does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

the effects of welfare and tax reform the material well being of single mothers in the 1980s and 1990s abstract the tax and welfare programs that provide income and in kind benefits to single mothers have changed dramatically in recent years these changes began as far back as the mid 1980s and culminated with the 1996 welfare law that ended welfare as we knew it these tax and welfare changes have sharply increased the employment of single mothers and cut welfare rolls however little is know about the effects of these policy changes on the material well being of single mothers and their children studies of those leaving welfare have found that a substantial percentage have problems paying rent purchasing enough food and paying utility bills other studies found a decline in income among the worst off single mothers after 1994 or 1995 the goal of this paper is to examine the material well being of single mothers and their families before and after recent welfare and tax reforms using data from two nationally representative household surveys we examine the consumption patterns of single mothers and their families from 1984 2000 we find that the material conditions of single mothers did not decline in recent years either in absolute terms or relative to single childless women or married mothers this pattern holds for the average single mother as well as for low educated single mothers at both the 15th and 25th percentiles of the consumption distribution in most cases our evidence suggests that the material conditions of single mothers have improved slightly

the tale of the tails canadian income inequality in the 1980s and 1990s we present new evidence on levels and trends in after tax income inequality in canada between 1980 and 2000 we argue that existing data sources may miss changes in the tails of the income distribution and that many of the changes in the income distribution have been in the tails for this reason we turn to an alternative source in particular we construct data on after tax and transfer income using census files augmented with predicted taxes based on information available from administrative tax data using these data we find that canadian after tax inequality levels are substantially higher than has been previously recognized primarily because income levels are lower at the bottom of the distribution than in commonly used survey data we also find larger long term increases in after tax income inequality and far more variability over the economic cycle this raises interesting questions about the role of the tax and transfer system in mitigating both trends and fluctuations in market income inequality les auteurs presentent de nouveaux resultats sur les niveaux et tendances de l inegalite des revenus apres impots au canada entre 1980 et 2000 on suggere que les donnees existantes peuvent avoir ignore des changements dans les extremites de cette distribution alors que le gros des changements y etait concentre pour cette raison les auteurs se sont tournes vers une autre source de donnees ils ont construit une base de donnees sur les revenus apres impots et les paiements de transfert en utilisant les donnees du recensement ainsi que des donnees additionnelles sur les impots prevus a partir de renseignements disponibles dans les dossiers administratifs on decouvre que les niveaux d inegalite des revenus apres impots sont beaucoup plus eleves que ce qu on a suggere jusqu ici d abord parce que les niveaux de revenus sont plus bas au pied de la distribution que ne le suggerent les donnees d enquetes on decouvre aussi un accroissement plus grand a long terme de l inegalite des revenus apres impots et une plus grande variabilite au cours du cycle economique voila qui souleve des questions interessantes a propos du role de la fiscalite et du systeme de paiements de transfert dans la modulation de la tendance et des fluctuations dans l inegalite des revenus du marche

semiparametric estimation and consumer demand this paper considers the implementation of semiparametric methods in the empirical analysis of consumer demand the application is to the estimation of the engel curve relationship and uses the british family expenditure survey household composition is modelled using an extended partially linear framework this is shown to provide a useful method for pooling non parametric engel curves across households of different demographic composition c 1998 john wiley sons ltd

tricks with hicks the easi demand system we invent implicit marshallian demands which combine desirable features of hicksian and marshallian demands we propose and estimate the exact affine stone index easi implicit marshallian demand system like the almost ideal demand aid system easi budget shares are linear in parameters given real expenditures however unlike the aid easi demands can have any rank and its engel curves can have any shape over real expenditures easi error terms equal random utility parameters to account for unobserved preference heterogeneity easi demand functions can be estimated using gmm or three stage least squares and like aid an approximate easi model can be estimated by linear regression

why are households that report the lowest incomes so well off we document that households in the uk with extremely low measured income tend to spend much more than those with merely moderately low income this phenomenon is evident throughout three decades worth of microdata and across different employment states levels of education and marital statuses of the likely explanations we provide several arguments that discount over reporting of expenditure and argue that under reporting of income plays the major role in particular by using a dynamic model of consumption and saving and paying special attention to poverty dynamics we show that consumption smoothing cannot explain all the apparent dissaving

changes in the consumption income and well being of single mother headed families there is a long standing debate over how the material well being of the disadvantaged has changed over time in the united states this debate has intensified in light of notable increases in income inequality in the 1970s and 1980s and during the 1990s dramatic changes in welfare and tax policies that target poor families including expansions in the earned income tax credit eitc welfare waivers and the passage of the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act prwora while some championed these changes as catalysts for self sufficiency others predicted that these reforms would lead to severe deprivation 1 a large body of research has shown that these changes were associated with a dramatic fall in welfare receipt and increases in work and earnings 2 there is little consensus however on how material well being has changed during this period particularly for the most disadvantaged families such as those at the bottom of the income or consumption distribution in this paper we analyze changes in material well being between 1993 and 2003 for single mother headed families a group that has been the target of these recent changes in tax and wel fare policy for these families we analyze changes in income and total consumption as well as changes in disaggregated consumption time use and health insurance coverage we describe the underlying trends in well being for disadvantaged families during this dynamic period rather than identifying the causal effects of individual policies or macroeconomic conditions we begin by briefly documenting the recent trends in income and consumption for single mother headed families for income the trends differ sharply for different deciles of single moth ers for example between 1993 1995 and 1997 2000 reported income in the bottom decile falls by about 16 percent while reported income rises by more than 17 percent in the third fourth and fifth deciles the trends for reported consumption on the other hand tell a very different story these data show neither the sharp decline at low percentiles nor the large increases at the remaining percentiles in the bottom half of the distribution of single mothers rather we find a modest about 7 to 12 percent rise in consumption throughout the entire distribution while we do not examine the reasons for the sharp differences in income and consumption changes in this paper we do argue that consumption is a better measure of material well being for those at the bottom of the distribution

two decades of income inequality in britain the role of wages household earnings and redistribution we study earnings and income inequality in britain over the past two decades including the period of relatively inclusive growth from 1997 to 2004 and the great recession we focus on the middle 90 where trends have contrasted strongly with the new inequality at the very top household earnings inequality has risen driven by male earnings although a catch up of female earnings did hold down individual earnings inequality and reduce within household inequality nevertheless net household income inequality fell due to deliberate increases in redistribution the tax and transfer system s insurance role during the great recession falling household worklessness and rising pensioner incomes

has consumption inequality mirrored income inequality we revisit to what extent the increase in income inequality since 1980 was mirrored by consumption inequality we do so by constructing an alternative measure of consumption expenditure using a demand system to correct for systematic measurement error in the consumer expenditure survey our estimation exploits the relative expenditure of high and low income households on luxuries versus necessities this double differencing corrects for measurement error that can vary over time by good and income we find consumption inequality tracked income inequality much more closely than estimated by direct responses on expenditures jel d31 d63 e21

embodied carbon in china s foreign trade an online sci e and ssci based literature review abstract this paper systematically presents a survey of the empirical literature studying the embodied co2 emissions in china s foreign trade ecct based on the bibliometric method and the online version of science citation index expanded sci e and social sciences citation index ssci this study summarizes the latest publications regarding ecct in peer reviewed journals in terms of quantities most productive countries institutions authors citations and disciplines by using synthetic analysis of keyword frequency this study reveals the most popular methodologies applied in measuring ecct discusses the variation of numerical results in the literature and reasons and countermeasures for the results uncertainties continuous investigation of the literature releases the methodology employed for measuring ecct becoming more reasonable and the results more critical however the numerical results of ecct are of great discrepancies within given year by different considerations on methodology specification accounting principles and data sources and processing for instance the estimates of co2 embodied in china s exports changed from 478 mt to over 3000 mt and those of in china s imports ranged from 140 mt to over 1700 mt in 2007 therefore overcoming data inherent limitations and reducing discrepancies among available databases should be urgently considered the results imply that the prospective research tendencies on ecct are to 1 improve china s regional input output data and energy intensity data to more precise estimates under global perspective 2 estimate china s carbon emission at firm level by different firm ownerships in production and consumption worldwide 3 assess china s carbon emission from processing or non processing trade by compiling more detailed multi regional input output table 4 evaluate city level carbon mitigation capacity in china under global mrio model 5 explore new carbon management experience in china s carbon trading market and new trade expansion policy of one belt and one road in her new growth era

tax subsidies and household saving evidence from canada targeted tax based saving incentives can be a powerful tool for promoting household and national saving this study examines the effect of the cancellation of the registered home ownership savings plan rhosp a canadian tax subsidized saving program on household saving the cancellation provides exogenous variation in eligibility for the subsidy that is uncorrelated with householdspecific heterogeneity in saving behavior the empirical analysis suggests that the subsidy had a substantial impact on saving each dollar contributed to the program represented 56 93 and 20 57 cents of new household and national saving respectively

viewpoint further results on measuring the well being of the poor using income and consumption we evaluate the relative merits of income and consumption based measures of well being our results provide evidence that consumption better captures well being for those with few resources the bottom deciles of expenditures exceed those of income suggesting under reporting of income the under reporting rate for government transfers is high and rising overall non response is more severe in u s income data than in expenditure data furthermore a consumption data set requires fewer observations than an income data set to obtain the same level of precision for typical estimates finally very low consumption is more strongly related to other bad outcomes than very low income on evalue les merites relatifs des mesures de bien etre fondees sur le revenu et la consommation les resultats montrent que la consommation mesure mieux le bien etre de ceux qui ont peu de ressources les deciles au bas de la distribution des depenses depassent les deciles de la distribution des revenus ce qui suggere qu il y aurait des revenus non rapportes le taux de sous declaration des transferts gouvernementaux est eleve et croissant le taux global de non reponses est plus important aux etats unis pour les revenus que pour les depenses de plus les bases de donnees sur la consommation requierent moins d observations que celles sur le revenu pour obtenir le meme degre de precision des evaluations typiques finalement une tres basse consommation est plus fortement co reliee a d autres mauvaises conditions qu un tres bas niveau de revenu

identifying the disadvantaged official poverty consumption poverty and the new supplemental poverty measure few economic indicators are more closely watched or more important for ew economic indicators are more closely watched or more important for policy than the offi cial poverty rate it is used to gauge the extent of deprivapolicy than the offi cial poverty rate it is used to gauge the extent of deprivation in the united states and to determine how economic well being has tion in the united states and to determine how economic well being has changed over time the poverty rate is often cited by policymakers researchers changed over time the poverty rate is often cited by policymakers researchers and advocates who are evaluating social programs that account for more than half and advocates who are evaluating social programs that account for more than half a trillion dollars in government spending eligibility for some means tested transfer a trillion dollars in government spending eligibility for some means tested transfer programs is determined based on the poverty thresholds and local poverty rates programs is determined based on the poverty thresholds and local poverty rates affect the allocation of billions of dollars in federal funds affect the allocation of billions of dollars in federal funds the methods for calculating the current poverty measure largely unchanged the methods for calculating the current poverty measure largely unchanged since the 1960s have been criticized by many researchers in response the census since the 1960s have been criticized by many researchers in response the census bureau has led a two decade process of research and discussion of poverty measurebureau has led a two decade process of research and discussion of poverty measurement with an eye to revising the offi cial measure the process has involved hundreds ment with an eye to revising the offi cial measure the process has involved hundreds of papers dozens of offi cial census bureau publications u s census 2010 of papers dozens of offi cial census bureau publications u s census 2010 and two national academy of sciences reports citro and michael 1995 iceland and two national academy of sciences reports citro and michael 1995 iceland 2005 we will not summarize this vast literature here rather we will examine 2005 we will not summarize this vast literature here rather we will examine the properties of three measures of poverty the offi cial u s poverty rate the new the properties of three measures of poverty the offi cial u s poverty rate the new supplemental poverty measure fi rst released by the u s census bureau in fall 2011 supplemental poverty measure fi rst released by the u s census bureau in fall 2011 and a consumption based measure of poverty we will focus on two fundamental and a consumption based measure of poverty we will focus on two fundamental goals of these measures to identify the most disadvantaged and to assess changes goals of these measures to identify the most disadvantaged and to assess changes

consumption inequality in canada 1997 to 2009 we assess the evolution of consumption inequality in canada over the years 1997 to 2009 we correct the imputation of shelter consumption for homeowners to allow for unobserved differences in housing quality correlated with selection into rental tenure and we account for measurement error in this imputation using the annual survey of household spending for years 1997 to 2009 we find that household level consumption inequality measured by the gini coefficient increased from 0 251 to 0 275 over 1997 to 2006 between 2006 and 2007 consumption inequality may have decreased and over 2007 to 2009 consumption inequality was flat over the entire period of 1997 to 2009 consumption inequality increased moderately the gini coefficient for individual level consumption inequality followed a similar pattern though the changes were smaller in magnitude we also explore a possible correction for tail non response bias in inequality measurement and find that the increase in measured consumption inequality is robust to this correction

measuring the trends in inequality of individuals and families income and consumption we present evidence on the level of and trend in inequality from 1985 2010 in the united states using disposable income and consumption for a sample of individuals from the consumer expenditure ce survey differing from the findings in other recent research we find that the trends in income and consumption inequality are broadly similar between 1985 and 2006 but diverge during the great recession with consumption inequality decreasing and income inequality increasing given the differences in the trends in inequality in the last four years using both income and consumption provides useful information

can permanent income theory explain cross sectional consumption patterns the prediction that consumption income ratios should decline as income rises in cross sectional data is a feature of friedman s 1957 permanent income hypothesis and other consumption smoothing models the theory thus provides a link between longitudinal income data and cross sectional expenditure data given measured income variability and a functional relationship between consumption and permanent income we predict cross sectional expenditure patterns and compare those predictions to actual values our approach cannot explain the actual skewness in consumption income ratios under even the strictest consumption smoothing model which implies that income measurement error or other anomalies are affecting the data

imputing rent in consumption measures with an application to consumption poverty in canada 1997 2009 we consider two econometric problems in the measurement of poverty both relating to rent imputation first we account for quality differences correlated with selection into owner occupied versus rental tenure this correction increases estimated household consumption by 5 over uncorrected estimates and decreases estimated poverty rates quite dramatically second we propose that measurement error induced by the imputation be corrected by imputing a consumption distribution rather than a consumption level for each household this correction increases estimated poverty rates slightly we use our methods to measure consumption poverty in canada and find that the imputation strategy used influences the patterns observed for example measured poverty among the elderly barely declines when one uses our methods in contrast to the almost 6 percentage point reduction we find using traditional methods in our assessment of the over time evolution of consumption poverty we find that substantial progress has been made on overall poverty and on child poverty but that poverty among the elderly hardly changed imputer le loyer dans les mesures de consommation une application a la pauvrete de consommation au canada 1997 2009 les auteurs considerent deux problemes econometriques dans la mesure de la pauvrete tous deux relies a l imputation du loyer d abord on prend en compte les differences de qualite liees au choix entre logement occupe par son proprietaire et logement locatif la correction accroit le niveau de consommation des menages de 5 par rapport aux estimations non corrigees et diminue les taux de pauvrete estimes de maniere dramatique ensuite on suggere que l erreur de mesure introduite par l imputation soit corrigee en derivant une distribution de consommation plutot qu un niveau de consommation pour chaque menage cette correction augmente la pauvrete estimee un peu les auteurs utilisent leurs methodes pour mesurer la pauvrete de consommation au canada et decouvrent que la strategie d imputation utilisee influence les patterns observes par exemple la pauvrete mesuree chez les aines diminue a peine quand on utilise leurs methodes contrairement a la diminution de presque 6 que proposent les methodes traditionnelles dans leur evaluation de l evolution de la pauvrete de consommation dans le temps ils decouvrent qu on a fait des progres substantiels pour ce qui est de la pauvrete en general et de la pauvrete des enfants mais que la pauvrete chez les aines n a a peu pres pas change

global value chains and market formation process in emerging export activity evidence from ethiopian flower industry abstract this article provides a case study of the ethiopian flower export industry which successfully emerged at time when the eu market main destination was already characterised by increasingly stringent standards and delivery requirements entering this market required a multitude of capabilities at firm sector and national levels several of these capabilities were absent or weak in the domestic market when the new activity kicked off the article analyses how the capabilities of individual firms and the industry at large co evolved and the role of various actors in the market formation process

surviving the great recession the influence of income inequality in us urban counties abstractsurviving the great recession the influence of income inequality in us urban counties regional studies while there has been extensive research on the role of income inequality in economic growth there has been less investigation as to the role of income inequality on economic resilience this paper addresses the relationship between income inequality and resilience by evaluating the vulnerability of urban counties in the united states entering recession between 2006 and 2010 and tests whether income inequality contributes to their probability of recession survival a cox proportional hazards model is used to determine factors contributing toward urban counties resilience to the external shock of the great recession the research is focused on the relationship between the level of income inequality in a county and its recession risk it is found that areas with increased income inequality entered recession earlier

consumption and income inequality and the great recession abstract we examine changes in consumption and income inequality between 2000 and 2011 during the most recent recession unemployment rose and asset values declined sharply we investigate how the recession affected inequality while addressing concerns about underreporting in consumption data income inequality rose throughout the period from 2000 to 2011 the 90 10 ratio was 19 percent higher at the end of this period than at the beginning in contrast consumption inequality rose during the first half of this period but then fell after 2005 by 2011 the 90 10 ratio for consumption was slightly lower than it was in 2000

a note on the calculus for physical input output analysis and its application to land appropriation of international trade activities abstract in a recent paper in this journal embodied land appropriation in international trade activities was analysed using a physical input output table piot ecological economics 44 2003 137 the authors stated that there are significant differences between the physical and the monetary input output tables in their results which the authors argued to be due to the fact that the results from the monetary table are determined mainly by the monetary structure of final demand while the structure of a physical table more closely resembles the physical realities of an economy in the present paper it is argued that the methodological foundation that the authors based their analysis on is misleading and does not satisfy the overall material balance requirement it is shown that the differences in the results between the monetary and physical tables presented by the authors have nothing to do with the resemblance to the physical realities i also tried to further clarify a number of critical issues in applying physical input output tables related to double counting treatment of wastes and the effect of closing the system toward direct material inputs a number of consistent but different approaches to cope with these issues are presented including their proofs the embodied land appropriation of international trade activities is calculated and compared by applying those approaches there are many advantages of using physical input output tables however their superiority should not be exaggerated nor be regarded as absolute depending on how it is constructed and used it is also possible that the results from a physical input output table do not tell us more than that indeed some commodities are cheaper or more costly per unit of their mass

constructing physical input output tables for environmental modeling and accounting framework and illustrations abstract a physical input output table piot provides a framework in which all the physical flows associated with an economy can be recorded this makes it a valuable tool for environmental economic modeling and accounting during the 1990 s piots were constructed for a number of countries subsequently the piot and related physical supply and use tables have been taken up in the system of environmental and economic accounting un united nations 2003 system of environmental and economic accounting united nations new york this paper reviews piots for the netherlands germany denmark italy finland and the european union these studies applied the basic and extended piot frameworks this paper elaborates these frameworks with packaging residuals wastes and emissions recycling and stock changes in order to create a full piot the production process of the extended and full piot is split into structural and auxiliary production processes modeling applications and ways of deriving environmentally relevant information from the full piot are illustrated using a numerical example

the great recession the treadmill of production and ecological disorganization did the recession decrease toxic releases across us states 2005 2014 abstract the treadmill of production ecological marxist steady state economics and the natural science literatures suggest that economic growth and pollution are linked we use the economic downturn resulting from the great recession in 2008 2009 as a natural experiment to test this hypothesis specifically we examine the effect of the great recession on pollution measured by the environmental protection agency s toxics release inventory tri using maps and fixed effects regression models for us states for the period 2005 2014 multivariate time series analysis demonstrates that even when adjusting for controls there is a unique and negative effect of the recession on tri levels we situate our findings in the relevant literature suggest possibilities for what the recession effect may be capturing and discuss some implications of increased pollution levels

are there cultural effects on saving some cross sectional evidence why are there such large differences in saving rates across countries conventional economic analyses have not been successful in explaining international saving differences so economists have sometimes suggested that national saving differences may be explained by cultural differences this paper tests the hypothesis that cultural factors influence saving by comparing saving patterns of immigrants to canada from different cultures using data from the canadian survey of family expenditures we find no evidence of cultural effects on saving

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

the circular relationship between inequality leverage and financial crises in this paper we put into perspective the recent literature which points to inequality as a possible cause of credit bubbles by reintegrating it into a more general analysis on the two way relationship between inequality and finance we focus more specifically on situations where high inequalities and widespread access to credit coexist and argue that even when institutions maintain more or less equal access to finance there may be a dynamic positive circular relationship between inequality and financial development however even if there is some evidence in the literature of a positive causal impact of inequality on credit this does not preclude other important cofounding factors the conclusions concerning the distributional impact of finance are more ambiguous a survey of the empirical literature highlights several issues that must be tackled first endogeneity reverse causality and coincidental factors are major concerns second the choice of consistent measurements for the key variables both credit and inequality has strong empirical implications and must be grounded on relevant theoretical channels third those circular dynamics have substantial policy implications for emerging economies since an increasing number face a joint increase in inequality and credit

applying physical input output analysis to estimate land appropriation ecological footprints of international trade activities in the last few years some studies have been presented which link land use accounting and input output analysis based on monetary input output tables miots for the calculation of direct and indirect land appropriation of production and consumption activities the compilation of the first comprehensive physical input output tables piots for some western european countries in the 1990s opened new possibilities for linking physical accounting and input output analysis using a physical multiplier for this kind of calculation is more appropriate as the most land intensive sectors are also the sectors with the highest amounts of material flows physical input output analysis illustrates land appropriation in relation to material flows of each of the sectors which is more appropriate from the point of view of environmental pressures than land appropriation in relation to monetary flows of a miot physical input output analysis has so far not been applied for any land related studies based on a physical input output model of the eu 15 physical input output analysis is applied in this paper in order to calculate direct and indirect land requirements for the production of exports from eu 15 to the rest of the world

the role of financial systems for cross country differences in the link between income and consumption inequality abstractthis article discusses why consumption inequality stays low despite high income inequality in the u s but income inequality is closely followed by consumption inequality in china we show that different financial systems can play a critical role in shaping the cross country different links between income and consumption inequality this phenomenon is consistent with the cross country different relationships between income inequality and saving rates consumer credit expansion in the u s makes inequality much less serious for consumption than for income and this result holds to an even larger extent if more domestic credit can be financed by foreign savings but this is not the case in china whose financial system focuses only on investment and trade while neglecting liquidity constraints on consumption our assertions accord well with evidence found from the u s china and other related economies

household level effects of electricity on income abstract this paper studies the effect of electricity on income using the nepal living standards survey iii nlssiii carried out in the years 2010 11 to account for endogeneity issues we use a two stage probit least squares 2spls model we find that causality runs both ways that is income explains whether a household is connected to electricity but also a household being connected to electricity has a very large and significant effect on income

income growth and atmospheric pollution in spain an input output approach abstract the relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex since the early nineties the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases but once a critical turning point has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase however to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in spain the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in spain in order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis we adopt an input output approach and use namea data for the nine pollutants first we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995 2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions and second we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure

physical and monetary input output analysis what makes the difference abstract a recent paper in which embodied land appropriation of exports was calculated using a physical input output model ecological economics 44 2003 137 151 initiated a discussion in this journal concerning the conceptual differences between input output models using a coefficient matrix based on physical input output tables piots in a single unit of mass and input output models using a coefficient matrix based on monetary input output tables miots extended by a coefficient vector of physical factor inputs per unit of output in this contribution we argue that the conceptual core of the discrepancies found when comparing outcomes obtained using physical vs monetary input output models lies in the assumptions regarding unit prices and not in the treatment of waste as has been claimed ecological economics 48 2004 9 17 we first show that a basic static input output model with the coefficient matrix derived from a monetary input output table is equivalent to one where the coefficient matrix is derived from an input output table in physical units provided that the assumption of unique sectoral prices is satisfied we then illustrate that the input output tables that were used in the original publication do not satisfy the assumption of homogenous sectoral prices even after the inconsistent treatment of waste in the piot is corrected we show that substantially different results from the physical and the monetary models in fact remain finally we identify and discuss possible reasons for the observed differences in sectoral prices faced by different purchasing sectors and draw conclusions for the future development of applied physical input output analysis

taking prices seriously in the measurement of inequality abstract in the measurement of inequality adjustments for differences across households in their demographic composition and in the price regimes they face are usually very simple often nominal expenditure or income is adjusted with an expenditure independent price deflator and a price independent equivalence scale i show that using more flexible expenditure dependent price deflators and price dependent equivalence scales affects the level of and trend in measured family expenditure inequality in canada over 1969 1997 for example standard methods show a significant decrease in inequality between 1969 and 1978 but more flexible methods show a significant increase in inequality over this period

measuring the well being of the poor using income and consumption we examine the relative merits of consumption and income as measures of the material well being of the poor consumption offers several advantages over income because consumption is a more direct measure of well being than income and is less subject to underreporting bias measurement problems with income are problematic for analyses of changes in well being of the poor because the biases appear to have changed over time and are correlated with government policies on the other hand income is often easier to report and is available for much larger samples providing greater power to test hypotheses we begin by considering the conceptual and pragmatic reasons why consumption might be better or worse than income then we employ several empirical strategies to examine the quality of income and consumption data first we compare income and consumption reports for those with few resources as well as their assets and liabilities to examine measurement errors and under reporting second we examine other evidence on the internal consistency of reports of low income or consumption third we compare how well micro data in standard datasets weight up to match aggregates for classes of income and consumption that are especially important for low resource families fourth we validate income and consumption measures by comparing them to other measures of hardship or material well being although the evidence tends to favor consumption measures our analyses suggest that both measures should be used to assess the material well being of the poor

consumer and producer environmental responsibility comparing two approaches abstract two different indicators of environmental responsibility were independently proposed by rodrigues et al rodrigues j domingos t giljum s schneider f 2006 designing an indicator of environmental responsibility ecological economics 59 3 256 266 and lenzen et al lenzen m murray j sack f wiedmann t 2007 shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice ecological economics 61 27 42 these indicators are both supposed to reflect the indirect effects of consumer and producer behavior in the generation of environmental pressure in this paper we compare their mathematical properties and interpretation we conclude that they have different implications for environmental policy

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

firms adoption of international standards evidence from the ethiopian floriculture sector global trade in agriculture and food products is increasingly governed by an array of standards a survey conducted in 2010 covering all operational firms in the nascent floriculture industry in ethiopia revealed that only 36 per cent have managed to acquire certification for international private standards this study uses a census based panel dataset from ethiopian floriculture to empirically examine the determinants of firms adoption of international private standards it also analyses overall industry level efforts and public private partnership to launch and implement a national scheme for good agricultural practice and build firms capacity to comply with the standards key words standards certification floriculture exports estate farms ethiopia africa

inequality in the labor market for native american women and the great recession this research paper builds on previous literature and documents general changes in the labor market for native american women that occurred during the great recession using extracts of data from the current population survey annual earnings file known as the merged outgoing rotation groups morg wages unemployment and other labor market variables for native american women are contrasted with those of native american men and white women to determine the relative change in labor market inequality that occurred during the great recession

global value chains labor organization and private social standards lessons from east african cut flower industries summary this article examines the opportunities and challenges that private social standards pose for labor organizations it explores different labor responses to private social standards in east african cut flower industries the analysis incorporates the concept of labor agency in global value chain analysis and reveals how retailer driven chains offer more room for labor organizations to exercise their agency than the traditional cut flower value chains labor organizations have been able to influence social standard setting and implementation and to use standards to further labor representation at production sites however labor organizations ability to seriously challenge the prevailing governance structure of the cut flower value chain appears extremely limited

simulating the impact of new industries on the economy the case of biorefining in australia abstract we investigate the economic and employment consequences of introducing a new sugarcane based biofuel industry into australia we model the new biofuel industry on the production recipe of the existing large scale gasoalcohol and alcohol sectors in the brazilian economy to this end we utilise a hybrid io lca input output life cycle assessment approach which involves inserting data on new processes and or sectors into an existing io table in particular we develop and test an analytical and a numerical approach for re balancing an io table augmented with rows and columns representing large new biofuel industries we quantify changes in economic output and employment in the australian economy we conclude that a future biofuel industry will be employment positive for australia

zipf s law for cities an explanation zipf s law is a very tight constraint on the class of admissible models of local growth it says that for most countries the size distribution of cities strikingly fits a power law the number of cities with populations greater than s is proportional to 1 s suppose that at least in the upper tail all cities follow some proportional growth process this appears to be verified empirically this automatically leads their distribution to converge to zipf s law

why is consumption more log normal than income gibrat s law revisited significant departures from log normality are observed in income data in violation of gibrat s law we identify a new empirical regularity which is that the distribution of consumption expenditures across households is within cohorts closer to log normal than the distribution of income we explain these empirical results by showing that the logic of gibrat s law applies not to total income but to permanent income and to maginal utility these findings have important implications for welfare and inequality

consumption inequality and income uncertainty this paper places the debate over using consumption or income in studies of inequality growth in a formal intertemporal setting it highlights the importance of permanent and transitory income uncertainty in the evaluation of growth in consumption inequality we derive conditions under which the growth of variances and covariances of income and consumption can be used to separately identify the growth in the variance of permanent and transitory income shocks household data from britain for the period 1968 1992 are used to show a strong growth in transitory inequality toward the end of this period while younger cohorts are shown to face significantly higher levels of permanent inequality

structural analysis of material flows in china based on physical and monetary input output models abstract the physical input output pio model has different product flow scopes from the monetary input output mio model using the pio and mio models to analyze the structure of material flows can identify new hotspots for policy decisions over each other however pio models are not well studied in existing studies on the structure of china s material flows this study uses both the pio and mio models to analyze consumption based material flows of chinese sectors and critical supply chain paths leading to china s material flows results show that the pio and mio models validate each other by simultaneously identifying critical sectors and important final demand categories however product prices and the treatment of services lead to different findings based on the mio and pio models compared with the pio model the mio model underestimates the contribution of the construction sector to china s material flows but overestimates that of the equipment and machinery and other services sectors the pio model reveals the higher importance of rural household consumption while the mio model identifies more critical supply chain paths associated with services the pio and mio models can complement each other in the implementation and assessment of environmental measures e g production efficiency improvement

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

world food demand long term projections of global food demand are heavily dependent on which functional form of the food demand equation is used given that real incomes can change substantially over the long term key elements are the dependence of the income elasticity on income which ensures that the food budget share always lies within the 0 1 range and the role of income inequality this article analyzes these issues proposes a new functional form that deals with them and presents estimates of income and price elasticities for food in 138 countries copyright 2012 oxford university press

welfare analysis when people are different inequality and poverty estimation indeed all welfare analysis must deal with the fact that people are heterogeneous equivalence scales and indifference scales are tools that may be used for this an equivalence scale gives the relative costs faced by different people an indifference scale gives the relative cost of living for people in different types of households equivalence scales and indifference scales can be estimated using off the shelf household level consumer expenditure data and standard econometric techniques for nonlinear equation systems i offer a short introduction to the identification estimation and use of equivalence scales and indifference scales and argue that these are complementary tools in the analysis of inequality and poverty the methods are illustrated with canadian household expenditure data from the surveys of household spending 20042009 estimated equivalence scales for disability are presented along with estimated household model parameters and an analysis of consumption poverty

quo vadis mrio methodological data and institutional requirements for multi region input output analysis abstract in order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies there is a need to capture the whole life cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains multi region input output mrio databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions in this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in mrio compilation summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for mrio analysis we list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective mrio research and propose systemic and institutional changes we deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for mrio compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of mrio research

what s mine is yours the influence of male and female incomes on patterns of household expenditure this paper uses microdata from the 1992 statistics canada family expenditure survey to provide evidence that male and female incomes do not always exert identical influences on household expenditures the novelty of the paper lies in its demonstration that while incomes may be pooled for some categories of consumption e g housing the income pooling hypothesis must be rejected for others we also go beyond simply rejecting the pooling hypothesis to ask how male versus female income is used our results stress the on going importance of traditional gender roles for example we find that expenditures on child care increase only with women s incomes higher male income is not associated with higher expenditure on child care even when both spouses are full time full year paid workers

what is the income cost of a child exact equivalence scales for canadian two parent families this note asks how much income does it take to preserve the prechild standard of living for all members of the postchild household equivalence scales for canadian two parent families are estimated using a complete demand system approach and imposing the condition of equiva lence scale exactness independent of a base blackorby and donaldson 1993 lewbel 1989 this approach has several advantages 1 it is formally grounded in economic theory 2 the income required for children can be estimated without ignoring the well being of the children themselves 3 the estimates obtained appear reasonable relative to others currently available in the literature

heterogeneity biases distributional effects and aggregate consumption an empirical analysis using stratified microdata using stratified microdata from the canadian famex 78 86 surveys this paper investigates whether observed heterogeneity in marginal propensities to consume across strata actually hinders the aggregation process despite significant heterogeneity in marginal responses the divergences between aggregate predicted consumption and the predictions from a model that uses average strata responses are found to be small whenever the strata demands are approximatively linear at the mean and the commodity group considered is not a luxury good on the other hand some cross sectional estimates obtained by pooling the strata are shown to be contaminated by unwanted cross moments further the analysis reconciles the fact that while there exists significant heterogeneity in consumer demands the related distributional effects in the aggregate equation have not been found to be important

viewpoint measuring the well being of the poor with income or consumption a canadian perspective there is a long tradition of using consumption measures derived from statistics canada s household expenditures surveys to study material well being inequality and poverty we offer an introduction to this research income and consumption measures give different pictures of the patterns of material well being in canada but the differences are not as large as in the us we also provide a comparison to meyer and sullivan s results on data quality canadian expenditure surveys are of high quality unique aspects of these surveys variation in quality control measures over time and the possibility of comparing to income tax data provide important insights into the quality of survey data on income and consumption il existe une longue tradition d utilisation de mesures de consommation derivees de l enquete des depenses des menages de statistiques canada pour mesurer le bien etre materiel l inegalite et la pauvrete les auteurs presentent ces recherches les mesures de revenus et de consommation donnent des portraits differents des patterns de bien etre materiel au canada mais les differences ne sont pas aussi importantes qu aux etats unis on presente une comparaison avec les resultats de meyer et sullivan sur la qualite des donnees les enquetes sur les depenses sont de haute qualite au canada certains aspects uniques de ces enquetes variation dans les mesures de controle de qualite dans le temps et possibilite de comparer les donnees derivees des rapports d impot sur le revenu fournissent des apercus importants sur la qualite des donnees d enquetes sur le revenu et la consommation canadian economics association

income and outcomes a structural model of intrahousehold allocation there is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many person households as a single decision maker if this is the case then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household we develop a method of identifying how incomes affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data the basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes we apply our method to a sample of canadian couples with no children we find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth

on the importance of linking inputs and outputs in material flow accounts the weight of nations report revisited abstract the influential word resources institute report the weight of nations of 2000 called for additional research effort to understand linkages between primary material inputs and output of waste and emissions in material flow accounts the report proved highly influential in driving efforts toward methodological harmonization of national material flow accounts but had little impact in triggering additional study into comprehensive material flow accounts and material balances for national economies in this research we test the feasibility of linking inputs to outputs by establishing material flow balances for five countries including germany japan the united states china and australia using available statistical data and agreed calculation methods while statistics for emissions to air are well documented statistics for solid waste are usually incomplete and for many countries are of poor quality we employ stock and flow modeling to determine the waste potential of a national economy which can be used to validate statistically reported waste flows we ask whether the accounts could be up scaled to a global dataset and discuss challenges and limitations of such an approach we also revisit the findings of the wri report and find that methodological improvements to material flow accounting yield more reliable results than could be achieved two decades ago unifying input and output accounts in one coherent framework i e a material balance allows alignment of the policy domains of resource efficiency greenhouse gas and pollution abatement and waste minimization

estimating a third order translog using canadian cross sectional micro data a third order translog is estimated using canadian cross sectional micro data stratified by four family sizes third order terms and family size are found to be statistically important explanatory variables homogeneity and symmetry restrictions are also rejected for the third order translog the translog and the almost ideal demand system directions for future research implied by these results include conditioning the third order translog on more demographic variables or relaxing some aggregation conditions imposed in the model used here