relative wage positions and quit behavior evidence from linked employer employee data the authors analyze the importance of relative wage positions within firms in western germany in the context of individual quit decisions as an inverse measure of job satisfaction using a linked employer employee data set liab for the years 1996 2005 whose sample consists of full time male prime age workers in western germany without college degrees they ascertain whether workers find status or signal effects stronger motivators for quit decisions they find that workers with higher relative wage positions within their firms are on average more likely to quit their jobs than those with lower relative wage positions and that workers who experience a loss in their relative wage positions are also more likely to accept a wage cut associated with their job transition overall results suggest that a signal effect is on average stronger than a status effect

preference based vs market based discrimination implications for gender differentials in child labor and schooling abstract this paper studies the effects of son preference by parents and earnings function bias on child labor and schooling in a model in which parents are altruistic it finds that son preference leads to gender differential in child labor with female children working more than male children but it does not lead to gender differential in schooling except when the bequest constraints are binding on the other hand the earnings function bias results in gender differential in both child labor and schooling dowry and marriage expenses can lead to inefficiently low level of schooling and high level of child labor son preference magnifies gender differential in child labor and schooling in the presence of dowry and marriage expenses

unknown wage offer distribution and job search duration abstract if job searchers do not know the wage offer distribution they are facing they might take the wage structure in their last firm as a prior doing so reservation wages will be biased which will also bias unemployment duration using data for austrian workers it is shown that workers seem to have good knowledge of expected mean wages but less so for higher moments of the wage offer distribution

the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

favorite son specialized child laborers and students in poor ldc households abstract though prior theoretical models of child labor nominally contain households with multiple children they treat all children as identical in their returns to labor market and education activities in actuality households with identical twins are the exception and inherent heterogeneity implies different returns for children we construct a theoretical model that allows child heterogeneity and bilateral altruism our model illuminates potential inefficiencies in the time allocation of children across labor market obligations and education opportunities in poor households when intra household talent differentials across children are great an inefficient reverse specialization may arise and partial bans on child labor will increase efficiency

complementarity and external linkages the strategies of the large firms in biotechnology in biotechnology large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small medium sized research intensive firms we test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another we show that if any two strategies are complementary i e undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other then they are positively correlated using data for a sample large us european and japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers we find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm specific characteristics

testing for complementarity glyphosate tolerant soybeans and conservation tillage many decisions in agriculture are made over combinations of inputs and or practices that may be complements the presence of complementarity among producer decisions can have deep implications for market outcomes and for the effectiveness of policies intended to influence them identifying complementarity relations however is a challenging pursuit drawing on recent methodological advances in this paper we propose a new test for complementarity between glyphosate tolerant soybeans and conservation tillage that overcomes limitations of previous studies specifically we develop a structural discrete choice framework of joint soybean tillage adoption that explicitly models both complementarity and unobserved heterogeneity the model is estimated with a large dataset of farm level choices that spans the 1998 2011 period and contains repeated observations for many of the sampled individuals we find that glyphosate tolerant soybeans and conservation tillage are indeed complementary practices a conclusion supported by several robustness checks in addition our estimation shows that farm operation scale promotes the adoption of both conservation tillage and glyphosate tolerant seed and that all of higher fuel prices more droughty conditions and soil erodibility increase use of conservation tillage we also apply our results to simulate annual adoption rates for conservation tillage in a scenario without glyphosate tolerant soybeans available as a choice we find that the adoption of conservation tillage has been about ten percent higher due to the advent of glyphosate tolerant soybeans

innovation complementarity and environmental productivity effects reality or delusion evidence from the eu abstract innovation is a key element behind the achievement of desired environmental and economic performances regarding co2 mitigation strategies would require cuts in emissions of around 80 90 with respect to 1990 by 2050 in the eu we investigate whether complementarity namely integration between the adoption of environmental innovation measures and other technological and organizational innovations is a factor that has supported reduction in co2 emissions per value added that is environmental productivity we merge new eu innovation and wiod data to assess the innovation effects on sector co2 performances at a wide eu level we find that jointly adopting different innovations is not a widespread factor behind increases in environmental productivity nevertheless even though complementarity is not a low hanging fruit a case where innovation complementarity arises is for manufacturing sectors that integrate eco innovations with product innovations one example of this integrated action is a strategy that pursues energy efficiency with product value enhancement we believe that the lack of integrated innovation adoption behind environmental productivity performance is a signal of the current weaknesses economies face in tackling climate change and green economy challenges incremental rather than more radical strategies have predominated so far the latter have been confined to industrial niches in terms of the number of involved firms this is probably insufficient when we look at long term economic and environmental goals

interactions between incentive instruments contracts and quality in processing tomatoes contracting and other forms of vertical coordination are important parts of the supply chains for many agricultural products often the buyer cares about multiple product attributes affected by a grower s actions using data that are insulated from common methodological problems we test whether or not price incentives for two processing tomato quality attributes exhibit complementarity in improving delivered quality price incentives for the two attributes are substitutes for the provision of one and complements for the other this finding has consequences for the profit maximizing choice of incentive instruments for processors and contributes to the literature regarding tests for complementarities

complementarities of innovation activities an empirical analysis of the german manufacturing sector abstract innovation strategies in manufacturing often involve internal rd it is based on data from the german part of the community innovation survey cis 3 the results provide evidence for significant complementarities between internal r d and r d cooperation but cast doubt on the complementarity of internal and contracted r d since a productivity effect on firms patenting probability or sales with new products cannot be found

the duration of unemployment and unexpected inflation an empirical analysis from chapter 1 the point of departure for the collection of studies presented in the following is the message delivered by american economists during the beginning of the 70 s that a proper understanding of the unemployment problem requires a dynamic view of the labor market in general and unemployment in particular the dynamic view should emphasize the flows into and out of unemployment by analyzing these flows a better understanding should be obtained of i the causes of unemployment and ii the welfare consequences of unemployment the first study presented in chapter 2 aims at giving an empirical picture of the dynamics of unemployment in sweden several decompositions of unemployment which highlight the causes and welfare implications of unemployment are made in chapter 3 one possible explanation to the longer unemployment spells during the seventies is examined namely the unemployment benefits which were extended in different ways for different groups both in 1968 and in 1974 the analytical approach in the chapter is to analyze the surviving rates of the unemployed i e the probability of remaining unemployed from one period quarter to the next in chapter 4 the same analytical approach is applied to the analysis of the cyclical fluctuations of unemployment spells the search theoretic literature has suggested two different explanations of these cyclical fluctuations one has emphasized the importance of inflationary surprises and the other the quantity rationing constraints facing the unemployed the empirical importance of these comparative explanations are analyzed using swedish and u s data a model of the transition rate for the unemployed which captures both mechanisms is specified the study in chapter 5 aims at giving an improved empirical picture of unemployment as a welfare and distributional problem the first issue analyzed is whether unemployment has deleterious effects on individuals subsequent labor market prospects in particular the subsequent wage level the second issue analyzed is whether unemployment tends to hit the relatively low paid in the labor force the issue whether unemployment duration rather than the stock of unemployed should be the guideline for labor market policy is also discussed in the chapter in chapter 6 finally some important topics for future research in this field are dicussed

innovation complementarity and scale of production we present an econometrically feasible model that uses the information contained in the innovation profile of each firm to test for the existence of complementarity among production and innovation strategies our approach is able to distinguish between complementarity and correlation induced by unobserved heterogeneity we apply the model to analyze the spanish ceramic tile industry where the adoption of the single firing furnace in the 1980 s facilitated the introduction of new product designs as well as opening new ways of organizing production our econometric results show that there is significant complementarity between product and process innovation small firms tend to be more innovative overall

the economics of child labor if child labor as a mass phenomenon occurs not because of parental selfishness but because of the parents concern for the household s survival the popular argument for banning child labor loses much of its force however this assumption about parental decision making coupled with the assumption of substitutability in production between child and adult labor could result in multiple equilibria in the labor market with one equilibrium where children work and another where adult wage is high and children do not work the paper establishes this result and discusses its policy implications copyright 1998 by american economic association

child labor school attendance and intrahousehold gender bias in brazil an extensive survey data set of brazilian households is used to test whether intrahousehold gender bias affects the decisions of mothers and fathers to send their sons and daughters to work and to school an intrahousehold allocation model is examined in which fathers and mothers may affect the education investment and the child labor participation of their sons and daughters differently because of differences in parental preferences or differences in how additional schooling affects son s and daughter s acquisition of human capital brazilian household survey data for 1998 are used to estimate the impact of each parent s education on the labor market participation and school attendance of their sons and daughters for labor market participation the father s education has a greater negative impact than the mother s education on the labor status of sons the father s education also has a greater impact on son s labor status than on daughter s for schooling decisions the mother s education has a greater positive impact than the father s education on daughter s school attendance but fathers have a greater positive impact on sons school attendance than on daughter s

in the same boat but not equals the heterogeneous effects of parental income on child labour this paper examines the impact of parental income on child labour the empirical literature has found conflicting results regarding whether poverty leads parents to send their children to work mos

high school graduation performance and wages using data from the panel study of income dynamics and a proprietary sample of semiskilled production workers this paper investigates the reasons for the discontinuous increase in wages associated with graduation from high school i find a discontinuous decrease in workers propensities to quit or be absent however i do not find that high school graduates have a comparative advantage in production jobs requiring more training nor in either sample is there a discontinuous increase in required training associated with the jobs held by high school graduates the wage premium associated with graduation from high school appears to be procyclical falling during slumps periods in which employers are likely to be hoarding labor and in which quits and absences are least important to firms there is also some evidence suggesting that prior quits have a larger effect on the wages of high school graduates than on the wages of high school dropouts

dynamic complementarities in innovation strategies using a panel of irish manufacturing plants over the period 1991 2008 we test for dynamic complementarities in the joint use of internal r d and external knowledge sources we find little evidence either from considering successive cross sectional waves of comparable surveys or in terms of the strategy switch choices of specific plants that there has been a systematic move towards the joint use of internal and external knowledge in innovation we then test formally for the presence of complementarities in the joint use of internal r d and external innovation linkages in static terms we find no evidence of complementarity but in dynamic terms find evidence that strategy switches by individual plants towards a more open strategy are accompanied by increased innovation outputs

time preference and life cycle consumption with endogenous survival we provide a structural theory of time preference and derive a functional form of intertemporal preferences by postulating that individuals make their life cycle consumption choices as if to maximize expected lifetime this yields a nontime separable expected utility representation where the inverse of the coefficient of intertemporal substitution exceeds the coefficient of relative risk aversion the rate of time preference depends on the inverse of expected remaining lifetime and the effect of age on the productivity of consumption in affecting health the preference formulation is applied in a standard intertemporal consumption model to illustrate the implied life cycle consumption choices

games with strategic complementarities new applications to industrial organization this paper provides an introduction to the analysis of games with strategic complementarities and applications to industrial organization oligopoly pricing comparative statics and a taxonomy of strategic behavior in two stage games

evolution of time preference by natural selection comment we reexamine alan r rogers 1994 analysis of the biological basis of the rate of time preference although his basic insight concerning the derivation of the utility function holds up the functional form he uses does not generate equilibrium evolutionary behavior moreover rogers relies upon an interior solution for a particular kind of intergenerational transfer we show such interior solutions need not generally arise hence rogers most striking prediction namely that the real interest rate should be about 2 percent per annum does not follow

child labor cause consequence and cure with remarks on international labor standards although the literature on child labor is enormous it lacks a common theoretical foundation in this paper analytical survey of this field is provided keeping in mind that this is an area where the primary reason for theorizing is ultimately to influence policy overall it is noted that the literature on child labor is an illustration of abundance and anarchy although empirical writings on child labor are numerous they are not usually founded on theory it is argued that there is much that can be done in curbing the issue of child labor several theories were studied in this paper including collaborative intervention such efforts include public action which alters the economic environment such that the parents of their own accord prefer to withdraw the child from labor force another strategy involves the government a legal intervention is enforcing a total ban on the subject although such interventions have good intentions some of them may not be feasible in general it is better to take economy wide measures against child labor and if there is to be a sector specific ban it should be based on the working conditions of that sector rather than the destination of the goods

birth order and the intrahousehold allocation of time and education this paper develops a model of intrahousehold allocation with endogenous fertility which captures the relationship between birth order and investment in children it shows that a birth order effect in intrahouse hold allocation can arise even without assumptions about parental preferences for specific birth orders of children or genetic endowments varying by birth order the important contribution is that fertility is treated as endogenous a possibility that other models of intrahousehold allocation have ignored the implications of the model are that children with higher birth orders that is who are born later have an advantage over siblings with lower birth orders and that parents who are inequality averse will not have more than one child the model furthermore shows that not taking account of the endogeneity of fertility when analyzing intrahousehold allocation may seriously bias the results the effects of a child s birth order on its human capital accumulation are analyzed using a longitudinal

estimating the labor market signaling value of the ged this paper tests the labor market signaling hypothesis for the general educational development ged equivalency credential using a unique data set containing ged test scores and social security administration ssa earnings data we exploit variation in ged status generated by differential state ged passing standards to identify the signaling value of the ged net of human capital effects our results indicate that the ged signal increases the earnings of young white dropouts by 10 to 19 percent we find no statistically significant effects for minority dropouts

is child labor inefficient we build a model of child labor and study its implications for welfare we assume that there is a trade off between child labor and the accumulation of human capital even if parents are altruistic and child labor is socially inefficient it may arise in equilibrium because parents fail to fully internalize its negative effects this occurs when bequests are zero or when capital markets are imperfect we also study the effects of a simple ban on child labor and derive conditions under which it may be pareto improving in general equilibrium we show that the implications of child labor for fertility are ambiguous

how changes in labor demand affect unemployed workers this study analyzes the manner in which certain favorable shifts in labor demand affect job search although all shifts increase reservation wages they do not necessarily decrease expected unemployment spell durations and increase expected post unemployment wages so that upward sloping short run phillips curves may occur a result due to chamberlain is used to demonstrate that if the wage offer distribution is restricted to be logconcave two of the shifts guarantee downward sloping phillips curves for one of these two shifts previous research by flinn and heckman used logconcavity in a different manner to achieve properly shaped phillips curves

on additive spillovers and returns to scale in r d abstract this paper explores economically meaningful forms of cost functions for process research and development in the presence of imperfect appropriability of inventive output we propose as a central criterion to be satisfied by the knowledge production process that a given r d investment should always produce more cost reduction if devoted to one lab rather than two independent labs operated under natural spillovers with input spillovers this postulate is broadly satisfied however with output spillovers this is generally not the case for r d technologies having decreasing returns to scale we identify economically plausible restrictions on the size of spillovers and on the properties of the r d cost function so as to bring about compatibility with the above postulate some empirical evidence in support of both the criterion and of its theoretical implications is discussed

the policy analysis of child labor a comparative study the policy analysis of child labour c grootaert h a patrinos modelling the determinants of child labour c grootaert child labour in cote d ivoire k cartwright child labour in urban bolivia k cartwright h a patrinos child labour in the philippines c sakellariou a lall policies to reduce child labour c grootaert h a patrinos

parental actions and sibling inequality this paper presents a simple model of resource allocation within the family the model is based on two main assumptions there are nonconvexities in human capital investments and parents cannot borrow to finance their children s education the model shows that poor and middle income parents will often find it optimal to channel human capital investments into a few of their children thus creating sizable inequalities among siblings the paper shows that the predictions of the model are consistent with the available evidence for three latin american countries d 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the evolution of intertemporal preferences where do preferences come from what determines their properties though traditionally reluctant to ask such questions economists have recently turned to evolutionary models for answers we focus on intertemporal preferences here arising out of the evolutionary implications of different reproductive strategies or life histories an agent s life history specifies the agent s number and timing and in a richer model quality of offspring evolution will select the life history that maximizes the growth rate of the associated group of individuals we begin with the simplest possible biological life history that of a semelparous agent that if it survives a fixed number of years reproduces and then dies we show the evolutionary criterion for success in this case entails hyperbolic time discounting of the log of the number of offspring produced the rate of time preference is a function of age however not of time relative to the present and there are no preference reversals in the sense of behavioral economics at the same time the optimal strategy maximizes the exponentially discounted number of offspring provided we discount at the sum of the death rate and the maximal growth rate conventional discounting thus suffices to induce optimal choices from the agent more generally if the animal is iteroparous that is has a nondegenerate profile of offspring we show the evolutionary indifference curves over offspring of various ages are hyperplanes that are not parallel but tilt to reflect greater impatience as the growth rate increases there is no additively separable function of the age profile of expected offspring that is globally equivalent to this basic biological growth rate the evolution of intertemporal preferences

child labor and learning this paper uses a unique micro panel dataset of brazilian students to investigate the impact of working while in school on learning outcomes the potential endogeneity is addressed through the use of difference in difference and instrumental variable estimators a negative effect of working on learning outcomes in math and portuguese is found the effects of child work range from 3 to 8 percent of a standard deviation decline in test score which represents a loss of about a quarter to a half of a year of learning on average

the factory system in the british industrial revolution a complementarity thesis abstract this paper offers an explanation for the rise of the factory system in britain during the industrial revolution 1770 1850 based on the concept of complementarity investment in machinery process supervision and improved quality control formed a cluster of complementary activities in which adopting any one increased the marginal return to also adopting the others further factory owners introduced process supervision not only to increase work effort but also to balance worker incentives among production quality control and asset maintenance tasks to test this hypothesis i have constructed a new data set from firm studies and archival records measures of firms adoption of the activities are positively correlated in the cross section of firms providing evidence in favor of the complementarity hypothesis

competing with menus of tariff options the nature of numerous strategies of firms is often discrete or countable this adds difficulty to measuring and testing for the existence of complementarities among several strategies this paper introduces a generalized multivariate count data model that allows estimating correlations of any sign among the pricing decisions of competing firms in a manner that is robust to the existence of unobserved heterogeneity leading to either over and underdispersion of the distribution of counts thus it is possible to overcome a major challenge in testing whether two decisions are strategic complements or substitutes namely dealing with the effect of unobserved heterogeneity i study how firms actually compete in nonlinear tariffs by analyzing the interrelation between the incumbent and entrant s decisions to offer a given number of tariff options results document the existence of complementarity among tariff options regardless of whether they are dominated or not this result supports the view that the implementation of nonlinear tariffs by means of a menu of self selecting two part tariffs has some strategic competitive value jel c35 d43 m21

evolution of time preference by natural selection this paper entertains the hypothesis that human time preferences are in evolutionary equilibrium i e that no mutation changing time preferences could be favored by natural selection this hypothesis implies that the marginal rate of substitution mrs holding darwinian fitness constant must equal the mrs holding utility constant furthermore in a market economy the latter must equal the mrs in exchange exploiting these principles the author finds that the long term real interest rate should equal ln 2 per generation about 2 percent per year and that young adults should discount the future more rapidly than their elders copyright 1994 by american economic association

r d induced industry polarization and shake outs abstract we consider the standard two stage game of r d and cournot competition with ex ante identical firms but depart from the literature in assuming that r d is characterized by mildly instead of strongly decreasing returns to scale we establish that only extreme r d levels are possible at equilibrium and that for a broad range of parameters equilibria are asymmetric in r d levels possibly leading one firm to endogenously exit this provides a simple link between returns to scale in r d and industry polarization including shake outs a novelty is that exit may be triggered by positive opportunities in a strategic setting given the original nature of our r d equilibrium a complete welfare analysis is conducted including a possible role for r d subsidies

does religion constrain the risky sex behaviour associated with hiv aids this article examines the likely effectiveness of public health interventions designed to change the risky sexual behaviour associated with human immunodeficiency virus acquired immune deficiency syndrome hiv aids by faith based organizations fbos we utilize data from the general social survey gss to estimate an economic model of sexual behaviour our theoretical approach proceeds by rationalizing on evolutionary grounds the existence of sexual activity in individual preference functions with unobservable costs imposed by religious beliefs and participation given the objective of utility maximization we justify the existence of demand functions for sexual activity that generate empirically testable hypotheses about the effects of religion and religious participation on risky sexual activity our results suggest that at least in the case of heterosexuals fbos can indeed influence the risky sexual behaviour that is associated with the transmission of hiv aids

assessing complementarity in organizational innovations for technological innovation the role of knowledge management practices we empirically investigate the pattern of complementarity among four organizational practices firm level data were drawn from the community innovation survey carried out in luxembourg supermodularity tests confirm the crucial role of organizational innovation in raising firms technological innovation the pattern of complementarity across organizational practices differs according to the type of innovation i e product or process as well as according to whether the firm is in the first stage of its innovation process i e being innovative or not or in a later stage i e sales of new products

evolution of preferences we endogenize preferences using the indirect evolutionary approach individuals are randomly matched to play a two person game individual subjective preferences determine their behaviour and may differ from the actual objective pay offs that determine fitness matched individuals may observe the opponents preferences perfectly not at all or with some in between probability when preferences are observable a stable outcome must be efficient when they are not observable a stable outcome must be a nash equilibrium and all strict equilibria are stable we show that for pure strategy outcomes these conclusions are robust to allowing almost perfect and almost no observability with the notable exception that inefficient strict equilibria may fail to be stable with any arbitrarily small degree of observability despite being stable with no observability

competitive pressure and the adoption of complementary innovations liberalization of the european automobile distribution system in 2002 limits the ability of manufacturers to impose vertical restraints leading to a substantial increase in competitive pressure among dealers we estimate an equilibrium model of profit maximization to evaluate how dealers change their innovation adoption strategies following the elimination of exclusive territories using french data we evaluate the existence of complementarities between the adoption of software applications and the scale of production firms view these innovations as substitutes and concentrate their effort in one type of software as they expand their scale of production results are robust to the existence of unobserved heterogeneity

in search of complementarity in innovation strategy internal r d and external knowledge acquisition empirical research on complementarity between organizational design decisions has traditionally focused on the question of existence of complementarity in this paper we take a broader approach to the issue combining a productivity and an adoption approach while including a search for contextual variables in the firms strategy that affects complementarity analysis of contextual variables is not only interesting per se but also improves the productivity test for the existence of complementarity we use our empirical methodology to analyze complementarity between innovation activities internal research and development r d and external knowledge acquisition our results suggest that internal r d and external knowledge acquisition are complementary innovation activities but that the degree of complementarity is sensitive to other elements of the firms strategic environment we identify reliance on basic r dthe importance of universities and research centers as an information source for the innovation processas an important contextual variable affecting complementarity between internal and external innovation activities

socioeconomic and demographic aspects of school enrollment and attendance in rural botswana as has been true for other african and non african mineral rich economies the most serious constraint on botswana s development to date has been the lack of human capital schapera notes that in traditional botswana schooling was conceived as a burden on the family because of both the new expenditures associated with schooling and the loss of the child s contribution to household production and income ashton notes that parents in botswana apparently failed to perceive the benefits of education 2 the situation has changed fundamentally since schapera and ashton wrote in the forties largely through government policy programs of school construction and teacher training schools have become relatively widespread the benefits of schooling are apparent in the labor market and are even more immediately evident at home schools often provide free meals and health care to their pupils however the schooling system may not be designed to serve sparsely populated areas completely this reflects in part the movement and social spread of botswana s rural population across villages lands and cattle posts moreover children especially in households with assets play a role in the household economy 3 as a consequence the indirect costs of schooling those noted by shapera may still be substantial in botswana today these costs in addition to the direct costs of transportation and uniforms may be prohibitive to the schooling of many children the evidence i present later shows that even primary schooling was not universal in botswana at the time of the 1974 rural income distribution survey on which this present study is based 4 this paper is to study the demographic and socioeconomic corre

reservation wages and their labor market effects for black and white male youth this paper presents an empirical analysis of self reported reservation wages for unemployed young black and white males the results show that young blacks seek wages which are comparable to those of young whites in absolute terms but which are higher relative to what is available on the demand side of the market these relatively higher reservation wages of young blacks contribute to their unemployment durations and somewhat to their subsequently received wages changes in reservation wages may thus help to explain the trends in wages and employment of young blacks in recent years

wage dispersion over the business cycle abstract in this paper i provide robust evidence that fluctuations in wage dispersion are independent of the business cycle while residual wage dispersion i e dispersion of wages within narrowly defined demographic and skill groups of workers increases during booms and lessens during recessions moreover i show that the procyclical fluctuations in residual wage dispersion are mainly generated by cyclical changes in the upper half of the residual wage distribution

does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy conducted between 1995 and 1996 in bangladesh the study observed that the subsidy increases schooling but its effect on child labour is ambiguous the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy the reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys girls represents about one quarter eighth of the increase in their school enrollment rate

the role of birth order in child labour and schooling does when a child was born relative to his or her siblings affect whether the child attends school or participates in child labour we investigate this question by estimating the causal effect of birth order on the probabilities of school attendance and child labour participation to address the potential endogeneity of family size we use instrumental variable approach where the proportion of boys in the family is used to instrument family size using a longitudinal household survey data from ethiopia we estimate unobserved effects bivariate probit instrumental variable model of school attendance and child labour choices the results suggest that the probability of child labour participation decreases with birth order but we find no evidence that suggests birth order affects the probability of school attendance however among children who are going to school hours spent studying increases with birth order results from complementary time use analysis reveal that there is no birth order effect on hour

the trade off between child labour and human capital formation a tanzanian case study we investigate the degree to which there is a trade off between child labour and human capital formation using time log data of children from a tanzanian household survey we find that a tradeoff between hours of work and study exists and hours of work tend to be more affected by social conditions than hours of study hours of work are negatively correlated to reading and mathematical skills through the reduction of human capital investment activities indicating a trade off between child labour and human capital the results point up the complexity of the issue and the need for detailed time allocation data

evolution and human nature from an economic perspective on individual decision making human beings have three key characteristics preferences beliefs and rationality beliefs are the probabilities with which people think various outcomes will occur conditional on information that might be available preferences are the rankings over the set of gambles that are based on such beliefs over the outcomes rationality is the extent to which people succeed in choosing optimal actions in the light of their beliefs and preferences and the extent to which their beliefs are appropriately modified by their information economists typically impose only rather weak assumptions on preferences for example preferences are taken to be transitive and sometimes less explicitly exogenous and unchanging stronger assumptions are typically imposed on preferences in specific contexts however for example preferences over time might be represented by an additively separable function with constant rate of discount despite widespread recognition that this case is a special one further attitudes to risk are often represented by the expected utility theorem which rests on assumptions that are strong if also appealing the assumptions made on rationality in particular are usually very strong that is rationality in economic models usually entails the exact optimization of preferences and modification of beliefs in accordance with bayes theorem the economist s basic picture of preferences beliefs and rationality has been subject to challenges from a growing number of empirical anomalies the proposed explanations of these anomalies involve relaxing the assumptions that economists make on these preferences beliefs or rationality for example preferences

sustainability constraints versus optimality versus intertemporal concern and axioms versus data sustainable sustained or survivable development are defined here as distinct sustainability constraints on intertemporal distribution in a context which ignores uncertainty environmental and intratemporal concerns such constraints are neither self contradictory nor redundant for they can conflict with maximizing the present value of utility optimality nor inferior since the axioms underlying optimality are ethically arbitrary and refuted by empirical psychological data axiomatic arguments may clarify but cannot resolve debates about intertemporal concerns data suggest that sustainability constraints are not respected and that intertemporal welfare functions containing a preference for sustained improvement may better reflect what bodies politic mean by sustainability

the influence of living with parents on women s decision making participation in the household evidence from the southern philippines abstract this article analyses the dynamics of women s participation in the decisions made in the household by looking at the effects of events that transpired in the recent period results suggest that the wife s participation status is positively affected by the presence of parents either hers or the spouse s in the household results also show that the wife s parents significantly affect participation in minor issues while the spouse s parents significantly affect the more relevant financial issues the article also offers a cursory discussion on the role of household headship

truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality 1988 truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality journal of business economic statistics vol 6 no 3 pp 335 337

complementarities in innovation policy this paper develops a framework for testing discrete complementarities in innovation policy using european data on obstacles to innovation we propose a discrete test of supermodularity in innovation policy leading to a number of inequality constraints we apply our test to two types of innovation decisions to innovate or not and if so by how much we find that the evidence regarding the existence of complementarity in innovation policies depends on the phase of innovation that is targeted getting firms innovative or increasing their innovation intensity as well as on the particular pair of policies that is being considered the two phases of the innovation process i e the probability of becoming an innovator and the intensity of innovation are subject to different constraints interestingly there seems to be a need to adopt a package of policies to make firms innovate while a more targeted choice among policies is necessary to make them more innovative