shopping around how households adjusted food spending over the great recession over the great recession real wages stagnated and unemployment increased concurrently food prices rose sharply outstripping growth in food expenditure and leading to a reduction in calories purchased this has led to concern about rising food poverty we study british households to assess how they adjusted to changes in the economic environment we show they switched to cheaper calories implying food consumption was smoother than expenditure we use longitudinal data to quantify the way households lowered their per calorie spending and show they done this in part by increasing shopping eort and without lowering the nutritional quality of

booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

is education always reducing fertility evidence from compulsory schooling reforms we study the relationship between education and fertility exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in england and continental europe implemented between 1936 and 1975 we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological children and the incidence of childlessness while we find a negative relationship between education and fertility in england this result can not be confirmed for continental europe the additional education generated by schooling expansions on the continent did not lead to a decrease in the number of biological children nor to an increase in childlessness these findings are robust to a number of sensitivity and falsification checks author s abstract

price setting during low and high inflation evidence from mexico this paper provides new insight into the relationship between inflation and the setting of individual prices by examining a large data set of mexican consumer prices covering episodes of both low and high inflation when the annual rate of inflation is low below 10 15 the frequency of price changes comoves weakly with inflation because movements in the frequency of price decreases and increases partly offset each other in contrast the average magnitude of price changes correlates strongly with inflation because it is sensitive to movements in the relative shares of price increases and decreases when inflation rises beyond 10 15 few price decreases are observed and both the frequency and average magnitude are important determinants of inflation i show that a menu cost model with idiosyncratic technology shocks predicts the average frequency and magnitude of price changes well over a range of inflation similar to that experienced by mexico

aggregate income shocks and infant mortality in the developing world health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial the authors investigate whether short term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1 7 million births in 59 developing countries the authors show a large negative association between per capita gdp and infant mortality female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns

the relationship between the markup and inflation in the g7 economies and australia an i 2 analysis of inflation and the markup is undertaken for the g7 economies and australia we find that the levels of prices and costs are best described as i 2 processes and that except for japan a linear combination of the log levels of prices and costs cointegrate to the markup that is integrated of order 1 it is also shown that the markup in each case co integrates with inflation and that higher inflation is associated with a lower markup in the long run

early life circumstance and adult mental health we show that psychological well being in adulthood varies with circumstance in early life combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey

the behavior of prices and inflation an empirical analysis of disaggregat price data this paper analyzes the effects of inflation on the dispersion of prices as well as other aspects of price behavior using disaggregated data on prices of foodstuffs in israel during 1978 84 we find that the effect of expected inflation on intramarket price variability is stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation we show that even in times of high inflation price quotations are not trivially short and price changes are not synchronized across firms these facts taken together confirm that there is some staggering in the setting of prices we find that the distribution of real prices is far from being uniform as many menu cost based models assume or conclude in fact as inflation increases to very high levels this distribution is not even symmetric when the annual inflation rate reaches 130 percent there are equal chances of finding real prices above or below the market average but upward deviations in the real price are further away from zero than downward ones furthermore as the annu

limited rationality and strategic interaction the impact of the strategic environment on nominal inertia much evidence suggests that people are heterogeneous with regard to their abilities to make rational forward looking decisions this raises the question as to when the rational types are decisive for aggregate outcomes and when the boundedly rational types shape aggregate results we examine this question in the context of a long standing and important economic problem the adjustment of nominal prices after an anticipated monetary shock our experiments suggest that two types of bounded rationality money illusion and anchoring are important behavioral forces behind nominal inertia however depending on the strategic environment bounded rationality has vastly different effects on aggregate price adjustment if agents actions are strategic substitutes adjustment to the new equilibrium is extremely quick whereas under strategic complementarity adjustment is both very slow and associated with relatively large real effects this adjustment difference is driven by price expectations which are very flexible and forward looking under substitutability but adaptive and sticky under complementarity moreover subjects expectations are also considerably more rational under substitutability

evolution of the infant health production function michael grossman s seminal publication on the demand for health and health production grossman 1972 has spawned a substantial body of research focusing on the production of infant health this article provides a systematic review of the published literature to date on infant health production and how it has evolved over the past 3 4 decades as data have become more available computing has improved and econometric methods have become more sophisticated while empirical research in most fields has expanded in corresponding ways the infant health production research has become an important part of the broader and inherently multidisciplinary literature on intergenerational health the strongest and most robust findings are that policies matter for infant health particularly those affecting access to health care and that prenatal smoking and other chemical exposures substantially compromise infant health promising directions for future research include elucidating relevant pathways reconciling the largely inconsistent estimated effects of nutrition and education and exploring the roles of preconceptional and lifetime health care paternal factors social support housing complementarity and substitutability of inputs factors that modify effects of inputs and evolving medical technologies

price changes in the euro area and the united states some facts from individual consumer price data prices of goods and services do not adjust immediately in response to changing demand and supply conditions this paper characterizes the average frequency and size of price changes in the euro area and its member countries investigates the determinants of the probability of price changes and compares the evidence for the euro area with available u s results the facts documented in this paper are based on evidence from individual price data recorded at the store level in all euro area countries except ireland and greece that is in datasets covering austria belgium finland france germany italy luxembourg the netherlands portugal and spain which together account for around 97 percent of euro area gdp the data used are the monthly price records underlying the computation of national consumer price indices and harmonized consumer price indices these data cover a large number of products selected on the basis of extensive household budget surveys

children of a policy revolution the introduction of universal child care and its effect on fertility what role does affordable and widely available public child care play for fertility we exploit a major german reform generating large temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three our precise and robust estimates on birth register data reveal that increases in public child care have significant positive effects on fertility the fertility effects are more pronounced at the intensive than at the extensive margin and are not driven by changes in the timing of births or selective migration our findings inform policy makers concerned about low fertility by suggesting that universal early child care holds the promise of being an effective means of increasing birth rates

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

the short term mortality consequences of income receipt many studies find that households increase their co nsumption after the receipt of expected income payments a result inconsistent wit h the life cycle permanent income hypothesis consumption can increase adverse healt h events such as traffic accidents heart attacks and strokes in this pape r we examine the short term mortality consequences of income receipt we find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly social security payments re gular wage payments for military personnel the 2001 tax rebates and alaska permane nt fund dividend payments the increase in short run mortality is large potential ly eliminating some of the protective benefits of additional income

house prices and birth rates the impact of the real estate market on the decision to have a baby abstract this project investigates how changes in metropolitan statistical area msa level house prices affect household fertility decisions recognizing that housing is a major cost associated with child rearing and assuming that children are normal goods we hypothesize that an increase in house prices will have a negative price effect on current period fertility this applies to both potential first time homeowners and current homeowners who might upgrade to a bigger house with the addition of a child on the other hand for current homeowners an increase in msa level house prices will increase home equity leading to a positive effect on birth rates our results suggest that indeed short term increases in house prices lead to a decline in births among non owners and a net increase among owners the estimates imply that a 10 000 increase leads to a 5 increase in fertility rates among owners and a 2 4 decrease among non owners at the mean u s home ownership rate these estimates imply that the net effect of a 10 000 increase in house prices is a 0 8 increase in current period fertility rates given underlying differences in home ownership rates the predicted net effect of house price changes varies across demographic groups in addition we find that changes in house prices exert a larger effect on current period birth rates than do changes in unemployment rates

staggered contracts and the frequency of price adjustment this paper describes a methodology for measuring the frequency of price change in order to test the relevance of assuming prices to be set for discrete periods of time at overlapping intervals taylor 1980 has related the frequency of adjustment to the rigidity of the economy in responding to unanticipated events estimates of the frequency of price change are computed from data on the component parts of the deflator for personal consumption expenditure the results show a substantial decrease in the period between price changes during the middle 1960s and marked fluctuations in the 1970s the movements suggest changes in the rigidity associated with both changes in general price inflation and changes in the posture of the fiscal and monetary authorities

price competition in an inflationary environment we study how inflation and deflation affect firms ability to cooperate in an experimental bertrand duopoly with differentiated products we find that there is significantly less cooperation in the treatments with inflation and deflation compared to the no inflation treatments the difficulties to cooperate affect prices and welfare depending on the market structure inflation and deflation lead to significantly lower real prices and higher welfare

industrial eco efficiency in china a provincial quantification using three stage data envelopment analysis abstract the coordinated development of industrialization and the ecological environment is vital to achieve ecological civilization in china integratively considering the economy energy and resources and environment this study aims to measure the industrial eco efficiency of 30 provinces autonomous regions and municipalities in china between 2005 and 2013 a three stage data envelopment analysis dea modeling approach is adopted to eliminate interference of the external environment and statistical noise with industrial eco efficiency measurement the results show that regional industrial eco efficiency in china is affected by the factors of the environmental regulation technological innovation level of economic development and industrial structure after eliminating the impacts of external environment and statistical noise china s national average industrial eco efficiency declines by 30 between 2005 and 2013 the industrial eco efficiency of the 30 provinces increases but at different rates of growth the variation of overall regional industrial eco efficiency is primarily caused by scale efficiency furthermore all the 30 provinces are classified into four groups to interpret the causes of variation and differences of regional industrial eco efficiency in general the management and technology level and the economy of scale of industries should be improved simultaneously even though specific opportunities for industrial eco efficiency improvement vary across provinces in china

the effect of job displacement on couples fertility decisions this paper analyzes the effects of job displacement on fertility using finnish longitudinal register data we focus on couples where one spouse has lost a job due to a plant closure and follow them for several years before and following the job loss the results show that female job loss decreases fertility for every 100 displaced females there are three fewer children born male job loss has no impact on fertility despite resulting in a stronger decrease in family income than female job loss this indicates that the income effect is not the mechanism through which job displacement influences fertility

the role of marriage in the causal pathway from economic conditions early in life to mortality this paper analyzes the interplay between early life conditions and marital status as determinants of adult mortality we use individual data from dutch registers years 1815 2000 combined with business cycle conditions in childhood as indicators of early life conditions the empirical analysis estimates bivariate duration models of marriage and mortality allowing for unobserved heterogeneity results show that conditions around birth and school going ages are important for marriage and mortality men typically enjoy a protective effect of marriage whereas women suffer during childbearing ages however having been born under favorable economic conditions reduces female mortality during childbearing ages

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

why are prices sticky preliminary results from an interview study this paper reports preliminary results from a large research project on business pricing which is currently underway the idea is to use interviews with actual price setters to assess the validity of a dozen theories of price stickiness the rather unorthodox for economists methodology is defended the research design is described briefly and a few results based on the first 72 interviews out of a projected 200 are presented this sample suggests that the median firm changes its price annually and that price adjustments typically lag 3 4 months behind shocks to demand or cost this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the impact of macroeconomic conditions in childhood on adult labor market outcomes this study examines the influence of business cycles in childhood on economic performance later in life i relate unemployment rates between the year before one s birth and the year of one s 15th birthday to schooling employment and income as an adult the analysis exploits variation in macroeconomic conditions across states over time i address a number of identification challenges related to cohort effects linear trends current events and economic persistence the caregiving behaviors and background characteristics of parents are also studied the average unemployment rate in childhood normally has a negative effect on human capital in adulthood jel j11 j24 j31

multi period efficiency and malmquist productivity index in two stage production systems abstract conventional two stage data envelopment analysis dea models measure the overall performance of a production system composed of two stages processes in a specified period of time where variations in different periods are ignored this paper takes the operations of individual periods into account to develop a multi period two stage dea model which is able to measure the overall and period efficiencies at the same time with the former expressed as a weighted average of the latter since the efficiency of a two stage system in a period is the product of the two process efficiencies the overall efficiency of a decision making unit dmu in the specified period of time can be decomposed into the process efficiency of each period based on this decomposition the sources of inefficiency in a dmu can be identified the efficiencies measured from the model can also be used to calculate a common weight global malmquist productivity index mpi between two periods in that the overall mpi is the product of the two process mpis the non life insurance industry in taiwan is used to verify the proposed model and to explain why some companies performed unsatisfactorily in the specified period of time

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

does drinking really decrease in bad times this paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and drinking using individual level data from 1987 to 1999 interview years of the behavioral risk factor surveillance system brfss we confirm the procyclical variation in overall drinking identified in previous research using aggregate sales data and show that this largely results from changes in consumption by existing drinkers rather than movements into or out of drinking moreover the decrease occurring during bad economic times is concentrated among heavy consumers with light drinking actually rising we also find no evidence that the decline in overall alcohol use masks a rise for persons becoming unemployed during contractions these results suggest that any stress induced increases in drinking during bad economic times are more than offset by declines resulting from changes in economic factors such as lower incomes

who is credit constrained in the u s economy an important assumption of the life cycle model of consumption is the postulate of perfect capital markets this hypothesis has recently been challenged by substantial empirical evidence hall and mishkin 1982 using the panel study of income dynamics estimate that 20 percent of united states families are liquidity constrained mariger 1986 derives a life cycle model with endogenous liquidity constraints and using a cross section estimates this fraction to be 19 4 percent hubbard and judd 1986 simulate a model with a constraint on net worth which shows that with reasonable assumptions about preferences 19 0 percent of united states consumers are liquidity constrained the emerging consensus points therefore to a fraction of approximately 20 percent of the population behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with the pure life cycle model in addition hayashi 1985 and zeldes 1989 investigate the correlation among consumption wealth and income for various population groups and infer that liquidity constraints are more important for younger families with low levels of wealth and saving the main limitation of these studies is that in their data sets constrained consumers are not observable and have to be identified via indirect evidence thus there is as yet little firm evidence about the characteristics of the consumers who are likely to be credit constrained this paper adopts an approach that differs from previous tests for liquidity constraints because it makes use of data where constrained consumers are observable and explicitly links their existence to credit market imperfections and personal characteristics the data drawn from the 1983 survey of consumer finances scf and described in section ii provide information on individuals whose request for credit has been rejected by financial intermediaries in section iii a model is developed in which consumers and lenders behavior jointly determines the probability that a consumer is rationed in the credit market this probability is then

transitory shocks and birth weights evidence from a blackout in zanzibar abstract do transitory economic shocks affect neonatal outcomes i show that an unexpected month long blackout in tanzania caused a sharp but temporary drop in work hours and earnings for workers in electricity dependent jobs using records from a maternity ward i document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout and an increase in the probability of low birth weight the reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout the blackout also increased fertility for teenage and first time mothers but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights

the role of economic shocks on health evidence from german reunification sudden economic shocks impact the everyday lives of people from one day to the next a number of studies have examined the association between economic fluctuations and health however no consensus on the nature of this relationship has been established by exploiting the dramatic economic fluctuations following the german reunification of 1990 which included a sudden change from a socialist to a capitalist system in east germany this study examines the association between broad negative economic shocks and health the article finds that increases in state unemployment rates are associated with large and statistically significant declines in health outcomes estimates are stronger for people who became unemployed shortly after reunification for low income individuals and for east germans a group confronted with larger economic fluctuations when examining potential mechanisms that could explain the observed health deteriorations the study finds significant reductions in exercise frequency and increases in economic uncertainty and overall stress

on the optimal inflation rate abstract in our incomplete markets economy households choose portfolios consisting of risky uninsurable capital and money money is a bubble it has positive value even though it yields no payoff the market outcome is constrained pareto inefficient due to a pecuniary externality each individual agent takes the real interest rate as given while in the aggregate it is driven by the economic growth rate which in turn depends on individual portfolio decisions higher inflation due to higher money growth lowers the real interest rate on money and tilts the portfolio choice towards physical capital investment modest inflation boosts growth rate and welfare

abortion legalization and child living circumstances who is the marginal child weexaminethe impact ofincreased abortion availabilityon the averageliving standards of children through a selection effect would the marginal child whowas not born have grown up in different circumstances than the average child we use variation in the timing of abortion legalization across states to answer this question cohorts born after legalized abortion experienced a signiecant reduction in a number of adverse outcomes we end that the marginal child would have been 40 60 percent more likely to live in a single parent family to live in poverty to receive welfare and to die as an infant access to abortion is one of the most contentious public policy issues facing the united states today the period since the legalization of abortion under the roe v wade decision of 1973 has been marked by incessant debate over the appropriate government enancing and legal status of abortions meanwhile pregnancy resolution through abortion is a very common outcome in the united states roughly 25 percent of all pregnancies are aborted ventura et al 1995 as a result major changes in abortion access could have substantial effects on the birthrate indeed levine staiger kane and zimmerman end that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s led to an 8 percent reduction in the birthrate 1

weak and strong disposability vs natural and managerial disposability in dea environmental assessment comparison between japanese electric power industry and manufacturing industries the economic concept of weak and strong disposability has long dominated studies on dea data envelopment analysis environmental assessment this study reviews the two disposability concepts from their conceptual and methodological implications in particular this study is interested in the concept of weak disposability because the concept is believed to have an analytical capability to measure an occurrence of congestion the two economic concepts on disposability accepted by production economists are replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy by which a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector a firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation in contrast the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified performance by utilizing new clean air technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two groups of disposability this study compares between weak strong disposability and natural managerial disposability in terms of their conceptual and methodological differences focusing upon the concept of congestion and technology innovation furthermore using the concept of natural and managerial disposability this study compares japanese electric power firms with manufacturing firms this study finds that the manufacturing firms outperform the electric power firms under natural disposability an opposite result is found under managerial disposability this empirical study also finds that the two groups of japanese firms have attained desirable good congestion due to technology innovation based upon such empirical results this study identifies two policy implications one of the two implications is that the two groups of japanese industries have attained a high level of technology innovation by a result of environmental regulation the other is that the electric power industry operates more efficiently to reduce the co2 emission than the manufacturing industries

partial insurance and investments in children this article studies the impact of permanent and transitory shocks to income on parental investments in children we use panel data on family income and an index of investments in children from the children of the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that there is partial insurance of parental investments against permanent income shocks but the magnitude of the estimated responses is small we cannot reject the hypothesis of full insurance against temporary shocks another interpretation of our findings is that insurance possibilities are limited but the fact that skill is a non separable function of parental investments over time results in small reactions of these investments to income shocks especially at later ages

the effects of aggregate and gender specific labor demand shocks on child health we estimate the relationship between local labor market opportunities and child health using state unemployment rates and demand induced changes in mothers and fathers employment opportunities in contrast with studies of adult health we find little evidence that aggregate economic conditions are correlated contemporaneously with children s health however we find important patterns by gender in particular improvements in women s employment opportunities are consistently associated with worse child health while better labor market conditions for men have positive effects these patterns suggest that both family income and maternal time are important inputs to child health abstract from author

infant health during the 1980s peruvian crisis and long term economic outcomes summary in 1988 peru entered a severe economic crisis as a corollary of unfavorable external economic conditions high levels of debt and heterodox policies the so called debt crisis of 1980s this paper investigates the short term health shock experienced by infants during the crisis and its long term impact on human capital accumulation because no longitudinal data are available the estimation of causal effects is performed using multiple cross section surveys that are representative of the same population over time the short term and the long term effects are estimated exploiting the heterogeneous impact of the crisis across and within birth cohorts results indicate that the peruvian crisis significantly affected the health of infants particularly that of children born to low educated mothers from 1988 to 1990 vaccination declined 12 percentage points and infant mortality increased 2 3 percentage points among children born to low educated mothers in the long run the children who suffered the most severe health shocks during the economic downturn of the 1980s performed worse in school they had 0 12 fewer years of formal education and their probability of completing primary education by age 15 was three percentage points lower in relation to similar children born after the crisis the results have strong policy implications children in developing countries should be safeguarded against health shocks during economic crises to avoid a decline in the accumulation of human capital in the long run

assets subsistence and the supply curve of labor the backward bending supply curve of labor is now accepted as a matter of course by most economists it has no doubt been perplexing to observe that the most commonly employed types of utility functions do not yield such curves under the usual textbook analysis of the problem 1 particular preference maps have been found that generate backward bending curves 2 however they are nonparametric leading to difficulties of estimation and upon closer examination seem to imply counter intuitive results we will show that taking into account the wealth position of an individual on the one hand and survival consideration on the other greatly expands the variety of shapes that can be derived for the supply curve from some simple utility functions the use of a specific simple utility function also implies some severe restrictions on the form the supply curve can take rendering it testable empirical evidence is shown to support the conclusion that the supply curve is monotonic we will also show that the notion that the aggregate supply curve of labor slopes down rests in part on an error of aggregation and that the empirical evidence usually cited in support of the negative slope when correctly interpreted cannot be so construed

consumption insurance an evaluation of risk bearing systems in low income economies the hypothesis of full risk sharing can be taken to data from low income countries and evaluate formal and informal financial systems in many contexts idiosyncratic risks are high so credit insurance arrangements could be beneficial statistical tests reveal that households in southern india take advantage of these possibilities villages in cote d ivoire and countries in thailand do not do as well the paper includes an empirical description of the devices used to smooth consumption and a theoretical discussion of private information and incentives on ideal operating systems the full information and mechanism design frameworks provide benchmarks for policy analysis

economic booms and risky sexual behavior evidence from zambian copper mining cities existing studies suggest that individual and household level economic shocks affect the demand for and supply of risky sex however little evidence exists on the effects of an aggregate shock on equilibrium risky sexual behavior this paper examines the effects of the early twenty first century copper boom on risky sexual behavior in zambian copper mining cities the results suggest that the copper boom substantially reduced rates of transactional sex and multiple partnerships in copper mining cities these effects were partly concentrated among young adults and copper boom induced in migration to mining cities appears to have contributed to these reductions

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

mortality and the business cycle evidence from individual and aggregated data there has been much interest recently in the relationship between economic conditions and mortality with some studies showing that mortality is pro cyclical while others find the opposite some suggest that the aggregation level of analysis e g individual vs regional matters we use both individual and aggregated data on a sample of 20 64 year old swedish men from 1993 to 2007 our results show that the association between the business cycle and mortality does not depend on the level of analysis the sign and magnitude of the parameter estimates are similar at the individual level and the aggregate county level both showing pro cyclical mortality

economic conditions early in life and individual mortality this paper analyzes the effect of economic conditions early in life on the individual mortality rate later in life using business cycle conditions early in life as an exogenous indicator we have individual data records from dutch registers of birth marriage and death certificates covering an observation window of unprecedented size 1812 2000 these are merged with historical data on macro economic and health indicators we correct for secular changes over time and other mortality determinants we nonparametrically compare those born in a recession to those born in the preceding boom and we estimate duration models where the individual s mortality rate depends on current conditions conditions early in life age individual characteristics including individual socio economic indicators and interaction terms the results indicate a significant negative effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rates at all ages

new evidence on inflation persistence and price stickiness in the euro area implications for macro modeling this paper evaluates new evidence on price setting practices and inflation persistence in the euro area with respect to its implications for macro modeling it argues that several of the most commonly used assumptions in micro founded macro models are seriously challenged by the new findings jel e31 e52

aggregate economic shocks and infant mortality new evidence for middle income countries abstract we provide country specific estimates of the effect of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality for a sample of mainly middle income countries in most countries infant mortality appears to be pro cyclical or acyclical only when shocks to gdp are very deep 15 or larger are they consistently associated with higher mortality

state abortion rates the impact of policies providers politics demographics and economic environment abstract this paper uses data on abortion rates by state from 1974 1988 to estimate two stage least squares models with fixed state and year effects restrictions on medicaid funding for abortion are correlated with lower abortion rates in state and higher rates among nearby states a maximal estimate suggests that 19 25 of the abortions among low income women that are publicly funded do not take place after funding is eliminated parental notification laws for teen abortions do not significantly affect aggregate abortion rates a larger number of abortion providers in a state increases the abortion rate primarily through inducing cross state travel

crime in europe and the united states dissecting the reversal of misfortunes contrary to common perceptions today both property and violent crimes with the exception of homicides are more widespread in europe than in the united states while the opposite was true thirty years ago we label this fact as the reversal of misfortunes we investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes incarceration abortion unemployment and immigration on crime for this we use time series data 1970 2008 from seven european countries and the united states we find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in europe our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether such a policy would also be efficient from a cost benefit point of view we leave this to future research paolo buonanno francesco drago roberto galbiati and giulio zanella

poverty and survival a recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival but equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant using state level panel data for india we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival we identify a significant within state relationship which persists conditional upon state income indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line the poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981 it is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education fertility and state health expenditure and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends

aggregation and the estimated effects of economic conditions on health this paper considers the relationship between economic conditions and health with a focus on different approaches to geographic aggregation after reviewing the tradeoffs associated with more and less disaggregated analyses i update earlier state level analyses of mortality and infant health and then consider how the estimated effects vary when the analysis is conducted at differing levels of geographic aggregation this analysis reveals that the results are sensitive to the level of geographic aggregation with more disaggregated analyses particularly county level analyses routinely producing estimates that are smaller in magnitude further analyses suggest this is due to spillover effects of economic conditions on health outcomes across counties

liquidity economic activity and mortality abstract we document a within month mortality cycle where deaths decline before the first day of the month and spike after the first this cycle is present across a wide variety of causes and demographic groups a similar cycle exists for a range of economic activities suggesting the mortality cycle may be due to short term variation in levels of economic activity we provide evidence that the within month activity cycle is generated by liquidity our results suggest a causal pathway whereby liquidity problems reduce activity which in turn reduces mortality these relationships may help explain the procyclical nature of mortality

measurement of agricultural total factor productivity growth incorporating environmental factors a nutrients balance approach this article proposes to use nutrient orientated environmental efficiency ee measures to construct a nutrient total factor productivity index ntfp since nutrient orientated ee measures are consistent with the materials balance principle ntfp index is superior to other existing tfp indexes an empirical study on the environmental performance of an agricultural sector in 30 oecd countries from 1990 to 2003 yielded several important findings first these countries should be able to produce current outputs with at least 50 less aggregate eutrophying power implying that they should have been able to substantially reduce the potential for eutrophication second traditional tfp has grown by 1 6 per annum due to technical progress however there are lags in the responses of several countries to this technical progress third environmental tfp has grown at a slower rate than traditional tfp growth due to reductions in nutrient orientated allocative efficiency finally changes in input combinations could have significantly improved environmental efficiency and productivity these findings favor policy interventions and faster technological transfer to improve environmental performance

why are recessions good for your health a series of influential papers by christopher j ruhm 2000 2003 2005 2008 documents that recessions are good for your health or more specifically that state level mortality rates are strongly procyclical the magnitude of the correlation is economically meaningful a typical estimate from the literature suggests that a 1 percentage point increase in a state s unemployment rate is associated with a 0 54 percent reduction in that state s mortality rates if this reflects a causal relationship that is also valid at the national level then a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate would translate based on 2004 mortality rates into about 12 000 fewer deaths per year these findings are frequently interpreted as resulting from the rising opportunity cost of time that accompanies better labor market opportunities and some empirical support exists for this interpretation for example ruhm 2000 shows that obesity and smoking also exhibit a procyclical pattern the economy and health

growing up in a recession does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution we find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort support more government redistribution and tend to vote for left wing parties the effect of recessions on beliefs is long lasting we support our findings with evidence from three different datasets first we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 2010 general social survey our specifications control for nonlinear time period life cycle and cohort effects as well as a host of background variables second we rely on data from the national longitudinal survey of the high school class of 1972 to corroborate the age period cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood third using data from the world value survey we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history

china s regional natural resource allocation and utilization a dea based approach in a big data environment abstract china s economic reform and opening policy has resulted in china s rapid growth especially in terms of economy the growth however is mainly based on huge consumption of natural resources and that consumption should be reduced by significant amounts to protect global ecosystems emerged in 1980s big data has developed very quickly in recent years bringing new perspectives and opportunities for all kinds of academic fields especially in dea since it is a research highly based on data in this paper we propose a sbm dea model based on natural resource input orientation to evaluate the efficiency of natural resource utilization for 26 provincial regions in mainland china from 2005 to 2012 a dea based approach is developed to allocate a reduced total of natural resources among the 26 provincial regions drawing support from the developments of big data we use each provincial region s previously observed production data to characterize its own production technology which allows a better analysis of how the production will change after allocations of natural resources are reduced our empirical study shows that most provincial regions perform well in terms of efficiency in utilizing natural resources but that is based on huge consumption of natural resources from an area perspective the eastern area of china achieved the highest average efficiency value followed by the central and western areas our study also indicates that the most effective allocation of the natural resources requires about half of the 26 provincial regions to reduce their natural resource consumption while the remaining ones can maintain their original consumption

income receipt and mortality evidence from swedish public sector employees in this paper we study the short run effect of salary receipt on mortality among swedish public sector employees by exploiting variation in paydays across work places we completely control for mortality patterns related to for example public holidays and other special days or events coinciding with paydays and for general within month and within week mortality patterns we find a dramatic increase in mortality on the day that salaries arrive the increase is especially pronounced for younger workers and for deaths due to activity related causes such as heart conditions and strokes the effect is entirely driven by an increase in mortality among low income individuals who are more likely to experience liquidity constraints all things considered our results suggest that an increase in general economic activity on salary receipt is an important cause of the excess mortality

the impact of income shocks on health evidence from cohort data we study the eect of permanent income innovations on health for a prime aged population using information on more than half a million individuals sampled over a twenty five year period in three dierent cross sectional surveys we aggregate data by date of birth cohort to construct a synthetic cohort dataset with details of income expenditure socio demographic factors health outcomes and selected risk factors we then exploit structural and arguably exogenous changes in cohort incomes over the eighties and nineties to uncover causal eects of permanent income shocks on health we find that such income innovations have little eects on health but do aect health behaviour and mortality

an i 2 analysis of inflation and the markup an i 2 analysis of australian inflation and the markup is undertaken within an imperfect competition model it is found that the levels of prices and costs are best characterized as integrated of order 2 and that a linear combination of the levels which may be defined as the markup cointegrates with price inflation from the empirical analysis we obtain a long run relationship where higher inflation is associated with a lower markup and vice versa the impact in the long run of inflation on the markup is interpreted as the cost to firms of overcoming missing information when adjusting prices in an inflationary environment copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the causes and consequences of distinctively black names in the 1960s blacks and whites chose relatively similar first names for their children over a short period of time in the early 1970s that pattern changed dramatically with most blacks particularly those living in racially isolated neighborhoods adopting increasingly distinctive names but a subset of blacks actually moving toward more assimilating names the patterns in the data appear most consistent with a model in which the rise of the black power movement influenced how blacks perceived their identities among blacks born in the last two decades names provide a strong signal of socioeconomic status which was not previously the case we find however no negative relationship between having a distinctively black name and later life outcomes after controlling for a child s circumstances at birth

long run impacts of childhood access to the safety net a growing economics literature establishes a causal link between in utero shocks and health and human capital in adulthood most studies rely on extreme negative shocks such as famine and pandemics we are the first to examine the impact of a positive and policy driven change in economic resources available in utero and during childhood in particular we focus on the introduction of a key element of the u s safety net the food stamp program which was rolled out across counties in the u s between 1961 and 1975 we use the panel study of income dynamics to assemble unique data linking family background and county of residence in early childhood to adult health and economic outcomes the identification comes from variation across counties and over birth cohorts in availability of the food stamp program our findings indicate that the food stamp program has effects decades after initial exposure specifically access to food stamps in childhood leads to a significant reduction in the incidence of metabolic syndrome obesity high blood pressure and diabetes and for women an increase in economic self sufficiency overall our results suggest substantial internal and external benefits of the safety net that have not previously been quantified

are children really inferior goods evidence from displacement driven income shocks abstract this paper explores the causal link between income and fertility by analyzing women s fertility response to the large and permanent income shock generated by a husband s job displacement i find that the shock reduces total fertility suggesting that the causal effect of income on fertility is positive a model that incorporates the time cost of children and assortative matching of spouses can simultaneously explain this result and the negative cross sectional relationship i also find that a husband s displacement accelerates childbearing which is consistent with lifecycle models of fertility in which the incentive to delay is driven by expected earnings growth

will airline efficiency be affected by carbon neutral growth from 2020 strategy evidences from 29 international airlines abstract in this paper the impact of the carbon neutral growth from 2020 cng2020 strategy on airline efficiency is analyzed based on the predicted data of 29 international airlines during 2021 2023 the data is predicted through neural network following the principle of cng2020 strategy we calculate the emission limit for each airline two models network range adjusted measure with natural disposability and network range adjusted measure with managerial disposability are proposed to discuss the efficiency change when the cng2020 strategy is considered the following findings are gotten 1 under natural disposability the indices related with undesirable output have a larger role in deciding benchmarking airline 2 for most of the 29 airlines cng2020 strategy has little influence on their efficiency

pro cyclical mortality across socioeconomic groups and health status abstract using variation across geographic regions a number of studies from the u s and other developed countries have found more deaths in economic upturns and less deaths in economic downturns we use data from regions in norway for 1977 2008 and find the same pro cyclical patterns using individual level register data for the identical population we find that disadvantaged socioeconomic groups are not hit harder by pro cyclical mortality than advantaged groups we also find that other indicators of deteriorated health than death like becoming disabled are pro cyclical overall our analysis suggests that pro cyclical mortality is rather related to deaths of people already in deteriorated health than to people of low socioeconomic status

do in work tax credits serve as a safety net we test the eitc s response to economic need using irs data we exploit differences in timing and severity of economic cycles across states because the eitc requires earned income there is a theoretical ambiguity in the credit s cyclicality we find higher unemployment leads to increased likelihood of eitc recipiency and in credit amounts received for married couples but has insignificant effects for single individuals the eitc s protective effects are concentrated among skilled workers the eitc mitigates income shocks for married couples with children and groups likely to have moderate earnings but does not for most recipients single parents with children

an economy of scales a selective review of obesity s economic causes consequences and solutions this paper reviews the economic research on obesity covering topics such as the measurement of and trends in obesity the economic causes of obesity e g the monetary price and time cost of food food assistance programs income education macroeconomic conditions and peer effects and the economic consequences of obesity e g lower wages a lower probability of employment and higher medical care costs it also examines the extent to which obesity imposes negative externalities and economic interventions that could potentially internalize such externalities such as food taxes subsidies for school based physical activity programs and financial rewards for weight loss it discusses other economic rationales for government intervention with respect to obesity such as imperfect information time inconsistent preferences and irrational behavior it concludes by proposing a research agenda for the field overall the evidence suggests that there is no single dominant economic cause of obesity a wide variety of factors may contribute a modest amount to the risk there is consistent evidence regarding the economic consequences of obesity which are lower wages and higher medical care costs that impose negative externalities through health insurance studies of economic approaches to preventing obesity such as menu labeling taxes on energy dense foods and financial rewards for weight loss find only modest effects on weight and thus a range of policies may be necessary to have a substantial effect on the prevalence of obesity

the reversal of the relation between economic growth and health progress sweden in the 19th and 20th centuries health progress as measured by the decline in mortality rates and the increase in life expectancy is usually conceived as related to economic growth especially in the long run in this investigation it is shown that economic growth is positively associated with health progress in sweden throughout the 19th century however the relation becomes weaker as time passes and is completely reversed in the second half of the 20th century when economic growth negatively affects health progress the effect of the economy on health occurs mostly at lag 0 in the 19th century and is lagged up to 2 years in the 20th century no evidence is found for economic effects on mortality at greater lags these findings are shown to be robustly consistent across a variety of statistical procedures including linear regression spectral analysis cross correlation and lag regression models models using inflation and unemployment as economic indicators reveal similar results evidence for reverse effects of health progress on economic growth is weak and unobservable in the second half of the 20th century

income leisure tradeoffs of animal workers results of recent empirical and theoretical research have shown the applicability of consumer demand theory in describing and predicting choices of nonhuman consumers see a covich d rapport and j turner battalio et al kagel et al 1975 1980 commodities used in these studies have been largely limited to different kinds of edibles food grains water and sweet tasting preferred fluids a natural extension of the commodity choice model is to consider leisure as a good this paper presents results of experiments showing that nonhuman workers pigeons are willing to trade off income for leisure if the price is right more specifically our results show that the slutsky substitution effect is positive for exactly compensated wage decreases and that leisure is a normal good at all points in the choice space in addition to demonstrating the pervasiveness of income leisure tradeoffs the experiments show strong regularities in the size of the substitution and income effects at varying wage rates with increases in real wages both income and substitution effects get smaller but the substitution term decreases more rapidly than the income term resulting in a backward bending labor supply curve at higher wages the plan of the paper is as follows in section i we characterize the procedures employed in the laboratory for studying labor supply and summarize well established characteristics of this behavior as it is relevant to the present experiments sections ii and iii describe the hypotheses tested and the experimental procedures employed in the tests results of the experiments are given in section iv some of the implications of these results are discussed in a brief concluding section space considerations do not permit a detailed discussion of the reasons why economists should take seriously the investigation of economic theories using nonhuman subjects see kagel and battalio for this argument for the more skeptical reader we simply note that if one defines economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources among unlimited and competing uses albert rees 1968 p 472 then animal psychologists ecologists and biologists have been involved in studying economic behavior for some time now rapport and turner jack hirschleifer h rachlin it is but a small step to take the technologies of these related disciplines and apply them to behavior of interest to economists for example labor supply behavior at a minimum such studies expand considerably the scope for comparative economic analysis at a maximum they provide a laboratory for identifying testing and better understanding general laws of economic behavior use of this laboratory is predicated on the fact that behavior as well as structure vary continuously across species and that principles of economic behavior would be unique among behavioral principles if they did not apply with some variation of course to the behavior of nonhumans

caution men not at work gender specific labor market conditions and child maltreatment abstract this paper examines the effect of labor market conditions measured through unemployment mass layoffs and predicted employment on child maltreatment using county level data from california using these indicators we separately estimate the effects of overall and gender specific economic shocks we find only modest evidence of a link between overall economic conditions and child maltreatment however analysis by gender reveals robust evidence that maltreatment decreases with indicators for male employment and increases with indicators for female employment these opposite signed effects are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on household time use models and is supported by an analysis of time use data though we discuss other mechanisms that may also play important roles

environmental efficiency analysis of china s regional industry a data envelopment analysis dea based approach abstract china s economic has got remarkable achievements during the past 30 years which has brought tremendous pressure on natural resources and serious environmental pollution at the same time in this paper we aim to make environmental efficiency analysis of china s regional industry data envelopment analysis dea method is incorporated and the slacks based measure sbm model considering undesirable outputs is introduced to measure the environmental efficiency of different regions big data theory is introduced in the collection and selection of the input and output data of the regions further we evaluate the environmental efficiencies of china s industry using data from 2008 to 2012 the results show that apart from several developed provinces the environmental efficiencies of china s industry are generally low and the environmental efficiencies of the regions did not show any increasing trend through the past 5 years additionally lager differences exist in environmental efficiencies between the regions in china finally we suggest the chinese government to focus on the low environmental efficiencies and the unbalanced development of its regional industry

the impact of stock market fluctuations on the mental and physical well being of children the stock market crash of 2008 caused a severe impact to households earlier research has explored the impacts of a stock market crash on life well being psychological stress and adult health behaviors we extend this literature by documenting impacts of stock market fluctuations on a range of child outcomes including effects on both mental and physical health we show a negative effect of a market crash on hospitalizations child reported health status sick days from school and an aggregate health index measure both graphical and regression based analysis reveal that our results are not driven by a preexisting trend of declining child health before the market crash and extensive sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the results are robust to multiple empirical specifications jel i15 e32 j13

the unintended effects of place based programs fertility and health effects of urban empowerment zones abstract whether place based welfare programs affect fertility and health outcomes is an understudied question i estimate the health impacts of the empowerment zone ez program a federal program that gave sizeable grants and tax breaks to certain high poverty census tracts in selected cities using difference in differences methods i find that the ez program decreased fertility rates by 11 percent and improved birth outcomes compositional changes in fertility likely cannot explain changes in infant health recent research on the later life impacts of low birth weight suggest that the health impacts of this program may have substantial long term benefits

fatal fluctuations cyclicality in infant mortality in india this paper investigates the impact of aggregate income shocks on infant mortality in india and investigates likely mechanisms a recent oecd dominated literature reports the provocative finding that mortality at most ages is pro cyclical similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce and both income risk and mortality risk are greater in poor countries this paper uses data and methods designed to avoid some of the specification problems in previous studies and it explores mechanisms and extensions that have not been previously considered it uses individual data on infant mortality for about 150 000 children born in 1970 1997 merged by cohort and state of birth with a state panel containing information on aggregate income identification rests upon comparing the effects of annual deviations in income from trend on the mortality risks of children born at different times to the same mother conditional upon a number of state time varying covariates including rainshocks and state social expenditure rural infant mortality is counter cyclical the elasticity being about 0 33 this is despite the finding that relatively high risk women avert birth or suffer fetal loss in recessions it seems in part related to recessions stimulating distress labor amongst mothers in contrast to the case in richer countries where they discourage labor market participation health care seeking declines in recessions and this appears to be related to the opportunity cost of maternal time disaggregation reveals that the average results are driven by rural households in which the mother is uneducated or had her first birth in teenage and that it is only girls that are at risk boys are protected from income shocks exposure to poor conditions in the fetal and neonatal period appears to have a larger effect on infant mortality than similar exposure in the postneonatal period

the impact of legalized abortion on crime we offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization the five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation which legalized in 1973 with roe v wade states with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s in high abortion states only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime