does grassroots democracy reduce income inequality in china abstract using village and household survey data collected from 48 villages of eight chinese provinces for the period 1986 2002 this paper studies how the introduction of village elections affects income distribution at the village level we estimate both a static fixed effect panel model and a dynamic panel model for the within village gini coefficient and take care of the endogeneity of the introduction of elections the dynamic panel model shows that having elections reduces the gini coefficient by 0 04 or 14 3 of the sample average we also find that elections tend to increase the income shares of poorer portions of the population further econometric analysis based on dynamic panel models shows that elections increase per capita public expenditures by 271 yuan but do not increase the level or progressiveness of net or total income transfer in a village therefore elections positive role in reducing income inequality is not played through more income redistribution but through more pro poor public investment

real interest rates and endogenous growth in a monetary economy abstract in endogenous growth models where the engine of growth is human capital acquired via formal education inflation taxes may raise or lower real interest rates depending upon whether or not physical and or human capital are liquidity constrained cases are examined

did china s tax for fee reform improve farmers welfare in rural areas abstract china enacted a rural tax reform the tax for fee reform tfr in the late 1990s a crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform improved farmers welfare in rural areas this article uses village level survey data from the chinese household income project in order to examine the effect of the tfr on farmers direct and indirect welfare we find no evidence that the direct welfare effects improved farmers net income in contrast the reform appears to have reduced the villages financing capacity and hence to have lowered their overall expenditures these indirect effects have had significant negative impacts on farmers welfare

governance and agricultural productivity a cross national analysis abstract in this study we examine the relationship between governance and agricultural performance by employing the world bank s aggregate governance indicators based on a cross country panel sample two methods are employed to test the hypothesis that better governance fosters agricultural productivity the empirical results of both methods support the hypothesis as for the first method the estimation results of the widely used inter country aggregate agricultural production function show that a country with better governance can produce more agricultural outputs given the same amounts of agricultural inputs the same education level and the same climate condition as for the second method the empirical results of a structural equation model reveal that given the same amounts of agricultural capital stock and land an agricultural worker in a country with better governance produces more better governance can indirectly improve agricultural productivity by driving agricultural capital accumulation our empirical work lends support to the claim of hayami and ruttan hayami y ruttan v 1985 agricultural development an international perspective john hopkins university press baltimore that governance is a basic factor explaining the poor economic performance of many developing countries in order to improve the agricultural performance of many developing countries apart from physical and education investments more emphasis should be placed on improving the governance infrastructure of these countries

tradeable permits missing markets and technology this paper examines the effects of missing markets heterogeneous pollutants and the pollution technology of firms on the efficacy of transferable pollution permits under the assumption of perfect competition in all markets we show that if firms can substitute among pollutants then setting the optimal number of permits for only one pollutant will not in general lead to an efficient outcome the degree of the inefficiency will depend on the information set available to the regulator and the substitutability among pollutants by firms when establishing transferable pollution rights regulators should therefore consider the technology of firms if firms discharge pollutants in the same fixed proportions then the regulator need only set a market for one of the pollutants to ensure an efficient outcome where firms can substitute among pollutants however establishing a market for only one pollutant provides an incentive for firms to substitute to unregulated ones this is an important policy issue as substitutability among pollutants within and across production processes may dampen the dynamic advantages of a tradeable permit policy

jobless spells and re employment wages many studies of job loss attribute the earnings losses associated with layoffs to the loss of job occupation and industry specific human capital this paper estimates the effect of jobless spells on post layoff wages using data from the 1984 panel of survey on income participation for a sample of adult white male workers who were permanently laid off between 1974 and 1984 the estimated impact of jobless spells on starting wages and survey date wages several years after re employment are controlled for separations layoffs and quits and for individual and job characteristics the estimates show that jobless spell durations reduce starting wages wage growth in the new job is lower for workers who experience long spell durations a result that suggests acceptance of jobs which are poor matches compared to other workers who spend less time out of work following a layoff the findings support labour force policies which minimize the amount of time a person is out of work

externalities property rights and the allocation of resources in major league baseball most economists who have analyzed professional baseball have concluded that two distinctive features of its labor market the reserve clause and player draft influence the distribution of wealth between players and owners but do not affect the allocation of playing talent among teams such conclusions which are strongly at variance with laymen s views of such matters are derived from theoretical considerations rather than empirical examinations our paper examines data from the two decades of major league history and concludes that on the basis of that data the empirical generalizations of previous economists do not appear to be justified

citizens preferences and the portfolio of public goods evidence from nigeria summary developing countries have undertaken decentralization reforms to increase the efficiency of public goods provisioning by tailoring the goods to the preferences of smaller groups the reforms aim to ensure that the resulting supply of public goods matches local demands we analyze if local politicians tasked with supplying public goods in a developing country respond to citizens preferences we ask two questions first faced with demands for increased spending on a particular type of public good will politicians increase the overall spending on public goods or keep it constant while reallocating resources between different public goods second if politicians reallocate resources rather than increase overall spending which public good will receive additional funds at the expense of another good we examine these questions using sub national spending and preference data in nigerian districts our empirical strategy accounts for interdependency between spending areas as increased spending in one area can be offset by decreasing expenditures elsewhere we find that local politicians reallocate resources across education health infrastructure and agricultural support to match the preference profile of citizens across these goods but do not increase overall spending for public goods

residential mobility with job location uncertainty abstract this paper investigates the relationship between job changes and residential mobility a job change may be prompted by reasons unrelated to factors associated with housing consumption however a job change may lead to an adjustment to housing consumption i e residential relocation previous studies find that job relocations are positively associated with residential mobility this paper departs from previous studies by looking at the effects of an uncertain future job location on residential mobility and mobility expectation it is conjectured that with the existence of costs of residential mobility a household head s likelihood for changing jobs in the future dampens the household s propensity to move but encourages the formation of mobility expectation these conjectures are examined empirically using data from the panel study of income dynamics and they are confirmed

a theory of political transitions we develop a theory of political transitions inspired by the experiences of western europe and latin america nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite the initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening revolution especially when the opportunity cost is low for example during recessions the threat of revolution may force the elite to democratize democracy may not consolidate because it is redistributive and so gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating between regimes and suffer substantial fiscal volatility

the wage effects of voluntary labor mobility with and without intervening unemployment this study investigates how an unemployment spell between jobs affects a job changer s new wages one hypothesis holds that the search and mobility costs associated with unemployment between jobs are compensated for by increased wage gains resulting from more intensive job search opposing hypotheses are that unemployed job changers are at a disadvantage because they have fewer job contacts than job changers who move directly from one job to another or because they are unable to gain new skills or develop good work habits while unemployed the results of this analysis of 1979 81 data from the national longitudinal survey of young men support the first hypothesis an unemployment spell between jobs is associated with wage gains higher than those obtained when the job change was made with no intervening unemployment

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

an analysis of the effects of higher education on wage differentials between blacks and whites by gender in the united states previous analyses that have examined the effect to higher education on the wage differences between blacks and whites have largely been focussed on males and failed to provide quantitative estimates of the impact that higher education has on discrimination and the black white wage differential for both genders in 1980 in particular we find that equalizing the years of college completed by black and white males reduces the wage differential by 14 conversely equalizing the years of college completed by black and white females exacerbates wage inequality by increasing the wage advantage accruing to black females by nearly 24 hence the egalitarian policy mission of higher education in narrowing wage inequality between blacks and whites is complicated by the issue of gender

the excess sensitivity of layoffs and quits to demand excessive layoffs in bad times and excessive quits in good times both stem from the same weakness in practical employment arrangements the specific nature of worker firm relations creates a situat

the provision of public goods under alternative electoral incentives politicians who care about the spoils of office may underprovide a public good because its benefits cannot be targeted to voters as easily as pork barrel spending we compare a winner take all system where all the spoils go to the winner to a proportional system where the spoils of office are split among candidates proportionally to their share of the vote in a winner take all system the public good is provided less often than in a proportional system when the public good is particularly desirable we then consider the electoral college system and show that it is particularly subject to this inefficiency

the returns to mobility and job search by gender using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth the authors estimate the returns to job search mobility and the interaction of search and mobility for young men and women they find st

job mobility and gender based wage growth differentials i introduction evidence presented by goldin 1989 o neill 1985 and others shows that the gender wage gap is narrowing much of the narrowing has been attributed to changes in female employment behavior such as the increased consistency of labor force participation and investment in education however because wages are not yet equal questions remain for example does mobility play a role in the remaining wage gap in this paper we examine the role of mobility because this has been a relatively neglected area of interest for researchers concerned about the gender wage gap some evidence on gender differences in mobility and the returns to mobility has been presented but there is little consistency in the reported evidence keith and mcwilliams 1995 demonstrate that the mobility histories of young men and women differ significantly loprest 1992 reports that for a sample of individuals who worked full time for four consecutive years young men s wages grew twice as much when they changed jobs i e employers as young women s did however abbott and beach 1994 find that the wage effects of mobility for women are similar in magnitude to the gains that mincer 1986 and holmlund 1984 find for men given the sometimes conflicting results reported so far determining the extent and the cause of gender differences in wage mobility effects has important implications for gender wage gap arguments in this study we examine the patterns and the returns to mobility for young men and women to examine mobility patterns we disaggregate mobility into involuntary or employer initiated and voluntary or employee initiated separations we further disaggregate involuntary separations into layoffs and discharges and we further disaggregate voluntary separations into family related and non family related quits by examining the impact of each of these different types of job separation on wage growth and the difference in the relative frequency of each type of separation for men and women we can make inferences about the impact of early career mobility on the gender wage gap the remainder of this paper is organized as follows in section ii we review evidence on the returns to different types of mobility in section iii we present evidence on gender differences in mobility and wage growth we use data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to examine the mobility patterns of men and women and to calculate average wages and average wage growth in section iv we describe how we selected a sample and specified a model for estimating the determinants of wage growth in section v we examine the wage growth effects of different types of mobility controlling for starting wages and individuals fixed effects in section vi we discuss our conclusions ii the returns to different types of mobility workers change jobs for different reasons some voluntary and some involuntary there is some evidence that the returns to different types of mobility differ not surprisingly there is consistent evidence that employee initiated separations quits increase wage growth and that employer initiated separations layoffs and discharges decrease wage growth relative to staying with the same employer 1 additional evidence on the job mobility and wage growth of men has been offered as well bartel and borjas 1981 show that job related quits have a larger positive impact on wage growth than do non job related quits with the highest wage growth resulting from those quits that are associated with successful job shopping parsons 1989 shows that for young men an employer initiated separation with prejudice a discharge results in a larger wage penalty than an employer initiated separation without prejudice a layoff keith 1993 and keith and mcwilliams 1995 show that the number of previous discharges decreases and the number of previous job related quits increases the current wage for samples of young men

costly employment contract renegotiation and the labor mobility of young men the distinction of quits and permanent layoffs remains a contentious issue in the labor economics literature basically there appear two contrasting views of such turnover while both interpretations of turnover are derived from job matching models that assume wealth maximizing behavior of workers and firms each involves different assumptions about the feasibility of individual labor contract negotiations following hire on the one hand application of the coase theorem to employment contracts implies that turnover will occur only when the value of the worker s product in some alternative employment exceeds current job productivity since the actual division of the job match rent is assumed costlessly renegotiable only the presence of a truly more productive job assignment would prevent the renegotiation of the current rent sharing contract to the mutual benefit of both worker and firm the likelihood of a job change is thus directly related to the level of total match productivity irregardless of whether the worker in response to some later survey question characterizes the separation as a quit or permanent layoff according to this formulation of worker and firm attachments quits and permanent layoffs are at least in any sense relevant to actual resource allocation indistinguishable an implication of this model is of course that mobility enhances productivity see gary becker elisabeth landes and robert michael 1977 counter to this view stand models of job matching that suggest that the presence of transactions costs in the form of costly contract renegotiations preclude any easy application of the coase theorem to employment contracts most forcefully advocated by masanori hashimoto 1981 these models of job matching imply that quits and permanent layoffs are different the difference results from the fact that with costly contract renegotiation mobility is to a large extent determined by the actual rent sharing agreement formulated at the beginning of employment according to this view then the total value of the match does not exclusively determine job change and thus not all mobility is productivity augmenting this paper offers a model of job matching with costly post hire negotiations in some aspects similar to that of hashimoto but with particular relevance to the population of young workers only beginning their labor force participation while hashimoto s discussion concentrates on longer term firmspecific training decisions the current model focuses on the period immediately following hire when worker productivity is to a large extent governed by endowed capabilities rather than determined by learning on the job the theoretical focus on inexperienced workers as well as the corresponding youthful composition of the empirical sample are motivated to control for unobserved factors such as firm specific human capital stocks as much as possible in further contrast to hashimoto s emphasis the model yields empirical implications concerning the role of wages in the determination of mobility that contrast to the implications of an otherwise similar zero negotiations cost model of job matching derivation of the empirical implications concerning the relationship of wages to quits and layoffs represents the primary contribution of this paper finally empirical results are presented that at least for a sample of very young men over a short period of time department of economics university of houston houston tx 77004 i thank finis welch dan mitchell and the referee for comments on an earlier version of this paper

local governance and public goods provision in rural china in developing countries identifying the most effective community level governance mode is a key issue in rural development therefore empirical evaluation of these different modes is desperately needed since the 1980s tens of thousands of villages in rural china have held local government elections providing a good opportunity to investigate the effect of democratization on the level of public goods provision using a recent village survey conducted over a significant period of time this article compares two different governance modes it finds that elections affect little on the size of revenue but significantly shift the distribution of taxation from individuals to enterprises if possible however privatization has made taxation or levies on rural enterprises more difficult it also shows that elections and power sharing are conducive to improve the allocation of public expenditures

local governance and the quality of local infrastructure evidence from village road projects in rural china abstract research has shown that allowing local communities to elect their own leaders increases local infrastructure investment however much less is known about the effects of local governance reform on the quality of local infrastructure this paper examines the effects of governance reform implemented in rural chinese villages on the quality of village road projects we conduct surveys in 101 rural villages and collect data related to the implementation of the reform over the last two decades we also measure the quality of over 550 village road projects completed in these villages using fixed effects and instrumental variable estimation methods we find that the implementation of village governance reform increases the quality of village road projects we also find evidence supporting the following effect mechanisms 1 village leaders become younger and more educated 2 high quality road projects increase incumbent leaders re election chances and 3 village residents participate more actively in the management and monitoring of village road projects

village elections public goods investments and pork barrel politics chinese style a key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influence the allocation of public resources in this paper we utilise a unique set of survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected villages describing china s recent progress in village governance reforms and its relationship to the provision of public goods in rural china between 1998 and 2004 two sets of questions are investigated using an empirical framework based on a theoretical model in which local governments must decide to allocate fiscal resources between public goods investments and other expenditures the empirical analysis both in the descriptive and econometric analyses suggests that when the village leader is elected directly ceteris paribus the provision of public goods rises compared to when the leader is not elected directly by villagers thus in this way it is possible to conclude that democratisation at least at the village level in rural china appears to increase the quantity of public goods investment second we seek to understand the mechanism that is driving the results also based on the survey data we find that when village leaders who had been directly elected were able to implement more public projects during their terms of office they as the incumbent were more likely to be re elected in this way we argue that the link between elections and investment may be a rural china version of pork barrel politics

the wage effects of cumulative job mobility this analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of youth shows that cumulative job mobility had statistically significant effects on wages in the years 1979 88 the direction of the wage effects positive or negative and their magnitude varied depending on the type of cumulative mobility examined employee initiated versus employerinitiated separations economic versus family related quits layoffs versus discharges the results also indicate that although men and women had different mobility histories men for example had been discharged more often than women and women had quit for family related reasons more often than men the wage effects of each type of cumulative mobility economic quits family related quits layoffs and discharges were similar for men and women tn this paper we examine the impact of cumulative job mobility on the subsequent wages of young men and women most previous work on this subject has focused on the impact of specific mobility events such as quits or layoffs rather than on the impact of total job history on wages researchers looking at single mobility decisions have consistently reported evidence that a change in employers does affect a worker s subsequent wage therefore it is reasonable to ask whether the impact ofjob change is cumulative that is does a worker s current wage reflect the impact of all past mobility decisions quits layoffs and discharges also since most of the

the political economy of government responsiveness theory and evidence from india the determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive this suggests that there is a role both for democratic institutions and the mass media in ensuring that the preferences of citizens are reflected in policy the ideas behind the model are tested on panel data from india we show that public food distribution and calamity relief expenditure are greater controlling for shocks where governments face greater electoral accountability and where newspaper circulation is highest

are free agents perspicacious peregrinators the perspicacious peregrinator model of solomon w polachek and francis w horvath hypothesizes that individuals decide to migrate based on the size of potential gains this model is tested using themigration decisions of major league baseball players between 1977 and1979 potential gains are measure d as the differ ence between earnings with and without migration a distinction is made between players eligible for free agency and those ineligible so as to a ccount for differences in the level of competition for players services in diff erent segments of this market migration is found tobe related to the expected gain from earnings for players eligible for free agency but not for those ineli gible copyright 1987 by mit press

do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power evidence from rural china abstract do elected leaders in an authoritarian regime have any real power does grassroots democracy in a one party state entail parochial problems making use of primary survey data covering two election cycles in a mountainous area of china where an administrative village consists of several natural villages nvs we find that elected village heads favor their home nvs in resource allocations especially when these nvs have a large population in contrast the home nvs of appointed communist party secretaries do not receive disproportionately more resources on average this pattern of resource allocation is compatible with the interest of village heads and suggests that as elected leaders village heads have some true power in resource distribution

grassroots democracy and local governance evidence from rural china summary this paper studies the impacts of village elections on the accountability of the village committee local fiscal sharing and state taxation in rural china using data of 48 villages for the period of 1986 2002 elections are found to substantially increase the share of public expenditures in the village budget but reduce the shares of administrative costs and income handed to the township government these findings suggest that elections have enhanced the accountability of the village committee but weakened local fiscal sharing and the state s grip no strong evidence is found that state taxation is affected by elections nor is it found that the role of a more competitive election is different from that of a closed election

migration and employment after an economic shock regional characteristics and migration patterns this study addresses the migration dynamics of workers after their workplace has closed it analyses to what extent migration responses differ between regions with different characteristics for ind

collectivization and china s agricultural crisis in 1959 1961 the agricultural crisis in china in 1959 61 after the initial success of the collectivization movement resulted in 30 million extra deaths in this paper a game theory hypothesis proposes the main cause of this catastrophe i argue that because of the difficulty in supervising agricultural work the success of an agricultural collective depends on a self enforcing contract in which each one promises to discipline oneself a self enforcing contract however can be sustained only in a repeated game in the fall of 1958 the right to withdraw from a collective was deprived the nature of the collectivization was thus changed from a repeated game to a one time game as a result the self enforcing contract could not be sustained and agricultural productivity collapsed the empirical evidence is consistent with this hypothesis

post school investment and wage differentials some further evidence the topic of wage differentials between demographic groups has received a great deal of attention in the literature among the most researched areas are wage differentials based on race and gender studies have consistently found that men earn more than women and whites earn more than blacks many attempts have been undertaken to explain these wage differentials with two main explanations evolving over time the first claims one group is paid less than another due to discrimination thus the fact that white males earn more than black males may be due to employers and employees distaste for hiring and working with minorities the second main explanation claims different groups have different levels of human capital thus black males earn less not because of discrimination but because they have fewer acquired skills than white males wage differentials are obviously important for public policy if workers are paid differing amounts simply because of their race or gender then society is not fully utilizing its resources this would indicate a need for stronger government intervention to remove discriminatory practices by businesses for example this intervention may take the form of affirmative action programs or mandating comparable worth however if the gap in wages is due to choices made by individuals which lead to differences in human capital then the wage differentials may be justified as a result government intervention is not only unnecessary but may be an example of inefficient regulation since no easy way exists to measure the extent of discrimination the standard method has been to decompose the residual of a wage equation into explained and unexplained portions the idea being that some of the wage gap can be explained by differences in attributes between groups of individuals goldin and polachek 5 point out that attributes may also be due to discrimination if for example blacks are the first to be laid off this may result in lower levels of experience this is not by choice and may indicate discrimination also there is a question of which is the appropriate base group for example the researcher has two alternatives when examining the wage gap between black and white males he or she can take the predicted black wage given white characteristics as a percentage of white wages or take the actual black wage as a percentage of predicted white wages given black characteristics in many cases the choice is not really clear and as a result often an average of these two is taken by employing a dummy variable for either

pollution control with imperfectly observable emissions in this paper a model of environmental regulation with imperfect monitoring of emissions is presented the regulator can use linear output taxes and emission taxes to influence the pollution level of a risk averse firm in contrast to the perfect monitoring case a tax mix will usually be optimal the relative weight depends on the degree of risk aversion and monitoring imperfection and on technological factors

reputation voluntary mobility and wages this study analyzes the effect of voluntary mobility on subsequent wages to discover if there are wage penalties associated with repeated mobility to reduce the endogeneity between wages and voluntary mobility the sample is restricted to young males on their first job following a permanent layoff using respondents from the national longitudinal survey of youth ordinary least squares wage equations from the layoff sample are compared to those from a sample of workers who remained employed the evidence shows that voluntary mobility differentially affects the wage equations of the restricted and the unrestricted samples copyright 1993 by mit press

post migration earnings profiles an application of human capital and job search models several studies have noted that post migration earnings of migrants rise more rapidly than earnings of non migrants 13 42 9 human capital models would attempt to explain this by differences in the investment profiles of migrants and non migrants these differences could be due to migration selectivity whereby migrants have different investment incentives due to ability or motivation or to the loss of human capital by migrating and the recoupment of this capital after migration search models would explain this phenomenon by imperfect information migrants may have less information about wage distributions at the destination than non migrants enter the destination job market at a low wage and engage in subsequent post migration search for better earnings or as yezer and thurston 15 have suggested search may be selective and migrants whose reservation wages are not met after some time at the destination leave i e we observe migrants having steeper earnings profiles since those who do not obtain high earnings leave as one might expect neither of these pure models is alone sufficient to explain the factors that create the different earnings streams instead they can be viewed as complementary explanations the failure to recognize that migration involves both job search and human capital changes could lead to biased tests of hypotheses originating from only one model a good example of this and the one addressed in this paper is testing hypotheses regarding the source of differences between experience earnings profiles of migrants and non migrants for example yezer and thurston 15 establish and test the hypothesis that the distance migrated should be positively associated with income gains after migration they find the expected relation using regressions with a distance dummy 2 however it is well known that more educated individuals travel greater distances 11 and generally have steeper earnings profiles than less educated persons the correlation between education and distance migrated makes any test of the yezer and thurston hypothesis biased toward accepting their search model when education is not controlled

labour mobility and returns to experience in foreign firms this paper uses finnish linked employer employee panel data to study whether employees are able to appropriate returns to knowledge accumulated in foreign owned firms when moving to domestic firms the estimates indicate that highly educated employees earn a return to prior experience in a foreign owned firm which is over and above the return to other previous experience these employees do not appear to pay for the knowledge they accumulate in the form of lower starting wages in foreign owned firms

joint production externalities and the regulation of production networks real production systems are often vertically integrated in the sense that one production process uses the unwanted joint product of another production process as input this interrelation ship links in a non obvious way the different negative externalities stemming from the production processes an empirical example is the sulphuric acid industry our model of a vertically integrated production system shows how internalising one currently existing externality may create another externality which has thus far not been existent we also discuss how environmental policy could deal with this problem when regulating integrated production systems

village political economy land tenure insecurity and the rural to urban migration decision evidence from china this paper investigates the impact of land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of china s rural residents a simple model first frames the relationship among these variables and the probability that a reallocation of land will occur in the following year after first demonstrating that a village leader s support for administrative land reallocation carries with it the risk of losing a future election the paper exploits election timing and village heterogeneity in lineage group composition and demographic change to identify the effect of land security in response to an expected land reallocation in the following year the probability that a rural resident migrates out of the county declines by 2 8 percentage points which accounts for 17 5 percent of the annual share of village residents aged 16 to 50 who worked as migrants during the period this finding underscores the potential importance of secure property rights for facilitating labor market integration and the movement of labor out of agriculture

are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents evidence from chinese villages are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents using panel data from village elections in china the ols regression shows that introducing competitive elections has a relatively small effect on the removal of autocratic incumbents however the effect becomes much larger when the endogenous timing is instrumented with the passage of provincial election laws and village specific election cycles additional evidence also suggests that removing incumbents through competitive elections enhances local governance i interpret these results as suggesting that political selection matters in electoral autocracies

human capital investment specialization and the wage effects of voluntary labor mobility ahstract analyses of voluntary labor mobility suggest that job search facilitates job change while specific training inhibits mobility further given that specific skills cannot be transferred between jobs and since both search and training are costly it is reasonable for workers to specialize in search or specific training on a given job training or search specialization however implies that estimation methods which treat the incidence of a quit as exogenous underestimate mobility effects on wages the larger wage effects reported here result from simultaneous estimation but also reflect more accurate measurement of wage growth between jobs

the political economy of health services provision in brazil abstractwe examine the impact of local politics and voter preferences on the allocation of publicly subsidized the unified and decentralized health care system sus health services across 4 338 counties in brazil sus clinics doctors and nurses per capita are higher in counties with a higher share of uninsured in the population and with higher per capita incomes as is consistent with a probabilistic voting model political participation i e the fraction of the poor who vote and the political power of the mayor his vote share in the last election are associated with more visible health inputs namely clinics and consultation rooms but not with more doctors and nurses

the wages of older men in this paper net depreciation rates in human capital are estimated from wage data on a longitudinal sample of men aged 45 to 64 the results indicate that wage rates begin to decline in the early fifties at rates under 1 percent annually and decline at about 2 percent annually after age 60 this decrease was offset by the general increase in wage levels so that on average the real wages of men approaching retirement did not decline during the period studied the general increase was larger for blacks than for whites probably because of decreases in labor market discrimination between 1966 and 1974 an appendix presents a gls estimator for a variance components model in which the number of observations per individual varies

life on the frontier migrant information earnings and past mobility this paper examines the extent to which information obtained from past geographic mobility affects both post move job search and earnings in subsequent migration in the united states the study considers this linkage between past and present mobility by estimating earnings frontiers for various categories of interstate migrants partitioned by prior mobility history the results demonstrate that migrant groups exhibiting high relative levels of human capital stock do not necessarily possess superior pre move labor market information it is also demonstrated that the incentive to acquire this pre move information is tied to psychic cost and variation in this cost among migrant types excerpt