control of accumulating stock pollution by heterogeneous producers abstract this paper presents a framework to determine optimal resource allocation over time for the production of a good by heterogeneous producers who generate a stock externality we analyze the optimal intertemporal and quality specific combination of abatement strategies at the source source abatement given by a change in the intensity intensive margin of production and in the chosen technology extensive margin and or removal of existing pollution stock stock abatement the results show how the specifications of the production and the emission functions affect technology adoption and the design of the optimal intertemporal combination of source and stock abatement strategies moreover the paper shows that regulation at the intensive margin cannot be considered as a substitute for a regulation at the extensive margin the paper employs the so called two stage solution approach for solving the resulting quality distributed intertemporal optimal control problem

corporate philanthropic disaster response and ownership type evidence from chinese firms response to the sichuan earthquake this article examines whether the charitable giving amount and likelihood of firm response to catastrophic events relate to firms ownership type using a unique dataset of listed firms in china where state ownership is still prevalent based on the data of chinese firms response to the 2008 sichuan earthquake we find that the extent of corporate contributions for state owned firms following this disaster is less than that for private firms state owned firms are also less likely to respond in this disaster compared to private firms the results also reveal that firm size profitability geography cash resource available and leverage affect firms philanthropic disaster response behavior in china

does trade liberalization narrow the gender wage gap the role of sectoral mobility abstract this paper analyzes the impact of import competition and dynamic labor adjustment on gender outcomes in wages and welfare in the u s i consider a dynamic model of sectoral choice and structurally estimate mobility costs using data from the current population survey and o net a measure of intersectoral distance in task characteristics facilitates the structural estimation of switching costs that vary by gender and across sectors in a set of trade shock simulations an import competition shock in the manufacturing sector disproportionately affects male employment and wages since manufacturing is male labor intensive and men face higher exit costs from manufacturing wage and welfare gains from trade are higher for women than men

trade liberalization and wage inequality abstract this paper studies empirically the link between trade liberalization and wage inequality in chile within the context of the heckscher ohlin samuelson hos model we use cointegration techniques to estimate the long run relationship between the skill premium in chile and product prices openness and factor endowments we find that the fall in the relative price of labor intensive goods helps explaining the increase in wage inequality in chile during the last two decades the increase in proportion of the labor force with college degree on the other hand tends to reduce wage inequality in chile openness measured as the volume of trade over gdp widens the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor we offer some hypothesis on the elements that are behind this positive relationship between wage openness and inequality but no empirical work is done this area may be an interesting subject of research

international trade and labor market discrimination textabstractwe embed a competitive search model with labor market discrimination or nepotism into a two sector two country framework in order to analyze how labor market discrimination impacts the pattern of international trade and also how trade trade affects discrimination discrimination or nepotism reduces the matching probability and output in the skilled labor intensive differentiated product sector so that the country with more discriminatory firms has a comparative advantage in the simple sector as countries alter their production mix in accordance with their comparative advantage trade liberalization can then reinforce the negative effect of discrimination on development in the more discriminatory country and reduce its effect in the country with fewer discriminatory firms similarly the profit difference between non discriminatory and discriminatory firms increases in the less discriminatory country and shrinks in the more discriminatory one in this way trade can further reduce discrimination in a country where it is less prevalent and increase it where it is more firmly entrenched

competition and corporate governance in transition this paper examines the elements of institutional development critical to the enhancement of company performance in transition economies this includes initial conditions forms of privatization institutional frameworks and the competitiveness of markets comparing empirical evidence the paper concludes that there is a clear distinction in effectiveness of policies followed and their impact between central europe and cis countries this divergence is attributed to fundamentally different political attitudes toward reform the need of cis governments to gain political support for reform and as a consequence of the desire of central european countries to join european union

privatization public offerings and political objectives this paper empirically analyses the political and economic objectives underlying privatization on the stock market particularly the factors of sips underpricing are explained and the study analyses whether the change of political parties in government play a role on the issue the paper has two main findings first larger initial returns occurred in the early stages of privatization second the change of government from left wing to right wing did not lead to significantly higher levels of underpricing the results show that governments are quite pragmatic with respect to underpricing maximizing proceeds from sips shows to be more important than ideological differences between parties in government

policy objectives and performance in a mixed market with bargaining abstract we analyse a mixed duopoly in which wages and salaries are determined by nash bargaining and where the public firm s unit costs depend on its objectives because of constant returns to scale welfare maximisation without restriction would eliminate or significantly weaken the private firm therefore we focus on constrained welfare maximisation in which case unit costs are normally higher in the public firm on the other hand the private firm may even earn more than in a monopoly if the public firm maximises profits or if the constraint offers too much protection

globalization and the gender earnings gap evidence from sri lanka and cambodia disasters in bangladesh and protests elsewhere have created an intense debate about the value particularly to women of apparel employment in developing countries this paper focuses on how the forces of globalization specifically the multi fibre arrangement mfa have affected women s wages in the apparel sector in developing countries the paper uses household and labor force surveys from cambodia and sri lanka to estimate both apparel wage premiums relative to other industries and the male female wage gap before and after the end of the mfa the approach builds on new models that apply traditional trade theory e g the heckscher ohlin and stolper samuelson theorems to analyze the effect of globalization on gender based earnings the authors find large positive wage premiums and a closing of the male female wage gap during the mfa period but smaller premiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the mfa the results suggest that the benefits of apparel exports for women in developing countries remain significant post mfa they also model an approach for studying the effects of globalization that differentiates males and females as separate factors this may be a fruitful alternative to discrimination models or those that analyze the effects of globalization on women in terms of skill further research is necessary to identify the potential development effects of post mfa apparel employment and to thoroughly compare the benefits documented in this paper with the costs that may come with apparel jobs

differences in pollution levels among civil law countries a possible interpretation abstract the aim of this paper is to shed light on the way the legal systems of different countries can explain the discrepancies in their pollution levels in particular we underline the factors of capital accumulation and the financial market development that are driven among other things by the various levels of protection accorded by the legal system to both shareholders and creditors the research develops in two directions firstly we supply a theoretical analysis to explain how constraints on the process of capital accruement affect the pollution level in the model a crucial role is assigned to the rate of interest and its relationship with discount rates which constitutes an important variable in decisions to implement anti pollution devices secondly we perform an econometric analysis using the data of eighty five countries belonging to the legal family of civil law for the period from 1992 to 2003 adopting four pollution indicators as dependent variables our main findings are that legal families and financial market development can help to explain the differences in environmental indicators observed among nations

patent races and the persistence of monopoly patent races are important determinants of market structure for a new firm a patent can be an entry ticket into the market for an incumbent firm already in the market patents for related technologies can ensure that no new firm enters in this spirit recent work has explored the implications of patenting for the persistence of monopoly see for example dasgupta i982 gilbert i98i gilbert and newbery i982 much attention has been given to pre emptive patenting the strategic acquisition of patents by an incumbent firm solely to prevent potential rivals from entering the market in this context it is important to distinguish between two kinds of patent race a standard race is a competition in which a prize is awarded to the first player to reach the finishing line an asymmetrical race is a competition in which one player loses something of value if one of his rivals reaches the finishing line he is content if nobody wins but a prize is won by the first of the other players to reach the finishing line if any of them does so a patent race in which an incumbent firm s sole concern is to prevent potential rivals from entering his market is an asymmetrical race and not a standard race the distinction between the two kinds of race can be captured only in models with a sufficiently rich dynamic structure this and other advantages of a properly dynamic model are explained in section ii a model of an asymmetrical race with two firms is presented in section iii in this model the challenger wins a prize and the incumbent loses a prize if the challenger is first to reach the finishing line it is shown that the challenger is often automatically deterred from making any effort to win the race because the strategic interactions between the players are such that the incumbent would outdo any reasonable effort made by the challenger in order to stop the challenger being first to reach the finishing line then the incumbent has no need to make any effort in the race in order to maintain his existing monopoly the reason is that the incumbent unlike the challenger does not need to go all the way to the finishing line to achieve his objective on the other hand it may be truedepending on the parameters describing the firmsthat the challenger wins the patent proceeding to the finishing line just as if he were the only contender for the patent of particular interest is the case in which the firms are identical

competition among officials and the abuse of power traditional economic theory suggests that competition among officials providing government goods tends to reduce corruption however empirical evidence does not yet support this view in this paper i show that a corrupt and powerful central authority can use competition among officials to amass resources for itself while competition reduces corruption at the lower level of government corruption at the higher level of government is increased to avoid widespread theft from the central authority competing officials are monitored more intensively than a monopolist hence even though competition among officials generates more consumer surplus it may reduce welfare

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

globalisation women s economic rights and forced labour economy s penetration by foreign direct investment by and large has no sta tistically significant impact globalisation might weaken the general bargaining position of labour such that outcome related la bour standards might suffer however being more open toward trade is likely to promote rather than hinder the realisation of t wo labour rights considered as core or fundamental by the international labour organisation namely the elimination of economic discrimination and of forced labour

gender poverty and demography much has been written on gender inequality and how it affects fertility and mortality outcomes as well as economic outcomes what is not well understood is the role of gender inequality embedded in the behavior of the family the market and society in mediating the impact of demographic processes on economic outcomes this article reviews the empirical evidence on the possible economic impacts of gender inequalities that work by exacerbating demographic stresses associated with different demographic scenarios and reducing the prospects of gains when demographic conditions improve it defines four demographic scenarios and discusses which public policies are more effective in each scenario in reducing the constraints that gender inequality imposes on poverty reduction

shareholder protection compulsory acquisition and the efficiency of the takeover process this paper examines public good problems connected with takeovers two broad categories of exclusion device oppression of minority interests and compulsory acquisition of shares are evaluated it is argued that inability to control the level of oppression with any precision renders the first method unsatisfactory from the policy viewpoint but that strong protection of minorities coupled with compulsory acquisition rights for the acquiror can straightforwardly generate an efficient solution to the public good problems it is shown that in the u k company law and the city code on takeovers and mergers combine to produce an approximation to this efficient solution against managements which are performing poorly in the eyes of the capital market and since the work of marris 1964 this incentive mechanism has come to play a prominent role in the economic analysis of company behaviour the usual argument is that as the market value of a particular company falls relative to the level that it is generally believed could be obtained by other managers following different policies the firm becomes increasingly vulnerable to a takeover by a raider attracted by the prospect of the capital gains that would ensue following managerial changes in turn the threat to the incumbent managers acts as a deterrent to behaviour which runs counter to shareholders interests the effectiveness of the workings of the takeover mechanism is therefore of some importance for the efficient utilisation and allocation of resources potential obstacles to the smooth functioning of the takeover process have however been recognised for quite some time as long ago as 1926 the greene committee on company law reform identified cases where a takeover had been inhibited by the actions of small minorities of shareholders much more recently grossman and hart 1980 have formalised some of the earlier points in a way that clearly highlights one of the major difficulties that freeriding strategies on the part of shareholders in firms with dispersed share ownership can prevent successful bids the argument is that shareholders of the target company believing their own actions have a trivially small effect on

corporate social responsibility ownership structure and political interference evidence from china prior research suggests that ownership structure is associated to corporate social responsibility csr in developed countries this article examines whether and how ownership structure affects csr in emerging markets using chinese firms social responsibility ranking our empirical evidences show that for non state owned firms corporate ownership dispersion is positively associated to csr however for state owned firms whose controlling shareholder is the state this relation is reversed we attribute the reversed relationship to political interferences and further test this hypothesis by demonstrating that regional economic development is negatively related to csr for state owned firms due to decreased political interference in more developed areas this study is the first to directly examine the relationship between the dispersion of corporate ownership and csr in emerging markets and our results depict that it is important to consider ownership type in assessing csr in emerging market where state ownership is still prevalent such as china the results also reveal that firm size profitability employee power leverage and growth opportunity affect csr in china

competition and the racial wage gap evidence from brazil abstract we look at the natural experiment represented by the brazilian trade liberalization from the early 1990s to study the effect of increased competition in the market for final goods on the racial wage gap we focus on local labor markets as the unit of analysis and use the initial structure of employment to calculate the relevant tariff reduction from the perspective of each local labor market we show that the conditional racial wage gap fell more between 1991 and 2000 in regions associated with larger reductions in tariffs or in other words in regions that experienced larger increases in exposure to international competition a reduction in tariffs equivalent to the average observed in the sample was associated with a reduction in the racial wage gap of 18 our results are broadly consistent with theories of employer discrimination that predict that reductions in pure economic rents should lead to reductions in labor market discrimination

does ownership always matter abstract the objective of this paper is to explain and illustrate the complex relationship between ownership arrangements and enterprise performance it is commonly argued that efficiency will be lower in the public sector than the private because enterprise objectives deviate from maximisation of profits and because monitoring arrangements are inadequate due to the absence of capital market discipline we argue that public ownership does make the owner manager relationship more complicated because the chain of principals and agents is expanded objectives are politically determined and these are conveyed by a policy making administrative structure to management but the relative efficiency of public as against private ownership actually depends on the efficacy of capital market monitoring on the political and constitutional system on the information and sanctions available to policy makers and on the nature of the management market variation in these factors can help to explain the different natures and roles of the public sector between countries

language and the estimates of the gender wage gap in this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country we find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of gwg the results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks

productive efficiency in public and private firms abstract this paper compares the degree of x inefficiency which emerges as a consequence of the imposition of the optimal incentive contracts in public and private firms using a straightforward principal agent model with two possible states of the world it establishes the rather surprising result that in the good state of the world public ownership always results in a higher degree of productive efficiency

a feminization of vulnerability female headship poverty and vulnerability in thailand and vietnam summary this article investigates whether heterogeneous subgroups of female headed households are worse off than households headed by men it analyzes the correlates of consumption shock exposure and severity as well as vulnerability to poverty using panel data of over 4000 rural households from thailand and vietnam strong evidence of heterogeneity among subgroups of female headed households are found in particular in comparison with male headed households de facto female headed ones are found to be richer in thailand but prone to more severe shocks in both countries furthermore our results suggest that in thailand single female headed households are less vulnerable to poverty than households headed by men however in vietnam these households are particularly poor and vulnerable to poverty we show that this is mostly due to their greater poverty rather than their higher risk exposure our findings suggest that differentiation by subgroups of headship is important for policy development and targeting as well as future research

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

the effects of competition and equal treatment laws on gender wage differentials discrimination if it is inefficient can be eliminated by competition in most countries it is also forbidden by law this paper evaluates the influence of economic and legal factors on the portion of male female wage differentials that is not explained by other worker characteristics and may be due to discrimination we use a new international data set of suitable gender wage gap measures constructed from the results of existing studies meta analysis of the data shows that increased competition and adoption of international conventions concerning equal treatment laws both reduce gender wage gaps while legislation that prevents women from performing strenuous or dangerous jobs tends to increase it doris weichselbaumer and rudolf winter ebmer

the extent of the market and the supply of regulation we present a model in which setting up and running a regulatory institution takes a fixed cost as a consequence the supply of regulation is limited by the extent of the market we test three implications of this model first jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation are more likely to have it second jurisdictions with lower incremental fixed costs of introducing and administering new regulations should regulate more this implies that regulation spreads from higher to lower population jurisdictions and that jurisdictions that build up transferable regulatory capabilities should regulate more intensely consistent with the model we find that higher population u s states have more pages of legislation and adopt particular laws earlier in their history than do smaller states we also find that the regulation of entry the regulation of labor and the military draft are more extensive in countries with larger populations as well as in civil law countries where we argue that the incremental fixed costs are lower

a reason for quantity regulation in a variety of situations governments regulate undesirable activities by controlling quantities rather than charging taxes blue laws prohibit all liquor sales on sundays rather than impose higher taxes on that day zoning restrictions limit commercial construction in residential areas rather than charge for nuisance to neighbors anti smoking and anti trust laws restrict rather than tax particular conduct fishing and hunting rules allow hunting during particular time periods rather than tax the catch pollution controls impose limits rather than tax emissions quantity regulations are common in the financial sphere as well in the united states banking regulations for many years prohibited interstate banking as well as ownership of investment banks by commercial banks in many countries commercial banks are limited in the amount of various activities they can pursue such as real estate investments or borrowing in foreign currency in some countries banking laws prohibit all lending to the parties related to the owners of the bank the so called related lending rather than impose liability rules on loans to related parties that are found to be fraudulent or unsafe rafael la porta et al 2000 despite this common practice economists generally prefer taxes and liability rules to quantity controls and property rights rules robert ellickson 1973 louis kaplow and steven shavell 1996 1997 nathaniel keohane et al 1998 as the instrument for reducing undesirable conduct when explaining why quantity regulations are so pervasive they first make the political economy argument that quantity restrictions are favored by incumbent firms that wish to deter entry james buchanan and gordon tullock 1975 but this argument is not general it does not explain such quantity restrictions as blue laws and hunting and fishing regulations which affect all market participants equally some academics also argue that because certain activities such as smoking are seen as morally wrong by the community their level is regulated at zero in other instances however such as pollution and hunting positive but limited levels of activity are allowed inconsistent with the moral argument that the reason for quantity regulation is the special attraction of zero in this paper we present an alternative reason for quantity regulations one from the perspective of a benevolent government we begin with the observation of gary becker and george stigler 1974 that law enforcement is not free but is fundamentally an economic problem throughout human history and throughout the world today there are chronic problems of under enforcement witness the low level of tax compliance in much of the developing world and over enforcement by politically motivated prosecutors or regulators an analysis of pigouvian taxes versus quantity restrictions must recognize that in reality neither policy is free and automatic to enforce in general the choice of policies itself can facilitate or discourage enforcement in two ways first policies can shape the incentives for enforcement second policies can influence the costs of enforcement in our earlier work glaeser and sheifer 2000 glaeser et al 2001 we have focused on incentives and shown that quantity regulations can be used as an optimal instrument to raise the rewards to law enforcers for identifying violations here we focus not on the incentives for the enforcers but on the costs of finding violations these costs are often lower in the case of quantity restrictions we show that even when quantity regulations unlike taxes restrict some socially efficient conduct the reduced costs of identifying violations can enhance enforcement and overall efficiency such reliance of quantity regulation is especially important when private enforcement is crucial as in the case of enforcing department of economics harvard university cambridge ma 02138 we thank the national science foundation for financial support and louis kaplow for extremely helpful comments

privatization and efficiency in a differentiated industry we consider a market in which a public firm competes against private ones and ask what happens when the public firm is privatized in the short run privatization is harmful because prices rise the disciplinary role of the public firm is lost in the long run privatization leads to further entry the net effect is beneficial if consumer preference for variety is not too weak a sufficient statistic for the social surplus to be higher in the long run is that the public firm makes a loss this suggests that profitable firms should not necessarily be privatized

women and labor market changes in the global economy growth helps inequalities hurt and public policy matters this report examines the level and changes in female and male participation rates employment segregation and female wages relative to male wages across the world economy it funds sufficient evidence to support the view that labor markets in developing countries are transformed relatively quickly in the sense that gender differentials in employment and pay are narrowing much faster than they did in industrialized countries however the report evaluates the inefficiencies arising from persisting gender differentials in the labor market and finds them to be potentially significant the estimates also indicate that the resulting deadweight losses are borne primarily by women while men gain mainly in relative terms there are no real winners from discrimination the paper concludes that growth benefits women at large inequalities can have significantly adverse effects on welfare and market based development alone can be a weak instrument doe reducing inequality between the sexes to break the vicious cycle of women s low initial human capital endowments and inferior labor market outcomes compared to men s the report proposes greater access to education and training for girls and women enforceable equal pay and equal employment opportunities legislation a taxation and benefits structure that treats reproduction as an economic activity and women as equal partners within households and a better accounting of women s work to include invisible production

management and ownership effects evidence from five countries despite the growing recognition in the corporate governance literature that the relationship between ownership concentration and profitability is context dependent this issue has not yet been subjected to direct empirical investigation using a single cross national sample this study empirically examines the ownership concentration performance relationship across the nations of canada france germany the united kingdom and the united states essentially we argue that the correlation if any between ownership concentration and firm profitability differs across countries in a systematic way determined by the national system of corporate governance results indicate that important and statistically significant differences do in fact exist across the countries studied 1998 john wiley sons ltd

export orientation and female share of employment evidence from turkey abstract we investigate the relationship between export orientation and female share of employment in the turkish manufacturing sector during 1983 85 following the onset of export led industrialization policies using plant level data we find that female share of employment in a plant increases with the export to total output ratio of its sector the contribution of the study to the literature is its use of plant level data for a large number of plants enabling us to control for other determinants of female share of employment such as workers skill composition at the plant level

gender and trade aspects of labour markets we provide a comprehensive up to date review of the large body of theory and evidence on the linkages between trade liberalisation and gender inequality in income as well as two of the latter s key underlying determinants wages and employment on balance the evidence for developing countries points to an overall beneficial impact of trade expansion on female employment both relative to male employment and in absolute terms although largely concentrated in unskilled manufacturing by contrast the bulk of the evidence suggests a widening gender wage gap as a result of freer trade

privatization in theory and practice privatization george yarrow this paper examines the theoretical and empirical case for private versus public ownership privatization usually leads managers to place greater emphasis on the pursuit of profits however whether this is beneficial to society depends on the trade off between possible market failures due to a lack of competition and deficiencies in government control of public firms the competitive and regulatory environment is more important than the question of ownership per se in competitive markets there is a presumption in favour of private ownership where there is a natural monopoly vigorous regulatory action is required the evidence suggests that privatization has led to improved performance by firms such as the national freight corporation and cable and wireless which operate in a relatively competitive environment the benefits are less clear in the case of firms like bp britoil and british aerospace however the most worrying case is that of british telecom and the projected privatization of british gas where little thought has been given to limiting the abuse of monopoly power rather the regulatory environment has been tailored to the needs of the existing management and to ensuring a successful share flotation privatization is also advanced as a weapon for reducing trade union power encouraging wider share ownership redistributing wealth and improving the public finances however there are other policy instruments better suited to achieving these objectives the existing privatization programme has not led to a marked widening of share ownership and has resulted in windfall gains to a small group of investors at the expense of taxpayers in general

globalization and the gender wage gap there are several theoretical reasons why globalization will have a narrowing as well as widening effect on the gender wage gap but little is known about the actual impact except for a number of country studies the author provides a cross country study of the impact of globalization on the occupational gender wage gap based on the rarely used but most far ranging survey of wages around the world the international labour organization s october inquiry this annual survey was started in 1924 and contains a wealth of information on wages and the gender wage gap for the period 1983 99 there is information on the gender wage gap in 161 narrowly defined occupations in more than 80 countries around the world the author finds the following i the occupational gender wage gap appears to be narrowing with increases in gdp per capita ii there is a significantly narrowing impact of trade and foreign direct investment fdi net inflows on the occupational gender wage gap for low skill occupations both in poorer and richer countries and for high skill occupations in richer countries iii there is no evidence of a narrowing impact of trade but there is evidence of a widening impact of fdi net inflows on the high skill occupational gender wage gap in poorer countries iv wage setting institutions have a strong impact on the occupational gender wage gap in richer countries

welfare maximisation with endogenous average costs abstract in contrast to the earlier literature about industries mixing public and private ownership costs are not exogenous because firms choose capacity if capacity is increased the fixed costs increase but more can be produced at constant marginal costs it turns out that mixing private and public firms improves welfare if the deadweight loss of imperfect competition is significant all firms break even but welfare maximisation implies higher unit costs and lower profitability

mind the gender wage gap the impact of trade and competition on sectoral wage differences this paper examines differences between women s and men s wages in 18 selected oecd countries in the period 1970 to 2005 the study is based on 12 manufacturing sector and skill specific sets of panel data on the gender wage gap we apply a system generalised method of moments gmm estimator to the extended version of the conditional gender wage gap convergence equation controlling for sector concentration and industry specific measures of openness using a difference in difference approach trade affected concentrated sectors versus trade affected competitive sectors the results indicate that i an increase in sector concentration is associated with wage gap growth ii both import and export penetration are associated with a reduction of the high skill gender wage gap growth in concentrated industries iii there is evidence of a widening impact of trade on the medium and low skill occupational gender wage gap growth in less competitive industries iv institutional regulations of the labour market have an impact on the development of the gender wage gap for highly skilled labour an increase in labour market regulation raises the growth of the gender wage gap while for medium and low skilled workers it lowers it

gender poverty and demography an overview much has been written on gender inequality and how it affects fertility and mortality outcomes as well as economic outcomes what is not well understood is the role of gender inequality embedded in the behavior of the family the market and society in mediating the impact of demographic processes on economic outcomes this article reviews the empirical evidence on the possible economic impacts of gender inequalities that work by exacerbating demographic stresses associated with different demographic scenarios and reducing the prospects of gains when demographic conditions improve it defines four demographic scenarios and discusses which public policies are more effective in each scenario in reducing the constraints that gender inequality imposes on poverty reduction

women in transition changes in gender wage differentials in eastern europe and the former soviet union under state socialism women fared relatively well in the labor market female male wage differentials were similar to those in the west and female labor force participation rates were among the h

modeling the effects of trade on women at work and at home abstract foreign trade affects women s wages and jobs their household work and their leisure this paper develops a model which covers not only all the sectors of the market economy but also social reproduction and leisure activities for women and men separately the model which in other respects is a standard cge computable general equilibrium model is applied to a simplified set of data for bangladesh its use is illustrated by simulating the gendered effects of changes in trade policies and capital flows

presidential address does finance benefit society academics view of the benefits of finance vastly exceeds societal perception this dissonance is at least partly explained by an underappreciation by academia of how without proper rules finance can easily degenerate into a rent seeking activity i outline what finance academics can do from a research point of view and from an educational point of view to promote good finance and minimize the bad

mixed oligopoly and spatial agglomeration a comment this paper extends matsushima and matsumura 2003 by incorporating a large production cost difference between public and private firms in a quantity setting spatial mixed oligopoly the public and private firms first choose their locations in a linear market and then compete in quantities it is shown that for a significant inefficiency of the public firm all firms including both public and private firms agglomerate at the market centre ce texte developpe les resultats de matsushima et matsumura 2003 en incorporant la possibilite d une grande difference de couts de production entre l entreprise publique et les entreprises privees dans un oligopole spatial mixte de concurrence par les quantites les entreprises publiques et privees choisissent leur localisation dans un marche lineaire et se concurrencent par les quantites on montre que s il existe une inefficacite significative de l entreprise publique toutes les entreprises publiques et privees tendent a s agglomerer au centre du marche

institutional interest ownership type and environmental capital expenditures evidence from the most polluting chinese listed firms this study empirically examines whether firms environmental capital expenditures impact institutional investors investment decisions in the chinese market we particularly examine the impact of ownership type on the relationship of environmental capital expenditures and the behavior of different types of institutional investors by classifying institutional investors into two categories short term and long term investors in addition this study further investigates whether environmental capital expenditures related to ownership type increase firm value we find that long term institutional investors tend to invest in state owned firms soes making environmental capital expenditures results also indicate that with governmental backing and encouragement the market value of soes making more environmental capital expenditures is likely to increase however no similar results are found for non soes

a cge analysis of the impact of foreign direct investment and tariff reform on female and male workers in tanzania summary this study analyzes the impact on female and male workers of tariff reform and the reduction of regulatory barriers faced by domestic and foreign firms operating in business services it develops a data set that distinguishes labor by gender for 52 sectors and four skill categories the model is the first to incorporate modern trade theory to assess its gender implications the dixit stiglitz framework results in productivity gains which increase remunerations across all worker categories however this is less beneficial for women because the less skilled workers and the ones that are less involved in business services gain less

gender inequality endogenous cultural norms and economic development this research focuses on the role played by cultural norms in the long run persistence of gender inequalities cultural norms about gender roles are considered to be endogenous and can generate gender inequality and low development traps indeed when the gender gap is internalized it leads to inegalitarian views about gender roles due to these inegalitarian beliefs boys receive more education and the initial gender gap is reinforced the existence of gender inequality traps is pointed out by the world bank as a major obstacle for economic development wdr 2006 the present article allows for a better understanding of the persistence of such traps and the means to escape

globalization and the empowerment of women an analysis of spatial dependence via trade and foreign direct investment summary this article tests the hypothesis that higher women s economic and social rights in foreign countries with which a country is connected via trade and foreign direct investment fdi spill over into higher rights among the laggards a phenomenon known as spatial dependence analyzing women s rights over the period 1981 2007 in a global sample and samples of countries at different stages of economic development we find consistent evidence for spill over effects via trade links with the exception of a sample of low income countries we also find some evidence for similar effects via fdi but only for economic rights and only in middle income countries

privatization and efficiency differentiating ownership effects from political organizational and dynamic effects this paper argues that the private public ownership factor should be differentiated from other factors that also influence the effect of privatization on efficiency this is empirically confirmed in a longitudinal study of 24 spanish firms for which several political and organizational factors are found to influence the estimated effects of privatization on efficiency the analysis of the timing of the effects reveals a strong significance for post privatization years 5 6 negative and 7 8 positive this suggests that the negative effect of these factors is transitional being eventually offset by the positive effects of the change to private ownership 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification l33

the transition in east germany when is a ten point fall in the gender wage gap bad news the gender wage gap in east germany has narrowed by 10 percentage points in transition but women have experienced much more severe employment difficulties than men using the german socio economic panel for 1990 94 i show that on balance women have lost relative to men almost half the relative wage gain is due to exits from employment of the low skilled who are disproportionately women the female employment decline is not primarily voluntary more than half the gender gap in the hazard rate from employment reflects a general fall in demand for low skilled workers reduced child care plays no role

corporate philanthropy and stock price crash risk evidence from china how to mitigate stock price crash risk has become a focus in the theoretical and practical fields building on the work of kim et al j bank finance 43 1 13 2014b this paper investigates the relation between corporate philanthropy and crash risk under the unique chinese institutional background the results show that both state ownership and the 2005 split share reform attenuate the mitigating effect of corporate philanthropy on crash risk specifically the negative relation between corporate philanthropy and crash risk is less pronounced for state owned enterprises than for non state owned enterprises and it is also less pronounced after firms accomplish the split share reform further this effect is more pronounced for firms with greater financial risks and poorer performance our paper contributes to the growing literature on the determinants of stock price crash risk and the economic consequences of corporate philanthropy it also offers useful guidance to firms that are seeking to reduce stock price crash risk in emerging markets

international trade and the gender wage gap new evidence from india s manufacturing sector summary this study examines how increasing competitive forces from india s trade liberalization have affected women s relative wages and employment neoclassical theory implies that costly discrimination against female workers should diminish over time with increased competition we incorporate this idea into a theoretical model of competition and industry concentration and test the model using repeated cross sections of india s national sample survey organization nsso household survey data merged with trade and production data from 1983 to 2004 estimates from ordinary least squares ols and fixed effects regressions at the industry level indicate that increasing openness to trade is associated with larger wage gaps in india s concentrated manufacturing industries

globalization and gender wage inequality in china summary this paper uses an enterprise population level dataset to investigate the link between globalization and gender inequality in the chinese labor market we find that foreign and exporting firms employ more female workers than domestic nonexporters foreign participation and export orientation within the same region and industry significantly encourage female employment and reduce the gender wage gap furthermore we show that while a large gender wage gap exists for foreign and exporting firms it mainly reflects the difference in gender productivity gender wage discrimination is observed only among private nonexporting firms overall our results highlight the importance of globalization in encouraging female employment and reducing gender discrimination

does foreign investment liberalisation enhance women s economic status micro evidence from urban china this paper analyses the effects of inward foreign direct investment fdi on female earnings and women s economic status in households using chinese urban household survey data from 1997 to 2008 the identification exploits the substantial relaxation of foreign investment regulations immediately after china s accession to the wto in 2002 the difference in differences estimation results show that fdi liberalisation has improved women s economic status significantly by increasing female earnings in sectors more exposed to fdi further analyses indicate that foreign investment liberalisation facilitates the promotion of female employees in their career ladders and increases their skill premium which are two important channels through which women enhance their economic independence

north south trade and female labour in manufacturing an asymmetry a simple method of measuring the impact of north south trade on the female intensity of manufacturing is applied to data for developed and developing countries the results confirm that growth of exports has increased the relative demand for female labour in the south however there does not appear to have been a general counterpart reduction in the relative demand for female labour in northern manufacturing even among blue collar workers there are several possible reasons for the apparent conflict between these findings and other evidence that in northern manufacturing females have been disproportionately displaced by trade with the south

privatization and economic growth an empirical investigation from a sample of developing market economies this paper explores the economic determinants of privatization programmes and the macroeconomic impact of this institutional reform on the growth rate of the gdp a sample of thirty five developing market economies is considered over the 1988 92 period probit and tobit models are used to identify the determinants of successful privatization programmes then regressions are run where probabilities probit and expected values tobit are successively included as additional regressors beside the potential influence of other economic policy variables a significant positive effect is highlighted giving evidence of the importance of divestiture the economic effect is found to be stronger when this institutional reform took place in industry or infrastructure

an analysis of economic warfare in times of conflict an adversary s resources are a source of potential harm many geopolitical tactics are thus quite explicitly economic as they seek either to deter an adversary s worst intentions or reduce its capacity to inflict damage richardson 1960 tullock 1974 relevant policies include trade limiting sanctions galtung 1967 pape 1997 and direct attacks on an adver sary s military infrastructure or personnel 1 this paper explores a third example namely efforts to undermine an adversary s source of income i focus on us efforts to reduce the resources of taliban loyal insurgents by suppressing the afghan opium trade with additional applications to conflicts involving oil producing nations the taliban historically profited from the opium trade through a 10 percent tax on farmers known locally as ushr and by providing traffickers with protection services this link between opium income and taliban resources coupled with concerns about a narcoticsinsecurity cycle motivates the view that the united states should suppress the afghan opium trade blanchard 2009 caution is warranted

coase versus the coasians who should enforce laws or contracts judges or regulators many coasians though not coase himself advocate judicial enforcement we show that the incentives facing judges and regulators crucially shape this choice we then compare the regulation of e nancial markets in poland and the czech republic in the 1990s in poland strict enforcement of the securities law by a highly motivated regulator was associated with a rapidly developing stock market in the czech republic hands off regulation was associated with a moribund stock market i introduction at the heart of economists traditional skepticism about government regulation is the coase theorem coase 1960 the theorem states that when property rights are well dee ned and transaction costs are zero market participants will organize their transactions in ways that achieve efe cient outcomes when they can do so it is not necessary for the government to engage in corrective actions through taxes regulations or even legal rules financial markets are often used to demonstrate the coase theorem s case against regulation advocates of the regulation of these markets point to a variety of potential failures such as the ability of security issuers to expropriate both potential and existing investors through misrepresentation or proe t diversion investors fear of such expropriation prevents e rms from raising external funds and keeps efe cient projects from being undertaken not so reply the coasians they point out that most securities transactions take place between sophisticated adults and that both the buyers and the issuers of securities have available to them a vast range of private arrangements to achieve efe ciency including contracts such as corporate charters certie cation by intermediaries and various forms of bonding such contracts render most laws and regulations unnecessary stigler 1964 easterbrook and fischel 1991

mixed oligopoly and spatial agglomeration abstract we investigate a mixed market where a state owned welfare maximizing public firm competes against profit maximizing private firms we use a circular city model with quantity setting competition in contrast to a pure market case discussed by pal 1998a spatial agglomeration of private firms always appears in equilibrium all private firms locate at the same point and the public firm locates at the opposite side we also find that this equilibrium pattern of the location is second best provided that output of each private firm cannot be controlled by the social planner jel classification h42 l13 oligopole mixte et agglomeration spatiale les auteurs examinent un marche mixte ou une entreprise publique possedee par l etat et cherchant a maximiser le niveau de bien etre est en concurrence avec des entreprises privees qui cherchent a maximiser leurs profits on utilise un modele de cite circulaire ou la concurrence se fait en choisissant la quantite produite en contraste avec le cas du marche parfait discute par pal 1998a l agglomeration spatiale des entreprises privees parait etre en equilibre toutes les entreprises privees se localisent au meme point et l entreprise publique se localise du cote oppose il appert que ce pattern d equilibre de localisation est un equilibre de second ordre compte tenu du fait que la production de chaque entreprise privee ne peut etre controlee par le planificateur social

infrastructure incentives and institutions abstract expensive infrastructure is ineffective if it doesn t travel the last mile in nineteenth century new york and modern africa disease has spread when urbanites chose not to use newly built sanitation infrastructure to save money either subsidies or pigouvian fines can internalize the externalities that occur when people don t use sanitation infrastructure but with weak institutions subsidies generate waste and fines lead to extortion our model illustrates the complementarity between infrastructure and institutions and shows how institutional weaknesses determine whether fines subsidies both or neither are optimal contrary to becker 1968 the optimal fine is often mild to reduce extortion