why do women still earn less than men decomposing the dutch gender pay gap 1996 2006 despite major improvements in women s labour market attachment women still earn considerably less than men international research shows that the persistence of the gender pay gap may be due to the fact that although the gap in characteristics between men and women is diminishing changes in the wage structure counteract this change this article will study whether this swimming upstream phenomenon is also playing a role in the rather slow convergence between male and female wages in the netherlands our results indicate that this is not the case most of the changes in the dutch wage structure have been rather favourable to women the lacking convergence in wages has to be explained from the fact that despite the favourable changes the dutch wage structure still contains a considerable implicit gender bias

energy in a regional economy a computable general equilibrium model for california abstract this study presents a model of energy in the california economy and uses it to simulate long run impacts of oil price changes under varying assumptions about the structure of the economy the distinguishing feature of the model is flexibility use of generalized leontief flexible cost functions at the sectoral level captures the substitution effects of relative price changes while at the same time retaining the structure of traditional input output analysis experimental results suggest this innovation can be important a doubling of the price of imported oil leads to a much larger drop in oil use and a substantially smaller drop in aggregate consumption than is obtained with a fixed coefficient version of the model

improved stoves in sub saharan africa the case of the sudan the paper estimates charcoal demand and supply elasticities to determine rebound effects from improved stoves in the sudan these are increases in fuel consumption resulting from gains in real income upon the use of more efficient appliances and from downward price adjustments associated with the reduction in fuel requirements the findings are that 1 charcoal markets are characterized by low elasticities and 2 42 of fuel savings are lost mostly as a result of large price adjustments since low elasticities place more of the burden of market adjustment on prices than on quantities nonetheless price related effects may be small because of increases in charcoal prices as a result of accelerated deforestation

gender wage inequality in inclusive and exclusive industrial relations systems a comparison of argentina and chile drawing on an empirical and comparative mixed methods analysis of argentina and chile this article investigates arguments about the role of inclusive versus exclusive industrial relations systems in promoting gender wage equity and enabling attractive wage returns to women investing in higher education our findings confirm the importance of argentina s inclusive industrial relations system in narrowing gender pay differences to a greater extent than chile nevertheless chile s industrial relations institutions are not wholly exclusive its high level statutory minimum wage has played a strongly distributive role in the 2000s and compressed wages in the lower half of the wage distribution also notable is the finding from quantile regression that highly educated women in high paid jobs enjoy a larger wage premium in the class equal argentina than in chile despite a far wider wage gap between low high educated workers in chile overall

overchoice and assortment type when and why variety backfires almost universally research and practice suggest that a brand that increases its product assortment or variety should benefit through increased market share in this paper we show this is not always the case we introduce the construct assortment type and demonstrate that the effect of assortment size on brand share is systematically moderated by assortment type we define an alignable assortment as a set of brand variants that differ along a single compensatory dimension such that choosing from that assortment only requires within attribute trade offs in contrast we define a nonalignable assortment as a set of brand variants that simultaneously vary along multiple noncompensatory dimensions demanding between attribute trade offs in turn we argue that an alignable assortment can efficiently meet the diverse tastes of consumers thereby increasing brand share but that a nonalignable assortment increases both the cognitive effort and the potential for regret faced by a consumer thereby decreasing brand share we term this effect overchoice across three studies we provide evidence of overchoice and tie the effect to the effort and regret brought about by nonalignability in the process we demonstrate that simplification of information presentation reversibility of choice and a reduction in underlying nonalignability serve to reduce or eliminate this effect

does predicted rebound depend on distinguishing between energy and energy services pour analyser le role des services energetiques et des combustibles dans l effet de relance de la consommation d energie liee a des actions d amelioration de l efficacite energetique plusieurs approches sont utilisees et comparees celle de cobb douglas celle de leontief et celle de la croissance equilibree

centralisation employment and wage dispersion this paper is about bargaining institutions and their influence on wage dispersion and employment using novel statistical measures it compares labor market performance in seventeen oecd countries since 1973 it concludes that countries with highly centralized wage bargaining have generally achieved the best performance combining high employment with low wage dispersion thereby avoiding certain major inequalities prevalent elsewhere the paper also presents a formal model of bargaining based on the work of l calmfors and j driffill 1988 simulations are used to illustrate how this model generates the kind of outcomes described in the empirical part of the paper copyright 1992 by royal economic society

unintended consequences of maternity leave legislation the case of colombia abstract we estimate the impact on female labor outcomes of the extension in maternity leave period from 12 to 14 weeks an amendment to the colombian labor law in 2011 to identify this impact we compare labor market outcomes of different groups of individuals with women of child bearing age first we compared two groups of women with different fertility rates low elasticity of substitution finding that as result of the extension women in the high fertility age group experience an increase in inactivity informality and self employment when comparing high fertility age women with men in the same age group high elasticity of substitution we find that the extension increases the probability of unemployment informality and self employment and decreases wages of women compared with men

equal pay as a moving target international perspectives on forty years of addressing the gender pay gap this paper provides an overview of the key factors impacting upon the gender pay gap in the uk europe and australia forty years after the implementation of the first equal pay legislation the pay gap remains a key aspect of the inequalities women face in the labour market while the overall pay gap has tended to fall in many countries over the past forty years it has not closed in some countries it has been stubbornly resistant or has even widened in reviewing the collection of papers that make up this special issue we identify four broad themes with which to group the contributions and draw out the explanations for diverse trends theoretical and conceptual debates legal developments and their impacts wage setting institutions and changing employer demands and newly emerging pay inequalities between and within educational and ethnic groups across the four themes we underline how the trends in the gender pay gap capture the dynamism of inequalities as the market power of different groups and stakeholders changes over times three key dimensions emerge from the papers to provide a framework for future research and policy discourse the relationship between litigation and bargaining strategies the interaction between wage setting institutions and new organisational practices and the increasing and range of diversity or equality strands competing for equal treatment we conclude that progress towards closing the gender pay gap will not be easy will require a collective effort of various actors and will not be quick

effects of carbon taxes in an economy with prior tax distortions an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre existing taxes first we examine the extent to which costs of a u s carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes such use of revenues significantly reduces but does not eliminate the overall policy costs the positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes we also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax s costs to the level of pre existing taxes for any given use of revenues welfare costs rise significantly with pre existing tax rates indicating that models disregarding pre existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives

a cross national comparison of the gender gap in income this article examines national labor market samples from two dualist countries the united states and canada and two corporatist countries norway and sweden labor market location is less powerful in predicting income in norway and sweden where they have more inclusive employment policies in sweden though the labor market variables are more important in explaining the income gap family effects marital status and number of children are weak everywhere but especially in scandinavia nevertheless because it is encouraged by policies designed to integrate employment and family part time paid work has a major effect on the gender gap in income in norway and sweden women however pay more of a penalty than men for part time employment in north america

language and the estimates of the gender wage gap in this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country we find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of gwg the results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks

policy generosity employer heterogeneity and women s employment opportunities the welfare state paradox reexamined scholars of comparative family policy research have raised concerns about potential negative outcomes of generous family policies an issue known as the welfare state paradox they suspect that s

capital energy substitution and the multi level ces production function abstract this paper has clarified a misconception in sato s multi level ces production function and used the function in testing for capital energy substitution in taiwanese manufacturing the empirical results show that capital and energy are substitutes and the aes estimates differ little from those derived from the translog approximation

the rebound effect in swedish heavy industry energy efficiency improvement eei benefits the climate and matters for energy security the potential emission and energy savings due to eei may however not fully materialize due to the rebound e

exploring the rebound effect from the perspective of household an analysis of china s provincial level abstract the existence of the energy rebound effect may partially even totally offset the expected energy savings in order to explore the status of the household rebound effect in china we manually compiled the provincial energy input output table of china then combining econometric methods input output analysis and the re spending model we conduct a detailed analysis of both the direct and indirect energy rebound effect from the household perspective in china under a unified research framework the results show there are significant differences in risk vulnerability regarding energy rebound effect among different regions qinghai is the most vulnerable province as 69 23 of its economic sectors could lead to a backfire effect two economic sectors have the potential to cause a backfire effect in thirteen provinces in addition the chinese government and its provincial government should take full account of the regional differences when formulating energy policies to alleviate the pressure on energy conservation and carbon emission reduction

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

from wage regulation to wage gap how wage setting institutions and structures shape the gender wage gap across three industries in 24 european countries and germany whilst a common and persisting feature of advanced market economies the gender wage gap nevertheless varies across countries amongst the factors affecting this wage gap industrial relations and industry differences still require further research using data from eu silc in 25 european countries this article analyses how national wage setting institutions impact wage differences between male and female full time employees in three distinct industries complementing the country comparison is an in depth study of the german case using data from the german linked employer employee database shedding light on the interaction of industry specific wage setting regulations and gender equity in living wages findings from the international comparison suggest a substantial gender wage gap for full time employees across industries with specific country patterns country patterns seem to be due to the overall influence of trade unions and the relationship between pay bargaining strategies and specific minimum wage policies the german case adds to these findings by analysing the impact of sectoral models of wage bargaining for industry specific gender wage gaps focussing on living wages for skilled full time employees

modeling of industrial energy consumption an introduction and context industrial energy accounts for roughly one third of total global energy consumption and is expected to continue to use a similar share in the foreseeable future however this is one of the hardest end uses to analyze model and forecast the reasons for modeling industrial energy consumption are as varied as the ways in which energy is used in production processes this has led to the application of a broad set of emperical tools from several different disciplines in this article we provide an introduction and context for a compendium or survey of the methods used in this area this special issue of energy economics is designed to provide both newcomers and accomplished researchers with an overview of the current state of development in the are of industrial energy modeling

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

product variety and endogenous pricing with evaluation costs one important decision firms must make is to select the product line characteristics and number of products to offer consumers this paper explores the effect of the interaction between consumer evaluation costs and pricing on the optimal product line length to offer consumers before deciding to buy a product among all products offered a consumer learns the product line length given the product line length a consumer decides whether to evaluate the products available and their prices this decision to evaluate depends on the expected consumer surplus after the evaluation being greater than the evaluation costs when the firm offers few products the firm may not attract many consumers because of lack of product fit and may be forced to offer low prices when the firm offers many products all consumers will find a great product fit that is the variance of consumer valuations per product chosen is lower this allows the firm to charge high prices to extract ex post consumer surplus resulting in lower ex ante expected consumer surplus which may lead consumers not to evaluate the products in the first place that is by offering fewer products a firm can commit not to extract all possible consumer surplus these two forces may then lead to the existence of an interior optimal number of products to offer the optimal number of products offered is decreasing in the evaluation costs

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

contextual inference in markets on the informational content of product lines context can influence decisions this malleability of choice is usually invoked as evidence that people do not maximize stable preference orderings in a market equilibrium however context conveys payoff relevant information to consumers consequently these consumers rationally violate naive formulations of standard choice theoretic principles i identify informational asymmetries under which apparently anomalous behaviors namely the compromise effect and choice overload arise as market equilibria firms respond to consumers contextual inference in case of the compromise effect a firm may introduce premium loss leaders expensive goods of overly high quality that increase the demand for other goods

wage setting institutions and pay inequality in advanced industrial societies the distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies in this paper institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992 the most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage setting i e whether wages are set at the level of the individual the plant the industry or the entire private sector the impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private sector wage setting the concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter after controlling for wage setting institutions other variables such as the governing coalition the size of government international openness and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact economic political and norm based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed

formal but less equal gender wage gaps in formal and informal jobs in urban brazil in developing countries a large share of employees work informally and are not covered by employment protection legislation i study here how gender wage inequality differs across formal and informal jobs in brazil the raw gender wage gap is higher in informal jobs 13 compared to formal jobs 5 but i show that this difference is an artefact of different male and female selection processes first women have better observable characteristics than men and the female advantage is stronger among formal employees second men and women entering formal and informal jobs have different unobservable characteristics controlling for endogenous selection into formal vs informal jobs i find that the gender gap in wage offers is high and increases with education in formal jobs in informal jobs however estimated wage offers are the same for men and women i discuss the potential implications of these findings regarding the effect of labour market regulation on gender wage gaps

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

national family policies and mothers employment how earnings inequality shapes policy effects across and within countries although researchers generally agree that national family policies play a role in shaping mothers employment there is considerable debate about whether how and why policy effects vary across co

trading off the benefits and costs of choice evidence from australian elections abstract i investigate the robust predictions of a theory on the costs and benefits of dealing with increased numbers of choices in an election context my data consist of a rich array of measures of voting behaviors and corresponding ballot and voter population characteristics for a panel of electoral districts from three australian federal election cycles i examine how the number of candidates and voting tickets on the ballot as well as key moderating variables affect the share of voters 1 opting for a simplified alternative to the baseline voting process and 2 intentionally casting an invalid ballot the findings indicate that incremental options can increase or decrease motivation to engage in a choice process the overall pattern of results appears consistent with a diminishing returns model of expanded choice voters appear to trade off costs and benefits rationally in their decisions concerning how and whether to make choices public policies and private strategies should leverage moderating variables to encourage participation in choice processes and should account for opt out tendencies at both ends of the choice spectrum

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

separate and unequal occupation establishment sex segregation and the gender wage gap the authors report the first large scale empirical investigation of within job wage differences between men and women in the same occupation and establishment using data first on blue collar and clerical employees from 16 u s industries in 1974 83 and second on employees in 10 professional and administrative occupations the authors report three findings first wage differences at the occupation establishment level were small even without controls for individual level characteristics hence within job wage discrimination was much less important than occupation establishment segregation for observed wage differences second establishment segregation was an important cause although not as important as occupational segregation of wage differences third establishment segregation was extensive as was occupational segregation

when more alternatives lead to less choice this paper shows that when the alternatives offered to consumers span the preference space as it would be chosen by a firm search or evaluation costs may lead consumers not to search and not to choose if too many or too few alternatives are offered if too many alternatives are offered then the consumer may have to engage in many searches or evaluations to find a satisfactory fit this may be too costly and result in the consumer avoiding making a choice altogether if too few alternatives are offered then the consumer may not search or choose fearing that an acceptable choice is unlikely these two forces result in the existence of a finite optimal number of alternatives that maximizes the probability of choice

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

labour market effects of parental leave in europe we investigate the aggregate level effects of parental leave legislation on various labour market outcomes of women in 16 european countries for the period between 1970 and 2010 the paper updates and extends previous findings in the literature the results show increases in participation rates that diminish with length and generosity of leave schemes while pure participation numbers may not increase dramatically there is strong evidence of increases in weekly working hours on the other hand a decrease in wages for high skilled women and amplified occupational segregation are possible results of long parental leave schemes we conclude with a discussion of the recent debates over extending minimum maternity and parental leave rights on the european level copyright oxford university press

an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations minford p stoney p riley j and webb b 1994 an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations reg studies 28 563 576 the paper estimates an econometric model of merseyside on annual data the model is derived from a heckscher ohlin framework for the traded sector set beside a non traded sector and facing a positively sloped supply curve of manual labour whose reservation wage is set by unemployment benefits with all other factor prices being set exogenously to the region through elastic supply the supply of manual labour responding to traded sector wages set by world market conditions determines the size of the region s output the model s fit over the past is acceptable though data is limited its simulation properties contrasting with those of previous demand driven models imply high returns to policies that reduce local costs such as taxes union mark ups and transport charges minford p stoney p riley j et webb b 1994 un modele econometrique de merseyside

family policies wage structures and gender gaps sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries this study uncovers an unexpected effect of family friendly policies on women s economic attainments using hierarchical linear models the analysis combines individual level data obtained from th