occupational downgrading and upgrading in britain the willingness of workers to move down an occupational hierarchy is a potentially important source of flexibility in the labour market but relatively little is known about the scale or pattern of occupational up and downgrading this paper examines who downgrades and the cyclical structure of up and downgrading we find that occupational downgrading is surprisingly large relative to flows into unemployment individuals who have a high payoff to skilled work such as educated workers are less likely to downgrade contrary to expectations the rate of downgrading is found to be greater in the boom while upgrading follows the more conventional expectation of also being procyclical this finding is interpreted as evidence consistent with the rationing of jobs in the downgrading process contrary to the assumptions of simple dual labour market models

a multivariate sample selection model estimating cigarette and alcohol demands with zero observations heckman s sample selection model is generalized to the multivariate case and used to estimate demands for cigarettes beer and wine by individuals in the united states the specification allows correlations between the error terms of multiple selection and level equations and nests the popular bivariate sample selection model and two part model empirical results suggest that the proposed model performs better than the restricted specifications differentiated effects of variables on probabilities and levels of consumption also suggest rejection of the tobit system gender differences are present and demographic variables are more important than income in determining consumption of cigarettes beer and wine

quasi and simulated likelihood approaches to censored demand systems food consumption by food stamp recipients in the united states a quasi maximum likelihood estimator is proposed and applied to a censored translog demand system for foods using a sample of food stamp recipients in the united states the procedure produces remarkably close parameter and elasticity estimates to those of the simulated maximum likelihood procedure a two step procedure is also considered but it produces different elasticities demands are found to be price elastic for pork and fish but price inelastic for all other food products gross complementarity and net substitutability are obvious but these cross price effects are much less pronounced than own price and total food expenditure effects copyright 2003 oxford university press

assessing the importance of health and nutrition related factors on food demand a variable preference investigation the importance of health nutrition related factors and demographics on food consumption is assessed based on consumer demand using a variable preferences approach results of the models show that diet disease individual s race region of residence urbanization education and perceived importance of taste influence the consumption of various food groups economic and policy implications of the results are discussed in the paper

public good provision mechanisms and reciprocity this paper determines optimal public good provision mechanisms in an environment where agents are motivated by reciprocity in a two agent economy we show that the standard pivot mechanism is not strategy proof if at least one agent cares strongly enough about reciprocity truthful reporting maximises a player s own payoff and hence is viewed as selfish by his opponent who retaliates by understating demand for the public good incentive compatibility is restored if the mechanism is implemented sequentially when agents are asked to report their demands in turn a high report by the first mover he may result in him paying an unfairly large share of the provision cost should the second mover she understate her demand hence truthful reporting is not judged as selfish by the second mover who reciprocates by stating her true demand our results alert the institutional designer to the importance of game dynamics when agents are non selfish

a signalling theory of nominal wage inflexibility a model of learning in local labor markets is constructed in which the emphasis placed by employers on job applicants employment histories induces workers to reject low nominal wages to avoid subsequently signalling a low ability this wage censoring behavior leads to inefficiently high levels of unemployment and generates an apparent downwardly inflexible nominal wage monetary policy may be of use if it affects the quality of the nominal wage signal copyright 1993 by royal economic society

the us retail demand for fish products an application of the almost ideal demand system the main objective is to address the limitations of past us fish demand research through the development of a variation of the almost ideal demand system model for disaggregate fish products at the retail level price and expenditure elasticities as well as elasticities of substitution between fish products and other protein commodities determined from this work may be used in the context of fisheries management and market development and promotion results indicate that with the exception of shellfish demand for the various fish products is relatively inelastic cross price elasticities are generally moderate while expenditure elasticities are large and positive for fresh fish and shellfish demographic effects especially geographical division season race occupation age sex household composition and price income interaction as a proxy for quality are highly significant variables

estimating fishing and hunting leisure spending shares in the united states abstract we apply a bivariate censored demand system to estimate hunting and fishing trip related spending shares in the united states using data from off site surveys the approach considers fishing and hunting destination decisions and includes respondents who were inactive i e did not hunt or fished in a particular season the statistical significance of correlation coefficient parameter supports the use of a joint e g bivariate rather than separate e g univariate decision modeling process for fishing or hunting share equations most individual characteristics are statistically significant as explanatory variables respondents holding recreation licenses tended to spend significantly more on recreation than those without licenses all own price and cross price elasticities are statistically significant and suggest that hunting and fishing are complements the results also suggest that the popularity of hunting may decline as the population ages

the british low wage sector and the employment prospects of the unemployed abstractare low wages a way for the unemployed to switch to higher paying jobs using data from the british household panel survey the labour market dynamics of unemployed low paid and higher paid employed men are analysed moreover the respective un employment duration and occupational skill level are accounted for results show that in general low wages significantly reduce the risk of future unemployment and increase the chances of ascending the salary ladder especially in the case of long term unemployment 360 days furthermore the occupational skill level has a substantial influence on the upward mobility of low paid jobs individuals working in the initial period in a low paid and higher skilled occupation have on average an 11 percentage points higher probability of entering higher pay compared to when working in a low paid and low skilled occupation

prices and quality effects in cross sectional demand analysis a conceptual clarification of the sources and meaning of cross sectional price variability is used to motivate a theoretical and econometric framework for the estimation of cross sectional demand functions quality effects are distinguished from supply related price variability to identify cross sectional demand for disaggregated food commodities an empirical application using data from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey indicates that parameter differences resulting from a failure to adjust cross sectional prices for quality effects are likely to be small for relatively homogenous disaggregated food commodities in demand analysis with cross sectional household budget data it is usually assumed that prices are constant allen and bowley prais and houthakker george and king given this assumption engel functions are estimated where expenditure or quantity is regressed on income or total expenditures family size and other demographic characteristics the assumption that cross sectional price effects are absent or are captured adequately by spatial and temporal dummy variables has not been evaluated empirically whether cross sectional price effects can be treated in this manner has implications for the specification of cross sectional demand functions as well as the estimation of engel functions there is a considerable literature on estimating price elasticities with cross sectional data most of the applications utilize timeseries cross sectional data annual or quarterly household consumption surveys and

a microeconometric model analysis of us consumer demand for alcoholic beverages this paper discusses the specification and estimation of a two stage budgeting consumer demand for alcoholic beverages using 1987 88 usda individual and household food consumption survey data the upper level first stage budgeting decision is modelled via a gamma tobit model the lower level second stage budgeting allocates alcohol expenditure via a synthetic demand system for beer spirits and wine the synthetic system is constructed via a normalized linear combination of the level rotterdam cbs and an aids equivalent model data on individual three day alcohol consumption from the individual food intake survey are used for analysis while price and household characteristics information are obtained from the house hold food intake survey the results show that some individual and household characteristic variables as well as economic variables have significant impacts on consumer demand for alcoholic beverages

demand systems estimation with microdata a censored regression approach demand systems estimation increasingly makes use of household level microdata mainly to measure the effects of demographic variables data based on these household expenditure surveys present a major estimation problem for any given household many of the goods have zero consumption implying a censored dependent variable techniques which do not take this censored dependent variable into account will yield biased results we utilize a censored regression approach that is computationally simple consistent and asymptotically efficient the results are then presented and compared with those obtained using an uncensored technique

a test of the habit formation hypothesis using household data numerous studies have confirmed the importance of habit formation as represented by a lagged dependent variable in demand analysis although all work to date has been based on aggregate time series data this study uses household level bls interview panel data to test the habit hypothesis an interrelated demand system for seventeen goods is estimated from cross section data and compared with a similar system based on time series data the results show that the habit component is significantly different between the two data sets and much smaller in the cross section data habit effects while not as large in cross section data as time series are still highly significant several explanations are offered concerning why the two sets of estimates differ copyright 1991 by mit press

do employers use unemployment as a sorting criterion when hiring evidence from a field experiment the stigma associated with long term unemployment spells could create large inefficiencies in labor markets while the existing literature points toward large stigma effects it has proven difficult to estimate causal relationships using data from a field experiment we find that long term unemployment spells in the past do not matter for employers hiring decisions suggesting that subsequent work experience eliminates this negative signal nor do employers treat contemporary short term unemployment spells differently suggesting that they understand that worker firm matching takes time however employers attach a negative value to contemporary unemployment spells lasting at least nine months providing evidence of stigma effects

on bias correction in the multivariate sample selection model heien and wessells two step estimator for the multivariate sample selection model has been used extensively during the past 15 years a modified version of it with slightly different selectivity regressors has also appeared in the empirical literature both estimators are unfounded and generally do not correct for the sample selectivity bias as intended but have continued to gain popularity in empirical applications the properties of the modified heien wessells procedure are investigated in both the bivariate and multivariate contexts and the conditions under which this estimator fails to correct for sample selectivity are examined the theoretical properties are demonstrated with a simulated random sample

food demand in mexico an application of the amemiya tobin approach to the estimation of a censored food system the modeling of micro level food demand patterns requires not only allowing for household heterogeneity but also addressing the problem of censoring in this article we present a variation of the amemiya tobin framework for estimating a censored demand system that allows for household heterogeneity the unique aspect of our approach is the use of a procedure that ensures the adding up of both latent and observed expenditure shares and also imposes expenditure share nonnegativity this system is applied to an analysis of food demand based on a random sample of urban mexican households

wages and employment in a segmented labor market this paper analyzes the impact of business cycle fluctuations on a labor market segmented into a unionized primary sector and a competitive secondary sector either permanent or temporary changes in real aggregate demand are shown to widen the intersectoral wage differential in recession and under reasonable specifications of key parameters to cause greater fluctuations of primary sector employment than secondary sector employment this pattern agrees with the stylized facts of the u s economy

variety prices and food status in low income households the basic premise of this paper is that a household receives utility directly from the status of a food composite good which is created by combining a household s skill and creativity in preparing foods other inputs and the kinds and amounts of foods available we proceed to investigate the factors influencing the demand for and prodcution of this composite good the demand for food status in influenced most by the following characteristics race education houshold size homeownership region of household residence and income direct price effects were minor estimates of a food status production function imply that the production of food status is not much a matter of the quantities of foods consumed but rather the types of food purchased variety and the creativity of the homemaker

capital requirements screening and interlinked sharecropping and credit contracts this paper provides one more rationale for interlinking credit and tenancy contracts in the context of production loans in an environment characterized by a heterogeneous labor pool and imperfect information landlords will have an incentive to avail themselves of screening devices by linking tenancy and credit contracts a screening device can be implemented the equilibrium set of contracts is characterized by a variety of interest rates some of which might be below the market interest rate the interest rate principal schedule is downward sloping with higher ability tenants choosing larger principals at lower interest rates

sample selectivity models for away from home expenditures on wine and beer the impact of household characteristics on away from home wine and beer weekly expenditures in the usa is examined results imply that higher income households without children and headed by an older white and higher educated individual spend more on wine away from home than do others on the other hand smaller midwestern and western households without children and headed by a younger and white individual spend more on beer away from home than do others

reinforcing separate spheres the effect of spousal overwork on men s and women s employment in dual earner households this study examines whether long work hours exacerbate gender inequality as working long hours becomes increasingly common a normative conception of gender that prioritizes men s careers over women s careers in dual earner households may pressure women to quit their jobs i apply multilevel models to longitudinal data from the survey of income and program participation to show that having a husband who works long hours significantly increases a woman s likelihood of quitting whereas having a wife who works long hours does not appear to increase a man s likelihood of quitting this gendered pattern is more prominent among workers in professional and managerial occupations where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting are strong furthermore the effect is stronger among workers who have children findings suggest that overwork can reintroduce the separate spheres arrangement consisting of breadwinning men and homemaking women to many formerly dual earner households

a theory of signalling during job search employment efficiency and stigmatised jobs this paper discusses why redundant skilled workers may be reluctant to accept interim unskilled jobs if skilled work is more satisfying or less arduous for highly productive workers then such workers invest more in moving quickly between skilled jobs thus high productivity workers tend to search on the job and if unemployed will specialise in job search rather than take an interim position if individual differences in productivity are known to the worker but not the potential employer then search strategy may be used as a productivity signal with more than the efficient proportion of workers searching on the job and too few accepting interim unskilled jobs optimal policy requires a subsidy on interim unskilled jobs

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

household demand for fats and oils two step estimation of a censored demand system a censored system of household fat and oil demand equations is estimated with a two step procedure using cross sectional data from the 1987 1988 us nationwide food consumption survey own price and total expenditure elasticities are close to unity and there is no evidence of gross substitutability compensated elasticities suggest net substitution among the products considered

a demand systems analysis of food commodities by u s households segmented by income using the 1987 88 nationwide food consumption survey twelve food commodity groups were analyzed according to household poverty status parameter estimates were used to obtain subsistence expenditures own price elasticities expenditure elasticities and income elasticities own price elasticities were similar between the income groups for most commodities however income elasticities were consistently higher for the lower income group the use of average estimates of price and income elasticities for the population as a whole for the projection of individual commodity demands is not likely to be successful if notable changes are evident in income distribution

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

the scarring effects of unemployment low pay and skills under utilization in australia compared there is a substantial literature on the scarring effects of unemployment on future employment prospects and a smaller one on the scarring effects of low pay but the possibility that skills mismatch in the form of skills under utilization may have similar detrimental effects has not been considered before we use the household income and labour dynamics in australia panel to investigate the dynamics of unemployment low pay and skills under utilization including differences by gender and education we show that in addition to earlier evidence on wage penalties and reduced job satisfaction skills under utilization scars future employment prospects in a way similar to that of low pay

conditional cooperation and voluntary contributions to public goods we compare a partners condition where the same small group of subjects plays a repeated publi c good game to a strangers condition where subjects play this game in changing group formations subjects in the partners conditi on contribute from t he first period on significantly more to the publi c good than subjects in the strangers conditi on in the strangers conditi on contributions show a continual decay whil e in the partners conditi on contributions fluctuate on a high level until t hey decrease in the final periods we interpret subjects behavior in terms of conditional cooperation which is characterized by both future oriented and reactive behavior

once in the door gender tryouts and the initial salaries of managers although women pursue managerial credentials at nearly the same rate as men gender disparities in wages exist because of the shortfall in wages women sustain relative to men at the onset of their careers this article develops a tryout approach to test for the presence of demand side contributions to initial wage inequality while also developing and testing theory on why it may be lessened through internships using detailed data on graduates from an elite management program from 2009 2010 our analyses reveal that internships are associated with the gap in men s and women s initial salaries for men there is no difference in salary offers from employers where an internship occurs versus one where an internship does not occur however women receive higher salaries from employers where an internship first takes place this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations

an empirical analysis of acreage effects of participation in the federal crop insurance program the extent to which crop insurance programs have resulted in additional land being brought into production has been a topic of considerable debate we consider multiequation structural models of acreage response insurance participation crp enrollment and input usage our analysis focuses on corn and soybean production in the corn belt and wheat and barley production in the upper great plains our results confirm that increased participation in insurance programs provokes statistically significant acreage responses in some cases though the response is very modest in every case in the most extreme cases 30 decreases in premiums as a result of increased subsidies provoke acreage increases ranging from 0 2 to 1 1 a number of policy simulations involving increases in premium subsidies are considered

an empirical model of sectoral movements by unemployed workers using canadian data i investigate the relationships among sectoral mobility unemployment spells and total unemployment recent north american evidence suggests that incidence shifts toward high wage high tenure workers may increase equilibrium unemployment through decreasing sectoral mobility and increasing spells using a multiple spell transition model i find that while shifts toward such workers may have these effects composition changes that lead to higher mobility can also increase unemployment a further investigation into the relative roles of mobility and spell lengths in driving total unemployment indicates that the influence of the former is comparatively small

the interrelated dynamics of unemployment and low wage employment this paper examines the extent of state dependence in unemployment and the role played in this by intervening low wage employment a range of dynamic random and fixed effects estimators are compared low wage employment is found to have almost as large an adverse effect as unemployment on future prospects and the difference in their effects is found to be insignificant evidence is presented that low wage jobs act as the main conduit for repeat unemployment and considerably increases its probability obtaining a higher wage job reduces the increased risk of repeat unemployment to insignificance

calculating marginal effects in models for zero expenditures in household budgets using a heckman type correction using the heckamn approach either in single equation or multi equation settings general expressions are derived for calculating marginal effects and elasticities in the conventional calculation of marginal effects terms related to the change in the inverse of mills ratio are omitted using data from the 19877 88 nationwide food consumption survey we calculate income and household size elasticities for 12 food commodities we compare the magnitudes and signs of the elasticities using the conventional expressions of marginal effects and our derived expressions bottomline sizeable differences especially in single equation applications can occur in calculating marginal effects if one fails to account for changes in the inverse of the mills ratio

obviously strategy proof mechanisms what makes some strategy proof mechanisms easier to understand than others to address this question i propose a new solution concept a mechanism is obviously strategy proof osp if it has an equilibrium in obviously dominant strategies this has a behavioral interpretation a strategy is obviously dominant if and only if a cognitively limited agent can recognize it as weakly dominant it also has a classical interpretation a choice rule is osp implementable if and only if it can be carried out by a social planner under a particular regime of partial commitment i fully characterize the set of osp mechanisms in a canonical setting with one dimensional types and transfers a laboratory experiment tests and corroborates the theory

the challenge of high unemployment it is argued that policymakers macroeconomists and microeconomists should all take high unemployment more seriously the shortcomings of existing theories of unemployment are discussed and a new definition of involuntary unemployment is proposed a model is sketched in which falling aggregate demand leads to keynesian unemployment because labor is heterogeneous and relative wages matter microeconomic theory is criticized for assuming away unemployment and in the process radically changing the answers to some basic questions in trade theory and public finance finally some speculative explanations are offered for the low unemployment now found in states like new jersey and massachusetts this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

a signaling theory of unemployment abstract this paper presents a signaling explanation for unemployment employment at an unskilled job may be regarded as a bad signal therefore good workers who are more likely to qualify for employment at a skilled job in the future may be better off being unemployed than accepting an unskilled job we present conditions under which all equilibria satisfying the cho kreps intuitive criterion involve unemployment however there always exist balanced budget wage tax and subsidy schedules that eliminate unemployment and increase the expected incomes of all workers moreover unemployment can be eliminated with tax schedules that do not raise any revenue and that place very weak informational demands on policy makers however these tax schedules do not always increase the expected income of every worker

duration dependence and labor market conditions evidence from a field experiment this article studies the role of employer behavior in generating negative duration dependence the adverse effect of a longer unemployment spell by sending fictitious resumes to real job postings in 100 u s cities our results indicate that the likelihood of receiving a callback for an interview significantly decreases with the length of a worker s unemployment spell with the majority of this decline occurring during the first eight months we explore how this effect varies with local labor market conditions and find that duration de pendence is stronger when the local labor market is tighter this result is consistent with the prediction of a broad class of screening models in which employers use the unemployment spell length as a signal of unobserved productivity and recognize that this signal is less informative in weak labor markets jel code j64

school to work linkages educational mismatches and labor market outcomes a recurring question in public and scientific debates is whether occupation specific skills enhance labor market outcomes is it beneficial to have an educational degree that is linked to only one

discrimination and open unemployment in a segmented labour market jobs in the primary sector require firm specific training with wages determined as a result of bargaining firms pay for the training and since they are imperfectly informed about worker productivity they test workers before hiring them the secondary sector is competitive taking a job in the secondary sector signals low productivity and therefore workers in the secondary sector are unable to get jobs in the primary sector open unemployment coexists with unfilled vacancies for low wage jobs

the effects of unemployment and underemployment on employment opportunities results from a correspondence audit of the labor market for college graduates the authors use data from a resume audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects of recent college graduates they find no statistical evidence linking unemployment spells of different durations to employment opportunities by contrast college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 lower than those of applicants who are adequately employed the null effects associated with unemployment and the adverse effects associated with underemployment are robust across cities with relatively tight and loose labor market conditions internship experience obtained while completing one s degree substantially reduces the negative effects of underemployment the data support the proposition that employers view underemployment as a strong signal of lower expected productivity

changing household characteristics and the away from home food market a censored equation system approach abstract the american consumer is obtaining more and more of his or her food at a restaurant and that worries some people concerned with the nation s dietary health to date much of this concern seems to be directed at the fast food segment of the restaurant industry this paper asks whether targeting one segment of the industry such as fast food restaurants is justified or whether a more balanced view of eating away from home is required to answer this question we look to the future and ask whether americans can be expected to purchase increasingly more fast food or more and more of the foods typically associated with full service dining one view is that sales at full service restaurants will now grow relatively faster than sales of fast food the argument supporting this position rests on rising incomes the aging of the population smaller household sizes and other changes taking place in the population using a new full information maximum likelihood procedure for estimating a system of censored expenditure equations we find evidence to support this argument

ambiguous beliefs and mechanism design abstract this paper develops a payoff equivalence theorem for mechanisms with ambiguity averse participants with preferences of the maxmin expected utility meu form gilboa and schmeidler 1989 we use our payoff equivalence result to explicitly characterize the revenue maximizing private value auction mechanism for agents with arbitrary forms of ambiguous beliefs we also show that the revenue ranking between first and second price auctions is sensitive to the form of ambiguity aversion our payoff equivalence techniques allow us to study the constrained efficient budget balanced bilateral trade mechanism and show that increased ambiguity improves the efficiency of the mechanism in addition we characterize the revenue maximizing efficient bilateral trade mechanism and show that heightened ambiguity lowers ex ante budget deficits

penalized or protected gender and the consequences of nonstandard and mismatched employment histories millions of workers are employed in positions that deviate from the full time standard employment relationship or work in jobs that are mismatched with their skills education or experience yet little is known about how employers evaluate workers who have experienced these employment arrangements limiting our knowledge about how part time work temporary agency employment and skills underutilization affect workers labor market opportunities drawing on original field and survey experiment data i examine three questions 1 what are the consequences of having a nonstandard or mismatched employment history for workers labor market opportunities 2 are the effects of nonstandard or mismatched employment histories different for men and women and 3 what are the mechanisms linking nonstandard or mismatched employment histories to labor market outcomes the field experiment shows that skills underutilization is as scarring for workers as a year of unemployment but that there are limited penalties for workers with histories of temporary agency employment additionally although men are penalized for part time employment histories women face no penalty for part time work the survey experiment reveals that employers perceptions of workers competence and commitment mediate these effects these findings shed light on the consequences of changing employment relations for the distribution of labor market opportunities in the new economy

a sample selection approach to censored demand systems the multivariate sample selection model is extended to a nonlinear equation system with partial selection and applied to household meat consumption in china elasticity estimates differ from those obtained from conventional maximum likelihood and tobit estimates chinese meat products are gross complements while net substitution also exists in some cases the use of micro survey data has been popular in estimating consumer demand equations important features of microdata include censored dependent variables estimation procedures for censored consumer demand systems include the primal kuhn tucker approach of wales and woodland 1983 dual virtualprice approach of lee and pitt 1986 and the tobit system amemiya 1974 estimated by generalized maximum entropy golan perloff and shen 2001 and maximum simulated likelihood dong gould and kaiser 2004 yen lin and smallwood 2003 procedures less efficient alternatives include the quasi maximum likelihood estimator yen lin and smallwood 2003 the generalized method of moments estimator meyerhoefer ranney and sahn 2005 and a number of two step estimators heien and wessells 1990 perali and chavas 2000 shonkwiler and yen 1999 yen 2005 recently proposed a maximum likelihood ml procedure for the multivariate sample selection model mssm an extension of the bivariate sample selection model heckman 1979 which had motivated the procedures of heien and wessells 1990 and shonkwiler and yen 1999 the mssm was developed in the context of linear equations and in addition is not strictly applicable for a partially selective equation system viz

food expenditures and household demographic composition in the us a demand systems approach food expenditures and subsistence quantities of poverty status and non poverty status us households are analysed within a linear expenditure system that postulates subsistence quantities to be linear combinations of demographic variables using the us bureau of labor statistics 1992 consumer expenditure survey and detailed monthly consumer price indices this article obtains expenditure elasticities own price elasticities and subsistence quantities for each income group across nine broadly aggregated food commodity groups elasticity estimates and subsistence quantity estimates differ across income groups supporting the premise that policies targeted at specific income groups should be based on the target group s elasticity estimates rather than average population elasticities parameter estimates are then used to simulate how subsistence quantities and own price elasticities can be expected to vary according to the demographic composition of the household within a specific income group

incomplete information models of guilt aversion in the trust game in the theory of psychological games it is assumed that players preferences on material consequences depend on endogenous beliefs most of the applications of this theoretical framework assume that the psychological utility functions representing such preferences are common knowledge however this is often unrealistic in particular it cannot be true in experimental games where players are subjects drawn at random from a population therefore an incomplete information methodology is needed we take a first step in this direction focusing on guilt aversion in the trust game in our models agents have heterogeneous belief hierarchies we characterize equilibria where trust occurs with positive probability our analysis illustrates the incomplete information approach to psychological games and can help to organize experimental results in the trust game this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behavioral economics

encultured biases the role of products in pathways to inequality recent sociological work shows that culture is an important causal variable in labor market outcomes does the same hold for product markets to answer this question we study a product market in w

wait unemployment in europe unemployment michael burda the sustained increase in unemployment rates in western europe is a major policy problem not least because of the increasing significance of long term unemployment a large part of cross country differences in long term unemployment rates can be predicted by a simple model of wait unemployment potential workers may refuse low paying jobs and invest in unemployment if this increases the chance that they will subsequently be offered a higher paying job this investment decision is sensitive both to the level of unemployment benefit and to its duration and coverage of the labour force more generous unemployment benefit will tend to increase average unemployment rates the analysis can also explain how increases in the labour force contribute to unemployment and why service sector employment has grown more slowly in europe than in the us over the past 15 years unemployment benefit is not set in a vacuum the paper also considers forces governing the evolution of benefit rates and entitlements during the period

a theory of wage dispersion and job market segmentation job market segmentation refers to the idea that there tends to be a correlation among high wages high productivity high capital intensity high value added few quits relative to layoffs and low labor turnover this paper develops a model of wage dispersion and job market segmentation based on the very sparse assumption that the only departure from a strictly orthodox neoclassical world consists of wages being sticky in the short run implications of the model are explored and discussed

from opt out to blocked out the challenges for labor market re entry after family related employment lapses in today s labor market the majority of individuals experience a lapse in employment at some point in their careers most commonly due to unemployment from job loss or leaving work to care for fam

a censored system of cigarette and alcohol consumption many previous studies of us cigarette and alcohol consumption have focused on single equations however the addictive nature of consumption suggests that it is more appropriate to model these products as a system we propose a two step estimation procedure and apply the procedure to a system of equations for cigarette beer and wine consumption results differ from those derived from an existing two step procedure findings suggest that consumption of cigarettes beer and wine is responsive to income changes but the elasticities are rather small personal physiques education age race ethnicity health gender employment status and regions also play significant roles in consumption

public goods games and psychological utility theory and evidence abstract we consider a theoretical model of a public goods game that incorporates reciprocity guilt aversion surprise seeking and the attribution of intentions behind these emotions in order to test our predictions we implement the induced beliefs method and a within subjects design using the strategy method we find that all our psychological variables contribute towards the explanation of contributions guilt aversion is pervasive at the individual level and the aggregate level and it is relatively more important than surprise seeking our between subjects analysis confirms the results of the within subjects design

worker turnover at the firm level and crowding out of lower educated workers this paper investigates whether employers exploit cyclical downturns to improve the average skill level of their work force we use a unique dataset that contains information on workers jobs as well as firm characteristics our findings are that at each job level mainly lower educated workers leave during downturns furthermore at each level of job complexity workers with a higher education are not more productive than lower educated workers we find no evidence that higher educated workers crowd out lower educated workers during recessions

costes de contratacion y empresas de trabajo temporal una explicacion de la disparidad regional en espana the temporary work agencies twa industry experienced continuous growth throughout the 90s and now represents around 15 of temporary hiring in spain more interestingly are markable regional disparity in this sector exists across spanish provinces by developing a simple theoretical model and using panel data methodology this article examines the spanish caseand suggests that the costs of recruiting training and screening could explain a large part of the regional disparity this result is supported by the empirical fact that the twa firms have greater success in markets with low unemployment rates where the average duration of unemploymen tis longer and in provinces with higher concentrations of urban population respectively

does atypical work help the jobless evidence from a caeas cps cohort analysis atypical employment such as temporary on call and contract work has been found disproportionately to attract the jobless but there is no consensus in the literature as to the labour market consequences of such job choice by unemployed individuals using data from the current population survey we investigate the implications of the initial job finding strategies pursued by the jobless for their short and medium term employment stability at first sight it appears that taking an offer of regular employment provides the greatest degree of employment continuity for the jobless however closer inspection indicates that the jobless who take up atypical employment are not only more likely to be employed 1 month and 1 year later than those who continue to search but also to enjoy employment continuity that is not less favourable than that offered by regular open ended employment

a sample selection model for prepared food expenditures the factors affecting household expenditures on four types of prepared food products from a sample selection model estimated using a two step method are explored results suggest that several variables affect household expenditures on various prepared food products factors examined are presence of children number of earners region household size seasonality age race education and income

a note on heckman type corrections in models for zero expenditures in heien and wessells 1990 a two step estimation procedure that makes use of heckman type corrections is proposed to estimate consumption on household budget surveys it is shown that this approach which draws from switching regressions models leads to inconsistent estimates

are workers permanently scarred by job displacements this paper investigates whether workers suffer lasting scars following job displacements using david t ellwood s 1982 terminology scars represent persistent effects whereas blemishes are transitory adjustments which dissipate over time more precisely dislocated individuals are defined as scarred if they continue to earn less or to be unemployed more than their nondisplaced counterparts even after the conclusion of a several year adjustment period