individual and aggregate labor supply with coordinated working times i analyze two extensions to the standard model of life cycle labor supply that feature operative choices along both the intensive and extensive margin one assumes that individuals face continuous wage hours schedules while the other assumes that all work must be coordinated across individuals though similar qualitatively the two models have very different implications for aggregate labor supply responses to tax policy in the first model curvature in the individual utility from leisure function plays relatively little role but in the second model it is of first order importance the second model also has important implications for what data are best able to provide evidence on the extent of curvature in the utility from leisure function

productivity growth scale economies and the schumpeterian hypothesis the schumpeterian hypothesis is usually interpreted as implying 1 a positive relationship between innovation and monopoly power with the concomitant above normal profits or 2 large firms are more than proportionately more innovative than small firms 6 22 empirical tests of the latter version of the schumpeterian hypothesis have traditionally examined the relationship between some measure of innovative activity and firm size innovative activity has been measured using innovative inputs such as r d expenditures or the employment of scientific and engineering personnel or innovative outputs as represented by the number of patents significant innovations or sales of new products the shortcomings of each of these as a proxy for innovative activity has been discussed extensively in the literature studies by phillips 10 stigler 13 carter and williams 3 weiss 15 allen 1 bock and farkas 2 greer and rhoades 4 kendrick and grossman 7 sveikauskas and sveikauskas 14 and scherer 11 have employed the growth rate of productivity either labor or total factor as a measure of innovative activity in empirical tests of the schumpeterian hypothesis this variable serves as a proxy for the rate of technical change and is particularly appropriate as a measure of dynamic efficiency in industries such as transportation primary metals utility services etc where the emphasis is on process and not product innovations as noted by kamien and schwartz 6 productivity may grow over time as a result of i shifts in the production function associated with technical change or ii increases in productivity arising from economies of scale this study demonstrates that inclusion of the scale effect in estimates of productivity growth imparts a downward bias in the relationship between firm size and dynamic efficiency which may lead to an inappropriate rejection of the schumpeterian hypothesis the empirical implications of this bias are illustrated using data from a sample of electric utilities operating in the u s during the period 1961 73

the effect of taxes on labor supply in the underground economy this paper uses micro data from a randomized survey carried out in the metropolitan area of quebec city canada to analyze the decision to evade taxes and work in the underground economy the results indicate that taxes distort labor market activities away from the regular sector to the underground sector but the distortion is small for the average worker the distortion is large however for particular groups of the population such as welfare claimants copyright 1994 by american economic association

does work pay in france monetary incentives hours constraints and the guaranteed minimum income abstract this paper uses a representative sample of individuals on france s main welfare program the revenu minimum d insertion or rmi to estimate monetary incentives for employment among welfare recipients based on the estimated joint distribution of wages and hours potentially offered to each individual we compute potential gains from working in a very detailed manner relating these gains to observed employment we then estimate a simple structural labor supply model we find that potential gains are almost always positive but very small on average especially for single mothers because of the high implicit marginal tax rates embedded in the system employment rates are sensitive to incentives with extensive margin elasticities for both men and women usually below one conditional on these elasticities simulations indicate that existing policies devoted to reducing marginal tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution such as the interessement earnings top up program have little impact in this population due to their very limited scope the negative income tax prime pour l emploi seems to be an exception

the causes of hours constraints evidence from canada over half of workers are dissatisfied with the number of hours they work and of these the vast majority desire more rather than fewer hours using the canadian survey of work reduction we examine two potential explanations for hours constraints long term contracts due to worker moral hazard or specific capital and implicit contracts in which wages are insured but hours fluctuate our results contradict the moral hazard and insurance models and weakly support the specific capital model les causes des contraintes sur les heures de travail le cas canadien plus de la moitie des travailleurs ne sont pas satisfaits du nombre d heures qu ils travaillent et de ceux ci la grande majorite veut travailler plus et non pas moins d heures a l aide des donnees de l enquete canadienne sur la reduction des heures de travail les auteurs examinent deux sources potentielles d explication pour ce genre de phenomene les contrats a long terme attribuables au probl eme du capital humain specifique des travailleurs et au hasard moral et les contrats implicites par lesquels le niveau de salaire horaire est assure mais le nombre d heures travaillees fluctue les resultats presentes contredisent les modeles fondes sur le hasard moral et l assurance et supportent faiblement le modele de capital humain specifique surveys conducted in the united states consistently show that a substantial fraction of workers wish to work a different number of hours from those that they actually work of those who would like to change their hours the vast majority would prefer to work more hours shank 1986 in previous work kahn and lang 1992 we tested whether u s hours constraints could be explained by lifetime contract agency models in which the earnings profile is structured so as to deter worker cheating or

sampling variability some observations from a labour supply equation in economics the number of observations available for empirical work is often predetermined researchers assume some large sample distribution and carry through with measurement and testing applied to data sets of varying sizes the consequences of sampling variability are generally ignored it is shown in a re sampling experiment using data sets of different sizes and estimating log linear male labour supply equations that a wide range of what appears to be statistically supported estimates of the wage elasticity of labour supply are generated testing based on bootstrapped estimates shows that 4000 observations are required to reduce sampling variability to statistically acceptable levels

an examination of the equilibrium specification and structure of production for canadian telecommunications multiple output models of canadian telecommunications production are estimated under different production equilibria a specification test is conducted between the short and long run equilibrium models and the long run equilibrium is rejected in order to capture the nature of the disequilibrium a dynamic cost of adjustment model is estimated for bell canada there are significant adjustment costs and it is estimated that for 1 00 of marginal capital costs the carrier must incur an additional cost of 0 30 to install the new capital into the production process

economic growth resource availability and environmental quality skeptical that research to date does not warrant confidence in the relationship between natural resources and the maintenance of material well being the authors consider the conventional explanations for how resource stringencies have been avoided and what has been learned during the past decade they then point out what has been missed by formal economic modeling and why it may be important in understanding the implications of resource scarcity 19 references

firms expectations and employment behaviour evidence from a panel of uk manufacturing firms abstract in this paper we investigate the effect of expectations of future sales on employment adjustment we find that uk manufacturing firms sales expectations have a statistically significant effect on their employment behaviour leading to employment being more sluggish to respond when firms expect sales to rise

fairness spillovers the case of taxation abstract it is standardly assumed that individuals react to perceived unfairness or norm violations in precisely the same area or relationship where the original offense has occurred however grievances over being exposed to injustice may have even broader consequences and also spill over to other contexts causing non compliant behavior there we present evidence that such fairness spillovers can incur large economic costs a belief that there is unfairness in taxation in the sense that the rich do not pay enough taxes is associated with a twenty percent higher level of paid absenteeism from work

job search hours restrictions and desired hours of work a structural empirical job search model is presented that incorporates the labor supply decision of individuals the arrival of a job offer is modeled as a random draw from a wage hours offer distribution subjective information is used on desired working hours to identify optimal hours from offered hours policy simulations are performed to address several policy questions does a decrease in unemployment benefits lead to the acceptance of jobs with less preferred working hours how does a decrease in the length of the standard working week affect the job acceptance behavior of the unemployed

neoclassical modeling of nonneutral technological change an experimental appraisal the results of an experimental evaluation of the performance of neoclassical models using alternative indexes of the pace of introduction of innovations to measure the effects of technical change on the patterns of factor input usage are reported the analysis maintains that production processes should be viewed as engineering activities so that neoclassical characterizations of them and of any innovations to them are best treated as approximations two large scale process analysis models provide the description of the true production technology with and without access to six specific process innovations the analysis considered both input aggregation and the index of the extent of technical innovation the results suggest that indexes which are explicitly tied to the technical features of the innovations involved perform better in isolating the direction of the input effects associated with each innovation moreover this conclusion was found to hold with differing levels of input aggregation

tied wage hours offers and the endogeneity of wages in the standard model of labor supply each worker is a price taker where the relevant price is an hourly wage rate which is fixed in the short run and which does not depend upon the number of hours supplied with this basic assumption the wage can be regarded as exogenous for the purpose of estimating a labor supply function this paper proposes and implements a pair of tests for the exogeneity of wages in a longitudinal labor supply model and for the particular failure of exogeneity associated with jobs that offer wage hour packages the first test is very simple it amounts to a test of whether hours granger cause wages at the individual level the second test involves a simultaneous estimation of labor supply and wage offer equations both tests indicate that the offered wage is related to hours worked though the offer locus is for this sample very flat the principal conclusion is that labor supply equations cannot properly be estimated in isolation from the process generating wages even when long time series are available on a sample of individuals this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

job changes and hours changes understanding the path of labor supply adjustment we use british panel data to investigate single women s labor supply changes in response to three reforms that affected individuals work incentives we use these reforms to identify changes in labor supply there is evidence of small hours of work effects for two of such reforms a third reform in 1999 instead led to a significant increase in single mothers hours of work the mechanism by which the labor supply adjustments were made occurred largely through job changes rather than hours changes with the same employer this is little overall effect of the reforms on wages

theoretical and practical arguments for modeling labor supply as a choice among latent jobs models of labor supply derived from stochastic utility representations and discretized sets of feasible hours of work have gained popularity because they are more practical than standard approaches based on marginal calculus in this paper we argue that practicality is not the only feature that can be addressed by means of stochastic choice theory this theory also offers a powerful framework for developing a more realistic model for labor supply choices founded on individuals having preferences over jobs and facing restrictions on the choice of jobs and hours of work we discuss and clarify how this modeling framework deviates from both the conventional discrete approach van soest 1995 as well as the standard textbook approach based on marginal calculus hausman 1985 we furthermore discuss how the model based on job choice offers the possibility of conducting a richer set of simulations of alternative policies

whose preferences are revealed in hours of work it has become orthodox in economics research to interpret the association between hourly earnings and working hours as the expression of the preferences of workers this convention originated in h gregg lewis explanation for the decline in hours of work since the nineteenth century his explanation rested on an explicit resolution of the identification problem inherent in any quantity hours price wage relation for over 40 years researchers have neglected this identification problem with the result that the findings in the purported labor supply literature are of questionable value jel j22 j23 c13

fixed costs and hours constraints hours constraints are typically identified by worker responses to questions asking whether they would prefer a job with more hours and more pay or fewer hours and less pay because jobs with different hours but the same rate of pay may be infeasible when there are fixed costs of employment or mandatory overtime premia the constraint in those cases may be illusory cross section estimates of reported hours constraints are consistent with this model implying that the overall level of hours constraints may exaggerate the extent to which the labor market is characterized by frictions and imperfections

behavior of the firm under regulatory constraint a recent article by akira takayama discusses an earlier paper by harvey averch and leland l johnson on fair rate of return regulation of public utilities although takayama p 255 agrees with averch and johnson s general conclusions that a firm will tend to increase its investment with the introduction of an active constraint on its rate of return he criticizes the a j argument as being confusing ambiguous and in error takayama then attempts a clarification and presents a new formulation which leads to the a j result quoted above this comment will discuss several of takayama s criticisms in addition to showing that the so called a j effect cannot be derived from the basic assumptions made by both averch and johnson and takayama 1 we will show that the very assumptions used to prove the a j effect by defining the region of x require an assumption that the a j effect exists in the first place

the own wage elasticity of labor demand a meta regression analysis firms labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis however despite extensive research estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity in this paper we conduct a comprehensive meta regression analysis to re assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80 of the variation in the estimates we further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias as estimates of the own wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated

female labor supply with a discontinuous nonconvex budget constraint incorporation of a part time full time wage differential this paper incorporates the well documented part time full time wage differential into an empirical labor supply model with both a heterogeneity and a random error term and estimates that model fo

after work shopping employment effects of a deregulation of shop opening hours in the german retail sector abstract this study investigates the impact of a deregulation of shop opening laws on employment in the german retail sector exploiting the gradual change in the opening times of shops across states and using data from the german socio economic panel difference in differences estimates indicate an average increase in the employment probability driven by a rise in the likelihood of working marginal part time hours workers in small firms are likely to experience a reduction of their propensity to work for individuals facing high family related supply side constraints the change in shop opening hours has opposing effects on employment positive on lower and negative on upper parts of the hours distribution overall the deregulation is estimated to have raised the likelihood of working fewer hours than desired by the workers

the effects of competition on publicly owned firms evidence from the municipal electric industry in the u s abstract previous studies have examined the effects of competition on privately owned firms this study examines the impact of competition on a sample of publicly owned electric utilities operating in the u s during 1961 1980 estimates from a translog variable cost function indicate that competitive firms had higher generating costs than monopolists ceteris paribus in addition it appears that operating costs would fall significantly if a single monopolist were to replace two competitors in a given market

constrained by hours and restricted in wages the quality of matches in the labor market this paper examines the explicit loss born by workers who face constraints in their working hours by analyzing differences in actual and desired hours and wages men tend to be underemployed while women are evenly split between over and underemployment losses in surplus are generally small but 10 of underemployed men and women experience losses of more than 34 or 50 of surplus respectively the loss measure is also an important determinant in predicting labor market transitions meaning increases in surplus losses generate a higher probability of changing from workers present jobs or changing the number of hours jel j22 j41

why was there mandatory retirement abstract lazear argues that hours constraints and mandatory retirement form part of an efficient contract which inhibits worker shirking he argues that initially workers earn less than their vmp and must work more than they want while later they earn more than their vmp and must work less however if bonding is costly incentive compatibility requires that workers can never exceed the contracted hours in addition hours will be set so that vmp exceeds the disutility of employment consequently being paid more than their vmp is only sufficient not necessary for workers to be constrained to work less than they wish

capital vintage time trends and technical change in the electric power industry beginning with tinbergen in 1942 economists have employed a time trend in cost or production functions to represent the rate at which new technology is introduced into the production unit in sufficiently flexible models of the production process the time trend may be used to obtain estimates of the rate as well as direction of technical change the use of the time trend is generally defended on pragmatic grounds as no theoretical justification exists for assuming that new technology is introduced at a steady rate that is independent of a firm s investment in r d education capital of a more recent vintage etc in recent years alternatives to the traditional time trend have been sought to represent the rate at which new technology is introduced research in this area has been concentrated in the telecommunications industry where the stock of r d or the percentage of calls completed by direct dialing or modern switching facilities have been employed as technological indices by nadiri and schankerman 32 denny et al 14 and christensen et al 7 the latter two studies indicate that explicit technological indices provide a better representation of the pace of innovation than the time trend this conclusion must remain tentative however as it is not possible to determine what is the true direction of technical change in these studies this shortcoming is overcome in a recent study by kopp and smith 24 who compare the performance of time trends and explicit technological indices in a study using pseudo data generated by process analysis models their results unambiguously support the use of technologically explicit indicators of technical change and indicate that the use of a time trend may not provide a consistent estimate of the direction of technical change this study does not however shed any light on the ability of a time trend to accurately reflect the rate of technical change the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of alternative technological indices on the estimated rate and direction of technical change in the electric power industry the performance of a time trend is compared with that of a vintage index computed as the average age of a firm s steam generating capacity this latter index is consistent with the notion that new technology is embodied in newly constructed capital an assumption sup

hours flexibility and retirement i introduction standard models of labor supply depict workers as choosing to work any positive amount of hours they wish at the competitive wage paid to persons of their type implicit in these models is the assumption that employers offer to workers at a particular wage a menu of infinitely many hours options from which workers may choose however this assumption seems fundamentally at odds with how the labor market functions in particular the distribution of weekly hours of work suggests that workers may be offered only a limited set of hours options by the employers 1 this study examines how employer imposed minimum hours of work requirements affect workers retirement decisions 2 we present a simple theoretical framework which shows that workers who cannot lower their hours of work in one period are more likely to retire by some subsequent date than workers not so constrained the intuition is straightforward given his characteristics and the wage he commands there is a particular hours level which a person desires to work in any period equivalently between any two time periods a worker initially working a given amount of hours desires that his hours change over time by a particular amount for workers with jobs that feature flexible hours the actual change in hours worked over time always perfectly matches the desired change if the worker desires to withdraw from the labor force then he does so if he desires to work fewer positive hours in the later period he changes his labor supply to precisely the desired level for workers with the same desired change in labor supply but who face hours constraints the only way to lower hours of work from one positive amount to another is to change jobs because such job changes are associated with transition costs the worker chooses from among a set of less than ideal options he can continue at the present job and be overemployed alternatively he can pay a transition cost and work the desired hours level in a new job or he can withdraw completely from the labor force thus unlike the worker whose hours are flexible the hours constrained worker retires both when he desires to work 0 h and when he wishes to work some positive amount less than he did previously but faces relatively high transition costs we tested the prediction that hours constrained workers are more likely to retire over time using a sample of retirement aged individuals from the health and retirement study hrs we found that a large fraction of workers aged 55 64 yr cannot lower their usual weekly hours of work in 1992 these constraints are prevalent for both men and women among people working different hours level and across all types of jobs exploiting the panel feature of the data and using a series of empirical tests we found that hours constrained workers are much more likely than their unconstrained peers to be retired by 1996 we document few differences in observed characteristics between constrained and unconstrained workers suggesting that the results do not derive from differences in latent retirement propensities across workers or to unmeasured job characteristics moreover we controlled carefully for demographic and job information we also conducted some simple tests to assess the likelihood that the results derive from sorting by job type constrained or unconstrained or simple measurement error and found that our main estimates continue to obtain the study s emphasis that hours constraints make it difficult for workers to satisfy changing labor supply preferences without changing jobs is also the main focus of altonji and paxson 1992 these authors showed that in a sample of prime aged women events likely to generate large changes in labor supply preferences such as the birth of a child or a child starting school tend to be associated with large changes in hours worked only for persons who change jobs

choice among wage hours packages an empirical investigation of male labor supply this article specifies and estimates an empirical model of male labor supply based on an implicit market model of wage hours determination we discuss how moving from a standard labor supply model to an implicit market model affects model specification and choice of estimation technique we find that average hourly earnings are not independent of hours worked and that ols estimates of the wage hours relationship are biased we also show that a labor supply model that assumes wages to be independent of hours worked produces a positively biased estimate of the effect of the wage on labor supply

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

insider forces and wage determination this paper investigates the relative importance of firm specific factors i e insider forces in wage determination using firm level data on 219 u k companies over 1974 82 it finds that a 1 percent rise in a firm s prices or productivity relative to the aggregate economy leads to a rise in relative wages of 0 1 0 2 percent as a corollary to this outside factors like the aggregate wage and the unemployment rate also play an important role there is evidence for insider based hysteresis effects but these are inversely related to the extent to which firms take national agreements into account copyright 1990 by royal economic society

the effects of hours constraints on labor supply estimates almost all labor supply models are estimated under the assumption that workers are free to choose their hours however theory casual empiricism and survey data suggest that many workers are not free to vary the hours within a job consequently labor supply estimates based on actual hours of work may be biased using canadian data on desired hours of work the authors find that using actual hours causes labor supply estimates to be biased upwards copyright 1991 by mit press

are involuntary part time workers indeed involuntary theoretically those classified by the bureau of labor statistics as involuntary part time workers are individuals who would like to work full time but have been unable to obtain full time employment to empirically test the accuracy of that definition the author employs simple probit models of employment preferences and employment opportunities estimated with data from the march 1990 current population survey the results confirm that those classified as involuntary part time workers were indeed employed part time involuntarily furthermore those classified as involuntary part time workers in 1990 were at least 50 more likely to be in the full time labor force in 1991 than were those who were classified as voluntary part time workers in 1990

dynamic factor demands and the effects of energy price shocks a dynamic model is used to understand how sharp changes in energy prices affect investment behavior employment and energy use the authors discuss the theory behind their model selection model specifications estimation methods and data list parameter estimates and elasticities for the selected model and describe the simulations they conclude that 1 the data strongly reject the hypothesis of constant returns to scale within their specification of aggregate production 2 the data indicate adjustment costs on labor are small and 3 their results help reconcile some of the conflicting estimates of energy demand elasticities appearing in recent literature 23 references 3 figures 3 tables

intertemporal substitution and constraints on labor supply evidence from panel data intertemporal substitution and constraints on labor supply evidence from panel data i introduction through much of the 1970s and 1980s macroeconomic stabilization analysis has been dominated by equilibrium models in which fluctuations in employment result from intertemporal substitution workers voluntarily vary their labor supply over time in response to movements in wages and interest rates a number of recent empirical tests of intertemporal substitution models for example altonji 1982 mankiw et al 1985 ham 1986 strongly reject the intertemporal substitution approach these results have led some economists to reject equilibrium macro models in favor of keynesian models in which workers face quantity constraints on labor supply in keynesian models employment fluctuations result from changes in the severity of constraints that is changes in involuntary unemployment rather than intertemporal substitution on the other hand many economists remain unconvinced by recent rejections of intertemporal substitution models because the results are consistent with many possible explanations for tractability empirical studies always impose restrictive assumptions such as separability of utility over time and between goods or such as the existence of a representative consumer data also suffer from numerous problems such as aggregation bias measurement error and the use of average rather than marginal wage rates consequently even the authors of the studies seem hesitant to draw firm conclusions they often simply conclude that workers behavior is explained either by quantity constraints or by a more complicated intertemporal substitution model than the one they have tested 1 this paper attempts to determine which of these explanations is correct are changes in employment a sophisticated form of intertemporal substitution or are they involuntary the crucial data come from questions in the panel study of income dynamics about whether workers experience unemployment or are unable to work as many hours as they want following ham 1982 1986 this information is used to classify workers as quantity constrained in their labor supply or unconstrained i then test a simple intertemporal substitution model for each group of workers if the tests suffer from overly restrictive utility functions or data problems then the model should be rejected for both samples on the other hand if some workers truly face quantity constraints then the model should perform better for the sample of unconstrained workers 2 the tests yield two main results first the model indeed performs worse for the constrained workers for this group the data reject the model s overidentifying restrictions and the parameter estimates contradict the model in contrast the results for the unconstrained workers are weakly consistent with the model as keynesian theories suggest quantity constraints alter workers behavior second the estimates of the intertemporal labor supply elasticity for prime age men are close to zero even for unconstrained workers even if workers are free to vary their hours they apparently choose to respond little to movements in wages the paper addresses two other issues first do constraints on borrowing influence labor supply in the intertemporal substitution model workers borrow and lend to smooth consumption while varying hours of work as this suggests the model performs best for workers who not only face no labor supply constraints but who also own substantial assets and thus are unlikely to face liquidity constraints finally the paper proposes a new approach to identifying intertemporal labor supply equations previous micro studies do not adequately address the problem that wages are correlated with unobservable characteristics that affect tastes for work i propose two identifying restrictions 1 changes in tastes are uncorrelated with levels of time in variant variables and 2 changes in tastes have no aggregate component

is tomorrow another day the labor supply of new york city cabdrivers the labor supply of taxi drivers is consistent with the existence of intertemporal substitution my analysis of the stopping behavior of new york city cabdrivers shows that daily income effects are small and that the decision to stop work at a particular point on a given day is primarily related to cumulative daily hours to that point this is in contrast to the analysis of camerer et al who find that the daily wage elasticity of labor supply of new york city cabdrivers is substantially negative implying large daily income effects this difference in findings is due to important differences in empirical methods and to problems with the conception and measurement of the daily wage rate used by camerer et al

h ours constraints and the wage hours locus surveys in the united states and canada reveal that approximately half of all workers would like to work a different number of hours per week if they could continue to receive their usual hourly wage of these about two thirds would like to work more hours and one third would like to work fewer hours kahn and lang 1991 shank 1986 despite the apparent prevalence of hours constraints the reasons why they exist are poorly understood in previous research we showed that lazear s 1981 agency model of the return to seniority is inconsistent with the data and that the specific capital model and insurance based implicit contract models cannot account for important regularities kahn and lang 1992 1995 in this paper we examine whether hours constraints can be explained by the existence of a hedonic wage hours locus we find that the actual wage hours locus is reasonably consistent with the wage hours locus predicted by observed hours constraints when the hedonic model is augmented by considerations of long term contracting we conclude that despite data and estimation shortcomings hedonic choices are an important reason for hours constraints to exist

estimation of a labour supply model with censoring due to unemployment and underemployment this study proposes and implements a method of labour supply estimation which is appropriate when the sample contains unemployed and underemployed workers the estimation method consists of excluding unemployed and underemployed workers from the sample and then using to avoid selection bias an extension of heckman s approach to the case where two correlated selection rules generate the sample hausman s specification test is then used to determine whether ignoring constrained workers has led to biases in traditional labour supply estimates and the empirical results suggest that previous estimates of several important parameters are biased since the biases go in the direction that would be predicted by the hypothesis that the unemployed and underemployed are constrained the results support this hypothesis

discreteness and the welfare cost of labor supply tax distortions we compare the welfare costs of tax distortions of labor supply in one andtwo memberhouseholddiscreteandcontinuouschoicelaborsupply leisurecon sumption models calibrated to the same aggregate uncompensated labor supplyelasticities in the discrete models taxes induce a large response from a subsetof the population whereas the majority of the population exhibits unchangedbehavior in contrast the majority of the population reacts to tax changes in con tinuous models discrete choice matters as the welfare costs of similar taxes varysigni cantly when individuals face discrete labor supply choices from when theychoose working hours continuously

employment determination in british industry investigations using micro data this paper derives and then estimates a model of employment where unions and firms bargain over wages and possibly employment and efficiency wage considerations may be important it illustrates the difficulties associated in interpreting many existing attempts to discriminate between alternative models the results based on over 200 u k firms suggest that employment is negatively related to the firm s own wage and the change in the own wage relative to outside opportunities the latter may be an efficiency wage effect various financial factors are also seen to have a significant effect on employment

a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup the recently implemented court decision to break up bell american telephone telegraph co to accord with u s anti trust laws represents a highly significant policy decision which is proving to be influential in other countries as well as the u s the telecommunication industry is of such size and importance that even relatively small economies that might be lost with bell s breakup as a natural monopoly could involve substantial welfare losses to consumers and producers studies commissioned by the u s justice department that approached this topic by econometric methods reported that the evidence failed to support the contention that bell was a natural monopoly here a goal programming constrained regression as developed in the management science literature uses the same functional form and the same data but nevertheless reverses the main findings of the econometric studies in every one of the 20 years covered this kind of difference in results obtained by two different methods of analysis poi

fossil fuel flexibility in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors this paper analyzes short run interfuel substitution in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors on fossil fuel choice the problems are studied within a restricted translog cost share model the paper concludes that interfuel substitution in existing power plants is substantial especially that between oil and gas this is consistent with the notion that short run fuel substitution takes place in dual or multi fired plants by switching load between different single fired plants and by some conversions of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the empirical investigation also indicates that the system load factor is a notable determinant of fossil fuel choices in west europe and the paper ends with an assessment of the fuel consequences of some load management schemes in the region

efficiency equity and regulation an optimal pricing model of bell canada this paper examines the optimality of telecommunications prices charged to residential users within quebec and ontatio optimality is evaluated from the standpoint of both efficiency and equity the underlying optimization model incorporates equity considerations through the distribution of welfare across individuals the model is simulated using structural information obtained from a multi input multi output cost and demand model of bell canada the results suggest that historic telecommunications prices are consistent with socially optimal prices when equity considerations are heavily weighted they are not consistent with pure efficiency ramsey prices efficacite equite et reglementation un modele de tarification optimale pour bell canada ce memoire examine l optimalite des tarifs imposes aux consommateurs usagers des services de telecommunication en ontario et au quebec l optimalite est evaluee en tenant compte a la fois de l efficacite et de l equite le modele d optimisation sous jacent tient compte de l equite en examinant la distribution de bien etre entre individus les exercises de simulation utilisent des renseignements de nature structurelle obtenus du modele de demande et de couts de bell canada developpe pour plusieurs intrants et plusieurs extrants les resultats obtenus suggerent que les tarifs imposes pour les services de telecommunication sont conformes historiquement avec les niveaux qu on peut considerer comme socialement optimaux quand les considerations d equite recoivent un poids considerable ils ne sont pas conformes cependant avec ce que dicterait une tarification d efficacite pure a la ramsey

testing the predictive value of subjective labour supply data empirical implementation of labour supply theories is usually based on realized labour market behaviour this requires strong assumptions about the impact of labour demand a possibility to avoid these assumptions is to make use of subjective data on desired labour supply in this paper we investigate whether respondents answers to survey questions on the desired number of working hours contain additional information on the preferences of the individuals using panel data for the netherlands we analyze whether deviations between desired hours and actual hours of work help to predict future job changes or changes in hours worked we use parametric and recently developed nonparametric tests the results suggest that subjective information on desired working hours are helpful in explaining female labour supply for males the evidence is mixed

constraints on the choice of work hours agency versus specific capital lifetime contracts imply that at a given time wages and value of marginal product vmp will diverge the contract will specify hours as well as wages since firms will desire to prevent workers from working more when the wage is greater than vmp and from working less when the wage is less than vmp if hours are set efficiently workers will face binding hours constraints the agency model and the firm specific capital models make opposite predictions regarding the relation between work hours constraints and job tenure we test these predictions our results indicate that neither model explains the observed pattern of hours constraints

hours restrictions and labor supply the authors estimate a labor supply model that permits hours restrictions of a simple but general form each individual chooses from among a finite set of jobs drawn at random f rom a market distribution each offering a fixed quantity of hours the polar cases of no constraints on hours worked and exogenous hours ar e nested within the general case the authors results are consistent with a substantial amount of rationing in the work hours of a sample of low income men most of whom are working less than they would like copyright 1993 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

productivity scale economies and technical change reconsidered recently several writers have presented theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that suggests that an electric utility s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into a variety of factors for example gollop and roberts 12 decompose a utility s total factor productivity growth rate into three distinct components 1 technical change 2 a scale effect and 3 an environmental regulatory factor results for the 1970s indicate that declining rates of technical change and output growth coupled with increased regulatory intensity lead to a noticeable decline in the firm s long run productivity growth rate similarly nelson and wohar 15 examine the impact of technical change scale economies and rate of return regulation on an electric utility s longrun productivity growth rate evidence suggests that the technical change and scale components behaved in a manner similar to the gollop and roberts 12 findings the evidence concerning the impact of the regulatory factor was less convincing due to the difficulty in obtaining reliable estimates of the regulatory constraint parameter a common characteristic of this literature is that the firms under investigation are assumed to employ all inputs at their long run cost minimizing levels as such the productivity decomposition model is primarily concerned with distinguishing between shifts in the production function versus movements along the production structure according to caves christensen and swanson 5 a violation of the long run equilibrium assumption adds an equally important factor to the decomposition of productivity growth specifically the movement toward or away from longrun equilibrium as a consequence researchers must further distinguish between long run and short run productivity growth estimates 2 in a recent article 9 daly and rao illustrate theoretically and empirically using a long run cost function and data pertaining to ontario hydro that a firm s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into 1 technical change 2 non constant returns to scale and 3 a capacity

regulation capital vintage and technical change in the electric utility industry this paper presents estimates of the rate of technical change in the electric power industry over the period 1951 78 the estimated model directly incorporates the effects of rate of return regulation and uses both a time trend and a vintage index to represent disembodied and embodied technical change respectively the results indicate that disembodied technical change was the primary source of cost reduction during 1951 70 and that tighter regulation as represented by a one point reduction in the rate of return would have reduced the rate of technical change by an average of 1 2 during 1951 78 34 references 18 footnotes 3 tables