the welfare economics of local public spending an empirical approach it has been suggested that spillover effects between politically autonomous local governments are common and that they present a welfare problem for the community as a whole a local government might under invest in roads for example because they are used by non residents or in schools because school leavers move out of the area other researchers and many consumers have found fault in the mechanisms of public choice or have claimed that electorates have negligible effective control over the local bureaucracy as far as output is concerned there might well be a serious local welfare problem even without spillovers this paper offers an empirically operational methodology for the welfare economic evaluation of local public spending the setting is the system of local government in sydney australia although the theoretical approach can be readily adapted to other settings the questions addressed are a is there evidence of positive spillovers and do they imply welf arerelevant externalities when prices quantities and locations have adjusted b is an increase in local spending desirable for local residents c on balance what can be said about the effect on aggregate welfare of a local fiscal expansion the key to the theoretical approach and its testable implications is the idea that the residential mobility of households between local governments reveals preferences over local public goods this can be traced to tiebout 1956 although the present model is appropriate to a considerably more general setting in which restrictions on mobility spillover effects and local government inefficiencies are allowed the central problem for the present analysis is to infer consumer preferences over local fiscal policies from observed differences in the rates of population growth between local governments as far as spillovers are concerned it is useful to make the following distinction from the outset direct externalities are said to be present when for given consumptions of non government goods and given residential locations an individual in one local political jurisdiction is not indifferent between alternative expenditures by another government mobility externalities result when the welfare of a local resident is affected

environmental kuznets curves new evidence on both panel and country level co2 emissions using data on per capita co2 emissions and per capita real gdp from fifteen countries spanning the period 1960 2013 this paper tests the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc using both panel based and time series based methodological approaches of cointegration given that the ekc hypothesis postulates an inverted u shaped relationship between emissions and output the study tests for cointegration between per capita co2 emissions per capita real gdp and the squared values of per capita real gdp the evidence from panel cointegration methodologies is mixed this result might arise due to time dependence of cointegrating coefficients the time varying cointegration approaches provide strong evidence in favor of time varying cointegration parameters furthermore based on the quantile cointegration approach the results indicate that the ekc hypothesis holds in 12 out of the 15 countries however even for these three countries the ekc hypothesis seems to hold at certain quantiles

indicators for sustainable energy development a multivariate cointegration and causality analysis from tunisian road transport sector this paper studies causal mechanism between indicators for sustainable energy development related to energy consumption from tunisian road transport sector the investigation is made using the johansen cointegration technique and the environmental kuznets curve ekc approach it examines the nexus between transport value added road transport related energy consumption road infrastructure fuel price and co2 emissions from tunisian transport sector during the period of 1980 2010 empirical results show that road transport related energy consumption transport value added transport co2 emissions and road infrastructure are mutually causal in the long run these results do not support the hypothesis of neutrality between energy and income for the tunisian road transport sector also there is a unidirectional causality running from fuel price to road transport related energy consumption with no feedback in both the short and long runs the fuel price and the road infrastructure are significant in the causal chain though the estimated long run cointegrated equation we conclude that there is an inverse n shaped relation between transport value added and transport co2 emissions with income turning point respectively equal to 75 and 579 constant 2000 tnd prices therefore our empirical findings refute the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped ekc for transport co2 emissions in tunisia the findings of this study have a number of policy implications economic growth environmental degradation energy and transportation policies should be recognized in order to improve the energy efficiency in transport sector all measures that should reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without affecting economic growth may be undertaken the policymakers in tunisia should plan urban transport relocate production units improve fuel efficient vehicles and reinforce legislation on controlling emissions in order to copying with policies based on low carbon development and climate resilient strategies

four themes in fertility research this study is concerned with four main themes that have been combined to describe u s fertility trends since 1920 these themes are identified as a time adjustment mechanism income the wifes labor force activities and some intergenerational factor in order to obtain an unambiguous picture each theme will be represented by only one variable after selecting the variables and estimating a model an examination of the changing role these variables have had in explaining changes in fertility the total fertility rate throughout much of this century will be made finally the implications these themes have for future fertility will be examined the authors conclude that in interpreting historical u s fertility rates the results seem to indicate that much of the early decline in u s fertility was due to falling infant mortality after the second world war fertility rose sharply as the age structure variable declined and income rose eventually both womens labor force participation rates and the age structure variable rose and consequently fertility fell they also suggest that the age structure variable may cause a temporary upward swing in fertility in the near future excerpt

childbearing age family allowances and social security although the optimal policy under endogenous fertility has been widely studied the optimal public intervention under endogenous childbearing age has remained largely unexplored this paper examines the optimal family policy in a context where the number and the timing of births are chosen by individuals who differ as to how early fertility can weaken future earnings growth we analyze the design of a policy of family allowances and of public pensions in such a setting under distinct informational environments we show how endogenous childbearing ages affect the optimal policy through the redistribution across the earnings dimension and the internalization of fertility externalities it is also shown that contrary to common practice children benefits differentiated according to the age of parents can under some conditions be part of the optimal family policy

fertility and the personal exemption implicit pronatalist policy in the united states the personal exemption in the us provides households with an income tax subsidy for each child this paper uses aggregate time series data for the us from 1913 to 1984 to estimate the impact of the tax value of the personal exemption on the aggregate birth rate the empirical results indicate that the personal exemption has a positive and significant impact on fertility and this result is robust to a variety of specifications the us therefore pursues an implicit pronatalist policy through the income tax and the empirical results indicate that the recent tax reform act of 1986 will on average increase this subsidy for fertility authors

how economic growth affects emissions an investigation of the environmental kuznets curve in portuguese and spanish economic activity sectors abstract it is a disquieting reality that increased economic growth for many years now in the western world is at odds with environmental degradation in this paper the relationship between economic growth and environmental variables is analyzed under two non linear specifications a quadratic and a cubic specification the study is conducted for portugal and spain in the period 1975 2012 using data for 13 sectors gva is used as proxy for income while energy use and carbon dioxide account for environmental degradation there is evidence for an inverted u shaped ekc however there are also other inverted n shaped functions that explain the relationship between economic growth and emissions altogether empirical results do indicate particular differences between portuguese and spanish sectors the results are of interest not only for researchers but also for policy makers political mitigation measures are also analyzed

determinants of the environmental kuznets curve considering economic activity sector diversification in the opec countries abstract sectors contribute differently to the total level of co2 emissions per capita since they are heterogeneous in terms of gdp structure this work investigates the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis considering a set of twelve of the fourteen opec countries it contributes to previous literature exploring the environmental kuznets curve relationship by analysing how economic activity sector diversification impacts the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions addressing an important identified gap to address this gap annual data from 1992 to 2015 is used a panel cross section analysis is provided between countries and for the seven considered sectors is estimated through panel corrected standard errors and convergence estimations are presented conclusions point to the relocation of pollution intensive sectors to almost all of the opec countries for all countries a u shaped relationship is evidenced implying that economic growth in oil producing and exporting countries increases environmental degradation while energy consumption increases environmental damage trade openness seems to have a significant and negative effect over emissions leading to environmental improvements this study points out that opec countries will have increased challenges facing them in terms of environmental degradation and only a few economic activity sectors can conduct environmental improvements through growth the inclusion of oil prices increased coefficients magnitude probably these sectors are already allocating more labour and capital in projects and investments on renewable energy energy efficiency and energy savings substituting fossil fuels like oil

a new environmental kuznets curve relationship between direct material input and income per capita evidence from industrialised countries abstract many studies have focused on the quantification of the input of materials into the economy however the insights provided by those studies have generally been limited this paper attempts to bring analytical value to the discussion on dematerialization considering direct material input dmi per capita as the dependent variable in a test of the environmental kuznets curve ekc the explanatory variable is as usual gross domestic product per capita the quadratic and cubic versions of the ekc are tested econometrically using panel data ranging from 1960 to 1998 for 16 industrialised countries the results indicate a strong and robust support for both the quadratic and cubic ekc relationships between material input and income in industrialised economies while the statistical support to both types of evolution may seem contradictory it suggests that as industrialised economies grow the intensity of material consumption first increases but eventually starts exhibiting a decreasing trend after a certain income threshold is reached the inverted u or quadratic relationship is confirmed even though for the ranges of income considered in this study the trend is mostly on the increasing part of the inverted u curve however the statistical support to the cubic specification suggests that these results need to be regarded with caution overall the statistically stronger models are the quadratic and cubic models with country random effects and the cubic model with country and year fixed effects

family economics and macro behavior in this 1987 presidential address to the american economic association the author explores the contributions of the field of family economics to macroeconomic analysis the focus is on family behavior as an active endogenous factor that both affects and is affected by the evolution of the economy much of the time is spent on long term economic growth although i also discuss short and long cycles in economic activity and the interaction between overlapping generations through social security transmission of inequality and in other ways many conclusions in these and presumably other macro areas change radically when family choices get the attention they deserve excerpt

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

the role of economic growth in the fertility transition in western europe econometric evidence the aim of this paper is to construct a structural model of economic growth that causes nonlinear changes in fertility and to test the model with time series data from germany 1859 1913 the model is based on the new household economics derived from becker where on the demand side fertility is part of a maximizing process in which numbers of children child quality expenditures per child and market purchased goods and services serve as the utility function the constraints are income and relative prices a summary is provided of transition theory and the econometric model 4 hypotheses are tested 1 economic growth has non monotonic effects on fertility 2 declining infant mortality rates negatively influence fertility 3 infant morality declines with declines in the growth of real per capita income and 4 declining fertility will reduce infant mortality rates lagged effects are possible for hypotheses 1 and 2 lag estimation was obtained by setting ordinary least squares equations with 5 lags for each variable f tests were then used to reduce lags tests were also run for serial correlation heteroscedasticity and specification error the results of the regressions were that the r2 indicated a close fit for all birth rate equations the equations for infant mortality were not as strong the first hypothesis is supported by a quadratic equation in which the function is an inverted u the trend terms are all significant and negative there was some support for the second hypothesis that infant and child mortality lowers birth rates the infant mortality equation shows only positive and significant coefficients for germany and norway which suggests little support that lower birth rates reduced infant mortality experiments were run to shorten lag times to test for spurious evidence of causality and to test for an omitted non linear time trend results were not affected by these experiments dynamic counterfactual simulations for birth rates were conducted in order to gauge total effects there was evidence that slightly slower economic growth lowers birth rates initially and then raises birth rates in the uk only the depressing effect on birth rates is observed there is support that economic growth is a cause of fertility change in western europe and support for the new economic theory but decline is accounted for by other forces

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

threshold cointegration and nonlinear adjustment between co2 and income the environmental kuznets curve in spain 1857 2007 abstract article history received 9 march 2011received in revised form 24 february 2012accepted 2 march 2012available online 14 march 2012jel classi cation c2q4keywords environmental kuznets curveco 2 emissionsnonlinear relationshipthreshold cointegration inthispaper wemodelthe long run relationship between per capita co 2 and per capita income for the spanisheconomy over the period 1857 2007 according to the environmental kuznets curve eck the relationshipbetween the two variables has an inverted u shape however previous studies for the spanish economy onlyconsidered the existence of linear relationships such an approach may lack exibility to detect the trueshape of the relationship our empirical methodology accounts for a possible non linear relationship throughthe use of threshold cointegration techniques our results con rm the non linearity of the link between thetwo above mentioned variables pointing to the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for the spanishcase 2012 elsevier b v all rights reserved

time series growth in the female labor force in this paper we investigate the reasons for the growth in the female labor force in america during the twentieth century in our research we study the longer term trends since 1900 and conduct a more intensive examination of developments after the second world war on the basis of our work we conclude that rising real wages accounted for 60 of the total growth in the female labor force half of this wage effect in expanding labor supply was the fertility reducing consequence of a higher female wage

revisiting the environmental kuznets curve in a global economy the present study deals with an empirical investigation between co2 emissions energy intensity economic growth and globalization using annual data over the period of 1970 2010 for turkish economy we applied unit root test and cointegration approach in the presence of structural breaks the direction of causality between the variables is investigated by applying the vecm granger causality approach our results confirmed the existence of cointegration between the series the empirical evidence reported that energy intensity and economic growth globalization increase condense co2 emissions the results also validated the presence of environmental kuznets curve ekc the causality analysis shows bidirectional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions this implies that economic growth can be boosted at the cost of environment

income taxes and the marriage decision economic incentives have been found to play an important role in the marriage decision in developed and developing countries however the way in which the income tax treatment of the family affects these incentives has been routinely ignored this paper uses time series data for the united states from 1947 to 1988 to estimate the impact of economic factors including for the first time the tax consequences of marriage on the aggregate marriage rate the estimation results indicate that economic factors like income female wages and education play an important and statistically significant role in the marriage decision in particular the tax consequences of marriage clearly affect the marriage decision when income taxes increase with marriage the aggregate marriage rate declines however the magnitude of this impact is quite small this result suggests that some individuals respond to tax incentives in their marriage choices but that for many individuals taxes do not affect these decisions

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

energy consumption economic growth and co2 emissions in middle east and north african countries this article extends the recent findings of liu 2005 ang 2007 apergis et al 2009 and payne 2010 by implementing recent bootstrap panel unit root tests and cointegration techniques to investigate the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions energy consumption and real gdp for 12 middle east and north african countries mena over the period 1981 2005 our results show that in the long run energy consumption has a positive significant impact on co2 emissions more interestingly we show that real gdp exhibits a quadratic relationship with co2 emissions for the region as a whole however although the estimated long run coefficients of income and its square satisfy the ekc hypothesis in most studied countries the turning points are very low in some cases and very high in other cases hence providing poor evidence in support of the ekc hypothesis co2 emission reductions per capita have been achieved in the mena region even while the region exhibited economic growth over the period 1981 2005 the econometric relationships derived in this paper suggest that future reductions in co2 emissions per capita might be achieved at the same time as gdp per capita in the mena region continues to grow

an empirical analysis of life cycle fertility and female labor supply this paper examines us household fertility and female labor supply over the life cycle using data from the panel study of income dynamics the authors investigate how maternal time inputs and market expenditures on offspring as well as the benefits they yield their parents vary with ages of offspring and influence female labor supply and contraceptive behavior the econometric framework combines a female labor supply model and a contraceptive choice index function it also accounts for the fact that conceptions are not perfectly controllable events using longitudinal data on married couples the authors estimate these equations and test alternative specifications of the technologies governing child care the findings suggest that while parents cannot perfectly control conceptions variations in child care costs do affect life cycle spacing of births furthermore the results demonstrate the gains of modeling the linkages between female labor supply and fertility behavior at the household level authors modified

a time series model of fertility and female labour supply in the uk multiple time series procedures suitable for estimation and testing with nonstationary data are applied to uk data on age specific fertility rates age specific female labour force participation rates and women s and men s wages cointegration tests establish the existence of two long run equilibrium relations identified as a fertility relation and a labour supply equation for each age group maximum likelihood estimates of these equations are consistent with the new home economics model of fertility and tests of granger causality show evidence of extensive feedback among the variables

fertility and the size of the u s labor force this paper reviews and interprets from an economic perspective the demographic trends in the u s since the turn of the century the primary focus will be upon the interplay between the fertility and labor force participation of women and how they may be interpreted within simple economic models we will begin by stating what economic demography is and why careful analytic methods are needed section ii provides a brief demographic history of the u s section iii describes the major economic theories of fertility and section iv discusses the empirical performance of these theories section v discusses the linkages between fertility and the size of the labor force and section vi concludes excerpt

efficiency and equity in the provision of public education the paper focuses on the benefits derived from public elementary and secondary education monetary values of households perceived benefits from operating expenditures are estimated information concerning the preference mappings of citizens is obtained using a random utility model to analyze micro voting data the estimated model in turn provides information concerning the efficiency and distributional consequences of public education expenditures the conclusion is that operating expenditures exceed the estimated efficient level furthermore it may be difficult to justify the inefficiently large expenditures on equity grounds since the estimated distribution of households perceived benefits net of local taxes is pro rich g overnment provision of goods and i j services has the potential of greatly affecting the welfare of citizens this paper focuses on the benefits derived from one such service public elementary and secondary education monetary values of households perceived benefits from public education expenditures are estimated information concerning the preference mappings of citizens is obtained using a multinomial probit random utility model to analyze micro voting data the estimated model in turn provides information concerning the efficiency and distributional consequences of public education expenditures the conclusion is that operating expenditures exceed the estimated efficient level furthermore it may be difficult to justify the inefficiently large expenditures on equity grounds since the estimated distribution of households perceived benefits net of local taxes is pro rich in contrast to this study a number of studies employ ad hoc rules to measure citizens benefits from public elementary and secondary education initially total benefits are assumed to equal the cost of educational services this input cost measure of benefits is then allocated to households using some unproven rule of thumb when an ad hoc rule is used to allocate a questionable measure of total benefits the results are even more suspect conceptually it is quite odd to determine assume total benefits and then allocate the total to individuals or households the correct method is first to obtain estimates of individuals or households benefits these estimates can then be used to determine the magnitude of total benefits and analyze how the benefits are distributed across the population aaron and mcguire 1970 criticize ad hoc benefit measures and propose the income value measure for x units of the politically allocated good x this measure is iv mrsj x where mrsj is the marginal rate of substitution of x for a composite commodity evaluated at x and one s aftertax income this measure is comparable to measures of the income values of goods purchased in private markets while aaron and mcguire argue for preferencebased benefit measures the lack of information concerning preference mappings necessitates that they assume the shape of the utility function even though the results by maital 1973 based on a similar method are slightly less restrictive a number of restrictive assumptions are common to both studies not only are households assumed to have identical separable utility functions but the existing levels of politically allocated goods are assumed to be efficient implying the total income value equals the input cost also the allocation of benefits from mixed goods e g public education between public and private components is based on ad hoc rules the major contribution of the current study is that the benefit estimates are based on information concerning the preference mappings of individuals as revealed through referenda voting 2 the estireceived for publication march 9 1983 revision accepted for publication june 4 1984 state university of new york albany this paper was improved as a result of the advice and encouragement of kenneth wertz john akin david guilkey and james wilde as well as the helpful comments of two referees financial support for this research was in part provided by a dissertation research fellowship from the brookings institution 1 an example is the 1967 tax foundation study 2nmicro voting data are also used by rubinfeld 1977 to obtain information about citizens preferences for public school expenditures he uniquely estimates the parameters of a demand function up to an unknown multiplicative constant a micro demand function for education is uniquely estimated by bergstrom rubinfeld and shapiro 1982 using a different type of survey data while the method used here is to directly estimate preference mappings the information concerning such mappings embedded in such a demand function provides an

assessing the impact of local taxation on property prices a spatial matching contribution this paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of local taxation on property prices controlling for the local public spending using data on property taxation and real estate transactions over the period 1994 2004 our empirical methodology pairs transactions in the same spatial environments spatial differencing and instrumental variables methodology allow us to compare sales across municipality boundaries and to control for the potential endogeneity of local taxation and public spending our results suggest that the local property tax rate has no impact on property prices while the amount of taxes paid appears to have a negative effect on property price

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

the effect of economic opportunity and family background on adolescent cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation and childbearing among low income blacks this article uses a hazards model permitting continuous covariates and fixed effects to estimate the effect of local employment opportunity and family background on the cohabitation and childbearing of black youths from low income households support is found for w j wilson s hypothesis that employment opportunity encourages the formation of cohabitational unions as well as for the opportunity cost hypothesis that employment opportunity discourages childbearing outside such unions however the latter effect appears to be larger suggesting that the opportunity cost hypothesis is the primary channel through which higher employment rates result in lower rates of illegitimacy among underclass youths

linking analyses and environmental kuznets curves for aggregated material flows in the eu abstract the relationship between economy and environmental impacts has been an essential topic in the discussion on environmental problems for a long time from the 1990s this relationship has gained a position in environmental policy as well de coupling the use of natural resources from economic growth has been set as one of the policy goals in the sixth environmental action programme by the european commission in the scientific discussion the concept of environmental kuznets curve deals closely with the de coupling or de linking phenomenon aggregated material flows on the other hand have often been considered as a macro level proxy of environmental degradation different methods or approaches have been designed for sustainability or carrying capacity evaluation as well the objective of this article is i to discuss the possibilities and limitations of using environmental and economic indicators in the sustainability analysis at the macro level ii to present a theoretical framework for the linking analysis including a classification of the degrees of de linking re linking environmental impacts from to economic growth and iii to give an empirical example by using indicators of direct material flows as a proxy of environmental degradation and by applying the framework into the european union and its 15 member countries the results show that the trend in the european union is a weak de linking of material flows from economic growth during the years 1980 2000 in other words material intensity of the economy has generally decreased due to increased efficiency but the absolute amount of material use has increased although at a lower rate of increase than economic growth on the other hand there is a quite large variation between different eu member countries however absolute decrease in the use of materials cannot be found as a continuous trend between the years 1980 and 2000 in any of the studied eu member countries

fertility choice and economic growth theory and evidence this proposed theoretical model is based on new models of barro and becker and becker murphy and tamura and explains the interaction of family decisions about fertility and the macroeconomy in a growth situation the proposed model captures a dynamic interaction between labor leisure and fertility choice and a structural fertility preference shock endogenous factor are consumption labor leisure and fertility while exogenous factors are production and utility parameters the aim was to develop a general equilibrium model which expresses short and long term dynamics to test the impact of economic disturbances on fertility and to explain the us baby boom and subsequent fertility patterns savings in capital accumulation and in labor supply were expected to have ambiguous effects while improved productivity was expected to increase steady state consumption the methodology a structural vector auto regression var model was developed by blanchard and quah and ihmed ickes wang and yoo structural impacts include disturbances in employment fertility theoretical preference shift and output long term restrictions are based on theory rather than on ad hoc causal orderings sims method or current responses bernanke method the structural var model is estimated using the logged differences of labor fertility rate and output the empirical results are based on analysis of us data 1949 88 on fertility weekly hours worked and real gross national product the model revealed that fertility choice should not be considered exogenous to the labor market or to economic growth variance of the forecast error for the fertility rate was significantly explained by employment shocks the effect was reduced fertility and increased labor force effort output responses to fertility and technology shocks were similar to those reported by shapiro and watson in the variance decomposition analysis output shocks explained about 33 of output variance fertility shocks explained about 33 of labor growth and 25 of output growth after the first year with a lag of one year about 37 of fertility variance was explained by employment shocks concluding remarks underscore the importance of knowing which shock initiated the motion and causal ordering

can government enforcement permanently alter fertility the case of china i introduction in developing countries per capita output growth objectives are often stymied by high birth rates 1 traditional values ignorance of birth control technology and labor intensive farming are all factors which contribute to high fertility rates for those reasons many developing countries experiencing high birth rates adopt population control policies while most programs combine educational efforts with some form of persuasion many also provide strong economic disincentives to high fertility 2 of particular interest from this vantage point is the experience of the people s republic of china which stands alone in its use of quotas on child bearing decisions 3 china s population control policy began with a massive campaign in 1953 reversing an earlier pro natalist stance however that campaign was curtailed by the political turmoil arising from the great leap forward and the cultural revolution population control programs resumed in 1970 with the issuance and enforcement of three reproductive norms late marriage longer spacing between births and fewer children in 1979 the authorities went even further allowing each household to have only one child interest in china s experience arises not only from the severity of the restrictions but also due to the government s ability to enforce them the feasibility of enforcing these restrictions is a result of the deep penetration of the communist party into most aspects of an individual s life including its control over housing employment and salaries 4 however despite the government s extensive involvement in birth planning those who study chinese demography have debated the extent to which government policies are responsible for the large fertility decline in the 1970s 5 this paper uses recent advances in economic theory and econometrics to quantitatively assess the main sources of fertility fluctuations in china specifically we employ a model with endogenous fertility choice which modifies the framework of razin and ben zion 1975 and barro and becker 1989 6 in contrast to other papers we focus on the relationship between government enforcement of population control policies and fertility outcomes we also allow the fertility rate to be affected by 1 household preferences including alterations in taste as well as in education health care and the changing role of women and 2 production technology which mostly captures changes in agricultural output or income we perform simple comparative static analysis to examine long cycles in fertility and output and characterize the transitional dynamics which govern short cycles easterlin 1968 and lee and loschky 1987 provide nice discussions of long fertility cycles the long run steady state predictions will be used to identify the empirical structural vector autoregression var system as well as interpret the underlying structural disturbances additionally the transitional dynamics results can be compared to the estimated dynamic structure finally we employ a structural var as in blanchard and quah 1989 and ahmed ickes wang and yoo 1993 to econometrically disentangle the relative contributions of policy and economic development factors to changes in fertility growth the structural disturbances include a change in the government s enforcement power a technological advance in agricultural production and a preference shift toward a higher fertility rate all of which are capable of generating both short and long cycles in fertility and output we find that government enforcement power has a significant negative effect on fertility accounting for about one third of the variance of the forecast error for fertility growth after the first year an expansion in agricultural output on the other hand yields a short run positive impact on fertility growth and is responsible for almost one fifth of fertility growth variations furthermore while theoretically all shocks have the potential to generate long cycles only preference shifts have statistically significant long run effects

semiparametric bayesian inference for dynamic tobit panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity summary this paper develops semiparametric bayesian methods for inference of dynamic tobit panel data models our approach requires that the conditional mean dependence of the unobserved heterogeneity on the initial conditions and the strictly exogenous variables be specified important quantities of economic interest such as the average partial effect and average transition probabilities can be readily obtained as a by product of the markov chain monte carlo run we apply our method to study female labor supply using a panel data set from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth a panel cointegration analysis from canadian industrial sector perspective abstract this paper investigates the long run and the causal relationship between greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth for canadian industrial sectors over the period 1990 2007 the empirical findings suggest that in the long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions whereas a non linear relationship is found between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth consistent with the environmental kuznets curve the short run dynamics conveys that there is a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions and a weak unidirectional causality running from greenhouse gas emissions to energy consumption from economic growth to energy consumption in the long run however there seems to be a weak one way causality flowing from energy consumption and economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions

driving forces for aggregate energy consumption a cross country approach abstract although a cornerstone for development past and current energy use has often posed a major challenge for policymakers with respect to planning and management within this context in this paper an updated multi sectorial cross country assessment of energy consumption trends was undertaken aiming at identifying the main drivers of changes in aggregate energy consumption these drivers have been interpreted in the light of the policy measures that have been implemented over the years by different countries to achieve a sustainable development of the energy sector the cross country assessment encompasses a set of developed united kingdom portugal and spain and emerging brazil china and india countries resorting to the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition method changes in the aggregate energy consumption were decomposed into three main explanatory effects activity structure and intensity the major findings achieved reflect the relevance of intensity and activity effects in detriment of the structural effect the assessment of energy consumption trends using the lmdi decomposition method provides critical information regarding which is the dominant factor that should be focused in policy design

econometric analysis of birth rate dynamics in britain the author presents an econometric model to estimate annual fluctuations in the birth rate in the united kingdom since 1950 the new model has been improved by 1 adding additional economic variables to the model particularly child allowances real house prices and following easterlin 1980 womens cohort size 2 using mens and womens net after tax wages rather than gross wages and 3 employing econometric techniques developed from the theory of cointegrated series to deal with the nonstationarity of most of the data excerpt

revisiting environmental kuznets curves through the energy price lens abstract the goal of this paper is to provide new insights to elucidate the inconclusive results from the environmental kuznets curve ekc empirical literature for the first time in empirical literature an econometric analysis includes the relative prices for several energy sources the paper provides strong evidence on the relevance of energy prices to co 2 emissions accordingly one reason for the lack of agreement in the ekc literature may be the absence of energy prices in empirical exercises the presence of relative energy price changes in the econometric specification confirms a monotonic and positive relationship between co 2 and gross domestic product gdp therefore we may conclude that there is a decoupling process but without reaching any turning point on that relationship the policy implications are straightforward direct climate action by policy makers is required to break the positive relationship between co 2 and gdp that conclusion has been reinforced by the reduction of energy prices since the middle of 2014 otherwise the trend in energy prices may reverse the relative decarbonisation processes accounted for in recent years in major developed countries

the baby boom and world war ii a macroeconomic analysis we argue that one major cause of the u s postwar baby boom was the rise in female labor supply during world war ii we develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor force participation decisions we use the model to assess the impact of the war on female labor supply and fertility in the decades following the war for the war generation of women the high demand for female labor brought about by mobilization leads to an increase in labor supply that persists after the war as a result younger women who reach adulthood in the 1950s face increased labor market competition which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier the effect is amplified by the rise in taxes necessary to pay down wartime government debt in our calibrated model the war generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust

profiles of fertility labour supply and wages of married women a complete life cycle model of all the major economic and demographic events in the postwar united states period the trends in fertility and female labour supply stand out as among the most dramatic fertility rates after their depression lows rose unexpectedly after world war ii far more than was anticipated as an adjustment to the war and continued to rise until the late 1950 s and early 1960 s when they again took an unexpected turn downward all the way to today s historical lows female labour force participation rates continuing their historical climb grew throughout the postwar period at an increasing pace by 4 percentage points during the 1950 s by 5 percentage points during the 1960 s and by 8 percentage points during the 1970 s these two trends are of course closely related for most married women have traditionally spent at least some minimal time out of the labour force while caring for their own children thus for example the slower growth rate of labour force participation rates in the 1950 s is probably connected with the higher fertility rates in that period in this paper a complete model of female labour supply and fertility choice is constructed and estimated the model is more complete than previous models in several respects first labour supply and fertility decisions are modelled as completely joint in the same sense as the consumption of two goods is joint second both are modelled as life cycle decisions that is as decisions regarding sequences of labour supply and fertility events rather than levels of the same hence the timing of both is important third the life cycle path of wage rates is made endogenous to the model given a wage function showing the effect of work experience on future wages the path of wages is determined automatically by the chosen path of labour supply which in turn is related to fertility decisions that require some period of non work econometrically the three profiles for labour supply fertility and wages are estimated with a full information maximum likelihood technique that solves several econometric problems such as the problem of heterogeneity of tastes the selectivity problem of missing wage rates for non workers and the problem of simultaneous equations bias the value of constructing a complete model is best seen by briefly reviewing past work in this area the modern literature in the area is based upon the work of becker

female earnings and the divorce rate a simultaneous equations model economists have contributed a great deal of research both theoretical and empirical to the study of marital formation and dissolution many empirical examinations of marriage and divorce rates exist based on becker s seminal contributions to the literature all of these divorce studies are single equation models with female earnings assumed exogenous as discussed by becker 1981 however causality may run in the opposite direction as well the divorce rate may influence female earnings this paper estimates a simultaneous equations model in which divorce rates and female earnings are the jointly endogenous variables data are by state for 1960 1970 1980 and 1990 the state wide divorce rate equation is an extension of waters and ressler 1999 and the specification of a state wide earnings equation follows standard human capital theory the specification of joint endogeneity between female earnings and the divorce rate allows valid inferences to be made regarding the effect of female earnings on

women s fertility market work and marital status a test of the new household economics with international data since its emergence from the pioneering efforts of becker 1960 and mincer 1962 the new household economics has inspired a wide range of theoretical and empirical models of demographic behaviour with particular emphasis on fertility female labour force participation and marriage a central principle of these models has been to assign critical roles to the values of men s and women s time in the decision making process in the present paper i adhere to that principle while seeking to contribute to the empirical literature in two important respects 1 the econometric model developed in this paper incorporates several improvements over prior models although women s fertility market work and marital status are closely interconnected their endogeneity has not been fully reflected in previous econometric work 2 in the present model all these demographic variables are endogenous and are subject to a common set of incomes and prices another distinctive feature represents an extension of the approach developed by butz and ward 1979 they used interaction termsmen s and women s earnings weighted by female labour force participation to explain variation in us birth rates here earnings are interacted with the endogenous demographic variables in all equations simulation experiments are used to gauge the total impacts of changes in men s and women s pay under alternative sets of initial conditions 2 for the first time so far as known cross national data are used in a direct test of the new household economics although the literature contains

which industry is greener an empirical study of nine industries in oecd countries abstract this study analyzed the relationship between the co2 emissions of different industries and economic growth in oecd countries from 1970 to 2005 we tested an environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and found that total co2 emissions from nine industries show an n shaped trend instead of an inverted u or monotonic increasing trend with increasing income the ekc hypothesis for sector level co2 emissions was supported in the 1 paper pulp and printing industry 2 wood and wood products industry and 3 construction industry we also found that emissions from coal and oil increase with economic growth in the steel and construction industries in addition the non metallic minerals machinery and transport equipment industries tend to have increased emissions from oil and electricity with economic growth finally the ekc turning point and the relationship between gdp per capita and sectoral co2 emissions differ among industries according to the fuel type used therefore environmental policies for co2 reduction must consider these differences in industrial characteristics

post war fertility and female labour force participation rates this paper provides an explanation for the change in fertility and female labour supply over the post war period in england and wales a model of fertility and labour force participation is outlined and estimated over the period 1953 82 for six age groups of women the most significant factors to influence fertility and participation are found to be male and female earnings and education interest rates number of children and the state of the labour market are also important excerpt

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth panel data evidence from developing countries in this paper we test the environment kuznet s curve ekc hypothesis for 43 developing countries we suggest examining the ekc hypothesis based on the short and long run income elasticities that is if the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run income elasticity then it is evident that a country has reduced carbon dioxide emissions as its income has increased our empirical analysis based on individual countries suggests that jordan iraq kuwait yemen qatar the uae argentina mexico venezuela algeria kenya nigeria congo ghana and south africa approximately 35 per cent of the sample carbon dioxide emissions have fallen over the long run that is as these economies have grown emissions have fallen since the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run elasticity we also examine the ekc hypothesis for panels of countries constructed on the basis of regional location using the panel cointegration and the panel long run estimation techniques we find that only for the middle eastern and south asian panels the income elasticity in the long run is smaller than the short run implying that carbon dioxide emission has fallen with a rise in income

what have we learned from the economics of the family the family is distinguished from other social institutions such as firms by its crucial role in the production and nurture of children and its rationale is ultimately to be found in the preferences of individuals for own children sexual reproduction means that the production of one s own child requires the participation of another person of the opposite sex the production of a child who will survive become a successful adult and produce his or her own children requires the expenditure of both personal and purchased resources over a lengthy period of time although interesting insights on the family can be culled from the classics systematic development of the economics of the family is a recent phenomenon beginning in the late 1950 s when harvey leibenstein 1957 and gary becker 1960 attempted to address the determinants of fertility behavior within the framework of consumer theory in this paper i provide a brief overview of the history of family economics since 1960 and along the way offer a selective assessment of what has been learned from it i attempt this assessment by asking how far we have progressed in answering a few of the larger theoretical empirical and policy questions that have motivated economists interests in an area customarily studied by sociologists and demographers or that have caused economists dealing with more traditional subject matter to incorporate the family into their work among the set of questions that have been addressed within the literature during the past twenty five years are 1 what are the causes of the historical association between economic growth and development and demographic transition from high to low levels of fertility and mortality of what relevance is the historical experience of currently developed countries to contemporary ldcs should fertility reduction be a primary goal of policy in the developing countries are the developed countries in danger of extinction because of fertility below replacement levels 2 what was the cause of the post world war ii baby boom and subsequent baby bust was the baby boom a one time aberration from a secular decline in fertility or can we expect substantial fluctuations in the birth rate in the future what are the consequences of the baby boom for the economic welfare of cohorts born during and after the boom 3 is the traditional family dead in the united states and other developed countries why did the divorce rate double in a decade why the growth in female headed households why do so many divorced fathers fail to support their children has the sexual division of labor within the family changed as a consequence of the growth of female labor supply to what extent are these changes in the family caused by social policy and to what extent are they a product of basic market forces associated with modern economic development what are the consequences of these changes for the welfare of future generations i attempt to touch on some issues from each of the three areas in which the questions are grouped however constraints imposed by limitations of space time and most imtdiscussants kenneth wolpin ohio state university robert pollak university of pennsylvania t paul schultz yale university

tax incidence analysis of developing countries an alternative view misleading conclusions can be drawn from studies of tax incidence that ignore the special features of developing countries incorporating these features can sometimes reverse the incidence pattern of taxes relative to what is often taken to be conventional wisdom even where patterns are not reversed quantitative differences can be substantial the newer views of incidence have implications for tax restructuring options being considered in several developing countries the proposed restructuring may appear to lead only to a more regressive tax system because of improper incidence analysis copyright 1991 by oxford university press

for love or money the impact of income taxes on marriage higher sometimes lower than their combined single income tax obligations in this paper we explore the impact of the federal individual income tax as well as other economic and demograplhic variables on the marriage decisionis of individuals using longitudinal data from the panel study on income dynamics for the period 1968 92 we estimate a discrete time hazard model of the time to first marriage we find that the probability of marriage is significantly affected by a range of economic and demographic variables importantly we find that an increase in total income taxes paid by married versus single women has a negative effect on the likelihood of marriage and that the change in the marginal tax rate is also a significant determinant of marriage in some cases in contrast the tax effects are rarely significant in determining marriage probabilities among men although there are some differential responses by race in general the impacts of the income tax variables even when statistically significant are small

women and affirmative action abstract this paper reviews evidence indicating that as it has been enforced so far affirmative action has contributed negligibly to women s progress in the workplace affirmative action can be modeled as a tax on employers whose female employment growth falls below a certain rate clearly if labor supply shifts result in female employment growth greater than the regulatory standard the tax constraint will not be binding as we shall see this may help explain an affirmative action program that is generally ineffective for women although it has been effective for minorities federal anti bias policies in general and the system of affirmative action goals in particular have been accused of instituting employment quotas this paper reviews evidence on the homogenization of the workplace predicted by the quota theory as well as considering more direct evidence on whether affirmative action goals are really quotas in lambs clothing i shall also review the slim evidence on the most fundamental and co

booms busts and fertility testing the becker model using gender specific labor demand in this paper i present estimates of the effect of local labor demand shocks on birth rates to identify exogenous variation in male and female labor demand i create indices that exploit cross sectional variation in industry composition changes in gender education composition within industries and growth in national industry employment consistent with economic theory i find that improvements in men s labor market conditions are associated with increases in fertility while improvements in women s labor market conditions have smaller negative effects i separately find that increases in unemployment rates are associated with small decreases in birth rates at the state level

the environmental kuznets curve economic growth renewable and non renewable energy and trade in tunisia we use the autoregressive distributed lag ardl b ounds testing approach for cointegration with structural breaks and the ve ctor error correction model vecm granger causality approach in order to investigate relationships between per capita co 2 emissions gdp renewable and non renewable energy consumption and international trade exports or imports for tunisia during the period 1980 2009 we show the existence of a short run unidirectional causality running from tra de gdp co 2 emission and non renewable energy to renewable energy our long run estimates show that non renewable energy and trade have a positive impact on co 2 emissions whereas renewable energy impacts weakly and negatively co 2 emission when using the model with exports and this impact is statistically insignificant when using the model wi th imports the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is not supported graphically and analytically in the long run this means that tunisia has not ye t reached the required level of per capita gdp to get an inverted u shaped ekc our main policy recommendations for tunisia are the following i to radically reform the subsidies system granted b y the tunisian government for fossil fuels consumption ii to encourage the use of renewable energy and ener gy efficiency by reinforcing actual projects and regulatory frame work iii to locate ports near exporting industrial zones or vice versa to reduce emission of pollution caused by the transport of merchandise iv to elaborate a strategy for maximizing its benefit from renewable energy technology transfer occurring when importing capita l goods v to encourage the creation of renewable energy projects for export to the eu with a proportion of production for national consumption

symposium on women in the labor market t his symposium contains four essays on the general topic of women in the labor market the essays are varied not only in focus but also in philosophical outlook the topic is of central importance today few economic trends have been more pronounced or sustained than the increased labor force participation of women in 1948 the labor force participation rate of females was 32 7 percent at the end of 1987 it stood at 56 4 percent the growth has been significant even during the 1980s in 1980 the rate was 51 5 percent and it shows little sign of tapering off during the same period the labor force participation rate of males has fallen in 1948 the rate for males was 86 6 percent whereas it was 76 1 percent in 1987 trends toward earlier retirement among males account for some of the change along with other demographic shifts the relative economic position of females has improved during the 1980s a rough look at current population survey data reveals that the ratio of average female weekly wages to average male weekly wages was 58 in 1976 and 59 in 1980 by 1986 it had risen to 62 although some have attributed this narrowing to the lack of appreciable growth in male weekly wages rather than to progress in female weekly wages no similar trend exists for other groups in particular black males have not done well over the same period relative to white men in 1976 the ratio of black male weekly wages to white male weekly wages was 70 in 1986 it was 66 thus there is something significant about females that is absent for other disadvantaged groups in the labor market this progress is confined to white women for the most part the ratio of black female weekly wages to white female weekly wages was 89 in 1974 and reached a peak of 93 in 1979 it fell back to 88 by 1986

the effect of house price on fertility evidence from hong kong i introduction the mechanism underlying the demographic transition coinciding with industrialization still remains an unresolved debate in economics and demography early contributions to the new family economics formulated the choice of fertility into the beckerian time allocation model and derived that the secular decline of fertility rates in developed countries over the past 50 yr was mainly attributed to the increase of the opportunity cost of childbearing and rearing represented by the increase of female education levels wage rates and labor force participation rates becker 1960 1991 willis 1973 although this negative relationship between fertility rates and female labor market activities has been verified by later empirical studies butz and ward 1979 heckman and walker 1989 1990 it cannot fully explain the demographic transition pattern in western europe and elsewhere as contended by becker and murphy 2000 an illustration in point of the insufficiency of this female labor market story comes from the demographic transition pattern that has occurred with the east asian tigers during the past four decades while these four economies south korea taiwan hong kong and singapore have experienced both economic takeoff and fertility decrease synchronously macunovich 2000 their female labor market behavior changed mildly and female labor force participation rates flfprs are still much lower than their western counterparts 1 the typical representation of this new demographic transition pattern happened in hong kong on the one hand the economy of hong kong has been booming and has experienced one of the fastest per capita gross domestic product gdp growth rates around the world in the past four decades however the total fertility rate tfr has sharply decreased by 75 at the same period from 3 459 in 1971 downward to 966 in 2005 one of the lowest in the world and far below the required replacement level of 2 100 2 on the other hand however the extent to which the female labor market behavior has responded to the economic prosperity has been very limited for example the flfprs just increased from 42 8 in 1971 to 52 0 in 2005 3 since it is unbelievable that a 9 2 increase of flfprs is the primary driving force for the almost 75 decrease of tfrs other factors influencing the shadow price of childbearing and rearing should also be taken into account 4 the dominant factor responsible for the drastic decrease of fertility rates in hong kong suggested by the present article is the house price hp the justification of the hp into a fertility decrease story involves the standard income and substitution effects first of all the increase of hps impoverishes parents and exerts a negative income effect on the demand for children in the standard economic theory of fertility becker 1991 following the conventional practice in which the child is assumed to be a normal good the negative income effect decreases the demand for children second hp is a part of the shadow price for children the increase of the hp should also decrease the demand for children in the hicksian sense and this negative compensated substitution effect reinforces the pure negative income effect overall both effects may cause many relatively young or poor households to be unable to afford to set up a household in a lifecycle context consequently to the extent that owning house or renting house of a sufficient size may be a precondition for having children many such households may be highly constrained to have any children at all for relatively wealthy couples rising housing prices would diminish the house size they could afford to buy or to rent and decrease the demand for children accordingly more importantly the magnitude of the increase of hp may be large enough to trigger the sharp decrease of fertility rates in hong kong in fact the growth rates of hps have dominated the growth rates of both real per capita gdp and real wage rates during the past four decades

demographic consequences of maternal leave programs in industrial countries evidence from fixed effects models the authors measure the effects of paid maternity leave upon infant mortality the labor force participation of women during their prime childbearing years and fertility rates to reach their conclusions they constructed a simultaneous equations model using the individual fixed effects method and a data set comprising 17 oecd countries and four time periods the extension of maternal leave programs measured in terms of duration of paid leave is shown to reduce infant mortality to raise rates of labor force participation for women in the prime childbearing ages and to increase birth rates the direct plus indirect impacts of extending maternity leave programs as revealed by the reduced form parameters of the authors models however produce a different picture the total impacts upon both infant mortality and female labor force participation conform closely to the structural estimates but the impact upon birth rates almost disappears it seems that the indirect effects of the maternal leave variable via infant mortality and womens labor force participation offset the directly pronatal influence from a policy perspective the benefits of paid maternal leave programs would seem to be unconditionally positive with respect to lowering infant mortality and also positive with respect to raising female labor force participation one should not however expect higher birth rates from such programs the findings also suggest that maternal leave programs can facilitate some increases in womens labor force participation without incurring the reductions in fertility which would otherwise be experienced

a capitalization approach to fiscal incidence at the local level this paper argues that an analysis of the capitalized burdens and benefits of the local public sector offers a simple straightforward and objective computational methodology to fiscal incidence at the local level this capitalization approach represents a major departure from the highly discretionary and imprecise computational environment of the reasonable assumptions and aaron and mcguire approaches it is initially discussed both from conceptual and operational points of view and then implemented using alternate procedures major limitations of the approach are then noted a comparative perspective on fiscal incidence results based on the capitalization approach and of earlier studies on this subject is provided in the concluding section of the paper during the past two decades several important studies have been published which investigate the redistributive implications of federal provincial and local government finances in canada all the canadian studies on the subject in general follow the methodology used for similar studies in the united states these studies differ as to the shifting of tax burden assumptions and the concept of income employed and understandably their results also vary accordingly a common criticism of these approaches is that their distribution conclusions depend crucially on what incidence hypothesis is chosen musgrave and musgrave 1976 394 all these studies merely illustrate what the distribution of fiscal incidence would be if the incidence assumptions were true the numerical es

the ces utility function non linear budget constraints and labour supply results on female participation and hours the most recent efforts in the study of labour supply decisions have concentrated on the estimation of explicit utility indices as a means to overcome the specification and endogeneity problems created by non linear budget constraints the presence of non convexities and the interest in making welfare comparisons between individuals are additional reasons that make the use of explicit utility functions in either direct or indirect form an essential requirement for labour supply studies it is therefore important to consider carefully the available possibilities from a utility index we want flexibility and ease of estimation the stonegeary function has proved its relative worth in consumption studies but its performance has been disappointing when leisure is incorporated into the set of commodities abbot and ashenfelter i976 found that for part of their sample estimated available time was less than hours worked and these results have pervasively reappeared in subsequent studies using this function hausman i980 has recently proposed a utility function which yields a linear hours function this is an important contribution which facilitates the task of estimation enormously this paper argues that the ces utility function despite not generating a linear hours function is also very convenient for estimation purposes in fact it is shown below that to estimate the parameters of the utility function there is no need whatsoever for any explicit hours function labour supply responses by married women have been previously estimated with british data but none of the available results has taken full account of the joint decision on participation and hours and of the non linear shape of the budget constraint that the tax system generates layard et al i980 consider the joint decision in their estimation procedure but ignore the tax system greenhalgh i980 takes into account the non linearity of the budget constraint but estimates labour supply responses by a method which treats participation and hours of work as separate and independent decisions in the present paper on the other hand using an explicit utility index we propose an estimation method which takes into account both the tax system and the joint hours participation decision

the fertility effect of dependent tax exemptions estimates for the united states the effect of the dependent tax exemption on the fertility rate in the united states is estimated the estimation is an improvement on previous work in that a non linear specification is used to better capture the shape of the demand for children it is found that the marginal effect of the dependent exemption decreases with the level of the exemption this suggests that although subsidies for childbearing will increase fertility it becomes increasingly difficult for countries to increase fertility through this type of scheme

an economic analysis of fertility market participation and marriage behaviour in recent japan this research studies determinants of the gold futures price volatility in thailand futures exchange using linear regression model and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model the data sample consists of daily settlement price volume and open interest of gold futures from the first trading day in thailand futures exchange to june 26 2013 we examine the nearby futures contract which is switched over to the next maturing contract one day before the expiration date the results of both models confirm that price returns volatility of gold futures increases when 1 the futures contract approaches expiration 2 trading volume increases and 3 open interest decreases we also present an analysis of the role of covariance between changes in spot prices and carry costs in explaining the maturity effect in futures our results provide very strong evidence in favor of this negative covariance hypothesis therefore the results of this study would be of interest to investors due to their importance to forecast future prices of gold hedgers should adjust their optimal hedging position according to volatility changes the analysis of gold futures volatility also insists the clearing house in setting different margin requirements as each contract approaches maturity differently margin requirements should be raised for nearby gold futures contract as its volatility increases either an increase in trading volume or a decrease in open interest should also increase margin requirements for gold futures

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

is renewable energy effective in promoting growth abstract this paper applies panel data techniques to analyze the role of the various energy sources in economic growth for a set of 24 european countries 1990 2007 controlling for energy consumption and energy dependency the results suggest that the negative effect of the use of renewables supplants the positive effect of creating income by exploiting a natural resource locally and thus growth does not appear to improve with the change towards renewables the high costs of promoting renewables are probably being placed excessively upon the economy namely by increasing the costs of electricity tariffs thus inducing a deceleration in economic activity fossil fuels lead to dissimilar effects on growth while natural gas does not appear to be relevant in explaining growth coal hampers the capacity for growth whereas the use of oil stimulates that growth this is in line with productive structures that are deeply grounded in fossil fuels particularly oil

modeling the evolutionary nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth abstract given the fast paced world economy increasing carbon dioxide co2 emissions have caused serious concern regarding global warming many studies have examined the nexus between co2 emissions and economic growth and inconsistent results are provided limited evidence suggests that different time periods under investigation could be a source of inconsistency but there lacks of a thorough analysis this paper systematically focuses on the evolutionary characteristics of the nexus to explore the influence of time periods the panel data are reorganized by considering different time periods in various countries and an intelligent data driven approach symbolic regression is applied to discover models for each period without predefined structure and parameters three issues does the time period matter what are the trends in different time periods what are the applicable scopes of the models have been addressed in this paper the results reveal the evolutionary nature of the nexus and it is verified that an intrinsic time period distinction does generate extrinsic inconsistency the detailed dynamics of models indicate that the optimal models tend to be more complex as the time periods are extended for countries with different locations and income levels the applicable scopes of the four superior models monotonically increasing inverted u shaped inverted n shaped and m shaped vary in different time periods the findings highlight that the effect of time periods cannot be ignored and the models should not be applied unconditionally when conducting empirical research finally several policy implications are provided which are critical for the balance of economic growth and co2 emissions particularly in some developing countries

empirical analysis of the environmental and energy policies in some developing countries using widely employed macroeconomic indicators the cases of brazil china and india abstract this paper proposes an empirical analysis concerning the environmental and energy policies of some important developing countries brazil china and india today present in the international scenario with very different features than in the past the research is carried out using two of the most important macroeconomic indicators several times proposed in the field of policy analysis emission intensity ratio and energy intensity ratio moreover the emission intensity ratio is used in order to verify the empirical existence of the so called environmental kuznets curve for the three countries for what concerns this last point final results do not correspond closely to the theoretical strict formulations hypothesised in the classical environmental kuznets curve model this paper follows completing and concluding the previous one carried out by the same author for some industrialised countries after a brief but ineluctable premise considering the theoretical basic assumptions to define the question and regarding general statements the specific cases are analysed main findings show that resulting trends in these developing countries are different and furthermore they differ from those already observed in industrialised ones

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

afdc and illegitimacy ratios a vector autoregressive model the expansion of the government programme of aid to families of dependent children afdc plays a major role in theoretical explanations of the sharply rising trend in us illegitimacy ratios the proportion of births occurring to unwed mothers to date this role has not been supported by empirical evidence the present study uses a new approach time series data and granger causation a series of tests shows robust causal impacts of afdc on non white illegitimacy ratios a counterfactual simulation reveals that about half the increase in non white illegitimacy ratios over the past two decades can be attributed to an afdc effect

micro estimates of public spending demand functions and tests of the tiebout and median voter hypotheses responses to questions given to a random sample of michigan households are used to estimate public spending demand functions while income and price elasticities are similar to those obtained from aggregate data positive income elasticities appear to arise because public services are distributed in a prorich manner a relatively small variance in spending demands among urban and suburban communities in metropolitan areas with substantial public service variety suggests that the tiebout mechanism works this interpretation is supported by the fact that actual spending conforms substantially to desired levels in urban areas but less so in rural areas with little public sector choice

how does parental leave affect fertility and return to work evidence from two natural experiments this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the duration of paid job protected parental leave on mothers higher order fertility and postbirth labor market careers identification is based on a major austrian reform increasing the duration of parental leave from one year to two years for any child born on or after july 1 1990 we find that mothers who give birth to their first child immediately after the reform have more second children than prereform mothers and that extended parental leave significantly reduces return to work employment and earnings also decrease in the short run but not in the long run fertility and work responses vary across the population in ways suggesting that both cash transfers and job protection are relevant increasing parental leave for a future child increases fertility strongly but leaves short run postbirth careers relatively unaffected partially reversing the 1990 extension a second 1996 reform improves employment and earnings while compressing the time between births

tax incentives and fertility in canada quantum vs tempo effects using inter jurisdictional differences in the implementation of the family allowance program in canada in the mid 1970s this paper first shows that quebec families with two or more children prior to being exposed to the program responded quite strongly to the added incentives in the short run relative to women in other canadian provinces tracking down the cohorts across censuses we find that the same group of quebec families subsequently showed a decrease in fertility relative to the rest of canada leaving ultimate family size unaffected these results are consistent with the program having generated only a timing effect utilisant les differences entre juridictions dans la mise en uvre du programme d allocations familiales au canada au milieu des annees 70 ce memoire montre d abord que les familles quebecoises qui avaient deux enfants ou plus avant d etre exposees au programme ont repondu tres fortement aux incitations additionnelles a court terme en comparaison avec ce qui s est passe dans les autres provinces canadiennes en suivant les cohortes a travers les recensements on montre que ce meme groupe de familles du quebec a par la suite subi un declin de fecondite par rapport au reste du canada ce qui a eu pour effet de laisser la taille de la famille ultimement non affectee d une maniere relative ces resultats sont coherents avec la conclusion que le programme a seulement eu un effet sur le profil temporel de la fecondite

the dynamics of fertility family planning and female education in a developing economy unlike most empirical works on fertility analysis this study is the first attempt to analyse the dynamics of fertility and its determinants with a particular focus on the role played by female education and family planning programmes in the context of a traditional society the analysis is based on the application of the following dynamic time series techniques in a multivariate context cointegration vector error correction modelling and variance decompositions these dynamic tools are recently developed and hitherto untried in fertility analysis in the context of a poor developing economy such as india the results based on the above most recently developed methodology broadly indicate that in the complex dynamic interactions the importance of conventional structural hypothesis as a granger causal factor in bringing fertility down in the longer term cannot be denied however overall in the short to long term the findings appear to be more consistent with the recent ideational hypothesis

inequality of energy intensities across oecd countries a note abstract this paper proposes the use of theil s second measure to analyze international energy intensity differences this index allows differences to be broken down within and between groups of countries in a consistent manner an analysis of oecd countries for the period 1971 1999 shows some basic points first the fall in energy intensities differences is attributable both to within group and between group inequality components second between group inequalities are currently the main contributor to the whole inequality value finally a detailed exploration on within group inequalities reveals the significant explanatory role played by eu countries

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

using the environmental kuznets curve to evaluate energy policy some practical considerations abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc is a widely applied empirical model that is used to assess the effect of country s increased income on its emissions such as co 2 typical estimation is of a reduced form model relating per capita emissions to per capita gdp and sometimes to energy consumption with an eye toward determining whether a country s per capita emissions increase or decrease with per capita gdp in this article we consider a number of practical issues in estimating and using the ekc for energy policy analysis proper estimation procedures should be used if the empirical work is to provide valid estimates of the ekc s shape in addition policymakers should proceed with caution when crafting policy on the basis of reduced form estimates of the ekc because the reduced form model provides limited insight into the policy implications of the relationship between income energy consumption and emissions

the co2 emissions income nexus evidence from rich countries the paper attempts to test the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for 36 high income countries for the period 1980 2005 the test is based on the suggestion of narayan and narayan 2010 various panel data unit root and co integration tests are applied carbon dioxide co2 emissions and gdp series are integrated of order one and co integrated especially after controlling for cross sectional dependence additionally the blundell bond system generalised methods of moments gmm is employed to conduct a panel causality test in a vector error correction mechanism vecm setting unidirectional causality running from real per capita gdp to per capita co2 emissions is uncovered in both the short run and the long run the empirical analysis based on individual countries provides evidence of an ekc for greece malta oman portugal and the united kingdom however it can be observed that for the whole panel a 1 increase in gdp generates an increase of 0 68 in co2 emissions in the short run and 0 22 in the long run the lower long run income elasticity does not provide evidence of an ekc but does indicate that over time co2 emissions are stabilising in the rich countries

a cointegration model of age specific fertility and female labor supply in the united states 1 introductionmodels of fertility based on economic theories of behavior have been subjected to rigorous conceptual and empirical scrutiny for surveys see olsen 1994 and macunovich 1996a for critical reviews see murphy 1992 and smith 1981 however much empirical analysis of aggregate fertility patterns in the united states has relied on traditional regression methods with little influence from recent developments in multiple time series methods appropriate for nonstationary variables although important theoretical propositions are testable with individual data understanding of trends and patterns in fertility behavior at the societal level requires aggregate analysis ryder 1980 the aggregation of individual effects to make statements about total fertility is problematic as the composition of the population changes over time some effects that are measured at the individual level may reflect changes in individuals positions within a society and these effects will not be present at the societal level alternatively social interaction may induce behavioral changes across a population that are not reflected in individual responses as described by kohler 2001 changes in societal norms and institutions can create feedback loops between aggregate variables and individual incentives toward childbearing so that effects between aggregates may exceed substantially the responses measured at the level of the household 1analysis of aggregate time series data has its own considerable challenges fertility and its determinants are most likely nonstationary time series that trend or drift persistently away from their initial values such nonstationarity may undermine classical estimation and inference with traditional regression procedures leading to spurious inferences about relations among variables furthermore the principal determinants of fertility for example women s wages and education levels female labor force participation unemployment rates and husband s incomes are quite possibly endogenously determined in conjunction with fertility decisions this problem of endogenous regressons can undermine the identifiability of the fertility model rendering the relations unestimable even if the relations are identified the problem of endogenous regressors leads to inconsistent least squares estimators of model parameters the objective of this paper is to revisit a simple economic model of fertility employing the cointegration model of johansen 1995 that is appropriate for analyzing relations between nonstationary time series johansen s procedure allows the empirical determination of the number of stationary relations and produces maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of these relations that are consistent and normally distributed even in the presence of endogenous explanatory variables furthermore to capture information on both the level and the timing of fertility the analysis is applied to two age specific fertility rates covering the prime childbearing years of u s women 2 empirical studies of fertility with aggregate dataeconomic models of fertility are grounded in either easterlin s 1980a relative income hypothesis or the new home economics nhe of willis 1973 and becker 1981 the former theory emphasizes the role of male incomes relative to economic aspirations as the driving force behind fertility and female labor force participation economic aspirations of young adults are determined by material conditions prevailing in their parental homes during their teenage years when their parents would be close to their prime in earnings capacity an increase in relative income shifts preferences in favor of childbearing and away from labor force activity by young adult women in the full easterlin model relative income is determined by the size of the young adult cohort relative to that of prime aged adults both measured contemporaneously easterlin 1980b

marriage and divorce informational constraints and private contracting the relationship between divorce rates in the united states and laws regulating divorce are analyzed using data from a special current population survey undertaken in 1979 with particular reference to the adoption by many states of no fault divorce laws the author utilizes a contract theoretic framework to examine the impact of both legal and informational constraints on several aspects of the marriage relationship 1 the probability of divorce 2 compensation at divorce i e the terms of the divorce settlement 3 the probability of entering marriage and 4 incentives for investment in marriage specific capital two different models are developed the first assumes that ex post information about the value of each spouses opportunites at divorce is symmetric and that since divorce would only occur if the joint benefits outweigh the joint costs the law has no effect on the divorce rate the second model asserts that the existence of asymmetric information results in a fixed wage marriage contract and that divorce would be higher in states that allow unilateral divorce the evidence supports the first of these hypotheses excerpt

on the empirical implementation of some game theoretic models of household labor supply this paper discusses some issues in the empirical implementation of game theoretic models of household labor supply in particular we focus on the identification problems inherent in many of these models as an illustration we estimate a game theoretic model which uses data on preferred working hours as additional identifying information

pooled mean group estimation of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 abstract we apply the pooled mean group estimator to test for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 in 22 oecd countries this approach allows for more flexible assumptions in a panel data framework the period goes from 1975 to 1998

women in the labor market and in the family t here are two themes in this paper the first an exercise in revisionist history argues that the conventional wisdom of an absence of any substantial labor market progress for women is mistaken instead throughout this century women s wages have been steadily rising relative to those of men a progress likely to accelerate in the next few decades our second theme contends that this labor market progress is not enough alongside their labor market advances the relative economic plight of many women is worsening the downside news is the increasing feminization of poverty a reflection of the growing instability of the american family

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

endogenous fertility multiple growth paths and economic convergence abstract this paper extends the cass koopmans optimal growth model to allow for endogenous fertility choice it is shown that if agents choose their fertility rate then the net rate of return on capital marginal product of capital minus the population growth rate may not be monotonically decreasing in capital in this case multiple steady states and growth paths may emerge which can explain the persistent differentials in income between poor and rich countries as well as the existence of development miracles and disasters the paper provides also empirical evidence which supports the existence of multiple convergence groups and is consistent with the theoretical model

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

estimating property tax capitalization a further comment in recent years an increasingly popular area of empirical investigation has concerned attempts to test tiebout s 1956 hypothesis that allocative efficiency in the provision of public services may be attained through a system of local governments 1 in his seminal contribution to the analysis of the tiebout hypothesis and the capitalization of property taxes oates 1969 reasoned that if consumers are sensitive to the public service benefits and property tax costs associated with home ownership these factors should be reflected in housing prices until recently most studies of the capitalization phenomenon have followed oates s specification in which housing values are regressed on a vector of housing characteristics public service measures and a tax price term 2 as several analysts have noted 3 however attempts to test the tiebout hypothesis by using an oates type equation must certainly lead to failure this is so because in a perfect tiebout equilibrium a marginal increase in housing value brought about by increased provision of public services must necessarily be offset by a marginal decrease in housing value caused by the added tax cost assuming that

the butz ward fertility model in the light of more recent data butz and ward b w in their 1979 article the emergence of countercyclical us fertility postulated a change in the longstanding pattern of procyclical fertility first documented by dorothy thomas in 1927 the paucity of published data on female wages led b w to approximate a time series using a number of disparate sources there has been some criticism of the b w methodology focusing mainly on the problem of autocorrelation in time series analysis and misspecification 15 years after the 1979 article a great deal of both micro and macro data exist which were not available at the time of the original b w research the author tests the robustness of the b w results by first updating them using their original sources then with data drawn from the march current population survey cps the results indicate that there are wide divergences between the original b w estimates of female wages and the cps time series in particular the cps time series shows that much of the dramatic increase in the female hourly wage in the 1960s as estimated by b w appears to have been the result of the proxy they used for average hours worked that proxy was a series of average hours of all workers in the retail trade which trends sharply downward contrary to the actual pattern for married women estimates of the b w model using the new cps series fail to work neither in terms of the signs nor significance of the variables even using the original b w data their model no longer fits in the period after about 1954 their results seem to have been driven by relationships exhibited during 1947 54 almost 10 years before the increases in female labor force participation which began in the 1960s