the private wage sector in cote d ivoire homogeneity or heterogeneity one dominant feature of economic development is change in the structure of the economy some sectors expand while others shrink in response to changes in output markets considerable adjustments must take place in factor markets as well development will therefore proceed more speedily when barriers in the factor markets are minimal whether or not barriers in the labor market exist macroeconomic discussions of labor markets usually assume uninhibited flows between sectors 13 similarly a large literature on earnings of wage workers has treated the wage sector as a homogeneous part of the labor market yet if the wage sector is heterogeneous model estimates have no empirical meaning and policy recommendations have no foundation

individual taxpayer response to tax cuts 1982 1984 with implications for the revenue maximizing tax rate abstract this paper measures the response of taxpayers to the u s personal rate reductions from 1982 to 1984 a baseline income distribution is created to describe what level and distribution could be expected in the absence of tax changes comparison of this baseline with actual tax return data shows that at least one sixth and probably one quarter of the revenue ascribable to the rate reductions was recouped by changes in taxpayer behavior the data also show that federal income tax revenue would have been maximized at a tax rate of about 35 percent and total income tax revenue maximized at a total tax rate of about 40 percent

voluntary governance mechanisms in global supply chains beyond csr to a stakeholder utility perspective poor working conditions remain a serious problem in supplier facilities in developing countries while previous research has explored this from the developed buyers side we examine this phenomenon from the perspective of developing countries suppliers and subcontractors utilizing qualitative data from a major knitwear exporting cluster in india and a stakeholder management lens we develop a framework that shows how the assumptions of conventional buyer driven voluntary governance break down in the dilution of buyer power and in the web of factors rooted in suppliers traditions beliefs local demands and resource dependency we reveal out how success in governing collaborative global supply chains often falls short within the subcontracting stage where a stakeholder management mindset is elusive to most participants we suggest that success in governing collaborative global supply chains is dependent on concepts of stakeholder utility and the presence of shared value that is often at odds with the realities of power information asymmetry and compliance reward systems inherent in the non market coordination of global supply chains our findings offer important insights for delineating the concepts of value creation from csr concepts and practices and for modifying the basic assumptions of conventional supply chain governance

the importance of group coverage how tax policy shaped u s health insurance in 1954 the internal revenue service stipulated that employer contributions to the health insurance plans of their employees were to be excluded from employee taxable income today the tax subsidy is major feature of the u s health care market this paper examines the initial effects of the tax subsidy on the demand for health insurance using previously unexamined data from 1953 and 1958 results suggest that the tax subsidy increased the growth of group insurance particularly among union members and employed persons this is a critical effect because group insurance is not only less expensive than individual insurance but it is also easier to obtain and households with access to group health insurance are far more likely to purchase health insurance coverage than those without similar access by increasing access to group insurance the tax subsidy fostered an increase in the purchase of group health insurance by people who may not have purchased individual coverage and generated institutional change as it cemented an employment based system of group health insurance in the united states this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

determinants of female administrative support personnel compensation at a large public university compared with research on faculty salaries and executive compensations very little is known about the earnings of administrative office support personnel this paper constructed and estimated the total compensation variant of a modified human capital earnings model using a 1989 90 fiscal year microdata sample consisting of about 300 all female office workers administrative secretaries regular secretaries and clerks at a large public university the total compensation consisting of wages plus actual dollar costs of five employer paid health life accident longevity sick leave vacation and pension benefit plans specification fitted the data reasonably well the pattern of estimated differential returns to specific human capital attributes within administrative support occupations tends to be significant and is consistent with the skill atrophy prediction of the human capital theory implications of the findings for secretarial productivity career choice decisions and opportunities for advancemen

ethical compliance programs and corporate illegality testing the assumptions of the corporate sentencing guidelines this paper analyses the ethical performance of foreign investment enterprises operating in china in comparison to that of the indigenous state owned enterprises collectives and private enterprises it uses both the deontological approach and the utilitarian approach in conceptualization and applies quantitative and econometric techniques to ethical evaluations of empirical evidences it shows that according to various ethical performance indicators foreign investment enterprises have fared well in comparison with local firms this paper also tries to unravel the effect of a difference in business culture and competitive market forces on ethical performance by comparing the behavior of foreign investment enterprises with that of the indigenous state owned enterprises and collectives on the one hand and with that of the indigenous private enterprises on the other

codes of ethics partly as a result of much recent evidence of business and government crime a large proportion of major corporations have adopted codes of ethics government service is also making more use of them the electrical manufacturing anti trust conspiracy and 1973 1976 investigation of foreign and domestic bribery were immediate prods there are also government codes of which the aspa code is most widely distributed corporate codes discuss relations to employees interemployee relationships whistle blowing effect on environment commercial bribery insider information other conflicts of interest anti trust accounting consumer relations and political activities a discussion of use of codes shows partly favorable results a number of corporation decisions have not yet become a subject of code provisions codes will be more useful if the reasons behind each order are stated and team work is encouraged

two stage residual inclusion estimation addressing endogeneity in health econometric modeling the paper focuses on two estimation methods that have been widely used to address endogeneity in empirical research in health economics and health services research two stage predictor substitution 2sps and two stage residual inclusion 2sri 2sps is the rote extension to nonlinear models of the popular linear two stage least squares estimator the 2sri estimator is similar except that in the second stage regression the endogenous variables are not replaced by first stage predictors instead first stage residuals are included as additional regressors in a generic parametric framework we show that 2sri is consistent and 2sps is not results from a simulation study and an illustrative example also recommend against 2sps and favor 2sri our findings are important given that there are many prominent examples of the application of inconsistent 2sps in the recent literature this study can be used as a guide by future researchers in health economics who are confronted with endogeneity in their empirical work

compensating differentials and self selection an application to lawyers this paper models individual choice between two types of jobs as dependent on the difference in potential earnings and on preferences for nonpecuniary the model leads to simultaneous estimation of earnings and job choice functions in a manner that takes account of self selection of individuals into the sector of highest utility an application to lawyers choosing between private and public interest law casts doubt on the notion that public interest lawyers are accepting substantially lower earnings by virtue of their choice an impression derived from estimation of earnings functions without accounting for self selection the estimation technique also takes proper account of the choice based nature of the sample which appears to be important

default probabilities for mortgages abstract models now exist for valuing the default option embedded in a mortgage implicitly these models generate all the information necessary to determine the probability of default in any possible situation economists and policymakers may find such default probabilities considerably more interesting than the nonobservable dollar value of the default option this paper provides the analytical procedure necessary to calculate such probabilities and presents a wide range of results the decision to terminate a mortgage results in the loss of the options to default or prepay in the future because of this consideration the price of a house must fall below the point of zero equity before a rational borrower defaults we provide evidence that even in the absence of transaction costs this value of delay results in substantial levels of negative equity being observed without default occurring in fact by not accounting for the value of delay most of the current empirical literature cited in this article substantially overestimates the role of transaction costs in the decision to default

employers provision of pensions and sick pay evidence from the 1990 workplace indistrial relations survey this paper examines the determinants of pension and sick pay provision using data on some 1100 private sector establishments with 25 or more employees it also compares the wages of employees eligible for a pension or for sick pay with the wages of those for whom no such provision was made using ordered probit techniques three levels of provision were examined with respect to each type of benefit no provision provision for white collar employees only and provision for all employees benefit provision was found to be associated with work place size and with the extent to which employment was white collar it was negatively associated with the level of part time working new establishments were slightly less likely to offer pensions than older ones but age had no impact on sick pay provision perhaps because it is less complex and costly than pension provision establishments which recognized trade unions were more likely to offer fringe benefits than those which did not however blue collar unions se

does health insurance reduce illness related worker absenteeism the objective of this article is to examine whether having health insurance reduces illness related absenteeism among older workers a nationally representative sample of 1780 workers in the united states aged 52 64 are drawn from the 2004 2006 health and retirement study hrs binary logistic regressions and censored tobit models are estimated for workers likelihood of missing work days due to illness and the number of illness related work days missed respectively while explicitly addressing the possibility of insurance selection effects the findings suggest that over a 12 month period older workers without health insurance are as likely as insured workers to miss work days due to illness and there are no differences in the number of days missed between insured and uninsured workers however there is strong evidence that poor baseline health onset of new diseases and longer hospitalization significantly increase an older worker s absenteeism at work these results suggest that having health ins

absenteeism as a mechanism for approaching an optimal labor market equilibrium an empirical study this research examines absence as a response to a non optimal labor market equilibrium its basic premise is that workers may be using absenteeism to move themselves closer to an optimal equilibrium in situations where due to greater than desiredwork hours the workers marginal rate of substitution of income for leisure mrs is less than the wage rate for the last hour worked this notion is tested for a sample of workers using tobit analysis with individual data from company records on absence and wages and an empirical measure of each worker s mrs the results indicate a significant positive relationship between absence and the difference between a worker s mrs and wage

restoring the promise of american labor law the product of an october 1993 conference on labor law reform jointly sponsored by the school of industrial and labor relations at cornell u and the department of economic research at the afl cio this volume both argues the need for fundamental reform of the legal and institutional underpinnings o

a note on the substitution between wage and non wage benefits in spot labour markets abstract recent empirical work suggests that spot labour market workers have a strong preference towards wages over fringe benefits this paper provides a theoretical framework based on this finding after a discussion of the utility function and equilibrium the paper proceeds to a comparative statics analysis an important result is that workers spend all extra compensation on wages only this is shown to be true in the case that wage benefits are taxed furthermore proportional taxes have no effect for workers choice between wage and non wage benefits

bubbles in us regional house prices evidence from house price income ratios at the state level we investigate the presence of bubbles in the us house price income ratio at the state level by applying the recent time series based econometric test to data from january 1975 to december 2014 we

the methods used to implement an ethical code of conduct and employee attitudes in the process of implementing an ethical code of conduct a business organization uses formal methods of these training courses and means of enforcement are common and are also suitable for self regulation the usa is encouraging business corporations to self regulate with the federal sentencing guidelines fsg the guidelines prescribe similar formal methods and specify that unless such methods are used the process of implementation will be considered ineffective and the business will therefore not be considered to have complied with the guidelines business organizations invest enormous funds on formal methods however recent events indicate that these are not by themselves yielding the desired results our study based on a sample of 812 employees and conducted in an israeli subsidiary of a leading multinational high tech corporation headquartered in the us indicates that of the methods used in the process of implementation one of the informal methods namely the social norms of the organization is perceived by employees to have the most influence on their conduct this result when examined against employee tenure remains relatively stable over the years and stands in contradistinction to the formalistic approach embedded in the fsg we indirectly measure the effectiveness of the percieved most influential implementation process methods by analyzing their impact on employee attitudes namely personal ethical commitment and employees commitment to organizational values our results indicate that the informal methods manager sets an example or social norms of the organization are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal method training and courses on the subject of ethics the personal control method my own personal values differs significantly from all the other methods in that it yields the highest degree of personal ethical commitment and the lowest degree of employees commitment to organizational values

the elusive wage benefit trade off the case of employer provided health insurance this study shows that standard regressions estimated to measure a trade off between wages and health insurance are misspecified by insufficiently accounting for establishment and firm size an interactive size corrected specification is more likely to reveal a trade off furthermore because insurance decisions are typically made by firms and wages set by establishments the insurance constraint on establishments in multi establishment firms weakens the trade off we use model generated data to show that both factors contribute to the failure in previous research to identify a trade off and data from a cross section of northern californian establishments to test for a trade off in multi establishment and single establishment firms

optimal executive perquisites abstract expenditures by executives on personal perquisites can be optimal for the board of directors using a principal agent model we present a numerical example where the principal can reduce the total cost of compensation for the agent by offering a lower expected bonus and a larger budget allocation from which the agent diverts some funds to perquisites this is optimal when the agent has sufficiently large diminishing marginal utility for perquisites

a new test for supplier inducement and application to the canadian market for dental care abstract the hypothesis that dentists do not induce demand for their services is tested using reduced form estimates of the price elasticity of demand if demand is autonomous shifts in supply for whatever reason should generate equivalent estimates provided access costs change proportionately with shifts in supply if demand inducement is present demand can appear to be very elastic or very inelastic depending on what is causing the shift in supply each of three applications of this test conducted in the context of jointly estimated fee and quantity equations using annual canadian data for 1956 1989 rejects the no inducement hypothesis

farming the tax code the impact of high marginal tax rates on agricultural tax shelters surprisingly little scholarly work has examined the practice of farming the tax code in which accounting losses on agricultural investments are used to shelter other income from taxation economic theory suggests that the amount of investment in agricultural tax shelters is positively related to the marginal tax rate this hypothesis is empirically investigated using a sample of federal individual income tax returns filed for 1983 both the probability of reporting a farm tax loss and the amount of farm losses are increased by a rise in the marginal tax rate especially among upper income taxpayers

dynamic implications of absence behaviour this paper analyses the absence behaviour of workers in the context of a two period model the theoretical results that emerge highlight the potential benefits of analysing absenteeism within a multi time period model as opposed to a single time period model which has generally been adopted by the theoretical models of absenteeism to date workers are employed under a two period contract which is characterized by an experience rated sick pay scheme the theoretical results of the model indicate that if a worker faces such a sick pay scheme the theoretical results of the model indicate that if a worker faces such a sick pay scheme then the probability of absence in the current period is reduced the empirical analysis explores the absence rates observed from a set of workers who face an experience rated sick pay scheme the empirical results present some support in favour of the predictions which arise from the theoretical model

house price expectations alternative mortgage products and default rapid house price depreciation and rising unemployment were the main drivers of the huge increase in mortgage default during the downturn years of 2007 to 2010 however mortgage default was also partly driven by an increased reliance on alternative mortgage products such as pay option arms and interest only mortgages which allow the borrower to defer principal amortization the goal of this paper is to better understand the forces that spurred use of alternative mortgages during the housing boom and the resulting impact on default patterns relying on a unifying conceptual framework to guide the empirical work the conceptual framework allows borrowers to choose the extent of mortgage backloading the postponement of loan repayment through various mechanisms that constitutes a main feature of alternative mortgages the model shows that when future house price expectations become more favorable reducing default concerns mortgage choices shift toward alternative contracts this prediction is confirmed by empirical evidence showing that an increase in past house price appreciation which captures more favorable expectations for the future raises the market share of alternative mortgages in addition using a proportional hazard default model the paper tests the fundamental presumption that backloaded mortgages are more likely to default finding support for this view the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the federal reserve bank of philadelphia or the federal reserve system this paper is available free of charge at http www philadelphiafed org research anddata publications working papers

people i know job search and social networks we assess the strength of information spillovers relating unemployment duration of workers displaced by firm closures to their former colleagues current employment status displaced specific networks are recovered from a 20 year panel of matched employer employee data spillovers are identified by comparing performances of codisplaced workers a one standard deviation increase in the network employment rate reduces unemployment duration by about 8 the effect is magnified if contacts recently searched for a job and if their current employer is spatially and technologically closer to the displaced worker stronger ties and lower competition for information favor reemployment several indirect tests exclude other interaction mechanisms

moral hazard and sickness insurance abstract we study if the replacement level in the swedish national sickness insurance which replaces foregone earnings due to temporary illnesses affects work absence behavior we use micro data and estimate the effects of a major reform whereby the replacement level during the first 90 days in each absence spell was reduced on work attendance to separate out the effect of the reform from any trend in work absence we distinguish between the implications on the incidence of work absence i e the frequency of spells and the duration of the spells we also use a regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effects on the prevalence of work absence finally we estimate elasticities with respect to the replacement level in the sickness insurance

the role of pensions in the labor market a survey of the literature because employer sponsored group pension plans entail agreements between workers and their employers explicitly linking future payment and employment they offer an unusual window into long term employment relationships this review of recent research on pensions explores how pensions influence employee compensation retirement turnover and other matters central to the determination of labor s price and quantity over time the authors also outline some unanswered questions and difficult to reconcile findings because the pension promise involves an explicit and relatively well documented set of statements regarding future contingent payment and employment an examination of the design and operation of employersponsored group pension plans can yield important insights into the long term employment relationship specifically pension research illuminates some important labor market questions in two ways it offers insight into an important element of compensation in its own right and it furthers our understanding of labor markets in which long term

borrowing constraints and homeownership borrowing constraints enable lenders to manage risk using non price terms in the presence of imperfect information but also impact the ability of households to become homeowners some individual households welfare would improve if constraints were lifted however as the subprime crisis demonstrates indiscriminately lifting borrowing constraints increases risk in the mortgage market unsustainably and can entail systemic risk the literature has identified three constraints that limit access to mortgages wealth through maximum loan to value ratio income through maximum debt to income ratio and credit through minimum credit score households with insufficient wealth or income relative to their preferred housing consumption and local house prices or an inadequate credit score are unable to become owners even if that would be the optimal tenure based on their preferences expected duration of residence and user cost of owning relative to renting changes in the mortgage market can lead to relaxed borrowing constraints expanded access to mortgages and increased homeownership whether such credit expansions are sustained depends on the ability of financial markets and regulations to ensure proper risk management and assessment the first section reviews evidence of the existence of credit rationing in the us mortgage market the second section discusses the impact of borrowing constraints on homeownership outcomes post world war ii the third section presents new estimates of the effect of borrowing constraints in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis

subprime mortgages and the housing bubble this paper explores the link between the house price expectations of mortgage lenders and the extent of subprime lending it argues that bubble conditions in the housing market are likely to spur subprime lending with favorable price expectations easing the default concerns of lenders and thus increasing their willingness to extend loans to risky borrowers since the demand created by subprime lending feeds back onto house prices such lending also helps to fuel an emerging housing bubble these ideas are illustrated in a theoretical model and tentative support is found in empirical work exploring the connection between price expectations and the extent of subprime lending the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the federal reserve bank of philadelphia the federal reserve board of governors or the federal reserve system this paper is available free of charge at http www philadelphiafed org research and data publications working papers

absenteeism predictors least squares rank regression and model selection results this paper examines the determinants of absenteeism using ols rank based re gressions and a model selection procedure the results show that personal attributes are the most important determinants of long term absences for total working days lost the penalty factors are the most significant predictors the results also show that absenteeism tends to be lower among firms with more part time workers unionization on the other hand increases the total days lost due to absenteeism

labor market effects of employer provided health insurance i introduction increasing health insurance coverage is arguably an important policy goal the congressional budget office 2003 estimates that in 1998 20 30 million americans had no health insurance for the entire year approximately 40 million were uninsured at a specific point in time in the year and nearly 60 million were without coverage some time during the year most individuals who have health insurance in the united states obtain it through their employer in 1999 65 8 of nonelderly americans had employer provided insurance also called group insurance or employer sponsored insurance either through their own employer or through the employer of another household member see gruber 2001 employer provided insurance plans generally have lower premiums and offer more benefits than individual insurance plans health insurance providers can offer cheaper and better plans to company employees for at least two reasons first the average administrative cost of such plans is lower than individual plans second employment based plans are typically subject to less adverse selection than individual plans particularly so for large employers furthermore the tax subsidy afforded employment based health insurance renders the effective consumer price substantially lower than the cost see pauly 1986 and gruber 2001 together these various factors give a strong incentive for employers to offer and employees to accept coverage as part of their employment contract as employer provided insurance is by far the most prevalent form of coverage in the private sector policy makers look for further expansion of this base as a way to insure the uninsured while avoiding direct public financing as a way to increase employer based health insurance coverage some states either have or are considering government mandates that require employers to provide insurance to certain types of workers 1 the state of hawaii requires private sector employers to offer health insurance to all workers who work for more than 20 h a week and requires these workers to have insurance the state of california is currently considering a similar mandate there is a considerable interest from policy makers on the effects of such mandates on labor market outcomes in this study we report on an experiment that was designed to provide some insights about possible effects of alternative health insurance regulations on the competitive labor market with a particular focus on mandates since we only considered a competitive market setting with complete contracts and no wage rigidities our results may not be directly applicable to all labor market situations 2 however the study provides useful insights about the interaction of health insurance benefit provision wages and employment structure for labor markets where the competitive wage setting and the complete contracts assumptions are reasonable with these limitations in mind our results can be also generalized to other types of employer provided fringe benefits such as paid vacations or pension plans as any government intervention health insurance regulation may affect the labor market theory predicts that in perfectly competitive labor markets health insurance creates no distortionary effects on the labor market equilibrium as long as the coverage is not mandated and there are no wage rigidities 3 all workers who value insurance above its cost of provision are offered insurance and accept it the wages are adjusted downward see rosen 1986 and gruber 2000 summers 1989 used a simple supply and demand analysis to show that the effect of increases in premiums on equilibrium labor hours and wage depends both on the elasticity of labor demand and labor supply and on how fully workers value changes in the cost of health insurance if the demand or the supply of labor is completely inelastic or if workers fully value the insurance then an increase in the premium would result in an equal decrease shift in wages

the effect of unionism on fringe benefits this study analyzes the impact of unionism on fringes paid to production workers using data on individual establishments it compares fringe expenditures in establishments having the same level of compensation per hour and finds that unionism raises the share of compensation allotted to fringes particularly to pensions vacation pay and life accident and health insurance in addition since unionism also raises the straight time wage rate itself a prime determinant of expenditures on fringes unionism has a very sizeable impact on total fringe expenditures as well as on the fringe share of compensation the union fringe effect exceeds in percentage terms the union wage effect and is sufficiently large to suggest that standard union wage studies understate the union effect on total compensation the study also compares the fringe expenditures of production and non production workers within the same establishment controlling for within establishment pay policies the findings suggest that the pres

stock option grants to target ceos during private merger negotiations abstract unscheduled stock options to target chief executive officers ceos are a nontrivial phenomenon during private merger negotiations in 920 acquisition bids during 1999 2007 over 13 of targets grant them these options substitute for golden parachutes and compensate target ceos for the benefits they forfeit because of the merger targets granting unscheduled options are more likely to be acquired but they earn lower premiums consequently deal value drops by 62 for every dollar target ceos receive from unscheduled options conversely acquirers of targets offering these awards experience higher returns therefore deals involving unscheduled grants exhibit a transfer of wealth from target shareholders to bidder shareholders

how elastic is the firm s demand for health insurance abstract we investigate the impact of tax subsidies on the firm s decision to offer insurance and on conditional firm spending on insurance we do so using the micro data underlying the employment cost index which has a major advantage for this exercise the matching of very high quality compensation data with information on a sample of workers in the firm we find that overall there is a moderately sized elasticity of insurance offering with respect to after tax prices 0 25 and a larger elasticity of insurance spending 0 7 we also find that the elasticities are driven primarily by small firms for whom the elasticity is larger and we find that there is significant value added to this employer based data replicating methods from standard micro data sources in our data lead to misleading estimates of these key parameters our simulation results suggest that major tax reform could lead to an enormous reduction in employer provided health insurance spending

how does home equity affect mobility abstract the impact of the housing crash on household mobility is theoretically ambiguous households that have little or negative equity are less likely to move because the proceeds from the sale of the home may not be large enough to pay off the original mortgage and provide a sufficient down payment on a new home on the other hand at sufficiently negative levels of home equity household mobility may actually increase through the foreclosure channel in this paper we develop and empirically test a model that incorporates both of these mechanisms our empirical results based on data for florida homeowners provide evidence of a non monotonic relationship between home equity and mobility although default induced mobility did increase following the financial crisis this increase did little to offset the substantial decline in voluntary moves due to home equity lock in we find that on net household mobility declined by roughly 25 in our sample because of reductions in equity

union nonunion compensation differentials across plant sizes evidence from cps 1983 previous empirical work on the relationship between plant size and union nonunion differentials has focused either on wages podgursky 1986 or benefits bramley wunnava and robinson 1989 freeman 1981 this note extends this research by simultaneously focusing on both wages and benefits there are several arguments that can be made in explaining union nonunion differentials across plant sizes 1 union threat effects 2 efficiency wage effects and 3 wage dispersion effects our study focuses on measuring the union nonunion differential in total compensation for this end estimates of total compensation are obtained using mellow s suggestion 1982 for combining hourly wage information with qualitative data on pensions and health insurance and ross s imputations 1989 for holidays and vacations benefits our results based on the may 1983 cps supplemented by bls data on pensions health insurance holidays and vacation benefits indicate significant union nonunion total compensation differentials exist only for workers in establishments with less than 500 workers these results are consistent with podgursky s wage differential findings

tax policy and the demand for health insurance estimates of the price and income elasticities of demand for health insurance are derived from econometric estimates of the parameters of a discrete choice model of health insurance demand using data from a survey of plan choices among a sample of federal government employees the estimated income elasticity 0 01 is similar to most previous estimates the estimated price elasticity 0 16 is in absolute value much less than the earlier previous estimates and somewhat less than the more recent previous estimates possible causes of these differences in price elasticity estimates are discussed

healthy bodies and thick wallets the dual relation between health and economic status there is abundant evidence of a quantitatively large association between many measures of economic status including income and wealth and a variety of health outcomes such as mortality or morbidity however considerable and often heated debate remains especially across disciplines about the direction of causation and about why the association arises although medical scientists are often convinced that the dominant if not exclusive pathway is that variation in socioeconomic status produces health disparities they are increasingly debating among themselves about why low economic status might lead to poor health at least for modern industrial countries 1 the old standby arguments the less well to do have access to less or lower quality medical care or a stronger pattern of deleterious personal behaviors have been rejected as insufficient instead a series of intriguing competing theories have arisen that emphasize long term impacts of early childhood or even inter uterine environmental factors the cumulative effects of prolonged exposures to individual stressful events or reactions to macro societal factors such as rising levels of income inequality a common link is that each theory attempts to document the physiological processes through which low economic status leads to poorer health while these scientific questions are extremely important this research has taken place with little input from economists economists are now making contributions about the alternative pathway the impact poor health may have on economic resources poor health may restrict a family s capacity to earn income or to accumulate assets by limiting work or by raising medical expenses at a minimum this work should provide a caution against exaggerating the magnitude of causation from economic status to health outcomes but the potential contribution runs deeper as people age the evolving variation in individual health outcomes may offer additional statistical information to estimate parameters of household savings and consumption behavior that so far have proven to be somewhat elusive thus incorporating health uncertainty and risk into economic models should eventually enrich our understanding of basic tenets of household behavior the first section of this paper documents the size of the association between health and one prominent economic status measure household wealth section two deals with how health influences economic status by sketching out reasons why health may alter household savings and eventually wealth and then providing estimates of the empirical magnitude of these effects section three shifts attention to the alternative pathway the links between economic status and health and summarizes 2major controversies and evidence surrounding these issues

do codes make a difference the case of bank lending and the environment codes of conduct are a conspicuous feature of modern business organization but doubts have been raised regarding their efficacy in ensuring high standards of behavior although some of the issues involved have been discussed at some length in the business ethics literature the amount of systematic empirical evidence on the impact of codes is very limited this paper seeks to make a contribution to that body of knowledge by studying the policies and procedures of a sample of banks which have signed a statement on banking and the environment promulgated by the united nations development programme although some differences are found when compared with a sample of banks which did not sign the statement they are not extensive the implications of the findings for codes of conduct and for future empirical studies are then discussed

the impact of the 2007 liquidity shock on bank jumbo mortgage lending this paper explores the consequences of the collapse of the private label residential mortgage backed securities market in 2007 on banks originations of jumbo mortgages we show that jumbo lending declined by more at banks that were more dependent on this market and were less well capitalized in contrast banks that had little dependence on this market and were well capitalized increased jumbo originations these findings highlight how dependence on the secondary market may cause amplification of financial shocks and the potential value of capital requirements that are higher during periods of economic growth in mitigating the amplification effects

health insurance the tradeoff between risk pooling and moral hazard choosing optimal health insurance coverage involves a trade off between the gain from risk reduction and the deadweight loss from moral hazard this paper examines this trade off empirically by estimating both the demand for health insurance and the demand for health services it relies on data from a randomized controlled trial of cost sharing s effects on the use of health services and on the health status for a general non elderly population

taxes and the number of fringe benefits received abstract discussion about tax policy towards fringe benefits has often assumed that taxing benefits would cause a large change in the composition of employee compensation previous evidence though indicates that changes in marginal tax rates do not have a large effect on expenditures on major fringe benefits as a share of total compensation this paper examines whether employees respond to higher tax rates by getting additional kinds of fringe benefits the results suggest that the effect of tax rates on the probability of receiving additional fringe benefits is quite small

corporate governance and codes of ethics as a result of recent corporate scandals several rules have focused on the role played by boards of directors on the planning and monitoring of corporate codes of ethics in theory outside directors are in a better position than insiders to protect and further the interests of all stakeholders because of their experience and their sense of moral and legal obligations female directors also tend to be more sensitive to ethics according to several past studies which explain this affirmation by early gender socialization the fact that women are thought to place a greater emphasis on harmonious relations and the fact that men and women use different ethical frameworks in their judgments the goal of this paper is to determine the influence of these characteristics of the board in terms of promoting and hindering the creation of a code of ethics our findings show that a greater number of female directors does not necessarily lead to more ethical companies moreover within europe as a continent board ownership leads to an entrenchment of upper level management generating a divergence between the ethical interests of owners and managers in light of this situation the presence of independent directors is necessary to reduce such conflicts

taxes fringe benefits and faculty the growth of employee benefits in academe has closely paralleled their economy wide growth this study estimates a complete system describing the demand for benefits and wages using panel data on 1477 institutions of higher learning the demand for benefits is very responsive to changes in real income and the tax price of benefits these conclusions are robust with respect to varying definitions of the tax price treating it as endogenous and accounting for unmeasured individual effects on demand simulations suggest that the tax reform act of 1986 sharply reduced the demand for benefits extrapolating the impact to the entire economy the annual flow of compensation shifted away from benefits by at least 15 billion copyright 1992 by mit press

management financing and taxation of housing stock in the shrinking cities of aging societies abstract more than 11 million homes lie empty across europe more than 2 million homes are empty in each of france and italy 1 8 million in germany and more than 700 000 in the uk these figures show that a large share of the housing stock in europe is not in use the problem has arisen because policymakers did not develop proper tools to balance long term supply and demand for housing the article describes why this problem appeared and provides an answer to the question of what type of incentives policymakers should apply to housing stock management financing and taxation to achieve a better utilization of the built environment a housing stock is a form of inventory of a built environment the value of housing stock represents the major part of inventories in each society such stock currently is not managed properly because the management of housing stock does not include the methods for forecasting demand according to the dynamics of age cohorts for different housing needs preferences and purchasing power the goal is to develop such tools therefore the actuarial reverse mortgage approach to financing is combined with a graph of a multiple decrement competing risk approach to achieve better forecasting of supply and demand and to show how tax policies influence the housing market and the inventory of empty homes the article also shows how taxation of real estate transactions is eating into the housing equity of the elderly when the latter must change their residential property due to decreased functional capacity therefore we conclude that taxation of transactions is not an age friendly instrument and should be replaced by property taxes that are paid annually a better taxation policy is also suggested for spain

deconstructing a mortgage meltdown a methodology for decomposing underwriting quality technical progress in originating and pricing mortgages has enabled a trend since 1979 toward more relaxed credit standards on mortgage lending which is reflected in rising foreclosure rates we develop a methodology for decomposing the trend in mortgage performance in the national serviced portfolio into a part due to economic conditions and a part due to underwriting changes the decomposition provides natural metrics or indices of underwriting quality and economic conditions the results suggest that the recent mortgage debacle can be attributed about equally to each factor the relaxation in observable credit standards is not monotonic while the easing of important risk characteristics like loan to value ratios in the early 1990s was arguably deliberate the negative effects of lower standards was masked by strong local and national economic conditions after 2000 there was little change in observable loan characteristics nevertheless loan performance continued to erode even after controlling for the economic environment we present evidence that the erosion in the latter period must have arisen from underwriting covariates that are typically unobservable to investors in securitizations this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that moral hazard in non agency securitizations of mortgages particularly subprime and alt a loans caused underwriting risks to be mispriced

negative equity and foreclosure theory and evidence abstract recent declines in housing prices have focused attention on the relationship between negative housing equity and mortgage default theory implies that negative equity is a necessary condition for default but not a sufficient one this often misunderstood result is clearly illustrated in a dataset of massachusetts homeowners during the early 1990s fewer than 10 percent of borrowers likely to have had negative equity at the end of 1991 experienced a foreclosure during the following three years an econometric model of default estimated on two decades of massachusetts housing data also predicts low default rates for current negative equity borrowers we develop a simple theoretical model to interpret these empirical findings and to assess potential foreclosure reduction policies our results imply that lenders and policymakers face an information problem in trying to help borrowers with negative equity because it is hard to determine which owners really need help in order to stay in their homes

ethical commitment financial performance and valuation an empirical investigation of korean companies a variety of stakeholders including investors corporate managers customers suppliers employees researchers and government policy makers have long been interested in the relationship between the financial performance of a corporation and its commitment to business ethics as a subject of research the relations between business ethics and corporate valuation has yet to be thoroughly quantified and investigated this article is an effort to amend this inadequacy by demonstrating a statistically significant association between ethical commitment and corporate valuation measures consistent with anecdotal evidence we have found a significant association between the ethical commitment of korean companies and their valuation on the korean stock market however the result reveals that the association between ethical commitment and financial performance is not significantly supported

what are occupational pension plan entitlements worth in britain the acquisition of rights by workers in private pension plans underpins retirement behaviour recruitment policy and wage structure but there is controversy as to how these individual pension rights should be valued the paper combines four data sets to calculate pension entitlements for a sample of 3000 british workers in 1987 expected scheme tenure is a key variable in valuation younger workers and women face greater initial uncertainty as to their pension outcomes which is resolved as job tenure lengthens given the distribution of tenure durations many employees would obtain higher returns in defined contribution schemes than in a typical final salary defined benefit plan

search for nonwage job characteristics a test of the reservation wage hypothesis previous structural models of job search behavior have been based upon the reservation wage property this article provides estimates of a more general search model that nests models with the reservation wage property the estimates lead to rejection of the reservation wage property the model includes hours of work in the utility function but other nonwage job characteristics can be included as well an experiment based on the estimated parameters indicates that a significant proportion of job offers would be mistakenly predicted to be accepted or rejected under the restrictions implied by the reservation wage property

tax structure and tax compliance a model of individual tax compliance behavior including evasion and avoidance is developed and estimated the model recognizes the importance of marginal income tax rates payroll tax contributions and benefits and the probabil ity of detection and the penalty on unpaid taxes share equations for avoidance evasion and reported income are estimated using individual level data the estimation results indicate that the tax base rises with higher benefits for payroll tax contributions and falls with higher marginal tax rates the base also falls with more severe penalties and more certain detection of evasion as individuals substitute towards avoid ance income t he methods by which individuals reduce their tax liabilities take a variety of legal and illegal forms all of which are influenced at least in part by incentives created by the tax structure these methods can be broadly classified as avoid ance and evasion tax avoidance is any legal activity that lowers taxes such as worker substitu tion between wage and nonwage compensation tax evasion is the reduction in tax liabilities by illegal means such as underreporting income on tax returns despite extensive but separate literatures on avoidance and evasion we know very little about the tax base response to changes in tax structure it is the purpose of this paper to examine the role that the tax structure plays in compliance there are several reasons for the persistence of the compliance puzzle most prominent is the absence of detailed individual data that would allow a full empirical specification of all factors affecting compliance this difficulty is most evi dent when searching for individual data on the evasion compliance decision even when avail able data have never allowed in the same work the construction of both tax and audit variables 1 clearly data availability is even more problem atic when looking at the choice among evasion avoidance and reported income in addition pre vious work has not looked at the avoidance evasion compliance decision as a joint process even though these decisions are made simultane ously 2 further both strands of the literature have ignored another factor that may affect the compliance decision the benefits that accrue from participation in payroll programs if benefits are tied only to taxable income then their presence gives individuals an incentive to pay taxes in short there has been no empirical work that analyzes the effects of tax rates probabilities penalties and payroll benefits on avoidance and evasion choices of individuals in this paper we provide such an analysis we first develop a theory of individual choice among the three types of compensation we then esti mate the resulting share demand equations using a unique data set which has detailed information on the compensation paid to roughly one quarter of the labor force in jamaica in 1983 from these data we are able to derive measures of reported taxable income evasion income and avoidance income for individual workers in the formal sec tor we are also able to construct measures of the marginal income tax rate marginal payroll taxes and benefits the probability of detection and the penalty on evasion for individual workers we are therefore able to estimate for the first time the responses of workers to the full range of tax structure parameters section i presents the theoretical model of worker compensation choice and the empirical specification of the model section ii discusses the jamaican tax system data and variable con struction are discussed in section iii estimation results are presented in section iv the final section summarizes the main results

substitution between wage and nonwage benefits you gotta be kidding ollie you re just robbing yourself schuylkill mutual offers a terrific deal on keogh and we could plug you in in fact we advise plugging you in on the corporate end so not a nickel comes out of your personal pocket it comes out of the corporate pocket and there s that much less for uncle to tax these poor saps carrying their own premiums with no company input are living in the dark ages there s nothing shady about rigging it this way we re just using the laws the government has put there they want people to take advantage it all works to up the gross national product you know what i mean by keogh don t you you re looking kind of blank john updike p 296

housing booms and media coverage this article analyses news media coverage of the housing market building on theories of media influence where word of mouth is the final mechanism of opinion change but media initiate discourse i examine the relationship between news media and the recent uk house price boom over 30 000 articles on the uk housing market from the period 1993 to 2008 are analysed and it is found that media granger caused real house price changes suggesting the media may have influenced opinions on the housing market however media sentiment on the housing market did not change with the secular increase in house prices in the 2000s suggesting that the media did not contribute to the uk s housing boom and may have helped constrain it