has job stability decreased population data from a small open economy we use a population based employer employee dataset to analyze changes in job stability in norway we first present descriptive analyses of tenure and separation rates followed by regression adjusted measures controlling for changes in demographics and the business cycle we see only weak evidence of changes in the tenure rates in particular for the public sector we find a slight increase in short tenures and a decrease in tenures above eight years however we do not find that this tendency towards less stable jobs leads to an increase in the flow to unemployment or out of the labor force

factors influencing differences between survey and market based environmental value measures a unique us database combining survey and housing data is used to obtain household level stated and market based willingness to pay wtp measures to avoid living near landfills systematic differe

banking deregulation and industry structure evidence from the french banking reforms of 1985 we investigate how the deregulation of the french banking industry in the 1980s affected the real behavior of firms and the structure and dynamics of product markets following deregulation banks are less willing to bail out poorly performing firms and firms in the more bank dependent sectors are more likely to undertake restructuring activities at the industry level we observe an increase in asset and job reallocation an improvement in allocative efficiency across firms and a decline in concentration overall these findings support the view that a more efficient banking sector helps foster a schumpeterian process of creative destruction many economies around the world are characterized by heavily regulated bank

contingent values as implicit contracts estimating minimum legal willingness to pay for conservation of large carnivores in sweden mean willingness to pay wtp based on multiple bounded discrete choice responses from contingent valuation surveys are normally obtained using some kind of parametric estimator this paper instead exploits the possibility to interpret the response to the discrete choice question as an implicit contract between the researcher and the respondent resulting in a minimum legal wtp mlw estimator never previously used in valuation literature it is used in this paper to estimate the wtp for the preservation of large carnivores in sweden based on a large scale national survey results show that mlw estimates only were 12 19 of the comparable parametric estimates in keeping with other results in contingent valuation literature we find that the mlw estimates are positively related to the educational level income and the fraction of urban population while negatively related to age among the advantages of the mlw estimator is its transparency as well as the fact that it rests on a contractual notion of wtp

can self control explain avoiding free money evidence from interest free student loans abstract this paper uses insights from behavioral economics to explain a particularly surprising borrowing phenomenon one in six undergraduate students offered interest free loans turns them down models of impulse control predict that students may optimally reject subsidized loans to avoid excessive consumption during school using the national postsecondary student aid study we investigate students take up decisions and identify a group of students for whom the loans create an especially tempting liquidity increase students who would receive the loan in cash are significantly more likely to turn it down suggesting that consumers choose to limit their liquidity in economically meaningful situations

testing for non response and sample selection bias in contingent valuation analysis of a combination phone mail survey we use a combination phone mail survey to test for possible sample biases in contingent valuation we find no sample selection bias but do find non response bias we show how failure to correct for non response bias distorts aggregate benefit estimates

valuing option existence and bequest demands for wilderness to assess the relative importance of current costs and future benefits of nuclear waste storage we develop a simple model of bequest value the basic model of nonparternalistic altruism is extended to account for the uncertain nature of the externality

differences between continuous and discrete contingent value estimates in a split sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay wtp for food safety improvements the dichotomous choice dc elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of wtp than did a continuous method little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced by the statistical techniques used with the dc data most or all of the difference was due to differences in respondent behavior in addition the continuous wtp responses showed a significant scope effect while the dc responses did not the observed difference in behavior may be attributable in part to yea saying by dc respondents

distribution and redistribution in postindustrial democracies this paper analyzes the processes of distribution and redistribution in post industrial democracies we combine a pooled time series data base on welfare state effort and its determinants assembled by huber ragin and stephens 1997 with data on income distribution assembled in the luxembourg income survey lis archive in the case of the lis data we re calculate the micro data in order to remove the distorting influence of pensioners on pre tax pre transfer income distribution we examine the determinants of three dependent variables pre tax pre transfer income inequality post tax post transfer income inequality and the proportional reduction in inequality from pre to post tax and transfer inequality we hypothesized that pre tax pre transfer income inequality would be determined by labor market institutions union density bargaining centralization labor market conditions unemployment and economic structures post industrialism third world imports we hypothesized that the reduction in inequality would be determined by political configurations directly by left government and indirectly via their effect on welfare state generosity by left government and christian democratic government post tax and transfer income inequality was hypothesized to be a product of the combination of labor market variables and political variables the results broadly confirms our hypotheses and the overall fit is very good

from flexibility to insecurity how vertical separation amplifies firm level uncertainty this article presents a model where firms may endogenously externalize part of their production process we start from the premise that adaptation to uncertainty cannot be contracted upon in the worker employer relationship vertical separation then balances flexibility gains against hold up costs of opportunistic behavior by outside contractors in equilibrium the degree of separation is shown to depend on the degree of product market competition contractor s bargaining power and the volatility of demand shocks our main result is that an increase in the degree of vertical separation amplifies the elasticity to demand shocks of firms sales and employment it does not however amplify aggregate uncertainty evidence from firm level data is shown to be largely consistent with the main implications of our theory jel l16 l23 l24

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

sectoral transformation and labour market flows in this chapter we examine the dynamics of adjustment in the labour market and in particular the movement of workers between industries it is often assumed that the speed with which the labour market must adjust has increased due to globalisation and or technological change if this is the case then these forces may be responsible for greater instability in the workplace the displacement of growing numbers of especially unskilled workers from declining sectors longer periods of unemployment and wage losses

the worth of a possum valuing species with the contingent valuation method the focus of this paper is on methods of assessing the value peopleplace on the conservation of species for use in policy making of principalinterest is the relatively new methodology of contingent valuation whichis a method for asking people directly about their preferences the paperpresents an application of the contingent valuation method to theconservation of an endangered species in the state of victoria australia the results emphasise the importance of careful survey design implementation and analysis as well as the precise definition of theenvironmental good being valued consequently the contingent valuationmethod does provide information relevant to decision making processesbased on monetary economic considerations thus in orthodox economicterms it makes sense to conserve species but there are other moral andethical grounds for conserving species as well

against the wind bargaining recentralisation and wage inequality in norway 1987 91 in the late 1980s norway s labour market experienced similar supply and demand shifts for skills to other countries but unlike other oecd nations norway s wage setting system became more centralised the pay distribution in norway became more compressed at the bottom from 1987 to 1991 while low wage workers in other countries lost ground relatively using norwegian microdata for 1987 and 1991 i found that changing labour market prices helped cause this wage compression further the less educated had declining relative overall employment but increasing relative public sector employment both possible labour market responses to the wage compression

the distribution of ncome in the uk and oecd countries in the twentieth century distributional changes are an important part of the economic history of the oecd countries over the twentieth century in the uk income inequality in the 1970s was substantially lower than 40 years earlier and is now much higher than in 1979 the pattern of change in the usa has similarities to that in the uk but other countries have exhibited significant differences in order to explain diversity of experience over time and differences in income inequality across countries today we need to recognize that the distribution of income is subject to a variety of forces affecting earnings wealth and income these forces include the policy choices made by governments affecting market incomes and fiscal redistribution what we need to explain is why in some periods a number of these forces combine to produce episodes of rising or falling inequality any single theory such as that based on a global shift of demand away from unskilled workers cannot provide a fully adequate explanation

macroeconomic performance and collective bargaining an international perspective this paper critically reviews the research on how collective bargaining systems influence macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries the review considers effects of bargaining level coordination and corporatist institutional arrangements key empirical results turn out to be quite fragile and much of the paper explores issues of measurement and specification that account for the fragility the paper concludes that complementarities between key institutions and between institutions and the economic environment may be more important for macroeconomic performance than the effects of individual institutions and it suggests research strategies

regional labor markets and the determinants of wage inequality from 1972 to 1990 the united states experienced the largest increase in wage inequality of any developed country the spread in log wages between the 90th and 10th percentiles of the male wage distribution increased by about 60 points and inequality increased within virtually every demographic or skill category of the labor force see chinhui juhn et al 1993 various explanations have been offered including changes in the relative demand for skill intensive goods international trade immigration of less skilled workers and increased labor force participation of women yet attempts to quantify the relative importance of these factors have not met with much success this leaves skill biased technical change as the residual claimant that rationalizes the data this paper uses regional differences in the evolution of wage inequality to provide new evidence on the determinants of relative wages using a model of factor demand in geographic markets i isolate contributions of i changing skill ratios in the labor force ii increased participation of women iii technical change and iv changes in the industrial composition of labor demand the data indicate that changing skill ratios and women s labor supply have affected the wages of low skilled men in the west the data indicate that increased immigration of less skilled hispanic and asian workers has adversely affected the wages of natives causing a greater increase in inequality there than in any other region of the country i modeling wage inequality in regional markets

household consumption of cheese an inverse hyperbolic sine double hurdle model with dependent errors the dependent double hurdle model is generalized by an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of the dependent variable the resulting specification features a flexible parameterization accommodates heteroskedastic errors and nests a range of common limited dependent variable models results for u s household cheese consumption suggest that the homoskedastic and normal double hurdle model is misspecified income elasticities are small and vary across household groups foodstamp recipients are more responsive to income changes than nonrecipients foodstamp recipients are also less likely to consume cheese but conditional on consumption spend more than nonrecipients

automatic stabilizers and economic crisis us vs europe this paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the eu and the us to provide income insurance through automatic stabilization in the recent economic crisis we find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 of a proportional income shock in the eu compared to 32 in the us in the case of an unemployment shock 47 of the shock is absorbed in the eu compared to 34 in the us this cushioning of disposable income leads to a demand stabilization of up to 30 in the eu and up to 20 in the us there is large heterogeneity within the eu automatic stabilizers in eastern and southern europe are much lower than in central and northern european countries we also investigate whether countries with weak automatic stabilizers have enacted larger fiscal stimulus programs

the scandinavian fantasy the sources of intergenerational mobility in denmark and the us this paper examines the sources of differences in social mobility between the us and denmark measured by income mobility denmark is a more mobile society but not when measured by educational mobility there are pronounced non linearities in income and educational mobility in both countries greater danish income mobility is largely a consequence of redistributional tax transfer and wage compression policies while danish social policies for children produce more favorable cognitive test scores for disadvantaged children they do not translate into more favorable educational outcomes partly because of disincentives to acquire education arising from the redistributional policies that increase income mobility

an analysis of the probability of default on federally guranteed student loans federally insured student loans constitute an area that is almost completely unexplored by researchers despite intense scrutiny that federally insured loans are receiving after the savings and loan collapse based on a probit model of default for two thousand guaranteed student loans the authors find that individual characteristics including parents income presence of two parents at home student s graduation and student s race have a significant impact on default rates while institutional characteristics four year vs two year college private vs public school size and individual school dummies have little significant effect the results imply that proposals to penalize colleges with high default rates are premature copyright 1992 by mit press

working wives and food away from home the box cox double hurdle model household expenditures on food away from home are analyzed with the use of the bls 1989 consumer expenditure survey parameterization and distributional assumptions of cragg s double hurdle model are generalized for this purpose and the resulting model outperforms the more traditional ones results suggest households with working wives and those with higher income are more likely to consume food away from home and also to consume more than others wife s age and household size increase the conditional level of consumption education has conflicting effects on probability and conditional level of consumption

job tenure in britain 1975 1992 the authors examine eighteen years of a large cross section to build up a picture of job tenure in britain they look for changes in the distribution of job tenure over a turbulent period for the u k labor market the authors find some change in the mean job tenure a decrease in elapsed tenure of about 10 percent between 1975 and 1992 these are important changes but they do not support the view that the dramatic changes in the labor market technology and competition have spelled the end of jobs for life copyright 1996 by royal economic society

intergenerational earnings mobility in norway levels and trends using longitudinal data for norwegian children born in 1950 1955 1960 and 1965 we find a relatively high degree of earnings mobility there is no tendency toward decreasing mobility over the cohorts conditioning on the position in the earnings distribution the analysis indicates quite high mobility in the middle of the distribution and somewhat more persistence at the top and bottom this approach also reveals increased mobility over time for sons but a less clear picture for daughters

american ambivalence towards abortion policy development of a heteroskedastic probit model of competing values theory using elaboration likelihood models and insights from the recent core beliefs literature we show that conflicting core beliefs lead to ambivalence about policy choices hypotheses policy choices about abortion are heterogeneous this heterogeneity across individuals is a function of the underlying conflict in their beliefs about the role of women and the sanctity of human life methods a heteroskedastic probit model is developed to test the hypotheses results heterogeneity is observed for six of seven abortion policy choices when core values conflict respondents are more ambivalent in their policy responses and more difficult for our standard models to predict

social welfare when needs differ an axiomatic approach if the social welfare of households of different demographic type has to be evaluated we observe considerable disagreement about the way the composition of households is to be taken into account this paper makes an attempt to differentiate some of the various approaches it deals with four methods in order to make their normative content transparent an axiomatic approach is employed the methods are completely characterized and some of their implications are demonstrated

declining job security this article defines and analyzes job security in the context of implicit contracts designed to overcome incentive problems in the employment relationship contracts of this nature generate predictions concerning the relationship between job security parameters such as worker seniority and sectoral economic conditions and the probability of separations to test these predictions i estimate binomial and multinomial models of job separations using panel study of income dynamics psid data for the years 1976 93 the results are consistent with a decline over time in the incentives to maintain existing employment relationships for male workers and for skilled white collar women

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

estimation of a type 2 tobit model with generalized box cox transformation this article considers estimation of a type 2 tobit model with bickel doksum transformation of the dependent variable of the regression equation the basic idea is that while the transformed depend

an analysis of under reporting for micro data sets the misreporting or double hurdle model abstract this paper analyzes under reporting through the two extended tobit models p tobit and double hurdle models the empirical results clarify the characteristics of under reporting misreporting plays an important role in under reporting

the welfare state in transition reforming the swedish model acknowledgments introduction richard b freeman robert topel birgitta swedenborg 1 generating equality and eliminating poverty the swedish way anders bjorklund richard b freeman 2 public employment taxes and the welfare state in sweden sherwin rosen 3 tax policy in sweden erik norrman charles e mclure jr 4 wage policy and restructuring the swedish labor market since 1960 per anders edin robert topel 5 the effects of sweden s welfare state on labor supply incentives thomas aronsson james r walker 6 an evaluation of the swedish active labor market policy new and received wisdom anders forslund alan b krueger 7 taxes and subsidies in swedish unemployment lars ljungqvist thomas j sargent 8 the social costs of regulation and lack of competition in sweden a summary stefan folster sam peltzman 9 industrial policy employer size and economic performance in sweden steven j davis magnus henrekson 10 a heckscher ohlin view of sweden competing in the global marketplace edward e leamer per lundborg contributors author index subject index

a box cox double hurdle model of wildlife valuation the citizen s perspective abstract a stated preference approach is used to elicit the attitudes of the general public towards coyote conservation the payment vehicle is presented in a way that explicitly prompts respondents to adopt a citizen perspective rather than a consumer perspective when responding to the survey to deal with the large numbers of zero responses a box cox double hurdle specification is used to model separately individuals choices about whether to support conservation or not and their choice about the level of support the results show that simpler analyses that do not account explicitly for these two different decisions would lead to misleading conclusions in the study of nuisance wildlife the study uses primary data from prince edward island canada

adopt a hypothetical pup a count data approach to the valuation of wildlife the willingness to pay wtp for a coyote conservation program is estimated using a novel payment vehicle based on how many problem coyotes respondents would be willing to sponsor for a year this hypothetical scenario mimics an increasingly popular type of actual market data from a phone survey conducted in prince edward island are analyzed using count data models that consider different processes explaining zero responses and the level of positive responses this is particularly important in the case of coyotes often regarded as an economic bad estimates of wtp per coyote per year around 18 22 and annual wtp per contributor of about 46 57 are obtained

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

spike models in contingent valuation spike models allow for a nonzero probability of zero willingness to pay in referendum style contingent valuation experiments they include many of the often used models as special cases and allow various analyses that are not possible in standard applications in this paper the economic rationale for the spike models and their estimation techniques are discussed and empirical illustrations are provided one study suggests that mean willingness to pay is zero and both studies strongly suggest that median wtp is zero these results have some bearing on the continuing debate of the incentive properties of hypothetical surveys and the construction of scenarios in contingent valuation experiments

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

economic change and rising income inequality in the oslo region the importance of knowledge intensive business services wessel t economic change and rising income inequality in the oslo region the importance of knowledge intensive business services regional studies the growth of market income inequality in the oslo region of norway between 1993 and 2004 is investigated using two measures it is shown that most of the change occurred within knowledge intensive business services and further within demographic subgroups changes in mean income between group inequality and shifts in the balance between segments of the economy are of minor importance the results support a combined focus on productive paths and institutions labour relations in particular appear as an important explanation however labour relations can hardly explain why men rather than women and western immigrants rather than non western immigrants converge towards employment in high profit businesses this particular pattern requires research beyond the economic and institutional landscape wessel t

has job stability declined yet new evidence for the 1990 s we update the evidence on changes in job stability through the mid 1990s using recently released current population survey data for 1995 that parallel earlier job tenure supplements in the aggregate job stability declined modestly in the first half of the 1990s moreover the relatively small aggregate changes mask rather sharp declines in stability for workers with more than a few years of tenure nonetheless the data available to this point do not support the conclusion that the downward shift in job stability for more tenured workers and the more modest decline in aggregate job stability reflect long term trends

do existence values for cost benefit analysis exist the use of the contingent valuation method to generate estimates of existence value for input to cost benefit analysis requires that individuals have utility functions defined over the relevant arguments the validity of the assumption that the required utility functions generally exist has been questioned it has been argued that some individuals will respond on the basis of lexicographic preference orderings it has also been argued that some individuals do not consider that market or individual willingness to pay criteria are appropriate where existence value type issues are at stake the paper considers survey evidence bearing upon these arguments it is concluded that the evidence is consistent with the view that it is incorrect to proceed on the assumption that individuals generally satisfy the assumptions required for the existence of existence values for use in cost benefit analysis

credit constraints and demand for higher education evidence from financial deregulation abstract we use staggered banking deregulation across states in the united states to examine the impact of the resulting increased credit supply on college enrollment from the 1970s to the early 1990s our research design produces estimates that are not confounded by wealth effects due to changes in income or housing wealth we find that lifting banking restrictions raises college enrollment by about 2 6 percentage points 4 9 we rule out alternative interpretations by examining results for different income groups and bankrupt households we also find similar effects for two year or four year college completion and supporting evidence in household educational borrowing

is job stability in the us falling reconciling trends in the current population survey and panel study of income dynamics this article considers whether two commonly used sources of information on employer tenure the panel study of income dynamics and the current population survey yield systematically different trends in employer tenure little evidence of a discrepancy between the data sets in the 1980s or 1990s is found when comparable samples variable definitions and time frames are used neither data set shows a significant trend in the share of workers with 1 year or less of tenure while both data sets show an increase in the fraction of men with less than 10 years of tenure starting in the late 1980s

measuring impartial preference for biodiversity biodiversity undergoes unprecedented rates of erosion despite the important services it provides this is considered evidence that biodiversity is undervalued biodiversity valuation is accordingly a prominent issue in the literature economic valuations are however largely criticized numerous alternatives have been introduced most of them involve participatory protocols aimed at producing high quality results being time consuming and expensive it is difficult to implement and reproduce them at a large scale we produce an easily reproducible inexpensive survey methodology to measure impartial preference for biodiversity we implement it in switzerland through a mail based survey our result is that biodiversity should be ranked after retirement schemes and public transportation but before relations with foreign countries order and security and culture and leisure in the expanses of the state current expenses therefore substantially underestimate the value that swiss people grant to biodiversity our new method is a viable alternative to standard economic valuation given the impartiality achieved at least in the swiss political context our estimate can be used by decision makers to assess the legitimacy of conservation programs or to gauge public support at a philosophical level our measure is relevant for public policies because it captures the stances that people take when they participate in public decisions

statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets household budget surveys are an important source of data on consumer s expenditure not just for individual consumers but also for estimating national aggregates however it is a widespread finding that for certain commodities most notably tobacco and alcohol the estimate from the household survey falls short of the known consumption total calculated with some confidence from data on production imports exports and excise duties for example in the british family expenditure survey with which we shall largely be concerned total tobacco expenditure was underestimated in 1976 by 21 percent see kemsley redpath and holmes 1980 p 51 much of this understatement together with that on alcohol is thought to occur because of the design of the survey which excludes many persons amongst whom consumption of such items is thought to be atypically high e g prisoners hoteliers and their residents merchant seamen even so the possibility remains that some of the understatement is due to various types of misreporting by households included in the survey in this paper we consider a model in which the standard tobit specification tobin 1958 is supplemented by the operation of a simple binary censor the tobit model is essentially a linear regression model in which non positive observations of the dependent variable are replaced by zero we take this specification as our starting point but add a second censoring process that randomly replaces a fraction of the observations generated by the tobit model bv zeroes the combined model can serve as a representation of several types of

an independent sample test of yea saying and starting point bias in dichotomous choice contingent valuation abstract we developed several diagnostic tools to test the convergent validity of two common contingent valuation elicitation procedures data were collected from independent samples receiving dichotomous choice and payment card questions we compared actual with counter factual responses using deterministic and monte carlo methods and we found that wtp distributions and mean values varied by the value elicitation method we also developed a paired comparison test for procedure variance which indicated that yea saying and starting point bias influenced dichotomous choice responses

parametric and semi nonparametric estimation of willingness to pay in the dichotomous choice contingent valuation framework standard procedures for extractingwillingness to pay wtp from dichotomouschoice cv questionnaires rely heavily uponparametric assumptions regarding thedistribution and form of wtp in the sampledpopulation however theory provides littleguidance regarding which parametricspecification to use and the resulting wtpestimates can be sensitive to the selectionsmade here we compare and contrast severalparametric and semi nonparametric estimatorsthat have been proposed in the literature examining the sensitivity of the resulting wtpestimates to the underlying distribution ofpreferences and the estimation procedureemployed

the demand for alcoholic beverages in spain the objective of this study is to analyze the main determinants of alcoholic beverages consumption at home data comes from the latest spanish household national survey which provides information on expenditure and quantities of different food products by household because households are interviewed only 1 week a large number of zeros have been recorded among the existing censured demand models the double hurdle dh model the purchase infrequency model and the tobit purchase infrequency model among others and after carrying out model selection tests the dh model has been finally estimated all expenditure elasticities are positive corresponding the highest value to spirits own price elasticities are negative and also in this case the spirits exhibit the highest value socio economic variables also play an important role in explaining consumer purchase and consumption decisions

fairness in the contingent valuation of environmental public goods attitude toward paying for environmental improvements at two levels of scope abstract respondents to contingent valuation cv surveys give a variety of reasons for not wanting to pay money this variability is likely to reflect people s attitudes toward paying for the public good change their attitudes toward paying for public goods in general and a component that is independent of these attitudes but unique to particular beliefs about paying e g i can t afford to pay negative attitudes toward paying can contribute to an apparent insensitivity to different levels of the same public good in a telephone survey northern wisconsin property owners were asked about their wtp for four environmental public goods biodiversity indian spearfishing water quality and wolves at two levels of scope part and whole for water quality and spearfishing the part was a chain of lakes that was geographically nested within a larger region of lakes similarly the biodiversity whole represented a region comprising the smaller level of the public good the scope conditions for wolves were quantitatively nested levels of returning 300 and 800 wolves to northern wisconsin respondents beliefs about paying for each public good and level of scope were measured in order to test their generality across the different public goods and levels of scope negative attitudes toward paying that are general across public goods place restrictions on the use of cv for environmental public goods however negative attitudes that are tied to specific environmental public goods suggest that the valuation method might be difficult to implement in these cases only moreover negative attitudes toward paying that are either general or specific may contribute to perfect embedding when they are expressed across different levels of scope for the same public good respondents beliefs about paying for each public good were associated with an attitude toward paying for the respective good and an attitude toward paying for public goods in general at both levels of scope the general attitude was more explanatory of beliefs about paying for wolf reintroduction and spearfishing than were the specific attitudes the distribution of beliefs was sensitive to the type of good being valued but less so to the scope of the public good change contingent valuation practitioners should seek improvements in respondents perceptions of the fairness of the valuation process in order to facilitate citizens involvement in decisions about environmental public goods avenues for future research are proposed and discussed

a short history of labour turnover job tenure and job security 1975 93 how extensive is labour turnover and how does it vary by gender skill and over time using survey data from britain between 1975 and 1993 this study documents these features and discovers evidence of widening inequalities in job stability and security for the majority still in full time employment average job durations are little changed from those of twenty years ago for those seeking employment however current patterns of job creation mean that entry jobs are now of shorter duration more unstable and relatively less well paid nor do entry jobs offer sufficient access into stable jobs as a result entry jobs are increasingly taken by those with a partner in work polarising the distribution of employment and thereby disenfranchising around one fifth of working age households from regular access to earned incomes copyright 1995 by oxford university press

multivariate mixed models for open ended contingent valuation data willingness to pay for conservation of monk seals although dichotomous choice dc contingent valuation cv has been recommended by the us noaa blue ribbon panel for large scale contingent valuation studies useful information can still be obtained from smaller open ended oe studies often undertaken as a precursor to a dc survey the cv study considered here was carried out in greece and looked at willingness to pay wtp for protecting the mediterranean monk seal monachus monachus in the aegean area this is the most endangered seal in the world and the application of the cv methodology was the first such application in greece the oe data consist of two responses first a binary response detailing whether or not respondents were in principle prepared to pay for the protection of this seal secondly those respondents who answered yes to the first question were then asked to state their maximum wtp for such protection a multivariate binomial log normal mixture model is used to develop a bid function including explanatory variables such as income sex age and education such a modelling approach provides an alternative to more commonplace tobit estimation however the model is extended to include further information which was collected on

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

the values jury to aid natural resource decisions congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources yet information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public including economic measures of value required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable existing sources of information about the public s values for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment include existing markets public surveys including contingent valuation and public involvement each of these sources has serious limitations

the covariance structure of earnings in great britain 1991 1999 i analyse the dynamic structure of earnings in great britain for the period 1991 99 by decomposing the earnings covariance structure into its permanent and transitory components according to the british household panel study data earnings inequality of male full time employees increases over the 1990s however earnings mobility may have also increased that is for this period earnings persistence falls this evidence is at odds with previous literature on earnings dynamics both for britain and other oecd countries moreover human capital and job related characteristics account for nearly all persistent earnings differences and the transitory component is highly persistent

a picture of job insecurity facing british men this paper considers three aspects of the job insecurity facing british men in the last two decades the probability of becoming unemployed the costs of unemployment in terms of real wages losses and the probability that the continuously employed will experience substantial real wage losses the first of these has not risen in the last two decades the second has risen by around 50 percent and the third has risen particularly for the top skill groups

black white differences in wealth and asset composition using data from the 1976 and 1978 national longitudinal surveys of young men and young women this study examines racial differences in the magnitude and composition of wealth and the reasons for them on average young black families hold 18 percent of the wealth of young white families and hold their wealth in proportionately different forms even after controlling for racial differences in income and other demographic factors as much as three quarters of the wealth gap remains unexplained we speculate on the causes for this concluding that racial differences in intergenerational transfers and to a lesser extent barriers to the accumulation of business and home equity most likely play a role

how many us jobs might be offshorable using detailed information on the nature of work done in over 800 us bureau of labor statistics occupational codes this paper ranks those occupations according to how easy hard it is to offshore the work either physically or electronically using this ranking it is estimated that somewhere between 22 and 29 of all us jobs are or will be potentially offshorable within a decade or two no estimate is made of how many jobs will actually be offshored since the rankings are subjective two alternatives are presented one is entirely objective the other is an independent subjective ranking in general they corroborate the rankings albeit not perfectly it is found that there is little or no correlation between an occupation s offshorability and the skill level of its workers as measured either by educational attainment or wages however it appears that controlling for education the most highly offshorable occupations were already paying significantly lower wages in 2004

job tenure and job mobility in britain using work history data from the british household panel survey the authors examine job mobility and job tenure over the period 1915 90 british men and women held an average of five jobs over the course of their work lives and half of all lifetime job changes occurred in the first ten years separation hazards were higher for more recent cohorts implying an increase in job instability as jobs accumulated average tenure lengthened but the proportion of involuntary separations increased for both men and women the rise in job instability was particularly marked in the lowest occupational classification in general job insecurity was greater for men than women

income risk the tax benefit system and the demand for children because children represent an irreversible commitment parents might hedge against higher income risk by having fewer children we show that under plausible assumptions recent increases in income risk might have reduced prudent parents desired fertility responses to this via the tax benefit system are considered introducing an expected revenue neutral transfer cum child benefit system under proportional taxation which lets the government share the household s income risk increases desired fertility for parents who would choose to have small families in this system s absence pound for pound the targeted child benefit enhances fertility more than the lump sum transfer

contingent valuation and the activation of environmental norms abstract this paper uses contingent valuation cvm as the context in which to explore the implications of a model of altruistic norm activation a model is presented which provides a framework for thinking about the factors that individuals consider when formulating their responses to cvm questions and the processes by which they bring such factors together the activation of personal environmental norms and hence positive willingness to pay depends on four main categories of belief awareness and acceptance of environmental need consequences of personal action responsibility for personal action and acceptance of policy initiatives the model is illustrated with a qualitative case study and some of the implications for cvm are considered in light of these findings it is argued that whilst notions of fairness may not present problems from a demand prediction economic standpoint such notions may be more problematic for the cost benefit analysis use of results

valuing public goods discrete versus continuous contingent valuation responses independent applications of open ended and dichotomous choice formats are compared using tests of means estimating joint likelihood functions and nonparametric tests of distributions the null hypothesis of no difference in the open ended and dichotomous choice estimates of central tendency cannot be rejected for two out of three data sets while estimated standard deviations are significantly different for all three data sets in addition actual dichotomous choice means and standard deviations exceed those from comparable synthetic dichotomous choice data sets suggesting either open ended questions underestimate values or dichotomous choice bid structures may lead to systematic overestimates

the relationship between the income elasticities of demand and willingness to pay abstract the relationship between income and willingness to pay for collectively provided public environmental goods is investigated we show that while the income elasticity of willingness to pay and the ordinary income elasticity of demand are related knowledge of one is insufficient to determine the magnitude or even the sign of the other the income elasticity of willingness to pay is influenced by additional factors which are generally unobservable examples are provided to illustrate the degree to which the two income elasticities may diverge our results indicate that even when goods are demand luxuries they may or may not have income elasticities of willingness to pay which are greater than one

changes in job security and their causes an empirical analysis for france 1982 2002 abstract in this paper we analyze the changes in the risks of involuntary job loss in france between 1982 and 2002 we find that these risks are higher in the 1990s than they were in the 1980s we develop an econometric analysis to separate the effects of institutional changes from the effects of new technologies our estimates show that the rise in job loss rates is significantly more pronounced in industries that have the largest share of r d workers and the largest rate of new technologies users these findings suggest that technological changes contribute to decreasing the incentive to keep workers for long period of time and to increasing job insecurity

job stability in the united states two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration much has been made of changes in the wage distribution in the 1980s but little attention has been given to job durations since hall we fill this void by examining the temporal evolution of job retention rates in u s labor markets using data assembled from the sequence of current population survey job tenure supplements there have been relative declines in job stability for some of the groups that experienced the sharpest declines in relative wages however we find that aggregate job retention rates have remained stable

the equal pay act as an experiment to test theories of the labour market the uk equal pay act of 1970 resulted in a large rise in the relative earnings of women in the early 1970s as this change unlike most wage changes was largely exogenous to employers one can think of this episode as an experiment for testing different theories of the labour market hence study of the effects of the equal pay act should be given considerable weight and is likely to have wider implications about the operation of labour markets most models of the labour market used by economists assume that employment is demand determined at least after a large positive shock to the wage these models would predict that female relative employment should have fallen after the introduction of the equal pay act yet it is hard to find evidence of this this paper argues that female relative employment did not fall because the female labour market is in part monopsonistic

unemployment shocks and income distribution how did the nordic countries fare during their crises we study the inequality of disposable income in denmark finland norway and sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries a standard measure of inequality the gini coefficient was surprisingly stable in all countries during this period by decomposing the gini into income components we test hypotheses about the reasons for this stable income distribution our most straightforward hypothesis that rising unemployment benefits counteracted the impact of more unequally distributed earnings receives only limited support more complex mechanisms seem to have been at work jel classification d30 d31 j60

measuring the existence value of wildlife what do cvm estimates really show two research programs are brought together to contribute to the growing body of work on alternatives to standard welfare based approaches to environmental valuation and policy the first is the theoretical literature undermining the new welfare

a contingent valuation estimate of the benefits of wolves in minnesota in this paper we estimate the willingness topay for a wolf management plan and a wolfdamage plan in minnesota using the contingentvaluation method the theoretical definition ofwillingness to pay for wolf protection iscomposed of use and non use values weincorporate a don t know response option in thedichotomous choice valuation questions a largenumber of respondents answered don t know themultinomial logit model is used todifferentiate between don t know and noresponses non use motives are importantfactors that explain willingness to pay we usethese benefit estimates in combination with twoalternative cost estimates to consider theefficiency of the wolf management and damageplans both plans have estimated benefitsgreater than costs