the interrelations of finance and economics theoretical perspectives it is traditional in a discussion piece to organize the material in one of two ways the writer can either take a historical perspective and attempt to explain how it is we got where we are today and where we are likely to go from here or the writer can describe the current state of the art dwelling on particular points of interest or promise in the prevailing research having quite recently done both i thought i would take a somewhat different approach i would like to try to briefly describe the main characteristics of a neoclassical theory of finance that captures the essential themes of modern finance and relate these characteristics to the general themes of economics finance uses the modeling framework constructed in economics but within this scaffolding finance has taken a different methodological perspective it is wrong to characterize finance or financial economics to be formal as simply another of the specialty areas of economics not unlike for example labor economics or development economics or public finance while finance is specialized in its focus on the financial markets the differences between economics and finance only begin there the principal distinction is one of methodology rather than of focus if labor markets behaved like financial markets the theories of finance would be used to study them indeed the line where financial theoretic analysis leaves off and more conventional patterns of economic reasoning begin is an active research issue

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

global trading versus linking architectures for international emissions trading abstract international emissions trading is widely seen as an indispensable policy pillar of climate change mitigation stern n 2007 the economics of climate change the stern review cambridge university press new york this article analyzes five different types of trading architectures classified into two top down unfccc driven and three bottom up driven by individual countries or regions approaches the two types of approaches are characterized by a trade off between environmental effectiveness and political feasibility respectively whereas their relative cost effectiveness depends on implementation details bottom up architectures constitute imperfect substitutes for top down architectures in terms of environmental effectiveness and thus remain mere fallback options however especially the formal linking architecture can act as complement in terms of cost effectiveness

a switching regression model for wage determinants in the public and private sectors of a developing country governments in less developed countries face severe budgetary constraints given that public sector employment is a large part of modern sector employment the government wage bill h as come under increased scrutiny the central question is how do gove rnment wages compare with those in the private sector in this paper the authors develop and estimate a model to answer this question an important aspect of this model is the endogenous treatment of sector choice the estimation results full information maximum likelihood sound a strong warning against the use of ordinary least squares est imates that are based on sector specific samples data are from the i vory coast copyright 1988 by mit press

the case for international emission trade in the absence of cooperative climate policy we evaluate the efficacy of international trade in carbon emission permits when countries are guided strictly by their national self interest to do so we construct a calibrated general equilibrium model that jointly describes the world economy and the strategic incentives that guide the design of national abatement policies countries decisions about their participation in a trading system and about their initial permit endowment are made noncooperatively so a priori it is not clear that permit trade will induce participation in international abatement agreements or that participation will result in significant environmental gains despite this we find that emission trade agreements can be effective that smaller groupings pairing developing and developed world partners often perform better than agreements with larger rosters and that general equilibrium responses play an important role in shaping these outcomes

an empirical analysis of the co2 shadow price in chinese thermal power enterprises abstract this paper estimates the shadow price of co2 and explores its determinants for thermal power enterprises in china using a parametric quadratic directional distance function we evaluate the inefficiency and shadow price of co2 for 124 power enterprises in 2004 applying deterministic and econometric methods a regression analysis is undertaken to examine the factors that drive shadow prices our results indicate that there are large inefficiencies in terms of electricity production and co2 emissions the shadow price is a negative function of firm size age and coal share and is positively correlated with the technology level this correlation between shadow prices and its determinants is not sensitive to changing assumptions regarding directional vectors although such changes do alter the distribution of shadow prices the large variation witnessed in shadow prices across power enterprises argues in favor of market based regulation such as an emissions trading system as opposed to the command and control regulation currently used in china to minimize overall abatement cost

cointegration and market efficiency abstract recently many economists have asserted that asset prices determined in efficient asset markets cannot be cointegrated we show that there is no general equivalence between the existence of arbitrage opportunities and cointegration or for that matter a lack of cointegration whether asset prices are cointegrated is a function of the relevant model we first show a convenient way to calculate the cointegrating vector based on necessary and sufficient conditions for cointegration we then examine particular cases including exchange rates interest rates and spot and forward exchange rates and asset prices with incoem flows reinvested and not reinvested jel f31

burden sharing in a greenhouse egalitarianism and sovereignty reconciled the allocation of emission entitlements across countries is the single most controversial issue in international climate policy extreme positions within the policy debate range from entitlements based on current emission patterns sovereignty to entitlements based on equal per capita allocations egalitarianism this paper shows that gradual convergence from sovereignty towards egalitarianism could provide a pragmatic solution to the equity debate when combined with international emissions trading the convergence approach stands out for offering the developing countries substantial incentives for participation in the international greenhouse gas abatement effort without imposing excessive burdens on the industrialized countries

endogenous trading volume and momentum in stock return volatility this article examines the ability of volume data to shed light on the source of persistence in stock return volatility a mixture model in which a latent common factor restricts the joint density of volume and returns is used to relax the assumption of exogenous volume used in previous studies we use a point in time signal extraction procedure to identify this latent process and a calibrated simulation to conduct analysis of the viability of the model to explain important properties of the data using daily returns and volume on individual stocks our procedure cannot accommodate serial dependence in squared returns

industry level emission trading between power producers in the eu in this paper we investigate how restrictions for emission trading to the energy intensive power sector will affect the magnitude and distribution of abatement costs across eu countries vis a vis a comprehensive eu emission trading regime we find that emission trading between european power sectors allows the harvest of a major part of the efficiency gains provided by full trade as compared to strictly domestic action however trade restrictions may create a more unequal distribution of abatement costs across member states than is the case for a comprehensive trade regime the reason for this is that restricted permit trade enhances the secondary terms of trade benefits to eu member countries with low marginal abatement costs at the expense of the other eu member states

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

labour market segmentation a local labour market analysis using alternative approaches earlier studies have generally attempted to establish the presence or otherwise of labour market segmentation using a single technique using data drawn form the british social and economic life initiative sceli for six local labour markets this paper tests for segmentation using four different methods of analysis a simple career non career model cluster analysis and switching regressions the results in general suggest that explanatory power is not improved by analysing the labour market in different segments but this simple career model points to higher rewards for given characteristics in the career sector and the results of the switching regression model are consistent with duality in one of the six markets

labor market integration in urban ethiopia 1994 2004 abstractan analysis of panel data on individuals in a random selection of urban households in ethiopia reveals large sustained and unexplained earnings gaps between public and private and formal and informal sectors over 1994 2004 at the same time we find first that the rate of mobility increased in the two pairs of sectors sample transitions rates grew across survey waves while state dependence in sector choice decreased second the correlation between sector choice and earnings gaps increased over the same period in particular the correlation between comparative earnings and selection into the informal sector was high throughout the survey decade and increased in magnitude over the second half of the period these results suggest that ethiopia s urban labor markets might be integrating

pension design with a large informal labor market evidence from chile this article investigates the fiscal and welfare trade offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid contributing by working informally using a life cycle model of labor supply and saving decisions i structurally estimate preferences and earnings opportunities in the formal and informal sectors using data on chilean households i find limited support for formal jobs rationing instead mandatory pension contributions significantly encourage informality policy experiments show that chile could lower minimum pension spending by 23 while guaranteeing the same income to retirees if the minimum pension s implicit tax rate was increased to 60

enlightened corporate governance specific investments by employees as legitimation for residual claims while much has been written on specificity e g in texts on new institutional economics agency theory and team production theory there are still some insights to be learnt by business ethicists this article approaches the issue from the perspective of team production and will propose a new form of corporate governance enlightened corporate governance which takes into consideration the specific investments of employees the article argues that in addition to shareholders employees also bear a residual risk which arises due to their specific investments this residual risk presents a valid and legitimate basis for residual claims in this way employees can be seen as residual claimants due to the fact that their income depends upon a hazardous quasi rent therefore this article will call on the fiduciary duty of board members to protect those employees who are exposed to such residual risks and may thus be vulnerable as a result this leads to a fundamental change of perspective on the theory of the firm a change which will adopt the theories of new institutional economics agency theory and team production theory in order to promote business ethics research against this background enlightened corporate governance aims to follow the criterion of specific investments as a legitimate basis for residual claims furthermore it seeks to understand the consequences for board members and to promote the sharing of control and ownership the article will close with some discussion of the implications and future prospects for business ethics

market power and hot air in international emissions trading the impacts of us withdrawal from the kyoto protocol ten years after the initial climate change convention from rio in 1992 the industrialized world is finally likely to ratify the kyoto protocol which will impose legally binding greenhouse gas emission reductions on the developed world however the kyoto protocol will enter into force without the usa which withdrew under president bush in march 2001 accounting for hot air and market power of the former soviet union on emission permit markets it is shown that us withdrawal has important consequences on environmental effectiveness compliance costs and excess costs of market power under the kyoto protocol non compliance of the usa implies a dramatic decrease in environmental effectiveness as well as compliance costs of oecd countries whereas the former soviet union and transitional economies in eastern europe suffer from a huge decline in permit sales revenues excess costs of market power in permit trade increase in relative terms but decline substantially in absolute terms due to us withdrawal pol

earnings determination and labour markets gran santiago chile 1978 abstract the purpose of this study is twofold first to ascertain whether or not there are statistical differences in the structure of earnings functions among workers in various sectors of economic activity second to provide a test of the human capital approach in the explanation of earning differentials among wage earners using individual characteristics of full time wage earners in santiago the results show that the structures of earnings functions are not statistically different across sectors of economic activity also the application of a human capital model shows that about 50 percent of the relative dispersion of earnings may be attributed to differences in schooling and experience

is there a case for carbon based border tax adjustment an applied general equilibrium analysis concern that unilateral greenhouse gas ghg emission reductions could foster carbon leakage and undermine the international competitiveness of domestic industry has led to growing calls for carbon based border tax adjustments btas this article uses a global general equilibrium model to assess the economic effects of btas and comes to three main conclusions first btas can reduce carbon leakage if the coalition of countries taking action to reduce ghg emissions is small because in this case leakage while typically small mainly occurs through international trade competitiveness losses rather than through declines in world fossil fuel prices second even though the economic effects of btas vary somewhat depending on how they are implemented their welfare impact is typically small and slightly negative at the world level third and perhaps more strikingly btas do not necessarily curb the output losses incurred by the domestic energy intensive industries eiis they are intended to protect in the

changes in earnings inequality and labour market segmentation metropolitan santiago 1969 78 changes in earnings inequality are examined in this article through an eclectic approach allowing for differences in human capital earnings function by labour market segments several findings are of interest the first are the components of earnings inequality changes these being in order of importance changes in the within segments inequality changes in the relative share of the informal sector segment and changes in relative income between segments second these changes are found to be the result of labour market liberalisation policies such as abolition of both minimum wages and labour turnover legislation in the formal sector the promotion of self employed activities in the informal sector and the selective mobility pattern between segments

the effects of public sector hiring and compensation policies on the egyptian labor market this article examines the combined impact of the employment guarantee for graduates and public sector compensation policies on the egyptian labor market besides contributing to an unsustainable rate of growth in the government labor force these policies have encouraged queuing for government jobs contributed to high graduate unemployment rates and reduced the employment of graduates in the private sector despite substantial wage erosion in the public sector in recent years government wages when appropriately corrected for observed heterogeneity and sample selection are on a par with or higher than private sector wages especially for graduates when combined with the more desirable nonwage aspects of government jobs these compensation levels explain the attractiveness of public sector employment to graduates government pay scales are especially advantageous to female secondary school graduates who appear to face considerable discrimination in the private sector

segmented labour markets theory and evidence this paper examines the possibility of accepting the labour market segmentation approach as a valid alternative to the classical and neo classical analysis of labour markets it consists of three main parts the urst part contains a historical analysis of both the distant and recent origins of the labour market segmentation hypothesis part two outlines the central ideas of both segmentationalists and radical theorists who attempted to explain the fragmented nature of labour markets and the importance of institutional and social inuuences upon pay employment and mobility of individual workers between different labour market sectors the third part examines the case for labour market segmentation using four alternative techniques and discusses the issue of mobility among different labour market segments it is thereby concluded that the lack of agreement among the segmented labour market theorists on both theoretical and methodological issues has prevented them from developing a consistent and convincing argument based on veriuable empirical evidence to validate their thesis

market power in emissions trading markets ruled by a multiple unit double auction further experimental evidence we discuss selected methodological problems of previous double auction da experiments and test the hypothesis that a multiple unit double auction muda is able to prevent market power in an emissions trading market additionally we analyze how the information subjects receive about the market structure and different levels of subjects experience influence the behavior based on a larger number of independent observations than analyzed in previous studies the experiment generates two main results first emissions trading markets ruled by a muda realize a high degree of efficiency even under market power conditions however a muda is in general not able to restrict market power we observe persistent price discrimination in two market power environments i e the distribution of profits is strongly shifted in favor of the strong market side without greatly harming efficiency this result is independent of the information to subjects about the market structure second when subjects are experienced the efficiency is higher and the ability of the strong market side to exercise market power declines strongly however the variability of behavior is large and the strong market side is still able to realize supracompetitive profits in some groups

marginal abatement costs of co2 emission reductions geographical flexibility and concrete ceilings an assessment using the poles model abstract the kyoto protocol envisage the setting up of flexibility mechanisms allowing annex b countries to fulfil their commitments to reducing greenhouse gases with respect for the principle of economic efficiency the current negotiations relate in particular to the possibility of setting up a system of tradable emissions permits for annex b countries and also of introducing ceilings to trade this paper analyses the stakes and economic potential of adopting this instrument both for those countries that made commitments in kyoto and for developing countries it is based on a formal approach that allows for a consistent framework of analysis the emission permit market is in fact simulated on the basis of a reference scenario and of marginal abatement cost curves and estimated by the poles model after analysing these marginal abatement cost curves and comparing them with those produced by other models we explore two different configurations for a competitive market a market limited to the annex b countries and a world market the results produced by the model show that widening the market to include developing countries is more effective than the annex b market solution it reduces the cost of implementing kyoto for oecd countries and at the same time allows the countries of the south to benefit from selling the permits this research also shows that introducing restrictions on exchanges for annex b countries could have a counter productive redistribution effect with the ethical argument that underlies that particular measure

an agency theory perspective on the owner manager relationship in tourism based condominiums abstract this paper draws on field study data to provide an examination of the condominium owner manager relationship in the australian tourism context although there has been considerable growth in tourism accommodation owned through strata title no research examining the somewhat idiosyncratic relationship between unit owners and resident managers has been found in the literature the peculiar nature of the relationship underlines its significance as a context in which to apply the agency theoretical model as australian condominium resident unit managers provide letting and caretaker services for condominium unit owners it appears that the relationship can be justifiably viewed as a principal agent exchange mills p k j business res 20 1990 31 the study specifically focuses on strata title condominiums located in major tourism regions this sub sector of the condominium management industry was chosen for study because it exhibits several key attributes distinguishing it from the non tourist based condominium sector for example two different parties represent the principal resident owners and investor owners also a significant proportion of a resident manager s work relates to the management of short term holiday unit letting in light of the particular agency relationship dynamics arising in large tourist based condominium governance several suggestions concerning the legal environment of the industry are provided

segmented or competitive labour markets a normal roy model with four sectors is developed it allows to derive tests of several assumptions on the working of the labor market strongly or weakly competitive or segmented it shows that more important a feature of labor markets than segmentation is the presence of comparative advantages for individuals between the various economic sectors the model is applied to data on women s labor force participation in the main towns of colombia in 1980 it uses multivariate probit and tobit techniques copyright 1991 by the econometric society

the agent ss ethics in the principal agent model this paper evaluates the current use of the principal agent model pam in accounting and finance focusing on the agent ss use of private information the agent ss behavioral norms in the the pam deviate from commonly held ethical values in society from models of man in conventional economic theory and also from behavioral foundations of related business school fields like corporate strategy business ethics and human resource management still it would be unwise to reject the pam solely because of its distasteful ethical assumptions the model does appear to have predictive power but its descriptive or normative qualities remain unexplored the popularity of the pam with its extreme model of man raises fundamental questions about the impact of this model on business school stakeholders and society at large

welfare consequences of emission credit trading programs abstract the welfare consequences of moving from a command and control approach to pollution control to an emission credit trading program that attains the same environmental quality are shown to depend on the competitiveness of the output markets in which polluting firms compete if the output markets are competitive then the introduction of trading increases aggregate welfare in contrast if the output markets in which these firms participate are not competitive then the adoption of an emission credit trading program may reduce social welfare this is so even if emission credit markets are perfectly competitive

work contracts and earnings inequality the case of chile great social inequality has been one of the worrisome features of economic development in latin america this study focuses on chile one of latin america s fastest growing economies with one of the highest levels of income inequality during the 1990s using micro level data from the 1994 and 2000 encuestas de caracterizacion socio economica this article examines the role of work contracts in explaining male and female earnings and earnings inequality among wage and salary workers over the second half of the 1990s the analysis distinguishes between wage and salary work without a work contract referred to as informal work and wage and salary work with a work contract within the latter group the study further differentiates by the type of work contract held such as permanent and a variety of contingent work contracts the findings reveal that the majority of employees in informal and contingent wage and salary work arrangements earned significantly less than their permanent counterparts additiona

exclusionary manipulation of markets for pollution rights abstract strategic price manipulation can affect the distribution of transferable pollution rights across polluters and the efficiency of pollution control efforts prior research has concentrated on market manipulation by firms seeking only to minimize the sum of pollution rights costs and pollution abatement costs in this paper we explore the potential for the exclusionary manipulation of pollution permit markets intended to drive up the costs of one s rivals and we distinguish between the resource allocation effects of exclusionary manipulation and cost minimizing manipulation we find that exclusionary manipulation can sometimes worsen and sometimes ameliorate the abatement inefficiency which occurs under cost minimizing manipulation and that an overbuying rule can obviate or at least limit damages from this form of strategic behavior

caste discrimination and transaction costs in the labor market evidence from rural north india abstract this paper is an empirical attempt to quantify caste based discrimination in the labor market using household data taken from rural north india in the regression analysis transaction costs associated with entry into the labor market and reservation wages are estimated simultaneously along with market wages the estimation results provide evidence of the existence of transaction costs in the labor market and discrimination against backward classes with regard to access to regular employment in line with previous studies the results suggest that the achievements of india s reservation policy so far have at best been limited in addition a comparison between the estimates from the model employed in this paper and conventional reduced form approaches shows that discrimination in labor market entry is likely to be underestimated in the conventional reduced form approaches

demand side and supply side explanations for barriers to labor market mobility in developing countries the case of guatemala the hypothesis of labor market segmentation is based on the existence of barriers to mobility between jobs because of these barriers wages of workers with similar characteristics are different from wages that would result from competition though the labor market segmentation hypothesis concerns mobility and access there have been few direct tests of the existence of restricted mobility in the labor market rather tests of labor market segmentation have focused on the presumed effects of restricted mobility in particular the presence of different reward structures across sectors is viewed as support for the segmentation hypothesis as a result much of the literature has concentrated on the appropriate comparison of the wages of workers by including controls for observable and unobservable characteristics

cointegration and predictability of asset prices abstract this article argues that whatever concerns one might have about the identification of a cointegrating relationship with market inefficiency cointegration tests can still be usefully employed to investigate the predictability of asset prices we examine the case of n dimensional systems and show that the standard assumption made in the literature that cointegration implies predictability of all n asset prices is not valid in the presence of r cointegrating vectors only r prices are predictable and standard wald or lm tests carried out within johansen s maximum likelihood ml framework can be used to establish for which prices unpredictability does not hold similarly one can distinguish between joint unpredictability in the short and long run when asset prices are driven by fundamentals

segmented labor markets new evidence from a study of four race gender groups using data from a supplement to the 1983 current population survey the author tests hypotheses of segmented labor market theory two labor market sectors a primary sector and secondary sector are identified on the basis of occupational segmentation as inferred from workers answers to the question of whether specific skills or prior training were conditions for their employment the results show significant unexplained earnings differentials across sectors for each of four groups black men black women white men and white women other segmented labor market hypotheses are also generally supported by the results but distinct variations are found across the four groups

are there dual labor markets in chile empirical evidence abstract in this paper we use a switching regression method to test the hypothesis that segmentation in the chilean labor market exists the results support the labor segmentation hypothesis and consequently they contradict those of corbo and stelcner 1983 the explanation for this is that we do not make any a priori definition of the population as corbo and stelcner do in fact our results show that any a priori definition of the sample will lead to rejecting the segmentation hypothesis

climate policy induced investments in developing countries the implications of investment risks international climate policy has assigned the leading role in emissions abatement to the industrialized countries while developing countries remain uncommitted to binding emission reduction targets however cooperation between the industrialized and the developing world through joint implementation of emission abatement promises substantial economic gains to both parties in this context the policy debate on joint implementation has addressed the question of how investment risks to project based emission crediting between industrialized countries and developing countries affect the magnitude and distribution of such gains in our quantitative analysis we find that the incorporation of country specific investment risks induces rather small changes vis a vis a situation where investment risks are neglected only if investors go for high safety of returns is there a distinct decline in the overall volume of emission crediting and the associated total economic benefits while the welfare effects of risk incorporation for industrialized countries are unequivocally negative the implications across developing countries are ambiguous whereas low risk developing countries attract higher project volumes and benefit from higher effective prices per emission credit compared to a reference scenario without risk the opposite applies to high risk countries sensitivity analysis with respect to higher risk estimates show that shifts in the comparative advantage of emission abatement against high risk countries may become dramatic as only very low cost mitigation projects will be realized driving down the country s benefits from emission crediting to the advantage of low risk developing countries this result is supported by empirical evidence on regional imbalances of activities implemented jointly under the pilot phase of the kyoto protocol

a test of dual labor market theory despite substantial differences in their views of the appropriate policy response to the existence of poverty neither the proponents of dual market theory nor its critics have proposed potentially conclusive tests of the dual market hypothesis this paper presents a test of the two central propositions of dual market theory 1 the existence of two distinct labor markets with different wage setting mechanisms and 2 the existence of barriers to mobility between the labor markets we find considerable support for both hypothesis estimation of a switching model of wage determination with unknown regimes yields two distinct wage equations the one which most workers are associated with closely resembles the standard human capital regression with significant returns to education and experience the other equation is flat with no returns to human capital these two equations resemble the predictions of dual market theory for the primary and secondary markets respectively further we present evidence that at least some non white workers are involuntarily confined to the secondary market this crowding of minority workers into the low wage labor market accounts for a substantial portion of white non white wage differences we interpret these results as providing empirical support for the dual market hypothesis and for recent theoretical work on efficiency wagemodels in addition combining the efficiency wage argument with the observation that much of the white non white wage difference is explained by the exclusion of non whites from the primary sector suggests an explanation for the persistance of wage differences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

intertemporal emission trading with a dominant agent how does a restriction on borrowing affect efficiency in this paper we analyze how restricting intertemporal trading by prohibiting borrowing of emissions permits affects the ability of a dominant agent to exploit its market power we show that the monopolist could take advantage of the constraint on borrowing by not distributing the sale of permits cost effectively across periods furthermore we show that a constant present value price over time does not imply a cost effective distribution of abatement permit sales across periods

an investigation of the labor market earnings of panamanian males evaluating sources of inequality this paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of labor market earnings and inequality for males in panama using newly available microdata we estimate earnings equations based on the measurement framework of mincer 1974 and compare them with those for other countries at various stages of economic development we present evidence on two aspects of inequality in less developed economies labor market segmentation and social stratification we present tests of the segmentation hypothesis including several of the dual labor market hypotheses and discuss their inherent ambiguity we also present evidence on the importance of family background for earnings determination and educational attainment

inter industrial wage differentials evidence from latin american countries the recent literature on inter industrial wage differentials for the united states suggests that the labour market equilibrium features non competitive elements however the lessons from the united states need not carry over to other countries especially developing economies this article analyses the wage differentials in selected latin american countries despite the sharp contrasts between the latin american and the us economies our results show more similarities than differences with those reported in past studies wage differentials are substantial and persist over time the differentials are also correlated across occupations and to a lesser extent across establishment sizes

wage differentials and moonlighting by civil servants evidence from cote d ivoire and peru as part of their efforts to reduce fiscal deficits many governments have allowed public sector salaries to erode often on the assumption that government workers are overpaid vis a vis those in the private sector that assumption is tested by analyzing public private pay differentials in cote d ivoire and peru switching regressions models are estimated using full information maximum likelihood fiml and the results are compared to those obtained using ordinary least squares ols techniques the ols yields seriously biased estimates of the pay structure suggesting that public wages are higher than private wages the fiml estimates show the opposite our probit analysis also shows that the wage disadvantage of civil servants is a determinant of the greater prevalence of moonlighting among public than private employees the evidence suggests that reductions in employment rather than pay while being less palatable in the short term will be more effective in the long run

tradeable emission permits regulations in the presence of imperfectly competitive product markets welfare implications in the present paper we analyse the interaction of a competitive market for emission permits with an oligopolistic product market it is well known that a competitive permits market achieves the cost minimizing distribution of abatement effort among the polluting firms for a given reduction in emissions however when the product market is oligopolistic it may redistribute production inefficiently among firms it has been suggested that this inefficiency can outweigh the gains obtained from using emission permits instead of command and control although this argument is clearly correct under full information it is shown in the present paper that it reverses under incomplete information in particular it is shown that when tradeable emission permits are specified according to the standard textbook example they yield higher social welfare than the command and control regulation

common elements of efficiency wage theories what relevance for developing countries conventional labour economics argues that wages are determined by supply and demand and that the typical firm is a wage taker efficiency wage theories state that wages are endogenous to a firm s own optimising behaviour and that the wage rate determines the labour productivity these theories raise questions regarding the effectiveness of expenditure reducing and expenditure switching adjustment policies this article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on efficiency wages it examines alternative models highlights the emphasis of empirical research towards industrial countries and points out the need for a test based on the major implications of the theory

beyond kyoto backstop technologies and endogenous prices on co2 permits and fossil fuels this paper analyses the markets for fossil fuels given that the limits the kyoto protocol sets on co2 emissions from annex b countries extend beyond 2008 2012 a forward looking model with endogenous prices for fossil fuels is applied under different assumptions concerning the technological progress for a carbon free backstop technology both the time profile of the international permit price needed for the kyoto forever targets as well as the implications through reduced demand and lower producer prices for fossil fuels are calculated the permit price has to rise at least up to 2030 in order to fulfil the emission targets from then on the necessary permit price shows different future developments dependent on when the backstop technology starts to replace oil since changes in the availability of the backstop technology shift the time profile of the permit price the loss of petroleum wealth for oil and gas producers varies between the scenarios but is never more than 20 findings indicate that the

public private wage differentials in haiti do public servants earn a rent abstract this study uses a newly collected data set on haiti where data are very limited to assess how individuals are selected into the public vs private sectors and to estimate public private sector wage differentials the central question is whether or not public servants are earning a rent the estimation procedure is an extension of heckman s 1979 sample selection technique to the case where two selection rules generate the sample the procedure first estimates by bivariate probit analysis the probability of employment in the public or private sector and then for those in the public sector the probability of employment in the state owned enterprises soes vs public administration wage functions are then estimated for all three sectors using the inverse mills ratios from reduced form probits selectivity bias is found to exist in one sector soes correction for this bias in the wage equations lowers the wage differentials between the soe and the private sector and the soe and public administration as is clearly demonstrated by the oaxaca decomposition of these estimated mean differentials nevertheless the corrected findings still indicate that the public sector especially the soes earn a sizable rent

human capital and earnings distribution in a developing country the case of prerevolutionary nicaragua this article examines how different patterns of human capital investments affect household earning and its major components in rural and urban areas of developing countries 1865 women aged 15 45 in the following 3 areas of prerevolutionary nicaragua supply data the central metropolis other urban areas and rural areas other urban area households have the highest average total income central metropolis households have the next highest and rural areas have the lowest urbanization is positively associated with both mean level of total earnings and with total income the authors examine 5 human capital variables womens schooling mens schooling womens health mens health and average household nutrition another variable cumulative work experience became apparent during modeling for women schooling increases labor force participation probability in urban but not rural areas nutrition has a positive impact in all 3 regions and past work experience has a significant impact health status has no effect standard human capital variables do not differ significantly between the central metropolis and other areas but sharply contrast between urban and rural areas for men there is less potential for increasing labor force participation through human capital investment although past work experience schooling and nutrition show significant effects the authors test 10 simulations of hypothetical changes in human capital distributions which involve increasing education improving nutritional status and improving health 4 conclusions are drawn 1 since changes from human capital variables on regional earnings distributions cannot be discerned from individual relations simulation is a useful tool for investigation 2 estimates of the gains toward distributional goals are needed compared to other investments 3 directing policies toward the target group is more cost effective than general measures and 4 policies should be targeted for households low in the overall distribution not just the poorest households

a panel data heterogeneous bayesian estimation of environmental kuznets curves for co2 emissions this article investigates the environmental kuznets curves ekc for co2 emissions in a panel of 109 countries during the period 1959 to 2001 the length of the series makes the application of a heterogeneous estimator suitable from an econometric point of view the results based on the hierarchical bayes estimator show that different ekc dynamics are associated with the different sub samples of countries considered on average more industrialized countries show evidence of ekc in quadratic specifications which nevertheless are probably evolving into an n shape based on their cubic specification nevertheless it is worth noting that the eu and not the umbrella group led by us has been driving currently observed ekc like shapes the latter is associated to monotonic income co2 dynamics the eu shows a clear ekc shape evidence for less developed countries consistently shows that co2 emissions rise positively with income though there are some signs of an ekc analyses of future performance neverthe

heteroskedasticity in stock return data volume versus garch effects this paper provides empirical support for the notion that autoregressive conditional heterqskedasticity arch in daily stock return data reflects time dependence in the process generating information flow to the market daily trading volume used as a proxy for information arrival time is shown to have significant explanatory power regarding the variance of daily returns which is an implication of the assumption that daily returns are subordinated to intraday equilibrium returns furthermore arch effects tend to disappear when volume is included in the variance equation the autoregressive conditiqnal heteroskedasticity arch process of engle 1982 has been shown to provide a good fit for many financial return time series 1 arch imposes an autoregressive structure on conditional variance allqwing volatility shocks to persist over time this persistence captures the propensity of returns of like magnitude to clu ter in time and can explain the well documented nonnormality and nonstability of empirical asset return distributions see especially fama 1965 an appealing explanation for the presence of arch is based upon the hypothesis that daily returns are generated by a maiture of distributions in which the rate of daily information arrival is the stochastic mixing variable as suggested by diebold 1986 gallant hsieh and tauchen 1988 and stock 1987 1988 arch might capture the time series properties e g serial correlation of this mixing variable hqwever this linkage has not been broadly documented with the datia the objective of this study is to examine the validity of this explanation for daily stock returns the empirical strategy exploits the implication of the mixture model that the variance of daily price increments is heteroskedastic specifically positively related to the rate of daily information arrival using daily trading volume as a proxy for the mixing variable we show that for a sample of 20 common stocks arch effects vanish when volume is included as an explanatory variable in the conditional variance equation

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded