barriers to efficiency and the privatization of township village enterprises abstract qian 2000 and others suggest that post 1994 tax and banking reforms in china combined with the development of markets for allocating resources influenced the economic performance of township village enterprises tves and private enterprises pes this paper uses chinese provincial level data to search for evidence of advantages and or disadvantages offered to tves and pes before and after the 1994 reforms we define a sectoral net income based measure of overall efficiency and decompose the measure into components that highlight the existence of credit constraints output target constraints and labour hiring constraints the results offer empirical support for qian and others explanation of why private enterprises eventually emerged as the dominant institution for allocating resources in post 1994 rural china

policy watch the marriage penalty many government programs have implicit penalties or subsidies for marriage for example many couples pay higher income taxes when married than their combined tax liabilities as single filers while many other couples receive a marriage subsidy because their joint taxes fall with marriage likewise most low income couples are eligible for higher welfare benefits if they are separated rather than married this article discusses the marriage penalty with a particular focus on tax and transfer programs why does it exist who faces it to what extent does it affect marriage and labor market behavior what tradeoffs are involved in reducing it

widows waiting to wed re marriage and economic incentives in social security widow benefits in this paper we focus on an age restriction for remarriage in the social security system to determine if individuals respond to economic incentives for marriage aged widow er benefits are paid by the federal government to persons whose deceased spouses worked in social security covered employment a widow er is eligible to receive benefits if she or he is at least age 60 if a widow er remarries before age 60 he or she forfeits the benefit and therefore faces a marriage penalty under current law there is no penalty if the remarriage occurs at 60 years of age or later we investigate whether this rule affects the marriage behavior of widows specifically we examine the rates of remarriage of women around age 60 under current as well as past social security eligibility rules using data from the vital statistics our results provide compelling evidence that this group of women respond to economic incentives when considering the decision to remarry first the 1979 law change that eliminated the marriage penalty for those at least age 60 resulted in a large increase in the marriage rate for widows at

investment in u s agriculture resource adjustment problems in u s agriculture are motivated against the background of the farm problem the adjustment cost hypothesis is invoked to specify and estimate consistently a system of dynamic investment demand and output supply equations by utilizing recent advances in dynamic duality theory the investment demand equations assume the form of a multivariate flexible accelerator results indicate that labor capital services and land exhibited quasi fixity while intermediate materials were a variable factor this can be construed as a form of asset fixity within aggregate u s agriculture the univariate flexible accelerator hypothesis is rejected

measuring permanent responses to capital gains tax changes in panel data the authors use panel data and information about differences in state tax rates to separate the effects of transitory and permanent tax rate changes on capital gains realizations behavior the estimated effect of permanent change is substantially smaller than the effect of transitory change the difference is even larger than differences between estimates from past micro data studies which have primarily measured the transitory effect and time series studies which have primarily measured the permanent effect the authors results resolve a long standing conflict between micro data and time series studies of how marginal tax rates affect capital gains realizations behavior copyright 1994 by american economic association

for love or money the impact of income taxes on marriage higher sometimes lower than their combined single income tax obligations in this paper we explore the impact of the federal individual income tax as well as other economic and demograplhic variables on the marriage decisionis of individuals using longitudinal data from the panel study on income dynamics for the period 1968 92 we estimate a discrete time hazard model of the time to first marriage we find that the probability of marriage is significantly affected by a range of economic and demographic variables importantly we find that an increase in total income taxes paid by married versus single women has a negative effect on the likelihood of marriage and that the change in the marginal tax rate is also a significant determinant of marriage in some cases in contrast the tax effects are rarely significant in determining marriage probabilities among men although there are some differential responses by race in general the impacts of the income tax variables even when statistically significant are small

rural credit and agricultural supply in brazil the objective of this study is to determine the financing impact of total expenditure on the use of agriculture inputs fertilizers labor and pesticides and the output of cotton rice beans corn soybean and wheat in brazil we study the period 1976 2005 the analysis is based on duality applied to the production theory the output supplies and conditioned input demands are estimated from a translog multi output multi input restricted profit function where the total production credit is used as proxy of the total expenditure farmer expectations with respect to crop prices are incorporated to the estimation based on the quasi rational expectation model the output and input responses to the total expenditure are positive and statistically significant except for cotton wheat fertilizer and pesticides the short run output supply response to own prices is inelastic except for wheat which presents elastic response to its price acreage has a positive impact on the output supply and it is influenced by land productivity the main conclusion is that farmers face budget restrictions to purchase inputs and a government credit program might increase the agricultural supply

german income taxation and the timing of marriage i investigate how the german income tax code affects the timing of marriages the german income tax code allows married couples to benefit from full income splitting relative to unmarried couples

taxes and marriage a two sided search analysis this article analyzes the effects of differential tax treatment of married and single individuals in the united states on marriage formation and composition divorce and labor supply we develop a marriage market model with search frictions and heterogeneous agents that is sufficiently rich to capture key elements of the problem under consideration we then calibrate the model and use it to evaluate the quantitative effects of several tax reforms aimed at making the tax law neutral with respect to marital status we find that these reforms i systematically increase the labor supply of married females with changes ranging from 0 3 to 10 1 percent ii have substantial effects on the correlation of spouses incomes which changes from 0 2 to values between 0 185 and 0 334 iii can lead to either an increase or decrease in the fraction of people married with changes that range from 0 6 to 2 4 percent

empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture a methodological survey empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years the aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature furthermore the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings six approaches are distinguished measurement of loan transaction costs analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept analysis of spill over effects with regard to secondary credit sources econometric household modeling and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions an explicit comparison with a first best solution is impossible in the first three approaches since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers access to credit based on qualitative or quantitative indicators the fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory the fourth approach takes an intermediate position since spill over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source the approaches are fairly data demanding in general usually requiring specific data on loan transactions even so most approaches are applicable to cross sectional household data with the exception of the first all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing

short and long run credit constraints in french agriculture a directional distance function framework using expenditure constrained profit functions this empirical application investigates the eventual presence of credit constraints using a panel of french farmers the credit constrained profit maximization model proposed by fare grosskopf and lee is extended in three ways first we rephrase the model in terms of directional distance functions to allow duality with the profit function second we model credit constraints in the short run and investment constraints in the long run using short and long run profit functions third we lag the expenditure constraint one year to account for the separation between planning and production we find empirical evidence of credit and investment constraints financially unconstrained farmers are larger perform better and seem to benefit from a virtuous circle where access to financial markets allows better productive choices

capturing the least costly way of reducing pollution a shadow price approach abstract the production analysis literature is increasingly concerned with estimating marginal abatement costs yet most studies do not emphasize the ways in which pollutants may be reduced and their costs which makes them unable to identify the least costly compliance strategy this paper utilizes the materials balance principle to relate pollution to the employment of material inputs a production model which allows input and output substitution downscaling of operations pollution control and emission permits purchases as compliance strategies is proposed and the implications of joint and non joint pollution controls for the trade off between pollutants and desirable outputs are considered marginal abatement costs reflecting the least costly way of compliance are derived by exploiting the duality between the directional distance function and the profit function

taxes and the timing of births because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight january 1 the incentives for the marginal birth are substantial using a sample of children from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of december rather than the first week of january is positively correlated with tax benefits we estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by 500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of december by 26 9 percent

taxes and transfers their effects on the decision to end a marriage abstract the transfer system typically has large marriage disincentives while the income tax system is likely to subsidize marriage for many low income families in other words the tax system may offset an increase in transfer benefits associated with marital separation the interaction of the transfer system with the income tax system has largely been overlooked the income tax system has become more relevant for low income families with the recent expansion of the earned income tax credit which filers may be eligible for even if their tax liability is zero this paper uses family level measures of the change in transfer benefits and tax liability associated with a change in family structure to consider the effect of these financial incentives on separation decisions

do taxes matter lessons from the 1980 s the response of the economy to two major although in important respects offsetting tax reforms has been much smaller than ardent supply side revolutionaries expected thus suggesting that a reassessment of the grounds for revolt is in order this paper offers such a reassessment by first discussing how the evidence from the tax reforms of 1981 and 1986 reflects on our understanding of the response to taxation with particular reference to savings and capital gains realizations i then reconstruct a 1992 view about how taxes affect behavior a unifying theme is that the tax system does much more than alter the relative prices of real variables it also provides incentives to misreport income restructure financial claims time transactions change the legal form of organization and so on for this reason observed low tax elasticities of real variables may be due to either low elasticities of substitution or the fact that tax policy changes opportunity sets in complex ways disentangling these explanations requires an emphasis on the transaction based nature of the tax system and the administration and enforcement of tax laws this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

expenditure constraints and profit maximization in u s agriculture comment in a recent 1986 paper lee and chambers hereafter lc developed a model of expenditure constrained profit maximization a single constraint was specified for the purchase of all variable inputs and the competing hypotheses of unconstrained and constrained profit maximization were tested in terms of corresponding nonnested homogeneity conditions lc proceeded in terms of a profit function with prices normalized on the predetermined level of expenditure in this comment an alternative formulation of the expenditure constrained profit function is presented the advantages over the lc approach are twofold first the nested relationship between the hypotheses of unconstrained and expenditure constrained profit maximization is apparent this permits simple nested tests of the full consequences of the alternative models second this alternative formulation can readily incorporate situations whereby expenditure constraints are input specific for example farmers typically negotiate separate loans for the purchases of operating inputs and capital inputs different expenditure constraints may have different impacts on incomes furthermore input specific foreign exchange constraints on production are easily incorporated into this formulation of the expenditure constrained firm the importance of modeling the effects of foreign exchange constraints on production in developing countries is well recognized dervis de melo and robinson however to date econometric models of producer behavior have not incorporated the impacts of foreign exchange constraints in a consistent manner e g kohli diewert and morrison

will you civil union me although the tax system is not marriage neutral in many countries it has been found to be only slightly significant in determining marriage decisions buffeteau and echevin 2003 alm and whittington 1995 this paper tests whether the tax system can alter the decision to contract a civil union which is less binding than a marital contract in 1999 france introduced civil union pacs as an alternative legal union to marriage i assess the impact of taxation on the decision to contract a pacs using a difference in differences evaluation of the 2005 income tax reform for newly pacsed couples as the control group is contaminated by the reform i propose an original estimation method based on a difference in differences in differences setting to estimate bounds to the impact of the reform my results find a positive and increasing impact of taxation on pacs rates but also a change in the timing of pacs unions suggesting that taxation alters the decision to contract a pacs in addition i find a slightly significant impact of taxation on the decision to terminate a pacs

production economics worthwhile investment abstract agricultural production economics research is examined within a broad framework of scientific development and utilization recent findings in selected areas of the subdiscipline are examined and opportunities for further fruitful inquiry are identified a few stylized facts emerge from recent work and suggest the need for much careful hypothesis testing model exploration and empirical sensitivity analysis in the future

the panel study of income dynamics after fourteen years an evaluation this article considers the representativeness of the panel study of income dynamics psid over its 14 year history from 1968 to 1981 given the dynamics of entry and exit from the panel by 1981 40 of the original members had left the sample and were replaced by new entrants who joined either existing households or new households being formed by members of the original sample we consider the distribution of demographic characteristics and earnings equations over time and we compare the psid with the current population survey cps by either approach we find little evidence that the psid has become unrepresentative

agricultural production technologies with systematic and stochastic technical change a production system modeling tool is developed that implements recent work on autoregressive and endogenous stochastic production technologies associated with generalized fechner thurstone gft optimizing functions a gft class production system is used to evaluate the empirical support for technology specifications inherent in the neoclassical theoretic structure of an agricultural production region little likelihood support is found for zero serial correlation elimination of systematic technology changers from the production system strict neoclassical production technologies hicks neutral technical change or zero homogenous factor demand functions

til death or taxes do us part the effect of income taxation on divorce there is now much empirical evidence that economic incentives affect the divorce decision via their impact on the flow of benefits of divorced vs married individuals however the effect of the individual income tax on divorce has been neglected in this work the income tax in the us is structured so that tax liability often changes with marriage some couples incur a marriage penalty in the form of higher taxes when they marry while others receive a marriage subsidy because their tax burden falls with marriage in this paper the authors examine the impact of the individual income tax on the likelihood of divorce in the us using data from the panel study on income dynamics they estimate a discrete time hazard model of the probability of divorce from the first marriage to test the hypothesis that the probability of divorce rises with the marriage penalty they also examine the role of other economic factors in the divorce decision the authors find that individuals respond to tax incentives in their decision to divorce although these responses are typically small and differ for men and women authors

effects of subsidies in russian dairy farming this study develops a microeconometric model of specialized dairy farms in the moscow region using panel data over the period 1995 2001 the model is used to analyze the role of subsidies on profit as well as input and output allocation theoretical conditions for short term profit maximization are not rejected by the data differences between farms allow for a fixed effect specification the dairy producers in the region demonstrate a low responsiveness to market signals but technology change becomes important labor land and livestock had low shadow prices although subsidies have a distorting effect on the input output mix this study shows they relieve the credit constraints on dairy farms and have an important positive influence on farm profit

income taxes and the timing of marital decisions abstract in this paper we estimate the impact of the federal individual income tax on the timing of marital decisions anecdotal evidence suggests that the tax penalty often associated with marriage contributes to the decision of when to marry using household data from the panel study on income dynamics we estimate various models of the probability of delaying marriage as a function of the change in tax burden caused by marriage as well as several other variables we find that there is a significant positive relationship between the marriage penalty in a year and the probability of delaying marriage until the following year the magnitude of the effect however is small

the crowding parameter and samuelsonian publicness in a recent issue of this journal gramlich and rubinfeld 1982 introduced a distributive share parameter into a public expenditures demand function they also included a parameter linked to population size and estimated the resulting demand function since the initial median voter formulations by borcherding and deacon 1972 and bergstrom and goodman 1973 it has been standard practice to include the population parameter known as the crowding parameter in public expenditures demand functions it has also been standard practice to interpret the parameter as a samuelsonian index of the extent to which public expenditures constitute a pure public or pure private good gramlich and rubinfeld found public expenditures to be a pure private good a conclusion they share with all previous researchers who have estimated the crowding parameter 1 this comment demonstrates that the private good conclusion is

saying i don t the effect of the affordable care act young adult provision on marriage this paper investigates the effect of the affordable care act young adult provision on the propensity to marry the young adult provision expanded options for obtaining insurance coverage outside of marriage young adults affected by the provision might have less incentive to marry since one avenue for obtaining health insurance coverage is through marriage this paper examines this question by applying difference in differences type methods using the 2008 2013 american community survey results suggest that the provision is associated with decreases in the likelihood of marrying cohabitation and spousal health insurance coverage and an increase in the probability of divorce

credit market imperfections and the distribution of policy rents this article shows that credit market imperfections have important implications for the distribution of policy rents in a model with land as fixed factor and credit market imperfections when an area payment is given land rents go up by more than the subsidy on aggregate farms may lose from the subsidy the results depend on the extent to which subsidies have direct and indirect effects on the credit constraints on whether farms rent or own land and on farm heterogeneity

income taxes and the marriage decision economic incentives have been found to play an important role in the marriage decision in developed and developing countries however the way in which the income tax treatment of the family affects these incentives has been routinely ignored this paper uses time series data for the united states from 1947 to 1988 to estimate the impact of economic factors including for the first time the tax consequences of marriage on the aggregate marriage rate the estimation results indicate that economic factors like income female wages and education play an important and statistically significant role in the marriage decision in particular the tax consequences of marriage clearly affect the marriage decision when income taxes increase with marriage the aggregate marriage rate declines however the magnitude of this impact is quite small this result suggests that some individuals respond to tax incentives in their marriage choices but that for many individuals taxes do not affect these decisions

expenditure constraints and profit maximization in u s agriculture the u s agricultural sector is undergoing some of its most severe financial problems since the great depression numerous reports have emerged of large numbers of farmers being unable to obtain short term oper

the married widow marriage penalties matter marriage penalties are a controversial feature of many government policies empirical evidence of their behavioral effects is quite mixed which is surprising because economic theory predicts that they should have an impact on the headship decision we investigate the removal of marriage penalties from the surviving spouse pensions of the canadian public pension system in the 1980s these reforms provide a simple and transparent source of identification our results indicate that marriage penalties can have large and persistent effects on marriage decisions we also present evidence suggesting that it is individuals with characteristics correlated with greater wealth who respond to the penalties jel j1 h2