economies of scale in energy use in adult only households the residential sector is responsible for 18 of australia s primary energy use thus improved knowledge about household energy use is vital to future energy management this study examines economies of scale in energy use and expenditure among adult only households and across three adult only household types significant economies of scale are found in all cases small households suffer a double penalty of greater per capita energy use and higher charge per unit of energy with older households the most affected the trend towards smaller average household size means that economies of scale are continually being lost offsetting gains in energy efficiency achieved through other means

the political economy of conflicts over wealth why don t the rabble expropriate the rich the most striking feature of liberal democracies is the coexistence of large inequalities of wealth with a roughly egalitarian distribution of voting power so far most attempts to explain this have asked why don t the poor form a coalition to expropriate the rich this paper argues that this is not necessarily the best way to interpret the problem and attempts to provide an alternative unified political economic model that is more consistent with standard assumptions about voting this is done by studying what would happen if every possible coalition could form in a wealth distribution game among the main findings is that if the marginal contribution of every individual to production is increasing sufficiently there is a stable distribution of the product this may include the egalitarian distribution if individuals are not so valuable there is no stable distribution

an alternative approach to estimate the wage returns to private sector training summary this paper follows an alternative approach to identify the wage effects of private sector training the idea is to narrow down the comparison group by only taking into consideration the workers who wanted to participate in training but did not do so because of some random event this makes the comparison group increasingly similar to the group of participants in terms of observed individual characteristics and the characteristics of planned training events at the same time the point estimate of the average return to training consistently drops from a large and significant return to a point estimate close to zero copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

a decomposition of training probabilities the determinants of workers training probabilities are analysed a distinction is made between the unconditional probability that a worker is employed by a firm that provides any training opportunities at all and the conditional probability that the worker receives training given that s he works for a firm that provides training for this analysis a censored version of the bivariate probit model is applied the results indicate that establishment size industry dummies type of schooling age and experience affect only the unconditional probability whereas the type of labour contract working hours and job level affect only the conditional probability years of formal schooling affect both probabilities more highly educated workers are both more likely to work for training providing firms and given that they work for such a firm to be selected for training programmes

minimum wages and training revisited theory predicts that minimum wages will reduce employer provided on the job training designed to improve workers skills on the current job but it is ambiguous regarding training that workers obtain to qualify for a job we estimate the effects of minimum wages on both types of training received by young workers exploiting cross state variation in minimum wage increases much of the evidence supports the hypothesis that higher minimum wages reduce formal training to improve skills on the current job but there is little or no evidence of offsetting increases in training undertaken to qualify for or obtain jobs

violence during democratization and the quality of democratic institutions abstract this paper investigates the impact of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies we propose a theory of endogenous regime transition in which violent conflict can arise in equilibrium peaceful transitions lead to a social contract that provides all groups with political representation and leads to better protection of civil liberties than violent transitions empirical evidence from the third wave of democratization based on a difference in difference methodology supports the theoretical predictions the findings suggest that compared to peaceful transitions violent conflicts during the democratic transition have persistent negative effects on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies

a quantitative evaluation of payroll tax subsidies for low wage workers an equilibrium search approach abstract phelps phelps e 1994 low wage employment subsidies versus the welfare state american economic review 84 54 58 presented the case for a low wage subsidy policy since the mid 1990s france has experimented with this strategy this paper evaluates the effect of this policy on employment and also on output and welfare we construct an equilibrium search model incorporating wage posting and specific human capital investment where unemployment and the distribution of both wages and productivity are endogenous we estimate this model using french data numerical simulations show that the prevailing minimum wage allows a high production level to be reached by increasing training investment even though the optimal minimum wage is lower we show that payroll tax subsidies enhance welfare more than a reduction in the minimum wage when they are spread over a large range of wages in order to avoid specialization in low productivity jobs

investment in human capital and gender wage differences evidence from the nlsy this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital since the nlsy includes relatively detailed information regarding on and off the job training we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post school training also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap it is found that about 60 of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances this suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found the research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men our research suggests that the largest factor

general training in labor markets common value auctions with unobservable investment abstract this paper studies the puzzle of employer financing for the general training of workers a parsimonious theory is developed based on asymmetric information between employers about the quantity of training the labor market is modeled as a common value auction with an informed and an uninformed bidder the novel feature of the game is that one of the bidders can make an unobservable investment that increases the value of the item before the auction by randomizing the amount of training provided an employer can create an endogenous adverse selection problem enabling it to compress the wage structure and capture some returns from its training investment the model generates continuous equilibrium wage and training distributions and identical employees can receive different wage offers and training levels a parametric example is used to illustrate how the shape of the wage distribution depends on the elasticity of production with respect to human capital

gender differences in training capital and wages this paper constructs an equilibrium job matching model where workers differ in their attachment to the labor force the model predicts that workers with weaker attachment to the labor market will receive lower starting wages and lower post training wages and will be placed in jobs that offer less training and use less capital the implications of the model for gender differences in pay and job assignment are tested with the eopp data set ourfindings suggest that while training intensity during the first three months of employment is similar in positions filled by males and females females are employed in positions that have a shorter duration of on the job training and that use less capital these differences in on the job training and capital in positions filled by men and women as well as a lower market value for women s prior labor market experience account for a substantial part of the gap in wages between males and females

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

analysis of the residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior by incorporating multiple self selection effects abstract it is expected that the residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior might correlate with each other besides due to the existence of self selection effects the observed inter relationship between them might be the spurious result of the fact that some unobserved variables are causing both these concerns motivate us to 1 consider residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior for both in home appliances and out of home cars simultaneously and 2 explicitly control self selection effects so as to capture a relatively true effect of land use policy on household energy consumption behavior an integrated model termed as joint mixed multinomial logit multiple discrete continuous extreme value model is presented here to identify the sensitivity of household energy consumption to land use policy by considering multiple self selection effects the model results indicate that land use policy do play a great role in changing beijing residents energy consumption pattern while the self selection effects cannot be ignored when evaluating the effect of land use policy based on the policy scenario design it is found that increasing recreational facilities and bus lines in the neighborhood can greatly promote household s energy saving behavior additionally the importance of soft policy and package policy is also emphasized in the context of beijing

home energy use in nine oecd countries 1960 1980 abstract government institutions and individuals have responded to fluctuations in energy supply and price with the implementation of policies and the initiation of conservation while these activities have resulted in noticeable conservation of energy primarily through behavioural actions further savings could be achieved through the exchange of information regarding promising policies and technologies toward this end data on residential sector energy use for nine oecd countries canada denmark france west germany italy japan sweden the uk and the usa have been collected over the period 1960 1980 and have been analysed using both indicators of energy use intensity and econometric methods

labor market effects of women s post school age training using data from the 1984 nls mature women s cohort this study investigates whether post school age training defined as both formal education and other forms of training received after the end of formal schooling affected women s wages and labor force participation the author analyzes the association between training and wage changes over the years 1967 when the women in the sample ranged in age from 30 to 44 through 1984 when they had reached ages 47 to 61 and compares labor force participation in 1984 between women who had obtained post school age training and those who had not women who received post school age training experienced a greater rise in wages and participated in the labor force at older ages than did women who received no training

inequality redistribution and growth a challenge to the conventional political economy approach abstract this paper reconsiders the conventional political economy view that 1 1 more unequal societies tend to make more redistribution and 2 2 more redistribution is harmful to growth we present a number of theoretical arguments suggesting that the two previous implications are not necessarily true and that the empirically observed negative correlation between inequality and growth might just come from the fact that more unequal societies tend to redistribute less which in turn is actually detrimental to growth

a theory of political transitions we develop a theory of political transitions inspired by the experiences of western europe and latin america nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite the initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening revolution especially when the opportunity cost is low for example during recessions the threat of revolution may force the elite to democratize democracy may not consolidate because it is redistributive and so gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating between regimes and suffer substantial fiscal volatility

decomposition analysis of the variations in residential electricity consumption in brazil for the 1980 2007 period measuring the activity intensity and structure effects abstract introduced at the end of the 1970s to study the impacts of structural changes on electricity consumption by industry index decomposition analysis techniques have been extended to various other areas to help in the formulation of energy policies notably in developed countries however few authors have applied these techniques to study the evolution of energy consumption in developing countries in brazil the few available studies have focused only on the industrial sector in this article we apply the decomposition technique called the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi to electricity consumption of the brazilian residential sector to explain its evolution in terms of the activity structure and intensity affects over the period from 1980 to 2007 the technique is sufficiently robust and flexible to perform this analysis by disaggregating residential consumers by consumption classes and regions of the country among the main results is measurement of the impact of government programs for income transfer and universal service on variations in residential consumption typical of developing countries

unequal societies income distribution and the social contract this paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political fundamentals can sustain such different systems of social insurance fiscal redistribution and education finance as those of the united states and western europe with imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality conversely with credit constraints lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality hence the potential for multiple steady states with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution or vice versa

credibility and policy convergence in a two party system with rational voters the traditional approach to modeling political parties behavior based upon the contribution of anthony downs 1957 assumes that the parties unique objective is to win elections thus they maximize their popularity the crucial implication of this assumption for a two party system is that if the two parties have the same information about voters preferences full convergence of policies results from electoral competition this is the crucial implication of the median voter theorem more generally it may be argued that different parties are motivated differently because they represent different constituencies parties may not care only about winning elections per se but also about the quality of the policies resulting from an election in this case the candidates of the two parties view winning an election not only as a goal per se but also as a means of implementing a better policy for their respective constituencies this paper shows that electoral competitions imply dynamic inconsistency if the voters are modeled as rational and forwardlooking agents and parties do not care exclusively about being elected but also about which policy to implement once elected the dynamic inconsistency arises as follows the parties have an incentive to announce convergent platforms to increase their chances of election however if the elected party is not committed to its electoral platform it has an incentive to follow its most preferred policy rather than the policy announced in its platform if voters are rational they account for this incentive thus in general in a one shot electoral game the only timeconsistent equilibrium is one in which no convergence is possible the two parties follow their most preferred policies and the voters rationally expect this outcome full convergence of parties platforms results only as a limiting case when the parties are completely indifferent with respect to the quality of the policies resulting from the election thus these results differ from the existing literature on ideologically motivated politicians for instance donald wittman 1977 1983 randall calvert 1985 which implicitly assumes the possibility of binding commitments to electoral platforms complete or partial policy convergence can be the outcome of political competition if the interaction between the parties and the voters is modeled as an infinitely repeated game in fact if the candidates have concave objective functions the welfare maximizing policy rule implies a complete convergence of parties policies however this cooperative and agreed upon policy may or may not be sustainable as a subgame perfect equilibrium depending on parameter values in particular it depends on the discount rates of the two parties the degree of polarization of their preferences and the relative popu graduate school of industrial administration carnegie mellon university pittsburgh pa 15213 and national bureau of economic research cambridge ma 02138 this paper is based upon a chapter of my unpublished doctoral dissertation at harvard university i am greatly indebted to jeffrey sachs for directing my attention toward these issues and for many conversations i also wish to thank andrew abel dilip abreu olivier blanchard ramon caminal andrew caplin alex cukierman morris fiorina benjamin friedman herschel grossman howard rosenthal and the referees for very useful comments the responsibilitv af anv n mtnkieis af calrirp nfnlv mine the result of policy convergence in a two party system is more general than the median voter theorem for discussions of convergence results not at the median see john ledyard 1984 peter coughlin 1984 coughlin and shmuel nitzan 1981 melvin hinich 1977 for earlier work on spatial competition see richard mckelvey 1975 hinich ledyard and peter ordeshook 1972 1973 and the references quoted therein the present paper focuses on the result of convergence rather than on the median voter theorem per se

learning and earning do multiple training events pay a decade of evidence from a cohort of young british men this paper estimates the impact of work related training on wage growth over the period 1981 91 using longitudinal data from the national child development study a cohort of young men aged 23 in 1981 a hurdle negbin model is used to control for training endogeneity we find that training incidence has a significant positive effect on wage growth we also find that young men with a higher level of education are not only more likely to be trained but are also more likely to experience substantially higher wage growth as a result

employer search training and vacancy duration we develop a model of optimal employer search strategy when information about match quality is endogenous the model is tested using four data sets two of which have not previously been used as theory predicts we find that when filling positions requiring more training employers search more intensively and extensively employers also search more extensively when hiring workers with more education and with prior experience these findings provide strong evidence of systematic variation in search strategies based on the characteristics of the positions and job applicants factors that influence employer search also affect the duration of a vacancy

toward a theory of vacancies we attempt to further characterize the search strategies of the employer in the article we discuss how characteristics of the employer or conditions that the employer faces affect the optimal search strategies and the probability of filling a vacancy in each period semiparametric and parametric methods are used to estimate hazard rates of filling vacancies the results suggest that for the given sample of vacancies the general form of the hazard function is nonmonotonic additionally the results suggest that those employers who have advance notice of the vacancy may search longer than those employers who do not

worker effort decisions and efficient gender specific wage tenure profiles i introduction during the past thirty years women have increased their labor force participation female labor market intermittency has decreased and women s total labor market experience and years of tenure with the current employer have increased what these trends imply about the evolution of the gender gap in wages depends in part on gender differences in returns to tenure it is therefore surprising that economists have all but ignored the empirical finding that women have higher returns to tenure than do men over a significant portion of their working lives one reason why this finding has been ignored or treated as an anomaly may be the lack of theoretical constructs which predict an inverse gender gap in returns to tenure several labor market models predict that women should have lower returns to tenure than men human capital theory offers the most frequently cited explanation of flatter earnings profiles for female workers according to human capital theory gains from specialization and exchange lead to one household member specializing in home production and the other in market work since only women bear children historically the outcome of the exchange has been that women have specialized in home production indeed all surveys of time use indicate that women spend on average two to three times as long on housework as men as a consequence of this allocation women anticipate intermittent labor force participation and fewer years overall in the labor force than men this pattern too is borne out in national surveys which invariably find shorter average tenure and fewer total years of labor market experience for women than for men women typically have shorter completed job spells as well hall 1982 table 5 presents evidence that the gender gap in completed job duration is quite large he estimates that 63 8 percent of men but only 49 6 percent of women hold jobs with eventual tenure of at least five years with 37 3 and 15 1 percent of men and women respectively holding jobs with eventual tenure of at least twenty years because of the greater intermittency and shorter anticipated work history for women than men women will find it optimal to acquire less human capital than men 1 lesser quantities of general human capital tends to flatten both the observed earnings experience profile and the observed earnings tenure profile two factors contribute to this pattern first skills deteriorate during periods out of the labor market as in mincer and polachek 1974 which flattens the earnings experience profile for women relative to men second women anticipating discontinuous work histories select into occupations with flatter earnings profiles to minimize the penalty to labor force withdrawals as in polachek 1981 the effects of firm specific human capital on gender differences in wage tenure profiles vary across models for example kuhn 1993 constructs an elegant game theoretic model of gender differences in training and wages if women have a higher exogenous exit rate than men in equilibrium they will be placed in jobs with lower levels of firm specific training with a positive relation between training and productivity and a common share rate of the costs and benefits of specific training for men and women the wage tenure profiles of men will be steeper than those for women in contrast becker and lindsay 1994 argue that firm specific human capital leads to higher returns to tenure for women than men becker and lindsay assume that men and women have the same level of firm specific training however women have greater variance in their opportunity cost of remaining with a firm and so are more likely than men to separate inefficiently by giving women a greater share of both the costs and benefits of firm specific human capital through a steeper wage tenure profile firms reduce undesirable turnover although human capital arguments dominate the literature on gender differences in the labor market other models of wage growth predict flatter wage tenure profiles for women

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

political equilibrium income distribution and growth this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on growth when investment in human capital is the source of growth and individuals vote over the degree of redistribution in the economy the model has three main features first very different patterns of income distribution are conducive to high growth at different levels of per capita income second growth is associated with an externality whereby investment in human capital by one group increases the productivity of other groups thus potentially enabling them to invest in human capital third the initial pattern of income distribution and the resulting political equilibrium are crucial in determining whether the transmission of this externality is promoted in which case growth is enhanced or prevented in which case growth is stopped using a non overlapping generations model with voting i derive several empirical implications in particular the model implies an inverted u relation between levels of inequality and levels of income in cross sections but not necessarily in time series a result that seems consistent with a number of empirical studies

overeducation undereducation and the theory of career mobility the theory of career mobility sicherman and galor journal of political economy 98 1 169 92 1990 claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects sicherman journal of labour economics 9 2 101 22 1991 was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study using panel data however the only retest using panel data so far robst eastern economic journal 21 539 50 1995 produced rather ambiguous results in the present paper random effects models to analyse relative wage growth are estimated using data from the german socio economic panel it is found that overeducated workers in germany have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than adequately educated workers the results cast serious doubt on whether the career mobility model is able to explain overeducation in germany the plausibility of the results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on the job training which is usually foun

evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees older than age 40 this discontinuity in a firm s training cost is exploited to identify the tax deduction s effects on training participation and of training participation on wages the results show that the training rate of workers just above age 40 is 15 20 higher than that of workers just below age 40 this difference mainly results from the postponement of training and is not a stimulating effect of the measure the two stage least squares estimate of the wage effect of training is not statistically different from zero

democracy as an equilibrium observation shows that while democracy is fragile in poor countries it is impregnable in developed ones to explain this pattern i develop a model in which political parties propose redistributions of incomes observe the result of an election and decide whether to comply with the outcome or to launch a struggle for dictatorship democracy prevails in developed societies because too much is at stake in turning against it more income can be redistributed in developed than in poor countries without threatening democracy limits on redistribution arise endogenously so that constitutions are not necessary for democracy to endure a democratic culture characterizes the equilibrium

the wage effects of training in portugal differences across skill groups genders sectors and training types this article investigates the determinants and wage effects of training in portugal in a first stage we show that there are considerable differences in training participation across groups of workers with elder and low educated individuals participating substantially less in a second stage we show that training has a positive and significant impact on wages the estimated wage return is about 30 for men and 38 for women discriminating between levels of education and working experience and the public and private sector reveals important differences across categories of workers we find that women low educated workers and workers with long working experience earn larger returns from training the average effect of training is similar in the private sector and the public sector however differences across experience groups are larger in the private sector while differences across education groups are larger in the public sector we use three alternative classifications of training activities and f

the impact of human capital investments on pension benefits this article develops a model with deferred compensation and severance pay that predicts that workers bear all the costs and receive all the returns of human capital investments and that specific investments yield higher returns than general investments this model also predicts that pensions which efficiently defer compensation will be positively related to specific investments evidence from the national longitudinal survey of older men confirms these predictions participation in company sponsored training programs proxying for specific investments increases the probability of pension receipt and the level of benefits more general training outside the firm has much smaller effects on pensions

dividing the costs and returns to general training data from the national longitudinal survey of youth indicate that the employer often pays the explicit costs of not only on site training but also off site general training although few of these costs appear to be passed on to workers in the form of a lower wage while in training completed spells of general training paid for by previous employers have a larger wage effect than completed spells of general training paid for by the current employer a model where contract enforcement considerations cause employers to share the costs and returns to purely general training can explain these findings

the impact of trade union membership on training in britain in order to measure the union non union training differential in britain a recursive model of training participation and union membership is estimated using data taken from the 1989 labour force survey the results show a positive and significant effect of union membership on training participation in small establishments this is consistent with the hypothesis that any negative impact on employer provided training that might have arisen from the union wage mark up is outweighed by a positive influence exerted by unions through the exercise of collective voice and or reductions in labour turnover by contrast in establishments with 25 or more workers unions have no significant impact on training

sources of training and their impact on wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth from 1986 to 1990 the author investigates the wage impact of various sources of training among them company training programs apprenticeships business schools vocational and technical institutes correspondence courses and seminars outside the workplace time spent in training of whatever kind apparently did not affect 1990 wage levels the incidence of two kinds of training however company training and seminars outside work was positively related to wage levels as well as to wage change between 1986 and 1990 that is workers who undertook such training enjoyed higher wages than those who did not time spent in vocational schools was also positively associated with wage change though not with 1990 wage levels the other forms of training had no apparent impact on either wage levels or wage change

evolution of an aging society and effect on residential energy demand the development of an aged society paired with a growing number of elderly households is expected to increase residential energy demand this study is designed to analyze various factors which determine the energy demand of elderly households and to predict the future of residential energy consumption in an aging society in addition comparing the factors with those in western countries which contain a population of increasing age we try to clarify characteristics of the elderly and residential energy demand then propose possible future subjects for study

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

job duration seniority and earnings an important stylized fact about labor markets is that workers with longer seniority with their current employer have higher earnings than other workers with the same total labor market experience this study shows that workers in longer jobs earn more throughout than workers in a series of shorter jobs and that the measured positive cross sectional return seniority is largely a statistical artifact due to the correlation of seniority with an omitted variable representing the quality of the worker the job or the worker employer match the implication is tha t earnings do not in fact rise very much with seniority copyright 1987 by american economic association

human capital and unemployment dynamics why more educated workers enjoy greater employment stability why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility empirically these workers have similar job finding rates but much lower and less volatile separation rates than their less educated peers we argue that on the job training being complementary to formal education is the reason for this pattern using a search and matching model with endogenous separations we show that investments in match specific human capital reduce incentives to separate but leave the job finding rate essentially unaffected the model generates unemployment dynamics quantitatively consistent with the data finally we provide novel empirical evidence supporting the mechanism studied in the paper this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

an indirect utility model of car ownership and private car use abstract in this paper a model is developed for the simultaneous determination of private car ownership and private car use measured as the annual number of kilometers this model is a micro economic utility model in which the fixed and variable car costs enter through the budget restriction this allows us to do micro simulations of increasing those costs which is a policy issue in the netherlands it turns out that in this model both fixed and variable car costs are effective measures for reducing traffic growth the former working primarily through decreasing car ownership levels the latter having a more direct effect on car use

do marital status and computer usage really change the wage structure this analysis uses several identification strategies and data sources to control for individual ability and determine the causal effect of marital status and computer usage on wages although data from the cps nlsy and a data set of identical twins show that there are large cross sectional effects of these variables new econometric specifications are applied to these data which indicate that marital status and computer usage are not important causal determinants of earnings even after adjustments are made for measurement error and within twin differences in ability

time saving innovations time allocation and energy use evidence from canadian households abstract time and energy are major inputs into the production of household goods and services as a result the market penetration of time saving technologies for general household use is expected to affect both a household s i allocation of time across home production and leisure activities and ii energy use for example with a household s adoption of a microwave or a dishwasher cooking food and washing dishes will require less time and therefore in home meal preparation may increase households with microwaves or dishwashers may also opt to spend more time undertaking other production activities inside or outside the home or engage in more leisure watching tv reading exercising to the extent that time is reallocated from less to more energy intensive activities in the home residential energy use will increase as households adopt appliances that embody time saving technology furthermore an adoption of time saving technologies for basic household chores such as meal preparation and laundry can impact energy use due to the fact that many time saving technologies are more energy intensive than alternative technologies that require larger time commitments in this paper we use the canadian survey of household energy use data from 2003 to examine the extent to which ownership of products that embody time saving innovations affects time allocation and energy use at the household level

environmentally sustainable household consumption from aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action unsustainable consumption patterns of the north or rather of the global affluent consumers class have been identified by agenda 21 as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development however neither accounting based on the system of national accounts sna nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making eco efficiency assessments as familiar in the business sector provide no appropriate tool for households as an alternative an environmental space based assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decisions the methodology is used twice once to analyse the environmental relevance of the main activity clusters of household consumption and once to identify the dominant acts of consumption within each cluster the latter provide the basis for deriving environmental performance indicators a rough analysis of household influence potentials permits to identify housing eating and mobility as the three priority fields for action for minimising the environmental impact of households extending the influence analysis actor matrixes are derived allocating influence and thus responsibility for environmental pressures to different groups of economic agents

regime and leader instability under two forms of military rule the finding that military regimes are more fragile than other authoritarian regimes represents one of the few stylized facts in comparative politics however the existing literature contains subst

regional discontinuities and the effectiveness of further training subsidies for low skilled employees the author analyzes the effects of further training subsidies for low skilled employees on individual labor market outcomes in germany using detailed administrative data the author exploits cross

the dynamics of political compromise we characterize efficient self enforcing divisions of political or economic surplus between two parties that interact repeatedly the party in power can decide the allocation and the parties political strength changes according to a markov process we find that the share of the party currently in power depends not only on its current strength but also on whether it had previously been even stronger since it last came to power we find that the constitutional supermajority requirements that attempt to constrain the use of power can counterproductively create less compromise

do wages rise with job seniority many previous studies have found a strong positive effect of job seniority tenure on wages this paper re examines the evidence using a simple instrumental variables scheme to deal with the fact that tenure is likely to be related to unobserved individual and job characteristics that affect the wage we use the variation of tenure over a given job match as the principal instrumental variable for tenure the variation in tenure over the job is uncorrelated by construction with the fixed individual and job match specific components of the error term of the wage equation our main finding is that the partial effect of tenure on wages is small and that general labour market experience and job shopping account for most wage growth over a career the strong cross section relationship between tenure and wages is due primarily to heterogeneity bias prior researchers see mincer and jovanovic 1981 bartel and borjas 1981 borjas 1981 cline 1979 and mellow 1981 and many others have established that job seniority has a strong positive relationship with wage rates in a cross section or a cross section time series of individuals in this paper we re evaluate the evidence concerning the partial effects on wages of job seniority tenure and total labour market experience the extent to which wages rise with tenure is important for several reasons first and foremost the wage tenure profile is a fundamental question about the structure of earnings over careers second the wage tenure profile is a key determinant of the extent to which the earnings power of individuals is tied to specific jobs and it is important for assessment of the losses suffered by displaced workers hamermesh 1984 third evidence that wages rise with job tenure has been used to explain the decline in quits with tenure since the wage growth on the current job lowers the probability that the worker will locate a superior alternative a growing theoretical literature surveyed in parsons 1984 has taken the evidence of a strong wage tenure profile at face value and sought to provide an explanation for the relationship the most prominent explanation is the theory of specific human capital oi 1962 becker 1962 mincer 1974 parsons 1972 kuratani 1973 and hashimoto 1980 in which the growth of wages with tenure holding experience constant is attributed to the worker s share of investments in firm specific skills more recently lazear 1981 has presented a supervision model of wage growth in which firms defer compensation as a means of inducing workers not to shirk freeman 1977 and harris and holmstrom 1982 provide an explanation for wage growth based on an insurance motive salop and salop 1976 nickell 1976 and guasch and weiss 1982 present adverse selection models of wage growth in which firms use a wage tenure profile as a

training and lifetime income this paper challenges the notion that on the job training investments are quantitatively important for workers welfare and argues that on the job training may not increase lifetime income by more than 1 percent i argue that it is very difficult to reconcile the slowdown in wage growth late in a worker s career with optimizing behavior unless the technology for learning on the job is such that it generates very low gains from training the analysis is based on a nonparametric methodology for estimating the learning technology from wage profiles the results are arrived at by comparing the lifetime income when the worker optimally invests in his human capital to the one where he does not make any investments jel e24 j24 j31

trade democracy and the gravity equation abstract does democracy affect trade there are several channels by which democracy may affect trade with differing implications first democratization in the exporting country can improve product quality and reduce trade costs increasing bilateral trade second democratization in the importing country may increase trade barriers and thus reduce imports in this paper i analyze the effect of democracy on trade by augmenting the gravity equation with democracy using a rich panel data set and controlling for the endogeneity of democracy i find empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that democracy fosters trade this finding is robust to various econometric methods and to the use of disaggregated specifications

the making of policy institutionalized or not this paper develops a framework for analyzing different policymaking styles their causes and their consequences in latin america finding that lower institutionalization and greater use of alternative political technologies apts are more likely the lower the cost of using these technologies the higher the potential damage they can cause the lower the wealth of the economy and the more asymmetric the distribution of de jure political power moreover strategic complementarity exists in the use of alternative political technologies for instance bribes by the rich and protests by the poor are likely to be countervailing forces and will both occur in polities with weaker political institutions

a quantile approach to assess the effectiveness of the subsidy policy for energy efficient home appliances evidence from rizhao china abstract a one year subsidy program for energy efficient home appliances has been implemented in china we construct a dataset consisting of participant and non participant households in both urban and rural areas of rizhao city by applying a quantile regression and counterfactual analysis this study disentangles the impact of this subsidy program and inherent household attributes on per capita residential electricity consumption first contrary to the mean regression the elasticity of electricity consumption to household s income age education and energy saving awareness varies markedly across the electricity consumption distribution and shows discrepancy between urban and rural areas second while inherent household attributes are identified as a primary determinant to the changes in residential electricity consumption the effect induced by the subsidy incentive is more significant at the middle of the electricity consumption distribution than at the tails third there are significant rebound effects that lead to overall increase in household electricity consumption our results suggest that the disparity between urban and rural regions and targeted consumer behavior changes should be taken into account to ensure the effectiveness of a future energy efficient subsidy program

general training by firms apprentice contracts and public policy workers will not pay for general on the job training if contracts are not enforceable firms may if there are mobility frictions private information about worker productivities however prevents workers who quit receiving their marginal products elsewhere their new employers then receive external benefits from their training in this paper training firms increase profits by offering apprenticeships which commit firms to high wages for those trainees retained on completion at these high wages only good workers are retained this signals their productivity and reduces the external benefits if they subsequently quit regulation of apprenticeship length a historically important feature enhances efficiency appropriate subsidies enhance it further

institutionalizing uncertainty the choice of electoral formulas taken from an infinite set of divisors methods the d hondt formula is the unique rule that maximizes the minimum number of seats for parties exceeding average size but not surpassing an absolute majority of the votes this property is also shared in the quota set of methods by the droop formula at the same time these two methods are those most commonly observed in practice this paper relates the property stated to the observed facts if parties try to maximize the minimum number of seats for a given share of votes then the d hondt formula should be chosen this choice is consistent with rational parties that make institutional choices in an uncertain environment

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

you paid for the skills now keep them tuition reimbursement and voluntary turnover does investing in employees marketable skills reduce turnover this study uses insights from human capital theory to explain how general skill development and promotion relate to voluntary turnover data from 9 439 salaried employees of a large manufacturer show that participation in tuition reimbursement reduces turnover while employees are in school voluntary turnover increases when individuals earn graduate degrees but is significantly reduced if they are subsequently promoted

why do low educated workers invest less in further training several studies document that low educated workers participate less often in further training than high educated workers this article investigates two possible explanations low educated workers invest less in training because of 1 the lower economic returns to these investments or 2 their lower willingness to participate in training controlling for unobserved heterogeneity we find that the economic returns to training for low educated workers are positive and not significantly different from those for high educated workers however low educated workers are significantly less willing to participate in training we show that this lesser willingness to train is driven by economic preferences and personality traits

energy use and appliance ownership in ireland abstract this paper examines household energy use and appliance ownership in ireland logit regression analyses on a large micro dataset reveal how household characteristics can help explain the ownership of energy using appliances using ols regression models we explore the factors affecting residential energy demand conditional on appliance ownership results suggest that the methods of space and water heating employed by a household are even more important than electrical appliances in explaining domestic energy usage however the stock of appliances must be included in such models so that results will not be biased the methods employed in this paper can be easily adopted for studies of household energy use in other countries where household expenditure survey data are available

the role of off the job vs on the job training for the mobility of women workers the transition from school to work is typically a period in which many young workers experience a wide range of different jobs and experience some of their most rapid wage growth over their working life robert hall 1982 has estimated that the first 10 years of an individual s working career will include approximately two thirds of all lifetime job changes robert topel and michael ward 1988 found that over half of young male new entrants held six or more jobs over the first 10 years of their work experience only one young male worker in twenty held a single job for 10 years in their sample all of this suggests that young workers early years in the labor market involve several employment transitions the purpose of this paper is to examine for young workers in their first years of work the determinants of leaving an employer in particular this paper focuses on the role of different types of training on the probability of leaving an employer in previous work 1990 i have examined the impact of private sector training on the determination of wages and wage growth of young workers and reached the following conclusions first formal company provided onthe job training on jt appears to be highly firm specific in the united states and therefore is not portable from employer to employer company provided training raises wages in the current job but has no effect on the wages earned in subsequent employment second formal off the job training off jt received from for profit proprietary institutions has little effect on the wages earned on the current job but it does raise the expected wage in subsequent employment finally there are important differences by race gender and education level in the probability of receiving different types of formal training and in the impact this training has on wages and wage growth these findings have several implications for the impact of training on mobility one implication is that if company provided training is primarily firm specific then the probability of leaving an employer should decline if a young worker has experienced some on jt an additional implication is that if a worker participates in an off jt program it appears that the worker should be more likely to leave the current employer in this case off jt allows a young worker to change career paths and find a better match using data from the national longitudinal survey youth nlsy cohort this paper examines in detail the factors that influence the probability of new entrants leaving their first job including the differential effects of company provided training apprenticeships and training from for profit proprietary institutions

trade unions and training practices in british workplaces the authors use british establishment level data from the 1991 employers manpower and skills practices survey emsps and individual level data from the autumn 1993 quarterly labour force survey qlfs to investigate the links between training provision and workplace unionization both the probability of receiving training and the amount of training received are found to have been substantially higher in unionized than in nonunion workplaces the authors view these results as showing that trade unions can play an important role in developing and boosting skill formation in britain

gender differences in displacement cost evidence and implications this paper uses a unique and newly available data set on displaced workers to estimate differences in the wage costs of displacement between women and men while predisplacement wages rise at about the same rate with tenure for women as men in this data set women lose more from displacement than men and the magnitude of this loss increases with tenure overall we interpret our results as not supportive of the specific capital hypothesis that women accumulate less firmspecific human capital than men and we suggest that future attempts to explain our result focus on gender differences in the process of search for a new job

electoral competition under the threat of political unrest this paper examines how voting and the outcomesof majority rule elections are affected by factors beyond the control of the winning party we present a model that helps to predict how threats against the electoral process ineuence 1 platform choice by political parties 2 which party wins the election and 3 the policy outcomes enally implemented in a democracy where the majority winner sets policy dissatiseed groups including groups outside the electoral process may still be able to interfere with that policy a losing party may organize a coup voters may riot unions may go on strike investors may take their capital abroad terrorists and foreign powers may threaten disruption and loss of life foreign powers may withdraw aid or even impose a trade embargo we analyze the effect of these nonelectoral factors on electoral outcomes we consider a majority rule electoral competition between two political parties with ideal policies lying to either side of the median voter s ideal policy we allow for only a one dimensional policy space but the disruption possibility leads to a twodimensional outcome space as evident in the examples given above the actors threaten

persistence of occupational segregation the role of the intergenerational transmission of preferences this article provides an explanation of the evolution and persistence of the women s segregation in jobs with less on the job training opportunities within the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of preferences job priority and family priority preferences are considered firms policy and the distribution of women s preferences are endogenously and simultaneously determined in the long run the results show though the gender gap in training will diminish it will also persist over time this is because both types of women s preferences coexist at the steady state due to the socialisation effort of parents to preserve their own cultural values

returns to apprenticeship based on the 2006 canadian census to study the effect of apprenticeships in canada the authors use the 2006 census the first large scale representative canadian data set to include information on apprenticeship certification they find large returns for males with an apprenticeship certification when compared with no degree a high school degree or a trade certificate these returns are almost as high as those to a community college diploma by contrast the returns for females who hold an apprenticeship certification are generally less than the returns to any other educational certification except for no degree for both genders differences in observable characteristics account for little of the overall pay differences between apprentices and the alternative educational pathways and the patterns tend to prevail across the quantiles of the pay distributions and for instrumental variable iv estimates

representing in home and out of home energy consumption behavior in beijing abstract it is expected that in home and out of home energy consumption behavior in a household might be correlated with each other probably due to the existence of household budget constraints ownership and usage of energy saving technologies for in home appliances or vehicles might lead to the increase in out of home or in home energy consumption it is therefore necessary to jointly represent in home and out of home energy consumption in the same modeling framework with this consideration we first build a new type of energy consumption model based on the multiple discrete continuous extreme value mdcev modeling framework next we conducted a questionnaire survey in beijing in 2009 and successfully collected the information about households energy consumption ownership usage of in home appliances and vehicles and households and their members attributes from 1014 households throughout an empirical analysis it is confirmed that the mdcev model is effective to simultaneously describe the in home and out of home energy consumption behavior in addition it is revealed that a set of household and personal attributes affect the ownership and usage of in home appliances and vehicles furthermore it is shown that the unobserved factors play a much more important role in explaining energy consumption behavior than the observed attributes of households and their members

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes

firm specific seniority and wages this article studies the relationship between seniority and wages micro data with more than one observation from each firm are utilized to single out the seniority effect on wages arising within firms from the total seniority wage effect the results show that the seniority effect arises within firms but do not support the human capital explanation of the seniority wage profile employees with high levels of firm specific on the job training requirements have less steep wage profiles the results give some support to the theory of delayed compensation as piece rate workers have negligible returns to seniority