the poverty gap in school spending following the introduction of title i abstract title i of the 1965 elementary and secondary education act explicitly directed more federal aid for k 12 education to poorer areas for the first time in us history with a goal of promoting regional convergence in school spending using newly collected data we find some evidence that title i narrowed the gap in per pupil school spending between richer and poorer states in the short to medium run however the program was small relative to then existing poverty gaps in school spending even in the absence of crowd out by local or state governments the program could have reduced the gap by only 15 percent

booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

estimating the impact of the hajj religion and tolerance in islam s global gathering we estimate the impact on pilgrims of performing the hajj pilgrimage to mecca our method compares successful and unsuccessful applicants in a lottery used by pakistan to allocate hajj visas pilgrim accounts stress that the hajj leads to a feeling of unity with fellow muslims but outsiders have sometimes feared that this could be accompanied by antipathy toward non muslims we find that participation in the hajj increases observance of global islamic practices such as prayer and fasting while decreasing participation in localized practices and beliefs such as the use of amulets and dowry it increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and islamic sects and leads to more favorable attitudes toward women including greater acceptance of female education and employment increased unity within the islamic world is not accompanied by antipathy toward non muslims instead hajjis show increased belief in peace and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions the evidence suggests that these changes are likely due to exposure to and interaction with hajjis from around the world rather than to a changed social role of pilgrims upon return

group loyalty and the taste for redistribution interpersonal preferences preferences that depend on the characteristics of others are typically hard to infer from observable individual behavior as an alternative approach this paper uses survey data to investigate interpersonal preferences i show that self reported attitudes toward welfare spending are determined not only by financial self interest but also by interpersonal preferences these interpersonal preferences are characterized by a negative exposure effect individuals decrease their support for welfare as the welfare recipiency rate in their community rises and racial group loyalty individuals increase their support for welfare spending as the share of local recipients from their own racial group rises these findings help to explain why levels of welfare benefits are relatively low in racially heterogeneous states

who wants to redistribute the tunnel effect in 1990s russia abstract support for governmental redistribution tended to be greater for the poor than the rich in a representative sample of russian adults in 1996 however support for redistribution is higher amongst those who expect their welfare to fall and this effect is strongest amongst the currently well off a rising trajectory inhibits demand for redistribution support is also stronger in rural areas amongst those with less schooling those who fear losing their job the elderly and amongst women our results are consistent with albert hirschman s idea of a tunnel effect whereby prospects of mobility in both directions influence demand for governmental redistribution

inherited trust and growth this paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation we show that inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants is sig nificantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears we thus use the inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants as a time varying measure of inherited trust in their country of origin this strategy allows to identify the sizeable causal impact of inherited trust on worldwide growth during the twentieth century by controlling for country fixed effects jel n11 n12 n31 n32 o47 z13

gender role attitudes and the labour market outcomes of women across oecd countries this paper uses data from the world value surveys 1990 1995 1999 to investigate the impact of gender role attitudes and work values on women s labour market outcomes across 25 oecd countries anti egalitarian views are found to display the strongest negative association with female employment rates and the gender pay gap these views are however softening among recent cohorts on the other hand perceptions of women s role as homemakers which are likely formed in youth and linked to religious ideology are more persistent over time they could be implicated in the recent slowdown of the gender convergence in pay finally the unavoidable clash between family values and egalitarian views that takes the form of an inner conflict for many women the so called mother s guilt is another obstacle in the path towards greater gender equality in the labour market copyright 2005 oxford university press

attitudes policies and work we study whether cultural attitudes towards gender the young and leisure are signi cant determinants of the evolution over time of the employment rates of women and of the young and of hours worked in oecd countries beyond controlling for a larger menu of policies institutions and structural characteristics of the economy than has been done so far our analysis improves upon existing studies of the role of culture for labor market outcomes by dealing explicitly with the endogeneity of attitudes policies and institutions and by allowing for the persistent nature of labor market outcomes when we do all this we nd that culture still matters for women employment rates and for hours worked however policies and other institutional or structural characteristics are also important attitudes towards youth independence however do not appear to be important in explaining the employment rate of the young in the case of women employment rates the policy variable that is signi cant along with attitudes is the oecd index of employment protection legislation for hours worked the policy variables that play a role along with attitudes are the tax wedge and unemployment bene ts the quantitative impact of these policy variables is such that changes in policies have at least the

allocation under dictatorship research in stalin s archives we survey recent research on the soviet economy in the state party and military archives of the stalin era the archives have provided rich new evidence on the economic arrangements of a command system under a powerful dictator including stalin s role in the making of the economic system and economic policy stalin s accumulation objectives and the constraints that limited his power to achieve them the limits to administrative allocation the information flows and incentives that governed the behavior of economic managers the scope and significance of corruption and market oriented behavior and the prospects for economic reform

social mobility and redistributive politics just like economists voters have conflicting views about redistributive taxation because they estimate its incentive costs differently we model rational agents as trying to learn from their dynastic income mobility experience the relative importance of effort and predetermined factors in the generation of income inequality and therefore the magnitude of these incentive costs in the long run left wing dynasties believing less in individual effort and voting for more redistribution coexist with right wing dynasties this allows us to explain why individual mobility experience and not only current income matters for political attiitudes and how persistent differences in perceptions about social mobility can generate persistent differences in redistribution across countries

individual preferences for political redistribution what drives people s support of governmental reduction of income inequality we employ data from a large international survey in order to evaluate the explanatory power of three competing forces referred to as the homo oeconomicus effect the public values effect and the social rivalry effect the empirical analysis reveals that at the aggregate level all three effects play a significant role in shaping individual preferences for political redistribution attitudes of citizens in formerly socialist countries turn out to differ from those of western citizens in a systematic way 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

on the origins of gender roles women and the plough the study examines the historical origins of existing cross cultural differences in beliefs and values regarding the appropriate role of women in society we test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution of gender norms we find that consistent with existing hypotheses the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture today have less equal gender norms measured using reported gender role attitudes and female participation in the workplace politics and entrepreneurial activities our results hold looking across countries across districts within countries and across ethnicities within districts to test for the importance of cultural persistence we examine the children of immigrants living in europe and the united states we find that even among these individuals all born and raised in the same country those with a heritage of traditional plough use exhibit less equal beliefs about gender roles today jel codes d03 j16 n30 copyright 2013 oxford university press

an optimal vendor buyer cooperative policy under generalized lead time distribution with penalty cost for delivery lateness abstract this paper presents an integrated inventory model for a single vendor and single buyer where lead time is a stochastic variable with general distribution function the vendor delivers goods at a fixed lot size to the buyer who has a constant demand rate storage is permitted on both parties but a penalty cost is assessed when the vendor delivers the shipment late beyond a threshold time the problem is formulated as a nonlinear cost model which needs to be minimized to arrive at an optimal policy for reorder point order quantity and number of shipments from the vendor to buyer to cooperatively operate the joint contract the solution procedure involves both closed form solution and iterative search procedure for this multi dimensional problem numerical examples are presented for uniform exponential and normally distributed lead time s to demonstrate the solution methodology as well as a precursor test for special cases the model presented here are applicable for numerous two stage supply chain systems including retail businesses assembly and production houses where two parties of the supply chain are tied to their common goal of achieving minimum total cost of inventory operation

growing up in a recession does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution we find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort support more government redistribution and tend to vote for left wing parties the effect of recessions on beliefs is long lasting we support our findings with evidence from three different datasets first we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 2010 general social survey our specifications control for nonlinear time period life cycle and cohort effects as well as a host of background variables second we rely on data from the national longitudinal survey of the high school class of 1972 to corroborate the age period cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood third using data from the world value survey we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

family values and the regulation of labor flexible labor markets requires geographically mobile workers to be e cient otherwise rms can take advantage of the immobility of workers and extract monopsony rents in cultures with strong family ties moving away from home is costly thus individuals with strong family ties rationally choose regulated labor markets to avoid moving and limiting the monopsony power of rms even though regulation generates lower employment and income empirically we do nd that individuals who inherit stronger family ties are less mobile have lower wages are less often employed and support more stringent labor market regulations there are also positive cross country correlations between the strength of family ties and labor market rigidities finally we nd positive correlations between labor market rigidities at the beginning of the twenty rst century and family values prevailing before world war ii which suggests that labor market regulations have deep cultural roots

matching with contracts we develop a model of matching with contracts which incorporates as special cases the college admissions problem the kelso crawford labor market matching model and ascending package auctions we introduce a new law of aggregate demand for the case of discrete heterogeneous workers and show that when workers are substitutes this law is satisfied by profit maximizing firms when workers are substitutes and the law is satisfied truthful reporting is a dominant strategy for workers in a worker offering auction matching algorithm we also parameterize a large class of preferences satisfying the two conditions

social preferences self interest and the demand for redistribution preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self interest people may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control therefore beliefs about the causes of income may affect demand for redistribution alternatively the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income and self interest is not properly controlled for they may also measure incentive cost concerns using social survey data i find that self interest cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

family structure institutions and growth the origins and implications of western corporations siders the importance of the family as an institution little attention however has been given to the impact of the family structure and its dynamics on institutions this limits our ability to understand distinct institutional developments and hence growth in the past and present this paper supports this argument by highlighting the importance of the european family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history and reflects on its growth related implications what constituted this change was the emergence of the economic and political corporations in late medieval europe corporations are defined as consistent with their historical meaning intentionally created voluntary interest based and self governed permanent associations guilds fraternities universities communes and city states are some of the corporations that have historically dominated europe businesses and professional associations business corporations universities consumer groups counties republics and democracies are examples of corporations in modern societies the provision of corporation based institutions to mitigate problems of cooperation and conflict constituted a break from the ways in which institutions had been provided in the past historically large kinship groups such as clans lineages and tribes often secured the