the uk demand for cigarettes 1954 1986 a double hurdle approach the double hurdle perspective suggests that it is crucial to distinguish between per capita and per smoker consumption when estimating the demand for cigarettes this paper presents a two equation model which identifies consumption and participation as two separate decisions the model is estimated with annual data on u k cigarette expenditure and participation rates highlighting the differing influence of prices income and health scares on the participation rate and on smokers demand for cigarettes

candidate reputations and the incumbency effect abstract a major shortcoming of the classical median voter model is that its central prediction convergence of platforms to the median voter s ideal is seldom observed one reason is that the classical model neglects the importance of voter expectations as a determinant of votes here we associate voters expectations about candidates with past as well as current candidate pronouncements and assume that incumbents whose actions are consistent with their reputations are perceived as less risky than challengers in equilibrium candidates choose distinct platforms typically neither adopts the median voter s ideal point either candidate may win depending on how well the incumbent s reputation reflects current voter tastes and how relatively risky the electorate perceives the challenger to be

a spatial model of legislative voting with perceptual error this paper presents a unidimensional spatial model of voting in which members of congress vote based on an imprecise perception of roll call alternatives the model is applied to the senate roll call votes of 1977 to estimate the ideal points of the senators and to examine the role of a liberal conservative dimension in describing votes on economic issues relative to social issues in light of the spatial model the paper argues that standard models of roll call voting are not based on a theory of choice and hence that it is difficult to interpret their results alternatives to standard models based on the spatial model are developed and are used to analyze the role of ideology in deciding a specific economic issue coal strip mining

estimating dynamic demand for cigarettes using panel data the effects of bootlegging taxation and advertising reconsidered abstracct a dynamic demand for cigarette consumption is estimated using pooled data of 46 states over the period 1963 to 1980 a price elasticity of 0 2 and an insignificant income elasticity is found using pooled estimation techniques the bootlegging effect is modeled explicitly using neighboring price the effect is found to be significant two major policy issues are analyzed in light of these new estimates 1 cigarette taxation is found to be an effective tool for generating revenues even though there may be spillover effects to neighboring states where bootlegging is significant 2 the effects of the fairness doctrine act and the advertising ban on cigarette consumption are re examined we find mild support for the effectiveness of subsidized anti smoking messages in reducing cigarette consumption and no support for the thesis that the ban on advertising helps to increase per capita consumption

skills schooling and household income in ghana this article examines the impact of cognitive skills on the income of households in ghana it uses scores on mathematics and english tests to measure cognitive skills and estimates the returns to these skills based on farm profit off farm income and total income the article uses powell s censored least absolute deviations and symmetrically trimmed least squares estimators to estimate farm and off farm income in contrast to heckman s two step or the tobit estimator powell s estimators are consistent in the presence of heteroscedasticity and are robust to other violations of normality the results show that cognitive skills have a positive effect on total and off farm income but do not have a statistically significant effect on farm income

assessing the influence of campaign expenditures on voting behavior with a comprehensive electoral market model this paper extends previous single equation econometric modeling efforts of the sales advertising relationship in elections operating within the perspective of the general demand context of voting behavior it develops a comprehensive electoral market model that takes account of potential simultaneous relationships among votes cast campaign expenditures and voting participation turnout the model is estimated using 3sls techniques with aggregate electoral district data from each of eight canadian provincial elections the model appears to yield consistent and therefore generalizable empirical results across the eight election events chief among the empirical results is the expected relationship between campaign efforts and voting behavior own communications efforts as proxied by campaign expenditures have a positive impact on votes received while competitive communications efforts draw votes away from a candidate

the effects of price and smoking risk information on the demand for tobacco in taiwan an empirical study this study evaluates the effects of a cigarette price increase and smoking risk information on tobacco consumption in taiwan tobacco price expenditure and an index of smoking risk information for taiwan were introduced into a central bureau of statistics cbs demand model to estimate several cigarette demand elasticity coefficients according to this model increasing the cigarette price is a more effective means of reducing cigarette consumption than disseminating more risk information in addition we found that a price rise of nt 5 per cigarette pack would cause a reduction in the consumption of domestic and imported cigarettes of 3 23 and 4 86 packs per capita respectively total per capita consumption of cigarettes would be reduced annually by 8 09 packs 7 56 despite this reduction in cigarette consumption the increase in cigarette price would at the same time lead to a significant net increase in tax revenue to the taiwan government

issue linkages in international crisis bargaining students of international relations have long been concerned with questions regarding the impact of issue linkages on bargaining outcomes unfortunately the body of theory attempting to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis of issue linkages is woefully underdeveloped in this study i contribute to the development of this theory with a particular emphasis on accounting for cases in which issue linkage fails in international crisis bargaining the spatial model of crisis bargaining which is a formal model constituting a synthesis of the spatial theory of voting and traditional utility based bargaining theory is used to develop a theory of issue linkages and to address a number of points regarding linkage strategy that are found in the literature after demonstrating how linking issues can affect the outcome of an international crisis i argue that existing explanations for linkage failure are inadequate the majority of the paper is devoted to determining what characteristics of the issues involved and of the disputants determine the likelihood that a linkage attempt will be successful i conclude with a brief discussion relating these results to the literature on crisis management

u s presidential elections 1968 80 a spatial analysis a methodology is presented for empirical estimation of spatial models of voting in mass elections the basic choice model posits utility functions that depend on spatial distance and a random error term the parameters of the utility functions are estimated by a polytomous logit model which is applied to spatial maps of voters and candidates for all presidential elections since 1968 these maps indicate that presidential candidates take positions at the periphery of the distribution of voters results based on these maps support the hypothesis of sincere spatial voting in two candidate elections in three candidate elections the coefficients of the voter utility function adjust to proxy for the lesser viability of the minor party candidate in contrast to choice turnout shows only weak spatial effects the data are inconsistent with the proposition that turnout is low because voters are not offered distinct alternatives while the utility function used by voters appears stable through time and candidate and voter positions appear stable in the last few months prior to an election voter and candidate positions exhibit substantial change over longer time periods

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

educational policy and labour productivity an output accounting exercise what is the contribution of education to output productivity or their growth economists have tried to answer this question using output accounting or growth accounting by the decomposing of output or its growth into the contributions of various factors including education the approach in this paper is output accounting of which krueger i968 provides an early example using crude aggregate census data on some 20 mostly developing countries krueger posed the question how much do differences in educational endowments lead to differences in per capita income she estimated the effect on per capita income in the united states of assuming not the u s educational distribution but the distribution in each other country the size of this effect xw as then related to the differences in per capita income krueger explained more than half the difference in per capita income by differences in human capital and so concluded that human capital defined more broadly than educational attainment contributed more than all other factors combined another version of the same exercise but using a three factor production function was conducted by fallon and layard i 9 75 with similar data sources but for a different set of countries they found the contribution of their index of human capital to be lower than krueger s estimate and generally lower than that of physical capital output and growth accounting both suffer from well known drawbacks see for instance bowman i980 and nelson i98i first failing to take account of the other determinants of income can bias estimates of the difference in income and productivity attributable to education secondly in simply assuming that the standardised earnings difference between the educated

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

differential consumer demand systems it is shown in this paper that several well known systems like the rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system can be seen as different parametrizations of the budget share differential equation using a third parametrization a new system called the cbs system is developed and discussed special attention is given to the relative price version of the system and in particular to the special case of preference independence some estimates for the netherlands based on time series for 1953 1981 using various approaches are presented

a new approach to the spatial theory of electoral competition in his unidimensional model of electoral competition downs argues that voters use party ideology as an informational short cut for forecasting the policies that a party will pursue if elected parties are perceived by voters as points on an ideological axis in the davis hinich multidimensional model on the other hand the axes are real issues and the principal actors are politicians who are modeled as points in the multi issue space this paper reformulates spatial voting theory in terms of a model that connects what we call predictive dimensions with political issues that are salient during a given election campaign this model is both a synthesis and an extension of the downs and davis hinich spatial models we obtain a median voter result for one predictive dimension that is similar to the downs result but with important differences we also obtain results showing the electoral advantage of incumbency and the tendency for incremental change when there is a great deal of heterogeneity in voter perceptions about the candidates

a directional theory of issue voting from stokes s 1963 early critique on it has been clear to empirical researchers that the traditional spatial theory of elections is seriously flawed yet fully a quarter century later that theory remains the dominant paradigm for understanding mass elite linkage in politics we present an alternative spatial theory of elections that we argue has greater empirical verisimilitude based on the ideas of symbolic politics the directional theory assumes that most people have a diffuse preference for a certain direction of policy making and that people vary in the intensity with which they hold those preferences we test the two competing theories at the individual level with national election study data and find the directional theory more strongly supported than the traditional spatial theory we then develop the implications of the directional theory for candidate behavior and assess the predictions in light of evidence from the u s congress

taxation or regulation looking for a good anti smoking policy abstract this paper investigates the relative ability of two anti smoking policies taxes and regulation in inducing reductions in cigarette consumption and in providing incentives to stop smoking or not to start to our results based on canadian data show that cigarette demand responds to taxes elasticity of 0 28 but not to regulation while the converse is true for the proportion of smokers in the population

are cigarette bans really good economic policy this study investigates the quarterly relationship between the quantity of cigarettes sold real disposable income per capita and the relative price level of cigarettes in canada careful attention is paid to the nonstationarity of the data and the dynamic specification of the model it is concluded that cigarette demand is extremely insensitive to price and income changes this is evidence of the large consumer surplus smokers enjoy and the large revenue increasing potential of a cigarette tax increase policy as opposed to cigarette bans

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

majority rule and election models abstract this paper surveys the theoretical work that has been done on majority rule and economic models of elections section i provides an overview of the topic section 2 reviews the most important results that have been obtained about majority rule as an abstract collective choice rule section 3 identifies some alternative inferences that can be made from those results section 4 covers some models that include additional features that are present in political institutions where majority rule is used section 5 concentrates on some alternative election models and equilibrium concepts section 6 focuses on election models with abstentions and or candidate uncertainty about voter behaviour section 7 compares and contrasts models where candidates are certain about what the voters choices will be contingent upon about the choices made by the candidates and models where they are uncertain about those choices section 8 closes the survey by identifying some emerging areas of research

agenda control by budget maximizers in a multi bureau setting while the present extension of the single issue model of agenda control has permitted the examination of a wide array of questions within a consistent overall framework and has generated new insights some qualifications are in order first the analysis like niskanen s and romer and rosenthal s is strictly limited to one form of agenda control take it or leave it offers made relative to some reversion level second each of the bureaus in this extension are single activity bureaus as a result certain types of agenda control that might exist when there are several dimensions to each bureau s activity such as the mix chosen for various sub activities or the spatial distribution of the bureau s output are ignored see denzau and mackay 1980 and mackay and weaver 1979a b for analyses of these types of agenda control for the case of a single bureau third as a point of reference and for expositional simplicity the analysis for the most part was executed with a single decisive voter on all issues as a result certain complexities and perhaps additional ambiguities were avoided finally in an effort to isolate and study the effects of the supply side phenomenon of agenda control a simple traditional model of the demand side of the collective choice process was employed for the simplest demand side passive supply side models this has typically proved quite adequate as models of the collective choice process have become more complex however taking on more strategic features the weaknesses of certain of the standard assumptions implicit in this demand side model become more apparent in particular the assumption that voters vote sincerely and non strategically is likely to be strained by most specifications of the dynamics of the voting process since learning on the part of voters would condition expectations and perhaps alter choice the inclusion of expectations formation into the model of voter behavior would certainly seem at least at the intuitive level to introduce an interesting additional set of constraints on agenda setters that may limit to some extent the expansionary tendencies described in this paper in short each of these qualifications should provide fertile ground for future research

necessary and sufficient conditions for single peakedness in public economic models abstract median voter results have played a central role in public economic analyses where there is a linearly ordered set of policy alternatives that is to be voted on in these analyses the median voter results themselves have been based on voters preferences being single peaked with respect to the ordering for this set in this paper we derive conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for such single peakedness to occur whenever we have economic decision makers this leads to certain new median voter results in addition it also reveals some important limitations on median voter analyses

british parties and spatial competition dimensions of party evaluation in the 1992 election scholars of british politics traditionally characterize the electorate in terms of partisanship and social class this paper suggests that ideology and issue preferences also enter into voter perceptions of british political parties and leadership using data from the 1992 british election study the paper analyzes the factors that contribute to individual voters perceptions of the conservative and labour parties the 1992 election saw the major parties move toward the ideological center of british voters perceptions of political parties are found to be multidimensional and issue oriented a spatial model incorporating issue preferences and perceptions of party positions proves both empirically and theoretically richer than simple models of partisanship the analysis of british voters complements earlier applications of the general spatial model in the context of the united states

health risk and the decision to quit smoking this study contributes to the understanding of the decision to quit smoking by taking into account the learning of new risk information the specific hypothesis tested is that smokers learn new risk information and hence create an incentive to quit from their own experience probit models are estimated for the decision to quit smoking based on longitudinal data obtained from taiwan it is shown that health risk measured by the observed change in health status over the period between two surveys has a relatively substantial positive effect on the probability of quitting smoking in addition the results indicate that schooling has a significantly positive effect on the probability of quitting these findings are consistent with the predictions of a bayesian learning framework and suggest that the risk information obtained from individual experience which is the sole source of information available to smokers in most developing countries plays the same role that public information does

hitting the target doubling primary school enrollments in sub saharan africa by 2015 abstract this paper estimates the number of children who will need to attend and complete primary school in sub saharan africa in order for the current international development target of universal primary education upe by 2015 to be attained in addition a variety of demand constraints that will also affect the attainment of upe are identified and assessed the main conclusion of this analysis is that target enrollment growth for the region as a whole between 2000 and 2015 is not much greater than enrollment growth during the 1990s for at least half of all countries in the region however this will require very high levels of sustained enrollment growth during the next 15 years there are also major concerns about the overall level of demand for primary education by individuals and households in particular formal sector employment contracted in many countries during the 1990s and returns to education in the smallholder agriculture and informal sectors continue to remain low but with sufficient commitment from governments and donor agencies to increase educational capacity and improve the quality of schooling the upe target can be attained as part of a comprehensive strategy for poverty reduction in each country

cigarette demand health scares and education in turkey the purpose of this paper is to examine the demand characteristics of cigarettes in turkey aggregate time series date for the 1960 88 period are used in estimation income and price elasticities of cigarette demand are obtained the effect of health warning is estimated to reduce cigarette consumption by about 8 since the inception of warnings in 1982 imports of cigarettes have been allowed since 1984 in addition to advertising of cigarettes in the non electronic media the effect of health warnings are found to be stronger than the opposing effect of advertising the results also suggest that public education about adverse health effects of smoking may be more effective in reducing consumption and less regressive on consumer incomes than raising the price of cigarettes

determinants of congressional minimum wage support the role of economic education much has been made about the lack of economic education among the public at large yet little has been said about the limited education of members of congress this paper examines the economic education levels of members of congress voting on the 2007 increase in the minimum wage controlling for a variety of characteristics of members and constituents this study finds that members who majored in economics as undergraduates were less likely to vote for the minimum wage increase than their colleagues no other major had a consistent influence a large number of statistical specifications confirm the robustness of the finding

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

the effects of an anti smoking campaign on cigarette consumption empirical evidence from greece 1987 the effects of an anti smoking campaign on cigarette consumption empirical evidence from greece applied economics vol 19 no 3 pp 323 329

cigarette consumption in spain empirical evidence and implications for public health policy the partial adjustment habit persistence model is used to analyse the behaviour of the demand for cigarettes in spain over the period from 1964 to 1988 on that basis the short and long run elasticities of demand with respect to price income and advertising intensity are estimated the model also provides and estimation of the effects that the anti smoking policies implemented during the period might have had on consumption the results are used to anticipate the probable impact on sales of a total ban on advertising and to design a suitable method to finance a health education campaign about the risks of smoking

dodging adverse selection how donor type and governance condition aid s effects on school enrollment summary we employ aiddata to test the effects of primary education aid on school enrollment we argue that the problem of adverse selection complicates both the allocation and the effectiveness of aid we hypothesize that bilateral donors ought to have greater freedom to condition aid on recipient governance quality than multilateral donors which are often bound by institutional rules to provide aid more impartially compared to their multilateral counterparts bilateral donors may have advantages in overcoming adverse selection resulting in bilateral aid s boosting enrollments to a greater degree aiddata s extensive coverage of multilateral aid enables this analysis for up to 100 low and low middle income countries from 1995 to 2008 latent growth regression analysis suggests that compared to multilateral donors bilateral donors indeed condition their primary education aid on recipient control of corruption and that bilateral aid is significantly related to improved enrollments

horticultural exports female wage employment and primary school enrolment theory and evidence from senegal abstract in this paper we analyse the indirect effects of the boom in horticultural exports in senegal on child schooling the export boom has caused a dramatic increase in female off farm wage employment which led to increased female bargaining power in the household we investigate the causal effect of female wage income on primary school enrolment we develop a collective household model with endogenous bargaining power to show that if women have higher preferences for schooling than men the impact of female wage income on school enrolment will be the result of a positive income effect a negative labour substitution effect and a positive empowerment effect we address the question empirically using original household survey data from senegal we use different econometric techniques and show that female off farm wage income has a positive effect on primary school enrolment for both boys and girls and that female empowerment is specifically important for the schooling of girls our results imply that the horticultural export boom in senegal has indirectly contributed to the second and third millennium development goals of universal primary education and elimination of gender disparities in primary education

taxation smuggling and demand for cigarettes in canada evidence from time series data abstract this study analyzes canadian cigarette consumption and taxation between 1980 and 1994 a period in which there have been large price rises and declines and a dramatic increase in the consumption of contraband tobacco products we examine elasticities of legal cigarette sales and total sales including contraband with respect to the price of legal cigarettes and various other factors the growth of the contraband market since 1987 appears to have created two classes of cigarette taxed and untaxed with responses to changes in the legal price that are respectively higher and lower than was previously the case the sensitivity of total cigarette sales to the taxation instrument is much lower than it would appear from sales of taxed cigarettes alone

the stability of cigarette demand the relative effects of various governmental interventions upon cigarette consumption is important to policy makers historically the demand for cigarettes has been quite unstable previous studie

voting behavior under the directional spatial model of electoral competition this paper contrasts voting behavior in multicandidate elections between the proximity and the directional spatial models of electoral competition under the traditionalproximity spatial model a voter s utility for a candidate is a declining function of distance between their respective positions under thedirectional spatial model introduced by rabinowitz and macdonald utility is specified as the scalar product of the vectors representing voter and candidate the present paper specifies and compares regions of candidate support for the two models and for several voting procedures the degree to which each model and voting system favors extremist versus centrist candidates is assessed it is shown that a pure directional model implies that candidates lying in the interior of the convex hull of the other candidates receive no support under the single vote plurality procedure a one parameter family of mixed proximity and directional models may provide more plausible descriptions of voter behavior than either pure model

self employment earnings and mobility in peninsular malaysia abstract this study tests several hypotheses about self employment in ldcs that derive from the common view of the self employed as part of the informal sector of a dualistic labor market the empirical findings based upon malaysian survey data reject the hypotheses that the self employed earn less than wage employees ceteris paribus and that the self employed in urban areas are typically recent migrants an alternative interpretation of the determinants of self employment is suggested based upon these findings

preferences loyalty and party choice the paper analyses the electorate s voting intentions with respect to the labour and conservative parties in great britain almost all policy issues are found to be endogenous i e to be influenced by party choice within a simultaneous relationship socio economic factors which influence choice through the endogenous policy issues include education geographical location age gender income and wealth parental particularly maternal influence is also found to be important and not to decline with age or education the paper also highlights the importance of competence rather than policy issues

health scare excise taxes and advertising ban in the cigarette demand and supply the cigarette industry is a fascinating laboratory for industrial economists because of its concentrated market structure and history of conflicts over health and tax issues the industry has been the focal point of many economic studies most of the recent studies have concentrated on the demand side of the market for example bass schmalensee hamilton and fujii deal with the impact of advertising and the health scare on cigarette demand 4 15 10 8 barzel johnson and sumner ward assessed the importance of the excise tax or ad valorem tax on consumers cigarette demand 3 12 16 on the supply side vernon rives naylor developed an econometric model of the tobacco industry 20 which however is more concerned with the agricultural aspects of the product than the industry s market organization a careful review of the above studies suggests serious shortcomings which appear to limit their application to policy formulation or market analysis first the variables are introduced in an ad hoc fashion without reference to existing demand or supply theories second none of the above studies recognizes explicitly the interactions among the variables in the demand and the supply equations in the context of the determination of market equilibrium this paper has three objectives 1 to apply the standard neoclassical market theory to the cigarette industry 2 to identify the interactions between cigarette demand and supply using a simultaneous equations approach the first such attempt in a cigarette industry study and 3 to evaluate the effects of cigarette taxes advertising and health scare issues on the industry s output based on the empirical results obtained from the simultaneous equations analysis the judicious selection of explanatory variables careful data

rural nonfarm activities and poverty in the brazilian northeast abstract this paper combines two complementary data sets to present a disaggregated spatial profile of poverty in the brazilian northeast and to investigate the importance of nonagricultural activities for its rural dwellers we present both univariate and multivariate profiles of nonagricultural employment and discuss its determinants while the main occupational difference between the rural poor and the rural nonpoor in brazil seems to be the greater reliance of the former on paid agricultural employment vis a vis own cultivation rather than access to nonagricultural activities the evidence nevertheless suggests that diversification into this growing sector provides both an important complement to the budgets of the poor and possibly a self insurance mechanism against negative shocks despite the substantial heterogeneity of the sector two general findings are robust returns to education are comparatively high and location in relation to urban areas is an important determinant of both employment and earnings in rural nonagricultural activities

education and off farm work an investigation is presented of the determinants of educational selectivity in a framework that emphasizes the coordination of household members sectoral time allocation is based on members comparative advantage which in turn depends on the utilization and returns to schooling in the farm and nonfarm sectors central to the model is a knowledge spillover hypothesis that workers who participate in off farm work may still contribute knowledge to farm management estimation of the model is based on cross sectional chinese farm household data collected in 1990 from 204 households in sichuan province it is concluded that schooling does not enhance labour productivity when carrying out routine tasks that the contribution to farm efficiency by the most educated members is not affected by their non farm participation and that schooling increases labour market wage rates these empirical results give comparative advantage for the better educated farmers to work off the farm

school quality and black white relative earnings a direct assessment the wage differential between black and white men fell from 40 percent in 1960 to 25 percent in 1980 it has been argued that this convergence reflects improvements in the relative quality of black schools to test this hypothesis we assembled data on pupil teacher ratios annual teacher pay and term length for black and white schools in the eighteen segregated states from 1915 to 1966 these data are linked to estimated returns to education for southern born men from different cohorts and states in 1960 1970 and 1980 improvements in the relative quality of black schools explain 20 percent of the narrowing of the black white earnings gap between 1960 and 1980

coalitions in congressional voting scholars of congress generally agree on four points concerning roll call votes first roll call votes are important to members of congress who care about reelection public policies or both second members have neither sufficient resources nor incentives to acquire process and interpret information about the content and consequences of hundreds of roll call votes considered on the floor each year 1 third insufficient resources and incentives induce members to apply simple decision rules on most votes fourth a voting model should conform to the choices members make under uncertainty 2 the scholars however differ in their specification of the simple rules members adopt familiar specifications include voting decisions rooted in two or three party alignments one or more policy dimensions self interest or ideology and cue taking to varying degrees most command an intuitive appeal and empirical support clearly it is important to evaluate each model based on its a refutable implications or b performance relative to the competing models to test a unidimensional voting model in which members vote based on an imprecise perception of the issues involved 4 this paper adopts the first approach it seeks to refute a pair of comparative static implications of the model two reasons account for the adoption of approach a and not b first to the extent feasible a comparison of the unidimensional model with the competing voting models appears in poole and rosenthal 1985a 1985b second the likelihood ration test considered to be statistically unambiguous requires that competing models generate a nested set of hypotheses see amemiya 1981 unfortunately models of roll call voting with substantially different origins 5 seldom meet this requirement

income distribution in rice growing villages during the post green revolution periods the philippine case 1985 and 1998 this paper aims to examine changes in household income sources and its impact on household income distribution in the post green revolution periods in 1985 and 1998 in the rural philippines we found that there has been a structural shift of household income away from farm in favor of nonfarm labor income sources this finding indicates that rural development is being led by nonfarm sectors such a shift has resulted in an increase in household income inequality as the distribution of nonfarm income has become less equal over time and was markedly more unequal than that of farm income in 1998

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

earnings schooling ability and cognitive skills conventional estimates now available for a large number of countries generally indicate that the social returns to education are positive large and competitive with returns to investment in physical capital that such estimates are good guides for public resource allocation has however been questioned the heart of the problem lies in the interpretation of the positive relationship between the education and the earnings of workers whether as the conventional estimates assume the coefficient of the education variable in the earnings function measures the effect on the productivity of workers of human capital acquired in school it has been hypothesized that education in part or instead represents screening for native ability and motivation or credentialism and that as a consequence conventional measures of the social benefit of education are substantially upward biased 2 in this paper we attempt to distinguish the influence on earnings of cognitive achievement native ability and years of education as a means of adjudicating the human capital screening and credentialist hypotheses our econometric analysis is based on two rigorously comparable micro data sets from kenya and tanzania generated by surveys of the urban wage labor force specifically for this study these data sets contain the usual variables found in earnings function estimates of the benefits of schooling individual earnings years of education and years of employment experience in addition they contain two variables measures of the worker s cognitive skills and of his or her reasoning ability not previously found in studies of developing countries and only rarely found in studies of the education earnings relationship in developed countries 3 with these variables we can estimate the direct effects on earnings of cognitive skills ability and years of schooling by using them to estimate educational production functions and educational attainment functions and linking these functions with the earnings function in a recursive framework we can also assess the various indirect effects on earnings of ability and years of schooling having data sets from two countries very similar with respect to size resource endowments structure of production and employment and level of development means that not only can we subject our results to the usual statistical tests but we can also assess their replicability both kenya and tanzania have nearly achieved the objective of universal primary education while university enrollments remain at less than 1 percent of the relevant age group the important policy issues re boissiere development research department the world bank 1818 h street washington d c 20433 knight institute of economics and statistics oxford university sabot williams college williamstown ma 01267 we are grateful to the educational testing service of princeton for the design of tests used in this study and to j armitage j behrman j hausman d hendry d jamison and an anonymous referee for their insights and advice helpful comments were also received from participants in seminars at oxford and yale universities the views presented here are our own they should not be interpreted as reflecting those of the world bank george psacharopoulos 1973 1981 contains a listing of 44 countries in which rate of return studies had been conducted and of the estimates obtained 2for instance kenneth arrow 1973 mark blaug 1976 samuel bowles and herbert gintis 1976 john riley 1979 michael spence 1976 and lester thurow 1975 3for attempts to control for ability and or for cognitive achievement in studies for the united states see jere behrman et al 1980 gary chamberlain and zvi griliches 1977 griliches and william mason 1972 michael olneck 1977 paul taubman and terence wales 1974 taubman 1975 and david wise 1975 see also the survey articles by griliches 1977 1979 in most instances the data refer to special subgroups in the population and clear distinction cannot be made between natural ability and cognitive skills acquired in school

income risk and household schooling decisions in burkina faso summary i study the effects of income uncertainty on household schooling decisions households with more volatile incomes have a greater incentive to build a buffer stock to insure against unforeseen adverse shocks and non enrollment can be part of such a strategy i use data from rural burkina faso where school attainment is low and income shocks are frequent to show that income uncertainty reduces several educational outcomes including enrollment education expenditures and years of education completed the findings suggest that income uncertainty has larger welfare costs in terms of human capital than is implied by studies that only focus on realized income shocks

anti smoking publicity taxation and the demand for cigarettes this study demonstrates that anti smoking publicity in the mass media in switzerland has had a substantial permanent impact on cigarette consumption extended publicity following the 1964 u s surgeon general s report accompanying various tax increases and preceding a public vote on an advertising ban for tobacco products decreased consumption permanently by 11 in addition publicity had important indirect effects which are reflected in smokers strong reactions to nominal cigarette price increases estimated nominal cigarette price elasticity is 1 0 by contrast real cigarette prices failed to be significant thus publicity in the mass media provides a powerful tool for deterring cigarette consumption

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