smoking drinking and income in an effort to increase understanding of the alcohol income puzzle the finding that drinking appears to lead to higher income this paper presents maximum simulated likelihood estimates of a system of limited dependent variables governing smoking and drinking patterns and income with all else held constant moderate drinking is associated with 10 percent higher income and heavy drinking associated with 12 percent higher income than drinking abstention smoking is associated with larger effects on income than drinking single equation estimates suggest smokers earn 8 percent less than nonsmokers and the smoking penalty rises to 24 percent after correcting for endogeneity

explaining irrigation technology choices a microparameter approach water price reforms are increasingly being used to encourage improvements in irrigation efficiency through technology adoption a microparameter approach based on field level data is used to assess the effect of economic variables environmental characteristics and institutional variables on irrigation technology choices the results show that water price is not the most important factor governing irrigation technology adoption physical and agronomic characteristics appear to matter more the results demonstrate the importance of using micro level data to determine the effects of asset heterogeneity and crop type on technology adoption the continued growth of urban water demand acted a measure a b 3616 requiring irrigathe recent awareness of environmental and in tion districts in the state to draft best managestream water values and the virtual halt of wa merit practices for the use of irrigation water ter supply development have put increased de including farm level measures such as irrigamands on scarce water supplies in the western tion systems water price reforms are also inunited states recent legislation has called for creasingly used to encourage improvements in increased in stream water flows to enhance wa irrigation efficiency through technology adopter quality and restore wildlife habitat in a hum tion the federal central valley project imber of states especially california because ag provement act requires the u s bureau of recricultural water use accounts for the majority of lamation to adopt increasing block pricing for water consumption in the west growers are water provided to irrigation districts generally forced to bear the burden of reduced the literature on adoption of modern irrigadiversions necessary to enhance in stream tion technology is well established both empiri

women s work sibling competition and children s school performance this research offers an interpretation of the relationship between fertility child spacing family resources and market work by mothers and the subsequent cognitive skills of grade schoolers as reported by their teachers first an approach to fertility as the outcome of a deliberate choice process is developed and then empirical evidence from a small panel of u s households first interviewed in 1975 76 when they had preschool children is presented in a 1981 82 reinterview a supplementary project was that of obtaining teacher ratings of school performance of individual children large family size as measured by the number of siblings of given age and sex in the household during preschool years in 1975 76 has an important negative impact on the child s subsequent grade school performance boy siblings in nearby age ranges have the most negative impact on performance while teenage siblings of either sex have no systematic adverse effect parental resources as measured by income education child care time and a mother s reduced market time are associated with greater cognitive skills and can offset the apparent disadvantage of having siblings in nearby age intervals there appears to be a significant tradeoff between a market career and a home career for women women who have more children spaced over wider age intervals and who devote more time to child care and less to market work presumably get more benefits from their home career in the form of enhanced child development on the other hand full time market work i e hours in the labor market for pay is important for earnings growth of the mother mary corcoran greg duncan and michael ponza 1983 and family income has a favorable effect on school performance so the apparent choices facing women are more equivocal

does drinking affect long term sickness absence a sample selection approach correcting for employment and accounting for drinking history this article studies the effect of alcohol consumption on the probability of long term sickness related absenteeism for women using swedish matched survey and register data we apply sample selection models to correct for nonrandom sampling into paid employment there are three main findings of the study first diverging from the most prevalent consumption group long term light drinkers is associated with an increased probability of long term sickness ranging from 10 for long term heavy drinkers to 18 for former drinkers second controlling for former consumption errors especially former drinker and former abstainer errors and sample selection into employment are important for unbiased consistent estimations third by predicting the effect of changes in consumption on long term sickness related absence we find that alcohol only explains a small part of the overall picture of long term sickness related absenteeism notwithstanding this fact long term sickness related absenteeism due to alcoho

what price drug use the contribution of economics to an evidence based drugs policy abstract this paper presents a review of the recent economics literature in the area of illicit drug use particular attention is paid to the economics of addiction and the rational addiction model the welfare economics framework for analysing the social costs of drug use and the attempts that have been made by economists to evaluate recent or proposed policy interventions a dominant theme in this review is the problem of poor data availability this is particularly true when it comes to implementing the rational addiction model but it is also apparent in the literature on estimating the costs of illicit drug use to society as a whole one of the main conclusions of this review is that until recently public policy has not been particularly influenced by research carried out by economists it is not clear whether this is because economists have had to grapple with inadequate data and hence their conclusions are couched in uncertainty or whether it is because drugs researchers have assumed a very limited role for economists in their analysis

the determinants of occupational success in britain this paper is concerned with measuring the true impact of certain human capital variables on an individual s occupational position the particular variables which are analysed are training qualifications and spells of sickness and unemployment the longitudinal nature of the data enables us to control for all relevant individual attributes which remain fixed over the period of the sample this is vitally important because these attributes are strongly correlated with the variables of interest and would seriously corrupt estimates derived from a single cross section a method of generating consistent estimates as n oo t fixed for a dynamic model with fixed effects is also illustrated

maternal education home environments and the development of children and adolescents we study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children s cognitive achievement behavioral problems grade repetition and obesity we address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up using matched data from the female participants of the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 nlsy79 and their children we can control for mother s ability and family background factors our results show substantial intergenerational returns to education for children aged 7 8 for example our iv results indicate that an additional year of mother s schooling increases the child s performance on a standardized math test by almost 0 1 of a standard deviation and reduces the incidence of behavioral problems our data set allows us to study a large array of channels which may transmit the effect of maternal education to the child including family environment and parental investments at different ages of the child we find that income effects delayed childbearing and assortative mating are likely to be important and we show that maternal education leads to substantial differences in maternal labor supply we investigate heterogeneity in returns and we present results focusing both on very early stages in the child s life as well as adolescent outcomes we present a falsification exercise to support the validity of our instruments and our results are found to be robust in a sensitivity analysis we discuss policy implications and relate our findings to intergenerational mobility

alcohol consumption and human capital a retrospective study of the literature grossman proposed an individual s health can be viewed as one aspect of their human capital following this line of thought a number of recent papers have reported a positive impact of alcohol consumption on earnings the rationale for the existence of such a relationship is the positive impact of alcohol on physical and mental health we conduct a meta analysis to determine whether such factors as the estimation technique the presence of ex drinkers in the sample possible sample selection bias and publication bias may all contribute to these findings an additional suggestion for the positive relationship between alcohol and wages is the presence of a common set of personality traits that determines drinking behaviour and also leads to higher earnings we examine this relationship by reviewing the literature that investigates if the personality influencing aspects of alcohol consumption influences measures of human capital we also survey the significant body of research that has examined how alcohol consumption has been found to influence educational outcomes and the work force participation of problem drinkers

home alone supervision after school and child behavior as female participation in the labor force continues to grow in the us so too does reliance on non parental child care however the high cost of child care has impeded the ability of many working mothers to find sufficient child care for their children as a result as recently as 1998 over eight million children ages five to 14 spent time without adult supervision on a regular basis in the us i examine the effect of the lack of adult supervision after school on a panel of school age children using ordinary least squares and fixed effect estimation i find that children with adult supervision are less likely to skip school use alcohol or marijuana steal something or hurt someone these findings suggest that expanding after school or child care programs typically geared to preschool age children to accommodate more school age children may have important consequences for their human capital development and labor market outcomes later in life

do drinkers know when to say when an empirical analysis of drunk driving this paper presents empirical evidence that an individual s decision to drive while drunk is negatively affected by the expected full price of driving drunk the analysis usa a unique data set containing information on self reported drunk driving matched to state level drunk driving policies as well as to state excise taxes on beer these are hypothesized and found to affect drunk driving further we find interesting racial differences but surprisingly small differences by gender in the effect of socioeconomic and policy variables on drunk driving propensities

insights on unemployment unemployment insurance and mental health abstract this paper contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between business cycles and mental health it is one of the first applications in the economics literature to incorporate data on web searches from google insights for search and these unique data allow the opportunity to estimate the association between weekly unemployment insurance ui claims in addition to monthly unemployment rates and search indexes for depression and anxiety results from state fixed effects models yield 1 a positive relationship between the unemployment rate and the depression search index and 2 a negative relationship between initial ui claims on the one hand and the depression and anxiety search indexes on the other a lag analysis also shows that an extended period of higher levels of continued ui claims is associated with a higher depression search index

the morning after alcohol misuse and employment problems using a rich recent and nationally representative longitudinal survey specifically designed to examine alcohol use and associated problems we investigate the effects of alcohol misuse on a series of understudied and perhaps less common employment problems such problems include being fired or laid off from a job sustained unemployment and conflicts with a supervisor and or co worker after controlling for time invariant omitted variables via fixed effects estimation we find evidence that three measures of alcohol misuse are significantly related to employment problems the results offer new information on the potential adverse labour market effects of alcohol misuse and shed light on potential mechanisms through which alcohol misuse may impact intensive labour supply and or wages

reducing binge drinking the effect of a ban on late night off premise alcohol sales on alcohol related hospital stays in germany abstract excessive alcohol consumption among young people is a major public health concern on march 1 2010 the german state of baden wurttemberg banned the sale of alcoholic beverages between 10 pm and 5 am at off premise outlets e g gas stations kiosks supermarkets we use rich monthly administrative data from a 70 random sample of all hospitalizations during the years 2007 2011 in germany in order to evaluate the short term impact of this policy on alcohol related hospitalizations applying difference in differences methods we find that the policy change reduces alcohol related hospitalizations among adolescents and young adults by about 7 there is also evidence of a decrease in the number of hospitalizations due to violent assault as a result of the ban

absenteeism as a mechanism for approaching an optimal labor market equilibrium an empirical study this research examines absence as a response to a non optimal labor market equilibrium its basic premise is that workers may be using absenteeism to move themselves closer to an optimal equilibrium in situations where due to greater than desiredwork hours the workers marginal rate of substitution of income for leisure mrs is less than the wage rate for the last hour worked this notion is tested for a sample of workers using tobit analysis with individual data from company records on absence and wages and an empirical measure of each worker s mrs the results indicate a significant positive relationship between absence and the difference between a worker s mrs and wage

alcohol use human capital and wages this article develops and estimates a model of wage determination that isolates the effects of alcohol use on wages as mediated through human capital accumulation although generally insignificant estimation results suggest that moderate alcohol use while in school or working has a positive effect on the returns to education or experience and therefore on human capital accumulation but heavier drinking reduces this gain slightly based on these results alcohol use does not appear to adversely affect returns to education or work experience and therefore has no negative effect on the efficiency of education or experience in forming human capital

an alternative model of pro cyclical absenteeism abstract current economic models of absenteeism derive pro cyclical properties from cyclical variations in the costs and consequences of absence through an extension of the household production model this paper proposes a complementary approach based on variations in forgone earnings associated with work commodity itself

the effect of drinking and smoking on the labour market outcomes of low income young adults among adults the causal drinking bonus and smoking penalty have been estimated to be as large as 12 and 24 respectively the magnitudes of these effects compare in size with many active labour market programs targeted at low income young adults this article extends the literature by examining these relationships in such a group somewhat surprisingly the data indicate that just as in the greater population young drinkers have more favourable labour market outcomes than nondrinkers however when a fixed effects approach is used to identify causal impacts there is no evidence that drinking has a positive impact on labour market outcomes and some evidence for negative returns to drinking the smoking penalty is estimated to be much smaller among this group and not statistically significant finally estimates suggest that the observed correlations between consumption and labour market outcomes are biased by unobserved characteristics of the individual as well as unobservables that change over time t

long term effects of a recession at labor market entry in japan and the united states abstract we examine effects of entering the labor market during a recession on subsequent employment and earnings for japanese and american men using comparable household labor force surveys we find persistent negative effects of the unemployment rate at graduation for less educated japanese men in contrast to temporary effects for less educated american men the school based hiring system and the dismissal regulation prolong the initial loss of employment opportunities for less educated japanese men the effect on earnings for more educated groups is also stronger in japan although the difference between the two countries is smaller than for less educated groups

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

the impact of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment in england in this study we provide evidence on the effect of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment in england to do this we use samples of employees from the health survey for england between 1992 and 1996 we find that owing to the endogenous nature of alcohol consumption ols estimates may provide a biased picture of the impact of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment using various sets of instrumental variables we find positive and significant returns to moderate levels of drinking for male and female employees which drop off rapidly as consumption increases

maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in canada evidence from the nlscy this paper investigates the socioeconomic factors affecting childhood overweight and obesity in canada using data from the national longitudinal survey of children and youth in particular i attempt to address the issue of whether an increase in the mother s work intensity is associated with an increase in the risk of the child s becoming overweight or obese i also attempt to evaluate the causality of this relationship and the mechanisms that might facilitate this link the results suggest that an increase in the mother s work intensity when she first returned to work in the period after the child s birth and before the child started school is associated with an increase in the risk of the child s becoming overweight or obese later in childhood conditional on the mother returning to work in the period between the child s birth and the start of school for the child a 10 hour increase in the number of hours worked per week when the mother first returned to work is associated with an increase in the probability that the child later becomes overweight or obese that is in the range of 2 5 to 4 percentage points ce memoire analyse les facteurs socio economiques qui affectent l exces de poids et l obesite des enfants au canada a l aide des donnees de l elnej en particulier on se demande si un accroissement de l intensite de travail de la mere est associea l accroissement de poids et a l obesite de l enfant on etudie le lien de causalite et les mecanismes qui sous tendent ce lien les resultats montrent qu un accroissement de l intensite de travail de la mere quand elle retourne au travail dans la periode apres la naissance de l enfant et avant qu il ne commence ses classes est associea la probabilite d exces de poids et d obesite plus tard un accroissement de 10 heures dans le nombre d heures travaillees par semaine est associea une probabilite de 2 5 a 4 points de pourcentage que l enfant va avoir des problemes de poids ou d obesite

declining organizational size and increasing unemployment rates predicting employee absenteeism from within and between plant perspectives the impact of increasing unemployment rates and decreasing organizational size on absenteeism was assessed for pooled monthly data from 17 plants over a five year period as the organizations becam

changes in the labor supply behavior of married women 1980 2000 using march current population survey data we investigate married women s labor supply from 1980 to 2000 we find a large rightward shift in their labor supply function for annual hours in the 1980s with little shift in the 1990s these shifts account for most of the slowdown in the growth of labor supply during this period a major development was the dramatic decrease in the responsiveness of married women s labor supply to their own and husbands wages their own wage elasticity fell by 50 56 while their cross wage elasticity fell by 38 47 in absolute value

adult labour market implications of antisocial behaviour in childhood and adolescence findings from a uk longitudinal study while antisocial behaviour in younger age groups is largely viewed as a public externality issue there are also reasons for expecting less favourable life course outcomes for those individuals who follow antisocial developmental pathways data from a uk longitudinal study of delinquent development in a cohort of working class boys are used to model the adult labour market implications of different antisocial developmental pathways to age 32 a series of probit estimations suggests that children identified as troublesome by peers and teachers at an early age and who subsequently engaged in delinquent behaviour throughout their adolescence had a significantly higher probability of experiencing long periods of time out of the workforce prior to age 32 and lengthy periods of unemployment and or low paid work at both age 18 and at age 32 a heckman selectivity model estimated on weekly earnings at age 32 does not provide evidence that antisocial development in children and adolescents is associated with a l

does drinking really decrease in bad times this paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and drinking using individual level data from 1987 to 1999 interview years of the behavioral risk factor surveillance system brfss we confirm the procyclical variation in overall drinking identified in previous research using aggregate sales data and show that this largely results from changes in consumption by existing drinkers rather than movements into or out of drinking moreover the decrease occurring during bad economic times is concentrated among heavy consumers with light drinking actually rising we also find no evidence that the decline in overall alcohol use masks a rise for persons becoming unemployed during contractions these results suggest that any stress induced increases in drinking during bad economic times are more than offset by declines resulting from changes in economic factors such as lower incomes

switching toward capital intensive technologies in finnish dairy farms we analyze dairy farmers decisions to switch from the traditional labor intensive tied housing system to a more capital intensive free stall housing the choice of the housing system is modeled as a sequence of interrelated choices errors that are consistent with the observed choices are simulated and used to control for serial correlation and farm specific fixed effects the sequence of choices is estimated by the ghk simulation technique and simulated maximum likelihood sml the results suggest that the switch toward more capital intensive free stall housing responds positively and elastically to investment grants and a farmer s capital resources in addition positive revenue shocks significantly encourage switches to free stall housing

do drinkers earn less theoretical work by becker and others on human capital led initially to empirical research on the determinates of earnings interest in human capital has now spread to other areas especially health this movement is in conjunction with societal concerns regarding the role of diet and environmental factors on human well being and performance following becker 1 and grossman 9 economists expect to find a significant relationship between health and earnings health aspects of human capital have been extensively explored since the early work of grossman 9 10 good health is both beyond the control of the individual exogenous as a result of genetic factors and random events and controllable endogenous through the regulation of activities such as smoking drinking eating exercise and other informed choices this study examines the relation between earnings and drinking curiously little rigorous empirical work has been done on the relation between earnings and drinking irving fisher s claim to the contrary 1 there is little evidence that prohibition led to substantial if any productivity increases although it is established that excessive drinking leads to poor health the empirical evidence regarding earnings and drinking is mixed and inconclusive according to the u s government abusive drinkers earn less in their biennial reports to congress the national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism niaaa estimates the economic cost to society of alcohol abuse approximately half of this cost arises from the estimated loss in earnings productivity due to abusive drinking 2 their approach consists of estimating a wage equation which includes human capital variables as well as a dichotomous abusive drinking variable and quantity of alcohol consumed 3 berger and leigh 3 used a sample selection model to test whether drinkers earned more or less than nondrinkers they divided their sample from the 1972 73 quality of employment survey into two categories drinkers and nondrinkers using a sample selection correction estimator hedonic wage regressions for each category and by sex were estimated they found that drinkers moderate and abusive combined earned more than nondrinkers comparisons were then made between wages from each regression with demographic and human capital variables set at

psychiatric disorders and labor market outcomes evidence from the national comorbidity survey replication this paper uses the national comorbidity survey replication to estimate effects of recent psychiatric disorder on employment hours worked and earnings we employ methods proposed in altonji et al 2005a which use selection on observable traits to provide information regarding selection along unobservable factors among males disorder is associated with reductions in labor force participation and employment when selection on observed characteristics is set equal to selection on unobserved characteristics the magnitudes of these effects for males are 9 and 14 percentage point reductions for participation and employment respectively among females we find negative associations between disorder and labor force participation and employment but these estimates are more sensitive to assumptions about selection there are no effects of disorder on earnings or hours worked among employed individuals

drinking and academic performance in high school i investigate the extent to which negative alcohol use coefficients in grade point average regressions reflect unobserved heterogeneity rather than direct effects of drinking using 2001 and 2003 youth risk behaviour survey data on high school students results illustrate that omitted factors are quite important drinking coefficient magnitudes fall substantially in regressions that control for risk and time preference mental health self esteem and consumption of other addictive substances moreover the impact of binge drinking is negligible for students who are less risk averse heavily discount the future or use other drugs however effects that remain significant after accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and are relatively large for risk averse future oriented and drug free students suggest that binge drinking might slightly worsen academic performance consistent with this the relationship between grades and drinking without binging is small and insignificant on the extensive margin and posi

absenteeism and the collective bargaining agreement an empirical test the article presents information on a study which examined organizational policy correlates that may affect the consequences of employee absenteeism the authors investigate causes of absenteeism a

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

a note on economic conditions and alcohol problems this paper reexamines the effect of the business cycle on alcohol consumption using u s state level analysis introduced by rhum ruhm c j 1995 economic conditions and alcohol problems journal of health economics 14 583 603 using an extended panel this analysis finds that ruhm s estimates are biased and inconsistent due to the problem of non stationarity in alcohol consumption and state economic condition time series corrected estimation using logarithmic first differences confirms ruhm s original finding of pro cyclical alcohol consumption but these results unlike ruhm s are robust to sample period

is there a wage bonus from drinking unobserved heterogeneity examined while the result that drinkers earn more than abstainers has been remarkably persistent only one paper in the literature on drinking and earnings has been written where individual fixed effects are included this study improves the current literature by utilizing a much longer panel and focuses on the low end of drinking while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity with the inclusion of individual specific effects it is found that while ols specifications yield a positive significant coefficient on current drinking even when a rich set of covariates is controlled for including individual fixed effects renders the coefficient statistically insignificant

the drinkers bonus in the military officers versus enlisted personnel applied economics published the first article reporting the findings of drinkers earning more than nondrinkers in 1988 the positive correlation between drinking and higher wages has existed in the economics literature on alcohol consumption for almost two decades however a clear explanation for this finding is only beginning to emerge i use data on male military personnel from the 1985 worldwide survey of alcohol and nonmedical drug use among military personnel to explore a theory of social capital specifically one way individuals can invest in social capital is through drinking in certain settings abstainers miss out on opportunities to increase their social capital stock because they forego social interaction that could result in promotion some evidence comes from exploring the wage bonus for officers versus enlisted i find the effect of different drinking levels on wages varies with station in the military officers who drink between two and 38 drinks per week earn between 2 and 8 more than o

long term unemployment hysteresis and the unemployment vacancy relationship a regional analysis jones d r and manning d n 1992 long term unemployment hysteresis and the unemployment vacancy relationship a regional analysis reg studies 26 17 29 in this paper we investigate the unemployment vacancy uv relationship in the ten standard regions of great britain in particular we test the hypothesis of hysteresis in the unemployment rate and consider the importance of long term unemployment in the hysteresis mechanism previous work has demonstrated the importance of long term unemployment in empirical models of the aggregate uv relationship in the regions of britain there is considerable heterogeneity both in the measured uv relationship and in the relative importance of long term unemployment the nature of this heterogeneity is considered in this paper jones d r et manning d n 1992 le chomage de longue duree l hysterese et le rapport chomage offres d emploi une analyse regionale reg studies 26 17 29 cet article etudie le rapport chomage offres d emploi c o dans les dix zo

structural versus reduced form estimation of optimal stopping problems in this paper i examine several statistical interpretive and policy implications of reduced form probit or logit estimation of optimal stopping problems the discussion proceeds in the context of an examination of the timber harvest decision of nonindustrial private forest nipf owners for a large class of optimal stopping problems a reduced form model which closely approximates the statistical performance of its structural counterpart is readily found still failure to properly interpret the relationship between the reduced form model and the underlying optimal stopping problem invites flawed econometric analysis and inappropriate interpretation of reduced form coefficients

cohort effects in promotions and wages evidence from sweden and the united states abstract this paper studies the long term effects of the business cycle on workers future promotions and wages using the swedish employer employee matched data we find that a cohort of workers entering the labor market during a boom gets promoted faster and reaches higher ranks this procyclical promotion cohort effect persists even after controlling for workers initial jobs and explains at least half of the wage cohort effects that previous studies have focused on we repeat the same analyses using personnel records from a single u s company and obtain the same qualitative results

an investigation of the relationship between unemployment and absenteeism a multi level approach the article discusses research pertaining to the relationship between unemployment and absenteeism at the national level the regional level and or the organizational level data on monthly absent

initial labor market conditions and long term outcomes for economists each year graduate students entering the academic job market worry that they will suffer due to uncontrollable macroeconomic risk given the importance of general human capital and the relative ease of publicly observing productivity in academia one might expect that long term labor market outcomes for students graduating in unfavorable climates will resemble long term outcomes for those graduating in favorable climates in this paper i analyze the relationship between macroeconomic conditions at graduation initial job placement and long term outcomes for ph d economists from seven programs using macroeconomic conditions as an instrument for initial placement i show that a quality and type of initial job have a causal effect on long term job characteristics i also show that better initial placement increases research productivity which helps to limit the set of economic models that can explain the effect of initial placement on long term jobs

regional unemployment and employee loyalty evidence from 12 uk regions abstractthis study investigates the relationship between unemployment and employee loyalty across uk regions it is argued that higher regional unemployment depresses wages and increases the cost of a potential job loss thus providing an incentive for employees to be loyal to their employer using data from the work and employment relations survey wers the results confirm the positive association between regional unemployment and employee loyalty a disaggregated analysis by type of business reveals that this association is stronger in the private sector the study adds a spatial dimension to an emergent literature that examines how unemployment affects the employed

illegal drug use and employment this article investigates the relationship between employment and the use of marijuana and cocaine for males in national longitudinal survey of youth data from 1984 and 1988 previous studies yielding mixed evidence may have inadequately accounted for the simultaneity between drug consumption and employment i implement an instrumental variable procedure that identifies drug use with variables that are empirically unrelated to employment including the regional cocaine price and a state marijuana decriminalization indicator results indicate that the use of each drug substantially reduces the likelihood of employment exogeneity tests reveal that standard probit estimates are severely biased toward zero

prevention against equality common sense supports prevention policies aimed at improving survival prospects among the population it is also widely acknowledged that an early death is a serious disadvantage and that attention should be paid to the compensation of short lived individuals this paper re examines the compatibility of those two concerns prevention against early death and compensation for early death we show that under mild conditions no social ordering on allocations can satisfy a concern for prevention and a concern for compensation the reason is that if it is socially desirable to raise the number of survivors through prevention it must also be under costly prevention desirable to deteriorate the living standards of the short lived we then explore two approaches to the prevention compensation dilemma and study the associated optimal allocation of resources

alcohol taxes and labor market outcomes abstract we present reduced form estimates of the effect of alcohol taxes on employment weekly work hours and wages the reduced form estimates are meaningful in two ways first they provide estimates of the effect of an important public policy tool alcohol taxes and second they can be used to evaluate hypotheses about the structural effects of alcohol use on labor market outcomes estimates indicate that there is a weak and indeterminate relationship between alcohol taxes and labor market outcomes this implies that alcohol use does not adversely affect labor market outcomes and is inconsistent with findings from previous studies

labor market effects of marijuana and cocaine use among young men using data on marijuana and cocaine use from the 1984 national longitudinal survey of youth the authors examine the hypothesis that drug use reduces labor market productivity as measured by wages from an analysis that controls for the probability of employment and the endogeneity of drug use they find that although long term and on the job use of marijuana negatively affected wages the net productivity effect for all marijuana users both those who engaged in long term or on the job use and those who did not was positive no statistically significant association was found between cocaine use and productivity

the effect of alcohol use on wages 1988 the effect of alcohol use on wages applied economics vol 20 no 10 pp 1343 1351

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

gender differences in labor market effects of alcoholism little is known about the role of specific health problems in affecting labor market productivity even less is known about gender differences in the labor market effects of such health problems current knowledge of health effects is based largely on samples composed exclusively of men a common practice in both economics and health research in the latter case even a congressional mandate to incorporate females in study samples is reputed to have had little effect patricia schroeder 1990 in this study we attempt to determine the structure of gender differences in labor market responses to alcoholism we use a relatively new data source that allows such comparisons by gender in a large community based sample previous studies have established that there are significant gender differences in labor market behavior differences in prevalence rates of alcoholism by gender are also well established it is estimated that 3 percent of females are currently suffering from alcoholism and twice that many have exhibited symptoms at some time for males the numbers are 10 and 20 percent respectively there is some medical evidence to indicate that physiologically women and men respond differently to alcohol for example a recent study suggests that women have greater vulnerability to the acute and chronic health conditions associated with alcoholism mario frezza et al 1990

the lasting effects of leaving school in an economic downturn on alcohol use the author tests whether leaving school in an economic downturn persistently affects alcohol use she models alcohol use in middle age as a function of the state unemployment rate at school leaving in the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 cohort the results suggest that men but not women who leave school in an economic downturn consume more drinks and are more likely to report heavy and binge drinking than otherwise similar men findings are robust to addressing the endogeneity of the time and location of school leaving and contribute to the literature on the lasting consequences of leaving school in an economic downturn

a pint a day raises a man s pay but smoking blows that gain away this paper studies the wage effects of the use of alcohol and tobacco the analysis based on a recent survey in the netherlands shows that for males the use of tobacco has a negative wage effect of about 10 while the use of alcohol has a positive wage effect of about the same size the wages of females are not affected by smoking and drinking

the specification and estimation of dynamic stochastic discrete choice models a survey our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the united states congress we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset given estimates of the structural model we

alcohol consumption smoking and wages the good health of an individual is a combination of uncontrollable factors that includes genetics and random events and controllable factors through the regulation of activities such as smoking and drinking since the work of grossman in the 1970s a significant relationship between health and earnings has been predicted in this present paper the 1995 australian national health survey is used to examine simultaneously the effects of drinking and smoking on wages to model the interaction of smoking with alcohol consumption separate models are fitted for smokers and nonsmokers these models account for potential selectivity bias resulting from the decision to smoke and endogeneity arising from a potential causal relationship between earnings and alcohol consumption

does alcohol consumption reduce human capital accumulation evidence from the college alcohol study it is often conjectured that a significant cost of youthful drinking is the future labour market consequences of having accumulated a lower stock of human capital while several studies have investigated the effect of youthful drinking on the quantity of human capital stock accumulated measured by years of education completed or high school graduation this paper investigates the effect of alcohol consumption on the quality of human capital stock accumulated as measured by college students gpa using data from the harvard school of public health s college alcohol study the indirect effect of the quantity of alcohol consumed on gpa is estimated through hours spent studying as well as the direct effect results show that the net total effect of alcohol consumption on gpa is negative for the sample of college students and that the main effect is via a reduction in the hours spent studying this finding confirms that high levels of alcohol consumption have an overall negative consequence for academic achie

local labor market fluctuations and health is there a connection and for whom we examine the relationship between local labor market conditions and several measures of health and health behaviors for a sample of working aged men living in the 58 largest metropolitan areas in the united states we find evidence of procyclical relationships for weight related health and mental health for men with low ex ante employment probabilities separate estimates suggest worsening labor market conditions lead to weight gains and reduced mental health among african american men and lower mental health among less educated males among our findings those related to mental health are most pronounced

alcoholism work and income this article reports on an empirical analysis of the relationships between alcoholism and income and working we show that the relationships between alcoholism and labor market success have important age or life cycle dimensions we present evidence that alcoholism may affect income more by restricting labor market participation than by affecting the wages of workers finally we demonstrate that the effects of alcoholism on earnings depend on the extent to which one controls for other covariates associated with alcoholism as such we suggest that there may be important indirect as well as direct effects of alcoholism on labor market success

a review essay on isabel sawhill s generation unbound drifting into sex and parenting without marriage and laurence steinberg s age of opportunity lessons from the new science of adolescence sawhill and steinberg approach risky behavior among youth from two different angles steinberg argues for intervention during the adolescent years to alter behavior in ways that prioritize patience and self regulation while sawhill advocates interventions that mitigate the negative effects of risky behavior both argue that disadvantaged youth suffer worse consequences as a result of risky behavior and therefore stand to gain the most from interventions while the authors develop strong arguments for adolescent interventions the existing evidence on their effectiveness is less compelling to reconcile the promise with the reality i argue that growing up in environments of significant uncertainty reduces the returns to forward thinking behavior in the daily lives of disadvantaged youths interventions to develop adolescent decision making skills so as to reduce risky behavior will not be effective if they are inconsistent with the incentives generated by a local environment that is often characterized by uncertainty

parental problem drinking and adult children s labor market outcomes current estimates of the societal costs of alcoholism do not consider the impact of parental drinking on children this paper analyzes the consequences of parental problem drinking on children s labor market outcomes in adulthood using the nlsy79 i show that having a problem drinking parent is associated with longer periods out of the labor force lengthier unemployment and lower wages in particular for male respondents increased probabilities of experiencing health problems and abusing alcohol are speculative forces behind these effects while causality cannot be determined due to imprecise iv estimates the paper calls for further investigation of the intergeneration costs of problem drinking

illicit drug use unemployment and occupational attainment in this paper we use data from the british crime survey bcs to examine the effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes we find very little evidence to support any relationship between drug use hard or soft and occupational attainment however we find compelling evidence to suggest that drug use particularly the use of opiates cocaine and crack cocaine is associated with an increased risk of unemployment regardless of age or gender

patents as options some estimates of the value of holding european patent stocks in many countries holders of patents must pay an annual renewal fee in order to keep their patents in force this paper uses data on the proportion of patents renewed and the renewal fees faced by post world war ii cohorts of patents in france the united kingdom and germany in conjunction with a model of patent holders renewal decisions to estimate the returns earned from holding patents in these countries since patents are often applied for at a nearly stage in the innovation process the model allows agents to be uncertain about the sequence of returns that will be earned if the patent is kept inforce formally then the paper presents and solves a discrete choice optimal stochastic control model derives the implications of the model on aggregate behaviour and then estimates the parameters of the model from aggregate data the estimates enable a detailed description of the evolution of the distribution of returns earned from holding patents over their life spans and calculations of both the annual returns earned from holding the patents still in force or the patent stocks in the alternative countries and the distribution of the discounted value of returns earned from holding the patents in a cohort this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

human development and alcohol abuse in adolescence the aim of this article is to analyse the development of human capital in adolescents as represented by their state of health and educational attainment when this capital is affected by the abusive consumption of alcohol measured by grams of ethanol to that end we adopt a theoretical framework derived from the model of rational addiction the model of health demand and the model of schooling demand which is then estimated by using data drawn from the spanish national survey on drug use in the school population 1996 1998 2000 results confirm that higher alcohol consumption leads to worse health states and lower academic efficiency among adolescents which suggests the need to implement effective policies aimed at reducing alcohol abuse among this population group

adolescent alcohol use sociability and income as a young adult we use data from the national longitudinal survey of adolescent health add health to study how sociability and adolescent alcohol use impact personal income as a young adult we find that factors which enhance not only individual sociability but also social interaction at the community level are positively linked to future earnings of adolescents adolescents whose friends and friends of friends have greater sociability reap long term labour market rewards into adulthood after adjusting for individual and community sociability the effect of teenage alcohol consumption on labour market earnings as young adults is reduced our results suggest that earnings premiums associated with adolescent alcohol consumption may be partially explained by social network dynamics

the impact of recent mental health changes on employment new evidence from longitudinal data abstractthis study uses longitudinal data and four different measures of mental health to tease out the impact of psychiatric disorder onsets and recoveries on employment outcomes results suggest that developing a mental health problem leads to a significant increase in the probability of transitioning to non employment while a recovery increases the probability of return to work among the not employed with a mental health problem no consistent effect was found on hours worked and earnings research and policy attention is needed with respect to early interventions such as job retention programmes to help workers with mental health problems remain employed as well as interventions that may lead to recovery and return to work more research is needed especially with data and models that can differentiate between the effects of mental health onsets and recoveries on employment exit and return to work transitions

employment wages and alcohol consumption in russia 1 introductionconcerns regarding the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market productivity are well grounded if problem drinking or alcoholism is considered a disease then it may have depressant effects on labor market productivity causing reductions in employment earnings and other labor market outcomes mullahy and sindelar 1993 1996 kenkel and ribar 1994 however there is a medical literature that documents a u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease according to this literature moderate drinkers have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than do either abstainers or heavy drinkers beaglehole and jackson 1992 doll et al 1994 consistent with this evidence several economists have found a positive association between moderate drinking and earnings berger and leigh 1988 french and zarkin 1995 heien 1996 hamilton and hamilton 1997 zarkin et al 1998 macdonald and shields 2001 this article investigates the impact of alcohol consumption on employment and wages in russia the primary contributions of the article are twofold first it enhances the economic literature on the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market behavior by using data from a longitudinal survey the use of a longitudinal data set enables the estimation of a fixed effects model which helps avoid the potential bias caused by unobserved individual factors not captured in cross sectional models the use of a fixed effects model is an important extension to the literature because the data sets used in previous studies are cross sectional and usually lack adequate variables that could serve as identifying instruments to control for the endogeneity of alcohol consumption 1 furthermore the richness of the data set used in this article allows for the application of three alternative measures of alcohol consumption in the empirical analysis this is important because the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes may be sensitive to the alcohol measure that is used the second notable contribution of this article is that it provides the first empirical evidence on the association between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes in russia excessive alcohol consumption is a widespread problem in russia where per capita alcohol consumption is around 14 liters per year the world health organization who considers 8 liters to be a sign that a country has a critical consumption level for health problems quinn judge 1997 furthermore the dramatic fluctuations in mortality rates experienced in russia over the past 15 years have generated considerable attention to the potential effect of alcohol consumption on the overall health of the russian population it is important to investigate how labor market outcomes would be affected by alcohol consumption in a country which demonstrates such dramatic fluctuations in alcohol consumption and mortality consistent with the previous studies cross sectional results generally support the hypothesis of an inverse u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and wages and employment results from the fixed effect models are found to be quite different from those of cross sectional models the positive effect of alcohol consumption on employment disappears for both males and females once the individual fixed effects are controlled for the results of the wage model lend support to a small and linear return to alcohol consumption but the effects are significant only at the 10 level the fixed effects estimates are smaller in magnitude and estimated with less precision compared with cross sectional estimates section 2 reviews the previous literature section 3 discusses the conceptual issues and empirical strategy section 4 introduces the data set section 5 provides a discussion of the results and sensitivity analyses section 6 concludes the article

mortality lifestyle and socio economic status this paper uses the british health and lifestyle survey 1984 1985 data and the longitudinal follow up of may 2003 to investigate the determinants of premature mortality in great britain and the contribution of lifestyle choices to socio economic inequality in mortality a behavioural model which relates premature mortality to a set of observable and unobservable factors is considered a maximum simulated likelihood msl approach for a multivariate probit mvp is used to estimate a recursive system of equations for mortality morbidity and lifestyles health inequality is explored using the gini coefficient and a decomposition technique the decomposition analysis for predicted mortality shows that after allowing for endogeneity lifestyles contribute strongly to inequality in mortality reducing the direct role of socio economic status this contradicts the view which is widely held in epidemiology that lifestyles make a relatively minor contribution to observed socio economic gradients in health

the making of an investment banker stock market shocks career choice and lifetime income i show that stock market shocks have important and lasting effects on the careers of mbas stock market conditions while mba students are in school have a large effect on whether they go directly to wall street upon graduation further starting on wall street immediately upon graduation causes a person to be more likely to work there later and to earn on average substantially more money the empirical results suggest that investment bankers are largely made by circumstance rather than born to work on wall street

alcohol and earnings does drinking yield a wage premium this paper examines the relationship between alcohol consumption and earnings for prime age males wage differentials for non moderate and heavy drinkers are estimated using a polychotomous choice model which accounts for the endogenous relationship be tween drinking and earnings we find that moderate alcohol consumption leads to increased earnings relative to abstention however heavy drinking leads to reduced earnings relative to moderate drinking heavy drinkers possess flatter age earnings profiles and attain lower returns for higher education than non and moderate drinkers these results are in contrast to previous research on substance abuse which finds no earnings drop off for heavy users

new evidence on the importance of gender and asymmetry in the crime unemployment relationship the literature examining the crime unemployment relationship is vast three recent developments in the analysis of this relationship are combined with a novel empirical method to explore the importance of gender effects and asymmetric adjustment when analysing the impact of unemployment upon criminal activity using data for the united states of america a number of interesting results are obtained the key finding concerns the importance of gender with opportunity effects in criminal activity detected when considering female but not male unemployment further examination shows findings to support theories associated with victimization and worsening socio economic conditions rather than those emphasizing latchkey care effects and an absence of guardianship consideration of motivation effects provides further evidence of significant asymmetries in the response of crime to unemployment

children as consumers investigating child diary expenditure data we investigate expenditure behaviour of school aged children using child diary information contained in the british family expenditure survey the estimates from an almost ideal demand system aids for child expenditure suggest that drinks sweets books and toys are normal goods for children but clothes travel leisure and vice prod ucts are luxury items with income elasticities greater than one being a lone parent child and having a working mother are important factors in determining child expenditure de cisions importantly a higher parental budget share on any given commodity is typically associated with an increased child budget share on the same commodity jel classification dll d12 j13

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

employment unemployment and problem drinking the misuse of alcohol is estimated to result in enormous economic costs composed largely of reduced labor market productivity however there has been debate on this issue the purpose of this paper is to help to resolve this debate by presenting sound structural estimates of the relationship between measures of problem drinking and of employment and unemployment the analysis is based on the 1988 alcohol supplement of the national health interview survey we find that for both men and women problem drinking results in reduced employment and increased unemployment

does drug use lower wages this study using microdata from the 1980 and 1984 waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth examines the effects of drug use on wages and employment contrary to most previous researcher