design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

preferences for energy efficiency vs renewables how much does a ton of co2 emissions cost concerns about climate change are growing and so is the demand for information about the costs and benefits of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions this paper seeks to estimate the benefits of climate change mitigation as measured by the public s willingness to pay for such policies we investigate the preferences of italian and czech households towards climate change mitigation policy options directly related to residential energy use we use discrete choice experiments which are administered in a standardized fashion to representative samples in the two countries through computer assisted web interviews our preferred estimates of the willingness to pay per ton of co2 emissions avoided is 133 for the italians and 94 euro for the czech respondents at 2014 purchasing power parity we find evidence of considerable heterogeneity in wtp driven by income the two samples differ in their within sample income elasticities of wtp but comparison across the two countries suggests an income elasticity of wtp of one or even greater than one for certain mixed logit specifications

intergenerational aspects of ecotax reforms an application to germany in a model of overlapping generations and majority voting we analyze an ecotax reform consisting of the tax rate and the budgetary rule revenue can be recycled through a lump sum transfer or a reduction in pension contributions our theoretical results as well as the calibration of our model to the german economy show that the median voter s preferred tax rate may exceed the efficient rate this holds whenever income of the decisive voter is sufficiently high compared to the average income as rich individuals benefit more from a reduction in pension contributions than they are harmed by an increase in ecotaxes the calibration confirms that the median voter prefers the earmarking of tax revenue for reductions in pension contributions to the alternative lump sum transfer this is quite an accurate prediction of the situation in germany aging of society as expected for germany lowers the ecotax in the political equilibrium below its optimal level

weighing what s practical proxy means tests for targeting food subsidies in egypt abstract despite achieving a significant cost reduction over the past two decades the absolute cost of food subsidies in egypt is still high relative to the benefits received by the poor there is scope for better targeting these food subsidies in particular for targeting cooking oil and sugar ration cards both because reforms in this area are perceived to be far less politically sensitive than adjusting subsidy policy for bread and wheat flour and because higher income groups presently receive a significant percentage of the benefits targeting the high subsidy green ration cards to the poor and the low subsidy red ration cards to the nonpoor will require identification of both poor and nonpoor households an international food policy research institute research team in egypt in collaboration with the egyptian ministry of trade and supply developed a proxy means test for targeting ration cards the paper describes the process of moving from the optimal income predicting model to the final model that was both administratively and politically feasible an ex ante evaluation of the levels of accuracy of the proxy means testing model indicates that the model performs quite well in predicting the needy and nonneedy households an effective and full implementation of this targeting method would increase the equity in the ration card food subsidy system and at the same time the total budgetary costs of rationed food subsidies would decline moreover the experience gained under this reform would facilitate targeting future social interventions to reduce and prevent poverty in egypt

social and political responses to ecological tax reform in europe an introduction to the special issue this paper introduces the special issue on the policies for ecological tax reform assessment of social responses petras project about responses to ecological tax reform etr in europe although etr is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability the project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable it is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the etr policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about etr policies the petras project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them a number of issues emerged relating to awareness trust understanding of the purpose visibility incentives regressivity levels of taxation terminology communication about etr and the use of alternative instruments together with these similarities a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen the final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers

assessing gender inequality in food security among small holder farm households in urban and rural south africa summary with the ongoing changes in climate household food insecurity is likely to be more widespread in most small holder and subsistence farm households in sub saharan africa however the existence and extent of gendered household food security or lack thereof remains unclear this study extends existing knowledge by assessing gender inequality in household food in security among small holder farm households in urban and rural areas of south africa in doing so we use the gender of the head of household and treatment effects framework our results show that male headed households are more food secure compared to female headed households with the latter depending more on agriculture to increase household food levels we further find that the household food security gap between male and female headed households is wider in rural than in urban areas where rural male and female headed households are more likely to report chronic food insecurity i e are more likely than their urban counterparts to experience hunger interestingly the effects of climatic characteristics on household food security are more apparent in rural than in urban areas our findings suggest that household food security initiatives are likely to be more effective in closing the gender gap in household food security if aligned with policies on urban and rural agriculture and development

public acceptance for environmental taxes self interest environmental and distributional concerns abstract while strongly recommended by economists it has often been politically difficult to impose taxes on externalities there is a substantial literature on public attitudes towards environmental taxes there has however been few comprehensive attempts to understand attitudes towards environmental taxes the main research question in this paper is which factors influence support for fuel taxation we propose a model of attitudes towards fuel taxation and test this model as well as more specific hypotheses using data from a representative survey of the adult norwegian population our results suggest that support for fuel taxation is best predicted by beliefs about environmental consequences followed by beliefs about consequences to others beliefs about consequences to self self interest is the factor that explains the least variation in support for fuel taxation the academically interesting result that support cannot be well explained without capturing a broad range of motivational factors is also highly policy relevant it implies that there is no magic formula for increasing public support for environmental taxes there are however some issues which can be addressed trust in how well the government spends the revenue and the perception that taxation does very little to change behaviour and thus to reduce environmental problems

green taxes in a post paris world are millions of nays inevitable turning the paris agreement s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments we address the question of the acceptability of cost effective climate policy in a real voting setting first we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes rejected in switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value added tax we examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes along with the perception of ineffectiveness most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes second at the same time of the ballot we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the swiss population survey respondents are informed about environmental distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design these impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model this original setting generates a series of novel results providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs e g social cushioning or recycling via lump sum transfers the case of lump sum recycling is particularly striking it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature we show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists prescriptions and the preferences of the general public

food security gender and occupational choice among urban low income households this paper examines an adaptive strategy using occupational choice that can be undertaken by household members in urban poor areas to help ensure their access to food our investigation focuses on self employed women and men in 14 predominantly slum communities in bolivia ecuador philippines and thailand results of our empirical analysis show that choice of business is associated with household vulnerability to food insecurity with women in vulnerable households likely to engage in food enterprises the findings suggest that urban low income households can mitigate the risk of food shortage through the selection of an enterprise activity that earns money income and is a direct source of food for consumption

incorporating discontinuous preferences into the analysis of discrete choice experiments data from a discrete choice experiment on improvements of rural landscape attributes are used to investigate the implications of discontinuous preferences on willingness to pay estimates using a multinomial error component logit model we explore differences in scale and unexplained variance between respondents with discontinuous and continuous preferences and condition taste intensities on whether or not each attribute was considered by the respondent during the evaluation of alternatives results suggest that significant improvements in model performance can be achieved when discontinuous preferences are accommodated in the econometric specification and that the magnitude and robustness of the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to discontinuous preferences

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

biased perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution evidence from a survey experiment abstract individual perceptions of income distribution play a vital role in political economy and public finance models yet there is little evidence regarding their origins or accuracy this study examines how individuals form these perceptions and explores their potential impact on preferences for redistribution a tailored household survey provides original evidence on systematic biases in individuals evaluations of their own relative position in the income distribution the study discusses one of the mechanisms that may generate such biases based on the extrapolation of information from endogenous reference groups and presents some suggestive evidence that this mechanism has significant explanatory power the impact of these biased perceptions on attitudes toward redistributive policies is studied by means of an experimental design that was incorporated into the survey which provided consistent information on the own ranking within the income distribution to a randomly selected group of respondents the evidence suggests that those who had overestimated their relative position and thought that they were relatively richer than they were tend to demand higher levels of redistribution when informed of their true ranking

social capital and coping with economic shocks an analysis of stunting of south african children abstract south african households live in an environment characterized by risks and many face a significant probability of experiencing economic losses that threaten their daily subsistence using household panel data that include directly solicited information on economic shocks and employing household fixed effects estimation we explore how well households cope with shocks by examining the effects of shocks on child nutritional status unlike in the idealized village community some households appear unable to insure against risk particularly when others in their communities simultaneously suffer large losses households in communities with more social capital however seem better able to weather shocks

understanding the health and nutritional status of children in ghana abstract the data set of the ghana living standards survey glss round 1 1987 1988 was utilized to analyse the principal determinants publicly and privately of health and nutrition of children under five in ghana while in most health and nutrition studies the emphasis is either on health related factors such as occurrence of illness immunization accessibility to light electricity the role of breastfeeding or on food availability and food consumption related factors in the present study an attempt has been made to incorporate both aspects simultaneously on the basis of the glss ghanaian households spend at the average approximately 60 of total expenses on food changes in relative prices of the various food commodities differently affect household food availability lowering prices of relatively cheap foods e g millet cassava tends to have a strong positive effect on total household kcal availability at the level of the household the absolute number of nondependents presumed to represent the available labour force is positively correlated with household food availability there is also a positive correlation between the mothers level of education 10 yrs of schooling and above and the nutrition level of children occurrence of illness in children could be shown to negatively affect their health and nutrition status finally a specific finding in the analysis was a rather strong negative effect of prolonged breastfeeding on the nutritional status of children among the policy recommendations emanating from the research are 1 promotion of efficient production and marketing of cassava 2 efforts to achieve slowing down of rural urban migration to prevent labour shortages in rural households 3 improving water and sanitation conditions 4 expanding immunization programmes in particular in rural areas and 5 promoting better weaning practices when children are no longer fully breastfed

tracking global carbon revenues a survey of carbon taxes versus cap and trade in the real world abstract we investigate the current use of public revenues which are generated through both carbon taxes and cap and trade systems more than 28 3 billion in government carbon revenues are currently collected each year in 40 countries and another 16 states or provinces around the world of those revenues 27 7 8 billion are used to subsidize green spending in energy efficiency or renewable energy 26 7 4 billion go toward state general funds and 36 10 1 billion are returned to corporate or individual taxpayers through paired tax cuts or direct rebates cap and trade systems 6 57 billion in total public revenue earmark a larger share of revenues for green spending 70 while carbon tax systems 21 7 billion more commonly refund revenues or otherwise direct them towards government general funds 72 of revenues drawing from an empirical dataset we also identify various trends in systems use of carbon revenues in terms of the total revenues collected annually per capita in each jurisdiction and offer commensurate qualitative observations on carbon policy design choices

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

distinguished lecture on economics in government central banking and systemic risks in capital markets on several occasions since 1970 the federal reserve has intervened to help prevent or delay the failure of a large individual commercial bank it has typically not played a similar role with respect to smaller banks moreover in three instances the federal reserve has intervened to rescue capital market institutions other than banks these actions have been criticized as inconsistent with the responsibilities of a central bank which have traditionally been defined to include the maintenance of the monetary base gold currency or bank reserves and control over the growth rate of the money supply the central bank has also been perceived as the ultimate source of liquidity for the financial system as a whole thus in time of financial crises the central bank was to be the lender of last resort it should lend generously to other banks faced with a sudden public demand for liquidity although it should provide funds at a penalty interest rate this traditional view of the central bank s last resort lending function is primarily the product of 19th century thinking in great britain the term lender of last resort was apparently first used by sir francis baring 1797 when he referred to the bank of england as the dernier resort the source of liquidity for all banks in a period of crises the first full treatment of the idea was provided by henry thornton in testimony before parliament and in public speeches but his comprehensive exposition of the last resort lending function appeared in 1802 however when the subject arises among economists the name that comes to mind most readily is that of walter bagehot his definitive analysis and recommendations were presented in 1873 in lombard street

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

targeting the poor in mexico an evaluation of the selection of households into progresa abstract in this paper we conduct an evaluation of the targeting method used by health education and nutrition program progresa of mexico to identify beneficiary households we address two key questions a how well does progresa s targeting perform and b how does the program perform in terms of its impact on poverty alleviation relative to other feasible methods and transfer schemes the first question is accomplished by comparing progresa s method to an alternative selection method based on household consumption which is our preferred measure of welfare we employ the concepts of undercoverage and leakage and find that progresa selection method is more effective in identifying the extremely poor localities or households but less so when it comes to distinguishing among localities or households in the middle of the scale to address the second question we compare the potential impact of progresa on poverty alleviation against uniform transfers that involve no targeting at all targeting based on consumption and geographic targeting i e targeting at the locality level rather than at the household level we find that progresa s method of targeting households outperforms uniform coverage and targeting at the locality level in terms of reducing the poverty gap and severity of poverty indices even after taking into account the economic costs of targeting but the closeness of progresa s performance to what could be achieved by geographic targeting alone raises some serious questions about the costs and benefits associated with the practice of household targeting within poor localities

time inconsistency in environmental policy tax earmarking as a commitment solution tax earmarking imposes a constraint on government policymaking and may be desirable if i t solves a time inconsistency problem in tax policy in a two period economy in which the policy decisions regarding taxes public goods provision and pollution abatement are taken by a majority elected individual we show how the time inc onsistency problem in environmental policy arises we demonstrate that the commitment equilibrium under no earmarking rules cannot be as fully implemented as a no commitment equilibrium under earmarking rules however th e earmarking rules do act as a partial commitment mechanism

are women overrepresented among the poor an analysis of poverty in 10 developing countries abstract this paper presents new evidence on the proportion of women in poverty in 10 developing countries it compares poverty measures for males and females and for male and female headed households and investigates the sensitivity of these measures to the use of per capita and per adult equivalent units and different definitions of the poverty line while poverty measures are higher for female headed households and for females the differences are significant in only a fifth to a third of the datasets the contribution of female headed households to aggregate poverty is less than that of females due to the low population share of the former stochastic dominance analysis reveals that differences between male and female headed households and between males and females are often insignificant except for ghana and bangladesh where females are consistently worse off these results suggest that cultural and institutional factors may be responsible for higher poverty among women in these countries our results point to the need to analyze determinants of household income and consumption using multivariate methods and to give greater attention to the processes underlying female headship

corruption inequality and fairness bigger governments raise the possibilities for corruption more corruption may in turn raise the support for redistributive policies that intend to correct the inequality and injustice generated by corruption we formalize these insights in a simple dynamic model a positive feedback from past to current levels of taxation and corruption arises either when wealth originating in corruption and rent seeking is considered unfair or when the ability to engage in corruption is unevenly distributed in the population this feedback introduces persistence in the size of the government and the levels of corruption and inequality multiple steady states exist in some cases

autoregressive modelling and money income causality detection abstract a step wise procedure based on granger s concept of causality and abaike s final prediction error criterion is suggested as a practical means to identify the order of lags of each variable in a multivariate autoregressive process the model seems useful because it can serve as a reduced form formulation to avoid imposing often spurious or false restrictions of the model it also provides a reasonably powerful test of causality the idea is applied to u s postwar money and income data it is found that between m1 and gnp a bivariate feedback model fits the data best between m2 and gnp a one way causal model from money to income performs better diagnostic checks applied to our model seem to indicate the adequacy of our approach

non farm work and food security among farm households in northern ghana this paper examines the impact of non farm work on household income and food security among farm households in the northern region of ghana we analyze the impact by employing propensity score matching method that accounts for self selection bias the matching results show that participation in non farm work exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on household income and food security status supporting the widely held view that income from non farm work is crucial to food security and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries

do hypothetical and actual marginal willingness to pay differ in choice experiments application to the valuation of the environment abstract in this paper we test the validity of choice experiments with donations for environmental projects in particular we test whether or not there are differences in preferences between a hypothetical and an actual choice experiment our experiments indicate no differences in addition internal tests of validity indicate transitive and stable preferences in both experiments although there are some indications of possible learning effects during the experiment

the anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity abstract the increasing diversity of societies raises questions about the consequences for redistributive preferences this paper assesses the impact of social identity on distributional preferences in a modified dictator game i estimate individual level utility functions with two parameters that govern the trade offs between equity and efficiency and giving to self and to other subjects on average put less weight on income of the out group the out group treatment also changes the distribution of equity efficiency concerns however the experiment also uncovers a large individual heterogeneity of preferences an analysis of garp violations reveals that choices in both treatments overwhelmingly stem from well behaved yet systematically different underlying utility functions hence the evidence presented here suggests that the rational choice approach is a useful tool for understanding the effect of social identity on preferences

cooperatives and happiness cross country evidence on the role of relational capital why is the share of happy people higher in some countries than in their equally developed neighbours we conjecture that the apparent contradiction might depend on a country s endowment of relation

is there a link between quality of employment and indebtedness the case of urban low income households in ecuador the paper explores the incidence of high indebtedness or financial stress among urban poor households in ecuador and demonstrates its relation with the quality of employment we argue that informalisation of employment and in particular job precariousness have consequences on other dimensions of vulnerability such as high debt servicing and financial stress the empirical analysis is based on a 2002 sample survey data of men and women workers in urban poor communities of ecuador by employing an index of job quality we investigate and compare the job quality of women and men workers in these households and find gender based patterns with women working in relatively low quality jobs compared to men moreover there seems to be differentiated levels of debt servicing among women and men that suggests uneven debt burden sharing among household members by means of regression analyses the paper demonstrates that low quality jobs tend to lead to higher debt servicing the results provide a nuanced and illuminating picture of the interconnectedness of employment financial stress and vulnerability

alleviating the constant stochastic variance assumption in decision research theory measurement and experimental test analysts often rely on methods that presume constant stochastic variance even though its degree can differ markedly across experimental and field settings this reliance can lead to misestimation of effect sizes or unjustified theoretical or behavioral inferences classic utility based discrete choice theory makes sharp testable predictions about how observed choice patterns should change when stochastic variance differs across items brands or conditions we derive and examine the implications of assuming constant stochastic variance for choices made under different conditions or at different times in particular whether substantive effects can arise purely as artifacts these implications are tested via an experiment designed to isolate the effects of stochastic variation in choice behavior results strongly suggest that the stochastic component should be carefully modeled to differ across both available brands and temporal conditions and that its variance may be relatively greater for choices made for the future the experimental design controls for several alternative mechanisms e g flexibility seeking and a series of related models suggest that several econometrically detectable explanations like correlated error state dependence and variety seeking add no explanatory power a series of simulations argues for appropriate flexibility in discrete choice specification when attempting to detect temporal stochastic inflation effects

household food security and child nutrition the interaction of income and gender of household head abstract data from kenya and malawi suggest that food security and preschooler nutritional status are influenced by the interaction of income and gender of the head of household rather than simply one or the other not only is household food security influenced by total household income but the proportion of income controlled by women has a positive and significant influence on household caloric intake households were disaggregated not simply in male and female headed households but female headed households were further disaggregated into de jure legal head of household is a woman and de facto female headed households male head of household is absent more than 50 of the time in both kenya and malawi the de facto female headed households had the lowest income despite this low income preschoolers nutritional status was significantly better than in the higher income male headed and de jure female headed households the ability to improve nutritional status in a low income environment in the de facto female headed households is related to a combination of child feeding practices and other nurturing behavior the findings suggest that interventions that exploit incentives to invest in children can provide more immediate improvements in child health and nutrition where sustained income growth is possible only in the long term

privatizing pastoral lands economic and normative outcomes in kenya summary this article presents empirical data from household level studies and anthropological field research regarding the economic and normative outcomes of privatization of pastoral land among a samburu community in kenya the privatization of land in samburu fits neither the optimistic scenario of property rights theorists nor the gloomy forecasts of those who favor communal ownership in pastoral areas while many households experienced gains from privatization this was due to the particular ways in which the process of land tenure change proceeded and how agriculture was integrated into their pastoral livelihood local level norms have emerged that reinforce the value of land ownership for residents and discourage land sales effectively preserving the pastoral way of life

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

history and social responses to environmental tax reform in the united kingdom abstract this paper gives a short history of fuel taxation and the climate change levy in the uk the research described was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them interviews were conducted with selected policy makers and companies focus groups were conducted with quota samples of the general public the research shows that the problem that etr faces in terms of public acceptance is not so much outright hostility to environmental taxation as conceptual problems with the design similar conceptual problems were also found in the interviews with business people these can be summarised as lack of trust about use of the revenues difficulty in understanding the purpose of a tax shift and a desire for incentives for good behaviour as well as perceived penalties for bad behaviour

social mobility and the demand for redistribution the poum hypothesis this paper examines the often stated idea that the poor do not support high levels of redistribution because of the hope that they or their offspring may make it up the income ladder this prospect of upward mobility poum hypothesis is shown to be fully compatible with rational expectations and fundamentally linked to concavity in the mobility process a steady state majority could even be simultaneously poorer than average in terms of current income and richer than average in terms of expected future incomes a e rst empirical assessment suggests on the other hand that in recent u s data the poum effect is probably dominated by the demand for social insurance in the future everyone will be world famous for e fteen minutes andy warhol 1968

the implications of female household headship for food consumption and nutritional status in the dominican republic abstract female control of household resources is often associated with consumption preferences which favor basic needs and child welfare using data from the dominican republic this study tests differences in spending patterns consumption preferences and child nutritional anthropometric status according to four definitions of female household headship female headed households fhh allocate the same amount or less of their budgets to food than male headed households mhh in absolute and proportional terms fhh consume higher quality more expensive and protein dense foods more animal products less of beans and rice than mhh average caloric adequacy per adult equivalent is equal or lower in fhh but children s anthropometric status is the same or higher it is significantly higher in low income fhh possibly due to intrahousehold allocation of food which favors children

are female headed households more food insecure evidence from bangladesh summary this paper uses household and village level survey data to investigate the food security of male and female headed households in bangladesh with particular attention to indigenous ethnic groups and finds no significant differences in the food security between these two types of households the absence of social and cultural restrictions among the indigenous groups permitting their females greater freedom to participate in the labor force coupled with informal redistributive mechanism is attributed to their less food insecurity this result indicates that noneconomic institutions can significantly impact economic outcomes such as food security

a choice experiment on fuel taxation and earmarking in norway abstract pigouvian taxes are efficient but unpopular among voters and hence often politically infeasible earmarking of revenues has been widely reported to increase public support for taxes but earmarking is generally not the most efficient use of the revenues this trade off between efficiency and political feasibility is the motivation for our primary research objective to quantify the effect of earmarking on support for fuel tax rises our secondary research objective is to investigate why earmarking increases support using data from a representative sample of the norwegian voter population n 1147 we estimate models of voter preferences for fuel taxes using logistic regression models our results show that in the absence of earmarking the majority of voters would like to reduce fuel taxes but earmarking the revenues for environmental measures has a substantial effect on voter support for fuel tax increases garnering a majority for increases of up to 15 above present levels further analysis indicates that a prime reason why earmarking for environmental measures is popular is that it increases the perceived environmental effectiveness of the tax and hence its legitimacy as an environmental rather than a fiscal policy instrument

valuing wetland attributes an application of choice experiments abstract the interest for wetlands is increasing not only because of the possibility of a cost efficient uptake of nutrients but also because wetlands can be designed to provide other services what values that are supplied depend largely on the design there are numerous different design options and different actors may promote different alternatives whether we want to design a wetland for nutrient retention alone or one that also serves other interests policy makers need information about the value of different options conducting a choice experiment we are able to identify attributes that increase and decrease citizens perceived value of wetlands using a random parameter model we find that biodiversity and walking facilities are the two greatest contributors to welfare while a fenced waterline and introduction of crayfish decrease welfare

on self interested preferences for burden sharing rules an econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures abstract this paper examines the acceptance of burden sharing rules that refer to the costs of the german energy transition which is one of the most challenging and disputed national climate and energy policy measures based on data from a comprehensive survey of more than 2200 citizens the empirical analysis reveals that the polluter pays rule has by far the highest support compared with the ability to pay rule and especially compared with the equal pay rule which is widely refused in the sample since the distribution of the costs of the german energy transition is largely in line with a polluter pays rule its strong support seems to contribute to the high acceptance of the energy transition at all the main result of our econometric analysis with multivariate binary and ordered probit models is that not only some attitudinal factors like environmental values and political identification but especially economic self interest is relevant since equivalent energy expenditures have a significantly negative effect on the support of the polluter pays rule and especially equivalent income has a significantly negative effect on the preference for the ability to pay rule these results suggest that the use of distributional arguments for the criticism of energy policy measures is not necessarily value driven on the basis of real perceptions of distributive justice but can also be strategically motivated to prevent and combat economically unfavorable measures together with the strong general support of the polluter pays rule these results suggest that a sharp reorientation of the german energy transition due to distributional arguments is not very useful

public preferences for carbon tax attributes the impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world recognizing the threats posed by climate change the durban platform the 17th session of the conference of parties cop 17 underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries a crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments using a choice experiment this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context the results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution the private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax moreover there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change

what determines gender inequality in household food security in kenya application of exogenous switching treatment regression this paper explores the link between the gender of a household head and food security in rural kenya the results show that the food security gap between male headed households mhhs and female headed households fhhs is explained by their differences in observable and unobservable characteristics fhhs food security status would have been higher than it is now if the returns coefficients on their observed characteristics had been the same as the returns on the mhhs characteristics even if that had been the case however results indicate that fhhs would still have been less food secure than the mhhs due to unobservable characteristics

the continuing search for a popular tax for the next few years perhaps for a longer time federal tax policy will be inseparably intertwined with deficit reduction policy as a result tax decisions will be more closely related to spending decisions and attention will shift to new kinds of taxes for decades federal tax policy debates have been quite separate from debates over what these taxes are supposed to finance federal tax controversy has focused heavily on the major general revenue sources the individual and corporate income taxes economists have analyzed the effects of these levies on economic behavior and on the distribution of income and this analysis has played a considerable role in policy formulation the substantial reduction in marginal tax rates as well as base broadening indexing and changes in the treatment of depreciation and consumer interest were greatly influenced by the views of economists the frequency of recent changes in the income tax rules capped by the surprisingly comprehensive tax reform legislation of 1986 have left both politicians and tax reformers with little appetite for further tinkering with the income taxes moreover the continuing large deficits in the federal budget only partially offset by growing surpluses in the social security trust fund have forced policymakers to focus on a new aspect of an old problem how to get citizens to want less from their federal government or be willing to pay more for it

pollution tax heuristics an empirical study of willingness to pay higher gasoline taxes economists widely agree that in concept pollution taxes are the most cost effective means of reducing pollution with the advent of monitoring and enforcement technologies the case for pollution taxation is generally getting stronger on the merits despite widespread agreement among economists however pollution taxes remain unpopular especially in north america some oppose pollution taxes because of a suspicion that government would misspend the tax proceeds while others oppose pollution taxes because they would impose economic hardships upon certain individuals groups or industries and there is no pollution tax more pathologically hated as the gasoline tax this is unfortunate from an economic perspective as a gasoline tax is easy to implement and is a reasonable pigouvian tax scaling proportionately with the harms of consumption surprisingly there is a dearth of theory explaining this cleave between economists and virtually everybody else drawing on behavioralist literatures this paper introduces several theories as to why people and governments so vehemently oppose pollution taxes using the example of gasoline taxes we provide some empirical evidence for these theories we also show that revenue recycling the use of tax proceeds to reduce other taxes is an effective means of reducing opposition to gasoline taxes

should public policy respond to positional externalities abstract a nice suit is one that compares favorably with those worn by others in the same local environment more generally a positional good is one whose utility depends strongly on how it compares with others in the same category 1 a positional externality occurs when new purchases alter the relevant context within which an existing positional good is evaluated 2 for example if some job candidates begin wearing expensive custom tailored suits a side effect of their action is that other candidates become less likely to make favorable impressions on interviewers from any individual job seeker s point of view the best response might be to match the higher expenditures of others lest her chances of landing the job fall but this outcome may be inefficient since when all spend more each candidate s probability of success remains unchanged all may agree that some form of collective restraint on expenditure would be useful in such cases however it is often impractical to negotiate private solutions do positional externalities then become legitimate objects of public policy concern in attempting to answer this question i employ the classical libertarian criterion put forth by john stuart mill 3 who wrote the state may not legitimately constrain any citizen s freedom of action except to prevent harm to others i argue that many positional externalities appear to meet mill s test causing not just negative feelings but also large and tangible economic costs to others who are ill equipped to avoid them i also discuss an unintrusive policy remedy for positional externalities one modeled after the use of effluent charges to curb environmental pollution the paper is organized as follows section 1 notes the deep similarity between the conditions that give rise to positional arms races and those that give rise to conventional military arms races section 2 follows with a review of evidence concerning the strength of concerns about relative position section 3 describes some of the tangible economic costs that people experience as a result of positional externalities arising from such concerns section 4 takes up the question of whether collective action directed against positional externalities is consistent with respect for individual rights section 5 describes how a progressive consumption tax could neutralize many of the most costly effects of positional externalities

bank bailouts and the conduct of monetary policy in fulfilling its obligations as a lender of last resort a central bank may encounter conflicts with its responsibility to manage the nation s monetary policy crisis lending through the discount window particularly to save troubled institutions is viewed by critics of federal reserve policy as inflationary and thus undesirable 2 the implicit assumption here is that the lending is not sterilized by open market sales leading to an expansion of bank reserves and monetary aggregates the recent actions of the fed to assist troubled financial institutions while well noted in the financial press have not been systematically analyzed to determine their overall impact if any on monetary policy using data for the period from 1973 through 1990 we examine whether the fed s crisis intervention has been sterilized with defensive open market operations a second question which we examine is whether the appropriate policy tool for studies of federal reserve behavior is nonborrowed reserves or the sum of nonborrowed reserves and extended credit 3

urban agriculture poverty and food security empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries urban agriculture may have a role to play in addressing urban food insecurity problems which are bound to become increasingly important with the secular trend towards the urbanization of poverty and of pop ulation in developing regions our understanding of the importance nature and food security implica tions of urban agriculture is however plagued by a lack of good quality reliable data while studies based on survey data do exist for several major cities much of the evidence is still qualitative if not anec dotal using a recently created dataset bringing together comparable nationally representative house hold survey data for 15 developing or transition countries this paper analyzes in a comparative international perspective the importance of urban agriculture for the urban poor and food insecure some clear hints do come from our analysis on the one hand the potential for urban agriculture to play a sub stantial role in urban poverty and food insecurity reduction should not be overemphasised as its share in income and overall agricultural production is often quite limited on the other hand though its role should also not be too easily dismissed particularly in much of africa and in all those countries in which agriculture provides a substantial share of income for the urban poor and for those groups of households to which it constitutes an important source of livelihoods we also find fairly consistent evidence of a positive statistical association between engagement in urban agriculture and dietary adequacy indicators

food and work poverty and hunger nutrition and human productivity many have suggested that widespread undernutrition is a major factor retarding work output and development this hypothesis has been expounded with particular vigor by the international development agencies the world bank presently estimates that 34 of the population in developing countries have insufficient energy intakes to allow them to lead an active working life h correa and g cummins p belli and b m popkin have developed well thought out expositions of the above cycle of poverty theory 2 although some developmentalists led by p v sukhatme t srinivasan p payne and m lipton3 have been questioning these assumptions with increasing vigor the cycle of poverty is a deceptively logical and extremely tenacious example of the persistence of error in speculations concerning development statements such as physical weakness interacts with other disadvantages to perpetuate poverty acute shortage of food impairs development poor people are locked into a syndrome of physical deprivation 4 and low real income is a reflection of low productivity the case for balanced growth rests on the need for a balanced diet are still common in the literature in his 1982 edition of the widely read and well written exposition of major developmental issues entitled inside the third world paul harrison states the labour of a hungry man is less productiveso he is likely to produce less or to earn less and this will keep him poor and hungry food intake has a direct and obvious effect on work avoidance of physical effort and excessive resting become essential adaptations to chronic hunger with low income he can afford to buy less food and is caught in a vicious circle of poverty malnutrition

the demand for earmarking results from a focus group study abstract environmental taxes might be efficient but plans to impose new taxes are often met with fierce public resistance in order to design environmental taxes that are both efficient and acceptable to the public so that they can be politically feasible it is important to understand public attitudes towards environmental taxes we conduct a focus group study in norway to extend the current knowledge on this issue we find less general resistance to taxation as a policy instrument and seemingly more trust in government than what has been reported in similar studies from other countries the participants are however very skeptical and do not see the point of using the revenues from an environmental tax to reduce other taxes such as the payroll tax instead they express a very strong preference for earmarking the revenues for environmental purposes they also call for more information about environmental taxes in particular on how the revenues are spent providing more information including what the revenues are spent on irrespective of whether they are earmarked or not would seem to provide a relatively cheap and possibly effective way to increase the public acceptability of new or increased environmental taxes

the rise and fall of french ecological tax reform social acceptability versus political feasibility in the energy tax implementation process the french government has a 10 year history of negotiations with industry resulting in voluntary agreements on energy consumption when implemented these voluntary agreements produced very few results in terms of global reduction of greenhouse emissions politiques et management public 11 4 1993 47 hence the idea of an energy tax became increasingly attractive for many french decision makers ecological environmental tax reform etr should have been one of the major political decisions and successes of the past leftwing coalition government instead it became one of its major failures as the constitutional court decided to terminate the energy tax project in december 2000 through insights gleaned from focus groups and interviews with business people and decision makers an attempt is made to understand the failure of the energy tax project firstly decision makers lacked crucial information about public and business opinions and secondly there were conflicts between the relevant administrations the fuel revolts of 2000 ended any hope of resolving the conflicts and implementing etr which was ultimately found unconstitutional this paper examines the political controversies raised by the etr project and the reasons for its eventual collapse in the hope of contributing new understanding to the body of knowledge on the political difficulties of introducing environmental policy instruments

urban labour market structure and job access in india a study of coimbatore develops new approaches to the analysis of labour market structure and segmentation notably stressing differences in labour status and in patterns of job access these ideas are applied in a south indian city showing how they help to analyze labour inequality supply and mobility

alternative definitions of female headship in the dominican republic abstract different definitions of female household headship have different implications for the economic status and welfare of members of female headed households fhh using data from the dominican republic this study compares four definitions of fhh self definition no adult males 18 60 present female earns over 50 of earned or of total income the definitions are associated but each defines a different group half of self defined fhh contain adult males half of those in which the woman is the major earner are self defined fhh in the dominican republic female headship by any definition is not associated with lower income per capita but sources of income are quite different fhh are more dependent on transfers and gifts than wages fhh defined by earnings are of higher income on average demographic composition of fhh is significantly different from male headed households mhh

inequality and happiness in recent years there has been an accumulation of empirical evidence suggesting that individuals dislike inequality alesina and giuliano 2011 and dawes et al 2007 the literature has built upon estimating the degree of this dislike as well as its causes the use of self reported measures of satisfaction or well being as a proxy for utility has been one of the empirical strategies used to this end in this survey we review the papers that estimate or examine the relationship between inequality and self reported happiness to conclude that inequality correlates negatively with happiness in western societies some of the surveyed papers identify particular sources of heterogeneity on preferences over inequality the evidence for non western societies is more mixed and less reliable notwithstanding that trust in the institutions seems to play an important role in shaping the relationship between income inequality and subjective wellbeing we conclude with suggestions for further research

using a choice experiment to account for preference heterogeneity in wetland attributes the case of cheimaditida wetland in greece abstract this paper aims to assist policy makers in formulating efficient and sustainable wetland management policies in accordance with the ramsar convention and the european union water framework directive 2000 60 ec by providing results of a valuation study on the cheimaditida wetland in greece a choice experiment is employed to estimate the values of changes in several ecological social and economic functions that cheimaditida wetland provides to the greek public in addition to the conditional logit model a random parameter logit model a random parameter logit model with interactions and a latent class model are estimated to account for heterogeneity in the preferences of the public for the various functions of the wetland the results reveal that there is considerable preference heterogeneity across the public and on average they derive positive and significant values from sustainable management of this wetland the estimated economic benefits of sustainable wetland management are weighed against the costs of alternative wetland management scenarios results of this cost benefit analysis can aid in the design of socially optimal policies for sustainable management of the cheimaditida wetland with possible implications for other similar wetlands in greece and the rest of europe

poverty and productivity in female headed households in zimbabwe abstract a household survey conducted in rural zimbabwe in 2001 is used to compare the position of de facto and de jure female headed households to those with a male head these households are characterised by different forms of poverty that impinge on their ability to improve agricultural productivity however once inputs are accounted for it is only for growing cotton that female headed households productivity is lower than that found for male headed households general poverty alleviation policies will benefit the female headed household but specific interventions via extension services and access to marketing consortia are also indicated

using discrete choice models with experimental design data to forecast consumer demand for a unique cultural event an approach is developed to forecast participation in unique events with long gestation periods experimental observations of choice are derived for conjoint measurement type multiattribute alternatives that describe possible event configurations the choice data are analyzed by means of discrete choice econometric models a multinomial logit choice model is applied to forecast the choice of attendance at various types of international expositions the empirical work was part of the planning efforts undertaken to investigate the potential demand for an international exposition to be held in eastern australia in conjunction with the australian 1988 bicentennial celebrations

trust membership in groups and household welfare evidence from kwazulu natal south africa unfortunately these two literatures have remained largely unconnected the group and network literature concludes that participation has important economic benefits even when the stated function of the group is noneconomic in most cases however the mechanisms by which groups and networks achieve this are unclear the determinants of trust and participation in groups literature highlights the importance of income and social homogeneity what remains less understood is whether and how trust can be generated for example via participation in groups this article links the empirical literatures referenced above by exploring the relationship between membership in groups and trust specifically using longitudinal data from kwazulu natal province south africa we examine 1 the importance of trust in the decision to join groups 2 the subsequent ability of groups to generate trust and 3 the effect of group membership and trust on a measure of well being per capita household income in addition we disaggregate groups into financial and nonfinancial and we categorize trust in people by agent or actor therefore we can explore whether trust in different kinds of actors is important for participation in different kinds of groups and whether participation in different kinds of groups is important for generating trust in different kinds of actors excerpt

how wrong can you be implications of incorrect utility function specification for welfare measurement in choice experiments despite the vital role of the utility function in welfare measurement the implications of working with incorrect utility specifications have been largely neglected in the choice experiments literature this paper addresses the importance of specification with a special emphasis on the effects of mistaken assumptions about the marginal utility of income monte carlo experiments were conducted using different functional forms of utility to generate simulated choices multi nomial logit and mixed logit models were then estimated on these choices under correct and incorrect assumptions about the true underlying utility function estimated willingness to pay measures from these choice modeling results are then compared with the equivalent measures directly calculated from the true utility specifications results show that for the parameter values and functional forms considered a continuous quadratic or a discrete linear attribute specification is a good option regardless of the true effects the attribute has on utility we also find that mistaken assumptions about preferences over costs magnify attribute mis specification effects

do you not like pigou or do you not understand him tax aversion and revenue recycling in the lab tax aversion reduces the likelihood that price rationing can be a politically viable tool for environmental protection we examine the case of the classic pigouvian tax to control a negative externality and consider how recycling the revenues labeling of the tax and information about its purpose affects the support for taxation we test the support for taxation within a single price market experiment in which purchases by some buyers impose external costs on others observing behavior consistent with tax aversion we also find that recycling the revenues to more narrowly targeted groups seems to increase support for taxation in the absence of narrow revenue recycling labeling a pigouvian instrument as a tax may significantly lower the likelihood of voter support

working women in an urban setting traders vendors and food security in accra abstract data collected from a 1997 household survey carried out in accra ghana are used to look at the crucial role that women play as income earners and securing access to food in urban areas one third of the households surveyed are headed by women for all households women s labor force participation is high with 75 of all households having at least one working woman the high number of female headed households and the large percentage of working women in the sample provide a good backdrop for looking at how women earn and spend income differently than men in an urban area livelihood strategies for both men and women are predominantly labor based and dependent on social networks for all households in the sample food is still the single most important item in the total budget yet important and striking differences between men s and women s livelihoods and expenditure patterns exist compared to men women are less likely to be employed as wage earners and more likely to work as street food vendors or petty traders women earn lower incomes but tend to allocate more of their budget to basic goods for themselves and their children while men spend more on entertainment for themselves only despite lower incomes and additional demands on their time as housewives and mothers female headed households petty traders and street food vendors have the largest percentage of food secure households women may be achieving household food security but at what cost this paper explores differences in income expenditure and consumption patterns in an effort to answer this question and suggests ways that urban planners and policy makers can address special concerns to working women in urban areas

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

women food security and development in less industrialized societies contributions and challenges for the new century summary in this paper i examine the links between women food security and development from a crossnational perspective i find that the proximity to gender equality constructed from the united nations human development and gender related development indices improves development in the form of both child hunger and child mortality extending these results other forms of female empowerment including female contraceptive prevalence significantly improve development outcomes in less industrialized societies findings are net of theoretical controls for economic development population pressure globalization democratization and region further strengthening the importance of gender considerations countries that incorporate gender into policy and program considerations benefit from such inclusion in the form of social and economic development outcomes findings are an important crossnational extension of existing research utilizing new measures that capture the important development dynamic

expenditure behavior and children s welfare an analysis of female headed households in jamaica abstract evidence from jamaica shows that the sex and union status of the household head can have a significant influence on household expenditure behavior with implications for individual household members while the presence of a female decision maker generally increases the share of the household budget allocated to child and family goods female headed households fhhs also spend more on adult wear and less on health lower health expenditures are partially offset by the differential use of other health inputs in fhhs these differences in resource allocation may explain why poorer fhhs do not necessarily have lower children s outcomes in developing countries

political uncertainty and the earmarking of environmental taxes abstract far from being used to secure a double dividend by reducing distorting taxes revenues from environmental taxes seem quite often to be earmarked to particular spending programs in the us for example a range of such taxes feed into environmental trust funds such earmarking runs counter to standard notions of good practice in taxing and spending this paper develops and explores an explanation of such apparent inefficiencies in terms of political uncertainty roughly a green incumbent may chose to earmark revenues if the efficiency loss from doing so is outweighed by the value of constraining subsequent and potentially non green policy makers from wasting the funds raised it emerges for example that those most likely to earmark are green politicians who are politically weak and that earmarking then enables such a policy maker to set the corrective tax higher than they otherwise would but nevertheless lower than the pigovian tax

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables

does adaptation to climate change provide food security a micro perspective from ethiopia we examine the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adapt to climate change and the impact of adaptation on farmers food production we investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adapted and those that did not adapt we estimate a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm we compare the expected food production under the actual and counterfactual cases that the farm household adapted or not to climate change we find that the group of farm households that adapted has systematically different characteristics than the group of farm households that did not adapt the relationship between production and average temperature is inverted u shaped for farm households that adapted while it is u shaped for farm households that did not adapt and vice versa in the case of precipitation we find that adaptation increases food production however the impact of adaptation on food production is smaller for the farm households that actually did adapt than for the farm households that did not adapt in the counterfactual case that they adapted

emulation inequality and work hours was thorsten veblen right we investigate the manner in which a desire to emulate the rich influences individuals allocation of time between labour and leisure greater inequality inducing longer work hours as a result data on work hours in ten countries over the period 1963 98 show that greater inequality is indeed associated longer work hours these veblen effects are large and the estimates are robust using country fixed effects and other specifications because consumption inequality is a public bad a social welfare optimum cannot be implemented by a flat tax on consumption but may be accomplished by more complicated progressive consumption taxes at the close of the nineteenth century thorsten veblen proposed what he termed pecuniary emulation as the foundation of a theory of consumption spending he maintained is driven by relative status considerations that is by the desire to be a particular type of person as much as bythedesire to enjoytheconsumer goodsper se the joneses with whom one had to keep up were not the neighbours but the rich theirleveloflivingbecamethenever attainableobjectiveinaconsumptionarmsrace among the less well to do in the theory of the leisure class he wrote the motive is emulation the stimulus of an invidious comparison especially in any community in which class distinctions are quite vague all canons and reputability and decency and all standards of consumption are traced back by insensible gradations to the usages and thoughts of the highest social and pecuniary class the wealthy leisure class 1934 p 81 while valued by some economists as capturing common sense aspects of consumption as a form of status seeking veblen s view of social preferences was soon eclipsed by the simpler and more tractable neoclassical theory of the consumer relegated to the underworld of economics veblen s ideas have nonetheless resonated over the ensuing years in the writing of duesenberry 1949 leibenstein 1950 and galbraith 1958 at the middle of the past century and schor 1998