cash transfer programs with income multipliers procampo in mexico abstract cash transfer programs create multiplier effects when recipients put the money they receive to work to generate further incomes when this is the case the ultimate income effects are multiples of the amounts transferred we analyze the procampo program in mexico that was introduced to compensate farmers for the anticipated negative effect of nafta on the prices of basic crops the transfer rules and the timing of the panel data collected allow unique control of biases in this impact analysis we find that the multiplier among ejido sector recipients is in the range 1 5 2 6 multipliers are higher for households with medium and large farms low numbers of adults in the household nonindigenous backgrounds and located in the center and gulf regions high multipliers reflect income opportunities that had remained unrealized due to liquidity constraints that are relaxed by the transfers opportunities come from the asset endowments that these households received through the land reform particularly irrigated land and they are enhanced by access to technical assistance

cash transfers in latin america effects on poverty and redistribution we present comparative evidence for eight latin american countries regarding the design and effects of cash transfers cts on the basis of household survey data we analyze their coverage importance in household income and effects on poverty reduction and income redistribution we present a static microsimulation to analyze the potential impacts of alternative pro gram designs including perfect targeting and higher budgets our results illustrate wide variation in terms of design coverage and importance in household income cts account for a significant portion of household income in lower deciles nonetheless their effects in terms of reducing the incidence intensity and severity of poverty are moderate at best and although their progressivity is high their redistributive impact is limited these results are mainly explained by the meager resources involved even under perfect targeting the budgets allocated would be insufficient to achieve full coverage among households in the lowest part of the income distribution

the impact of progresa on food consumption abstract in this article we used data from the mexican poverty alleviation program called progresa programa de educacion salud y alimentacion to examine whether eligibility for a cash transfer provided by the program conditional on children s regular school attendance and regular visits to health centers is also associated with increased consumption of food we used a longitudinal sample of approximately 24 000 households from 506 communities a distinguishing characteristic of this sample was that some of the communities were randomly selected for participation in progresa while the rest were introduced into the program at later phases exploiting this feature in our analysis we found that eligible households in the villages covered by progresa increased caloric acquisition compared with eligible households not receiving these benefits by november 1999 median beneficiary households in treatment localities obtained 6 4 more calories than did comparable households in control localities perhaps eve

on the estimation of hospital cost functions abstract data from 166 general hospitals in new york state 1981 is used to estimate a quadratic and logarithmic long run cost function both equations fit the data very well but give very different results the quadratic appears to confirm the commonly held view of a shallow u shaped average cost curve whereas the log function indicates significant economies of scale a total and average cost elasticity of 0 9 and 0 10 respectively using beds or patient days to measure output ramsey s reset test is used to discriminate between the two models and the quadratic is clearly rejected as a misspecification scale economies thus exist even where the usual quadratic suggests otherwise

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

compensation unionization and deregulation in the motor carrier industry abstract previous research on the deregulation of the motor carrier industry has concluded that firms have become more efficient under deregulation and that costs have fallen largely at the expense of labor most studies that examine the effects on labor use current population survey data and find that wage premiums to union labor have fallen as a result of deregulation this study uses firm data and finds that deregulation had a very small effect on the average compensation paid by surviving union firms for nonunion firms the impact of deregulation is much larger these results suggest that the compensation premium for the labor of surviving union firms has increased but this increase applies only to surviving union labor in the paper we also point to and note a major exodus of union firms with the result that union labor levels have fallen and fallen dramatically

the effects of deregulation de unionization technology and human capital on the work and work lives of truck drivers this paper investigates the sources of wage decline among truck drivers the authors first present an overview of the work and work life of truck drivers and then take two complementary approaches to disentangling the forces that reduced driver earnings the earnings of truck drivers fell by 21 between 1973 and 1995 using current population survey data the authors find that deregulation accounted for one third of the decline in drivers wages with a larger negative effect for non union workers the other two thirds of the decline was due to economic forces that broadly affected the blue collar economy using unique survey data the authors explore the effects of factors frequently cited as sources of blue collar wage decline this analysis indicates that only one new technology satellite communication systems had meaningful effects on drivers earnings which rose as a consequence of superior efficiency and work intensification union membership remains an important determinant of wages the authors conclude that the primary sources of wage decline and increased wage inequality have been deregulation de unionization and a declining manufacturing wage

factor substitution price elasticity of factor demand and returns to scale in police production evidence from michigan budget problems facing many state and local governments together with declining public sector subsidies have forced these governments to search for more efficient ways of providing services such as public safety and public health the provision of public safety like many other service industries is labor intensive with personnel cost usually accounting for between 50 and 70 percent of total cost the principal labor input is police officers the relatively large increases in police wages partly aided by arbitration thus puts increased pressures on city budgets apparently efforts at reducing cost of providing public safety have included attempts at factor substitution for example the last decade has seen an increasing use of civilian employees mostly in administration so that the ratio of police officers to civilians has declined in addition there has been a decline in the use of sidewalk beats by some police departments and an increase in the use of patrol cars for surveillance evidently there is a possible output as well as a substitution effect in the demand for these factors

the short term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor experimental evidence from kenya we use a randomized controlled trial to study the response of poor households in rural kenya to unconditional cash transfers from the ngo givedirectly the transfers differ from other programs in that they are explicitly unconditional large and concentrated in time we randomized at both the village and household levels furthermore within the treatment group we randomized recipient gender wife versus husband transfer timing lump sum transfer versus monthly installments and transfer magnitude us 404 ppp versus us 1 525 ppp we find a strong consumption response to transfers with an increase in household monthly consumption from 158 ppp to 193 ppp nine months after the transfer began transfer recipients experience large increases in psychological well being we find no overall effect on levels of the stress hormone cortisol although there are differences across some subgroups monthly transfers are more likely than lump sum transfers to improve food security whereas lump sum transfers are more likely to be spent on durables suggesting that households face savings and credit constraints together these results suggest that unconditional cash transfers have significant impacts on economic outcomes and psychological well being

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

the cost of poverty alleviation transfer programs a comparative analysis of three programs in latin america summary a common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative nontransfer costs substantially reduces their effectiveness yet there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical evidence on program costs improved information and a better understanding of the costs of such programs are crucial for effective policymaking this study proposes and implements a replicable methodology for a comparative cost analysis of three similar poverty alleviation programs in latin america and assesses their cost efficiency the findings underscore that any credible assessment of cost efficiency requires a detailed analysis of program cost structures that goes well beyond simply providing aggregate cost information

social protection food security and asset formation summary the last two decades have seen a rapid rise in social protection programs and studies that assess their impacts on a large number of domains we construct a new database of studies of these programs that report impacts on food security outcomes and asset formation our meta analysis finds that social protection programs improve both the quantity and quality of food consumed by beneficiaries the magnitudes of these effect sizes are meaningful the average social protection program increases the value of food consumed expenditure by 13 and caloric acquisition by 8 food expenditure rises faster than caloric acquisition because households use transfers to improve the quality of their diet most notably increasing their consumption of calories from animal source foods since the consumption of animal source foods in these populations is low and because there are significant nutritional benefits to increasing the consumption of these this is a positive outcome our meta analysis also finds that social protection programs lead to increased asset holdings as measured by livestock non farm productive assets farm productive assets and savings there is no impact on land holdings though the number of studies that assess these is small

on the relevant elasticity estimates for cost structure analyses of the trucking industry the effects of output qualities on costs of trucking firms could be evaluated at a given number of ton kilometers or at a given number of shipments this note shows that false interpretations of potential output qualities effects could occur when these effects are evaluated at a given number of ton kilometers copyright 1990 by mit press

generating skilled self employment in developing countries experimental evidence from uganda we study a government program in uganda designed to help the poor and unemployed become self employed artisans increase incomes and thus promote social stability young adults in uganda s conflict affected north were invited to form groups and submit grant proposals for vocational training and business start up funding was randomly assigned among screened and eligible groups treatment groups received unsupervised grants of 382 per member grant recipients invest some in skills training but most in tools and materials after four years half practice a skilled trade relative to the control group the program increases business assets by 57 work hours by 17 and earnings by 38 many also formalize their enterprises and hire labor we see no effect however on social cohesion antisocial behavior or protest effects are similar by gender but are qualitatively different for women because they begin poorer meaning the impact is larger relative to their starting point and because women s work and earnings stagnate without the program but take off with it the patterns we observe are consistent with credit constraints

enter at your own risk hmo participation and enrollment in the medicare risk market we examine hmo participation and enrollment in the medicare risk market for the years 1990 to 1995 we develop a profit maximization model of hmo behavior which explicitly considers potential linkages between an hmo s production decision in the commercial enrollee market and its participation and production decisions in the medicare risk market our results suggest that the payment rate is a primary determinant of hmo participation while the price of a supplemental medicare insurance policy positively affects hmo medicare enrollment we also find empirical support for the existence of complementarities in the joint production of an hmo s commercial and medicare products

cash transfer programme productive activities and labour supply evidence from a randomised experiment in kenya this paper reports analysis of the impact of kenya s cash transfer for orphans and vulnerable children programme on the household decisions on productive activities using data from a randomized experimental design results show that the programme had a positive and significant impact on food consumption coming from home production accumulation of productive assets especially on the ownership of small livestock and on formation of nonfarm enterprise especially for females the programme has provided more flexibility to families in terms of labour allocation decisions particularly for those who are geographically isolated the programme was also found to have reduced child labour an important objective of the programme however we find very little impact of the programme on direct indicators of crop production

cash transfer programs and agricultural production the case of malawi cash transfer programs are increasingly utilized to combat poverty and hunger while building the human capital of future generations however they have been faulted by some for failing to build the productive capacity of current generations this article analyzes the impact of the malawi social cash transfer scheme on agricultural production the results show strong increases in ownership of productive agricultural assets in time devoted to household farms and in food types consumed from own production coupled with a sharp decrease in ganyu labor which is often used as a coping mechanism once food stores have been depleted these results are most likely achieved by helping farmers overcome credit and liquidity constraints this research shows that cash transfer programs can help the capacity of extremely poor farm households to expand agriculture production even if the goal of the program is focusing on other dimensions of poverty

collective bargaining after deregulation do the teamsters still count using data from the american trucking associations and a 1991 telephone survey of 223 major firms in the general freight segment of the trucking industry sic 4213 the author describes the restructuring of the trucking industry that occurred following economic deregulation that began in 1977 and examines how that restructuring affected industrial relations outcomes such as wages and union strength he finds that both market concentration and competition increased after 1977 he also concludes that regulatory restructuring led the general freight industry to divide into two sectors one handling full truckload shipments shipments of 10 000 pounds or more and one handling less than truckload shipments the teamsters union lost bargaining power in the truckload sector but it retained much of its bargaining power within the less than truckload sector

contractual form and market thickness in trucking a central proposition of the transaction costs literature is that firms will substitute more complicated contractual arrangements for simple spot arrangements when transactions involve relationship specific investments i investigate this proposition by testing whether simple spot arrangements are less common when local trucking markets are thin i find that doubling the thickness of the market increases the likelihood that simple spot arrangements govern transactions by about 30 for long hauls i find weaker evidence of relationships between local market thickness and contractual form for short hauls hauls for which quasi rents are particularly small contracts protect quasi rents over a surprisingly large range but they play a less important role as quasi rents decrease

economies of scale and economies of scope in multiproduct financial institutions a study of british columbia credit unions this paper investigates the production technology facing computerized credit unions in canada a full system of translog cost equations is estimated in order to test for economies of scale economies of scope and other production characteristics in a multiproduct context the regression results indicate that most of the credit unions in our sample experience significant increasing returns to scale as they expand their level of output there is also evidence of cost complementarity or economies of scope in their mortgage and other lending activities as a result legislation which limits the ability of credit unions to grow and diversify will likely raise the operating costs of this important group of financial institutions additional structural tests of the most general translog specification suggest that none of the restrictive production conditions commonly imposed by other researchers using cobb douglas and ces specifications provide a valid representation of credit union technology the results of many earlier studies are therefore open to question this paper presents a number of structural tests of the production technology facing large computerized credit unions in canada a full system of translog cost equations is estimated using detailed cross sectional data on british columbia credit unions the parameter estimates obtained from our multiproduct specification allow us to test for economies of scale economies of scope and factor substitution unlike many earlier studies the present paper introduces the various outputs as separate variables instead of crudely proxying them with a single output measure such as total assets the total number of loans or the number of depositors by explicitly recognizing the multiproduct nature of the intermediation process we are able to address more interesting production questions and remove some of the bias caused by misspecification and measurement error in simpler approaches the flexible translog specification allows us to estimate the sensitivity of costs to proportionate increases in all outputs economies of scale as well as the cost savings firms realize by producing several outputs jointly rather than specializing in the production of one economies of scope the test results reported in the latter part of the paper suggest that increasing returns to scale exist in almost all of the credit unions in our sample though

is there a competitive market for hospital services this paper focuses on the price elasticity of hospital specific demand curves each hospital is assumed to practice price discrimination with respect to medicare medicaid and other patients among the third group patients covered by blue cross are analyzed separately from those who pay their own bills or are covered by commercial insurance or a health maintenance organization hmo we use two different methods to estimate the price elasticity of demand first a pricing rule is developed from which hospital specific price elasticities may be inferred second the distribution of each payer s admissions at specific hospitals is examined to determine if low priced hospitals attract more patients data for the analysis are taken from 31 hospitals in the minneapolis st paul metropolitan area in 1981 results of the first analytic method indicate that hospitals had monopoly power in their markets for blue cross and self pay commercial insurance hmo patients these results are confirmed and extended to medicare patients by the hospital demand analysis

exploring hospital production relationships with flexible functional forms this paper estimates a multiproduct variable cost function using data on a sample of california hospitals the results provide useful insights into the advantages and disadvantages of flexible functional forms for cost analysis the translog function appears to provide reasonable estimates of marginal costs when evaluated at or near the approximation point of the function the estimated function performs less satisfactorily however when evaluated outside this range the paper s results do not provide strong evidence of either ray scale economies or of weak cost complementarities there is some evidence however that the degree of scale economies may be underestimated

the future of uk final user energy demand anticipation of final user energy demand is central to suppliers and policy makers plans recent developments in dynamic econometrics such as the cointegration approach have enabled energy modellers to study long run relationships between demand and its determinants principally economic activity and real prices the purpose of this paper is to present the seecem output elasticity estimates and forecasts using the cointegration approach as well as the methodology and analysis underlying them as economic activity is expected to grow in all but the iron and steel sector the long run relationships indicate that most sectors will increase overall fuel use up to the year 2000 despite weak but potentially volatile world oil prices and given stable environmental policies average real oil prices should remain broadly constant except in the transport sector economic activity elasticities and increased competition in supply industries imply that natural gas and electricity are likely to take an increasing share of final user requirements at the expense of petroleum products and coal this gradual and continued shift towards cleaner fuels is likely to ameliorate adverse environmental consequences resulting from the overall growth in final user fuel demand

intertemporal properties of real output a bayesian analysis this article analyzes the univariate properties of real output and extends traditional analyses in three ways 1 a bayesian approach is taken 2 extensive cross country comparisons are performed using data from summers and heston cross country comparisons are derived for postwar data for 121 different countries 3 a model is developed that allows for the possibility that real output may be fractionally integrated in addition standard comparisons between autoregressive integrated moving average arima and deterministic trend models are made the class of fractionally integrated processes although possessing certain properties useful for generalization of arima models has received relatively little attention in the macroeconomic literature such models are valuable because they allow for greater flexibility in estimating the long run persistence of shocks

investigation of production sales and inventory relationships using multicointegration and non symmetric error correction models the accumulated sum of a stationary series is called integrated if a linear combination of some of the integrated series is stationary it is said to be cointegrated this paper presents empirical results on inventories to consider the possibility of a deeper form of cointegration called multicointegration which is introduced in granger and lee 1989 a vector integrated series is multicointegrated if the accumulated sum of its stationary cointegrated linear combination is again cointegrated with itself inventory which is the accumulated sum of production minus sales is probably cointegrated with production and sales the empirical results generally support the presence of multicointegration of production and sales in many u s industries and industrial aggregates the results also favour the non symmetric error correction model providing evidence that the strength of attraction is different on both sides of the attractor a modified s s rule for inventory control is investigated in the context of a non symmetric error correction model and the results generally do not support the s s rule sufficient evidence is found to conclude that multicointegration is a useful concept in the area of inventory determination

an analysis of returns to scale in public production with an application to fire protection abstract this paper analyzes returns to scale in public production existing studies fail to differentiate among three dimensions of scale service quality the level of governmental activity and the number of people served a fourth dimension economies of scope is need for agencies that provide multiple services this paper provides a formal definition of returns to scale for each dimension this framework is applied to fire protection using a translog cost function with two services fire prevention and fire suppression the results indicate economies of scope increasing returns to quality scale and constant returns to population scale

regulatory reform and technical change new evidence of scale economics in trucking economists have long argued against the regulation of motor carriers in the united states because the industry has been considered to be competitive in nature federal control of trucking has produced inefficiently high rates as well as costs advocates of regulatory reform have foreseen benefits accruing to shippers and consumers in general as greater rate freedom the entry of new firms and the removal of regulatory constraints lead motor carriers to reduce costs 16 and lower prices 17 many of these projected benefits were premised on the perceived competitive market structure of the trucking industry these perceptions have been largely supported by pre deregulation cost studies of general freight carriers which have found evidence of either constant returns to scale or diseconomies of scale friedlaender and wang chiang 8 find that for 20 interregional carriers over 1965 73 the typical firm operating at the sample mean is subject to mild scale diseconomies in a subsequent study of multiproduct economies of scale using 1976 proprietary data they 14 obtain the same basic results the typical firm has constant returns to scale while the representative large firm operates under moderate diminishing returns daughety nelson and vigdor 4 also find mild decreasing returns to scale for a panel of firms spanning 1953 58 in another study over 1974 79 friedlaender and bruce 6 find slight economies of scale for the typical firm based on simulations with the largest and smallest firms in their sample they suggest that over time large carriers have become more characterized by scale economies and small carriers by scale diseconomies however their evidence is far from clear cut given this conventional wisdom that the technology of the less than truckload segment of this industry was constant returns to scale before deregulation few if any economists doubted the desirability of the motor carrier act of 1980 the purpose of this paper is to determine empirically whether the sweeping legislative changes were justified on solely economic grounds it is possible that previous cost studies are biased as a consequence of the regulatory constraints facing the firms has deregulation itself corrected for distortions created by the regulatory environment and thus produced changes in the production choices of trucking companies was friedlaender and spady s 7 contention that truckload carriers may have experienced regulatory rather than technology based increasing returns to scale correct if so perhaps past results for general freight carriers are similarly due to regulation however in this case the reason may be regulatory

economies of scale and scope as an explanation of merger and output diversification activities in the health maintenance organization industry this paper tests for the existence and magnitude of economies of scale and scope as possible explanations for the recent observed trends in increasing health maintenance organization hmo scale through merger and acquisition and scope through greater participation in public enrollee markets using firm level data from a sample of california hmos for the time period 1986 1992 the results suggest that economies of scale provide a strong justification for mergers only in the case of relatively small hmos i e those with fewer than 115 000 enrollees and economies of scope do not explain the increasing hmo enrollment of public enrollees

the mystery of the vanishing benefits an introduction to impact evaluation this article provides an introduction to the concepts and methods of impact evaluation the author provides an intuitive explanation in the context of a concrete application the article takes the form of a short story about a fictional character s on the job training in evaluation ms speedy analyst is an economist in the ministry of finance in the fictional country of labas in the process of figuring out how to evaluate a human resource program targeted to the poor ms analyst learns the strengths and weaknesses of the main methods of ex post impact evaluation

the impact of vat introduction on uk residential energy demand an investigation using the cointegration approach abstract over a two year period which started in april 1994 the real price of energy to uk households was expected to rise by 17 5 as a result of value added tax vat introduction the regressive nature of the tax forced the government to limit vat on residential fuel to 8 using a cointegration approach to take account of the non stationarity fuel consumption time series this paper estimates real energy and fuel specific price and income elasticities for the period 1974 1 1994 1 they suggest that natural gas has a positive real energy price elasticity indicating that as real price of energy rises households scrap inefficient heaters and invest in more efficient ones principally natural gas these estimates enable projections to be made of the impact of the introduction of vat and imply a rise in natural gas consumption as a result of the additional vat although at the expense of other less efficient fuels overall residential energy consumption however is unlikely to fall significantly from the tax suggesting that it is an inappropriate way of achieving environmental objectives

school subsidies for the poor evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program abstract this paper evaluates how the progresa program which provides poor mothers in rural mexico with education grants has affected enrollment poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the progresa are compared to those who reside in other control communities pre program comparisons check the randomized design and double difference estimators of the program s effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled controlling for additional characteristics of the child their parents local schools and community and for sample attrition to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates these estimates of program short run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages

scale and scope efficiencies through hospital consolidations the hospital sector in the province of ontario has recently completed a large scale restructuring marked by wide ranging hospital closures mergers and program transfers given a generally inconclusive economics literature regulators used an accounting as opposed to an economic approach when predicting gains to consolidations this paper uses an economic cost function to examine economies of scale and scope in the years preceding restructuring where there was little doubt that economies were possible issues relating to output aggregation functional form and scale and scope testing are addressed and an equilibrium cost function is derived from an estimated short run function to measure the cost concepts of interest using index and direct approaches we examine a variety of potential reconfigurations and conclude that there were indeed large scale unexploited gains to strategic consolidation in the hospital sector furthermore these gains may not have been detected using standard approaches in the literature

a hierarchical bayes error correction model to explain dynamic effects of price changes abstract the authors put forth a sales response model to explain the differences in immediate and dynamic effects of promotional prices and regular prices on sales the model consists of a vector autoregression that is rewritten in error correction format which allows the authors to disentangle the immediate effects from the dynamic effects in a second level of the model the immediate price elasticities the cumulative promotional price elasticity and the long term regular price elasticity are correlated with various brand specific and category specific characteristics the model is applied to seven years of data on weekly sales of 100 different brands in 25 product categories the authors find many significant moderating effects on the elasticity of price promotions brands in categories that are characterized by high price differentiation and that constitute a lower share of budget are less sensitive to price discounts deep price discounts increase the immediate price sensitivity of customers the

deregulation and scale economies in the u s trucking industry an econometric extension of the survivor principle over the past three decades there has been much progress in the analysis of costs production and scale economies in u s industries including transportation and yet it can also be argued that accounting data on which all such cost and production function estimation is based do not give us a full story regarding scale economies in an industry among those who made this argument most forcefully was george stigler in a seminal article published in 1958 to provide evidence on scale economies with less use of accounting data stigler developed what he called the survivor technique a model that others have used in subsequent studies 1 the present article extends the survivor technique so as to make it a part of an econometric probit model somewhat akin to cost and production functions as they are estimated statistically but preserving the essential features of the survivor model developed by stigler in the 1950s the most important advantage of this approach is that it allows for the incorporation of a number of different variables to explain survivor

what are we learning about the long run an attempt is made to link together earlier definitions of the long run found in micro and macro economics with recent developments in econometrics specifically cointegration it is suggested that the links are not strong and that most of the previou s work in econometric theory has been unnecessarily overprecise the possibility of embedding cointegration theory into a very general nonlinear theory is suggested an example uses a nonlinear relationship between u k short and long run interest rates proposed by frank paish 1966 copyright 1993 by royal economic society

the trend behavior of alternative income inequality measures in the united states from 1947 1990 and the structural break this article tests the hypothesis that the time series process of income inequality has experienced a structural break the timing of the structural break is treated as an unknown parameter to be estimated from the data because it is not possible to associate a single episodic policy event with the break year and to avoid bias in favor of a unit root hypothesis if the break was near the selected year for several measures of income inequality a segmented trend model is more appropriate to account for the fundamentals affecting the behavior of income inequality as opposed to a stochastic trend model

resolving the impasse on hospital scale economics a new approach the existence of scale economies in hospitals in important for both public and managerial policy yet production and cost function studies have found conflicting evidence more recently more sophisticated studies have typically found scale diseconomies which is inconsistent with the views of industry participants and observers in the early 1980s california deregulated both private and public health insurance medical which provides a natural laboratory for examining hospital efficiency using stigler s original and multivariate survivor analysis we resolve the conflict in favour of scale economies and reconcile the controversy the survivorship methodology in simple to apply and a useful tool in conjunction with statistical cost and production studies

drivers of disruption estimating the uber effect abstract a frequent belief is that the rise of so called gig work has led to the displacement of workers in a wide range of traditional jobs this paper examines the impacts of the flagship of the gig economy uber on workers employed in conventional taxi services our analysis exploits newly collected data on the staggered rollout of uber across metropolitan areas in the united states and a difference in differences design to document that incumbent taxi drivers experienced a relative earnings decline of about 10 percent subsequent to uber s entry into a new market while there are no significant effects on their labor supply additional evidence from a battery of placebo tests event study estimates and specifications using google trends data to capture differences in treatment intensity underlines these findings a triple differences design that compares changes among taxi drivers relative to bus tractor and truck drivers that were unaffected by the arrival of uber provides further supporting evidence that the diffusion of uber has reduced the earnings potential of incumbent drivers in conventional taxi services in the united states

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

the welfare impact of hmo mergers abstract this paper estimates the welfare consequences of hmo mergers using data from california s small group market the analysis estimates the parameters from a differentiated products demand system the parameters are then used to simulate the effects of several hmo mergers by solving for the nash equilibrium in prices under different ownership structures even small mergers in moderately concentrated markets can result in significant consumer surplus reductions however these welfare losses can be offset by large efficiency gains the welfare consequences of hmo mergers turn less upon demand side considerations than on the health plan s ability to realize efficiencies

conditional cash transfers and agricultural production lessons from the oportunidades experience in mexico abstract this paper explores whether cash transfer programmes conditioned on human capital outcomes can influence agricultural production programme impact on food consumption from own production land use livestock ownership and agricultural spending are evaluated using first difference and weighted estimators in which weights are constructed from propensity scores the programme is found to increase the value and variety of food consumed from own production and to increase land use livestock ownership and crop spending impact estimates are found to differ across land use categories and procampo participation results support the hypothesis that transfers influence agricultural production and impacts are greater for households invested in agriculture

returns to scale and market concentration among the largest survivors of deregulation in the us trucking industry application of the survivor technique to the 100 largest less than truckload carriers of general commodity freight in the us interstate trucking industry produces estimates of the ranges of increasing constant and decreasing returns to scale from 1981 to 1993 the first thirteen years of deregulation nearly one quarter of total group ton miles hauled is found to have moved into the more efficient size range of constant returns to scale a gain in long run technical efficiency is thereby attributed to the motor carrier act of 1980 moreover the survivorship data allow estimates of intragroup market concentration for each of the same thirteen post deregulation years concentration purely within this group appears to have remained fairly moderate and stable since 1981 an unsurprising finding given the modest minimum efficient size estimated at about 2 million ton miles hauled annually the moderate and stable concentration among the 100 largest is not necessarily incompatible with other research which

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

migration and food consumption patterns in ghana abstract this paper examines the link between migration and food consumption patterns in ghana which has a history of widespread migration and high levels of poverty data from 4130 households from the nationally representative 2005 2006 ghana living standards survey are used for the analysis since migrants self select into migration an instrumental variable approach is taken to analyze the relationship between migration and total food expenditures per capita food expenditures across a range of food categories and shares of food expenditures across these categories overall the results indicate that migration does not substantially affect total food expenditures per capita and has minimal noticeable effect on food expenditure patterns looking at results in different settings the analysis indicates that only in high migration regions does migration appear to increase overall food expenditures resulting in a shift towards the consumption of potentially less nutritious categories of food such as sugar and beverages and eating out of the home the results raise questions about the value of migration for improving the food consumption of migrant sending households

wage differentials of transportation industries deregulation versus regulation this article investigates the wage differentials of similar occupations in three for hire transportation carrier industries railroad truck and motor bus under regulation and deregulation the estimation results indicate that the union wage gaps among all occupations have widened under deregulation specifically the union wages of railroad occupations have increased relative to those of truck drivers and the union wages of truck drivers have increased relative to those of motor bus drivers further wage gaps for all occupations for this period are greater among nonunion than among union workers jel l92 i introduction economic regulation of u s transportation carrier industries has been classified into three distinct eras the monopoly regulatory era the competition regulatory era and the regulatory reform era beginning in the late 1800s the 1930s and the 1970s talley 1983 these eras addressed carrier abuses destructive intramodal and intermodal competition and the negative impacts of regulation respectively the 1887 interstate commerce act sought to prevent monopolistic abuses and limit discriminatory practices of railroads the motor carrier act of 1935 of the competition regulatory era placed motor carriers freight and passenger under federal regulation by the 1970s advocates for federal regulatory reform argued that economic regulation protected inefficient carriers promoted high rates and fares and in general fostered an inefficient allocation of resources subsequently a number of deregulation or regulatory reform acts were passed including the railroad revitalization and regulatory reform act of 1976 the staggers rail act of 1980 the motor carrier act of 1980 and the bus regulatory reform act of 1982 though shippers and passengers have generally benefited from transportation deregulation paying lower real rates and fares the impact on carrier labor earnings has been negative for example the real weekly wages of union railroad engineers have declined 11 7 talley and schwarz miller 1998 the real hourly wages of union and nonunion for hire truck carrier drivers have declined 23 and 10 hirsch and macpherson 1998 and the real hourly wages of both union and nonunion for hire motor bus carrier drivers have declined 17 schwarz miller and talley 1994 the impact of deregulation however on the relative labor earnings of transportation carrier industries is unknown specifically have wage differentials changed from those of the regulation period if so have these differentials widened narrowed under deregulation thereby increasing decreasing the gap in the labor earnings of one industry relative to those of another do the changes in wage differentials differ for union and nonunion labor the purpose of this article is to investigate occupational wage differentials among transportation industries under regulation and deregulation as intermodal competition intensifies such information is expected to play a more important role in industry wage negotiations wage differentials of similar occupations in three for hire carrier industries under regulation and deregulation are estimated the three industries are the railroad truck and motor bus industries and the occupations include railroad engineers conductors and brakemen switchmen truck drivers and motor bus drivers the estimation results indicate that the union wages of railroad occupations have increased relative to those of truck drivers and the union wages of truck drivers have increased relative to those of motor bus drivers during the postderegulation period further wage gaps for all occupations for this period are greater among nonunion than among union workers the remainder of this article is structured as follows section ii discusses railroad truck and motor bus for hire carrier industries and in particular their labor under regulation and deregulation

are factor substitutions in hmo industry operations cost saving past research on the potentials for cost saving scale and scope economies in multiproduct hmo operations in the united states are incomplete in their economics of the underlying technology structure this article exploits the translog cost model estimates of all past studies of hmo production to infer the extent to which pairwise factor substitutions e g administrative services vs medical care resources e g hospital days physician services suggest potential for cost savings in groups and independent practice associations given the industry s nonhomothetic production over a 20 year period the conceptually valid morishima elasticity measure at constant output reveals limited cost saving potentials from factor interchange and input demands these opportunities differ for groups and ipas across medicare and non medicare products my findings add a timely and significant dimension to understanding potential cost savings in hmo operations policy suggestions and cost implications are rationalized in light of the declining medicare hmo enrollment and recent changes in factor input prices

the impact of conditional cash transfers on consumption and investment in nicaragua abstract this article examines the impact of a nicaraguan conditional cash transfer programme on measures of expenditures and productive investment despite clear evidence from a randomised evaluation that the programme increased current expenditures there is little evidence that it increased agricultural or non agricultural investment an estimated marginal propensity to consume out of the transfers of nearly one combined with no effect of cumulative past transfers on current consumption corroborate the direct evidence on investment in contrast to gains made in human capital investment the potential for long term increases in consumption as a result of other forms of increased investment may be limited

the law of one price for transitional ukraine five commodity prices in kiev ukraine are examined for their movements relative to us counterparts during ukraine s early transition period of 1991 1992 panel unit root tests are applied to the resulting commodity real exchange rates although the law of one price did not hold during the period the commodity real exchange rates appear to have possessed deterministic trends that were in the direction of closing the initial considerable price gap

trucking deregulation and labor earnings is the union premium a compensating differential this article examines wage determination among union and nonunion truck drivers using the 96 monthly current population surveys for 1983 90 union density in the previously regulated for hire sector of the trucking industry fell from about 60 during the regulatory period of the 1970s to about 25 by 1990 union log wage premiums fell from 0 40 in the 1970s to 0 30 or below in the 1980s longitudinal estimates from multiple panels for 1983 84 through 1989 90 suggest far smaller union premiums supporting the thesis that part of the wage differential following deregulation is a compensating premium for driver quality

the incidence of regulatory rents in the motor carrier industry this article focuses on two questions in the debate over motor carrier regulation first did regulation create eliminate or have no effect on monopoly rents in the trucking industry second ifthere were rents what was their incidence were they received by owners oftrucking firms dissipated through higher costs or captured by the teamsters union data on share price responses to deregulation announcements reveal declines in expected profits of 8 19 of totalfirm value this suggests that regulation created monopoly profits and indicates that at least some of these rents accrued to owners of trucking firms firms responses to regulatory change are modelled as functions of company s operating characteristics and measures of unionization operating efficiency and service characteristics are shown to affect the impact of deregulation on share values

systems competition and network effects this paper discusses firm behavior market performance and the public and private institutions that arise in systems markets i e markets where consumers use compatible components together to generate benefits in such markets which include communications networks and hardware software networks popular products are inherently more valuable these network effects can drive corporate strategies and are critical in understanding innovation in many high technology markets the discussion here emphasizes the dynamics of consumer adoption decisions in the presence of network effects competition between incompatible systems and how suppliers choose which components are compatible and which are not

women s power conditional cash transfers and schooling in nicaragua the social safety net red de proteccion social rps program in nicaragua is one of many conditional cash transfer programs that pay households cash stipends in exchange for school attendance and regular visits to health clinics by the children a key feature is that payments go to the female head of household previous research suggests that exogenous transfers to women are more likely to be spent on their children s health nutrition and education and thus to reinforce the goals of these programs randomized experimental data from rps are used to test for heterogeneous program impacts on school enrollment and spending based on a woman s power as proxied by her years of schooling relative to her husband s years of schooling the results confirm previous findings that more household resources are devoted to children when women are more powerful however when a woman s power greatly exceeds her husband s additional female power reduces school enrollment rps impacts on schooling are much larger than the expected income effects estimated from the control group although no evidence is found that female power alters the impact of rps on school enrollment the conditionality of rps is probably decisive while rps significantly increases food and education expenditures the impact is attributable primarily to income effects

sri lanka can conditional cash transfer programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study can conditional cash transfer cct programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks conducted the program started in 1997 and still exists today in sri lanka the study observed that income shocks on poor households are known to induce parents to take their children out of school and send them to work when other risk coping instruments are insufficient cct programs where the condition is on school attendance have been shown to be effective in increasing educational achievements and reducing child work shocks are highly prevalent and children have irregular periods of school enrollment children who are taken out of school are less likely to re enroll

modelling loss of resilience in agroecosystems rangelands in botswana economists have recently begun to consider the questions raised by the ecological concept of resilience a measure of the degree to which a system can be perturbed before it switches from one stability domain to another at a theoretical level it has been argued that the loss of resilience in an ecological economic system involves a change in its long run productive potential but no consideration has yet been given to the empirical investigation of this this paper discusses an econometric approach to the problem using the example of semi arid rangelands the long run productive potential of the system is regarded as an unobserved state variable change in which is irreversible or at least only slowly reversible it is estimated by applying the extended nonlinear kalman filter the paper illustrates the approach using data from botswana for the period 1965 1993 the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters associated with the loss of resilience mechanism are non zero they indicate a small loss of resilience event at the end of the long drought in the 1980s however these parameters are very imprecisely estimated and are therefore statistically insignificant we find that the sensitivity of the system to exogenous shocks varies with fluctuations in both economic and non economic parameters contrary to what is usually thought to be the case the sensitivity of the system to exogenous shocks is only weakly affected by variations in offtake prices but is very strongly affected by variations in the cost of herd maintenance this suggests that offtake prices may be a weak tool for controlling the size of cattle stocks and preventing a loss of resilience on the other hand taxes on cattle stocks or grazing fees may be very effective