cost efficiency and electricity market structure a case study of oecd countries the oecd electricity sector has witnessed significant institutional restructuring over the past three decades as a consequence many power generation utilities now act as unregulated companies that technically compete to sell power on an open market this paper analyses the performance in term of cost efficiency for electricity generation in oecd power sector while accounting for the impact of electricity market structures we employ the short run cost function in which capital stock is treated as a quasi fixed factor input empirical models are developed for the cost function as a translog form and analysed using panel data of 25 countries during the period 1980 to 2009 we show that it is necessary to model latent country specific heterogeneity in addition to time varying inefficiency the estimated economies of scale are adjusted to take account of the importance of the quasi fixed capital input in determining cost behaviour and long run constant returns to scale are verified for the oecd generation sector the research findings suggest there is a significant impact of electricity market regulatory indicators on cost in particular public ownership and vertical integration are found to have significant and sizable increasing impacts on cost thereby indicating policy lessons on the desirable ways to implement structural electricity generation reforms

space risk and opportunity the evolution of paid sex markets the emergence of paid sex markets is a product of various locational economies by this it is meant that coherent paid sex markets are intimately linked with various economies of agglomeration synergy complementarity and laddering whereby an entrant to paid sex consumption may progress from low intimacy low value added products to those of higher intimacy higher value added physical clustering of traded sex commodities can also enhance the progression of the consumer s ladder by heightening the stimulus to enter such markets for the first time this paper discusses the above factors in the context of the economic theory of clubs with particular reference to the use of zoning ordinances to control the location of adult entertainment providers

individual versus parental consent in marriage implications for intra household resource allocation and growth marrying indviduals consent has been requirement for marriage in europe since the middle ages in most of the rest of the world parental consent reigned until at least until the 1950s this paper investigates the role of consent in marriage for intra household allocation of resources and growth we argue that a shift from parental to individual consent moves resources in the same direction favoring young men and young women over old men if young adults have greater incentives to invest in child human capital than the old who will be around fewer periods this may impact on growth we formulate a simple endogenous growth model capturing these aspects

econometric analysis of cps type unemployment data analysts studying the unemployment experiences of population members often have access to data collected from a sample of individuals at a point in time which contain the length of the ongoing spell of unemployment for sample members currently unemployed no information regarding the lengths of ongoing employment spells is collected this paper considers how such information may be utilized in the estimation of parameters of alternating renewal process models of labor market attachment in the presence of both observed and unobserved population heterogeneity a number of models are presented and estimation is carried out using a cps type data set from italy

digit preference in cps unemployment data abstract in analyses of cps unemployment duration data it is necessary to smooth the observed responses prior to inference to accommodate the effects of digit preference in this note i show that popular methods of smoothing have significant effects on estimates of expected duration the time series properties of this statistic are less severely affected

shirking and sorting in a political market with finite lived politicians this paper analyzes principal agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters challengers and incumbents the introduction of a last period via finite livedness in combination with voters imperfect information about politicians preferences causes time varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments in the extreme sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office a systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist and depends on how quickly sorting takes place we show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences in addition if sorting is a significant feature of political markets cross sectional studies will tend to oversample little and non shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed

trends in unemployment duration data a method of estimating the distribution of uninterrupted unemploymentspells from aggregate unemployment data is outlined the methodology does not i mpose constant individual hazard rates and allows for heterogeneity characteris tics of the distribution of unemployment spells are then considered including ha zard rates measures of inequality such as gini coefficients and the fraction o f total unemployment associated with s weeks of unemploy ment the relationship between these char acteristics and labor demand variables gnp and supply side variables transfer payments unemployment insurance is considered in or der to better understand the relative role of short and long run unemployment copyright 1986 by mit press

regulating prostitution a health risk approach abstract we build an equilibrium model of prostitution where clients and sex workers choose to demand and supply sex under three legal regimes prohibition regulation and laissez faire the key feature is the endogenous evolution of the risk as a consequence of policy changes we calibrate the model to empirical evidence from italy and then compare the effect of different policies on the equilibrium quantity of prostitution and on the harm associated with it a prohibition regime that makes it illegal to buy sex but not to sell it is more effective than the opposite regime in reducing quantity taxes are one inducement to go illegal and prevent some of the less risky individuals from joining the market leaving it smaller but riskier a licensing system that prevents some infected individuals from joining the legal market reduces the risk and is therefore associated with an increase in quantity prohibition is preferable to minimize quantity only if a high expected fine is feasible regulation is best to minimize harm

technical efficiency of french nuclear energy plants this article analyses the efficiency of french nuclear energy plants belonging to edf electricity of france from 2004 to 2008 with a dea data envelopment analysis model the convexity model is used to investigate the technical efficiency of a representative sample of nuclear plants the results indicated that some plants have undergone an improvement in technical efficiency while others have regressed in terms of technical efficiency policy implications related to the results are discussed

the estimation of models of labour market behaviour in this paper we view the labour market experience of individuals as a process of movement between the states of employment and unemployment we note that there are three main ways of sampling members of the labour force namely sampling the members of a specific state sampling the people entering or leaving a state and sampling the population regardless of state the joint distribution of observable and unobservable characteristics of individuals depends on the mode of sampling adopted we examine this dependence and its implications for the interpretation of estimates of models of labour market behaviour

the distribution of unemployment spells canada 1978 82 this paper empirically examines entire distributions of unemployment spells according to a novel duration share approach based on decile shares and lorenz curves of unemployment the approach is applied to a canadian micro data source akin to the work experience surveys for the united states the major empirical findings are that long term unemployment accounts for a very substantial proportion of total weeks of unemployment despite the short duration of the average spell of unemployment the structure of unemployment spell distribution differs significantly by gender age education and region and significant cyclical effects on the distribution of unemployment spells are associated with the severe recession in 1982

advertising as information an empirical note lamm r mcfall unionism and prices in the food retailing industry journal of labor research 3 winter 1982 69 79 marion bruce w willard f mueller ronald w cotterill frederick e geithman and john r schmelzer the food retailing industrv market structure profits and prices new york praeger 1979a the price and profit performance of leading food chains a merican journal of a gricultural economics 61 aug 1979b 420 433 salinger michael a tobin s q unionization and the concentration profits relationship rand journal of economics 15 summer 1984 159 170 voos paula b and lawrence r mishel the union impact on profits evidence from the supermarket industry working paper no 88 north central project 117 university of wisconsin madison oct 1985 the union impact on profits evidence from industry price cost margin data journal of labor economics 4 jan 1986 105 133

economic insights from internet auctions this paper surveys recent studies of internet auctions four main areas of research are summarized first we survey several studies that document and attempt to explain the frequently observed sniping or last second bidding behavior in these auctions second we summarize several methods proposed to quantify the distortions caused by asymmetric information in these markets most notably due to the winner s curse third we explore research about the role of reputation mechanisms installed to help combat these distortions finally we discuss what internet auctions have to teach us about auction design

the impact of resource tax reform on china s coal industry abstract contributing to approximately two thirds of primary energy consumption coal usage is the focus of china s energy policies to regulate the resource taxation system and reduce the burden of coal enterprises the chinese government launched a reform of its resource tax system in 2014 for coal introducing the ad valorem system to replace the volume based system that had been in place for the preceding thirty years to assess the impact of the tax reform this paper constructs two stage dynamic game models by taking the coal and coal fired power industries as the players the market situations of shortage and oversupply are investigated separately empirical data are collected to estimate the model parameters for numerical simulations the model results suggest that the tax reform will reduce both coal prices and the coal industry profitability if the tax levied on each ton of coal is maintained at the same level as before the reform regardless of whether the market is in a shortage or an oversupply situation however the increased buyer s power will amplify the effect of the tax reform the numerical simulations also provide an estimation of the tax rate of the ad valorem system that maintains the profit of the coal industry considering the demand and supply situations in china s coal market policy recommendations are provided to guide further reform of china s resource tax system

the measurement of labor force dynamics with longitudinal data the labour market activity survey filter this article explores the measurement of labor force dynamics using longitudinal data focusing in particular on the canadian labour market activity survey lmas which represents a potential advance in longitudinal data collection because it measures aspects of dynamics not available in existing panel data such as the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we examine the implications of the lmas questionnaire structure the lmas filter for the study of labor market dynamics and undertake simulations to provide a quantitative assessment of the importance of this filter for labor force spells and transitions between labor force states

an analysis of the spanish electrical utility industry economies of scale technological progress and efficiency abstract in this paper we propose a model to explain the behaviour of the spanish electrical utility industry during the period 1987 1997 under the then existing regulatory system marco legal estable the paper will study the presence of economies of scale the effect of technological progress and the differences in the efficiency of the different companies within the market the paper concludes that the spanish electrical utility industry was not in fact characterized by economies of scale during this period but witnessed a great improvement in efficiency within that period all the critical market factors remind stable

the long shadow of the iron curtain for female sex workers in german cities border effects and regional differences this paper assesses determinants of habits and prices about sexual work in germany the paper alludes to a regional pattern in particular in pricing this pattern varies with the size of cities and across as well as along the former east west german border in particular the evidence suggests that there is a long shadow of the former iron curtain which leads to higher conditional prices in the former east than in the west in particular in larger agglomerations such as berlin moreover there is evidence of habit formation and spillovers within regions which leads to regionally clustered prices as well as unsafe sex services being offered by sexworkers

war migration and the origins of the thai sex industry this paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in thailand we relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock i e u s military presence during the vietnam war comparing the surroundings of thai military bases used by the u s army to districts close to unused thai bases we find that there are currently 5 times more commercial sex workers in districts near former u s bases the development of the sex industry is also explained by a high price elasticity of supply due to female migration from regions affected by an agricultural crisis finally we study a consequence induced by the large numbers of sex workers in few red light districts the hiv outbreak in the early 1990s

what s in a picture evidence of discrimination from prosper com abstract we find evidence of significant racial disparities in a new type of credit market known as peer to peer lending loan listings with blacks in the attached picture are 25 to 35 percent less likely to receive funding than those of whites with similar credit profiles despite the higher average interest rates charged to blacks lenders making such loans earn a lower net return compared to loans made to whites with similar credit profiles because blacks have higher relative default rates these results provide insight into whether the discrimination we find is taste based or statistical

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

economies of scale and utilization in the swiss electric power distribution industry economies of scale and utilization in the swiss electricity distribution industry are analysed a translog variable cost function was estimated using panel data for a sample of 39 municipal utilities over the period 1988 1991 economies of both scale and utilization appear to exist in the distribution of electricity both for small medium and large sized utilities thus the empirical evidence suggests sub additivity of the cost function over the relevant range of output for the swiss electricity distribution utilities a necessary condition for a natural monopoly to exist

a theory of prostitution prostitution is low skill labor intensive female and well paid this paper proposes a marriage market explanation to this puzzle if a prostitute compromises her marriage market prospects she will have to be compensated for forgone marriage market opportunities we discuss the link between poverty and prostitution and show that prostitution may decrease with male income if wives and prostitutes are drawn from the same pool of women we point to the role of male sex ratios and males in transit in sustaining high levels of prostitution and we discuss possible reasons for its low reputation and implications for marriage patterns

the bidder s curse traditional explanations for the popularity of auctions are efficiency and revenue maximization we argue that another reason is the potential for overbidding i e buyers bidding above their willingness to pay outside the auction the auction mechanism ensures that even if only few buyers overbid they affect prices and allocations we employ a novel approach to identify overbidding in the field comparing auction prices to simultaneous fixed prices for identical items on the same ebay webpage we argue that fixed prices provide an upper bound for auction bids in a detailed data set of board game auctions we find that the final price exceeds the simultaneous fixed price in 42 percent of the auctions the result is not explained by differences in item quality shipping costs or seller reputation prior auction experience does not eliminate overbidding the finding replicates in a second broad data set of a cross section of auctions 48 percent overbidding the substantial fraction of overbid auctions is induced by a small number of bidders only 17 percent ever bid above the fixed price using a simple model of second price auctions with alternative fixed prices we show that transaction costs of switching between auctions and fixed prices cannot explain the results given that even the expected auction price is higher than the fixed price consistent with limited attention the closer the fixed price is listed relative to an auction the less likely are overbids this effect is strongest for bidders first bids when they are likely to examine the auction and fixed price listings more closely

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

the dynamics of job separation the case of federal employees summary in this paper we develop a model of workers quit decisions using panel data on a sample of us federal government employees we use maximum likelihood techniques to determine how much of the observed decline in quits with job tenure is a result of declining individual quit propensities state dependence rather than dynamic sample self selection heterogeneity the latter is found to be much more important than the former the effects of relative federal government wages and other variables on quits are also estimated the results are useful for analysing federal compensation policies

youth unemployment duration from the italian labour force survey accuracy issues and modelling attempts youth unemployment in the european economic community remains remarkably high and very unevenly distributed across countries in the eec area 16 7 of the labour force aged 14 29 were unemployed in 1986 among the five major member countries the youth unemployment rate varied markedly from 7 9 in federal republic of germany to 25 6 in italy and 38 4 in spain the level and variation in youth unemployment rates are of course related to the overall employment and unemployment situation however there is also clear evidence that in the various countries the burden of unemployment is shared very unequally among different age groups the ratio of youth to adult unemployment rates is 1 3 for germany but raises to 3 2 for spain and dramatically to 6 3 for italy from a slightly different perspective the uneven distribution of the risks of unemployment for young people across countries is documented by the share of long term unemployed defined as those continuously out of work for a year or more in 1986 the fraction of longterm unemployed in youth unemployment was below 40 in germany united kingdom and france but reached 59 7 in spain and up to 67 7 in italy the purpose of this paper is to investigate opportunities and problems in using microdata from the quarterly italian labour force survey in a

the duration of employment opportunities in u s manufacturing long duration employment opportunities are a necessary condition for workers to hold lifetime jobs this paper uses longitudinal data on individual u s manufacturing plants from 1963 1982 to estimate the age and completed spell distributions for employment positions the results indicate that of the employment opportunities in progress in the u s manufacturing sector in 1982 30 0 were at least 19 years old and 59 6 would have a completed length of at least 20 years high rates of turnover in employment positions coexist with a large number of long duration employment opportunities because the turnover tends to be concentrated within a subset of the producers copyright 1991 by mit press

employment relations in dual labor markets it s nice work if you can get it jobs in big firms command higher wages i examine four theories that could explain this relation first large firms incur higher fixed employment costs including more specific training second monitoring costs are greater in big firms and can be spread by hiring more productive workers third large firms may choose to pay efficiency wages to deter shirking finally large employers organize production around teams and pay higher wages to get workers who comply with the discipline of team production the dispersion of wages and working conditions in the u s labor market reflect the heterogeneity of jobs employment relations and individuals

prostitutes pimps and brothels intermediaries information and market structure in prostitution markets author affiliation amy farmer department of economics room 402 business building sam m walton college of business university of arkansas fayetteville 72701 usa e mail afarmer walton uark edu corresponding author andrew w horowitz dagger department of economics room 402 business building sam m walton college of business university of arkansas fayetteville 72701 usa e mail horowitz walton uark edu acknowledgment we thank two anonymous referees for numerous insightful suggestions and critiques we also thank daniel hamermesh christine brown and seminar participants at the southern economic association meetings for helpful comments special thanks to aaron johnson for exceptional research assistance the usual disclaimers apply 1 introductionprostitution is a multi billion dollar globally distributed service industry that is receiving increasing attention in the economics literature 1 this article analyzes the important role intermediaries pimps or brothels typically play in this market and sheds light on the unusual dichotomy that in many countries an un intermediated transaction between prostitute and john the principals is legal but the use of an intermediary pimp or brothels is illegal our analysis answers a fundamental question in this context that has not been subject to prior analysis how does the presence or absence of intermediaries impact the surplus of the principals and the structure of the market to answer this question we develop a simple theoretical model that examines three potential functions of intermediaries they may lower prostitutes costs e g security costs they may regulate supply to increase market power and or they may transmit information our analysis reveals that the presence of intermediaries may shift surplus in non obvious ways depending on which function they perform and on whether equilibrium is pooling or separating across high quality and low quality market segments the legality of both prostitution and prostitution intermediaries varies greatly across countries 2 in many countries adult prostitution is legal but pimping is not e g france united kingdom italy brazil chile and mexico in other countries both prostitution and all intermediaries are illegal e g united states 3 haiti and guyana another pattern common in latin america is differential legality for different intermediaries for example operating a brothel a prostitution enterprise with a fixed location may be legal while an intermediary without a fixed location a pimp is illegal e g guatemala el salvador and colombia 4 finally both prostitution and all forms of intermediation are legal in some countries nicaragua greece and new zealand for example this differential legality of principal and intermediary has few parallels in other markets in addition to the varied legality of agents across countries prostitution markets tend to be highly segmented that is it is common for a market in which customers are highly sensitive to stigma and or disease to coexist with a distinct market for less sensitive customers in the high sensitivity segment very sophisticated intermediaries are common in the united states for example the infamous hollywood and washington madams heidi fleiss and deborah palfrey respectively operated highly efficient enterprises employing advanced businesses practices and health monitoring technologies 5 simultaneously in most countries there exists a low end market in which prostitutes vend directly to johns or street pimps provide very basic agency services our analysis indicates that the function s intermediaries perform dictate the welfare changes that accompany their elimination in most cases our analysis reveals that while the presence of intermediaries may increase or decrease consumer surplus it rarely diminishes producer surplus

efficient labor contracts with employment risk this article analyzes efficient employment agreements where the demand for consumption insurance can be satisfied by noncontractual means we assume that workers can save and that consumption is determined by a strong form of the permanent income hypothesis under conditions of asymmetric information about exogenous shocks to labor demand we derive a unique compensation schedule that efficiently guides decisions by both workers and employers efficient employment outcomes are generated without a need for third party enforcement or monitoring and workers choose a consumption policy that leaves them indifferent among realizations of labor demand within this solution it is both costless and efficient for workers to delegate employment decisions to the firm within the context of the model we analyze implications for the equilibrium distribution of wages and for empirical studies of labor supply

risky sex in a risky world sexual behavior in a hiv aids environment in spite of increased awareness of hiv aids unprotected casual sex is still widespread in many hiv infected countries in this paper a two period model for sexual decisions under uncertainty is d

on the formation of family structures hitherto models of family economics focus on explaining theorganization of monogamous and polygynous family patterns a thirdexisting marriage pattern polyandrous marriages has beenneglected this paper shows that in contrast to the common view a polyandrous marriage may be individually rational i considera game theoretic model of a subsistence economy whose membersmaximize their personal reproductive success in this model allthree family formations can appear as equilibrium solutions

factor substitution and economies of scale and utilisation in kuwait s crude oil industry abstract the cost structure of the crude oil industry in kuwait has been examined with specific focus on factor substitution and economies of scale and utilisation this has been done by estimating translog cost functions both long run and short run using time series data covering the period from 1976 to 1996 the results indicate that the implied production structure is non homothetic and the pattern of scale effect is labour saving but capital and material using the evidence also supports the presence of an induced exogenous technical change which is non neutral labour and capital using and material saving the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour is positive implying that the two inputs are substitute the results also indicate the existence of diseconomies of scale in the production of crude oil but no economies or diseconomies of utilisation

unemployment behaviour evidence from the cps work experience survey this chapter is empirical and descriptive rather than theoretical it examines the cps unemployment experience data which gives the number of weeks of unemployment and the number of spells of unemployment experienced by a sample of people in a year this chapter focuses on both the entry rate or frequency probability of entering and the exit rate or duration probability of exiting of unemployment spells for it is on both the entry and exit rates that the level and distribution of unemployment depends the conclusion is that entry rates and differences in entry rates across people are of primary importance in explaining unemployment experience

price quality and reputation evidence from an online field experiment we examine the link between price quality seller claims and seller reputation in internet auctions after purchasing actual baseball cards and having them professionally graded we find that some buyers in the online graded market are misled by incredible claims of quality they pay higher prices but do not receive better quality and in fact are defrauded more often online seller reputation is effective for identifying good faith sellers but conditional on completed auctions reputable sellers do not provide better quality evidence also suggests that high claim sellers target less experienced buyers we attribute these patterns to two loopholes in the ebay rating system we benefited from the comments of austan goolsbee raphael thomadsen john shea dan vincent david reiley larry ausubel peter cramton v joseph hotz jeff smith jimmy chan vincent crawford mark duggan and attendees at numerous seminars and conferences we are particularly grateful to seth sanders and john list for their constructive advice at the early stage of the research to timothy bresnahan rachel kranton and thomas hubbard for their detailed suggestions in reshaping earlier versions and to editor ariel pakes and two anonymous referees for their careful readings special thanks to eight friends who acted as our agents in purchasing baseball cards in retail markets and to numerous sports card store owners who shared their insights on the sportscard industry excellent research assistance from randy alexander moore and krzysztof fizyta is gratefully acknowledged any remaining errors are ours

income shocks and hiv in africa we examine how variation in local economic conditions has shaped the aids epidemic in africa using data from over 200 000 individuals across 19 countries we match biomarker data on individuals serostatus to information on local rainfall shocks a large source of income variation for rural households we estimate infection rates in hiv endemic rural areas increase by 11 for every recent drought an effect that is statistically and economically significant income shocks explain up to 20 of variation in hiv prevalence across african countries suggesting existing approaches to hiv prevention could be bolstered by helping households manage income risk better the relationship between income and health has long been of interest to economists and a lengthy literature documents strong linkages between economic conditions and many important health outcomes currie 2009 there has been much less progress however in understanding the economic foundations of the hiv aids epidemic one of the most important global health challenges such an understanding might yield particular dividends in sub saharan africa ssa where over a million people continue to become newly infected with the disease each year unaids 2010 in this article we explore the role of negative income shocks in shaping the

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

hours layoffs and unemployment insurance funding theory and practice in an international perspective the strikingly different behaviour of important economic aggregates in the united states and other industrial countries has received surprisingly little attention from economists among recent exceptions however gordon i 982 has shown that wages and hours of work are much more flexible in the united kingdom and japan than in the united states such relative hours variability is confirmed in a macro analysis by capdevielle and alvarez i98i and at micro level by sengenberger and kohler i982 the latter authors are concerned with labour market adjustment within the u s and west german automobile industries between i 97 i and i 980 estimates of the german workeroutput elasticity are found to be less than half that of the united states while the german hours elasticity is twice the united states figure at the national aggregate level capdevielle and alvarez also reveal much greater employment variability in the united states than in most other oecd countries in the years following the i973 74 opec supply shock much in line with these employment hours observations moy and sorrentino i98i argue that after

are displaced manufacturing workers unemployable an analysis of sectorally based adjustment costs in france despite the richness of the literature on the adjustment costs of displaced workers the impact of the former sector of employment on a displaced worker s jobless durations has received little attention this is curious given the policy responses in several countries although the literature indicates the importance of individual characteristics such as educational attainment and demographic traits a non trivial portion of government assistance is based on a collective attribute of the affected workforces namely the sector in which they formerly worked governments often target assistance to specific sectors in the forms of operating subsidies financial bailout packages and trade protection examples include steelworkers and shipyard workers in france coal miners in the united kingdom and fishery and shipyard workers in canada gray 1995 demonstrates that taxpayer funded early retirement benefits in france are heavily weighted toward workers in manufacturing industries in canada similar benefits are currently being received by the early retirees of algoma steel and the steelworkers union has requested a package for older laid off stelco employees the rationale commonly given by government officials and workers unions is that workers in the affected sectors have virtually no alternative employment opportunities possible reasons for the perception that workers displaced from certain sectors have low re employment probabilities have received little attention in the economics literature the thrust of the conjecture posited by policy makers in france is that there is an ethos described in houseman 1988 according to which workers in sectors such as heavy manufacturing are covered by an implicit contract which has conditioned them to expect guaranteed permanent employment the organizational characteristics of the internal labour market cause them to lack the cognitive skills required to

the intergenerational transmission of risk and trust attitudes recent theories endogenize the attitude endowments of individuals assuming that they are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models this paper tests empirically for the relevance of three aspects of the attitude transmission process highlighted in this theoretical literature 1 transmission of attitudes from parents to children 2 an impact of prevailing attitudes in the local environment on child attitudes and 3 positive assortative mating of parents which enhances the ability of a parent to pass on his or her attitudes to the child we focus on two fundamentally important attitudes willingness to take risks and willingness to trust others we find empirical support for all three aspects providing an empirical underpinning for the literature an investigation of underlying mechanisms shows that socialization is important in the transmission process various parental characteristics and aspects of family structure are found to strengthen the socialization process with implications for modeling the socialization production function and for policies focused on affecting children s non cognitive skills the paper also provides evidence that the transmission of risk and trust attitudes affects a wide variety of child outcomes implying a potentially large total effect on children s economic situation

the value of commuting time in an empirical on the job search model an application based on moments from two samples this article estimates the value of commuting time voct among swedish males in an empirical on the job search model it uses a large sample of employee establishment linked data obtained from administrative registers the sample lacks information on mode choice for the journey to work we therefore estimate a mode choice model on another sample and use this model to link the administrative data to the relevant set of travel times costs and distances the voct is found to be 1 8 times the net hourly wage rate in the sample the relatively high estimate results from a high voct among cohabiting men

economic booms and risky sexual behavior evidence from zambian copper mining cities existing studies suggest that individual and household level economic shocks affect the demand for and supply of risky sex however little evidence exists on the effects of an aggregate shock on equilibrium risky sexual behavior this paper examines the effects of the early twenty first century copper boom on risky sexual behavior in zambian copper mining cities the results suggest that the copper boom substantially reduced rates of transactional sex and multiple partnerships in copper mining cities these effects were partly concentrated among young adults and copper boom induced in migration to mining cities appears to have contributed to these reductions

the empire is dead long live the empire long run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy we hypothesise that the habsburg empire with its well respected administration increased citizens trust in local public services in several eastern european countries communities on both sides of the long gone habsburg border have shared common formal institutions for a century now we use a border specification and a two dimensional geographic regression discontinuity design to identify from individuals living within a restricted band around the former border we find that historical habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in courts and police falsification tests of spuriously moved borders geographic and pre existing differences and interpersonal trust corroborate a genuine habsburg effect

why have women become left wing the political gender gap and the decline in marriage the last three decades have witnessed the rise of a pohtical gender gap in the united states wherein more women than men favor the democratic party we trace this development to the decline in marriage which we posit has made men richer and women poorer data for the united states support this argument first there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the democrats among men but not women second longitudinal data show that following marriage divorce women are less more likely to support the democratic party

estimation of unemployment duration from grouped data a comparative study economists have often found it useful to look at the average length of an unemployment spell in evaluating labor market conditions and in considering the labor market experience of the unemployed usually this statistic has to be estimated from grouped observations on interrupted incomplete unemployment spells this paper is a comparative study of some nonparametric and parametric methods of estimating this quantity using australian department of social security data on unemployment benefit recipients

the duration of unemployment stocks and flows on regional labour markets in the netherlands in this paper flows into and out of the stock of umemployed are estimated by means of a statistical method using aggregate data of incomplete unemployment spells a distinguishing feature of this method is that it is not based on stationarity assumptions of the stock of unemployed results are presented for the netherlands from the period 1983 7 speical attention is paid to inter regional differences in inflow outflow patterns of unemployed an effort is made to explain the observed regional differences in the average length of completed spells of unemployment by differences in professional and demographic patterns and in the number of vacancies per region it appears that the number of vacant jobs in a region has a favourable influence on the duration of unemployment

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 and job duration in canada we use data from the canadian 2 year longitudinal labour market activity survey of 1986 87 to estimate the effect of the unemployment insurance ui system on job duration particular attention is focused on the entrance requirements of the ui system which relate eligibility for ui benefits to an individual s recent employment history the article makes operational the ui entrance requirement provisions which take into account variations in the regional unemployment rate controlling for many personal and job characteristics we find evidence that a significant number of jobs terminate when they have reached the duration that would permit a ui claim

prostitution services an exploratory empirical analysis this study provides an empirical analysis of the market for some male prostitution services in the uk flexible working hours part time working and multiple job holding are considered as important labour market characteristics in this service sector statistical models helping explain the provision of a deviant and a more mainstream sexual service is reported utilizing cross section data drawn from individual prostitute advertisements the significance of various declared intrinsic endowments of the prostitutes are examined in relation to the offer of these services including age ethnicity physique and masculine demeanour

face value information and signaling in an illegal market author affiliation trevon d logan the ohio state university and nber 410 arps hall 1945 north high street columbus oh 43210 usa e mail logan 155 osu edu corresponding author manisha shah dagger university of california los angeles and nber 3250 public affairs building los angeles ca 91195 e mail manishashah ucla edu acknowledgment we would like to thank george akerlof rodney j andrews raj arunachalam andrea a cann lisa d cook brahima coulibaly scott cunningham angus deaton avinash dixit claudia d goldin karla hoff joseph kaboski simon loertscher joseph m newhard christina paxson john pepper ruth peterson patricia reagan seth sanders ebonya washington nathan woodfork three anonymous referees and numerous seminar participants who provided helpful suggestions the usual disclaimer applies 1 introductionformal enforcement is often seen as the cornerstone of contract design while information can overcome the problems of asymmetric information akerlof 1970 spence 1973 principals are unlikely to engage agents unless the information conveyed is credible and verifiable while the use of formal institutions such as courts is rare relative to the volume of transactions the standard argument is that the presence of formal institutions gives contracts their authority in schelling s 1960 classic terminology the power to sue and be sued gives parties the ability to make credible enforceable commitments a prerequisite to most transactions without means of redress the information that principals and agents share would a priori have little value numerous studies have documented how informal networks long term relationships and reputations overcome problems of asymmetric information indeed researchers have developed large literatures that look at limited contractibility hart 1995 tirole 1999 and situations in which formal enforcement is costly greif 1993 to consider the additional mechanisms that must be in place if existing institutions are lacking or unable to mediate disputes however the literature has not developed an empirical answer to whether the value of information without formal enforcement approaches its value when formal enforcement is present in this article we ask two questions i are formal enforcement mechanisms necessary for the information that principals and agents share to have value ii if not then what is the value of information in an environment without formal enforcement ideally we would like to analyze an illegal market to answer these questions illegal markets rule out the possibility that market function or variation in the information environment is due to the presence of formal enforcement similarly in an illegal market the information that principals and agents convey to one another may not be credible or verifiable and misrepresentation is not likely to be punished the problem is that most illegal markets have coarse information environments it is therefore challenging to obtain information on prices quantities and consumer and producer behavior making empirical answers to these questions especially difficult we overcome these problems by analyzing an illegal market with a rich information structure the online market for male sex work we begin with a general description of this seldom studied market we then document the ways in which the clients of male sex workers informally police the market by informing other clients of deceptive sex workers and by reviewing sex workers on independent client owned web sites the informal policing in the market raises the cost of misrepresentation for would be fraudulent escorts and rewards the truthful self disclosure of honest escorts encouraging truthful self disclosure we further exploit this institutional knowledge to identify the specific information clients treat as signals of escort quality

asymmetric information adverse selection and online disclosure the case of ebay motors since the pioneering work of akerlof 1970 economists have been aware of the adverse selection problem that information asymmetries can create in used goods markets the remarkable growth in online auctions of used goods where buyers generally purchase sight unseen therefore poses a puzzle i argue that given a means for credible information disclosure sellers will voluntarily disclose their private information to buyers through online media this limits information asymmetries and adverse selection to test this theory i examine the role of information in a large online used car market ebay motors i nd that sellers selectively disclose information that information asymmetries are reduced by these disclosures and that online media such as photos text and graphics provide a rich environment for information disclosure

worksharing and factor prices abstract the aspect of worksharing on which this paper concentrates concerns an increase in the firm s workforce offset by a reduction in average working hours emphasis is given to the effect of relative factor prices on worksharing within a model structure which includes the capital stock and worker productivity as endogenous inputs factor prices include all the main categories of wage and non wage labour payments as well as the user cost of capital special attention is given to the role of non wages both quasi fixed and variable an analysis of the effects of marginal employment subsidies on worksharing is also considered with reference to the french solidarity contracts

scale economies in electricity distribution a semiparametric analysis we estimate the costs of distributing electricity using data on municipal electric utilities in ontario canada for the period 1993 5 the data reveal substantial evidence of increasing returns to scale with minimum efficient scale being achieved by firms with about 20 000 customers larger firms exhibit constant or decreasing returns utilities which deliver additional services such as water sewage have significantly lower costs indicating the presence of economies of scope our basic specifications comprise semiparametric variants of the translog cost function where output enters non parametrically and remaining variables including their interactions with output are parametric we rely upon non parametric differencing techniques and extend a previous differencing test of equality of non parametric regression functions to a panel data setting copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

competition in the electricity industry in england and wales when the electricity industry was privatized the government made structural changes to encourage competition in generation and in supply to consumers the conventional power stations were only divided between two compa nies however and we show that duopolistic competition in an unregulated spot market might imply undesirably high prices most sales are hedged in the contract market which makes the spot market more competitive and a realistic threat of entry could also force generators to keep their prices down in the event a large amount of entry took place supported by the regional electricity companies franchise monopoly over smaller consumers that monopoly ends in 1998 so that further entry might become very difficult while competition between firms already in the generation market is still limited vertical integration between the major generators and regional electricity companies might make entry even harder and should be blocked until the industry is more competitive

efficiency estimation with heteroscedasticity in a panel data model this paper deals with the estimation of efficiency in a panel data framework a oneway error component model ecm is generalized to accommodate firm specific variances for the inefficiency component a multi step procedure is developed to estimate the cost function and predict increase in cost due to inefficiency the model is applied to examine efficiency of ten major investor owned electric utilities in texas during 1966 1985 the production technology is represented by a translog cost function that is assumed to be the same for every utility except for heterogeneous intercepts but it is allowed to shift over time due to technical change the data supports the ecm with firm specific variances and rejects the homoscedastic ecm cost inefficiency is found to vary substantially across utilities ranging from 0 to 28 technical change is found to be quite small less than 1 especially during 1971 1985

employment tenure and earnings profiles in japan and the united states comments the relationship between job tenure and annual earnings in japan has received considerable attention from social scientists examining employment contracts and the japanese compensation system in their widely cited article masanori hashimoto and john raisian 1985 using data for 1980 showed that japanese men have greater job tenure than comparable workers in the united states and that the earnings of japanese men rise more rapidly with increased tenure they found that an additional year of tenure increases earnings in both small and large firms in japan more than does an additional year of general market experience their results for the united states indicate that general market experience increases earnings more than an additional year of job tenure the 1970 s and 1980 s were a period of substantial change in japanese labor markets due to the rapid aging of the population and the restructuring of the economy following the oil crisis the present analysis extends the work of hashimoto and raisian by estimating earnings equations for japanese men for the years 1971 1976 1981 and 1986 specifically we wish to investigate whether hashimoto and raisian s findings have been stable over time or whether changes in the labor market have altered the importance of tenure relative to total labor market experience in the japanese labor market i changes in the labor market

business cycles and compositional variation in u s unemployment in this article we study u s unemployment dynamics using grouped unemployment data from the current population survey over the period 1968 1992 we estimate a model that traces variation in these unemployment data both over time and between demographic groups back to the underlying variation in the inflow and the outflow in turn we model the outflow as a transition process in which we allow the exit probabilities to depend on calendar time duration and demographic group we use the estimation results to provide a decomposition of aggregate u s unemployment dynamics in various incidence and duration components

what money buys clients of street sex workers in the us the article presents a review of current theoretical and empirical approaches to sex work followed by the presentation of an original theoretical framework della giusta et al 2006 which is tested with an econometric model of the characteristics of demand for sex services by a sample of clients of street sex workers in the us we present findings in relation to stigma and the relationship between paid and unpaid sex that corroborate our model s hypotheses and are in line with findings from other empirical studies furthermore we identify in our sample two diametrically opposite profiles one for clients whom we label experimenters and one for more experienced ones that we name regulars we also estimate attitudes toward risk and draw implications in terms of both policy and future theoretical and empirical research

price and advertising signals of product quality we present a signaling model based on ideas of phillip nelson in which both the introductory price and the level of directly uninformative advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a newly introduced experience good repeat purchases play a crucial role in our model a second focus of the paper is on illustrating an approach to refining the set of equilibria in signalling games with multiple potential signals

pre marital confinement of women a signaling and matching approach abstract parents in several cultures discipline their daughters to inculcate the supposedly feminine virtues and improve their prospects in the marriage market this process invariably involves imposing restrictions on their behavior movement and social relations we refer to such practices as pre marital confinement and provide a unified game theoretic framework which encompasses the different arguments that have been advanced by social scientists to explain pre marital confinement the proposed framework views confinement by parents as an intrinsically valueless or valuable signal of some unobservable characteristic of their daughters which is valued by men in the marriage market we focus on identifying the conditions that lead to a societal norm of confinement we also show that behind a veil of ignorance where gender is unknown agents will choose to prohibit rather than permit confinement if it is intrinsically valueless and the parameters characterizing the society are such that the ex post equilibrium would involve pooling

birth control and female empowerment an equilibrium analysis we analyze from a theoretical perspective the impact of innovations in birth control technology on intrahousehold allocation of resources we consider a model of frictionless matching on the marriage market in which men as well as women differ in their preferences for children moreover men unlike women must marry to enjoy fatherhood we show that more efficient birth control technologies generally increase the power hence the welfare of all women including those who do not use them this empowerment effect requires that the new technology be available to single women an innovation reserved to married women may result in a disempowerment effect

matching and sorting in online dating using data on user attributes and interactions from an online dating site we estimate mate preferences and use the gale shapley algorithm to predict sta ble matches the predicted matches are similar to the actual matches achieved by the dating site and the actual matches are approximately efficient outof sample predictions of offline matches i e marriages exhibit assortative mating patterns similar to those observed in actual marriages thus mate pref erences without resort to search frictions can generate sorting in marriages however we underpredict some of the correlation patterns search frictions may play a role in explaining the discrepancy

estimation of cost functions in a data poor environment the case of capacity estimation in fisheries fisheries economic analysis is often handicapped by the lack of adequate data to undertake robust econometric analyses in this study a translog cost function was required to estimate the potential direction of adjustment in a uk fleet segment if a new regulatory regime was introduced however the available data were not appropriate for such estimation data envelopment analysis dea was used to modify the data subsequently used in the estimation of the long run cost function the resulting model appears robust and is consistent with economic theory and the supporting evidence produced using dea

employer size and labor turnover the role of pensions the well documented lower labor turnover in large firms than in smaller firms has been cited as evidence that large firms pay workers above their opportunity wage this study investigates whether t

the evolution of job stability in canada trends and comparisons with u s results using data from the 1976 2001 canadian labour force survey we examine the stability of currently held jobs and find no period long drop in job stability however job stability declined across the 1980s and rose across the 1990s for workers with less than one year of tenure when 1987 and 1995 are compared it can be seen that job stability was steady in canada but fell slightly in the united states with the difference concentrated among medium tenured workers we suggest that this difference was due to a slower recovery in canada in the 1990s which caused canadian workers to be less mobile jel classification j63 l evolution de la stabilite des emplois au canada tendances et comparaisons avec les resultats aux etats unis en utilisant les donnees de l enquete sur la population active pour la periode de 1976 a 2001 l auteur examine la stabilite des emplois detenus pour le moment et trouve qu il n y a pas eu de chute de la stabilite des emplois en longue periode cependant la stabilite des emplois a chute dans les annees 1980 et cru dans les annees 1990 pour les travailleurs qui detenaient leur emploi depuis moins d un an si l on compare 1987 et 1995 la stabilite des emplois se maintient au canada mais chute un peu aux etats unis la difference est concentree dans le groupe de travailleurs qui ne detenaient leur emploi que depuis une periode moyennement longue on suggere que les differences entre les deux pays sont attribuables a une reprise economique plus lente au canada dans les annees 1990 qui aurait rendu les travailleurs canadiens moins mobiles

differntial fecundity markets and gender roles women are fecund for a shorter period of their lives than men this paper investigates how differential fecundity interacts with marriage labor and financial markets to affect gender roles the main findings of the paper are as follows i fecund women are relatively scarce men will behave differently than women in response to this scarcity in the most fundamental way demand and supply conditions in the marriage market affect gender roles ii differential fecundity does not have any market invariant gender effect gender roles depend on the way in which marriage labor and financial markets interact iii gender differences in the labor market can occur without corresponding differences in labor market opportunities productivities in child rearing or social norms iv with uncertainty in human capital accumulation and no insurance against this uncertainty the model s predictions are consistent with observed gender roles

regional differences in electricity distribution costs and their consequences for yardstick regulation of access prices abstract in this paper we estimate an average cost function for a panel of 59 swiss local and regional electricity distribution utilities as a basis for yardstick regulation of the distribution network access prices shleifer 1985 proposed yardstick competition in terms of price to regulate local monopolies producing a homogeneous good the regulated price for the individual firms depends on the average costs of identical firms the yardstick competition concept can also be applied to firms that produce heterogeneous goods if these goods differ only in observable characteristics to correct the yardstick for heterogeneity the regulator can use a multivariate estimation of an average cost function in the case of electricity distribution the heterogeneity of output consists mainly of different characteristics of the distribution service areas in this paper we follow shleifer s suggestion to estimate a multivariate average cost function that can be employed by the regulatory commission to benchmark network access prices at the distribution level several exogenous variables measuring the heterogeneity of the service areas were included in the cost model specification we find that the regional differences of the service areas e g area shares of forests agricultural areas or unproductive land and population density significantly influence electricity distribution costs

prostitutes and brides in a seminal paper lena edlund and evelyn korn 2002 introduce a puzzling stylized fact that prostitution is low skilled labor intensive female and well paid and offer a provocative explanation sex workers draw a compensating differential due to the foregone opportunity to sell their fertility in the marriage market in so doing they not only provide the first formal model of occupational choice involving prostitu tion they also draw an intriguing link between the labor market and the marriage market that holds for only one occupation when a woman chooses to become a sex worker she relinquishes the compensation she would otherwise receive in marriage since taboos prevent prostitutes from marrying thus even in settings where prostitu tion is legal it must draw an earnings premium beyond drawing considerable media attention the richness of the edlund korn model has made

productivity growth technical change and economies of scale of korean fossil fuel generation companies 2001 2012 a dual approach abstract this paper examines total factor productivity tfp growth technical change and economies of scale measure of korean fossil fuel power generation companies gencos between 2001 and 2012 for the empirical investigation we estimated the cost function along with specification tests in order to find the most appropriate empirical model empirical results show tfp deterioration technical regress and economies of scale for the study period the optimal size of the korean gencos was also found which is employed in developing policies regarding tfp growth and technical advance

internal labour markets causes and consequences the paper analyzes the causes and consequences of internal labor market rules that yield long tenure promotion from within seniority pensions and due process in dismissals about half the workforce are estimated to be in such markets competitive reasons for internal labor markets as a response to specific training and arms length relationships between workers and firms are surveyed these reasons are found to be consistent with the pattern of internal labor markets among non union firms however some internal labor markets e g among small unionized firms are probably a response to union pressure and government regulations in these circumstances low labor mobility could pose problems for policy copyright 1991 by oxford university press

an illfare approach to the measurement of unemployment based on an illfare approach a new index of unemployment is proposed which unlike the traditional measures takes into account the incidence of unemployment mean duration of unemployment and the disparity in the distribution of the burden of unemployment the proposed measure is most relevant for comparing levels of unemployment across regions or over a period of time an illustation with us data is presented

reconstructing the pattern of american unemployment before the first world war this paper calculates the distribution of unemployment duration lengths and transition rates for massachusetts workers in the late nineteenth century using data on time spent out of work and assuming that the spell durations followed a weibull distribution i parameterize a model of the timing of transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa i then simulate the employment experience of representative workers and construct distributionis of completed spell lengths the experience of most out of work workers in a year seems to have been in one rather long spell rather than in shorter multiple ones