large negative association between per capita gdp and infant mortality female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns

factors explaining local privatization a meta regression analysis this paper aims at explaining the differences in the results of empirical studies of motivations for local privatization by undertaking a meta regression our results suggest that fiscal constraints and interest groups were especially relevant in the early studies of the us which considered several services further studies that focus on one service capture the influence of scale economies more accurately finally our results show that small towns are more affected by fiscal and political factors while ideology plays a major role for european and large cities thus no clear conclusions emerge from this literature because the findings of each study are sensitive to its characteristics

economic and other determinants of infant and child mortality in small developing countries the case of central america and the caribbean inter country differences in infant and child mortality are explained by looking at demographic economic health and educational factors a model is presented in which the infant mortality rate the child mortality rate and the birth rate are endogenous the model is tested using cross national multiple regression analysis and simulations the presence of simultaneity is confirmed introducing non economic factors transforms the character of the relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables from a diminishing returns to an increasing returns one the role played by public expenditure in education vaccination coverage low birth weight female schooling number of nurses access to safe water or malnutrition can be assessed as well as that played by structural adjustment variables such as the inflation rate or the external debt to gnp ratio infant and child mortality can be diminished everywhere in the region with relatively small amounts of expenditure disappointing outcomes in som

returns to regionalism an analysis of nontraditional gains from regional trade agreements the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in regional trade agreements with many policymakers and academics seeming to believe that these provide more than the traditional gains from trade this article examines several possible benefits that regional trade agreements may confer on their partners including credibility signaling bargaining power insurance and coordination it assesses the necessary conditions for each possible channel to work gives stylized examples of specific types of policy where the benefit might be applicable examines cases where the explanation might be relevant and discusses their overall plausibility it concludes by examining the north american free trade agreement and the europe agreements

income inequality and health lessons from a refugee residential assignment program this paper examines the effect of income inequality on health for a group of particularly disadvantaged individuals refugees our analysis draws on longitudinal hospitalization records coupled with a settlement policy where swedish authorities assigned newly arrived refugees to their first area of residence the policy was implemented in a way that provides a source of plausibly random variation in initial location the results reveal no statistically significant effect of income inequality on the risk of being hospitalized this finding holds also for most population subgroups and when separating between different types of diagnoses our estimates are precise enough to rule out large effects of income inequality on health

women empowerment and infant mortality in bangladesh this study attempts to investigate the effects of women empowerment on infant mortality in bangladesh four indicators have been considered to measure four dimensions of women empowerment the level of education participation in household hh decisions autonomy in movements and employment status the rotated factor analysis technique is used to construct the last three dimensions the weibull parametric survival model has been specified and estimated using the bangladesh demographic and health survey bdhs data of 2011 the results show that three measures of empowerment the level of education participation in hh decisions and autonomy in movements contribute significantly to the reduction of infant mortality but women employment is associated with increased mortality for infants the findings of this study have a number of policy implications on this issue for a developing country like bangladesh

european union developing country ftas overview and analysis this paper explores the complex structures of recent free trade agreements ftas between the european union and developing countries surveys the main factors determining their economic effects and presents quantitative simulations of the effects of these agreements limitations of product coverage substantially reduce the potential benefits of the agreements compared to full bilateral free trade while only the mexico chile and turkey agreements have trade related commitments which are wider and deeper than the preferential reduction in tariffs in the case of egypt existing levels of protection mean that it is moving toward regional free trade with many domestic distortions still in place producing a significant loss for the egyptian economy

income inequality and health status in the united states evidence from the current population survey several recent studies have identified an association between income inequality and aggregate health outcomes this has been taken to be evidence that inequality is detrimental to individual health we use data from the 1995 99 march current population survey to examine the effect of income inequality on individual health status for both the general population and those individuals in poverty we find no consistent association between income inequality and individual health status our results contradict recent claims that the psychosocial effects of income inequality have dramatic consequences for individual health outcomes

gendered impacts of the 2007 2008 food price crisis evidence using panel data from rural ethiopia abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the gendered impact of the 2007 2008 food price crisis using panel data on 1400 households from rural ethiopia that were initially surveyed before the onset of the crisis in 1994 1995 1997 and 2004 and after food prices spiked in 2009 it investigates whether female headed households are more likely to report experiencing a food price shock and whether female headed households experiencing a shock are more or less likely to adopt certain coping strategies controlling for individual household and community characteristics our findings suggest that female headed households are more vulnerable to food price changes and are more likely to have experienced a food price shock in 2007 2008 because female headed households are also resource poor and have a larger food gap compared with male headed households they cope by cutting back on the number of meals they provide their households during good months and eating less preferred foods in general a combination of short term measures to protect diet diversity and micronutrient consumption of vulnerable groups and longer term measures to promote investment in sustainable agriculture such as strengthening women s property rights may increase the ability of poor and vulnerable households to cope better with food price increases

health and income inequality attempting to avoid the aggregation problem attempts to test the relative deprivation hypothesis that income inequality affects individual health are subject to the aggregation problem waldmann quarterly journal of economics 107 1992 ingeniously attempts to overcome the difficulty by using income data for the poor and the share of income accruing to the rich the study finds that his results do not hold for a more recent data set and it suggests that his method may not overcome the aggregation problem

the determinants of the choice between public and private production of a publicly funded service the public choice literature contains little formal analysis of the bureaucratic choice of production modes public or private of publicly funded services an important question to be addressed is why some governmental bodies choose to provide a publicly funded service with publicly owned and operated production units whereas other governmental bodies contract with private firms to provide the same publicly funded service this paper is the first formal attempt to remedy this gap in the literature we develop a theoretical explanation of the government decision maker s choice between public and private production modes based on utility maximizing behavior we then examine empirically this choice employing logit analysis the empirical results which include several tests for robustness confirm our theoretical explanation the results are significant and suggest that non monetary constraints are an important factor affecting this choice of production modes and that monetary constraints are less influential

market reform and mortality in transition economies abstract the striking increase in mortality rates in russia in the early 1990s occurred simultaneously with the government s erratic attempts to introduce market reforms other transition economies such as poland and the czech republic avoided increases in death rates while they implemented rapid and deep reforms is there a link between mortality and the speed or depths of reforms as suggested by other researchers e g sachs 1996 american economic review 86 2 128 233 this paper uses aggregate data on 22 transition economies for 1989 1994 to investigate this question while the relationship between an index of reform progress and death rates is ambiguous death rates in these countries are correlated with measures of reform success such as gdp growth and the inflation rate higher crime rates and higher unemployment rates are also related to larger increases in death rates

the limits of r d internationalization and the importance of local initiatives turkey as a critical case the growth of r d in east asia has triggered the notion of a new innovation geography where r d is no longer a privilege of the traditional oecd countries what does this mean for mid sized emerging economies without the scale advantages and bargaining power of india or china this paper uses turkey as a case to examine the continual unevenness of international r d investments by analyzing opportunities and limitations for local initiatives in the telecommunications pharmaceutical and automotive industries the paper finds that active private capital a sufficient scale of production and focused public policies are needed to attract international r d

infant mortality relative income and public policy do health outcomes depend on relative income as well as on an individual s absolute level of income we use infant mortality as a health status indicator and find a significant and positive link between infant mortality and income inequality using cross national data for 93 countries holding constant the income of each of the three poorest quintiles of a country s population we find that an increase in the income of the upper 20 of the income distribution is associated with higher not the lower infant mortality our results are robust and not just caused by the concave relationship between income and health the estimates imply a decrease in infant mortality by 1 5 for a one percentage point decrease in the income share of the richest quintile the overall results are sensitive to public policy public health care expenditure educational outcomes and access to basic sanitation and safe water can explain the inequality health relationship thus our findings support the hypothesis of public disinves

striking at the roots of crime the impact of welfare spending on crime during the great depression abstractduring the great depression contemporaries worried that people hit by hard times would resort to crime president franklin roosevelt argued that the massive government relief efforts struck at the roots of crime by providing subsistence income to needy families after constructing a panel data set for 81 large american cities for the years 1930 40 we estimate the effect of relief spending by all levels of government on crime rates the analysis suggests that a 10 percent increase in relief spending during the 1930s reduced property crime by roughly 1 5 percent by limiting the amount of relief recipients free time work relief may have been more effective than direct relief in reducing crime more generally our results indicate that social insurance which tends to be understudied in economic analyses of crime should be more explicitly and more carefully incorporated into the analysis of temporal and spatial variations in criminal activity

effects of income inequality on population health new evidence from the european community household panel this study provides new evidence in order to explore the relationship between income inequality and health in the european union countries using new data from the european community household panel echp a variety of different specifications were tried using diverse dependent variables such as life expectancy at birth and child mortality the results show new support to the influence of income inequality on health indicators using aggregate data and panel techniques

bilateral free trade agreements and customs unions the impact of the eu republic of south africa free trade agreement on botswana the eu has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements although not a consequence of the cotonou agreement the free trade agreement between the eu and the republic of south africa eu rsa fta is clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships however there is no evidence that the design of the eu rsa fta incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern african nations the analyses reported here indicate that while the eu rsa fta may substantially benefit the signatories there are appreciable negative impacts for other states especially the rsa s immediate neighbours moreover the reluctance of the eu to fully liberalise trade in food and agriculture commodities results in a major reduction in the benefits for the rsa without ameliorating substantively the adverse implications for other nations

macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries an introduction norman v loayza romain ranciere luis serven and jaume ventura macroeconomic volatility both a source and a reflection of underdevelopment is a fundamental concern for developing countries this article provides a brief overview of the recent literature on macroeconomic volatility in developing countries highlighting its causes consequences and possible remedies to reduce domestic policy induced macroeconomic volatility by controlling the level and variability of fiscal expenditures by keeping inflation low and stable and by avoiding price rigidity including that of the exchange rate which eventually leads to drastic adjustments the ability to conduct countercyclical fiscal policies is crucial and it depends largely on the ability of the authorities to reduce public indebtedness to internationally acceptable levels establish a record of saving in good times to provide for bad times and develop credibility tha

maternal empowerment and child malnutrition in bangladesh abstractthe study examines the importance of maternal empowerment in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in bangladesh maternal empowerment is measured by a composite index based on four

inequality neighbourhoods and welfare of the poor abstract this paper investigates how neighbourhood effects interacting with income inequality affect poor people s ability to access basic facilities like health care services schooling and so on we model this interaction by integrating consumers income distribution with the spatial distribution of their location and explore the consequences of an increase in income inequality or variations in the neighbourhood characteristics on the welfare of the rich and poor in general and their access to market in particular we find that in general the impact will be non monotonic owing to an interesting trade off between the provision effect and the price effect on the one hand there is the positive provision effect higher valuation of the rich attracts the supplier to enter into the neighbourhood allowing the poor who live sufficiently close by to access the service on the other hand there is the negative price effect the service provider charges a higher price higher is the income or larger is the proportion of the rich in the neighbourhood in the extreme there exists the possibility of complete exclusion of poor from the market the service provider caters only to the rich and the poor has absolutely no market access we have identified the higher income gap between rich and poor as the key factor that exposes the poor to this complete exclusion possibility

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

more on the choice between public and private production of a publicly funded service overall the empirical findings we reported in our 1987 article are strongly suggestive of the importance of nonmonetary considerations in the production mode choice nonetheless professor pack is quite correct to note that our conclusion 1987 225 226 overstates the evidence we presented for the primacy of nonmonetary factors in the production mode choice when her full model is considered regarding the full model despite the statistically significant findings for some demographic variables a formal theoretical model of their effects on the production mode choice is lacking notwithstanding pack s comments concerning scale economies we are persuaded that the theoretic void regarding the effects of demographic variables on the production mode choice still exists

trade liberalisation the effects of free trade agreements on the competitiveness of the dairy sector in recent years preferential trade agreements ptas free trade agreements ftas in particular have proliferated while wto negotiations have stagnated this paper contributes to the literature on trade liberalisation and the agricultural sector by analysing the effects of ftas on the competitiveness of the dairy sector across 76 countries and over a 20 year period from 1990 to 2009 with a longitudinal econometric model the results demonstrate that when a country has a revealed comparative advantage in the dairy sector ftas positively influence several indicators of competitiveness in the dairy sector such as production market share and trade balance the results also indicate that multilateral ftas are more beneficial than bilateral ftas there is strong empirical evidence that ftas are more beneficial to developed countries than to developing countries there is no statistical evidence to support the hypothesis about a relationship between ftas and farm gate price

nationalization privatization and the allocation of financial property rights in this paper i have shown that a purely economic theory of nationalization and privatization is conceivable on the basis of an analysis of government as a rationally discriminating operator acting as the agent of pressure groups competing for redistribution variations in cost of capital differentials between private investors and the state essentially due to the existence of taxation explain alternate policies of taking over privately owned corporations and divesting from state enterprises soes some initial empirical results are encouraging consequently i cannot reject the hypothesis that through nationalization and privatization episodes politicians after all do behave according to economic rationality

revealed comparative advantage and competitiveness in hungarian agri food sectors we examine the competitiveness of hungarian agriculture and food processing in relation to that of the eu based on four indices of revealed comparative advantage using highly disaggregate data for the period 1992 to 1998 consistency tests suggest that the indices are less satisfactory as cardinal measures but are useful in identifying the demarcation between comparative advantage and comparative disadvantage hungary is shown to have a comparative advantage in a range of agri food products including animals and meat this complements the findings of those studies that have used price and cost based approaches in identifying competitiveness in cereals and crops results indicate that the rca indices when interpreted as a binary measure have remained surprisingly stable during the period of transition although there is evidence of a weakening in the level of comparative advantage as revealed in the balassa index

socio economic status and child health does public health insurance narrow the drawing on evidence from the u s this paper examines the effects of public health insurance on children recent expansions of american public health insurance programs to previously ineligible children have created a great deal of variation that can be used to identify their effects results indicate that providing public insurance to poor children narrows socio economic gaps in utilization and health among children however inefficiencies and inequities in the allocation of health care remain which suggests that universality and outreach programs are also important components of the public health systems common in europe

inequality and mortality long run evidence from a panel of countries we investigate whether changes in economic inequality affect mortality in rich countries to answer this question we use a new source of data on income inequality tax data on the share of pretax income going to the richest 10 of the population in australia canada france germany ireland the netherlands new zealand spain sweden switzerland the uk and the us between 1903 and 2003 although this measure is not a good proxy for inequality within the bottom half of the income distribution it is a good proxy for changes in the top half of the distribution and for the gini coefficient in the absence of country and year fixed effects the income share of the top decile is negatively related to life expectancy and positively related to infant mortality however in our preferred fixed effects specification these relationships are weak statistically insignificant and likely to change their sign nor do our data suggest that changes in the income share of the richest 10 affect homicide or suicide rates

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

multilateral agricultural trade liberalisation the contrasting fortunes of developing countries in the doha round an applied general equilibrium model is used to assess the impact of multilateral trade liberalisation in agriculture with particular emphasis on developing countries we use original data and the model includes some specific features such as a dual labour market applied tariffs including those under preferential regimes and regional agreements are taken into account at the detailed product level together with the corresponding bound tariffs on which countries negotiate the various types of farm support are detailed and several groups of developing countries are distinguished simulations give a contrasted picture of the benefits developing countries would draw from the doha development round the results suggest that previous studies have neglected preferential agreements and the binding overhang in tariffs as well as domestic support and have treated developing countries with a high level of aggregation and been excessively optimistic about the actual benefits of multilateral trade liberalisation regions like sub saharan africa are more likely to suffer from the erosion of existing preferences the main gainers of the doha round are likely to be developed countries and cairns group members

the injustice of inequality in many countries the operation of legal political and regulatory institutions is subverted by the wealthy and the politically powerful for their own benefit this subversion takes the form of corruption intimidation and other forms of influence we present a model of such institutional subversion focusing specifically on courts and of the effects of inequality in economic and political resources on the magnitude of subversion we then use the model to analyze the consequences of institutional subversion for the law and order environment in the country as well as for capital accumulation and growth we illustrate the model with historical evidence from gilded age united states and the transition economies of the 1990s we also present some cross country evidence consistent with the basic prediction of the model

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

public versus private economic activity a new look at school bus transportation thomas borcherding 1977 in commenting on the public versus private literature offered the generalization that removal of an activity from the private to the public sector will double its unit costs of production the results of this paper obviously are not consistent with borcherding s rule of two generalization at the same time however the 12 cost per mile differential in favor of private ownership indicated by the results for the overall sample is not a trivial sum in absolute terms the cost per mile differences in favor of private buses contained in the five trip groups are not trivial either nor is the direct evidence from the 82 joint systems in attempting to assess the results much depends on the perspective against which they are judged

income distribution and infant mortality comparing two countries in which the poor have equal real incomes the one in which the rich are wealthier is likely to have a higher infant mortality rate this anomalous result does not appear to spring from measurement error in estimating the income of the poor and the association between high infant mortality and income inequality is still present after controlling for other factors such as education medical personnel and fertility the positive association of infant mortality and the income of the rich suggests that measured real incomes may be a poor measure of social welfare this paper considers and tests several possible explanations such as the provision of medical services the degree of urbanization the extent of female literacy and differences in the composition of births among different income groups none of these factors adequately accounts for the positive association between the incomes of the rich and infant mortality the geographical scope is worldwide excerpt

openness and the politics of potable water improving access to potable water has become an increasingly urgent concern for developing nations in the current era of globalization according to standard wisdom if developing countries undertake certain domestic reforms such as investing in infrastructure and engineering then safe and clean drinking water will improve this analysis uncovers however that in addition to such domestic efforts one of the greatest factors affecting water uncertainty is in fact internationally induced trade surprisingly both scholars and practitioners have neglected the potential impacts of expanding trade on access to potable water this analysis is the first large n cross national study of water that focuses on the interplay of trade and politics both international and domestic as the primary driving forces behind improvements in or constraints to water access the author hypothesizes that growing export pressures are constraining drinkable water in poor countries but a particular domestic condition can mit

infant and child mortality in developing countries analysing the data for robust determinants is development best achieved by going for growth or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare in contrast to the human development reports of the undp the world bank has stressed the growth approach recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that health spending is extremely ineffective in reducing infant or child mortality which is mainly explained by a country s income per capita this article contests this position through testing the robustness of determinants of infant and child mortality we have estimated over 420 000 equations which show that while income per capita is a robust determinant of infant and child mortality so are indicators of health education and gender inequality some health spending such as immunisation is thus shown to be cost effective way of saving lives our results are consistent with the view that much health spending in developing countries may be poorly targeted or otherwise ineffective but do not support the position t

the effects of public health spending on self assessed health status an ordered probit model this paper explores the relationship between public health expenditure and self assessed health status medical resources are imputed according to where individuals reside the analysis draws upon data from the 1993 national health survey controlling for a number of individual characteristics which also determine health status the estimations indicate that increases in public health expenditure significantly improve both physiological and physical health the results remain consistent when the model is reestimated and the change in the probability at the mean of the independent variable is calculated

effective protection and investment incentives in egypt and jordan during the transition to free trade with europe abstract this paper assesses the possible impact of a euro mediterranean agreement ema on egypt and jordan and identifies policy options that will increase the benefits of free trade with europe the extent to which these countries will benefit from an ema depends greatly on the investment response and thus on improvements in the investment climate the latter will be determined by many factors this paper focuses on three such factors the modalities of the tariff reduction strategy that will be pursued the extent to which transaction costs may be reduced and upgrading the quality and lowering the costs of intermediate service inputs through greater competition many of the policy and institutional changes that are required are not or are only in part covered by the ema

the intrahousehold demand for nutrients in rural south india individual estimates fixed effects and permanent income good estimates of nutrient intake responses to prices and income are very useful for the evaluation of the numerous efforts to improve nutrition in many developing countries through pricesubsidy and income generation policies we discuss three problems in standard estimates of these responses and then illustrate their implications for nutrient demand relations for a poor sample from rural south india 1 intra household nutrient allocations usually are ignored in this case nutrient intakes for females systematically have algebraically lower price elasticities than do those for males which may leave the females particularly vulnerable at times of food shortages 2 unobserved fixed effects may bias the estimates of responses to observed variables in this case not only the community fixed effects on which the previous literature has focused but also household and individual fixed effects are important failure to control for them results in substantial algebraically upward biases in many estimated price responses 3 most previous studies use current instead of permanent income which a priori may account for the low estimated income elasticities in this case however the use of permanent income does not change the conclusion that the nutrient intakes responses to income are quite small

the eu s free trade agreements with developing countries a case of wishful thinking since the middle of the1990s the eu has vigorously pursued a policy of replacing non reciprocal preferences for the developing countries in the mediterranean latin america and with south africa with bilateral free trade agreements this article examines the content of these agreements and the empirical evidence on their likely effects and concludes that they are broad but shallow agreements the static effect are likely to be very small or negative while the potential dynamic gains are problematic especially regarding the concept of a lock in to trade liberalisation unless there are greater commitments to trade related issues by both sides and especially by the eu

traffic fatalities does income inequality create an externality responsible for 20 million severe injuries and or deaths annually few epidemics receive less attention than traffic accidents going beyond confirming an inverted u shaped relationship between mean income and fatalities we show theoretically that income inequality can positively affect fatalities in two ways each operates through heterogeneity between road users and while the direct effect can be expected to evaporate with rising income the indirect effect may prove to be an externality in that the relationship remains regardless of the level of income our model is supported by evidence from 79 countries between 1970 and 2000 les graves accidents de la route font plus de 20 millions de blesses graves et ou de morts chaque annee peu d epidemies aussi graves recoivent aussi peu d attention tentant d aller plus loin que de confirmer la relation en u inverse entre revenu moyen et accidents on montre theoriquement que l inegalite de revenus peut affecter les accidents graves d une maniere positive et ce de deux facons chacune des facons opere via l heterogeneite des utilisateurs de la route alors qu on peut esperer que l effet direct va disparaitre avec la croissance des revenus l effet indirect peut etre le fait d un effet externe qui reste en place quel que soit le niveau de revenu le modele est valide par des donnees pour 79 pays entre 1970 et 2000

absolute income relative income income inequality and mortality we test whether mortality is related to individual income mean community income and community income inequality controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics the analysis is based on a random sample from the adult swedish population of more than 40 000 individuals who were followed up for 10 17 years we find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases for mean community income and community income inequality we cannot however reject the null hypothesis of no effect on mortality this result is stable with respect to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in an extensive sensitivity analysis