inter industry wage differentials evidence from sweden and a comparison with the united states inter industry wage differentials evidence from sweden and a comparison with the united states

harvests and business cycles in nineteenth century america most major american industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the first world war were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production nor did the cotton harvest before the late 1870s the unique effect of the cotton harvest in this period can be explained as an essentially monetary phenomenon the result of interactions between harvests international gold flows and high powered money demand under america s goldstandard regime of 1879 1914

the wage effects of residential location and commuting constraints on employed married women it has been argued that greater spatial constraints are imposed on the job searches of women workers and that these greater constraints account for some of the gender wage gap all researchers agree that women commute shorter distances to work than men in addition some researchers have argued from indirect evidence that two earner households give greater weight to husbands job opportunities when choosing a residential location in this paper we use data on two earner households from the 1980 public use microdata sample pums of the us census for the detroit and philadelphia smsas to quantify the effects of residential location and of gender differences in commuting behaviour on the gender gap in wages first we find that within white households wives encounter relatively greater spatial variation in wages than their husbands but that there is less of a gender difference among black households second we analyse the simultaneous effects of commuting and residential constraints on wages we find for

identifying the effects of a lender of last resort on financial markets lessons from the founding of the fed abstract we use the founding of the federal reserve to identify the effects of a lender of last resort we examine stock return and interest rate volatility during september and october when markets were vulnerable because of financial stringency from the harvest stock volatility fell by 40 and interest rate volatility by more than 70 following the monetary regime change the drop is insignificant if major panic years are omitted from the analysis however because business cycle downturns occurred in the same year as financial crises our results suggest that the existence of the federal reserve reduced liquidity risk

agroclimatic shock income inequality and poverty evidence from burkina faso abstract this paper examines the impacts of agroclimatic shock on income inequality and poverty using household farm data from three agroecological zones of burkina faso together with income source decompositions of the gini coefficient and the foster greer thorbecke poverty index before and after a severe drought our findings reveal that because the poor lack acces to off farm income off farm income increases inequality and fails to shield poor households against agroclimatic risks the direction of the empirical relationship between changes in inequality and poverty after the drought depends critically on environmental variables and on apparent constraints on income diversification at different points in the income distribution

targeted export promotion with several oligopolistic industries abstract we study export promotion policies in situations where several oligopolistic industries compete for the services of a sector specific factor of production the partial equilibrium argument for strategic subsidies must be modified to incorporate general equilibrium effects working through the factor market we find that these effects generally weaken the case for profit shifting subsidies in a benchmark case with symmetric exporting industries fixed coefficients technologies and an inelastic supply of the specific factor free trade is shown to be optimal

assisting domestic industries under international oligopoly the relevance of the nature of competition to optimal policies optimal trade and industrial policies are derived for a home market that is supplied by a domestic firm and a foreign firm the optimal policy combination can be quite sensitive to the nature of the duopoly s competition for example for some cost and demand s tructures the optimal policy under cournot competition consists of a domestic production tax and a tariff but that under bertrand compet ition consists of a production subsidy and free trade copyright 1988 by american economic association

contributions to canadian economic history the last 30 years the cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the us in the 1960s was soon embraced by canadian economic historians many of the important issues surrounding canadian development remained the same the role of resources the place of international trade immigration capital accumulation and interactions with native americans among others but beginning in the 1960s and certainly over the last 30 years economic historians of canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics both theoretical and empirical we highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of canadian history has been changed

contractionary devaluation risk evidence from the free silver movement 1878 1900 i identify significant effects of devaluation risk on interest rates and output using us silver coinage policy news between 1878 and 1900 as clean shocks to exchange rate expectations the free sil

female participation and labor market attachment in rural canada this article explores the reasons for differences in female rural urban participation rates by estimating a dynamic model of participation allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence using canadian panel data the results suggest that overall observed differences in rural urban participation rates are primarily due to differences in observed socioeconomic characteristics however for women resident in low income households there is evidence that the operation of rural labor markets effectively lowers their participation rates copyright 2002 oxford university press

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

immigrants and the making of america we study the effects of european immigration to the u s during the age of mass migration 1850 1920 on economic prosperity exploiting cross county variation in immigration that arises from the interaction of fluctuations in aggregate immigrant flows and of the gradual expansion of the railway network we find that counties with more historical immigration have higher income less poverty less unemployment higher rates of urbanization and greater educational attainment today the long run effects seem to capture the persistence of short run benefits including greater industrialization increased agricultural productivity and more innovation

trade policy and industrial development iron and steel in a small open economy 1870 1913 in this paper we argue that effective tariff protection associated with the 1879 national policy and the 1887 tupper tariffs triggered investment in new technologically advanced blast furnaces that were capable of accommodating rapid output expansion this conclusion is based on an appreciation of the timing of late nineteenth century investments in canada and their connection to changes in government policy and other demand determinants in our empirical investigation we use new information on westbound transatlantic freight rates intra continental transport costs and furnace specific micro data and we acknowledge the endogenous relationships linking investment to domestic demand labour costs and tariffs politique commerciale et developpement industriel fer et acier dans une petite economie ouverte 1870 1913 dans ce texte les auteurs suggerent que la protection tarifaire effective associee a la politique nationale de 1879 et aux tarifs de tupper de 1887 ont declenche des investissements dans de nouveaux hauts fourneaux technologiquement sophistiques capables de s ajuster a l expansion rapide des taux de production cette conclusion est fondee sur une appreciation du moment des investissements au canada a la fin du 19eme siecle et de leur connexion aux changements dans la politique gouvernementale et aux autres determinants de la demande cette enquete empirique utilise des renseignements inedits sur les taux de fret du transport transatlantique vers l ouest les couts de transport intracontinental et des micro donnees sur les hauts fourneaux on reconnait les relations endogenes entre l investissement et la demande domestique les couts du travail ainsi que les tarifs

the need for industrial policy in ldc s a re statement of the infant industry argument this paper presents a learning by doing model of a small open economy learning acquired in production of an industry x enhances productivity of industries x and y by introducing dynamic production complementarities across industries through the learning curve this approach presents an important generalization of p k bardhan s 1971 model copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

tariffs and growth in the late 19th century the paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century in the context of three types of growth equation unconditional convergence equations conditional convergence equations and factor accumulation models it does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914 tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period economic theory is ambiguous as regards the relationship between trade policy and growth the growth literature of the past decade has produced an impressive array of models in which protection can either increase or reduce long run growth rates grossman and helpman 1991 rivera batiz and romer 1991 stokey 1991 young 1991 such theoretical ambiguity invites empirical research while new growth theory is ambiguous on the subject the new empirical growth literature has produced a consensus that free trade is positively associated with growth based on evidence from the late 20th century but see rodrlguez and rodrik 1999 for a sceptical review of the literature the clear

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

tariff structure trade expansion and canadian protectionism 1870 1910 canada s trade policy at the end of the 19th century is commonly viewed as protectionist and extremely costly in this paper we employ the anderson neary trade restrictiveness index to re examine this view based on product level customs data we show that canadian trade policy between 1870 and 1910 was more restrictive than previously understood but created smaller welfare losses than previously believed these results are primarily driven by high tariffs on inelastic non competing import goods although canada s tariff structure becomes more restrictive over the period our findings indicate it was not as protectionist or as costly as once thought structure tarifaire expansion du commerce et protectionnisme canadien entre 1870 et 1910 la politique commerciale canadienne a la fin du 19e siecle est habituellement consideree comme protectionniste et extremement couteuse dans ce memoire on emploie l indice de restriction du commerce de anderson neary pour reexaminer ce point de vue a partir de donnees du service des douanes au niveau du produit on montre que la politique commerciale canadienne entre 1870 et 1910 a ete plus restrictive que ce qu on avait pense autrefois mais qu elle a cree des pertes de bien etre moindres que ce qu on avait cru anterieurement ces resultats sont d abord engendres par des droits de douanes eleves sur des biens d importation qui ne concurrencent pas les biens domestiques et dont la demande est inelastique meme si la structure tarifaire du canada devient plus restrictive au cours de cette periode les resultats montrent qu elle n est ni aussi protectionniste ni aussi couteuse qu on l a deja pense

an annual index of u s industrial production 1790 1915 as a remedy for the notorious deficiency of pre civil war u s macroeconomic data this study introduces an annual index of american industrial production consistently defined from 1790 until world war i the index incorporates 43 quantity based annual series most entirely new in the manufacturing and mining industries in a manner similar to the federal reserve board s monthly industrial production index the index changes our view of the growth and volatility of the u s economy before world war i a direct implication of the index is that antebellum postbellum differences in industrial volatility are statistically indistinguishable the index also demonstrates that the pernicious deflationary depressions that purportedly followed the financial panics in 1837 and 1873 were actually rather mild recessions when expressed in real output

protection for maturing industries evidence from canadian trade patterns and trade policy 1870 1913 as industries mature experience is accumulated productivity increases trade performance improves on domestic and international markets and learning potential dissipates using theory consistent empirical specifications i find a strong robust negative relationship linking tariff rates to trade performance for manufactured products that matured during the first decade after canada prioritized protectionist policy objectives in 1879 this relationship also holds at a more aggregate industry level where i can use other measures of maturity control for import penetration use historically contemporaneous trade elasticity estimates link trade performance to trade restrictiveness and effective rates of protection and where i can instrument for import penetration and trade performance using a two stage iv gmm estimation approach the results suggest that after 1890 the canadian government carefully cut tariffs on products produced by maturing canadian producers and this retreat from protectionism significantly lowered the static deadweight losses resulting from canadian trade policy during the post 1890 period protection des industries en phase de maturite illustration par les modeles commerciaux et les politiques commerciales du canada entre 1870 et 1913 a mesure que les industries gagnent en maturite l experience s accumule la productivite croit les performances commerciales s ameliorent sur les marches nationaux et internationaux et le potentiel d apprentissage se dissipe a l aide de modeles empiriques conformes a cette theorie j ai degage une relation negative robuste entre les droits tarifaires et les performances commerciales pour les produits manufactures arrives a maturite au cours de la premiere decennie suivant la decision du canada de prioriser les objectifs de politique protectionniste en 1879 cette correlation est egalement valable a un niveau industriel plus general dans le cadre duquel il est possible d utiliser d autres mesures d evaluation de la maturite de controler la penetration des importations d utiliser des estimations historiquement contemporaines relatives a l elasticite des echanges de correler les performances commerciales aux restrictions des echanges et aux taux de protection effectifs et ou il est egalement possible de mesurer la penetration des importations et les performances commerciales gr ce a une approche estimative en deux etapes iv gmm les resultats suggerent qu apres 1890 le gouvernement canadien a pris soin de diminuer les droits tarifaires sur les produits fabriques par des entreprises canadiennes en phase de maturite et que ce renoncement au protectionnisme diminua significativement les pertes de poids mort statiques resultant des politiques commerciales du canada posterieures a 1890

panel estimates of the canadian rural urban women s wage gap this article analyzes the female rural urban wage gap in canada using longitudinal data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1993 96 we estimate a two step wage equation accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and sample selection the results indicate that a statistically and economically significant rural urban wage gap remains after controlling for observed and unobserved characteristics further the results suggest this rural urban wage difference is not simply induced by immobility between rural and urban markets rather consistent with the effect of thinner rural labor markets the evidence indicates that rural urban differences in the impact of a number of explanatory variables are significant

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

whose wages do unions raise a dynamic model of unionism and wage rate determination for young men we estimate the union premium for young men over a period of declining unionization 1980 87 through a procedure which identifies the alternative sources of the endogeneity of union status while we estimate the average increase in wages resulting from union employment to be in excess of 20 we find that the return to unobserved heterogeneity operating through union status is substantial and that the union premium is highly variable we also find that the premium is sensitive to the form of sorting allowed in estimation moreover the data are consistent with comparative advantage sorting our results suggest that the unobserved heterogeneity which positively contributes to the likelihood of union membership is associated with higher wages we are unable however to determine whether this is due to the ability of these workers to extract monopoly rents or whether it reflects the more demanding hiring standards of employers faced by union wages 1998 john wiley sons ltd

interindustry wage differentials and efficiency wages some canadian evidence using the 1986 labour market activity survey as their major source of data the authors estimate interindustry wage differentials in canada at the one and two digit levels of industry aggregation for various types of workers the major findings are that substantial interindustry wage differentials exist and are relatively stable over time that the pattern of interindustry wage differentials is very similar for different kinds of workers and that these differentials cannot be explained easily by compensating factors the differentials seem to be consistent with the rent sharing explanations of the labor market such as those based on the notion of efficiency wages

the cyclical behavior of individual production series 1889 1984 this paper uses simple summary statistics to analyze the volatility persistence and comovement of 38 annual individual production series for the period 1889 1984 it seeks to identify the size source and correlation of fluctuations in the production of specific commodities within various sample periods and to analyze possible changes in these characteristics over time the paper also discusses the implications of the behavior of individual production series for the behavior of the aggregate economy within the prewar interwar and postwar eras

measuring protection a cautionary tale abstract this paper comments on a theoretically based index of protection recently developed by anderson and neary the index must be calculated within the context of a specific cge model anderson and neary propose a generic model and have found that the index is robust to changes in the elasticities embedded within that model is the index also robust to changes in the specification of the model the paper identifies one historical instance where the index is extremely sensitive to the specification of the model s demand side there are important methodological lessons to be learnt from this example

the narrow moving band the dutch disease and the competitive consequences of mrs thatcher notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies abstract this paper presents a model of trade in which comparative advantage instead of being determined by underlying attributes of countries evolves over time through learning by doing in this model arbitrary patterns of specialization once established tend to become entrenched over time the model sheds light on three widely held views that do not make sense in more conventional models first is the view that temporary protection of selected sectors can permanently alter the pattern of comparative advantage in the protecting country s favor second is the view that seemingly favorable developments such as the discovery of exportable natural resources may lead to a permanent loss of other sectors and reduce welfare in the long run third is the possibility that a temporary overvaluation of a currency due to tight money can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness in some sectors

the economics of change in rural america communities perceptions of economic development prospects and alternatives are conditioned by previous experiences and anecdotal success stories thus small towns in traditionally agricultural regions equate economic development with prosperity in agriculture and the agricultural development program of the day sustainable agriculture value added enhancement alternative crops prosperity in nonmetro manufacturing centers is linked with industrial retention and recruitment and small business development and rural areas with natural historic or climatic amenities associate development with expanded tourism activity and the attraction of retirees

accounting for price changes american steel rails 1879 1910 a framework is developed for decomposing product price changes into changes in input prices technical efficiency and deviations of price from unit cost this framework facilitates the measurement of productivity growth in noncompetitive industries the history of american steel rail prices between 1879 and 1910 is analyzed and it is concluded in contrast with much recent work that productivity growth remained rapid until the twentieth century and that the steel industry was sufficiently collusive so that the rail producers received the benefits of that productivity growth as excess profits

migration risk and liquidity constraints in el salvador abstract this article utilizes panel data from el salvador to investigate the use of transnational migration as an ex post risk management strategy i show that adverse agricultural conditions in el salvador increase both migration to the united states and remittances sent back to el salvador i show that in the absence of any agricultural shocks the probability that a household sent members to the united states would have decreased on average by 24 26 i also show that the 2001 earthquakes reduced net migration to the united states a one standard deviation increase in earthquake damage reduced the average probability of northward migration by 37 11 the evidence suggests that the effects of the earthquakes had more to do with households retaining labor at home to cope with the effects of the disaster than with the earthquakes disrupting migration financing

earnings mobility family income and low pay for policy purposes it is important to establish both the nature of the low paid workforce at any point in time and ability to obtain better paid jobs through mobility within the earnings distribution over time in particular two important issues are the extent to which low pay is a transient phenomenon for any particular worker and the extent to which low pay is associated with low family incomes and therefore poverty we attempt to examine both aspects making use of the first three waves of the british household panel survey bhps

learning by doing export subsidies and industry growth japanese steel in the 1950s and 1960s abstract the paper examines the japanese steel industry to evaluate the role of export subsidy policies export subsidies can be instrumental in increasing an industry s cost competitiveness in the presence of learning by doing a characteristic of production in the steel industry using a dynamic estimation model this paper identifies a significant learning rate of above 20 with little intra industry knowledge spillover simulations made with the model indicate that the subsidy policy had an insignificant impact on industry growth the paper finds that the export subsidy had a small effect in stimulating industry growth because the estimated steel supply function was relatively inelastic

is deflation costly after all the perils of erroneous historical classifications i estimate average economic activity during periods of inflation and deflation while accounting for measurement errors in 19th century prices these measurement errors lead to underestimation overestimation of economic activity during periods of inflation deflation by exploiting multiple deflation indicators it is possible to recover the true relationship the shortfall of us industrial production growth during periods of deflation ranges from 4 5 pp to 7 6 pp instead of 2 pp i also find a negative relationship between deflation and real activity in the uk i then examine the cross country variation in the estimates for eleven countries the patterns are consistent with stronger biases for countries with more serious measurement errors in prices

wages rents and amenities differences among workers and regions what explains persistent regional earnings differences this paper argues that regional differences in amenities can account for the wage differences in contrast cost of living variations do not account for wage differences but actually exacerbate them this conclusion results from a model in which variations in rents and wages are equalizing differences for amenity differences empirical results are consistent with the model

when and how should infant industries be protected abstract this paper develops and analyzes a welfare maximizing model of infant industry protection the domestic infant industry is competitive and experiences dynamic learning effects that are external to firms the competitive foreign industry is mature and produces a good that is an imperfect substitute for the domestic good a government planner can protect the infant industry using domestic production subsidies tariffs or quotas in order to maximize domestic welfare over time as protection is not always optimal although the domestic industry experiences a learning externality the paper shows how the decision to protect the industry should depend on the industry s learning potential the shape of the learning curve and the degree of substitutability between domestic and foreign goods assuming some reasonable restrictions on the flexibility over time of the policy instruments the paper subsequently compares the effectiveness of the different instruments given such restrictions the paper shows that quotas induce higher welfare levels than tariffs in some cases the dominance of the quota is so pronounced that it compensates for any amount of government revenue loss related to the administration of the quota including the case of a voluntary export restraint where no revenue is collected in similar cases the quota may even be preferred to a domestic production subsidy

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

a classical marxian model of antebellum slavery this paper outlines a classical marxian model of the antebellum us economy the model assumes that the mobility of capital tended to equalize the rate of profit between north and south whilst land rents were minimized by an expanding frontier under these conditions slave prices are the capitalized present value of the excess surplus value produced by slaves this excess surplus value arose because slaves could be forced to work harder at a lower standard of subsistence than wage laborers who were free to move between individual employers and also between sectors by farming frontier lands if the growth of the slave population saturated the land available for slave production land rents would rise to capture the excess surplus value produced by slaves and slave prices would collapse we find the model predicts historical movements of slave prices and is compatible with contemporaneous views of the impact of territorial restriction on the viability of slavery

market potential and the rise of us productivity leadership abstract today s globalization driven by lower barriers to trade has increased market potential for many nations and led to gains in gdp per capita we test whether this was true in the first wave of globalization by constructing market potential measures for a sample of 27 countries in 1900 and 1910 based on a general equilibrium model of production and trade cross sectional estimates suggest that market potential was an economically significant determinant of gdp per capita at this time to assess welfare effects we then study the general equilibrium impact of raising market potential by eliminating international borders in a quantitative counterfactual calculation for 1900 there are significant gains in real income per capita for all nations we use us per capita output as a benchmark since it attained leadership in this variable from the late 19th century and the literature frequently attributes this to its relatively large domestic market a market unconstrained by trade costs associated with international borders because market potential was already near that of the us the largest european countries do not entirely close their per capita income gaps with the us after removing all border barriers to trade within europe or even globally on the other hand many small european countries could have done so

russia s commercial policy 2008 11 modernization crisis and the wto accession this paper examines the commercial policy of russia during 2008 11 a time of global financial crisis which coincided with an announced russian modernization programme in 2008 russia introduced a development strategy to limit its dependence on natural resources however the government relied heavily on this income for the planned modernization programme the falling price of oil in 2008 9 led to a tightened government budget constraint this situation induced russia towards wider use of more traditional instruments of trade policy such as tariff policy as well as an import substitution strategy the creation of the customs union and a pause in the wto accession process russia has been found by the global trade alert gta initiative to be one of the main users of protectionist policies since november 2008 with the oil price recovery from september 2010 russia had been back in the wto accession process on revised terms and conditions the wto ministerial conference in geneva approved the accession package of the russian federation on 16 december 2011 copyright 2012 oxford university press

the price differential between domestic and imported steel abstract in most years since the late 1950 s the price of imported steel has been below the domestic price this low import price has been a recurrent worry to steel workers and producers who fear that imports will force domestic mills out of business little help is expected from buyer loyalty to american steel steel is steel and the buyer need only find the cheapest source the concerns of the steel producers and workers seem at first well founded in economic theory two products which substitute perfectly in use simply cannot sell at different prices either the higher price will fall to meet the competition or production of the higher priced one will stop but the production of domestic steel has not stopped even though domestic producers have lost some ground to imports since the late 1950 s when imports first became low priced the demand for imports has grown steadily and sometimes suddenly as in 1968 still the amazing story is not that imports have grown swiftly but that they have grown slowly in 1962 imports had 6 percent of the u s market in 1976 14 years later they had 14 percent so each year on the average imports have increased their share of the market by less than one percent author

employment opportunities in rural areas implications for poverty in a changing policy environment the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 as well as changes in other public programs providing poor households with an economic safety net have refocused attention on the issue of poverty in the united states levitan mangum and mangum changes in welfare policy at the federal level follow a fifteen year period of transition and restructuring in u s labor markets during which incomes strongly diverged between the haves and the havenots marked changes in policy coupled with long run transformations in labor markets make poverty a critical issue shapiro poverty in u s central cities has received significant attention and has influenced the public s perception of who is poor and how to correct the poverty problem however how we collectively perceive the poor does injustice to the problem oversimplifying a very complex issue this is true in urban areas and it is particularly the case in rural areas it is not often recognized that nonmetro areas have higher rates of poverty than do metro areas lichter et al for example in 1990 16 3 of the nonmetro population was in poverty whereas 12 7 were poor in metro areas u s bureau of the census 1991 rural poor households are also more likely to be chronically poor have higher proportions of the working poor and have been historically less dependent on welfare than the urban poor fuguitt brown and beale lichter et al this article focuses on the ability of rural adults to find adequate jobs to help reduce the likelihood that they or their households are poor because the individual s participation in work is such a key factor in the 1996 act and because of the complexities of analyzing work patterns across poor households of different compositions this research focuses on the labor market outcomes of individuals we con

climate variability and migration evidence from tanzania po rt a n t la r ef er en c e a n r10 l a bx 1 401 abstract we analyze whether tanzanian households engage in internal migration as a response to weather related shocks our findings confirm that climate shocks lead to a higher probability of migration by reducing agricultural yields which in turn induces households to send their members away in order to spatially diversify their income this effect is however low since a 1 reduction in agricultural income induced by weather shock increases the probability of migration by 3 for an average household what is more such mechanism is valid only for households whose income is highly dependent on agriculture but is not significant for diversified livelihoods

infant industry protection in the steel rail industry abstract this paper examines a particular instance of infant industry protection the case of the u s steel rail industry it analyzes the joint roles of learning by doing changing resource endowments and tariff protection in the emergence of this industry making use of estimated demand and cost parameters the paper simulates what would have happened to prices production and welfare under free trade i calculate that despite strong learning effects the steel rail tariff hurt rail users in both the short and long runs the tariff s overall effect on welfare was positive but fairly small

nonresponse in panel data the impact on estimates of a life cycle consumption function if missing observations in a panel data set are not missing at random many widely applied estimators may be inconsistent in this paper we examine empirically several ways to reveal the nature and severity of the selectivity problem due to nonresponse as well as a number of methods to estimate the resulting models using a life cycle consumption function and data from the expenditure index panel from the netherlands we discuss simple procedures that can be used to assess whether observations are missing at random and we consider more complicated estimation procedures that can be used to obtain consistent or efficient estimates in case of selectivity of attrition bias finally some attention is paid to the differences in identification consistency and efficiency between inferences from a single wave of the panel a balanced sub panel and an unbalanced panel

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

macroeconomic effects of corporate default crisis a long term perspective abstract using an extensive data set on corporate bond defaults in the us from 1866 to 2010 we study the macroeconomic effects of bond market crises and contrast them with those resulting from banking crises during the past 150 years the us has experienced many severe corporate default crises in which 20 50 of all corporate bonds defaulted although the total par amount of corporate bonds has at times rivaled the amount of bank loans outstanding we find that corporate default crises have far fewer real effects than do banking crises these results provide empirical support for current theories that emphasize the unique role that banks and the credit and collateral channels play in amplifying macroeconomic shocks

temporary protection and technology adoption evidence from the napoleonic blockade this paper uses a natural experiment to assess whether temporary protection from trade with industrial leaders can foster development of infant industries in follower countries using a new dataset compiled from primary sources i find that in the short run regions departements in the french empire which became better protected from trade with the british for exogenous reasons during the napoleonic wars 1803 15 increased capacity in a new technology mechanised cotton spinning to a larger extent than regions which remained more exposed to trade temporary protection had long term effects in particular by exploiting the fact that the post war location of the cotton industry was determined to a large extent by the historical accident of the wars i first show that the location of cotton spinning within france was persistent and firms located in regions with higher post war spinning capacity were more productive 30 years later second i find that after the restoration of peace exports of cotton goods from france increased substantially consistent with evolving comparative advantage in cottons third i show that as late as 1850 france and belgium both part of the french empire prior to 1815 had larger cotton spinning industries than other continental european countries which were not protected from british trade during the wars this suggests that adoption of the new technology was far from inevitable

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

measuring the restrictiveness of trade policy this article provides an introduction to the trade restrictiveness index tri which equals the uniform tariff that is welfare equivalent to a given pattern of trade protection unlike standard measures of trade restrictiveness the tri has a solid theoretical basis can incorporate both tariffs and quantitative restrictions and can be adapted to construct the trade policy equivalent of domestic distortions the article compares a number of applications and describes procedures for operationalizing the tri on a personal computer the authors conclude that the tri has considerable potential in empirical work