a review of the recent empirical literature on displaced workers this article reviews the empirical literature on job displacement job displacement is widespread and strongly countercyclical tending to peak during economic downturns but concentrated in indus

does employment protection create its own political support this paper investigates the ability of employment protection to generate its own political support a version of the mortensen pissarides model is used for this purpose if wages are set through nash bargaining workers value employment protection because it strengthens their hand in wage negotiations workers in high productivity matches benefit most from higher wages as they expect to stay employed for longer by reducing turnover employment protection shifts the distribution of match specific productivity toward lower values thus stringent protection in the past actually reduces support for employment protection today introducing involuntary separations reverses this conclusion now workers value employment protection because it delays involuntary dismissals workers in low productivity matches gain most since they face the highest risk of dismissal the downward shift in the productivity distribution is now a shift towards supporters

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

what happens to wages after displacement faced with limited resources policymakers need to know when and where to target support for displaced workers the academic literature offers little support presenting wide ranging results with no consistent explanation for the observed differences in wages after workers are displaced in this paper we demonstrate that the heterogeneity found in the literature is consistent with varying market conditions the results suggest that support for displaced workers can be more efficiently allocated by considering the timing and location of displacement

impact of oil prices economic diversification policies and energy conservation programs on the electricity and water demands in kuwait abstract this paper describes the influences of oil revenue and government s policies toward economic developments and energy efficiency on the electricity and water demands a kuwait specific electricity and water demand model was developed based on historic data of oil income gross domestic product gdp population and electric load and water demand over the past twelve years 1998 2010 moreover the model took into account the future mega projects annual new connected loads and expected application of energy conservation programs it was run under six circumstances representing the combinations of three oil income scenarios and two government action policies toward economic diversification and energy conservation the first government policy is the status quo with respect to economic diversification and applying energy conservation programs the second policy scenario is the proactive strategy of raising the production of the non oil sector revenue and enforcing legislations toward energy demand side management and conservation in the upcoming 20 years the average rates of change of the electric load and water demand increase are 0 13 gw and 3 0 migd respectively per us dollar oil price increase moreover through proactive policy the rates of average load and water demand decrease are 0 13 gw and 2 9 migd per year respectively

the long term costs of job displacement for young adult workers using nlsy data the authors estimate the long term costs of job displacement for young adults earnings and wage losses were large for the first three years following displacement compared to earnings losses found by other studies for more mature workers however earnings losses for these young adults were short lived with differences between observed and expected earnings narrowing considerably five years after job loss at that point the shortfall in annual earnings relative to what would have been expected absent job loss was 9 for men and 12 5 for women and the shortfall in hourly wages was 21 2 for men young workers also apparently differ from more established workers in the composition of total earnings losses for older workers total losses largely represent actual immediate earnings losses whereas for young workers the loss of opportunities for rapid earnings growth is more important

lasting or latent scars swedish evidence on the long term effects of job displacement recently improved swedish register data have made it possible to remedy many weaknesses of previous research on displaced workers using linked employer employee data we identify all workers displaced in 1987 due to an establishment closure and follow them over both a predisplacement period of 4 years and a postdisplacement period stretching until 1999 we find that the displaced workers suffer both earnings losses and worsened labor market position not only during a transitory period of adjustment but also in the longer run these longer run effects seem to be driven by an increased sensitivity to subsequent macroeconomic shocks

earnings losses and unemployment of displaced workers in germany data from the german socio economic panel are used to examine the experiences of german workers following job displacement due to plant closure in the year of displacement annual earnings decline

house prices and birth rates the impact of the real estate market on the decision to have a baby abstract this project investigates how changes in metropolitan statistical area msa level house prices affect household fertility decisions recognizing that housing is a major cost associated with child rearing and assuming that children are normal goods we hypothesize that an increase in house prices will have a negative price effect on current period fertility this applies to both potential first time homeowners and current homeowners who might upgrade to a bigger house with the addition of a child on the other hand for current homeowners an increase in msa level house prices will increase home equity leading to a positive effect on birth rates our results suggest that indeed short term increases in house prices lead to a decline in births among non owners and a net increase among owners the estimates imply that a 10 000 increase leads to a 5 increase in fertility rates among owners and a 2 4 decrease among non owners at the mean u s home ownership rate these estimates imply that the net effect of a 10 000 increase in house prices is a 0 8 increase in current period fertility rates given underlying differences in home ownership rates the predicted net effect of house price changes varies across demographic groups in addition we find that changes in house prices exert a larger effect on current period birth rates than do changes in unemployment rates

measuring the effect of subsidized training programs on movements in and out of employment despite over two decades of u s experience in operating large scale subsidized training programs for low income and unemployed workers the effects of these programs are still highly controversial the controversy arises from the difficulty of specifying the model of participant outcomes in the absence of training that is necessary in any nonexperimental program evaluation in this paper we suggest that some of these difficulties may be overcome by focusing on a very simple measure of outcomes namely the probability of employment we present a variety of estimates of the effect of training on the probability of employment for the 1976 cohort of adult male participants in the comprehensive employment and training act ceta program our methods range from a simple comparison of pre and post training employment probabilities between trainees and nonparticipants to a fully specified first order markov model of employment probabilities with individual heterogeneity there is consistent evidence across methods that ceta participation increased the probability of employment in the three years after training by from 2 to 5 percentage points classroom training programs appear to have had significantly larger effects than on the job programs although the estimated effects of both kinds of programs are positive we also find that movements in and out of employment for trainees and nonparticipants are reasonably well described by a first order process conditional on individual heterogeneity in the context of this model ceta participation appears to have increased both the probability of moving into employment and the probability of continuing employment

the monetary multiplier when money is measured as a divisia quantity index abstract the traditional algebraic derivation of the monetary multiplier for conventional simple sum monetary aggregates is extended to cover the case of money defined as a divisia monetary quantity index thus the procedures developed by johannes and rasche for assessing the controllability of money can be applied to the issue of controllability of the divisia aggregates

the effect of job displacement on couples fertility decisions this paper analyzes the effects of job displacement on fertility using finnish longitudinal register data we focus on couples where one spouse has lost a job due to a plant closure and follow them for several years before and following the job loss the results show that female job loss decreases fertility for every 100 displaced females there are three fewer children born male job loss has no impact on fertility despite resulting in a stronger decrease in family income than female job loss this indicates that the income effect is not the mechanism through which job displacement influences fertility

fertility and the personal exemption implicit pronatalist policy in the united states the personal exemption in the us provides households with an income tax subsidy for each child this paper uses aggregate time series data for the us from 1913 to 1984 to estimate the impact of the tax value of the personal exemption on the aggregate birth rate the empirical results indicate that the personal exemption has a positive and significant impact on fertility and this result is robust to a variety of specifications the us therefore pursues an implicit pronatalist policy through the income tax and the empirical results indicate that the recent tax reform act of 1986 will on average increase this subsidy for fertility authors

emissions reduction and economic implications of renewable energy market penetration of power generation for residential consumption in the mena region this paper examines the implications of renewable energy re deployment in power generation for residential consumption in the middle east and north africa mena region under various re penetration targets a comparative assessment revealed a great heterogeneity among countries with turkey dominating as the highest emitter at the sub regional level the middle east sub region contributes more than double the ghg emissions estimated for the gulf and north africa sub regions with all sub regions achieving reductions in the range of 6 38 depending on the re target penetration and promising up to 54 savings on investment excluding positive externalities associated with the offset of greenhouse gas ghg emissions savings

the gender gap in early career wage growth in the uk the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but ten years after labour market entry there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points this article explores the reason for this gender gap in early career wage growth considering three main hypotheses human capital job shopping and psychological theories human capital factors can explain about 11 log points job shopping about 1 5 log points and the psychological theories up to 4 5 log points depending on the specification but a substantial unexplained gap remains women who have continuous full time employment have had no children and express no desire to have them earn about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market

the distribution of economic losses among displaced workers a replication this paper estimates the impact of unemployment on earnings following re employment for a large and representative sample of british men 1984 94 unemployment incidence is found to have only a temporary effect an average earnings setback of 10 on

causes and consequences of layoffs using probit analysis this article finds that differential treatment accounts for a substantial portion of the higher layoff rates of blacks in comparison to whites however women are found to be considerably less prone to layoffs than men with similar characteristics among those who obtained subsequent employment taking into account the possible selectivity bias in such a subsample white males are hurt more by layoffs than black males in terms of both short term and long term earnings growth women s earnings are not necessarily affected by layoff at all however whites and males are found to be more likely to be reemployed than blacks and females respectively

economic conditions and alcohol problems this study investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and two alcohol related outcomes liquor consumption and highway vehicle fatalities fixed effect models are estimated for the 48 contiguous states over the 1975 1988 time period alcohol consumption and traffic deaths vary procyclically with a major portion of the effect of economic downturns attributed to reductions in incomes rather than employment the intake of hard liquor is the most sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy there is no evidence however that fluctuations in economic conditions have a disproportionate impact on the drunk driving of young adults

structural change and the fertility transition this paper provides new insights into the relationship between structural change and the fertility transition we exploit the spread of an agricultural pest in the american south in the 1890s as pl

booms busts and fertility testing the becker model using gender specific labor demand in this paper i present estimates of the effect of local labor demand shocks on birth rates to identify exogenous variation in male and female labor demand i create indices that exploit cross sectional variation in industry composition changes in gender education composition within industries and growth in national industry employment consistent with economic theory i find that improvements in men s labor market conditions are associated with increases in fertility while improvements in women s labor market conditions have smaller negative effects i separately find that increases in unemployment rates are associated with small decreases in birth rates at the state level

a structural model of us aggregate job flows this paper contributes to the analysis of jobs flows dynamics through the explicit modelling of job creations and job destructions we propose a simple matching model extended for endogenous separation and tractable heterogeneity the parameters of the model are estimated using a simulation based estimation method we then test the ability of trade externalities generated by the matching process to i propagate reallocation and aggregate disturbances in the whole labor market and ii generate the observed distribution of aggregate job flows the results clearly indicate that the model is able to match the dynamics of us aggregate job flows copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

the economic consequences of labor mobility unlike most previous research on the relative changes in earnings of job stayers and job changers this study examines the variance in earnings changes rather than simply average changes men and women rather than only men and the five year period following job change rather than only the first year or two the author finds great variability in earnings changes both within and across race and gender groups notably men gained more from quits and except in the case of low wage workers lost less from layoffs than women also men suffered a much smaller penalty than women for repeated job changes for all groups the percentage difference between earnings before and after leaving a job generally persisted for several years

the effect of tax transfer policies on fertility in canada 1921 88 this paper estimates the effect on fertility of the personal tax exemption for children child tax credit family allowances and maternity leave benefits in canada using time series data from 1921 to 1988 it is found that the exemption child tax credit and family allowances all have significant and positive effects on fertility the results are robust to a variety of specifications including first differencing while the three tax transfer programs seem to be very distinct the null hypothesis that they have no differential effects on fertility can hardly be rejected all the results also hold for the cumulative effect of the three tax transfer programs the estimates predict that a large increase in the value of the tax transfer programs would be needed to increase fertility to the replacement level

do family wealth shocks affect fertility choices evidence from the housing market abstract this paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions using data from the panel study of income dynamics we show that a 100 000 increase in housing wealth among home owners causes a 16 to 18 increase in the probability of having a child there is no evidence of an effect of msa level housing price growth on the fertility of renters however we also present evidence that housing wealth growth increases total fertility and that the responsiveness of fertility to housing wealth has increased over time commensurate with the recent housing boom

earnings losses of displaced workers revisited recent literature reviews conclude that job displacement results in sustained earnings losses bruce c fallick 1996 lori g kletzer 1998 and that estimates of the size of those reductions vary with the type of data used in the analysis the industry within which displacement occurs and business cycle conditions the largest estimated losses were obtained using administrative data from pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s louis s jacobson robert j lalonde and daniel g sullivan 1993a the data covered a period of high unemployment in a heavily indus trialized state characterized by disproportionate job losses in manufacturing thus the ability to generalize those results to more favorable economic times and states with a greater reliance on service sector employment has been questioned to address these issues administrative data are used to similarly examine the impact of job displacement on earnings losses of workers in connecticut from 1993 to 2004 the work of jacobson lalonde and sullivan jls also provided important methodologi cal advancement by adapting analytical techniques developed for program evaluation james j heckman and v joseph hotz 1989 to the context of job displacement the same techniques fixed effects and time trend estimators as those used in the original jls publication are initially employed here then the methods are extended to include matching estimators developed since their publication both nearest neighbor estimators of average treatment on the treated att and differenced average treatment on the treated datt are adapted to the context of this study heckman hidehiko ichimura and petra todd 1997 heckman et al 1998 and rajeev h dehejia and sadek wahba 1999 2002 the results presented here for connecticut differ in some ways from those found in the work of jls using data from pennsylvania in the period immediately following job loss regardless of the technique employed earnings reductions for workers displaced through mass layoff range from 32 percent to 33 percent jls reported immediate losses of more than 40 percent six years later using the same estimators as jls earnings reductions in connecticut range from 13 percent to 15 percent they report sustained losses in pennsylvania of 25 percent the smaller long term impacts in connecticut demonstrate that under more ordinary economic times esti mated losses from administrative data lie within the range observed using other data sources this finding resolves a long standing conflict among the results of high quality studies that have used differing data sources to study earnings reductions following job loss 1 using two different matching estimators earnings losses six years after mass layoff are 12 percent the matching estimators compare those who experienced mass layoff to compari sons with the same ex ante probability of the event these smaller losses are consistent with the

are energy conservation policies effective without harming economic growth in the gulf cooperation council countries abstract this study explores the fossil fuels electricity consumption growth of the gross domestic product gdp relationship in the six gulf cooperation council gcc countries for the period 1980 2012 the aim of this study is to examine whether energy conservation policies are appropriate for these countries to reduce their high levels of electricity consumption the autoregressive distributed lag ardl and the toda yamamoto dolado lutkepohl tydl methodologies were employed to investigate this relationship the ardl results revealed that fossil fuels electricity consumption has a long run positive effect on gdp growth in the gcc countries however the tydl granger causality revealed different causality relationships among the countries a bi directional causality was found between fossil fuels electricity consumption and gdp growth in bahrain and the united arab emirates uae while one way causality from fossil fuels electricity consumption to gdp growth was found in oman and qatar on the other hand no causality was concluded between the variables in kuwait and saudi arabia from the results it is clear that energy conservation is not an ideal policy for the bahrain uae oman and qatar because it will have a negative consequence on their output however this policy can be implemented in kuwait and saudi arabia since it will not harm their output

job displacement s long run effect on access to employer provided health insurance and other fringe benefits abstract this paper investigates the effect of job displacement on access to employer provided fringe benefits we find that displacement is associated with lost access to all seven employer provided benefits investigated these losses increase the cost of displacement by 10 per year

a dynamic analysis of educational attainment occupational choices and job search this article examines career choices using a dynamic structural model that nests a job search model within a human capital model of occupational and educational choices wage growth occurs in the model because workers move between firms and occupations as they search for suitable job matches and because workers endogenously accumulate firm and occupation specific human capital simulations performed using the estimated model reveal that both self selection in occupational choices and mobility between firms account for a much larger share of total earnings and utility than the combined effects of firm and occupation specific human capital

state dependence individual heterogeneity and the choice of employment status evidence from korea abstractfocusing on the individual heterogeneity this article examines the causes of an individual s employment status choice and the extent of state dependence in the korean labour market we estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model using the panel data drawn from the first to fifteenth wave of the korean labour and income panel study the results suggest the presence of state dependence individual characteristics and growth background have a significant effect on the choice of employment status gender is still an important employment factor males are more likely to be employed and this gender effect is highest for regular employment re one s educational attainment and age operate in opposite directions that is educational attainment age has a positive negative impact on the choice of a regular job and a negative positive impact on the choice of a non regular job contrary to our expectations a wealthy family background reduces the probability of individuals being wage workers and rais

transitory shocks and birth weights evidence from a blackout in zanzibar abstract do transitory economic shocks affect neonatal outcomes i show that an unexpected month long blackout in tanzania caused a sharp but temporary drop in work hours and earnings for workers in electricity dependent jobs using records from a maternity ward i document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout and an increase in the probability of low birth weight the reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout the blackout also increased fertility for teenage and first time mothers but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights

taxes and the timing of births because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight january 1 the incentives for the marginal birth are substantial using a sample of children from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of december rather than the first week of january is positively correlated with tax benefits we estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by 500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of december by 26 9 percent

can the reserves approach to monetary control really work on october 6 1979 the board of governors bog of the federal reserve system announced that the federal open market committee fomc was abandoning its historical preoccupation with an interest rate approach to monetary control in favor of a reserve aggregate approach 1 underlying this new approach is the fact that at time t any money stock concept m is the product of a money multiplier m and a reserve aggregate r that is

an estimable dynamic stochastic model of fertility and child mortality this paper develops a finite horizon dynamic stochastic model of discrete choice with respect to life cycle fertility within an environment where infant survival is uncertain the model yields implications for the number timing and spacing of children a tractable estimation method is developed for the linear constraint quadratic utility case that is intimately tied to the dynamic optimization problem and the method is applied to malaysian household data estimation is based on integrating the numerical solution of the dynamic programming model of behavior with a maximum likelihood procedure

household finances income shocks and family separation in britain we examine the effect of household financial indebtedness on the incidence of partnership dissolution using a large survey of families with children in britain we use detailed data on household finances to provide a robust statistical analysis of the relationship between indebtedness and partnership dissolution and to avoid the potential simultaneity of financial and psychological health responses that arise when using self reported data on the extent of household financial problems we examine whether the data provides any support for the economic models of divorce and separation developed by gary becker and his colleagues

evidence of preseparation earnings losses in the displaced worker survey this paper attempts to quantify preseparation earnings losses of workers displaced in mass layoffs using the displaced worker survey the largest and most representative sample of displaced workers using the 1986 displaced worker survey and random samples of the 1984 and 1985 current population survey as a comparison group it is found that workers lose on average 9 percent of their earnings prior to separation as a result of wage cuts this result is very similar to the preseparation losses found in other studies using different data sources one implication of this finding is that those studies that only take into consideration the post displacement losses of workers displaced in mass layoffs clearly underestimate the total costs suffered by these workers

involuntary layoffs in a model with asymmetric information concerning worker ability this paper examines the contract between a risk neutral firm and its risk averse employees assuming that worker ability is privately learned by the firm after a period of employment employers in an external spot labour market attempt to infer worker quality from the observable actions taken by the firm such as the number of workers it lays off the threat of spot market raids distorts the optimal contract layoffs may be involuntary and can exceed efficient levels a seniority layoff rule may be included in the contract to avoid the adverse selection problems that arise if layoffs are conducted on the basis of ability

optimal unemployment insurance with human capital depreciation and duration dependence this paper studies the effect of human capital depreciation and duration dependence on the design of an optimal unemployment insurance ui scheme our results partially confirm those obtained in most previous studies benefits should decrease with unemployment duration the optimal program also generates two main novel features which are not present in stationary models first if human capital depreciates rapidly enough during unemployment ui transfers are bounded below by a minimal assistance level that arises endogenously in the efficient program second we study the optimality of imposing a history contingent wage tax after reemployment our numerical simulations based on the spanish and us economies show that the wage tax should decrease with the length of worker s previous unemployment spell and become a wage subsidy for long term unemployed workers as a by product of our study we develop a systematic approach suitable for studying recursively a wide range of dynamic moral hazard problems and other models with similar characteristics

female labour supply and household employment shocks maternity leave as an insurance mechanism this paper investigates the role of unpaid maternity leave in providing household insurance against paternal employment shocks the main outcome is the timing of a mothers return to work after having a child exploiting the us family and medical leave act we find that mothers eligible for maternity leave speed up their return to work in response to a paternal shock with the conditional probability of being in work 49 higher than in households with no unpaid maternity leave further evidence is provided on the insurance role of unpaid maternity leave through i no significant interaction between paid maternity leave and the paternal shock and ii smoothing of consumption effects of the shock for households covered by unpaid leave

an empirical model of sectoral movements by unemployed workers using canadian data i investigate the relationships among sectoral mobility unemployment spells and total unemployment recent north american evidence suggests that incidence shifts toward high wage high tenure workers may increase equilibrium unemployment through decreasing sectoral mobility and increasing spells using a multiple spell transition model i find that while shifts toward such workers may have these effects composition changes that lead to higher mobility can also increase unemployment a further investigation into the relative roles of mobility and spell lengths in driving total unemployment indicates that the influence of the former is comparatively small

did the great recession affect fertility examining the impact of job displacements on the timing of births in the united states we examine the impact of job losses during the great recession on fertility in the united states we find that for married cohabiting couples job losses of males during the recession decreased the likelihood of birth in contrast job losses of married cohabiting females had no impact on average on fertility because of opposing age specific effects although younger women were reducing fertility after job losses to cope with the loss of income older women aged 40 and above were more likely to have a child following their job loss moreover we find that job losses of single noncohabiting females decreased the likelihood of birth particularly for women below the age of 25 this negative effect on fertility persisted in the medium term up to three years following the job losses overall these results suggest that job losses during the recession may be partly responsible for the recent decline in the u s birth rates

declining labor turnover and turbulence abstract the rate of job loss has been on a secular decline for the last four decades or longer changes in demographics or industry composition do not account for the trend this paper seeks to identify the possible sources of the decline using a simple search and matching model with two types of workers experienced and inexperienced where the former type faces a risk of skill loss during unemployment the calibrated model suggests that a higher risk of skill loss during unemployment results in a lower job separation rate because workers accept lower wages in exchange for job security various other potential hypotheses are also examined

unemployment and mental health some evidence from panel data microdata are used in this paper to analyze the effects of unemployment on mental health the analysis is done in two steps first cross section data of labor force participants are analyzed it appears that the unemployed have worse mental health than the employed next panel data are used to control for fixed effects that is unobserved omitted variables that are constant over time the model is also specified to allow both the occurrence of and duration of unemployment to affect mental health then we cannot reject the hypothesis that there are no effects of unemployment on mental health however some sensitivity tests indicate that the precision of our estimates is rather low

the budget contraction effect how contracting budgets lead to less varied choice how do consumers adjust their spending when their budget changes a common view is that the allocation of one s current budget should not depend on previous budget allocations contrary to this the authors find that when the budget contracts to a particular level consumers select less variety as measured by the number of different items with some of the budget allocated to them than when their budget expands to that same level this budget contraction effect stems from a reduction in variety under the contracting budget not from variety expansion under the expanding budget evidence from five experiments indicates that the effect is driven by a desire to avoid feelings of loss associated with spreading allocation cuts relative to reference quantities from previous allocations across many items

worker displacement and the added worker effect this article examines the added worker effect which is the labor supply response of wives to their husbands job losses unlike past studies which focused on the husbands current unemployment status this article analyzes wives responses before and after job losses to examine the life cycle labor supply adjustments using panel study of income dynamics data reveals small predisplacement effects and large persistent postdisplacement effects the timing of the responses differs with type of displacement possibly because of differences in the information acquired before job loss long run labor supply increases compensate for over 25 of the husbands lost income

can maternity benefits have long term effects on childbearing evidence from soviet russia this paper quantifies the effects of russia s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing the program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfe

are children really inferior goods evidence from displacement driven income shocks abstract this paper explores the causal link between income and fertility by analyzing women s fertility response to the large and permanent income shock generated by a husband s job displacement i find that the shock reduces total fertility suggesting that the causal effect of income on fertility is positive a model that incorporates the time cost of children and assortative matching of spouses can simultaneously explain this result and the negative cross sectional relationship i also find that a husband s displacement accelerates childbearing which is consistent with lifecycle models of fertility in which the incentive to delay is driven by expected earnings growth

modelling the monetary multiplier and the controllability of the divisia monetary quantity aggregates fama eugene and richard roll some properties of symmetric stable distributions journal of the american statistical association 63 sept 1968 817 838 parameter estimates for symmetric stable distributions journal of the american statistical association 66 june 1971 331 338 friedman daniel and stoddard vandersteel short run fluctuations in foreign exchange rates evidence from the data 1973 79 journal of international economics 13 aug 1982 171 186 gnedenko b v and a n kolmogorov limit distributions for sums of independent random variables reading ma addison wesley 1968 international monetary fund international monetary fund survev various issues judge george g william e griffiths r carter hill and tsoung chao lee the theory and practice of econometrics new york john wiley and sons 1980 kendall maurice g and alan stuart the advanced theory of statistics 2nd edition vol i london charles griffin and co 1963 kindleberger c p the benefits of international money journal of international economics 2 sept 1972 425 442 mandelbrot benoit the variation of certain speculative prices journal of business 36 oct 1963 394 419 mcfarland james w r richardson pettit and sam k sung the distribution of foreign exchange price changes trading day effects and risk measurement journal of finance 37 june 1982 693 715 moulton westerfield janice an estimation of foreign exchange risk under fixed and floating rate regimes journal of international economics 7 june 1977 181 200 rogalski richard j and joseph d vinso empirical properties of foreign exchange rates journal of international business studies 9 fall 1978 69 79 roll richard the behavior of interest rates new york basic books inc 1970 schmidt peter econometrics new york marcell dekker inc 1976

integrating sustainable energy strategy with the second development plan of kuwait abstract the vision set for the second development plan 2015 2020 dp15 20 is to transform kuwait into a financial and commercial center by 2035 the dp15 20 addresses various sectors in the country including the energy sector which is tackled by presenting the overall goals of the oil and electricity sectors in terms of their respective capacities and performances the plan does not explicitly tackle energy sustainability development this work has proposed a potential sustainable energy strategy scenario and discusses the integration of the strategy within the dp15 20 the strategy is based on supply diversification to meet 15 of the demand from renewable sources by 2030 electricity energy consumption reduction of 12 in the building sector and co2 emission reduction of 33 by 2035

the cost of job loss this article identifies an equilibrium theory of wage formation and endogenous quit turnover in a labour market with on the job search where risk averse workers accumulate human capital through learning by doing and lose skills while unemployed optimal contracting implies the wage paid increases with experience and tenure indirect inference using german data determines the deep parameters of the model the estimated model not only reproduces the large and persistent fall in wages and earnings following job loss a new structural decomposition finds foregone human capital accumulation while unemployed is the worker s major cost of job loss

long run wage and earnings losses of displaced workers displacement related losses are estimated using national longitudinal survey of youth data that span the years 1979 2000 the typical displaced worker faces losses of 34 065 during the period 4 years prior through 5 years following displacement proportionally this represents a 10 8 loss compared to earnings of similar nondisplaced workers over the period considerable variation in losses is reported across worker types union male and more mature workers suffer greater losses respectively than do their nonunion female and younger counterparts college graduates and high school dropouts are found to suffer lower losses compared to high school diploma holders and those who completed some college

is unemployment insurance addictive evidence from the benefit durations of repeat users the author finds evidence that the past occurrence of a spell of insured unemployment lengthens the duration of future spells descriptive statistics from canadian administrative data covering mid 1971 to early 1990 suggest that unemployment insurance ui claimants tend to spend a longer and longer time collecting benefits with each additional claim they make this finding contradicts the implication of static neoclassical models that successive ui spells should be of the same length the author hypothesizes that the stigma attached to receiving unemployment benefits erodes with each new ui claim an individual files

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

penalized or protected gender and the consequences of nonstandard and mismatched employment histories millions of workers are employed in positions that deviate from the full time standard employment relationship or work in jobs that are mismatched with their skills education or experience yet little is known about how employers evaluate workers who have experienced these employment arrangements limiting our knowledge about how part time work temporary agency employment and skills underutilization affect workers labor market opportunities drawing on original field and survey experiment data i examine three questions 1 what are the consequences of having a nonstandard or mismatched employment history for workers labor market opportunities 2 are the effects of nonstandard or mismatched employment histories different for men and women and 3 what are the mechanisms linking nonstandard or mismatched employment histories to labor market outcomes the field experiment shows that skills underutilization is as scarring for workers as a year of unemployment but that there are limited penalties for workers with histories of temporary agency employment additionally although men are penalized for part time employment histories women face no penalty for part time work the survey experiment reveals that employers perceptions of workers competence and commitment mediate these effects these findings shed light on the consequences of changing employment relations for the distribution of labor market opportunities in the new economy

subsidizing the stork new evidence on tax incentives and fertility this paper exploits the introduction of a pronatalist transfer policy in the canadian province of quebec that paid up to c 8 000 to families having a child i implement a quasi experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time jurisdiction and family type the incentive was available broadly rather than to a narrow population as studied in previous work providing an exceptional opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses i find a strong effect of the policy on fertility and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with previous estimates

born on the first of july an un natural experiment in birth timing abstract it is well understood that government policies can distort behavior but what is less often recognized is that the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions we study one such introduction effect using evidence from a unique policy change in australia in 2004 the australian government announced that children born on or after july 1 2004 would receive a 3000 baby bonus although the policy was only announced seven weeks before its introduction parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive the benefit with the number of births dipping sharply before the policy commenced on july 1 2004 more australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years we estimate that over 1000 births were moved so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the baby bonus with about one quarter being moved by more than one week most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of induction and cesarean section procedures we find evidence to suggest that babies who were shifted into the eligibility period were more likely to be of high birth weight two years later on july 1 2006 the baby bonus was increased and we find that this again caused births to be moved from june to july these birth timing events represent an opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

job displacement disability and divorce earnings shocks should affect divorce probability by changing a couple s expected gains from marriage we find that the divorce hazard rises after a spouse s job displacement but does not change after a spousal disability this difference casts doubt on a purely pecuniary motivation for divorce following earnings shocks since both types of shocks exhibit similar long run economic consequences furthermore the increase in divorce is found only for layoffs and not for plant closings suggesting that information conveyed about a partner s noneconomic suitability as a mate due to a job loss may be more important than financial losses in precipitating divorce

the intergenerational effects of worker displacement this article uses variation induced by firm closures to explore the intergenerational effects of worker displacement using a canadian panel of administrative data that follows more than 39 000 father son pairs from 1978 to 1999 we find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9 lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock they are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance the estimates are driven by the experiences of children whose family income was at the bottom of the income distribution

the long run consumption effects of earnings shocks although prior studies of job displacement and disability have measured the impact of these shocks in terms of lost earnings no previous research has linked these permanent earnings shocks to the

the economics of new blood abstract we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of search and matching where public knowledge grows through time and workers accumulate a fraction of this knowledge through education retraining due to search delays the unemployment pool is populated by vintages of workers of differing productivities through intergenerational rivalry the human capital of older generations is rendered obsolete relative to that of the new blood higher knowledge growth exacerbates intergenerational competition thereby lowering education and growth while raising unemployment and inequality these findings help explain wage compression expansion and the hump shaped wage tenure profile across cohorts

exploring the relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission in mena countries abstract this study explored the relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission in the mena countries the panel model was utilized taking the period 1980 2009 into consideration pedroni cointegration test results showed that urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission were cointegrated the dynamic ols results also showed that there was a long run bi directional positive relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission however the significance of the long run relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission varied across the countries based on their level of income and development moreover long and short run bi directional causal relationships were found between the variables based on the granger causality test results from the results of this study it is important for the urban planners and policy makers in the mena countries to slow the rapid increase in urbanization the level of energy consumption and co2 emission in the mena countries increased more than double thus slowing down the urbanization level can help reduce the level of pollution and energy consumption in addition the increased energy efficiency implementation of energy savings projects energy conservation and energy infrastructure outsourcing reduce the level of pollution produced by urban areas

are children normal abstract we examine becker s 1960 contention that children are normal for the cross section of non hispanic white married couples in the united states we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly educated women living in similarly expensive locations completed fertility is positively correlated with the husband s income the empirical evidence is consistent with children being normal in an effort to show causal effects we analyze the localized impact on fertility of the mid 1970s increase in world energy prices an exogenous shock that substantially increased men s incomes in the appalachian coal mining region empirical evidence for that population indicates that fertility increases with men s income

do past unemployment spells affect the duration of current unemployment abstract on the basis of monthly labor force histories of respondents constructed from the panel study of income dynamics this paper finds no occurrence dependence in unemployment spells positive occurrence dependence in unemployment insurance spells and substantial heterogeneity in occurrence dependence

unemployment in regional labor markets using structural theories to understand local jobless rates in west virginia the author uses a range of structural labor market models to understand differing regional jobless rates in a state affected by pockets of structural unemployment four theories of regional structural unemployment are presented and their hypotheses are statistically evaluated using west virginia county panel data the author then presents case study evidence to compare these statistical results with the realities of the county labor markets both types of empirical evidence suggest that a segmented non market clearing model in which structural unemployment stems from queuing for above market clearing wages in both a high wage primary sector and a lower wage secondary sector can shed the most light on regional unemployment rates in west virginia

unemployment and subsequent earnings estimating scarring among british men 1984 94 this paper estimates the impact of unemployment on earnings following re employment for a large and representative sample of british men 1984 94 unemployment incidence is found to have only a temporary effect an average earnings setback of 10 on initial re engagement largely eroding over two years the effect of unemployment duration by contrast is permanent a one year spell adding a further penalty of 10 percentage points these wage penalties are least for young men and the low paid those most at risk of unemployment and greatest for prime age and highly paid men

the effects of unemployment and underemployment on employment opportunities results from a correspondence audit of the labor market for college graduates the authors use data from a resume audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects of recent college graduates they find no statistical evidence linking unemployment spells of different durations to employment opportunities by contrast college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 lower than those of applicants who are adequately employed the null effects associated with unemployment and the adverse effects associated with underemployment are robust across cities with relatively tight and loose labor market conditions internship experience obtained while completing one s degree substantially reduces the negative effects of underemployment the data support the proposition that employers view underemployment as a strong signal of lower expected productivity

can immigrants insure against shocks as well as the native born we examine the impact of job displacement and serious health problems on multiple measures of individual and household well being using longitudinal data we extend the previous literature by exami

the unintended effects of place based programs fertility and health effects of urban empowerment zones abstract whether place based welfare programs affect fertility and health outcomes is an understudied question i estimate the health impacts of the empowerment zone ez program a federal program that gave sizeable grants and tax breaks to certain high poverty census tracts in selected cities using difference in differences methods i find that the ez program decreased fertility rates by 11 percent and improved birth outcomes compositional changes in fertility likely cannot explain changes in infant health recent research on the later life impacts of low birth weight suggest that the health impacts of this program may have substantial long term benefits

energy consumption economic growth and co2 emissions in middle east and north african countries this article extends the recent findings of liu 2005 ang 2007 apergis et al 2009 and payne 2010 by implementing recent bootstrap panel unit root tests and cointegration techniques to investigate the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions energy consumption and real gdp for 12 middle east and north african countries mena over the period 1981 2005 our results show that in the long run energy consumption has a positive significant impact on co2 emissions more interestingly we show that real gdp exhibits a quadratic relationship with co2 emissions for the region as a whole however although the estimated long run coefficients of income and its square satisfy the ekc hypothesis in most studied countries the turning points are very low in some cases and very high in other cases hence providing poor evidence in support of the ekc hypothesis co2 emission reductions per capita have been achieved in the mena region even while the region exhibited economic growth over the period 1981 2005 the econometric relationships derived in this paper suggest that future reductions in co2 emissions per capita might be achieved at the same time as gdp per capita in the mena region continues to grow

male earnings marriageable men and nonmarital fertility evidence from the fracking boom we investigate whether an increase in the potential earnings of men leads to an increase in marriage and a reduction in nonmarital births by exploiting the positive economic shock associated with fracking in the 2000s a reduced form analysis reveals that in response to local area fracking production which increased wages and jobs for non college educated men both marital and nonmarital birth rates increase but marriage rates do not the pattern of results is consistent with positive income effects on births but no associated increase in marriage we contrast our findings to the appalachian coal boom experience of the 1970s and 1980s

employment and retirement following a late career job loss the frequency of job loss among workers in late career has risen disproportionately in recent years the effects of job loss on these workers are potentially severe their earnings capacity savings and retirement expectations are likely to be dramatically affected and they may take substantially longer to be re employed however despite these reasons for heightened concern relatively little is known about the economic consequences of late career job loss among recent cohorts of workers this paper presents findings from an ongoing research project using the health and retirement study that focuses on the economic impacts of late career job loss on employment and retirement patterns as well as on earnings and assets this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

are workers permanently scarred by job displacements this paper investigates whether workers suffer lasting scars following job displacements using david t ellwood s 1982 terminology scars represent persistent effects whereas blemishes are transitory adjustments which dissipate over time more precisely dislocated individuals are defined as scarred if they continue to earn less or to be unemployed more than their nondisplaced counterparts even after the conclusion of a several year adjustment period

unemployment history and frictional wage dispersion abstract recent evidence shows that baseline search models struggle to match the observed levels of wage dispersion this paper studies a random matching search model with human capital losses during unemployment wage dispersion increases as workers accept lower wages to avoid long unemployment spells the model explains between a third and half of the observed residual wage dispersion when adding on the job search the model accounts for all of the residual wage dispersion and generates substantial dispersion even for high values of non market time the paper thus addresses the trade off between explaining frictional wage dispersion and the cyclical behavior of unemployment