social assistance and labour supply the longitudinal 1988 89 lmas makes it possible to study the interaction between social assistance and labour supply while allowing for substantial time dependence tobit equations for hours worked on and off social assistance which allow for endogenous selection of social assistance status are estimated by using fiml small but statistically significant effects for a social assistance benefit variable are obtained particularly for females a claw back variable is not consistently useful the wage rate has a consistently negative coefficient in the selection equations and is important in the tobit equations in this paper an attempt is made to reconcile results found in earlier literature jel classification i38 j22 aide sociale et offre de travail l etude longitudinale de l enquete de 1988 89 sur la population active rend possible l etude de l interaction entre l aide sociale et l offre de travail tout en permettant la prise en compte de l effet d inertie herite du passe on calibre des equations tobit pour les heures travaillees separement pour les personnes qui recoivent et ne recoivent pas d aide sociale et une equation probit qui permet une selection endogene du statut d assiste social en utilisant la methode du maximum de vraisemblance avec pleine information on obtient des impacts faibles mais statistiquement significatifs des prestations d aide sociale sur l offre de travail pour les femmes une variable qui tente de capturer les effets de recouvrement fiscal des prestations n est pas uniformement utile comme source d explication le taux de salaire a un coefficient negatif de maniere generale dans les equations de selection et est important dans les equations tobit le memoire tente de reconcilier ces resultats avec ceux que contiennent les etudes anterieures

wind energy in malaysia past present and future in recent years the malaysian government has attempted to develop renewable energy re through newly introduced regulatory supports after 30 years of failure to achieve a greater than one percent non hydroelectric re share in the total power mix the government is currently assessing the onshore wind energy potential in malaysia to determine the possibility of including wind energy in its fit scheme however wind energy development in this low energy location is not as straightforward as it would seem many previous wind studies in malaysia have relied on poor data and simplistic or inadequate methodologies resulting in grossly inaccurate estimates of wind potential moreover two wind turbine generator demonstration projects executed by the government have failed however above all the greatest factor impairing the progress of re development in malaysia is the weak and uncertain political support of these efforts this lack of robust support is particularly true where fossil fuels are still heavily subsidised amid the subsidy reform in 2013 a review of global wind energy development shows that successful projects depend heavily on a sound and robust regulatory framework supported by strong and consistent political will this dependence is not observed in malaysia where the government continues to subsidise private independent fossil fuel power producers but levies taxes on electricity consumers to fund re development these levies do not effectively support re development given the magnitude of the re fund compared to fossil fuel subsidies in the absence of strong and sincere political will the progress of re development in malaysia has been notably slow as a result the prospect of wind energy development in malaysia currently remains vague this paper discusses the above issues in detail and recommends selected regulatory mechanisms based on the global experience of supporting re development in malaysia

the inequalities of public utility products in china from the perspective of the atkinson index abstract the chinese households make up approximately a quarter of the world s total compared with its size of population china s reserves of natural resources are relatively limited with the actual concerns about sustainable development in china we should pay more attention to the unequal distribution of energy which may result low efficiency and wasting of energy therefore how to best allocate the scarce public utility products pups for the household usage should be closely addressed in terms of equity and efficiency based on the micro household level data from crecs which investigated in 2013 in different scales city all over the country we measure the distribution of pups consumption quantitatively and evaluate the inequality of household income expenditures on electricity gas and water in the china s residential sector by using the atkinson index the results show that the atkinson index of households total pups consumption in medium scale city is equal to 0 0261 which is 83 0 higher than that of large scale city and 35 6 higher than that of small scale city it indicates that the inequalities of pups and income are greater in medium scale cities than in large scale and small scale cities considering the sustainability of pups we suggest further reform in china s public utility sectors the government should take more consideration on equality and efficiency of distribution and ensure that people have equal living standards especially for the low income households who serve as the main anchor for the sustainable development of china

is there a glass ceiling in sweden using 1998 data we show that the gender log wage gap in sweden increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates in the upper tail we interpret this as a strong glass ceiling effect we use quantile regression decompositions to examine whether this pattern can be ascribed primarily to gender differences in labor market characteristics or in the rewards to those characteristics even after extensive controls for gender differences in age education both level and field sector industry and occupation we find that the glass ceiling effect we see in the raw data persists to a considerable extent

the effect of food stamps on labor supply a bivariate selection model abstract although there is a large literature on the effects of u s transfer programs on labor supply this is the first such study of the food stamp program we model the nonlinearity and nonconvexity of the budget constraint and use maximum likelihood methods to estimate hours of work functions for female heads of household the largest recipient group in the program we also model the joint response to afdc and food stamps and we account for the existence of a significant number of eligible households who do not participate in the programs a three equation bivariate selection model is estimated on a sample of eligible households with maximum likelihood

the effect of child support payments on the labor supply of female family heads an econometric analysis recent census bureau statistics show that women who receive child support payments have higher earnings and work longer hours than women who do not does this suggest that child support unlike all other nonwage income does not deter work effort or are women who receive it simply different we use 1979 1982 cps data on divorced or separated women to estimate the determinants of hours worked when afdc participation and child support are endogenous we find evidence of unobservable differences between women who receive child support and those who do not controlling for these both child support and other nonwage income appear to reduce hours worked but the deterrent effect of child support is considerably less

schooling fertility and the labour market experience of married women a model of career path choice is constructed for a sample of women taken from the 1991 us national household education survey this allows for simultaneity and selection effects in the relationship between regime choice and earning it is established that inter alia expected earnings have a significant impact on the career path and the hours of work chosen by american women the role played by formal schooling and by childrearing in the determination of carrier path is highlighted and implications are discussed

study on the optimal supervision strategy of government low carbon subsidy and the corresponding efficiency and stability in the small world network context abstract the optimal strategy for the government to supervise low carbon subsidy is studied in this paper as well as the problem of supervision efficiency and supervision stability firstly the evolutionary game models are constructed in un supervision and supervision cases respectively based on agents of the government and enterprises and three supervision strategies and related rules are given secondly the supervision efficiency and supervision stability are discussed based on the established small world network model then the optimal supervision strategy and the corresponding optimal supervision probability are obtained moreover parameter sensitivity analysis is carried out based on benefit stability the simulation results show that 1 the optimal strategy for the government to supervise low carbon subsidy is random supervision of enterprises who declare high subsidy with the optimal probability of supervision 0 48 and the overall optimal supervision probability 0 24 2 the supervision efficiency and supervision stability can not achieve at the same time however in order to maximize the revenues of both agents the measure of efficiency first and stability second can be considered 3 when there is more noise in the environment the average revenues of both agents are lower and the benefit stability is worse when the supervision cost is higher the result is the same as the case with more noise in the environment however the increase in punishment cost does not necessarily lead to the increase in revenue when punishment cost increases to a certain extent and continues to increase the revenues of both agents reduce first and then increase and the benefit stability becomes worse first and then better finally the related policy recommendations and future work are presented

labour supply specification and the evaluation of tax reforms this paper investigates the practical importance of the functional specification of labour supply equations for the analysis of tax benefit reform we consider two labour supply specifications one derived from stone geary preferences and the other from a generalisation that relaxes some of the more critical restrictions in that model we use these equations to contrast the effects of two reforms to the u k income tax system one involves income effects almost exclusively while the other implies a significant number of large increases in marginal tax rates

how does parental leave affect fertility and return to work evidence from two natural experiments this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the duration of paid job protected parental leave on mothers higher order fertility and postbirth labor market careers identification is based on a major austrian reform increasing the duration of parental leave from one year to two years for any child born on or after july 1 1990 we find that mothers who give birth to their first child immediately after the reform have more second children than prereform mothers and that extended parental leave significantly reduces return to work employment and earnings also decrease in the short run but not in the long run fertility and work responses vary across the population in ways suggesting that both cash transfers and job protection are relevant increasing parental leave for a future child increases fertility strongly but leaves short run postbirth careers relatively unaffected partially reversing the 1990 extension a second 1996 reform improves employment and earnings while compressing the time between births

intra household allocation of parental leave we introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behavior to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave the concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors we cannot reject pareto efficiency in childcare sharing higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner respectively households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare

towards a sustainable electrification in ghana a review of renewable energy deployment policies abstract ghana has been facing perennial power rationing over the years due to fuel supply challenges the country s energy system is likely to suffer additional strain from rising energy demand fueled by population growth rapid urbanization and economic development fortunately there are enormous renewable energy resources which can provide sustainable electrification as backbone to socioeconomic development while curbing global warming ghana s energy strategy targets 100 access to electricity and 10 share of sustainable power in national generation mix by 2020 despite the existence of numerous policies and a renewable energy act current contribution of non conventional renewable energy to electricity generation is less than 1 the right mix of policies to address the unique domestic conditions and achieve its specific development goals remains insufficient this study reviews the regulatory framework financing incentives and other provisions of ghana s renewable energy act it critically examines the policy s strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats based on comparative analysis and lessons drawn from failed and successful implementation of similar policies around the world the study also assesses the impact of policy on project development it was found that the performance of ghana s renewable energy policy on grid connected electricity has been poor compared to its target the fundamental reasons for this unsatisfactory performance may be attributed to partial implementation of policies lack of market driven support schemes lack of pricing policy framework weak grid network limited access to funds and inconsistencies in renewable energy development strategies this study proposes the following countermeasures i ghana should comprehensively harmonize renewable energy regulatory and fiscal policies with domestic electricity pricing regime ii market driven support schemes should be prioritized for cost effectiveness and minimum governmental influence these reforms can help eliminate some of the major barriers to sustainable electrification in ghana while the lessons provide a learning curve for other african countries

does paternity leave reduce fertility abstract we find that the introduction of two weeks of paid paternity leave in spain in 2007 led to delays in subsequent fertility following a regression discontinuity design and using rich administrative data we show that parents who were just entitled to the new paternity leave took longer to have another child compared to just ineligible parents we also show that older eligible couples were less likely to have an additional child within the following six years after the introduction of the reform we provide evidence in support of two potentially complementary channels behind the negative effects on subsequent fertility first fathers increasing involvement in childcare led to higher labor force attachment among mothers this may have raised the opportunity cost of an additional child we also find that men reported lower desired fertility after the reform possibly due to their increased awareness of the costs of childrearing or to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality

renewable energy policies in promoting financing and investment among the east asia summit countries quantitative assessment and policy implications many countries have implemented various policies for renewable energy development ranging from setting power purchase agreements and the legislation of renewable energy requirements to providing incentives and imposing carbon taxes the evaluation of the effectiveness of such policies however is fragmented which raises a need for a comprehensive analysis this paper aims to assess whether and how policies promoting renewable energy investment have achieved the intended goals it employs five broadly defined criteria market uncertainty profitability technology and financial resources to build an index to assess respectively if such policies have helped create a market for renewable energy maximize potential profits reduce risks relating to the investment develop and adopt new technologies and improve the access to financial resources each criterion is reflected by three indicators values of each indicator are converted into ordinal values for analysis the index not only scans comprehensively all relevant renewable energy investment policies in the east asia summit countries but also provides systematic and quantitative measures to compare the effectiveness of policies in these countries with respect to the creation of market the degree of uncertainty the potential of profitability the development and adoption of technology and the accessibility of financial resources

assessing empirical approaches for analyzing taxes and labor supply recent surveys on the labor supply responses of men document a divergence in the estimates of substitution and income effects obtained using various estimation approaches generally studies accounting for nonlinear tax schedules in a static setting via a piecewise linear approach produce estimates that typically imply higher substitution and lower income responses than are suggested by empirical work applying other approaches this paper demonstrates that maximum likelihood estimation of a consumer choice problem with nonlinear budget sets implicitly relies on the satisfaction of inequality constraints that translate into behaviorally meaningful restrictions these constraints arise not as a consequence of economic theory but instead as a requirement to create a properly defined statistical model in the analysis of piecewise linear budget sets the implicit constraints required by maximum likelihood in estimation amount to imposition of slutsky conditions at all wage income combinations associated with kink points in the analysis of differentiable budget sets the tacit constraints invoked by maximum likelihood also involve inequality restrictions on slutsky terms the empirical work presented in this study supports the contention that these implicit constraints play a major role in explaining the discrepancies in estimates found in the literature on men s labor supply

alcohol availability prenatal conditions and long term economic outcomes this study examines how a policy that sharply increased alcohol availability during 8 5 months affected the labor productivity of those exposed to it in utero compared to the surrounding cohorts the prenatally exposed children have substantially worse labor market and educational outcomes and lower cognitive and noncognitive ability effects on earnings are found throughout the distribution but are largest below the median males are more affected than females consistent with growing evidence that boys are less resilient to early environmental insults the long term effects seem primarily driven by changes in prenatal health rather than changes in the childhood environment

the wisconsin child support assurance system estimated effects on poverty labor supply caseloads and costs the economic impact of a child support assurance system csas is simulated with microdata on custodial families in wisconsin the csas includes a uniform child support standard automatic wage withholding a minimum child support benefit and wage subsidy for eligible families the simulation incorporates a model of the labor supply decision representing the custodial parent s choice of whether to participate in csas or in the current afdc system the results suggest that csas can significantly reduce poverty as well as welfare caseloads if child support collections increase by one half of the difference between estimated ability to pay child support and current collections csas will be less costly than the current system

specialization and human capital incentives for specialization trade and the production of comparative advantage through investment are shown to arise from increasing returns to utilization of human capital indivisibilities imply fixed cost elements of investment that are independent of subsequent utilization hence the rate of return is increasing in utilization and is maximized by utilizing specialized skills as intensively as possible identically endowed individuals have incentives to specialize their investments in skills and trade with each other for this reason even if production technology exhibits constant returns to scale

forecasting the impact of renewable energies in competition with non renewable sources abstract the diffusion dynamics of traditional and clean energy systems in the energy mix are studied in a competition modeling where their interacting life cycles are jointly described competition has only been considered recently since diffusion competition models are not easy to be implemented data are represented by yearly consumptions in mtoe of traditional sources coal oil gas and nuclear systems and a selection of renewable sources hydroelectric wind and solar power for the us europe china and india from 1965 to 2014 for each case we will investigate whether the diffusion level of traditional sources sustains or prevents the spread of renewables and vice versa for the us and europe we will take into account the link between the 2008 2009 financial crisis and the slowdown in consumptions as a matter of fact the energy sector is characterized by uncertainty due to the depletion of finite energy sources the technological and economical problems of renewables and the hypothesis of shale gas as a possible bridge to renewables that could delay the spread of latter ones in this scenario six year forecasts are provided until 2020

fast food consumption and the ban on advertising targeting children the quebec experience abstract amid growing concerns about childhood obesity and the associated health risks several countries are considering banning fast food advertising targeting children in this article the authors study the effect of such a ban in the canadian province of quebec using household expenditure survey data from 1984 to 1992 authors examine whether expenditure on fast food is lower in those groups affected by the ban than in those that are not the authors use a triple difference indifference methodology by appropriately defining treatment and control groups and find that the ban s effectiveness is not a result of the decrease in fast food expenditures per week but rather of the decrease in purchase propensity by 13 per week overall the authors estimate that the ban reduced fast food consumption by us 88 million per year the study suggests that advertising bans can be effective provided media markets do not overlap

unintended consequences of maternity leave legislation the case of colombia abstract we estimate the impact on female labor outcomes of the extension in maternity leave period from 12 to 14 weeks an amendment to the colombian labor law in 2011 to identify this impact we compare labor market outcomes of different groups of individuals with women of child bearing age first we compared two groups of women with different fertility rates low elasticity of substitution finding that as result of the extension women in the high fertility age group experience an increase in inactivity informality and self employment when comparing high fertility age women with men in the same age group high elasticity of substitution we find that the extension increases the probability of unemployment informality and self employment and decreases wages of women compared with men

competition of firms discriminatory pricing and location1 two costlessly mobile firms are to be located in a market region a subset of the plane the firms compete by setting locations and delivered price schedules to study this competitive stiuation an appropriate extensive form game is defined along with an appropri ate noncooperative solution concept existence and general properties of the equilibrium are demonstrated among the results are each firm increases its profit by locating so as to decrease total cost to both firms of serving the market firms will never locate coinciden tally if they have identical production costs and transport cost rates or if these are different and the firms are located in a circular market region having a uniform demand distribution this paper studies competition between two profit maximizing firms in space who are costlessly mobile and may discriminate in price we will allow the firms to set locations and delivered price schedules and we will be concerned with the existence and properties of equilibria in location and price starting with hotelling 9 the spatial competition literature has focused on location on bounded linear markets by two or more firms hotelling assumed identical firms that produced a single good with constant cost of production and considered consumers to be uniformly distributed and to have inelastic demand he also assumed that the consumers pay transport cost and purchase the good from the cheapest source hotelling claimed that a nash equilibrium in locations for the two firm market existed and yielded back to back locations at the center of the market many authors most recently d aspremont gabszewicz and thisse 2 have noted that an equilbrium in prices and location does not exist for hotelling s model however if the firms employ identical exogeneously specified prices hotelling s conclusions hold subsequent work by smithies 14 hartwick and hartwick 7 and eaton 3 claimed to show that a nash equi librium in f o b prices and locations can exist in markets with a uniform distribu tion of consumers each of whom have identical elastic demand functions for the two and three firm problems the work of d aspremont et al casts doubt on these conclusions without the adoption of restrictive conditions our work contrasts with these works and related research which has dealt with linear markets with uniform distributions of customers and with identical firms our work will involve markets that are subsets of the plane having nonuniform distributions of customers our firms will be allowed to be different that is have differences in production and transport costs however the fundamental difference in our approach is that our firms will set discriminatory prices and not price f o b in many ways our work will represent the discriminatory pricing

child support reform and the labor supply of lone mothers in the united kingdom the reform of child support arrangements including their treatment by the welfare system has been on the policy agenda in a number of countries in recent years this paper simulates the impact of a reform that recently has been implemented in the united kingdom the analysis is based on estimates of a model of discrete choice labor supply for a sample of u k lone mothers we suggest that reform will induce a major reduction in welfare expenditures on lone mothers and a significant rise in their labor force participation due to greater work incentives associated with the changes

the employment effects of low wage subsidies abstract low wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled but the empirical evidence on their effects is still scarce this paper examines the employment effects of a finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme which is targeted at the employers of older full time low wage workers the system s clear eligibility criteria open up an opportunity for a reliable estimation of the causal impacts of the subsidy scheme our results indicate that the subsidy system had no effect on the employment rate or wages of the eligible groups but it increased slightly working hours among those already at work

the elusive wage benefit trade off the case of employer provided health insurance this study shows that standard regressions estimated to measure a trade off between wages and health insurance are misspecified by insufficiently accounting for establishment and firm size an interactive size corrected specification is more likely to reveal a trade off furthermore because insurance decisions are typically made by firms and wages set by establishments the insurance constraint on establishments in multi establishment firms weakens the trade off we use model generated data to show that both factors contribute to the failure in previous research to identify a trade off and data from a cross section of northern californian establishments to test for a trade off in multi establishment and single establishment firms

parental leave a policy evaluation of the swedish daddy month reform abstract many governments are making attempts to increase fathers share of parental leave in order to correct for unequal labor market outcomes using swedish data we ask whether fathers can be encouraged to take more parental leave in order to mitigate the negative consequences of mothers career interruptions the unique data stem from a reform of parental leave resulting in a clean natural experiment data comprise all children born before control group and after treatment group the date of implementation of the reform in cohorts of up to 27 000 newborns mothers and fathers we find strong short term effects of the incentives on male parental leave but no behavioral effects in the household fathers in the treatment group do not take larger shares of the leave taken for care of sick children which is our measure for household work we also investigate a second data set on fathers and mothers long term wages and employment without finding evidence for substantial effects of the reform

on the efficiency of location decisions under discriminatory pricing abstract the paper analyzes the question of whether delivered pricing policies give rise to an inefficient location of firms and in particular to a geographical distribution of capacity which is overly concentrated the analysis adds to the literature on spatial pricing and location decisions the element of uncertainty over the timely delivery of products and therefore the possibility that risk averse consumers may be willing to pay a higher delivered price for products if they can hedge and divide their orders among two suppliers the results are in strong contradiction to the common belief that identical delivered pricing systems produce a highly inefficient distribution and that fob would yield the optimal location however it is shown that in markets with coordination problems the concern about excessive concentration of productive capacity may be legitimate

the principle of minimum differentiation revisited abstract hotelling s model of differentiated products is examined and modified so that consumers have relatively low reservation prices for the differentiated products the problem of existence of a nash equilibrium in prices in a duopoly with given products is analysed when the reservation price is relatively low a nash equilibrium in prices exists for a larger range of products than when the reservation price is infinite next i examine product competition with instantaneous adjustment to the nash equilibrium prices of the previous game firms competing in a nash fashion have tendencies to move away from each other and try to achieve local monopolistic positions this is in sharp contrast with the acclaimed principle of minimum differentiation of the original model of hotelling of high reservation price where firms clustered in the product space

analysis of the policy effects of downstream feed in tariff on china s solar photovoltaic industry abstract the chinese government initiated the feed in tariff fit policy for downstream power generation in august 2013 the effectiveness of the downstream fit policy has attracted the attention of academia and government using the quarterly data of listed solar pv companies between 2009 and 2015 this paper provides an empirical analysis regarding the effects of the downstream fit policy we find that 1 the fit policy has significantly enhanced the inventory turnover of listed pv firms and improved their profitability 2 the fit policy has significant effects on the inventory turnover of midstream companies and mixed industry chain companies mainly engaged in downstream operations 3 fit policy is more favorable towards increasing the inventory turnover of private enterprises our results indicate that the fit policy can have substantial effects on the sustainable development of china s solar photovoltaic industry

the family gap for young women in the united states and britain can maternity leave make a difference in the united states and britain there is a family gap between the wages of mothers and other women differential returns to marital and parental status explain 40 50 of the gender gap another 30 40 is explained by women s lower levels of work experience and lower returns to experience taking advantage of quasi experiments in job protected maternity leave in the united states and britain this article finds that women who had leave coverage and returned to work after childbirth received a wage premium that offset the negative wage effects of children

child support and partnership dissolution this article studies the determinants of partnership dissolution and focuses on the role of child support we exploit the variation in child support liabilities and entitlements driven in part by the introduction of a new set of complex rules that determined child support liability in the uk and by their interaction with welfare rules our panel has the virtue that the post 1993 variation in child support liability for all couples in partnerships formed prior to 1993 is unanticipated we find strong evidence that the resulting large child support liabilities significantly reduced dissolution risks

wind turbine manufacturing in china a review abstract domestic wind turbine manufacturing sector in china has experienced development stages starting from scratch to mass production during the 11th fyp period 2006 2010 the main goal of wind power policy in china is to promote the commercialization of wind power by large scale deployment of wind farms this goal has been realized to a great extent and now the cost of wind power generation is nearly comparable to coal fired power generation in china the industry policy which devotes to mass production of domestic wind turbines is also largely successful the purpose of the paper is to provide an overview on wind turbine manufacturing sector in china the policy evolution in different stages achievements and challenges pertinent to the sector are addressed in the paper key findings are that the misleading industry policy which provides strong incentive to blind entrance and competition for scale and price and restrains innovation as well is the key obstacle for the sustainable development of the sector deficient technology standard and qualification system and the misplaced franchise bidding system also indulge vicious competition and oversupply creating a level playground for all turbine supplies providing strong incentive to innovative manufacturers establishing thorough and practicable standard and qualification system and fine tuning the directive of the franchise bidding system towards technology and service are the primary policy implications proposed by our study

gender economics an assessment concerns about gender equality have jumped to the forefront of public debate in recent years and gender economics is slowly affirming its place as a major field of study this assessment examines where we are in terms of gender equality it reviews the theoretical foundations that can explain existing inequalities and documents the empirical findings supported by the theories identifying avenues for future research and providing a fruitful framework to think about the effectiveness of policies and interventions targeting gender inequality in doing so i provide the foundations against which the contributions in this issue can be placed

wage offers and full time and part time employment by british women strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that women receive lower wage offers in part time jobs than in full time jobs is provided by estimation of wage offer functions for british women which control for self selection into these two types of jobs analysis of married women s employment decisions indicates that the difference in a woman s expected wage offers between full time and part time employment is an important determinant of whether she works full time while husband s income mainly affects the decision of whether to work in addition it appears that women who work despite having observed characteristics that discourage employment are much more likely to work part time

technology choice for reducing nox emissions an empirical study of chinese power plants abstract this study investigates the choices of denitration technology in the chinese thermal power sector using a multinomial logit model of the choices among 1135 boilers in thermal power plants operating in china in 2013 we analyze how the choices were influenced by government policies the stringency of national standards and subsidies for using specific technology the results are as follows first china s 12th five year plan might make it more attractive for plants to choose the cheapest denitration technology among the three options examined in this study second technology choices differed significantly by region before the 12th five year plan period these differences have disappeared perhaps due to the economic development across all regions of china third electricity price subsidies offered to plants that use denitration equipment might affect their technology choice these results suggests that plants might choose the cheapest technology available in order to lower investment costs

causal effects of paternity leave on children and parents reserving a share of the parental leave period for fathers is considered necessary in order to induce fathers to take leave and to increase men s participation in child rearing we investigate how a parental leave reform directed towards fathers affected leave taking and in turn children s and parents long term outcomes a paternal leave quota greatly increases the share of men taking paternity leave we find evidence that children s school performance improves as a result particularly in families where the father has higher education than the mother we find no evidence that paternity leave counters the traditional allocation of parents labor supply

do generous parental leave policies help top female earners generous government mandated parental leave is generally viewed as an effective policy to support women s careers around childbirth but does it help women to reach top positions in the upper pay echelon of their firms using longitudinal employer employee matched data for the entire norwegian population we address this question exploiting a series of reforms that expanded paid leave from 30 weeks in 1989 to 52 weeks in 1993 the representation of women in top positions has only moderately increased over time and career profiles of female top earners within firms are significantly different from those of their male counterparts the reforms did not affect and possibly decreased the probability for women to be at the top over their life cycle we discuss some implications of this result to put into perspective the design of new family friendly policy interventions

the econometrics of piecewise linear budget constraints a survey and exposition of the maximum likelihood method in this article maximum likelihood techniques for estimating consumer demand functions when budget constraints are piecewise linear are exposited and surveyed consumer demand functions are formally derived under such constraints and it is shown that the functions are themselves nonlinear as a result the econometric problems in estimating such functions are exposited and the importance of the stochastic specification is stressed in particular the specification of both unobserved heterogeneity of preferences and measurement error econometric issues in estimation and testing are discussed and the results of the studies that have been conducted to date are surveyed

discrete hours labour supply modelling specification estimation and simulation the assumption behind discrete hours labour supply modelling is that utility maximising individuals choose from a relatively small number of hours levels rather than being able to vary hours worked continuously such models are becoming widely used in view of their substantial advantages compared with a continuous hours approach when estimating and their role in tax policy microsimulation this paper provides an introduction to the basic analytics of discrete hours labour supply modelling special attention is given to model specification maximum likelihood estimation and microsimulation of tax reforms the analysis is at each stage illustrated by the use of numerical examples at the end an empirical example of a hypothetical policy change to the social security system is given to illustrate the role of discrete hours microsimulation in the analysis of tax and transfer policy changes

low or no subsidy proposing a regional power grid based wind power feed in tariff benchmark price mechanism in china abstract the chinese government plans to adopt a low or no subsidy policy mechanism on renewable energy power development in the future to achieve a balance between reducing financial burden on the government and ensuring profitability of investors as well as to account for the regional differences in china a novel regional wind power grid feed in tariff benchmark price mechanism by net present value npv method and real option ro method is proposed in this paper the results voice support on the appropriateness of gradually decreasing the wind feed in tariff fit benchmark price to as low as the coal fired fit the proposed fit price level is presented as a price range on the basis of a guaranteed internal rate of return irr falls in between 8 to 15 for wind power investors the results indicate that the current fit price should be readjusted and redistributed although the fit price in central and south china grids is recommended to be relatively high the npv of wind farm project value in six regional grids are at the same level

the impact of government subsidies and enterprises r d investment a panel data study from renewable energy in china in this research we aim to understand the influence of government subsidies on enterprises research and development r d investment behavior particularly in china s renewable energy sector we are also interested in examining how the attributes of enterprise ownership act as a moderating variable for the relationship between government subsidies and r d investment behavior three classical panel data analysis models including the pooled ordinary least squares ols model the fixed effect model and the random effect model are employed we find that government subsidies have a significant crowding out influence on enterprises r d investment behavior and that the influence is further moderated by the attributes of enterprise ownership moreover a panel threshold regression model is used to demonstrate how the influence of government subsidies on enterprises r d investment behavior will change when government subsidies increase two thresholds 0 6 and 10 1 are identified we recommend that relevant government departments should motivate enterprise r d investment behavioral intention by increasing subsidies within a certain range different attributes of enterprise ownership should also be considered as part of policy reform and re structuring relating to government subsidies

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

modelling the take up of means tested benefits the case of housing benefits in the united kingdom official estimates of housing benefit take up rates suggest that up to two million families in the united kingdom ma y not be receiving the help with their housing costs to which they ar e entitled the authors interest in the take up of means tested bene fits is therefore motivated by two concerns the first is the governm ent revenue implications of a change to benefit entitlement levels t he second relates to the welfare of individuals who fail to claim the ir entitlement to benefit in this paper the authors investigate the relationship between the take up of means tested housing benefit in dividual socioeconomic characteristics and the level of entitlement copyright 1987 by royal economic society

the incidence of mandated maternity benefits i consider the labor market effects of mandates which raise the costs of employing a demographically identifiable group the efficiency of these policies will be largely dependent on the extent to which their costs are shifted to group specific wages i study several state and federal mandates which stipulated that childbirth be covered comprehensively in health insurance plans raising the relative cost of insuring women of childbearing age i find substantial shifting of the costs of these mandates to the wages of the targeted group correspondingly i find little effect on total labor input for that group jel 118 j32 h51 in an era of tight fiscal budget constraints mandating employer provision of workplace benefits to employees is an attractive means for a government to finance its policy agenda consequently in recent years there has been a growth of interest in mandated benefits as a tool of social policy for example the centerpiece of president bill clinton s health care proposal is mandated employer provision of health insurance and more than 20 states have man

welfare benefits and lone parents employment in great britain the analysis pools ten years of general household surveys to identify the effects of britain s welfare benefit system on a lone mother s probability of employment it confirms the prediction that because of the implicit 100 percent tax rate in the system higher nonlabor income other than welfare benefits increases the probability while a higher benefit guarantee reduces it the analysis also confirms that among women who could never be eligible for benefits higher nonlabor income reduces the probability of employment and the guarantee has no effect

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

government subsidies for the chinese photovoltaic industry abstract since 2009 the subsidy for large scale photovoltaic pv power plants had been launched which effectively promoted the development of pv industry at the same time negative effects like serious oversupply of pv industry were brought about by these large scale governmental subsidies although governmental subsidy strongly supports the china pv companies few of them have competitiveness in the global market this dramatically conflictive phenomenon attracted many researchers attentions in recent years however investigations on the best entry and exit occasions of governmental subsidies for the pv industry were rarely reported in previous studies therefore based on the existing division method of enterprise development model classification of 72 pv companies listed in shanghai and shenzhen stock exchanges in china was firstly carried out in this paper this is followed by studying the influence of governmental subsidies on the indexes of different stages of enterprise development finally a conclusion was drawn that the governmental subsidies at early exploratory stage can maximize the social and economic effects suggesting the best entry occasion and subsidies at intermediate stage and mature stage have little effects on its turnover and aggravate the overcapacity of pv supply suggesting a suitable exit occasion

decomposition analysis of patenting in renewable energy technologies from an extended lmdi approach perspective based on three five year plan periods in china abstract renewable energy technological innovation is greatly influenced by renewable energy markets and policies in this regard the paper decomposes nine influencing factors of patents of a specific renewable energy technology using the extended logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method from 2001 to 2015 the differences in a specific renewable energy technological innovation and development during the three five year plan periods is prioritized at the national level the contribution of the increase in patents of renewable energy technologies mainly lies in the patents of solar energy technology and wind energy technology but during the 12th five year plan period the increments of their patent counts significantly decline due to priority given to the development of innovation in a specific renewable energy technology the improvement in the efficiency of r d spending the increases in the share of r d spending and the share of renewable energy low carbon economy concept advocacy and carbon scale expansion the patent counts of a specific renewable energy technology will increase additionally the factors affecting innovation in a specific renewable energy technology at the different economic development levels as well as different resource distribution levels are investigated

overall review of renewable energy subsidy policies in china contradictions of intentions and effects abstract china is vast abundant and particularly plentiful in energy sources due to which it has obtained remarkable achievements on economy however its energy structure is too simple to support the sustainable development of economy as coal still contributes to the majority of energy consumption in china as a consequence renewable energy law was enacted in 2005 and chinese government announced a series of policies to boom renewable energy industry subsidy policy is one of the major forms of these policies this paper aims to present these subsidy policies and to analyze their effects according to relative data in energy industry 2005 2013 to find out the deficiencies and enlighten possible policy improvements the original intentions and abstracts of 5 different levels of subsidy related policies are summarized and the effects in reality are attentively analyzed it can be concluded that subsidy policies have different short term effect on different renewable energies and they all show some negative effect to a certain extent 6 core problems are summarized in this paper and remedy strategies are suggested

heterogeneity and the effect of mental health parity mandates on the labor market health insurance benefit mandates are believed to have adverse effects on the labor market but efforts to document such effects for mental health parity mandates have had limited success i show that one reason for this failure is that the association between parity mandates and labor market outcomes vary with mental distress accounting for this heterogeneity i find adverse labor market effects for non distressed individuals but favorable effects for moderately distressed individuals and individuals with a moderately distressed family member on net i conclude that the mandates are welfare increasing for moderately distressed workers and their families but may be welfare decreasing for non distressed individuals

direct and cross effects of employment protection the case of parental childcare i examine whether employment protection affects the willingness of working parents to provide childcare using a reform that made it easier for employers to dismiss workers in small firms i find that softer employment protection reduces the use of temporary parental leave among directly treated fathers in addition i find that households respond to an increase in the dismissal risk by reducing temporary parental leave for the indirectly treated spouse spousal labor supply can thus serve as informal insurance against adverse income shocks

equal but inequitable who benefits from gender neutral tenure clock stopping policies many skilled professional occupations are characterized by an early period of intensive skill accumulation and career establishment examples include law firm associates surgical residents and untenured faculty at research intensive universities high female exit rates are sometimes blamed on the inability of new mothers to survive the sustained negative productivity shock associated with childbearing and early childrearing in these environments gender neutral family policies have been adopted in some professions in an attempt to level the playing field the gender neutral tenure clock stopping policies adopted by the majority of research intensive universities in the united states in recent decades are an excellent example but to date there is no empirical evidence showing that these policies help women using a unique data set on the universe of assistant professor hires at top 50 economics departments from 1985 2004 we show that the adoption of gender neutral tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially increasing male tenure rates

back to work parental benefits and mothers labor market outcomes in the medium run the authors estimate policy impacts of a generous parental benefit in germany by using a natural experiment and german census data they estimate policy effects for the short run first two years a

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

the dark side of sunshine regulatory oversight and status quo bias abstract as the mortgage foreclosure crisis accelerated in the u s in the late 2000s state level policymakers implemented measures designed to protect consumers and stem the tide of foreclosures one form of policy was simply to require lenders to report on foreclosure prevention activities such policies represented a shift from the status quo for mortgage loan servicing firms operating under incomplete information doing nothing with non paying loans while waiting for more information to be revealed to either foreclosing on the borrower or offering the borrower a modification of loan terms using a difference in difference in differences empirical strategy we exploit one policy implemented in maryland for a subset of mortgage servicers and find evidence that firms perform more loan modifications as well as file more foreclosures increasing foreclosure filings was contrary to the intent of the policy suggesting that policymakers should be aware of how firms exhibit systematic biases much like individuals

coase lecture the glass ceiling despite decades of progress women remain underrepresented in the upper part of the earnings distribution we review the recent research trying to explain this phenomenon after briefly revisiting gender differences in education we turn our attention to a body of work that has argued that gender differences in psychological attributes are holding back women s earnings we then review another active area of research focused on the challenges that women may face when trying to juggle competing demands on their time in the workplace and the home particularly when the home includes children we discuss recent work documenting women s greater demand for flexibility in the workplace as well as work measuring the labour market penalties associated with such demand for flexibility particularly in the higher paying occupations in the economy we highlight possible countervailing forces both at work and at home that may explain why these work family considerations may remain highly relevant to today s glass ceiling despite reduced time spent in non market work and a trend towards a more equal division of non market work between men and women finally we discuss the role that public policy and human resource practices may play in adding more cracks to the glass ceiling

baby steps the gender division of childcare during the covid 19 pandemic the nature and scale of the shocks to the demand for and the supply of home childcare during the covid 19 pandemic provide a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of the division of home labour and the determinants of specialization within the household we collected real time data on daily lives to document the impact of measures to control covid 19 on uk families with children under the age of 12 we document that these families have been doing the equivalent of a working week in childcare with mothers bearing most of the burden the additional hours of childcare done by women are less sensitive to their employment than they are for men leaving many women juggling work and a lot more childcare with likely adverse effects on their mental health and future careers however some households those in which men have not been working have taken greater steps towards an equal allocation offering the prospect of sharing the burden of childcare more equally in the future

male female wage differentials in job ladders much of the male female wage differential exists because men and women are assigned to different jobs within narrow job categories there is no male female differential only a tortured taste theory of discrimination can reconcile these facts we argue that differential movement along job ladders entails comparative advantage so the ability standard for promotion is higher for women this implies that more able women will be passed over in favor of less able men women assumed to have the same ability distribution as men earn less the differential reflects females lower promotion probability not within job discrimination

work incentives in the afdc system an analysis of the 1981 reforms the road to welfare reform increasingly appears to be one of the rockier paths the united states has traversed indeed by all outward appearances it is not even clear whether the current path runs uphill or downhill as far as work incentives in the welfare system are concerned economists of all political persuasions from milton friedman to james tobin have agreed that the uphill direction is that which leads to lower tax rates i e lower benefit reduction rates however as with free trade the near unanimity of opinion among economists has strangely only occasionally persuaded a majority of the nation s representatives to vote to go uphill the legislative history so illustrates from 1935 when the aid to families with dependent children afdc program was enacted to the 1967 social security amendments the tax rate in the program was 100 percent that is benefits were reduced by one dollar for every extra dollar earned with the 1967 amendments congress lowered the tax rate to 67 percent and in the heady atmosphere of the 1960 s it was expected that further progress in this direction would be made and that the tax rate would be lowered further indeed the family assistance plan subsequently proposed by president nixon would have lowered tax rates however the legislation passed the house but not the senate the ford administration considered welfare reform proposals internally but never proposed legislation while the carter administration proposed a massive welfare reform plan that met with no legislative success welfare reform was finally achieved in 1981 when the omnibus budget reconciliation act obra was enacted but obra increased the tax rate back to 100 percent the level prevailing prior to 1967 in retrospect it appears that 1967 marked the end not the beginning of legislative progress on work incentives in the welfare system in this paper i shall report the results of recent research that complicates the issue considerably by questioning whether lower tax rates do in fact provide work incentives the findings themselves seesaw not unlike the path of welfare reform itself first on a theoretical basis it appears that lower tax rates in a welfare program do not necessarily increase labor supply in the low income population as a whole contrary to the conventional wisdom in fact it also appears that members of the reagan administration were aware of this all along well in advance of the economics profession this theoretical ambiguity has fairly fundamental implications for the work incentive issue in welfare reform second nevertheless the empirical resolution of the ambiguity provided by existing econometric estimates in the labor supply literature and by estimates of the effect of afdc on labor supply indicates that a lower tax rate would indeed increase labor supply in the low income population as a whole and that a higher tax rate would decrease it thus the conventional wisdom is correct even though based upon an incorrect tdiscussants henry aaron the brookings institution and university of maryland harold watts columbia university edward gramlich university of michigan

product differentiation with consumer arbitrage abstract we determine the equilibrium to a game where two firms set delivered price schedules and consumers simultaneously declare where they want to take delivery of the product equilibrium pricing policies provide incentives for consumers not to demand their preferred varieties but rather to purchase more standard varieties this behavior may decrease market diversity the demanded varieties tend to agglomerate around the market center we also show that it is efficient for the cost of adapting the product to consumers to be shared through arbitrage but oligopoly gives rise to an inefficient level of personal arbitrage

is biomass power a good choice for governments in china abstract to fulfill the target of emissions reduction the chinese government has made many efforts to develop renewable energy biomass power can provide stable power supply avoid wasting straw resources and protect rural environment at the same time however the development of renewable power requires subsidies from the government but increased subsidies placed heavy burden on the governments whereas these governments want to develop renewable energy with minimum costs this paper attempts to answer the question that whether the development of biomass power is a good choice for local governments in china for this purpose the goal of emissions reduction and subsidies of renewable energy powers were discussed the main conclusion is that although the subsidies for biomass power were slightly higher than those for wind power biomass power is a good choice for governments considering other benefits especially for regions with rich agricultural and forest residues in the future regional and local conditions should be considered in the planning of biomass power development

household unemployment and the labour supply of married women a recent reform to the uk unemployment insurance ui system has reduced the duration of entitlement from 12 to six months the ui and welfare systems interact in the uk in such a way that exhaustion of ut for married individuals has potentially large disincentive effects on the labour supply of spouses a model of labour supply is estimated for married women allowing for endogenous unemployment durations of husbands and wives we distinguish between transfer programme induced incentive effects correlation between labour supply and wages within couples complementarity between the leisure times of spouses and a discouraged worker effect

taxation in empirical labour supply models lone mothers in the uk taxation has become an integral part of the empirical specification of labour supply models the opportunity set available to workers is made significantly non linear by the workings of the tax and benefit system and this in turn complicates an individual s optimal choice of labour supply in such a framework the relationship between hours of work gross wages and other income is necessarily non linear moreover the marginal wage and virtual income at any chosen hours of work are an implicit function of the hours choice itself to guarantee a unique solution to this choice problem consumer theory places integrability conditions on the form of wage and income derivatives of labour supply similarly once the problem is made stochastic and econometric methods are utilised to recover unknown parameters a coherency condition is required to define a well behaved econometric model see heckman i 978 and gourieroux et al i980 in the labour supply and taxation framework these two conditions are quite naturally closely related they do however have implications for labour supply specification and the reliability of tax reform simulations based on empirical labour supply models for the case of the linear labour supply model macurdy et al i990 document the potential for misleading results that may occur once a linear model is utilised in a framework with non linear taxation such a specification all but guarantees a global forward sloping labour supply function which is not a requirement of economic theory and is empirically often too restrictive in this paper we focus on two issues the first relates to the specification of a flexible model allowing backward bending labour supply the second issue relates to the statistical coherency of such a model in the presence of non linear taxation the empirical application in this paper concerns the labour supply behaviour of lone mothers in the uk this group face a highly non linear budget constraint the analysis of their labour supply responses is crucial for the design of effective policy reforms we use a labour supply specification suggested by

on the strategic choice of spatial price policy the strategic incentives with respect to the choice of price policy in spatial competition are analyzed in a duopoly model price discrimination emerges as the unique equilibriu m outcome in games with either simultaneous choice of policy and pric e or sequential choice where firms may commit first to uniform mill p ricing before the actual market stage nevertheless profits may be h igher with uniform pricing the authors models are applied to analyz e some common business practices that arise in geographical pricing like the basing point system and in the pricing of varieties or opti ons from a base product in a product differentiation context copyright 1988 by american economic association

career interruptions and subsequent earnings a reexamination using swedish data this paper reexamines the link between career interruptions and subsequent wages using a rich new swedish dataset we are able to disaggregate time out of work into several components regressing

the economic consequences of parental leave mandates lessons from europe this study investigates the economic consequences of rights to paid parental leave in nine european countries over the 1969 through 1993 period since women use virtually all parental leave in most nations men constitute a reasonable comparison group and most of the analysis examines how changes in paid leave affect the gap between female and male labor market outcomes the employment to populations ratios of women in their prime childbearing years are also compared with those of corresponding aged men and older females parental leave is associated with increases in women s employment but with reductions in their relative wages at extended durations

natural natural experiments in economics the recent literature exploiting natural events as natural experiment instruments is reviewed to assess to what extent it has advanced empirical knowledge a weakness of the studies that adopt this approach is that the necessary set of behavioral market and technological assumptions made by the authors in justifying their interpretations of the estimates is often absent the methodology and findings from twenty studies are summarized and simple economic models are used to elucidate the implicit assumptions made by the authors and to demonstrate the sensitivity of the interpretations of the findings to the relaxation of some of these assumptions