the earnings and human capital of american jews this paper analyzes the earnings and returns from human capital investments of second generation american jews compared with non jews jewish men have 16 percent higher earnings other things the same a 20 percent higher rate of return from schooling and a steeper experience earnings profile these patterns persist even after controlling for occupation self employment status and geographic concentration in the new york area there are no systematic differences among jews by parents country of birth the findings suggest that american jews are more productive in creating and using human capital and that this has encouraged greater investments in human capital

religiosity and earnings management international evidence from the banking industry using an international sample of banks we study how differences in religiosity across countries affect earnings management given that religiosity is a major source of morality and ethical behavior it may reduce excessive risk taking and act as deterrence for earnings manipulations therefore we predict lower earnings management in societies that have higher religiosity consistent with expectations our cross country analysis indicates that religiosity is negatively related to income increasing earnings management for loss avoidance and just meeting or beating prior year s earnings we also find that religiosity reduces income increasing earnings management through abnormal loan loss provisions in additional tests we document that religiosity increases the information value of bank earnings with both earnings persistence and cash flow predictability being enhanced by higher religiosity for the crisis period analysis i e 2007 2009 our evidence shows that banks in countries with higher religiosity exhibit lower probability of reporting asset deterioration and lower probability of having poor performance

bioenergy crop production in the united states potential quantities land use changes and economic impacts on the agricultural sector the u s departments of agriculture and energyjointly analyzed the economic potential for and impacts of large scale bioenergy cropproduction in the united states anagricultural sector model polysys wasmodified to include three potential bioenergycrops switchgrass hybrid poplar and willow at farmgate prices of us 2 44 gj anestimated 17 million hectares of bioenergycrops annually yielding 171 million dry mg ofbiomass could potentially be produced at aprofit greater than existing agricultural usesfor the land the estimate assumes highproductivity management practices are permittedon conservation reserve program lands traditional crops prices are estimated toincrease 9 to 14 percent above baseline pricesand farm income increases annually by us 6 0billion above baseline at farmgate prices of us 1 83 gj anestimated 7 9 million hectares of bioenergycrops annually yielding 55 million dry mg ofbiomass could potentially be produced at aprofit greater than existing agricultural usesfor the land the estimate assumes managementpractices intended to achieve highenvironmental benefits on conservation reserveprogram lands traditional crops prices areestimated to increase 4 to 9 percent abovebaseline prices and farm income increasesannually by us 2 8 billion above baseline

a model of educational investment decisions from a probit model of enrollments estimates of the expected net present value of post secondary education are developed for a sample of high school graduates based e xclusively on individual expectations of the relevant costs and benefits at the time of the enrollment decision the results are very plausible and consistent w ith rate of return estimates from studies which rely on ex post income data thi s suggests that students have rational expectationsand relatively good informat ion about future employment opportunities and other factors which determine the returns to educational investment copyright 1987 by mit press

the wage effect of the occupational segregation of women in britain married females earn around 60 percent of the male rate of pay part of this wage difference der ives from inequality of pay within occupations and part derives from the different occupational distributions of the male and female workf orces this paper merges models of occupational attainment and gender wage distributions it shows that the gender wage difference derives largely from wage differences within occupations the effect of fema le nonparticipation in the paid workforce is found to be an important aspect of occupational attainment as well as of pay differences with in occupations copyright 1987 by royal economic society

the impact of oil prices on bioenergy emissions and land use we evaluate how alternative future oil prices will influence the penetration of biofuels energy production greenhouse gas ghg emissions land use and other outcomes our analysis employs a global economy wide model and simulates alternative oil prices out to 2050 with and without a price on ghg emissions in one case considered based on estimates of available resources technological progress and energy demand the reference oil price rises to 124 by 2050 other cases separately consider constant reference oil prices of 50 75 and 100 which are targeted by adjusting the quantity of oil resources in our simulations higher oil prices lead to more biofuel production more land being used for bioenergy crops and fewer ghg emissions reducing oil resources to simulate higher oil prices has a strong income effect so decreased food demand under higher oil prices results in an increase in land allocated to natural forests we also find that introducing a carbon price reduces the differences in oil use and ghg emissions across oil price cases

religion and income heterogeneity between countries this paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income the violation of the homogeneity assumption would have two consequences first results based on country studies might not be applicable to other countries second one should be careful when pooling cross country data in this type of research data at household level from the european and world values survey are pooled for 25 western countries we estimate simultaneously an income and a religion equation to correct for the endogeneity of religiousness we find that estimation outcomes are different for low and high income countries whereas church membership is found to have a positive effect on income for high income countries this effect is negative for low income countries this result is robust to denominational distribution participation effects and alternative measures of religiousness

birth order schooling and earnings birth order effects are posited by many to affect earnings and schooling we show how such effects can be interpreted to shift either the earnings possibility frontier for siblings or parental preferences we find empirical evidence for birth order effects on age adjusted schooling and on earnings for young u s adults though the latter is not robust for all specifications the examination of intrahousehold allocations suggests that these birth order differences occur despite parental preferences or prices by birth order favoring later borns apparently because of stronger endowment effects that favor firstborns

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

occupational segregation and selectivity bias in occupational wage equations an empirical analysis using irish data the gender wage effects of occupational segregation are assessed within the framework of occupational attachment and wage equations this paper exploits the modified index number approach suggested by brown et al 1980 and used recently by miller 1987 however neither of these papers allowed for the potential effects of selectivity bias in occupational wage equations in this study selectivity bias is corrected for using the method outlined in lee 1983 this allows for the effects of occupational selectivity buas on the gender wage gap to be assessed the findings for this sample of young lrish workers suggest that the greater part of the female wage disadvantage lies in intraoccupational wage differences furthermore selectivity bias is found to be important for a number of occupational categories

financial dependence and growth diminishing returns to improvement in financial development this paper examines how much financial development facilitates economic growth by nonparametrically estimating the effect of financial development on reducing the costs of external finance to firms the data reveal substantial evidence of diminishing returns to improvement in financial development

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

native immigrant wage differentials and occupational segregation in the greek labour market this article explores native immigrant wage differentials in the greek labour market data from the most recent greek household budget survey 2004 05 were employed four alternative occupational categories were considered and occupational choice was explicitly modelled controlling for occupational selectivity occupation specific wage regressions for representative samples of employed native and immigrant workers were estimated and an augmented decomposition technique was utilized to analyse inter and intra occupation wage differentials the obtained results demonstrate that roughly 48 of the average wage differential cannot be explained by differences in observed characteristics and that the larger component of this unexplained part is due to asymmetrical occupational access by native and immigrant workers

education and ethnicity in canada an intergenerational perspective ethnic and intergenerational aspects of human capital investment are explored levels of and cross sectional returns to education across ethnic groups in canada are estimated and large differences observed for men a positive correlation exists between ethnic group average years of education and its return we also find large negative correlations between ethnic group average educational outcomes and the previous generation s fertility suggesting a role for home production as a complement to formal education and supporting models of child quantity quality trade offs very slow intergenerational convergence in ethnic group level educational and labor market outcomes is also observed

wage discrimination occupational segregation and visible minorities in canada the earnings gap between each of whites asians and blacks is decomposed into the effects on earnings of productivity related characteristics wage discrimination and occupational segregation unlike previous canadian studies this paper analyses the relative economic position of both immigrant and native born visible minorities and explicitly incorporates the effect of discrimination in occupational attainment on the earnings gap the results indicate that policies aimed at increasing the ethnic representation across occupational categories would be effective only for black men anti discrimination legislation aimed at decreasing the earnings gap between visible minority and white women should have a dual focus they should aim at reducing the inter occupational wage discrimination they should provide training programs to extend the career ladders confronting ethnic minority women

do energy prices stimulate food price volatility examining volatility transmission between us oil ethanol and corn markets this paper examines volatility transmission in oil ethanol and corn prices in the united states between 1997 and 2011 we follow a multivariate garch approach to evaluate the level of interdependence and the dynamics of volatility across these markets preliminary results indicate a higher interaction between ethanol and corn markets in recent years particularly after 2006 we only observe however significant volatility spillovers from corn to ethanol prices but not the converse we also do not find major cross volatility effects from oil to corn markets the results do not provide evidence of volatility in energy markets stimulating price volatility in grain markets

wage discrimination across ethnic groups evidence from israel i introduction wage differentials and occupational segregation have been intensively studied and well documented in the economic literature empirical analyses have demonstrated differences by gender and ethnicity and theoretical studies have attempted to explain the results polachek 1975 1993 leads the group that emphasizes human capital differences in explaining wage differences and segregation while bergmann 1974 1986 is in the forefront of a second group of scholars who claim that discrimination is the major source of inequality of wages and occupations in the united states race differentials in earnings and racial segregation decreased dramatically during the 1960s and the 1970s but sex differentials did not in 1980 the duncans 1955 segregation index calculated by fuchs 1989 across 503 occupations was about 30 for blacks versus whites and about 60 for men versus women 1 fuchs 1989 also showed that by 1980 the wage differential between white and black men 15 percent was less than half the difference between white men and white women 40 percent polachek and siebert 1993 137 39 present data showing that in 1990 the pay of u s women averaged 65 to 90 percent of that of men depending on the occupational category the gap has been relatively constant but there is some evidence that it has been narrowing in recent years they also find that earning ratios by occupation in the u k are very similar to parallel ratios in the u s chiswick 1983a 1983b and carlson and swartz 1988 among others examine earnings of ethnic minorities they find that most ethnic groups fare quite poorly compared to the white population but a few minorities jews chinese and japanese do as well or even better than the white majority the earnings gap for most groups declined over the 1960s and the 1970s and the portion of that gap that might be assignable to discrimination also declined in this study we examine ethnic wage differentials discrimination and segregation in the israeli labor market israel provides a tailor made setting for ethnic studies since its jewish population 4 335 million in 1993 consists of people with a large diversity in their countries of origin the first wave of jewish immigrants following the establishment of the state of israel in 1948 were holocaust survivors from europe or refugees from the predominantly moslem countries of north africa the middle east and yemen others came from north and south america western europe south africa and australia to live a more meaningful jewish life in the homeland israel encouraged and assisted these immigrants as part of an active pro immigration ideology and policy the main wave of immigration arrived in the late 1940s and early 1950s as friedlander 1975 shows between 1948 and 1952 the jewish population in israel increased from about 630 000 to nearly one and a half million an annual average growth rate of over 24 percent later there were three significant waves of immigration the first occurred at the beginning of the 1960s with annual immigration reaching an average of 57 000 per year an increase of 2 percent per year in population the second occurred in 1972 73 when 55 000 immigrants arrived annually an annual population increase of 1 7 percent the third large wave began in august 1989 with a massive influx of immigrants from the former u s s r generating about a 10 percent increase in the population in the years 1990 93 the absolute figures are 199 516 immigrants in 1990 176 100 in 1991 77 057 in 1992 and 66 145 in 1993 israel central bureau of statistics 1994 in 1991 about 15 000 ethiopian jews also arrived in israel the major ethnic division in israel is based on the country of origin although jews of various origins speak a number of different languages and perceive themselves as having some distinctive ethnic characteristics the main distinction is between jews originating from asia and africa excluding south africa easterners and those from america europe south africa and australia westerners

parental background educational attainments and returns to schooling and to marriage the case of israel this paper investigates the effect of family background attainments and on returns to own and wife s schooling for jewish males israel three dimensions of paternal background are referred to father s education the prestige of the father s occupation and whether the father is of a western origin an advantage in the western oriented israeli society for each of these types of segmentation it is found that both the level of and the returns to own and wife s schooling after some years of marriage are higher for those coming from a more favourable background these empirical findings are consistent with an investment in schooling model in which differences in demand productivity of own and wife s schooling vary more than differences in supply of investment funds

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

biofuel related price transmission literature a review abstract in this article an extensive review of the rapidly growing biofuel related time series literature is carried out the data used the modeling techniques and the main findings of this literature are discussed providing a review of this flourishing research area is relevant as a guidepost for future research this literature concludes that energy prices drive long run agricultural price levels and that instability in energy markets is transferred to food markets

immigrants minorities and labor market competition this paper investigates the extent of labor market competition among immigrants minorities and the native population an analysis of 1980 u s census data reveals that immigrants tend to be substitutes for some labor market groups and complements for others the effects of shifts in immigrant supply on the earnings of native born men are however very small on the other hand increases in the supply of immigrants do have a sizable impact on the earnings of immigrants themselves an increase of 10 percent in the supply of immigrants for example reduces the immigrant wage by about 10 percent

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

the gap between male and female pay in the spanish tourism industry abstract this paper analyzes wage differentials between male and female workers in the spanish tourism industry using a large administratively matched employer employee data set obtained from a representative sample of companies this allows us to control for unobserved firm specific factors likely to affect the magnitude of the gender wage gap our findings indicate that male workers earn on average 6 7 higher monthly wages than their socially comparable female counterparts in particular the type of contract held the qualifications required for the job and the specific sub sector of employment are very important variables in explaining this gender wage difference we also find that only around 12 of the mean wage difference in the tourism industry cannot be explained by differences in observable characteristics which is well below the average for the rest of the industries in spain 87 our interpretation is that minimum wage legislation provides a particularly effective protection to women in the tourism industry which is characterized by a large number of low wage earners

religion religiosity and educational attainment evidence from the compulsory education system in england this paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in england the results show that pupils that identify with any re

supply of cellulosic biofuel feedstocks and regional production pattern interest in cellulosic biofuels has grown due to recent concerns about the impact of expanding production of corn ethanol on food prices and the greater potential of cellulosic biofuels to mitigate climate change the energy independence and security act eisa of 2007 limits the production of corn ethanol to 56 billion liters after 2015 and mandates the production of at least 80 of the 136 billion liters of ethanol from non corn starch based cellulosic feedstocks by 2022 the biomass research and development act of 2000 had established an even more ambitious goal of using biomass to replace the equivalent of 30 of current petroleum consumption by 2030 and estimated that this would require 1 billion dry short tons of biomass annually u s department of energy usdoe 2003 biomass can be obtained from several different sources including forest resources crop residues woody biomass and perennial grasses a usda usdoe report perlack et al 2005 examined the technical feasibility of sustaining this supply of biomass and the land resources that would be required under alternative scenarios with yield enhancing and other technological changes in conventional crops and perennial bioenergy crops the study estimated that 0 54 to 1 billion dry tons of agricultural crop based biomass could be obtained annually from cropland idle cropland and cropland pasture with moderate to high productivity gains in crop productivity residue collection and tillage practices

contract theory and implications for perennial energy crop contracting abstract this article provides an overview of modern contract theory and discusses the implications of the theory for contracting for perennial dedicated energy crops we discuss some of the unique challenges of contracting for dedicated energy crops used for the production of advanced biofuels and survey some of the relevant concepts and research from the contract theory literature to address these challenges we focus primarily on the mechanism design or complete contracts approach to contracting which involves optimizing some objective function e g profits costs etc with respect to contract terms subject to important incentive constraints the solution to these optimization problems typically highlight important tradeoffs that a contract designer needs to consider in order to maximize profits and or minimize costs

the less extreme the more you leave radical islam and willingness to migrate summary this paper studies radical islam as a determinant of individuals willingness to migrate surprisingly despite its relevance in the political debate this topic has not been investigated empirically in the literature in order to fill this gap we develop a model of the decision to migrate focusing in particular on the role played by cultural traits more specifically we focus on radical islam as a deterrent for migration following berman 2003 we define radical islam as a set of ideologies also referred to as political islam holding that islam should guide not only personal life but also social and political life in our model more radical values imply a higher psychological cost of migrating this cost derives from the fact that connections with socio religious friends and neighbors are generally not maintained after migration thus deterring individuals from migrating mayers 2000 we then test empirically the predictions of the model using individual level data from the second 2010 11 and third 2012 14 waves of the arab barometer our results suggest that ceteris paribus more radical individuals are less willing to migrate this finding is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of instrumental variables and propensity score matching aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of radical islam the result is also qualitatively unchanged when using aggregate data on actual outflows of migrants

financial dependence and growth revisited we revisit an earlier highly influential paper on financial dependence and growth by rajan and zingales 1998 we re examine their assumptions and the robustness of their results to alternative theories and interpretations we first show that they may be implicitly testing whether financial intermediaries allow firms to better respond to global shocks to growth opportunities rather than the extent that financial intermediaries allow firms to grow in industries with an inherent technological financial dependence we propose a more direct measure of growth opportunities if u s capital markets are perfect then actual growth in the u s is a good proxy for global growth opportunities we test this directly by including u s industry growth in rajan and zingales s original specification and find that our direct growth measure outperforms their financial dependence measure and is less vulnerable to controlling for outliers and level of development this still suggests an important role for finance in the allocation of resources but shifts the emphasis from financial dependence to global growth opportunities jel f3 g1 o4

the feasibility costs and environmental implications of large scale biomass energy abstract what are the feasibility costs and environmental implications of large scale bioenegry we investigate this question by developing a detailed representation of bioenergy in a global economy wide model we develop a scenario with a global carbon dioxide price applied to all anthropogenic emissions except those from land use change that rises from 25 per metric ton in 2015 to 99 in 2050 this creates market conditions favorable to biomass energy resulting in global non traditional bioenergy production of 150 exajoules ej in 2050 by comparison in 2010 global energy production was primarily from coal 138 ej oil 171 ej and gas 106 ej with this policy 2050 emissions are 42 less in our base policy case than our reference case although extending the scope of the carbon price to include emissions from land use change would reduce 2050 emissions by 52 relative to the same baseline our results from various policy scenarios show that lignocellulosic lc ethanol may become the major form of bioenergy if its production costs fall by amounts predicted in a recent survey and ethanol blending constraints disappear by 2030 however if its costs remain higher than expected or the ethanol blend wall continues to bind bioelectricity and bioheat may prevail higher lc ethanol costs may also result in the expanded production of first generation biofuels ethanol from sugarcane and corn so that they remain in the fuel mix through 2050 deforestation occurs if emissions from land use change are not priced although the availability of biomass residues and improvements in crop yields and conversion efficiencies mitigate pressure on land markets as regions are linked via international agricultural markets irrespective of the location of bioenergy production natural forest decreases are largest in regions with the lowest barriers to deforestation in 2050 the combination of carbon price and bioenergy production increases food prices by 3 2 5 2 with bioenergy accounting for 1 3 3 5

wage determination of registered nurses in proprietary and nonprofit nursing homes this study explores why registered nurses employed in nonprofit nursing homes earn higher wages than those employed in proprietary facilities previous studies have explained this finding in a property rights context where higher wages were posited to result from the weaker incentives for cost minimization accompanying nonprofit status this paper tests an alternative explanation of sectoral wage differences which is predicated on the reason for the coexistence offor profit and nonprofit firms in a given industry informational constraints concerning the quality of care are posited to cause the long term health care market to fail to provide care at the upper levels of a quality of care continuum nonprofits are viewed as a response to this form of market failure acting to fulfill customers demand for higher quality and higher cost long term care with attendant demand for higher quality nurses than in for profit homes both the observed sectoral pattern in selectivity and wage decompositions based on selectivity corrected wage regressions call into question the property right explanation yet are consistent with an asymmetric information explanation

asymmetric labor market reforms effects on wage growth and conversion probability of fixed term contracts the authors investigate the impact of a change in employment protection laws in portugal that increased the maximum legal duration of fixed term contracts they find that this reform led to a reduction in the probability that a worker on a fixed term contract would be converted to a permanent contract in addition those workers who had their contracts converted experienced a significantly higher hourly wage growth at the time of conversion and faced a lower reduction in wage growth during the years in which the changed legislation was in force consequently the implementation of this law led to a 27 increase in the wage growth differential between the two contracts the findings are based on an endogenous regime switching model using rich administrative linked employer employee data

have oil and gas prices got separated abstract this paper applies vector error correction models that show that oil and natural gas prices decoupled around 2009 before 2009 us and uk gas prices had a long term equilibrium with crude prices to which gas prices always reverted after exogenous shocks both us and uk gas prices adjusted to the crude oil price individually and departure from the equilibrium gas price on one continent resulted in a similar departure on the other after an exogenous shock the adjustment between us and uk gas prices took approximately 20 weeks on average and the convergence was mediated mainly by crude oil with a necessary condition that arbitrage across the atlantic was possible after 2009 however the uk gas price has remained integrated with oil price but the us gas price decoupled from crude oil price and the european gas price as the atlantic arbitrage has halted the oversupply from shale gas production has not been mitigated by north american export as there has been no liquefying and export capacity

biomass feedstock contracts role of land quality and yield variability in near term feasibility abstract in the absence of an infrastructure for the harvest storage and purchase of cellulosic biomass contracting is an important mechanism through which biorefineries can ensure adequate feedstock supply we develop an optimization model to assess the economic potential of dedicated energy crops when profit maximizing farmers allocate croplands of varying quality toward biomass in response to multi year contracts we evaluate the economic competitiveness of perennial grasses with traditional commodity crops in a case study of switchgrass production in tennessee assuming short term contracts we consider the importance of payment structure land quality energy crop yield and projected commodity crop returns on a farmer s decision to accept a contract for biomass production we find that a wholesale contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per unit biomass is most effective on the highest quality of land while a contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per acre is most effective on lower quality land from the biorefinery perspective a wholesale contract is most effective for short term contracts while an acreage contract is most effective for long term contracts breakeven pricing will only secure feedstock from farmers who produce commodity crops with unfavorable price outlooks on lower quality land therefore the contract price must include a premium in order to compete for space in the crop mix the yield profile of energy crops has a significant effect on the terms at which short term contracts will be accepted and land allocated toward feedstock production the extent to which energy crop yields observed in field trials can be maintained at commercial scale also has a substantial effect on the scale at which farmers would be willing to participate in energy crop production

catholic schools dropout rates and educational attainment this paper examines the effect of catholic schooling on high school dropout rates and educational attainment particular attention is given to the effect of selection into the catholic school sector after adjusting for self selection we find that sophomores in the catholic schools are still substantially more likely to graduate with their class it is also shown that seniors in the catholic schools are not more likely to acquire more schooling than other seniors if selection is taken into account

ethnicity race and earnings abstract utilizing the 1980 and 1990 usa censuses and blinder oaxaca decompositions we examine the extent of discrimination across women and men by ancestry and race the charge that blinder oaxaca decompositions indicate cultural rather than discriminatory differentials is addressed with two futher experiments one that controls for color and varies culture and one that controls for culture and varies color

segmented or competitive labour markets a normal roy model with four sectors is developed it allows to derive tests of several assumptions on the working of the labor market strongly or weakly competitive or segmented it shows that more important a feature of labor markets than segmentation is the presence of comparative advantages for individuals between the various economic sectors the model is applied to data on women s labor force participation in the main towns of colombia in 1980 it uses multivariate probit and tobit techniques copyright 1991 by the econometric society

nonparametric regression techniques in economics this introduction to nonparametric regression emphasizes techniques that might be most accessible and useful to the applied economist the paper begins with a brief overview of the class of models under study and central theoretical issues such as the curse of dimensionality the bias variance trade off and rates of convergence the paper then focuses on kernel and nonparametric least squares estimation of the nonparametric regression model and optimal differencing estimation of the partial linear model constrained estimation and hypothesis testing is also discussed empirical examples include returns to scale in electricity distribution and hedonic pricing of housing attributes

world oil and agricultural commodity prices evidence from nonlinear causality abstract the increasing co movements between the world oil and agricultural commodity prices have renewed interest in determining price transmission from oil prices to those of agricultural commodities this study extends the literature on the oil agricultural commodity prices nexus which particularly concentrates on nonlinear causal relationships between the world oil and three key agricultural commodity prices corn soybeans and wheat to this end the linear causality approach of toda yamamoto and the nonparametric causality method of diks panchenko are applied to the weekly data spanning from 1994 to 2010 the linear causality analysis indicates that the oil prices and the agricultural commodity prices do not influence each other which supports evidence on the neutrality hypothesis in contrast the nonlinear causality analysis shows that i there are nonlinear feedbacks between the oil and the agricultural prices and ii there is a persistent unidirectional nonlinear causality running from the oil prices to the corn and to the soybeans prices the findings from the nonlinear causality analysis therefore provide clues for better understanding the recent dynamics of the agricultural commodity prices and some policy implications for policy makers farmers and global investors this study also suggests the directions for future studies

social identity and preferences social identities prescribe behaviors for people we identify the marginal behavioral effect of these norms on discount rates and risk aversion by measuring how laboratory subjects choices change when an aspect of social identity is made salient when we make ethnic identity salient to asian american subjects they make more patient choices when we make racial identity salient to black subjects non immigrant blacks but not immigrant blacks make more patient choices making gender identity salient has no effect on intertemporal or risk choices

bi ethnic labor markets mono ethnic labor markets and socioeconomic inequality the research examines the role of local opportunity structure in the determination of social and economic outcomes by focusing on the impact of local labor market segregation on socioeconomic inequality between jews and arabs in israel analysis of the 1983 israeli census reveals that the rules by which minority members achieve socioeconomic status vary considerably across bi ethnic and mono ethnic labor markets arabs working in jewish communities bi ethnic labor markets suffer the detrimental consequences of both occupational and income discrimination more than any other group by contrast arabs working in arab communities mono ethnic labor markets are occupationally advantaged with the absence of competition they produce incumbents for positions usually held by jews the findings suggest that the magnitude of disadvantages that superordinate groups force on minority groups is highly dependent on the degree of group competition in the local labor market

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

the endogeneity of union status an empirical test an unsettled issue in the literature relating to the relative wage effect of unions is the appropriate treatment of union status in a wage determination model in the context of a three equation model determining union membership and union and nonunion sector wage rates this paper presents an instrumental variables iv procedure for estimating the parameters of the wage equations and a test of the exogeneity of union status using the hausman specification test an advantage of our iv procedure in comparison to the widely used inverse mill s ratio procedure is that our procedure is a distribution free estimator whereas the inverse mill s ratio estimator hinges in the assumption that the error term of the choice equation is normally distributed using data for a sample of middle aged white workers we estimate the parameters of the union and nonunion wage equations with both procedures on the key question of the endogeneity of union status the hausman test decisively rejects the null hypothesis of exo

the bicausal relation between religion and income in this article the relation between religion and income is investigated using a micro dataset for the netherlands religion is measured by religious membership and by participation instead of estimating a religion equation and an income equation separately joint regression is preferred since this generally yields more efficient estimates following the single equation approach both religious measures are found to decrease income significantly and income is found to affect religion negatively however these cross effects become insignificant once the equations are estimated simultaneously in contrast the effects of socio economic characteristics on religion and income hardly differ between the approaches

impact of energy prices and cellulosic biomass supply on agriculture energy and the environment an integrated modeling approach abstract the accelerated growth in biofuel markets has both created and reinforced linkages between agriculture and energy the evolution of biofuel markets over the next 10 20 years and the implications for energy agriculture and the environment are uncertain building on an integrated agriculture energy modeling framework this study analyzes a baseline and three alternative scenarios two scenarios based on energy prices crude oil and natural gas and one based on assumptions regarding cellulosic biomass availability by examining the impact of scenarios driven by a changes in the energy sector and b changes in the agricultural sector we can compare the differential effects on biofuels markets commodity prices and quantities in each sector and co 2 emissions scenario comparisons show biofuel markets affected more by crude oil prices than natural gas prices however higher natural gas prices shift the biofuel production mix away from corn grain based to more cellulosic ethanol via multiple mechanisms alternatively the scenario with no cellulosic feedstock lowers total ethanol production and raises ethanol and corn prices in terms of environmental impacts higher ethanol levels driven by higher oil prices lead to lower co 2 emissions in comparison the no cellulosic scenario results in the highest co 2 trajectory relative to the baseline

effects of us biofuel policies on us and world petroleum product markets with consequences for greenhouse gas emissions abstract us biofuel policy includes greenhouse gas reduction targets regulators do not address the potential that biofuel policy can have indirect impacts on greenhouse gases through its impacts on petroleum product markets and scientific research only partially addresses this question we use economic models of us biofuel and agricultural markets and us and world petroleum and petroleum product markets to show that discontinuing biofuel tax credits and ethanol tariff lower biofuel use could lead to increased us petroleum product use and a reduction in petroleum product use in other parts of the world the net effect is lower greenhouse gas emissions under certain assumptions we show that biofuel use mandate elimination can have positive or negative impacts on greenhouse gas emissions the magnitude and the direction of effects depend on how us biofuel trade affects biofuel in other countries with different emissions context that determines how important use mandates are in the first place who pays mandate costs and the price responsiveness of global petroleum supplies and uses however our results show that counter intuitive effects are possible and discourage broad conclusions about the greenhouse gas impacts of removing these elements of us biofuel policy

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

differences in education and earnings across racial and ethnic groups tastes discrimination and investments in child quality viewing the united states as comprising many racial and ethnic groups it is shown that group differences in earnings schooling and rates of return from schooling are striking and that the groups with higher levels of schooling also have higher rates of return these data are shown to be consistent with a child quality investment model but they are not consistent with the hypotheses that the primary determinants of schooling level are discrimination minority group status differences in time preference discount rates or tastes for schooling group differences in fertility and female labor supply are examined as partial determinants of investment in child quality policy implications are discussed this paper was originally presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the population association of america see population index vol 53 no 3 fall 1987 p 443 excerpt

oil price agricultural commodity prices and the dollar a panel cointegration and causality analysis abstract this study examines the dynamic relationship between world oil prices and twenty four world agricultural commodity prices accounting for changes in the relative strength of us dollar in a panel setting we employ panel cointegration and granger causality methods for a panel of twenty four agricultural products based on monthly prices ranging from january 1980 to february 2010 the empirical results provide strong evidence on the impact of world oil price changes on agricultural commodity prices contrary to the findings of many studies in the literature that report neutrality of agricultural prices to oil price changes we find strong support for the role of world oil prices on prices of several agricultural commodities the positive impact of a weak dollar on agricultural prices is also confirmed

red tape and delayed entry does cutting red tape foster entrepreneurship in industries with the potential to expand we address this question by combining the time needed to comply with government entry procedures in 45 countries with industry level data on employment growth and growth in the number of establishments during the 1980s our main empirical finding is that countries where it takes less time to register new businesses have seen more entry in industries that experienced expansionary global demand and technology shifts our estimates take into account that proxying global industry shifts using data from only one country or group of countries with similar entry regulations will in general yield biased results

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve evidence from the panel of selected developed countries abstract the objective of the study is to examine the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve ekc under the financial constraint environment in the panel of selected developed countries over the period of 2000 2013 the study employed panel generalized method of moments gmm estimate for robust inferences the results confirmed the existence of ekc hypothesis in the energy resource depletion model i e inverted u shaped relationship between energy resource depletion and gdp per capita in the selected developed countries the results of climate change model confirmed the u shaped relationship of perfluorocarbons pfc gas emission and particulate matter 2 5 micrometers pm 2 5 emissions with the per capita income the health resource model confirmed the existence of inverted u shaped relationship of infant deaths and health expenditures per capita with the per capita income while there is a u shaped relationship between incidence of tuberculosis tb and gdp per capita the other results indicate that carbon dioxide co 2 emissions increase sulfur hexafluoride sf 6 emissions and health expenditures fossil fuel energy consumption increases pfc gas emissions and pm 2 5 emissions energy demand increases pm 2 5 emissions and health expenditures and financial dummy d 2008 affected energy resource depletion pm 2 5 emissions greenhouse gas ghg emissions index infant deaths and health expenditures per capita

land allocation effects of the global ethanol surge predictions from the international fapri model we quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on world agriculture using the multimarket multicommodity international fapri model the model incorporates trade offs between biofuel feed and food production and consumption and international feedback effects of the emergence through world prices and trade we shock the model with exogenous changes in ethanol demand first in the united states then in brazil and other countries and compute shock multipliers for land allocation decisions for important crops and countries the brazilian ethanol expansion using sugarcane has fewer consequences on existing arable land allocation than the u s ethanol expansion does using corn feedstock

the skills and economic status of american jewry trends over the last half century the general social surveys cumulative data file is used to analyze the schooling occupational status and earnings of american jews jews are identified by a question on religion at age 16 the analysis focuses on trends within the survey period and intergenerational changes from the father to the respondent ceteris paribus jews have significantly higher levels of schooling occupational status and earnings than other whites and within the survey period there is no trend in the differential the jewish fathers also had higher levels of achievement than other fathers but the differentials increased from the father s to the respondent s generation

when is quality of financial system a source of comparative advantage abstract dominant theories of trade tend to ignore the role of finance as a source of comparative advantage on the other hand the finance literature places financial institutions as a driver of economic growth this paper unites these two competing schools of thought in a general equilibrium framework for economies with high quality institutions defined by the competitiveness of the financial sector the quality of corporate governance and the level of property rights protection finance is passive on the other hand for economies with low quality institutions the quality of the financial system is an independent source of comparative advantage interestingly the conventional measure of financial development the size of the financial market relative to gdp does not adequately capture the underlying quality of financial institutions in addition free trade may reduce the aggregate income in south financial capital tends to flow from south to north

integrating bioenergy into computable general equilibrium models a survey in the past years biofuels have received increased attention since they were believed to contribute to rural development energy security and to fight global warming it became clear though that bioenergy cannot be evaluated independently of the rest of the economy and that national and international feedback effects are important computable general equilibrium cge models have been widely employed in order to study the effects of international climate policies the main characteristic of these models is their encompassing scope global models cover the whole world economy disaggregated into regions and countries as well as diverse sectors of economic activity such a modelling framework unveils direct and indirect feedback effects of certain policies or shocks across sectors and countries cge models are thus well suited for the study of bioenergy biofuel policies one can currently find various approaches in the literature of incorporating bioenergy into a cge framework this paper gives an overview of existing approaches critically assesses their respective power and discusses the advantages of cge models compared to partial equilibrium models grouping different approaches into categories and highlighting their advantages and disadvantages is important for giving a structure to this rather recent and rapidly growing research area and to provide a guidepost for future work

the cost of climate policy in the united states abstract we re evaluate prospects for us economic growth and the likely costs of advanced technologies given recent developments and then apply the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model to evaluate three core ghg policy scenarios for the us that cap emissions at different levels the three policy scenarios involve allowance allocations that through 2050 are 1 constant at present emissions levels 2 linearly reduced to 50 below present 3 linearly reduce emissions to 80 below present the cumulative allowance allocations over the horizon of the policy are 287 203 and 167 gt of co 2 equivalent respectively we compare the results to previous analysis of these same policy scenarios to evaluate how the changed growth and technology prospects affect the results we focus on 203 and 167 gt scenarios because current proposals envision deep cuts in emissions from present the 167 gt scenario is closest to proposals currently being considered by congress and supported by the us administration however we do not attempt to model specific details of actual proposals we test results to alternative assumptions about program coverage and banking behavior measured in terms of changes in economic welfare the economic cost of 203 and 167 gt cases is in the range of 2 to 3 by 2050 with co 2 prices between 48 and 67 in 2015 rising to between 190 and 266 by 2050 implementation details matter when an idealized economy wide cap and trade is replaced by coverage omitting some sectors or if the credibility of long term target is weak limiting banking behavior prices and welfare costs change substantially

incorporating the causes of occupational differences in studies of racial wage differentials this study provides a basic framework for incorporating the causes of occupational differences into analyses of racial wage differentials separating the influences of personal characteristics occupational choice and hiring discrimination on occupational attainment provides measures of the contributions of each to the racial pay gap the paper also considers the potential for bias in the wage equation estimates arising from self selection into occupations there are two generalfindings first correcting for self selection increases the importance of occupational distribution in explaining racial wage differentials second a proper accounting of the causes of these occupational differences yields discrimination measures that are higher than those that arise when occupational dummy variables are included in the wage equations and all the difference in occupational distribution is treated as nondiscriminatory

woody biomass energy potential in 2050 abstract from a biophysical perspective woody biomass resources are large enough to cover a substantial share of the world s primary energy consumption in 2050 however these resources have alternative uses and their accessibility is limited which tends to decrease their competitiveness with respect to other forms of energy hence the key question of woody biomass use for energy is not the amount of resources but rather their price in this study we consider the question from the perspective of energy wood supply curves which display the available amount of woody biomass for large scale energy production at various hypothetical energy wood prices these curves are estimated by the global biosphere management model globiom which is a global partial equilibrium model of forest and agricultural sectors the global energy wood supply is estimated to be 0 23 gm 3 year 0 165 ej year when energy wood prices vary in a range of 0 30 gj 0 216 m 3 if we add household fuelwood to energy wood then woody biomass could satisfy 2 18 of world primary energy consumption in 2050 if primary forests are excluded from wood supply then the potential decreases up to 25

land requirements feedstock haul distance and expected profit response to land use restrictions for switchgrass production abstract energy crop production has been proposed for land of poor quality to avoid competition with food production and negative indirect land use consequences the objective of this study was to determine the land area requirements biomass transportation distance and expected profit consequences of restricting switchgrass biomass production for use as biofuel feedstock to marginal land relative to unrestricted land use the usa soils capability classification system was used to differentiate between high quality land and land of marginal quality fifty years of historical weather data were used in combination with a biophysical simulation model to estimate switchgrass biomass yield distributions for land of different quality for counties in the case study region a mathematical programming model was designed and solved to determine the economic consequences for the levels of biofuel price considered 0 50 0 75 and 1 00 l and a 262 5 m l year biorefinery modeled restricting land use to marginally productive capability class iv soils increases the quantity of land optimally leased by 42 to 52 increases biomass trucking total transportation distance by 115 to 116 and reduces the expected net returns by 11 to 15 m year compared to when land use is unrestricted in the absence of government restrictions for profit companies are not likely to limit energy crop production to land of marginal quality

biofuel supply chain design under competitive agricultural land use and feedstock market equilibrium abstract the rapid expansion of the biofuel industry diverts a large amount of agricultural crops as energy feedstocks and in turn affects farm land allocation feedstock market equilibrium and agricultural economic development in local areas in this paper we propose game theoretic models that incorporate farmers decisions on land use and market choice into the biofuel manufacturers supply chain design problem a noncooperative bi level stackelberg leader follower game model and a cooperative game model are developed respectively to address possible business partnership scenarios between feedstock suppliers and biofuel manufacturers the models determine the optimal number and locations of biorefineries the required prices for these refineries to compete for feedstock resources as well as farmers land use choices between food and energy using corn as an example of feedstock crops spatial market equilibrium is utilized to model the relationship between corn supply and demand and the associated price variations in local grain markets with linear corn demand functions we develop a solution approach that transforms the original discrete mathematical program with equilibrium constraints dc mpec into to a solvable mixed integer quadratic programming miqp problem based on karush kuhn tucker kkt conditions the proposed methodology is illustrated using an empirical case study of the illinois state the computation results reveal interesting insights into optimal land use strategies and supply chain design for the emerging biofuel economy

testing the dual labor market hypothesis evidence from the israel labor mobility survey little research seems to have addressed the testing of the dual labor market model for nondeveloping economies outside the u s and the u k this paper examines the hypothesis for israel utilizing individual data drawn from the israel labor mobility survey and assigning workers to primary and secondary sectors on the basis of occupational prestige scores earnings functions are estimated and compared for the two sectors the results are very closely in line with predictions of the dual labor market model thus strongly suggesting that the dual labor market hypothesis may be relevant for israel