rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

the role of empowerment in agricultural production evidence from rural households in niger we use new household and individual level weai data from the tahoua region of niger and estimate a variable coefficient cobb douglas production function in which traditional inputs interact with tw

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

survival of the unfittest why the worst infrastructure gets built and what we can do about it the article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects second it documents a much neglected topic in economics that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits for large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns benefit shortfalls and the systematic underestimation of risks third implications for cost benefit analysis are described including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects fourth the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects but the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality the article depicts this situation as survival of the unfittest fifth the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments finally the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development it is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending combined with more investments in emerging economies combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

who are the world s food insecure new evidence from the food and agriculture organization s food insecurity experience scale summary until recently there was lacking a common food security measure and the necessary data to study the individual level determinants of food insecurity around the world in 2014 the food and agriculture organization s voices of the hungry project developed an experiential measure of food insecurity the food insecurity experience scale fies translated it into 200 languages and contracted gallup inc for collection of data through the gallup world poll this is the first paper that identifies and examines the common determinants of food insecurity in 134 countries using this cross country comparable experiential measure of food insecurity we also investigate whether and to what extent the common determinants of food insecurity identified in a global model differ across rankings of economic development using a series of multilevel linear probability models we find that the five characteristics associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity around the world are having low levels of education weak social networks less social capital low household income and being unemployed we also find significant heterogeneity in the determinants of food insecurity over development rankings this study is an important first step in utilizing the new fies to document risk factors of food insecurity around the globe

poverty food security nexus evidence from a survey of urban slum dwellers in kolkata we explore the poverty food security nexus using an experience based indicator of food security constructed using a cross section sample of slum households in kolkata within the framework of a simultaneous ordered probit model we find a poor household is also likely to be food insecure additionally education gender and household composition are major drivers of food insecurity among low income urban households with the policy implication that anti poverty policies should be successful in eliminating household food insecurity however they need to be complemented with human capital investment and gender empowerment to be most effective

the regional allocation of infrastructure investment the role of equity efficiency and political factors abstract this paper analyses the main determinants of the regional allocation of infrastructure investment the estimated investment equation is derived from a general specification of the government s objective function berhman and craig am econom rev 77 1987 315 which accounts both for the equity efficiency trade off and for deviations from this rule that arise because of political factors the reaction of investment to changes in the regional output provides information about the strength of the equity efficiency trade off the main political factor considered is a measurement of the electoral productivity of funds invested in each region the equation is estimated from panel data on investment and the capital stock of transportation infrastructure i e roads rails ports and airports for the spanish departments nuts3 during the period 1987 1996 we use a dynamic specification of the equation that allows for slow adjustment and which is estimated by gmm methods arellano and bond rev econom stud 58 1991 277 the results suggest that efficiency criteria play only a limited role in the geographical distribution of government infrastructure investment specific regional infrastructure needs and political factors both appear to be factors that do explain the regional allocation of infrastructure investment

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

gender differentials in farm productivity implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy abstract within many african households agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household detailed plot level agronomic data from burkina faso provides striking evidence of substantial inefficiencies in the allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the household production function estimates imply that the value of household output could be increased by 10 15 by reallocating currently used factors of production across plots this finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households a richer model of behaviour which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a household compete as well as co operate has important implications for the structure of agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy

the short and the long run relationship between fiscal decentralization and public expenditure composition in italy this article is an original contribution to the understanding of the relationship between fiscal decentralization and public expenditure composition relying on recent panel cointegration techniques our findings show that the level of decentralization influences the expenditure composition of the italian regional administrations in the long run

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

schooling search and spouse selection testing economic theories of marriage and household behavior the implications of the economic theories of marriage and of household fertility behavior are tested in a framework in which educational investment marital search and marital matches are responsive to marriage market conditions and the personal traits of individual agents some of which are unobserved by the econometrician implications are also derived and tested for the effects of longevity attractiveness preferences and labor and marriage market conditions on schooling marriage age and spouse choice the empirical results indicate that inattention to heterogeneity and martial selection leads to a false rejection of the economic theory of marriage but to a false acceptance of the value of time fertility hypothesis

infrastructure investment a review essay economists try not to be faddists but they often cannot help themselves while work on a topic should mirror the prospective importance of the topic that situation seems to occur with disappointing frequency instead the usual pattern is that some reasonably important topic will be totally ignored for the longest time then recognized and then the subject of a flurry of work all out of proportion to its likely long run importance nowhere has this speculative bubble of economic research been more clearly illustrated than with infrastructure investment macroeconomists havelong felt that the stock of public capital is an important factor input in the production of total output macroeconomists have known that u s productivity growth slowed dramatically in about 1973 and macroeconomists should have known that united states investment in public capital has been down since the late 1960s yet analysis of the u s productivity slowdown completely ignored infrastructure investment for the first fifteen years of this slowdown concentrating instead on energy prices social regulation the composition of the work force research and development different rates of obsolescence of the private capital stock and any number of other matters the public capital stock was hardly ever even mentioned as a potential factor in the productivity slowdown aschauer changed all that he wrote a series of papers 1989a 1989b 1989c that put these two movements together econometrically infrastructure investment turned down and aggregate productivity turned down slightly later both in the united states and in some other developed countries his work hit the magic button those who had worried about the productivity puzzle for fifteen years welcomed a new suspect those who were worried about low rates of u s national saving welcomed a new way to make their argument even more forcefully than with official figures on saving and investment which do not count infrastructure investment as investment political liberals and liberal politicians saw a way to rescue government spending and projects from the assaults of reaganism and even a way to avoid oth

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

determinants of dietary quality evidence from bangladesh summary whereas a large number of studies have been devoted to analyzing consumer demand for dietary quantity much less attention has been paid to the demand for dietary quality to address this gap in the literature this paper explores the determinants of dietary quality in bangladesh using data from a nationally representative household expenditure survey conducted in 2000 we find that while male education plays a positive role female education has a substantially stronger influence further female household headship is associated with lower dietary quality than male headship thus promoting female education and addressing the unique constraints faced by female headed households with respect to diet quality could be a significant policy instrument for addressing food insecurity in bangladesh

decentralization and the composition of public expenditure in spain gonzalez alegre j decentralization and the composition of public expenditure in spain regional studies this paper examines the effects of fiscal decentralization on the economic distribution of public expenditures using panel data from the seventeen spanish regions 1984 2003 it is shown that fiscal decentralization is a crucial determinant of the share of the public budget devoted to capital the estimation run is based on a model in which the utility of the representative agent from the current public expenditure depends on the distance to the level of the administration that provides it that could be the cause why decentralized economies experience a higher share of current expenditure in the budget of the public administrations gonzalez alegre j la decentralisation et la structure des depenses publiques en espagne regional studies cet article cherche a examiner l impact de la fiscalite decentralisee sur la distribution economique des depenses publiques a partir des donnees provenant d une

interest rate policy with expectations of devaluation the problem of recurrent devaluations in the nordic countries is dealt with using a simple rational expec tations model given imperfect international asset substitutability a nd sufficient foreign exchange reserves a small open economy can use interest rate policies geared to competitiveness to put an end to re current devaluations if this policy is known and credible no intere st rate adjustments are called for except shortly before and during the expected devaluation phase in contrast a completely unanticipat ed interest rate policy requires that the rate of interest be raised continuously as the expected devaluation date is approached copyright 1988 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

distributive politics and the allocation of federal grants understanding the dynamics of policy distribution requires an appreciation of federal grant programs that have achieved a prominent place in nearly all areas of domestic policy the theoretical literature on distributive politics however focuses almost exclusively on a centralized top down view of policy distribution by examining the role of presidents legislators and bureaucrats scholars have ignored participants who have become key actors in the distribution of federal expenditures the recipient jurisdictions this analysis of the allocation patterns under six federal programs shows that local governments exert important influences on the distribution of federal grants and that the distributional patterns and their determinants vary over time the analysis also points out the importance of disaggregation by focusing on programs and recipient jurisdictions as opposed to total federal expenditures and regions states or congressional districts

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

output growth the real wage and employment fluctuations this paper is an attempt to contribute to the integration of business cycle analysis with long term growth a real business cycle model with endogenous growth is developed and estimated with u s data in the present framework wage movements do not have to be transitory to generate fluctuations in labor effort the reduced form is a constrained bivariate output hours or real wage hours vector autoregressive process the bivariate setup provides a useful framework for analyzing the persistence of output fluctuations given that the theory implies that hours of work contain information about future output movement copyright 1991 by american economic association

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

on decentralization and life satisfaction abstract we empirically analyze the impact of fiscal and political decentralization on subjective well being in a cross section of 60 000 individuals from 66 countries more spending or revenue decentralization raises well being while greater local autonomy is beneficial only via government consumption spending

devaluation devaluation expectations and price dynamics this paper investigates the inflationary impact of actual and expected de valuations the empirical evidence indicates that 1 the effects of devaluation on the price level are felt for at least three years 2 in the majority of the cases the ceteris paribus inflationary impac t of devaluation is mild 3 significant differences concerning the devaluation inflation relationship exist across countries but there i s little evidence to suggest that such differences exist in general across time within a country and 4 the anticipation of devaluatio n can have severe inflationary consequences and can lead to price lev el overshooting copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

status caste and the time allocation of women in rural india abstractwe argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of india because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women we set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste based status concerns on the time allocation of women we then use the all india national sample survey data for the year 2004 5 and the time use survey for six states of india for the year 1998 99 to empirically test these hypotheses after controlling for a host of correlates we find that the ratio of women s market work to men s declines as we move up the caste hierarchy this ratio falls as family wealth rises and the decline is steeper for the higher castes finally the effect on women s market work of higher education is weaker for the higher castes these findings lend support to our theory and to the view that through its emphasis on family status caste plays a pivotal role in undermining the autonomy of wome

assessing food insecurity in latin america and the caribbean using fao s food insecurity experience scale abstract the complexity of the operational concept and definition of food insecurity has complicated the study of the food insecure and efforts to determine clear policy directions previous findings on the prevalence and severity of food insecurity are inconsistent and often depend on the measure used to overcome limitations in food security measurement the food and agriculture organization of the united nations developed the food insecurity experience scale which is the first survey protocol to measure people s direct experience of food insecurity on a global scale using this new measure our study contributes to the understanding of the food insecure by examining the determinants of food insecurity within and across countries in latin america and the caribbean lac using a series of multilevel linear models we find the three determinants associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity in lac are low levels of education limited social capital and living in a country with low gdp per capita results suggest the need to promote education of the most vulnerable encourage social interactions that help build individuals social capital and adopt gender sensitive programs the results also suggest the need for a shift in policy from short term strategies to long term efforts that sustain household productive capacity and employment to promote sustained economic growth

women s empowerment in agriculture implications for technical efficiency in rural bangladesh although a great deal of research exists on gender and agriculture few studies investigate the implications of reduced gender disparities in households for technical efficiency in this article i compare the levels of technical efficiency achieved on plots operated by households with different levels of gender disparities using plot level data from the 2011 2012 bangladesh integrated household survey and drawing on indicators derived from the women s empowerment in agriculture index i estimate a stochastic frontier production function model which includes women s empowerment in agriculture as an exogenous determinant of technical inefficiency i find that reduced gender disparities within households measured in terms of the empowerment gap between spouses are associated with higher levels of technical efficiency this result extends to plots that women jointly manage with their spouses as well as those that women do not actively manage

optimal fiscal policy public capital and the productivity slowdown abstract this paper develops a quantitative theoretical model for the optimal provision of public capital we show that the ratio of public to private capital in the us economy since 1925 evolves in a manner that is broadly consistent with an optimal transition path derived from a simple growth model the model is used to quantify the conditions under which an increase in the stock of public capital is desirable and to investigate the degree to which nonoptimal fiscal policies can account for the us productivity slowdown

a new approach to test the effects of decentralization on public infrastructure investment this paper proposes a simple theoretical framework to obtain a tractable equation that considers the traditional criteria for allocating public infrastructure investment and variables to capture de

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

an empirical investigation into measurement and determinants of food security abstractwe examine the association between calorie based indicators and experiential indicators of food security using data from slum households of kolkata surveyed in 2010 2011 experiential indicator is constructed following the united states household food security survey module calorie based indicator is constructed using household specific calorie norms modelling techniques take account of potential endogeneity in the relationship the two indicators are aligned in the same direction implying more accurate targeting however there is a lack of one to one correspondence between the two measures and the drivers of calorie deprivation and food insecurity also differ suggesting a one size fits all policy cannot address both concerns simultaneously

women s empowerment in agriculture what role for food security in bangladesh summary using a nationally representative survey from bangladesh we examine the relationship between women s empowerment in agriculture measured using the women s empowerment in agriculture index and per capita calorie availability dietary diversity and adult body mass index bmi accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment we find that increases in women s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level overall household wealth education and occupation are more important than women s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male bmi suggest that intrahousehold trade offs may exist

the impact of fiscal decentralization on the composition of public expenditure panel data evidence from italy grisorio m j and prota f the impact of fiscal decentralization on the composition of public expenditure panel data evidence from italy regional studies this paper is an original contribution to the understanding of the relationship between fiscal decentralization and public expenditure composition it studies the effects of the ongoing decentralization process in italy on the share of different categories of public spending in total expenditure of the italian regional administrations over the period 1996 2008 the data used allow one to go beyond the usual distinction between current and capital expenditures and to present a functional classification of public expenditures through a panel data analysis the paper shows that the level of decentralization influences the composition of expenditure

government debt economic activity and transmission of economic disturbances this paper analyzes the effects of government debt on output and the trade bala nce in a two country rational expectations model of the world economy it is shown that perceived changes in government debt do not affect the level of economic activity but unperceived changes in the home country s government debt are correlated positively with its output and negatively with its trade balance unperceived increases in the foreign country s government debt however have a positive impact on the home country s output and the trade balance empirical evidence from the u s is consistent with most of the implications of the model copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

the effects of devaluation and foreign price disturbances under rational expectations abstract this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the exchange rate and the foreign price level in a stochastic model in which domestic agents form expectations about possible changes in these variables the general conclusion to emerge is that the impact of such changes on the domestic economy depend critically upon a the extent to which such changes are predicted and b in some cases the permanency with which they are expected to prevail the short run and dynamic effects of a number of specific changes are examined in detail and it is shown how a variety of transitional paths may arise depending upon the accuracy of expectations with respect to both timing and magnitude

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

exchange rate policy and monetary information this paper develops a model of a small open economy in which the presence of local deviations from purchasing power parity give rise to differential information it is assumed that the monetary authorities are committed to buy and sell foreign exchange in order to support an exchange rate policy rule it is demonstrated that exchange rate policy can influence the distribution of real output i if agents possess incomplete and differential information and ii if they have contemporaneous money supply or balance of payments information it is also shown that exchange rate policy can be effective because of its ability to influence the information content of available monetary data the argument is turned around and used to support the frequent release of monetary data

what have we learned from three decades of research on the productivity of public capital the last three decades have witnessed a great deal of research effort devoted to measuring the private output elasticity of public capital the wide range of available estimates have precluded any consensus so far however this paper reconciles the empirical findings of the literature by quantitatively analyzing a sample of 578 estimates collected from 68 studies for the 1983 2008 period using meta regression analysis we show how study design characteristics and publication bias can explain a large fraction of the variation across estimates we find a short run output elasticity of public capital supplied at the central government level of 0 083 which increases to 0 122 in the long run if in addition only core infrastructure at a regional local level of government is considered these estimates are almost doubled the average output elasticity of public capital amounts to 0 106 our results suggest that public capital is undersupplied in oecd economies

fiscal competition and the pattern of public spending much attention has been given to the impact of fiscal competition on the level of public expenditure but relatively little to the impact on its composition using a broadly familiar and reasonably rich model of fiscal competition in the presence of mobile capital this paper establishes a systematic bias in public spending patterns starting from the non cooperative equilibrium and holding tax rates constant welfare would be improved by a coordinated reduction in the provision of local public inputs and a corresponding increase in the public provision of local public goods benefiting immobile consumers c 1997 elsevier science s a