the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption abstract survey characteristics affect the quality of the measurement of food consumption within households thus it is important to identify best practices for designing surveys that collect food data this paper analyses the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption from a sample of 81 national surveys results highlight regularities that can inform best practices in designing surveys and promoting the use of the data for multiple purposes surveys focused on food acquisition collect higher food quantities compared to those that target food consumption surveys based on recall interviews collect higher food quantities compared to those based on diaries but the difference decreases with long reference periods the use of standard units of measurement as well as the consideration of partakers in meals and of seasonality generates significant differences in the survey results the impact of the different survey characteristics carries substantive implications when food consumption data are employed for assessing food security conditions the results are part of a wider work program aimed at improving the quality of household survey data more evidence is needed ideally through coordinated sets of analyses and experiments in different contexts additionally survey characteristics must be complemented by effective field work in order to generate high quality data towards this end statistical capacity development is crucial to promote better data and more evidence based decision making

tell me something i don t already know informedness and the impact of information programs we document how imperfect information generates heterogeneous effects in information treatments with personalized high frequency feedback and peer comparisons in our field experiment in retail electricity we find that high and low energy users symmetrically underestimate and overestimate their relative energy use pre treatment responses to personalized feedback however are asymmetric households that overestimate their relative use and low users both respond by consuming more these boomerang effects provide evidence that peer comparison information programs even those coupled with normative comparisons are not guaranteed to lead to increases in prosocial behavior jel codes c93 d12 d83 l94 q41

does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

an endogenous growth model for the evolution of water rights systems this article presents a model to help explain the transition path from one water management system to another typically a commons framework to one of tradable permit based property rights furthermore drawing from transaction cost literature the model demonstrates how this takes place when externalities the strain on water resources become severe enough to warrant the increased transaction costs inherent with more complex water rights management frameworks

the effectiveness of a reemployment bonus abstract this paper investigates the effectiveness of the recently proposed reemployment bonus relative to the regular unemployment insurance benefits in a model where endogenous search effort plays a crucial role and the bonus is fully portrayed as an incentive contract

loss in the time of cholera long run impact of a disease epidemic on the urban landscape how do geographically concentrated income shocks influence the long run spatial distribution of poverty within a city we examine the impact on housing prices of a cholera epidemic in one neighborhood of nineteenth century london ten years after the epidemic housing prices are significantly lower just inside the catchment area of the water pump that transmitted the disease moreover differences in housing prices persist over the following 160 years we make sense of these patterns by building a model of a rental market with frictions in which poor tenants exert a negative externality on their neighbors this showcases how a locally concentrated income shock can persistently change the tenant composition of a block

infrastructure quality and the subsidy trap abstract electricity and water are often subsidized in developing countries to increase their affordability for low income households ideally such subsidies would create sufficient demand in poor neighborhoods to encourage private investment in their infrastructure instead many regions receiving large subsidies have precarious distribution networks supplying users who never pay using a structural model of household electricity demand in colombia i predict the change in consumption and profits from upgrading low quality electricity connections i show that the existing subsidies which provide greater transfers to areas with unreliable supply deter investment to modernize infrastructure finally i analyze alternative programs with stronger investment incentives jel h23 h54 l94 l98 o12 o13

explaining the transitions out of unemployment in spain the effect of unemployment insurance a multinomial logit model and matched files from the spanish active population survey epa are used to study transitions out of unemployment among men aged 20 59 in addition to demographic characteristics other explanatory variables included in the regressions pertain to previous job characteristics and the spell of unemployment in this article special attention is paid to the impact of unemployment insurance benefits on the re employment probability consistent with previous work it is found that receipt of unemployment insurance is associated with lower probabilities of re employment and of withdrawal from the labour force more importantly a differential effect of benefit receipt is obtained when comparing time periods before and after 1992 indeed in april of that year the labour authority made eligibility requirements for unemployment insurance more restrictive and curtailed benefit amounts

job search and impatience workers who are more impatient search less intensively and set lower reservation wages the effect of impatience on exit rates from unemployment is therefore unclear if agents have exponential time preferences the reservation wage effect dominates for sufficiently patient individuals so increases in impatience lead to higher exit rates the opposite is true for agents with hyperbolic time preferences using two large longitudinal data sets we find that impatience measures are negatively correlated with search effort and the unemployment exit rate and are orthogonal to reservation wages impatience substantially affects outcomes in the direction predicted by the hyperbolic model

decomposing response errors in food consumption measurement implications for survey design from a survey experiment in tanzania there is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time this variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate this study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types the observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to a the omission of any consumption and then b the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption the results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design in light of these findings the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item specific consumption reporting and consequently the measures of total household food consumption

contingent valuation and actual behavior predicting connections to new water systems in the state of kerala india in 1988 families in kerala state in india were surveyed to ascertain their willingness to pay for household connections to a piped water supply system in 1991 the families in these communities were surveyed again and their actual decisions recorded this article explores the validity of the findings of the 1988 study on the basis of actual behavior it looks at the question of benefit revelation did people behave as they said they would and it looks at the question of benefit transfer did people in one site behave as they were predicted to behave on the basis of the predictions of a behavioral model for a different site the data were also used to analyze the policy relevance of behavioral modeling coauthors are john briscoe bhanwar singh radhika ramasubban and ramesh bhatia copyright 1995 by oxford university press

determinants of conservation among the rural poor a charitable contribution experiment this paper examines how conservation decisions are affected by environmental degradation donations to an environmental ngo and participation in actual conservation activities capture individual preferences for environmental conservation environmental degradation is measured both through survey based data on experiences of deforestation and environmental shocks and through indices of deforestation constructed with gis data the results show that being exposed to environmental degradation is correlated both with higher donations and conservation behavior the relationship between conservation choices and individual social preferences is also explored experimental measures of individual altruism and inequality aversion and survey measures of trust time preferences and civic engagement are correlated with donations and real world conservation decisions respectively these findings show the role of environmental awareness in fostering environmental conservation even in very poor settings they also highlight the potential of experiments which closely mirror real world decisions to generate conclusions generalizable to individual behavior outside the laboratory

on the determinants of full employment unemployment rates in local labour markets 1987 on the determinants of full employment unemployment rates in local labour markets applied economics vol 19 no 2 pp 191 200

combining contingent valuation and travel cost data for the valuation of non market goods the travel cost method tcm has long been used to infer the economic value of nonmarket resources and public goods more recently contingent valuation cvm survey methods have gained popularity for eliciting these values here cvm survey responses are combined with tcm data on actual market behavior to estimate jointly both the parameters of the underlying utility function and its corresponding ordinary demand function this is a prototypical empirical example of a new modeling strategy variants of which should prove useful in many applications especially where reliance on a single valuation method is undesirable

engel s what a response to gan and vernon gan and vernon s comment does not resolve the puzzle that we originally posed their description of the puzzle is unclear so we start by restating it the essence of the matter is this imagine two households one of which is larger than the other for example containing the same age and sex composition of people but with twice as many of everyone imagine too that both households have the same level of per capita total household expenditure so that in the example the household with twice as many people spends twice as much in total if there are economies of scale the second household is better off while it is possible for it to maintain exactly the same expenditure pattern as the smaller household with everyone having the same of everything it can also rearrange its purchases to take advantage of the differential economies of scale in different goods because food is a normal good we would expect the larger household to spend more per capita on food this is especially so in poor countries where there are few substitutes for food so that there is limited opportunity for substituting away from food toward goods with greater economies of scale the evidence contradicts this prediction we looked at household survey data from the united states the united kingdom france taiwan thailand pakistan and south africa in all cases and with per capita expenditures held constant larger households have lower per capita food consumption and the reduction with household size is greatest in the poorest countries what do gan and vernon do they show that for the united states russia and south africa when they increase household size holding constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for housing falls more rapidly than the per capita demand for food the same is also true for various combinations of housing and other goods compared with food alone or food combined with clothing this is correct and such results can be inferred from table 5 p 920 of our original paper but these findings do not address the central puzzle which is that larger households that are more than fully compensated for their

reservation wages and unemployment in manufacturing a case study the distribution and determinants of reservation wages are examined using a large new data set of unemployed skilled manufacturing workers reservation wage ratios are smaller than previous evidence would suggest while the period of unemployment and eligibility for unemployment compensation play their anticipated roles in addition two new relationships are demonstrated first workers displaced from jobs outside their primary occupation have significantly lower reservation wages than those unemployed from their major occupation second the requirement for a union job is shown to play a surprisingly large and important role in determining reservation wages finally a simultaneous equation system captures the possibility of dual causation between reservation wages and months of unemployment we find no evidence that higher reservation wages cause longer unemployment

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

the workers value of the remaining employment contract duration this paper introduces and applies a method for estimating workers marginal willingness to pay for job attributes employing data on job search activity worker s willingness to pay for the remaining duration of the employment contract is derived we provide evidence that workers attach substantial value to the remaining contract duration a temporary worker with a remaining contract of 6 months is willing to pay about 10 of the wage to increase the contract by one month

calculating the value of time spent collecting water some estimates for ukunda kenya abstract this article presents two procedures for estimating the value of time spent hauling water in developing countries both approaches are used to derive estimates of the value of time for households in ukunda kenya the results indicate that households in this village place a surprisingly high value on the time they spend collecting water a value approximately equivalent to the wage rate for unskilled labor these findings suggest that the economic benefits of improved water services in developing countries may be much greater than is commonly realized

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

migration congestion externalities and the evaluation of spatial investments abstract the direct benefits of infrastructure in developing countries can be large but if new infrastructure induces in migration congestion of other local publicly provided goods may offset the direct benefits using the example of rural household electrification in south africa we demonstrate the importance of accounting for migration when evaluating welfare gains of spatial programs we also provide a practical approach to computing welfare gains that does not rely on land prices we develop a location choice model that incorporates missing land markets and allows for congestion in local land using this model we construct welfare bounds as a function of the income and population effects of the new electricity infrastructure a novel prediction from the model is that migration elasticities and congestion effects are especially large when land markets are missing we empirically estimate these welfare bounds for rural electrification in south africa and show that congestion externalities from program induced migration reduced local welfare gains by about 40

water works the economic impact of water infrastructure abstract billions of hours are spent each year on water collection in developing countries this paper explores whether improvements in water technologies which decrease household distance to drinking water source and the time intensity of home production enable changes in household time allocation and thereby productivity gains in kyrgyzstan adults reallocate time to leisure and labor on the household farm average yearly household cereals production increased significantly results imply a rate of return to labor equaling 0 11 hour approximately half the hourly farm wage absent evidence of improved adult health results suggest that productivity gains were realized primarily through increased farm labor

an empirical test of the theory of on the job search preunemployment search is the fundamental labor market process generating beneficial effects of advance notice yet theory indicates that workers receiving notice may not search whereas others may search even without advance notice our weighted results

examining the relationship between the use of supermarkets and over nutrition in indonesia this study examines the relationship between the use of modern food retailers and health outcomes using data from a survey of 1 180 urban households in indonesia the dependent variables include adult and child body mass index and the share of individuals overweight and obese after controlling for individual and household characteristics and using standard and lewbel instrumental variable approaches to control for unobservable characteristics we do not find a statistically significant relationship between use of supermarkets and adult nutrition measures on the other hand there is mixed evidence for a negative effect of supermarkets on child nutrition particularly for those in high income households

unemployment benefits and labor market transitions a multinomial logit model with errors in classification this paper utilizes validation data on survey response error in the current population survey to generalize the standard multinomial logit model to allow for spurious events that result from classification error the authors basic approach could be used with other stochastic models of discrete events as well they illustrate their algorithm by studying the effect of unemployment insurance on transitions from unemployment to employment and on labor force withdrawal their results confirm earlier work suggesting that unemployment insurance lengthens unemployment spells and show that correcting for classification error strengthens the apparent effect of unemployment insurance on spell durations copyright 1995 by mit press

estimating the private benefits of vaccination against cholera in beira mozambique a travel cost approach abstract this paper reports the results of the first study that estimates households private demand for cholera vaccines using the travel cost method we take advantage of an unusual natural experiment in january 2004 more than 41 000 residents from various locations in beira mozambique received two doses of oral cholera vaccine free of charge during the first vaccination trial to test its effectiveness in an endemic cholera zone of africa about 30 000 people participated from outside the target zone resulting in long queues and an average waiting time of about 85 min per dose we estimated travel cost models of the revealed demand for cholera vaccines among households informed of the trial using information collected in in person interviews conducted during the summer of 2005 to explore households participation in the trial we used standard and zero inflated household count models for all household members and dichotomous choice models for the head of the household our analysis shows that the quantity of vaccines obtained by households and the likelihood of participation decreased as travel cost in time and transport expenses rose our best estimates of per capita willingness to pay for the two required doses of cholera vaccine are about 0 85 usd these estimates are sensitive to the assumed value of time spent acquiring vaccines

changes in labor force status among the unemployed i argue against the popular view that young black men experience more joblessness than their white counterparts because they have priced themselves out of the labor market the seemingly excessive reservation wages of jobless young black men what they

valuing time in travel cost demand analysis an empirical investigation the opportunity cost of time is usu ally a significant part of the price variable in the travel cost demand model thus its accurate mea surement is important to the estimation of demand and benefit valuation for nonmarket resources this paper empirically tests models which assume that income is the basis for opportunity time cost with an alternative pooled model based on a disequi librium labor market for some recreationists ac ceptance of the hypothesis that disequilibrium mod els may be necessary for some individuals implies increased survey information requirements so that the appropriate model can be applied to each indi vidual jel q21

the economic benefits of surface water quality improvements in developing countries a case study of davao philippines two nonmarket valuation techniques the contingent valuation method and travel cost model are used to estimate the economic value that people in davao philippines place on improving the water quality of the rivers and sea near their community the contingent valuation and travel cost estimates are very close to each other and are quite low both in absolute terms and as a percentage of household income these findings suggest that water pollution control is simply not a high priority for davao s residents and support the argument that households willingness to pay for environmental amenities such as improved water quality is low

spring cleaning rural water impacts valuation and property rights institutions the brief summarizes the spring cleaning rural water impacts valuation and property rights institutions the first two rounds of spring protection occurred in january april 2005 and august november 2005 the author measure health impacts of spring protection an investment that improves source water quality the author also estimate households valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water which limits incentives for private investment spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66 percent but household water quality improves less due to recontamination child diarrhea falls by one quarter travel cost based revealed preference estimates of households valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners valuations and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic the author estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above marginal cost pricing private property will function better at higher income levels or underwater scarcity and alternative institutions could yield pareto improvements

property rights and water access evidence from land titling in rural peru summary insecure land tenure and property rights are an impediment to infrastructure access and services for households in many developing countries this paper explores whether alleviating this impediment through a land titling program in rural peru is associated with improvements in household water sources as well as sanitation and electricity services the economics literature on the links between property rights and investment decisions has amassed yet due to the necessity of water for life the high fixed costs associated with water infrastructure construction and the positive externalities that can result from water provision it is not obvious how water services might respond to land tenure improvements utilizing the phased in program timing in a quasi experimental design we exploit the differences in implementation timing across space in conjunction with the differences in program impact across households that held property titles prior to the project and those that did not results from this modified difference in differences method indicate that land titling is associated with small in magnitude but statistically significant increases in water access larger gains in sanitation and electricity services are found we investigate the channels through which this improved access occurs and find evidence of investments in all three services via either government or water utilities we find evidence of individual household investment only in the case of sanitation taken together these results indicate that land titles are important but not sufficient to increase access to water and other services

household survey data from developing countries progress and prospects assessing the adequacy of household surveys from developing countries can only be done with reference to the purpose s the data are meant to serve we assume that the objective of data collection is to support analysis of a wide range of issues concerning household welfare and behavior especially the prevalence causes and effects of poverty in its multiple dimensions analyses that address these issues can be arrayed in two dimensions methodological complexity which ranges from simple crosstabulations to sophisticated econometric techniques and specificity of the contribution to knowledge which ranges from analysis that addresses a specific policy decision in a particular country to general contributions to knowledge on economic development or research methods a few examples illustrate this typology descriptive statistics on participation in a government program by consumption quintile region or year are methodologically simple and country policy specific compilation of such work across many countries to obtain stylized facts is also methodologically simple but contributes to general knowledge of development using a specific model of household behavior to estimate the impact of charging higher prices for publicly provided services in a particular country is methodologically complex yet countryand policy specific rigorous econometric tests of alternative models of household behavior are methodologically complex and contribute to general knowledge beyond application of the method to a particular data set we discuss the adequacy of household survey data with respect to seven criteria for some criteria the threshold for adequacy varies within the two dimensional methodologyspecificity space

does city structure affect job search and welfare we develop a model in which workers search efficiency is negatively affected by access to jobs workers location in a city is endogenous and reflects a trade off between commuting costs and the surplus associated with search different configurations emerge in equilibrium notably the unemployed workers may reside far away segregated city or close to jobs integrated city we prove that there exists a unique and stable market equilibrium in which both land and labor markets are solved for simultaneously we find that despite inefficient search in the segregated city equilibrium the welfare difference between the two equilibria is not so large due to differences in commuting costs we also show how a social planner can manipulate wages by subsidizing taxing the transport costs and can accordingly restore the efficiency

reliability of recall in agricultural data despite the importance of agriculture to economic development and a vast accompanying literature on the subject little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data due to survey logistics agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of events occurring during past agricultural seasons that took place a number of months prior to the interview this gap can lead to recall bias in reported data on agricultural activities the problem is further complicated when interviews are conducted over the course of several months thus leading to recall of variable length to test for such recall bias the length of time between harvest and interview is examined for three african countries with respect to several common agricultural input and harvest measures the analysis shows little evidence of recall bias impacting data quality there is some indication that more salient events are less subject to recall decay overall the results allay some concerns about the quality of some types of agricultural data collected through recall over lengthy periods

separability and the shadow value of leisure time recreation choices are often viewed as short run decisions conditioned on longer run labor supply using weak separability to reflect this relationship the wage rate is the shadow value of time for individuals who get no utility from work whether or not they are observed to be trading time for money in the short run this result widens the circumstances under which the wage rate not some fraction thereof is the theoretically correct shadow value of time modifications to such a conclusion are developed for cases in which work is a source of utility and in which the first stage choice is not continuous

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

the relative effects of employed and unemployed job search a lthough many early models of job search assumed that job seekers were unemployed economists have come to recognize the importance of on the job search mattila 1974 for example found that roughly 60 of quitters experienced no unemployment between jobs implying that the majority of voluntary job changers engaged in on the job search the choice of search mode i e employed vs unemployed search has been modelled in the theoretical search literature barron and mccafferty 1977 burdett 1978 however there have been no attempts to estimate empirically the determinants of this choice 2 some researchers have however examined the resulting wages associated with these two types of search and found a greater wage return to employed than to unemployed search mattila 1969 black 1980 however because voluntarily unemployed search involves forgoing income burdett 1978 while employed search does not abstracting from voluntary reductions in hours incomemaximizing job seekers would never quit to search unless the expected net return to unemployed search exceeded that for employed search thus the previously mentioned empirical findings at first glance might appear to contradict the assumption of income maximization by job seekers because some workers do quit into unemployment 3 in this paper it is argued that previous attempts to compare the returns of employed and unemployed job search suffer from a selectivity problem specifically searchers who accept offers without experiencing any unemployment are likely to have unobservable variables such as informal job contacts and ability which will raise the relative return to employed search compared to that of voluntarily unemployed job seekers 4 providing an explanation for higher wages for on the job searchers than for unemployed searchers this paper estimates the relative wage effects of employed and unemployed search and the determinants of the choice of search mode i e employed vs unemployed search unlike earlier work mattila 1969 black 1980 the previously mentioned selectivity problems are accounted for this is the first attempt to estimate the determinants of choice of search mode 5 without adjusting for selectivity bias as regards employed vs unemployed search it is found that employed search is associated with greater expected wage offers than unemployed search controlling for measurable personal characteristics however accounting for selectivity the expected wage offer given unemployed search is greater than that given employed search finally the greater is the difference between the expected offer given unemployed and that given employed search the more likely one is to choose unemployed search these findings suggest that quitting to search unemployed may be a wealth maximizing decision received for publication november 5 1980 revision accepted for publication august 17 1981 university of illinois at urbana champaign and arizona state university respectively professor low is partially supported by a faculty grant from the graduate college at arizona state university the authors thank francine blau wallace hendricks and two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions i for a summary of this literature see lippman and mccall 1976 2 barron and mccafferty 1977 do estimate an aggregate time series model of the log of the proportion of quits entering unemployment as a function of the vacancy rate proxied by the help wanted advertising index however such a model ignores search that does not lead to quits and does not include variables beyond the vacancy rate that influence an individual s choice of search mode i it is also possible that the forgone earnings due to unemployed search could in principle be less than the possible savings in direct search costs due to unemployed search relative to employed search see burdett 1978 in this case a lower wage return to unemployed search could imply that quitting was based on income considerations further individuals may have quit for nonwage reasons 4 black 1980 found that other things equal those who planned to seek new employment but did not quit had significantly lower wage growth than those who did not plan to search and did not quit this finding strongly suggests the likelihood of a selectivity bias black 1980 p 227 black s 1976 1980 data the michigan panel study of income dynamics psid for his work on employed search did not allow him to distinguish employed and unemployed search

public health investments and the infant mortality gap evidence from federal sanitation interventions on u s indian reservations abstract to what extent do differential levels of investment in public health inputs explain observed differences in health outcomes across socioeconomic and racial groups this study investigates the impact of 3700 projects that were part of a widespread federal initiative to improve sanitation infrastructure on u s indian reservations starting in 1960 sanitation investment substantially reduced the cost of clean water for households leading to sharp reductions in both waterborne gastrointestinal disease and infectious respiratory disease among native american infants the sanitation program was quite cost effective in part because improvements in the overall disease environment also reduced infectious respiratory disease among nearby white infants despite the health externalities federal sanitation interventions explain almost forty percent of the convergence in native american and white infant mortality rates in reservation counties since 1970

systematic and random search a synthesis this paper synthesizes two models of search in the labor market systematic and random we construct and test a theoretical model in which the searcher is endowed with information on some possibly zero or all individual firms in the labor market as well as the overall wage offer distribution we test the model using a special wave of the 1976 current population survey the major theoretical results of our model are as follows searchers with lower stocks of knowledge about individual firms higher discount rates or having lower coverage by unemployment insurance are more likely to engage in random search activities

sewers diffusion and the decline of mortality the case of paris 1880 1914 it is common to argue that water infrastructure innovations improve life expectancy yet the benefits of clean water depend on a mechanism to dispose of waste water we draw on the historical experience of a large industrial city to estimate the impact of the spread of the sewer system using a longitudinal data set on mortality and rents for each of paris 80 neighborhoods we show that sanitation contributed several years to life expectancy these results point out the multiplicity of infrastructure needed to help decrease mortality

the displacement effect of reemployment bonus programs we develop a partial equilibrium matching model of the labor market in order to examine whether adoption of a reemployment bonus would displace workers not offered the bonus we examine the displacement effect for a unemployment insurance ui eligible workers who are offered but do not find a job in time to qualify for a bonus and b ui ineligible workers who are never offered a bonus the model predicts minimal displacement of the former group but for the latter group the model predicts an increase in unemployment duration of 2 4 week and an increase in unemployment of up to 2 per thousand

rethinking the economics of rural water in africa rural africa lags behind global progress to provide safe drinking water to everyone decades of effort and billions of dollars of investment have yielded modest gains with high but avoidable health and economic costs borne by over 300m people lacking basic water access we explore why rural water is different for communities schools and healthcare facilities across characteristics of scale institutions demand and finance the findings conclude with policy recommendations to i network rural services at scale ii unlock rural payments by creating value and iii design and test performance based funding models at national and regional scales with an ambition to eliminate the need for future sustainable development goals

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

job search by employed and unemployed youth analysis of data from the new youth cohort of the national longitudinal survey yields evidence that young unemployed job seekers chose higher levels of search effort as measured by number of methods used and time spent per method and lower reservation wages relative to offered wages than did comparable employed job seekers in 1981 these differences in search choices at least partly explain differences in search outcomes between the two groups unemployed searchers apparently were more likely than employed searchers to gain new employment and the wages they obtained were slightly lower the author argues that the greater search effort by unemployed job seekers is due to the higher costs of search they bear because of foregone earnings

on the job search in a developing country an analysis based on indian data on migrants job search by those who are employed has received increasing attention in recent years in both the theoretical and the empirical literature on labor markets in developed countries much of the interest stems from the observation that job changes often take place without an intervening period of unemployment and that there is a close relationship between searching for a job and quitting the current job also on the job search affects the rate of unemployment during the period between jobs a major preoccupation of the empirical research has been to estimate the returns to on the job search and to test the determinants of job search the bulk of this work uses data for the united states and the united kingdom 2 job search theory has not been empirically tested in the context of a developing country on the job search particularly in the so called informal sector of the urban labor market is an important feature of probabilistic models of migration in developing countries in the vein of michael p todaro and of john r harris and todaro 3 such models hypothesize that individuals migrate to urban centers with the aim of obtaining employment in the formal sector and that informal sector employment is a transitional phase during which migrants are searching for formal sector jobs recent work by gary s fields has formalized the theoretical aspects of this job search process within the framework of a multisector model 4 thus it would be of interest to find out if there are significant differences between developed and developing countries with respect to the determinants of on the job search

the power of the vegetable patch how home grown food helps large rural households achieve economies of scale escape poverty this paper explores how the household s capacity to grow food impacts their ability to achieve economies of scale in food consumption and how this impacts the geographic distribution of poverty across rural and urban areas an accurate understanding of consumption economies of scale is vital for comparing poverty levels across households of varying size using sri lankan data on home grown food consumption we empirically confirm that such economies of scale exist and that large households tend to consume relatively more home grown food than smaller households the magnitude of these scale economies are found to be larger than those in market purchased food but smaller than those found in housing expenditure consuming more home grown food is also found to be positively correlated with per capita calories consumed taking these effects into account in poverty estimates leads to a 15 per cent decline in the number of household who fall below the poverty line in rural regions

keeping time an analysis of errors in the measurement of unemployment duration this study uses longitudinal microdata from the current population survey to examine the consistency with which unemployment duration is reported an estimate of measurement error is proposed and analyzed a significant negative relationship is found between the initial month s unemployment duration and the reported change between surveys on average persons who begin spells of unemployment in the second month report durations greater than the actual time elapsed overall the average duration of unemployment in this sample may be overstated by at least two weeks a brief discussion of some implications for empirical labor market research concludes the article

unemployment insurance overpayments evidence and implications this paper presents the principal findings of the most comprehensive study yet undertaken of payment errors in the unemployment insurance ui program among the five states studied illinois kansas louisiana new jersey and washington the percentage of benefit weeks with payment errors ranged in 1981 82 from 12 percent to 52 percent with an average of 26 percent in each state overpayments greatly exceeded underpayments with inadequate job search efforts the primary cause of the overpayments found the authors discuss the implications of their findings for previous research and for ui program administration

decentralization and pollution spillovers evidence from the re drawing of county borders in brazil decentralization can improve service delivery but it can also generate externalities across jurisdictional boundaries we examine the nature and size of water pollution externalities as rivers flow across jurisdictions panel data on water pollution in brazilian rivers coupled with county splits that change the locations of borders allow us to identify the spatial patterns of pollution as rivers approach and cross borders controlling for fixed effects and trends specific to each location the theory of externalities predicts that pollution should increase at an increasing rate as the river approaches the downstream exit border that there should be a structural break in the slope of the pollution function at the border and that a larger number of managing jurisdictions should exacerbate pollution externalities we find support for all four predictions in the data satellite data on growth in night time lights along rivers show that local authorities allow more settlements to develop close to rivers in the downstream portions of counties which is the likely underlying mechanism the border effects on pollution are not as pronounced when the cost of inter jurisdictional coordination is lower

the effect of unionism on fringe benefits this study analyzes the impact of unionism on fringes paid to production workers using data on individual establishments it compares fringe expenditures in establishments having the same level of compensation per hour and finds that unionism raises the share of compensation allotted to fringes particularly to pensions vacation pay and life accident and health insurance in addition since unionism also raises the straight time wage rate itself a prime determinant of expenditures on fringes unionism has a very sizeable impact on total fringe expenditures as well as on the fringe share of compensation the union fringe effect exceeds in percentage terms the union wage effect and is sufficiently large to suggest that standard union wage studies understate the union effect on total compensation the study also compares the fringe expenditures of production and non production workers within the same establishment controlling for within establishment pay policies the findings suggest that the pres

job contact networks abstract many workers hear about or obtain their jobs through friends and relatives the aim of this paper is twofold first we relate both individual and aggregate labor market outcomes to the network structure of personal contacts second we study strategic network formation to this purpose we develop a model specifying at the individual level both the decision to form contacts with other agents and the process by which information about jobs is obtained and transmitted we show that equilibrium networks always exist and that only moderate levels of network asymmetry can be sustained at equilibrium also we establish a general non monotonicity result on information flow and unemployment with respect to network size in symmetric networks

spatial mismatch search effort and urban spatial structure abstract the aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism for the spatial mismatch hypothesis spatial mismatch can here be the result of optimizing behavior on the part of the labor market participants in particular the unemployed can choose low amounts of search and long term unemployment if they reside far away from jobs they choose voluntary not to relocate close to jobs because the short run gains low land rent and large housing consumption are big enough compared to the long run gains of residing near jobs higher probability of finding a job

testing the barten model of economies of scale in household consumption toward resolving a paradox of deaton and paxson households enhance the welfare of constituents by sharing shelter and appliances and economizing in services such as maintenance child care and food preparation resources so conserved can be applied to more personal goods such as food clothing or beauty care economizing by households is an important factor to consider when measuring poverty and inequality in 1895 ernst engel observed that the share of food consumption in total consumption can be used to measure economic welfare across households of different sizes and incomes larger or richer households spend a smaller share of their total expenditure on food although more elaborate methods have been developed see e g a survey by browning 1992 the use of food share or the budget share of other bundles of necessities as a proxy for welfare remains a viable method for measuring poverty and studying equivalence scales see e g deaton and muellbauer 1986 lanjouw and ravallion 1995 engel s method is popular for its simplicity it has only one demand equation to be estimated with the food share of total expenditure as a dependent variable a single cross sectional survey usually provides sufficient data for the analysis and no information on prices is required

price subsidies diagnostic tests and targeting of malaria treatment evidence from a randomized controlled trial author s dupas pascaline cohen jessica schaner simone abstract both under and over treatment of communicable diseases are public bads but efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other using rich experimental data on household treatment seeking behavior in kenya we study the implications of this tradeoff for subsidizing life saving antimalarials sold over the counter at retail drug outlets we show that a very high subsidy such as the one under consideration by the international community dramatically increases access but nearly half of subsidized pills go to patients without malaria we study two ways to better target subsidized drugs reducing the subsidy level and introducing rapid malaria tests over the counter

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

spatial mismatch transport mode and search decisions in england abstract we develop a theoretical model in which whites mainly use private vehicles to commute whereas nonwhites use public transportation we show that for both whites and nonwhites higher time distance to jobs leads to lower search effort because of different transport modes we also show that at exactly the same time distance to jobs white unemployed workers search more intensively than nonwhites because it is less costly for them to gather information about jobs we then test this model using english sub regional data we find that for each race indeed living in areas where distance to jobs is higher yields the unemployed to search less than in areas with better job access we also find that having access to a car increases search intensity for both whites and nonwhites finally closing the racial gap in car access and distance to jobs would considerably narrow the difference in search intensities between whites and nonwhites

reservation wages and their labor market effects for black and white male youth this paper presents an empirical analysis of self reported reservation wages for unemployed young black and white males the results show that young blacks seek wages which are comparable to those of young whites in absolute terms but which are higher relative to what is available on the demand side of the market these relatively higher reservation wages of young blacks contribute to their unemployment durations and somewhat to their subsequently received wages changes in reservation wages may thus help to explain the trends in wages and employment of young blacks in recent years

the second engel law is it a paradox abstract the second engel law says that the engel curve for food moves out as family size increases thus showing a decrease in welfare what is puzzling though is that this regularity does not hold for equivalent income functions expressed in per capita terms deaton and paxon 1998 economies of scale household size and the demand for food journal of political economy 106 5 897 930 show that holding per capita total household expenditure constant per capita expenditure on food falls with the number of heads deaton and paxson s empirical evidence from developed and less developed countries seems to invalidate the claim of the second engel s law the main objective of this paper is to understand such paradoxical relationship between food consumption and household size our nonparametric empirical evidence drawn from the colombian 1985 urban survey shows that the food share is negatively related to total household per capita expenditure in line with deaton and paxson s claim but equivalent incomes shift to the right as theory predicts the regularity of our nonparametric results is an indication of a problem in the parametric specification of the engel curve modified by family size in fact using also the surveys of italy nepal djibouti and bangladesh we show that a theoretically plausible modified engel curve is coherent with the claim of the second engel law and explains deaton and paxson s paradox

the value of life and the rise in health spending over the past half century americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending we investigate an issue central to this debate is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions notably the growth of income per person we develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case standard preferences of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption asset pricing and labor supply imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one as people get richer and consumption rises the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility the marginal utility of life extension does not decline as a result the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health and the health share grows along with income in projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century

assessing the impact of a school subsidy program in mexico using a social experiment to validate a dynamic behavioral model of child schooling and fertility this paper uses data from a randomized social experiment in mexico to estimate and validate a dynamic behavioral model of parental decisions about fertility and child schooling to evaluate the effects of the progresa school subsidy program and to perform a variety of counterfactual experiments of policy alternatives our method of validation estimates the model without using post program data and then compares the model s predictions about program impacts to the experimental impact estimates the results show that the model s predicted program impacts track the experimental results our analysis of counterfactual policies reveals an alternative subsidy schedule that would induce a greater impact on average school attainment at similar cost to the existing program

economies of scale in the household puzzles and patterns from the american past i introduction in one example of economies of scale households with multiple members are able to achieve the same standard of living at lower per capita expenditures on public goods than smaller households for example if two adults unite to form one household the couple will be better off as they can share public goods such as housing lowering per capita expenditure on them the couple can funnel these savings into increased consumption of public goods more spacious housing than either could afford separately making each member better off than they were when they lived by themselves the basic idea has strong intuitive appeal living standards for households of different sizes could be equated with lower per capita expenditures for larger households who are able to economize on public goods household economies of scale are therefore fundamental to the measurement of living standards measuring the distribution of income the costs of children the extent of poverty and poverty thresholds necessitates an accounting for these economies of scale one difficulty with household economies of scale is that it can be difficult to estimate the size of the scale economy and household economies of scale are not as well defined as scale economies in production while economies of scale are a function of the size of the household the demand for goods and services generally derives from both household size and composition when researchers turned their attention to economies of scale in the household they overcame the problem of detection and measurement by concentrating on adult only households as in nelson 1988 measuring economies of scale for households where all members are the same type have identical tastes and are treated equally will not aid in the measurement of poverty the distribution of income and the costs of children where compositional heterogeneity matters a second difficulty lies in the income and substitution effects that scale economies have on private goods while both the income and substitution effects imply increased consumption of public goods the income and substitution effects work in opposite directions for private goods and it is not possible to know which effect will dominate unless we know more about the private good private goods that have low own and cross price elasticities and sizable income elasticities are goods whose consumption is likely to increase with household size the increased consumption of those private goods could be taken as a measure of household economies of scale where larger households are better off in terms of private consumption due to scale economies in public consumption using this insight deaton and paxson 1998 suggested that food would be a good choice for a private good where the income effect will dominate because food has few substitutes and they argue that substitution away from food will be less likely for households close to subsistence this implies that food expenditures should increase with household size the savings realized on public goods would be funneled to food a necessity that has few substitutes rather than increasing with household size deaton and paxson found that food expenditure per capita decreases with household size after considering and dismissing a number of possible explanations they conclude that their empirical results are a puzzle a literature analyzing this food puzzle has developed deaton and paxson 2003 gan and vernon 2003 gardes and starzec 2000 gibson 2002 gibson and kim 2007 horowitz 2002 perali 2001 vernon 2005 but research on household scale economies has yet to look at how or if scale economies change over time just as knowledge about scale economies at a point in time allows us to estimate the extent of poverty and inequality knowledge about changes in scale economies are useful for analyzing changes in living standards over time even more knowledge about changes in scale economies is important since average household size has changed over time

a critical assessment of transaction cost theory and governance of public services with special reference to water and sanitation this is a pre copyedited author produced version of an article accepted for publication in cambridge journal of economics following peer review the version of record hulya dagdeviren and simon a robertson a critical assessment of transaction cost theory and governance of public services with special reference to water and sanitation cambridge journal of economics vol 40 6 1707 1724 january 2016 is available online at https doi org 10 1093 cje bev079

welfare measurement and measurement error the approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived they are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error contaminated income distribution but not on the form of the measurement error distribution and to be accurate within a rich class of error free income distributions and measurement error distributions the functionals of the error contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated so it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available to calculate corrected welfare measures the methods are illustrated in an application using indonesian household expenditure data

parallel realities exploring poverty dynamics using mixed methods in rural bangladesh this paper explores the implications of using two methodological approaches to study poverty dynamics in rural bangladesh using data from a unique longitudinal study we show how different methods lead to very different assessments of socio economic mobility we suggest five ways of reconciling these differences considering assets in addition to expenditures proximity to the poverty line other aspects of well being household division and qualitative recall errors considering assets and proximity to the poverty line along with expenditures resolves three fifths of the qualitative and quantitative differences use of such integrated mixed methods can therefore improve the reliability of poverty dynamics research

search method use by unemployed youth this article presents a search model which shows that search method choices should be related to their costs and expected productivities as well as to nonwage income and wage offer distributions the empirical evidence then shows that the most frequently used search methods i e friends and relatives and direct applications without referral are also the most productive in generating offers and acceptances the number of methods used is affected by factors that presumably reflect opportunities as well as income sources and needs specific methods are chosen in a manner that generates positive average effects on outcomes for those using them

food stamps and food spending an engel function approach estimation of food stamp program fsp effects has been complicated by self selection and by a contradiction between observed spending patterns and the economic theory of consumer choice we developed a modified version of the traditional theory in which participant households may be partly extramarginal even if they have some cash spending on at home food using current population survey cps data for 2001 2005 we estimated engel functions for at home and away from home food spending for fsp participants and nonparticipants compared to nonparticipants with the same level of total income participants had higher at home food spending and lower away from home food spending copyright 2007 oxford university press

on the job search some empirical evidence from britain abstract this paper considers evidence from the labour force survey concerning job search by employed workers the unconditional probability of observing on the job search is decomposed into the product of two constituent probabilities upon which maximum likelihood estimation is performed the analysis facilitates the identification of who searches and whether search takes place in work or from unemployment temporary or part time employment encourages continued search by men but not women skilled workers search more than the unskilled and demonstrate a preference for employed search inter industry wage relativities encourage search on the job job tenure is a significant determinant of the quality of a job match and the subsequent likelihood that on the job search is undertaken employed job seekers adopt search strategies that are more readily integrated into a working environment

an empirical model of employed search unemployed search and nonsearch the 1969 1971 national longitudinal surveys data on young men were used to study the employed worker s choice among employed search unemployed search and not searching for a new job we assume that an unobserved variable search intensity governs this choice such that unemployed search involves a greater intensity than employed search which of course is associated with greater intensity than nonsearch the principal results are that current wages seniority collective bargaining coverage employment outside construction and employment by government are each ceteris paribus negatively associated with search intensity further each of these variables lowers the probability of not searching and raises the probabilities of employed and unemployed job search

a comparison of contingent valuation method and random utility model estimates of the value of avoiding reductions in king mackerel bag limits this paper estimates the value of king mackerel bag limit changes with both stated and revealed preference methods the 1997 marine recreational fishery statistical survey allows estimation of the value of avoiding bag limit reductions with the random utility model and the contingent valuation method using the contingent valuation method the willingness to pay to avoid a one fish reduction in the bag limit is 2 45 per year using the random utility model the willingness to pay to avoid a one fish reduction in the bag limit is 2 24 per trip and 7 71 for a two month time period considering several methodological issues the difference in willingness to pay between the stated and revealed preference methods is in the expected direction

the differential effects of output shocks on unemployment rates by race and gender 1 introduction the issues of unemployment and output are central to many macroeconomic policy debates a major source of disagreement among policymakers deals with the maximum sustainable level of output growth that is consistent with the absence of inflation when the economy s rate of output growth exceeds the maximum sustainable rate there will be upward pressure on the economy s overall price level traditional macroeconomic theory emphasizes the role that tight labor markets play in this inflationary pressure the commonly held belief is that in a tight labor market firms must bid workers away from other firms if they wish to expand the size of their workforce hence labor costs in the economy will tend to rise since labor is a major input in the production of virtually all goods and services an increase in labor costs without an accompanying increase in productivity will tend to increase the economy s overall price level conversely when the economy contracts labor costs in the economy will tend to fall inducing a downward movement in the economy s overall price level the labor market is therefore linked to changes in economic activity and to changes in the economy s price level a common feature in many macroeconomic models is the connection between departures from the equilibrium rate of unemployment i e the natural or normal rate and the business cycle these macroeconomic models suggest that unanticipated departures from a steady state in the output market should be related to departures of the actual unemployment rate from the normal rate however the economy s aggregate unemployment rate is actually a weighted average of the unemployment rates of various demographic groups the rate of each demographic group is influenced by that group s flows into and out of unemployment since many of the factors that determine these flows have been found to differ by demographic group it is expected that a given aggregate output shock may have differential effects on the unemployment rates of various groups this article focuses on how unanticipated changes in real output affect the unemployment rate of different demographic groups we examine the time series behavior of black male white male black female and white female monthly unemployment rates over the january 1972august 1999 period specifically we estimate a vector autoregression var and then conduct simulations in the form of impulse responses to determine the extent to which each of these unemployment rates is affected by an aggregate output shock i e an unanticipated change in aggregate output we compare and contrast the magnitude and the persistence of these responses across the groups because the traditional impulse response function generated from a var is sensitive to how the researcher chooses to order the variables with different orderings often giving vastly different results we employ the recently developed generalized impulse response function koop pesaran and potter 1996 pesaran and shin 1998 this technique allows researchers to examine impulse responses that are robust to changes in ordering in the following sections we highlight the major literature that this article builds upon and then we discuss the basics behind the nature of the relationship between the unemployment rate and output a discussion of the data the methodology and the results follows the article closes with concluding remarks and policy implications 2 related literature a number of studies have examined racial differences in unemployment rates and in factors that may affect unemployment rates using data on displaced workers fairlie and kletzer 1998 examine racial differences in job displacement over the years 1984 1992 and find that black males experienced greater rates of job displacement and lower rates of reemployment than white males petterson 1998 uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth for the 19791986 period to examine the reservation wages of black males compared with those of white males and contrary to earlier research argues that these differences do not explain much if any of the racial employment gap

mechanism choice and the buy it now auction a structural model of competing buyers and sellers a striking feature of many online sales platforms is the coexistence of multiple sales mechanisms items on ebay for instance are frequently offered through auctions posted prices and buy it now auctions in this article i study how this mechanism multiplicity influences the welfare of buyers and sellers i specify and estimate a structural model of mechanism choice in online markets in which i consider both sides of the market on the demand side buyers choices among available listings are equilibrium outcomes of an entry game on the supply side sellers make equilibrium decisions when choosing sales mechanisms and prices i estimate this model using data from sales of baseball tickets on ebay and calculate consumer and seller rents in three markets the actual market with all three sales mechanisms and two counterfactual markets with auctions and fixed prices or only fixed price listings respectively i find that the addition of auctions to fixed price markets hurts sellers and risk averse buyers but benefits risk neutral buyers additionally the consumer surplus increases when buy it now auctions are offered but the seller surplus is reduced further i discuss the intuition for the cause of this result

improved source improved quality demand for drinking water quality in rural india abstract this paper tests the hypothesis that the expansion of improved drinking water supplies in rural india reduced household expenditure on water quality offsetting some of the quality benefits from source protection i estimate demand for in home treatment using geological characteristics to predict a household s drinking water source the probability of treatment and in particular boiling reduces by 18 27 percentage points in response to source protection offsetting 4 of the water quality gains and saving households 0 5 1 in monthly expenditure behavioral choices partly counteract the water quality gains from source protection

on the job search in a recession this paper is concerned with the behavious of one component of employee job search in one local labour market during a period of severe recession the paper focuses on the relationship between market conditions and the number of employees using the services of employment offices and jobcentres in analysing this relationship over time the paper stresses the need to adopt a flow approach in such empirical studies of the labour market often as in this case explanatory variables can affect inflows and outflows to labour market stocks in different directions and misleading conclusions may therefore be drawn if only the traditional stock analysis is conducted a further concern of the paper is to examine whether the relationship between market conditions and job search differs between male and female employees