a microsimulation model of swedish housing demand abstract this paper presents a microsimulation model of housing demand aimed at analyzing effects of changes in tax schedules like many other countries sweden s income tax laws treat homeowners and renters asymmetrically therefore most changes in tax laws will affect housing demand and tenure choice we develop a microsimulation model which generates consistent estimates of the mean and variance of total housing demand and show that commonly used measures like analytic elasticities evaluated at mean values of the exogenous variables can yield very misleading predictions our model can be used to simulate almost any change in the tax system here we report results of three simple experiments one of which is a change in the rate at which imputed income from owner occupied housing is taxed

net job creation in the us economy lessons from monthly data 1950 2011 this article studies the monthly net job creation njc at the aggregate and the sectoral levels in the united states over the period 1950 to 2011 the article has few important findings first njc did not show a significant trend over the last six decades which led to a fall in the njc rate second njc was very volatile and it could change course even in the span of 1 month third there was no clear pattern about the co movement between njc and the change in the unemployment rate fourth the averages of total njc and private njc since late 2010 were significantly higher than their respective historical averages and the volatility in njc since the end of the great recession was not unusual by historical standards fifth while the evidence about the effects of the 2009 american recovery and reinvestment act on employment is inconclusive some sectors appeared to benefit from it finally the most frequent drop in the unemployment rate was by 0 1 and drops of more than 0 2 should not be highly expe

welfare analysis of tax reforms using household data abstract this paper discusses a methodology for calculating the distribution of gains and losses from a policy change using data for a large sample of households estimates are based on the equivalent income function which is money metric utility defined over observable variables this enables calculations to be standardised and a computer program to compute the statistics presented in the paper is available for a general demand system equivalent income is related to measures of deadweight loss and standard errors are computed for each of the welfare measures an application to u k data for 5 895 households is given which simulates a reform that involves eliminating housing subsidies

prices and endogenous market structure in office supply superstores we consider the relationship between prices and market structure for office supply superstores in the u s which was central to the federal trade commission s opposition to the merger of staples and office depot due to potential biases in a standard regression we employ a two stage approach in which a model of endogenous market structure provides correction terms for a second stage price regression using a cross section of data on market structures and staples prices we find that excluding the correction term substantially distorts the importance of competitors as the two stage model yields stronger negative relationships between prices and market structure variables

housing prices and tenure choice with asymmetric taxes and progressivity abstract this paper studies the effects of tax schedule changes on prices and tenure choice in the housing market it is shown that given the present asymmetric treatment of owner occupants vs renters an increase in the degree of progressivity is likely to lead to an increasein the prices of both owner occupied and rental housing a numerical example indicates that the effects may be quite large equilibrium prices are calculated based on the actual swedish income tax schedules for 1971 and 1979 according to these simulations the tax changes that took place between these years caused the price of owner occupied houses to increase by around 30 percent and the rent level to increase by 2 or 3 percent

the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of married men in sweden abstract this paper presents labor supply functions estimated on a sample of prime age swedish males the model used takes account of the nonlinear character of individuals budget sets caused by the progressive income tax it also allows preferences to vary between individuals calculations with the estimated functions using a partial equilibrium framework indicate a sizeable effect of the income tax on hours of work the average expected deadweight loss of the income tax is found to be approximately 20 percent of tax revenue

regulatory responses to large format transnational retail in south east asian cities aggressive internationalisation by transnational chains is changing the face of the urban environment in much of emerging asia in south east asia the period following the asian financial crisis o

distributional effects of housing subsidies in the united kingdom this paper examines the first round distributional effects of subsidies to public sector tenants and tax concessions to owner occupiers in the united kingdom excluding income related housing benefits the average values per family of the two are found to be of similar magnitude local authority rates property taxes are found to have provided a roughly equivalent offset to the shortfall from economic rents for local authority tenants and the lack of taxation of owner occupiers imputed rents their abolition substantially improves the position of housing compared with other forms of consumption or investment

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

corporate social responsibility enhanced control systems reducing the likelihood of fraud all kinds of fraud are costly for the people engrossed both financially and often in terms of the time needed to clear their name when illegal use has been made of their personal details the relationship among ethics internal control and fraud is important in the understanding of corporate social responsibility csr this article uses an ethical process throughput model embedded in the fraud triangle in order to better understand the interconnectedness of ethical positions and internal control systems that handle fraudulent situations ethical positions are utilized to underscore how ethical behavioral control systems can be appropriately applied which can provide unparalleled security enhanced convenience heightened accountability better fraud detection and is very effective in depressing fraud thereby improving csr among organizations

firm dynamics and productivity growth a comparison of the retail trade and manufacturing sectors this article examines how the reallocation of market shares differs in the retail trade and manufacturing sectors and what it reveals about the nature of competition in the two sectors it compares and contrasts the amount and type of firm dynamics and examines its contribution to aggregate productivity growth in those two sectors the potential competitive pressures acting on these two very different industries were very similar in that about the same proportion of firms entered and exited both industries the survival processes associated with exit were similar there were similar differences in productivity between entrants and the exits that they drove out while the potential for turnover was the same its realization was not retail entrants bought a different option when they experimented with entry that suggests different entry costs they started at a larger relative size upon entry the differences that occurred in relative entry size gave retail entrants a greater proportional share of output and inputs and led the turnover process to make a greater contribution to aggregate productivity growth copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

retail globalization and household welfare evidence from mexico the arrival of global retail chains in developing countries is causing a radical transformation in the way that households source their consumption this paper draws on a new and unique collection of mexican microdata to estimate the effect of foreign supermarket entry on household welfare and its underlying channels the richness of the data allows us to estimate a general expression for the welfare gains from retail fdi and to decompose the total effect into several distinct components to base our estimates on plausibly exogenous variation in foreign retail entry we propose an event study design that exploits data on the universe of foreign store locations and opening dates in combination with high frequency data on barcode level store prices consumption quantities and household incomes in those same locations over the period 2002 2014 we find that foreign retail entry causes large and significant welfare gains for the average household that are mainly driven by a reduction in the cost of living a substantial share of this price index effect is due to pro competitive effects on consumer prices charged by domestic stores we find little evidence of significant changes in average municipality level incomes wages or employment we do however find evidence of store exit and adverse effects on domestic store profits and the incomes of traditional retail sector workers finally we present evidence that the gains from retail fdi are on average positive for all income groups but strongly regressive and quantify the opposing forces that underlie this finding

traditional food traders in developing countries and competition from supermarkets evidence from indonesia indonesia s urban centers recently underwent an explosion of supermarkets with cheaper higher quality commodities and better services supermarkets have the potential to drive traders in traditional markets out of business in this paper we evaluate whether this is indeed the case we find that traditional traders experienced declines in their business however both qualitative and quantitative findings indicate that the main cause of decline is not supermarkets instead traditional markets are plagued with internal problems and face increasingly bitter competition from street vendors therefore the policy recommendations include strengthening traditional traders and seriously tackling the problem of street vendors

does women on board affect the socially responsible firms effectiveness of internal control this study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility csr and the auditor s commitment to internal control which strengthens the internal control system and reduces fraud

does planning regulation protect independent retailers abstract regulations curbing the entry of large retail stores have been introduced in many countries to protect independent retailers analyzing a planning reform launched in the united kingdom in the 1990s i show that independent retailers were actually harmed by the creation of entry barriers against large stores this is because the entry barriers created the incentive for large retail chains to invest in smaller and more centrally located formats which competed more directly with independents and accelerated their decline overall these findings suggest that restricting the entry of large stores may exert negative competitive effects on independent retailers

tobin s q and the importance of focus in firm performance using tobin s q as a measure of performance we seek to estimate the relative importance of industry focus and share effects in determining firm performance our methods are analogous to those of richard schmalensee and like him we find that industry effects account for the majority of the explained variance however we also find that firm effects exist in the form of focus effects that is narrowly diversified firms do better than widely diversified firms we interpret this finding as consistent with profit maximization by firms with different factor endowments

does entry regulation hinder job creation evidence from the french retail industry are product market and entry regulation key sources of low employment growth in many european countries we investigate this question in the context of the french retail trade industry since 1974 approval by regional zoning boards has been required for the creation or extension of any large retain store in france we exploit a unique database that provides time and region specific variation in boards approval decisions we show that stronger deterrence of entry by the boards increased retailer concentration and slowed down employment growth in france

job creation or destruction labor market effects of wal mart expansion this paper estimates the effect of wal mart expansion on retail employment at the county level using an instrumental variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and endogeneity of the timing of entry i find that wal mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry half of this gain disappears over the next five years as other retail establishments exit and contract leaving a long run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs wholesale employment declines by approximately 20 jobs due to wal mart s vertical integration no spillover effect is detected in retail sectors in which wal mart does not compete directly suggesting wal mart does not create agglomeration economies in retail trade at the county level

wal mart innovation and productivity a viewpoint abstract technology effects business process development and productivity growth are considered in the context of a single company wal mart the starting point is the 2001 mckinsey global institute report which finds that over 1995 2000 a quarter of u s productivity growth is attributable to the retail industry and almost a sixth of that is attributable to wal mart wal mart is interesting as well because of its rapid growth in canada this is now canada s largest private sector employer we also consider other evidence relevant to public policy formation concerning wal mart and conclude with a discussion of options for partially filling important data gaps

tax reform and housing demand the distribution of welfare gains and losses abstract we study distributional effects of a recent reform of the swedish system of income taxation which affects the price of owner occupied housing in calculating the welfare effects we account both for the non linearities of the income tax schedule and the dichotomous choice aspect of housing demand to own or to rent small and rosen 1981 have shown how the standard harberger type approximation formulae can be adapted to handle discrete choices and we modify their analysis for a non linear budget constraint

foreign direct investment in india s retail bazaar opportunities and challenges despite encouraging signs india s retail market remains largely off limits to large international retailers like wal mart and carrefour opposition to liberalising foreign direct investment in this sector raises concerns about employment losses unfair competition resulting in large scale exit of incumbent domestic retailers and infant industry arguments to protect the organised domestic retail sector that is at a nascent stage based on international evidence we suggest that allowing entry by large international retailers into the indian market may help tackle inflation especially in food prices moreover technical know how from foreign firms such as warehousing technologies and distribution systems can improve supply chain efficiency in india in particular for agricultural produce better linkages between demand and supply have the potential to improve the price signals that farmers receive and also serve to enhance agricultural and other exports

gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance the monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed the gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm this is part of the business case for female participation on boards though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations while the issue of board gender diversity has attracted growing research interest in recent years most empirical results are based on u s data this article adds to a growing number of non u s studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in spain a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities we investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the blau and shannon indices has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant our study suggests that investors in spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains

supermarket human resource practices and competition from mass merchandisers the rise of supercenters and the entry of wal mart into food retailing have dramatically altered the competitive environment in the industry this paper explores the impact of such changes on the labor market practices of traditional food retailers we use longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct new measures of compensation and employment and examine how these measures evolve within and across firms in response to changes in product market competition an additional feature of the analysis is to combine rich case study knowledge about the retail food industry with the new matched employer employee data from the census bureau we compare a set of human resource practices using measures based on the matched employer employee data to an index based on survey data and case studies the consistency between the two approaches suggests that the measures are capturing important differences in supermarket human resource practices and policies analysis of administrative data combined with case study observations strengthens our understanding of the diversity of human resource practices in the retail food industry

the econometrics of nonlinear budget sets traditional empirical analysis of consumer demand has usually made the assumption of linear budget sets that is the consumer is assumed to purchase any desired quantity at a constant price subject to a budget constraint the major exception to this framework is the analysis of demand when some goods are rationed 2 in the rationed case the price is constant up to a quantity limit in contrast to the rationed case here i consider the situation where the price varies with the amount of the good purchased empirical situations with nonconstant prices come readily to mind and of course they have received much recent attention from theorists since mirrlees 44 paper on optimal nonlinear taxation the following examples are meant to give a partial listing of cases when nonlinear budget sets occur i electricity prices many electric utilities engage in declining block pricing that is the marginal price of successive kwh s of electricity decrease at a given number of points determined by total demand thus the budget set is piecewise linear houthakker 36 was the first to propose an approach to this problem taylor 51 analyzes the problem at length and hausman kinnucin and mcfadden 31 use an instrumental variables estimator to provide consistent estimates of the demand function

do investors value a firm s commitment to social activities previous empirical research has found mixed results for the impact of corporate social responsibility csr investments on corporate financial performance cfp this paper contributes to the literature by exploring in a two stage investor decision making model the relationship between a firm s innovation effort csr and financial performance we simultaneously examine the impact of csr on both accounting based financial health and market based tobin s q financial performance measures from a sample of top corporate citizens we find that 1 a firm s social responsibility commitment csr contributes to its financial performance 2 after controlling for investment in innovation activities csr continues to have a positive impact on a firm s financial performance 3 the customer dimension of csr has a positive effect on both cfp measures whereas the employee dimension indicates a significant impact only on financial heath and 4 the community relation dimension of csr only affects the market based cfp measure of firms with high innovation intensity

has wal mart buried mom and pop the impact of wal mart on self employment and small establishments in the united states this paper explores the widely accepted view that wal mart causes significant harm to the traditional small mom and pop business sector of the u s economy we present the first rigorous econometric investigation of this issue by examining the rate of self employment and the number of small employer establishments using both time series and cross sectional data we also examine alternative measures and empirical techniques for robustness contrary to popular belief our results suggest that the process of creative destruction unleashed by wal mart has had no statistically significant long run impact on the overall size and profitability of the small business sector in the united states jel l81 d59 c21 wal mart has indeed set prices low enough to drive mom pop stores out of business all over the country and kept the prices that low forever 1 during the last 20 years wal mart has moved into communities and destroyed them wiping out stores slashing the tax base and turning downtown areas into ghost towns 2 i introduction the argument that wal mart inflicts significant harm on the small mom and pop business sector of the u s economy is so widely accepted that one of the paper s opening quotes is actually from a pro wal mart article which goes on to discuss the merits and efficiency enhancements that result claiming that i n a free market large suppliers of nearly every thing will drive most small suppliers out of business even president clinton s former secretary of labor robert b reich writes in the new york times that wal mart will turn main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers 3 wal mart watch one of the largest anti wal mart organizations features an article claiming that in iowa wal mart s expansion has been responsible for widespread closings of mom and pop stores including 555 grocery stores 298 hardware stores 293 building suppliers 161 variety shops 158 women s stores and 116 pharmacies previous estimates of the negative impact of wal mart on other businesses such as the numbers cited above however are misleading for several reasons first these estimates come from a series of applied policy studies that simply compare averages for counties with wal mart stores to those without wal mart stores 5 while the findings from these studies have garnered significant media publicity and widespread public acceptance they are problematic because no econometric methods are employed making it hard to know if the differences are statistically significant and whether or not the difference is really due to the many other economic and demographic factors that differ between counties with wal mart stores and those without the second and biggest problem with these previous studies is that they employed data only for directly competing retail business sectors within that specific county 6 because of its sheer size wal mart s true impact on the overall u s small business sector stretches far beyond the impact any one store has in any one county the idea of creative destruction first eloquently stated by schumpeter 1934 explains how entrepreneurs like sam walton are a disruptive force in an economy 7 schumpeter emphasized the beneficial aspects of this process of creative destruction one in which the introduction of new products results in the obsolescence or failure of others schumpeter pointed out that while these inventions do indeed result in business failures in certain areas they result in overall net gains because of the positive impacts on economic activity in other areas 8 these impacts are however widespread and often hard to identify 9 similarly wal mart s openings while resulting in the failure of some small businesses create opportunities for new businesses both large and small not only in that local area but also in other more distant places

local labor markets and natural resources a synthesis of the literature a primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor with greater extraction requiring more workers shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings the main labor market outcomes or through changes in the population and income more generally these changes may spillover into the nonresource economy leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out be spread unequally across the population thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate or influence educational attainment as people choose between additional schooling and work in this review the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider this synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years it also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta analysis

effects of the swedish 1983 85 tax reform on the demand for owner occupied housing a microsimulation approach the effects of the swedish 1983 85 tax reform are analyzed with respect to the housing market a microsimulation model is used which takes into account the household s tenure choice owning vs renting as well as the quantity demanded conditional on the tenure choice the reform consists of a reduction in marginal tax rates and limitations on the deductibility of mortgage interest the simulations show that this will cause a general reduction in demand for owner occupied houses on a disaggregated level there will be an increase in the demand for small and medium sized houses while the demand for large units will fall sharply

does wal mart reduce social capital social capital has attracted increasing attention in recent years we use county level and individual survey data to study how wal mart affects social capital estimates using several proxies for social capital such as club membership religious activity time with friends and other measures do not support the thesis that wal mart destroys communities by reducing social capital we measure exposure to wal mart two ways wal marts per 10 000 residents and wal marts per 10 000 residents aggregated over the years since 1979 to capture a more cumulative wal mart effect we find that the coefficients on wal mart s presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications

resource discoveries fdi bonanzas and local multipliers evidence from mozambique we show that giant and unpredictable oil and gas discoveries trigger fdi bonanzas across developing countries we document a 56 increase in fdi in the 2 years following a giant discovery these b

the causes and consequences of wal mart s growth wal mart is the largest company in the world yet little is known about its economic impact this essay discusses what is known about wal mart s competitive advantage and its economic impact on local communities as well as the national and global economy and highlights the open questions to be addressed by future research

competition and product quality in the supermarket industry this article analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm s incentive to provide product quality in the supermarket industry product availability is an important measure of quality using u s consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls i find that stores facing more intense competition have fewer shortfalls competition from walmart the most significant shock to industry market structure in half a century decreased shortfalls among large chains by about a third the risk that customers will switch stores appears to provide competitors with a strong incentive to invest in product quality

supersizing supercenters the impact of walmart supercenters on body mass index and obesity abstract researchers have linked the rise in obesity to technological progress reducing the opportunity cost of food consumption and increasing the opportunity cost of physical activity we examine this hypothesis in the context of walmart supercenters whose advancements in retail logistics have translated to substantial reductions in the prices of food and other consumer goods using data from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system matched with walmart supercenter entry dates and locations we examine the effects of supercenters on body mass index bmi and obesity we account for the endogeneity of walmart supercenter locations with an instrumental variables approach that exploits the unique geographical pattern of supercenter expansion around walmart s headquarters in bentonville arkansas an additional supercenter per 100 000 residents increases average bmi by 0 24 units and the obesity rate by 2 3 points these results imply that the proliferation of walmart supercenters explains 10 5 of the rise in obesity since the late 1980s but the resulting increase in medical expenditures offsets only a small portion of consumers savings from shopping at supercenters

small independent merchants and transnational retail encounters on main street some insights from bangkok the aggressive expansion of retail transnational corporations is changing the face of much of emerging asia s urban environment and prompting policy makers to consider responses using cross sectional survey data from 30 districts in bangkok this paper explores two issues the impact of transnational large format retail on small independent merchants and the ways in which the latter are attempting to cope with the stress associated with the arrival of the former based on self reported subjective measures of immediate marketing responses sustained marketing efforts and organisational performance the findings suggest that surviving incumbent merchants compete in different and mostly unfavourable environments compared with the status quo ante with the overwhelming majority of these incumbents reporting negative impacts in addition the various responses of many of the incumbent independent merchants suggest that the latter may be unable to reverse the impact of the large retailers arrival