a bayesian approach to aggregation in demand systems smoothing with perfect substitution priors demand analysis requires aggregation of commodities some are imposed at the data collection level leaving some for the estimation level when data are collected the implicit assumption underlying the aggregation is perfect substitutability one gallon of gasoline is viewed by consumers as equivalent to another gallon hence the two are added together while such aggregation can be carried out further by the data analyst it is difficult to incorporate perfect substitutability into the estimation of direct demand systems perfect substitution in that context implies discontinuous demand functions which are not nested within standard empirical demand systems perfect substitution is much more easily handled in a system of inverse demands though an empirical method to impose perfect substitutability in an inverse demand system has not previously appeared in the literature in this article we develop such a method which allows perfect substitutability to be imposed as a prior restriction we use leame

trends in unemployment duration data a method of estimating the distribution of uninterrupted unemploymentspells from aggregate unemployment data is outlined the methodology does not i mpose constant individual hazard rates and allows for heterogeneity characteris tics of the distribution of unemployment spells are then considered including ha zard rates measures of inequality such as gini coefficients and the fraction o f total unemployment associated with s weeks of unemploy ment the relationship between these char acteristics and labor demand variables gnp and supply side variables transfer payments unemployment insurance is considered in or der to better understand the relative role of short and long run unemployment copyright 1986 by mit press

will the locals benefit the effect of wind power investments on rural wages abstract an important and poorly understood question when communities consider wind power investments is whether the local population will benefit financially i examine the effect of wind power investment on wages in rural counties in the us i combine quarterly panel data on wages with data on all wind power plant investments larger than 1 megawatt mw using a bayesian multilevel model estimated by mcmc i estimate a significant positive effect with a magnitude consistent with a 2 permanent increase in wages following an investment in a large wind farm of 400 mw however this effect has large geographic and socioeconomic variation counties with low employment tend to see little impact on wages from wind power potentially because slack in the labor market prevents wages from rising from a policy perspective these results are most relevant for local regulators and planners who seek to balance the benefits and costs of wind farms to the community this research indicates that wind farms can provide on average a modest boost to local wages with some areas seeing an out sized effect

unemployment insurance and the rate of re employment of displaced workers the rate of transition from unemployment to re employment for a sample of displaced workers is estimated using a semiparametric specification which allows the effects of unemployment insurance benefits to vary over time three results which would be missed by more restrictive specifications demonstrate the value of this approach 1 the effects of ui benefits decline and eventually disappear as the date of expiration approaches 2 expiration of ui benefits are an inadequate explanation of the spikes commonly observed in nonparametric sample hazard rates for re employment 3 ui benefits do not significantly affect the rate at which a displaced worker becomes re employed in his or her previous industry but reduce the rate for transitions to other industries copyright 1991 by mit press

the behavior of unemployment durations over the cycle this paper examines the relationship between unemployment durations and cyclical movements in unemployment using an employment calendar constructed from recent questions in the panel study of income dynamics we find that unemployment durations increase with the unemployment rate with the strongest effects for individuals with the longest elapsed durations copyright 1990 by mit press

firm level productivity spillovers in china s chemical industry a spatial hausman taylor approach this paper assesses the role of intra sectoral spillovers in total factor productivity across chinese producers in the chemical industry we use a rich panel data set of 12 552 firms observed over the period 2004 2006 and model output by the firm as a function of skilled and unskilled labor capital materials and total factor productivity which is broadly defined the latter is a composite of observable factors such as export market participation foreign as well as public ownership the extent of accumulated intangible assets and unobservable total factor productivity despite the richness of our data set it suffers from the lack of time variation in the number of skilled workers as well as in the variable indicating public ownership we introduce spatial spillovers in total factor productivity through contextual effects of observable variables as well as spatial dependence of the disturbances we extend the hausman and taylor 1981 estimator to account for spatial correlation in the error term this approach permits estimating the effect of time invariant variables which are wiped out by the fixed effects estimator while the original hausman and taylor 1981 estimator assumes homoskedastic error components we provide spatial variants that allow for both homoskedasticity and heteroskedasticity monte carlo results show that our estimation procedure performs well in small samples we find evidence of positive spillovers across chemical manufacturers and a large and significant detrimental effect of public ownership on total factor productivity

wind power implementation the nature of public attitudes equity and fairness instead of backyard motives abstract public attitudes anywhere in europe show moderate to strong support for the implementation of renewable energy nevertheless planning wind power developments appears to be a complicated matter in most countries the problems that have to be dealt with during decision making processes on the siting of wind turbines are usually referred to as mere communication problems however public attitudes towards wind power are fundamentally different from attitudes towards wind farms this gap causes misunderstandings about the nature of public support for renewables in particular where planners easily assume support for renewables can be generated by information campaigns emphasising the environmental benefits whereas opposition to renewable energy schemes can be explained by a selfish not in my backyard attitude both explanations used by planners authorities and unfortunately by many scholars are falsified furthermore policies that still take this common knowledge for granted can have negative consequences for the implementation rates of renewables visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on landscape values is by far the dominant factor in explaining why some are opposed to wind power and others are supporting it moreover feelings about equity and fairness appear the determinants of backyard motives instead of selfishness

unemployment duration unemployment benefits and labor market programs in sweden abstract standard search theory as well as some empirical evidence suggest that an unemployed individual s probability of entering employment increases as he approaches the time when unemployment benefits are due to expire this pattern may not carry over to a country like sweden where labor market programs are targeted at the long term unemployed at risk of benefit exhaustion the paper examines transitions out of unemployment using data on unemployed individuals in sweden a semi parametric competing risks model for transitions to employment labor market programs and non participation is estimated there is some evidence that the exit rate from unemployment to employment increases as benefit exhaustion is approached

how income transfer programs affect work savings and the income distribution a critical review for helpful comments on earlier drafts we thank without implicating moses abramovitz yves balcer john bishop alan blinder richard burkhauser michael darby irwin garfinkel alan gustman daniel hamermesh martin holmer george jakubson robert lampman paul menchik robert moffitt michael murray joseph quinn timothy smeeding eugene smolensky barbara wolfe and two anonymous referees

does unemployment compensation affect unemployment duration abstract we use a flexible hazard rate model with unrestricted spell duration and calendar timeeffects to analyse a dataset including all norwegian unemployment spells during the1990 s the dataset provides a unique access to conditionally independent variation inunemployment compensation we find that a marginal increase in compensation re duces the escape rate from unemployment significantly irrespective of business cycleconditions and spell duration the escape rate rises sharply in the months just prior tobenefit exhaustion while men are more responsive than women with respect to mar ginal changes in compensation women are most responsive with respect to benefitexhaustion keywords unemployment spells business cycles unemployment compensation non parametric duration analysis jel classification c41 j64 the ragnar frisch centre for economic research oslo we wish to thank the re search council of norway for financial support and christian brinck harald goldstein costas meghir espen moen steinar strom rolf aaberge and three anonomyous referees for helpful comments cor respondence to knut roed the ragnar frisch centre for economic research gaustadalleen 21 0349oslo norway e mail knut roed frisch uio no

estimating the effect of counseling and monitoring the unemployed using a job search model this paper examines the impact of the counseling and monitoring program for the unemployed with particular reference to their job finding rate application intensity and matching probability the effectiveness of counseling and monitoring is measured by using a job search model in which the job finding rate is equal to the product of the application intensity and the matching probability counseling and monitoring is an intensive job search assistance program designed to help unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits to find a job as quickly as possible the empirical analysis is based on data from a social experiment a sample of the inflow into unemployment was randomly assigned to a treatment and a control group the empirical results based on formal reduced form models show that counseling and monitoring does reduce the time taken to find a job because people participating in the program make more applications than those who are not participating although no differences are found in matching probabilities

ex post analysis of economic impacts from wind power development in u s counties wind power development has surged in recent years in the united states policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project level case studies or modeled input output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power often focusing on potential local state wide or national employment or earnings impacts building on this literature we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large wind rich region in the country taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location we find an aggregate increase in county level personal income and employment of approximately 11 000 and 0 5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008 these estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input output results and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0 2 and 0 4 for counties with installed wind power over the same period

how does the benefit effect vary as unemployment spells lengthen summary this paper investigates how the effect of income while unemployed on the probability of an individual leaving unemployment varies with the length of time that the individual has been unemployed we examine this question in the context of a variety of alternative econometric models we extend the proportional hazards model with unrestricted baseline hazard to one in which there are unrestricted effects of a subset of the explanatory variables and also consider models that can be estimated as series of binary response models the proportional hazard restrictions are rejected for the sample of british unemployed men analysed and in the binary sequence framework logit and probit models based on symmetric distributions dominate in likelihood terms the extreme value form model implied by extension of the proportional hazards formulation logit models with a flexible form for the duration dependence which also incorporate unobserved heterogeneity in a flexible way are estimated the results for all formulations indicate a rapidly declining effect of unemployment income as a spell lengthens with no significant effect for the long term unemployed the preferred specifications which allow for omitted heterogeneity indicate no significant effect after about 5 months and this result is robust to the inclusion or exclusion of previous labour market experience variables and to the choice of mixing distribution

imposing smoothness priors in applied welfare economics an application of the information contract curve to environmental regulatory analysis economic effects of public policy alternatives often are analyzed with simulation models the value of simulation is enhanced when model parameters can credibly be estimated econometrically but unrestricted estimation can be expected to result in problematic estimates for example estimated parameters contrary in sign to what economic theory dictates the information contract curve icc developed by leamer provides a flexible means to impose regularity on estimated parameters at minimum likelihood cost we extend the icc methodology using conically uniform priors and apply it to measuring the welfare costs of environmental regulations in the u s pulp paper and paperboard industry

search benefits and entitlement in a simultaneous analysis of unemployment duration and search intensity we estimate a non structural search model accounting explicitly for two features of the benefit system benefit level and time remaining until exhaustion of the entitlement period residual entitlement special attention is paid to the number of search contacts as an indicator for search intensity to assess the effect of the benefit level and residual entitlement on the number of search contacts we estimate a poisson model our results suggest that benefits work through a reduction of search efforts whereas residual entitlement is effective mainly through the reservation wage

employment trends in the u s electricity sector 2008 2012 abstract between 2008 2012 electricity generated gwh from coal the longtime dominant fuel for electric power in the us declined 24 while electricity generated from natural gas wind and solar grew by 39 154 and 400 respectively these shifts had major effects on domestic employment in those sectors of the coal natural gas wind and solar industries involved in operations and maintenance o m activities for electricity generation using an economic input output model we estimate that the coal industry lost more than 49 000 jobs 12 nationally over the five year period while in the natural gas solar and wind industries employment increased by nearly 175 000 jobs 21 we also combine published ratios for jobs per unit of fuel production and per megawatt of power plant capacity with site specific data on fuel production and power plant retirements additions and capacity changes to estimate and map direct job changes at the county level the maps show that job increases in the natural gas solar and wind industries generally did not occur where there were significant job losses in the coal industry particularly in west virginia and kentucky

capitalism socialism and productivity an econometric analysis of ces and translog functions abstract the authors inquire whether there is a difference in productivity between capitalist and socialist economies perhaps varying with the level of development data on 65 countries in 1975 provide a basis for estimating ces and translog functions relating national income to nine resource variables and two variables influencing productivity prior information on marginal products is used in deriving bayesian estimates the estimates indicate that although the relative productivity of socialist economies may decline with development the differences in productivity are insignificant at all observed levels of development

green jobs economic impacts of renewable energy in germany abstract the labor market implications of large investment into renewable energy re are analyzed in this text although a growing re industry can be observed in germany the overall effect of large increases of re based electricity and heat generating technologies on the german economy require a careful model based analysis the applied model panta rhei has been used among others to evaluate the german energy concept in 2010 it takes positive and negative impacts of re into account the paper shows the overall effects under different assumptions for fossil fuel prices domestic installations and international trade the results are sensitive to assumptions on the development of re world markets and german exports to these markets almost all of these scenarios exhibit positive net employment effects under medium assumptions net employment of re expansion will reach around 150 thousand in 2030 only with assumptions for german re exports below today s level net impacts are slightly negative gross employment will increase from 340 thousand in 2009 to between 500 and 600 thousand in 2030

the effects of a natural gas boom on employment and income in colorado texas and wyoming improvements in technology have made it profitable to tap unconventional gas reservoirs in relatively impermeable shale and sandstone deposits which are spread throughout the u s mostly in rural areas proponents of gas drilling point to the activity s local economic benefits yet no empirical studies have systematically documented the magnitude or distribution of economic gains i estimate these gains for counties in colorado texas and wyoming three states where natural gas production expanded substantially since the late 1990s i find that a large increase in the value of gas production caused modest increases in employment wage and salary income and median household income the results suggest that each million dollars in gas production created 2 35 jobs in the county of production which led to an annualized increase in employment that was 1 5 of the pre boom level for the average gas boom county comparisons show that ex ante estimates of the number of jobs created by developing the fayetteville and marcellus shale gas formations may have been too large

unemployment insurance in theory and practice a hallmark of modern labor economics is the close interplay between the development of theory data sources and econometric testing the evolution of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance provides a good illustration new theoretical approaches in particular job search theory have inspired a large amount of empirical research some of it methodologically innovative and most of it highly relevant for economic policy the paper presents a broad survey and an assessment of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance as it has evolved since the 1970s

unemployment duration and the restart effect some experimental evidence in this paper we analyse the effect of ihe restart programme in the united kingdom this programme consisis of an interview of tbe long term unemployed to counsel them on effective job search failure to attend the interview carries the threat of the cessation of unemployment benefits the results using experimental data indicate that the programme has a significant effect of reducing unemployment duration estimation of an independent competing risks model distinguishing between exits from unemployment to a job a training placement or to signing off unemployment benefit shows that the channels through which restart works differs according to exit type

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

the determinants of individual unemployment durations in an era of high unemployment this paper presents the results of an econometric analysis of the conditional probability of leaving unemployment for two male inflow cohorts entering unemployment at very different points in time 1978 and 1987 the effect of income while unemployed is found to be much weaker for the i987 cohort an elasticity of o i compared with 0 4 and is only found to be significant for teenagers and in the first three months of a spell demand constraints measured by the local unemployment rate are found to have a stronger negative effect on the exit probability for the i987 cohort than in 1978 the i 980s witnessed continual high levels of unemployment in britain and the movement of unemployment up the economic and political agenda unemployment results in major output and income losses and is the cause of much misery to those involved the nation is poorer because of it for both reasons it is therefore important to understand the process that generates a given level of unemployment this process can be considered in terms of two key probabilities the probability of an individual entering unemployment and the probability of an unemployed individual leaving unemployment to take up a job or for other reasons these probabilities will vary with the characteristics of the individual concerned and over time changes in the aggregate unemployment rate can under certain assumptions be decomposed into changes in the inflow rate into unemployment and changes in the steady

further evidence on the job search theory abstract the prediction of the job search theory that there is a negative correlation between reservation wage and the re employment probability is tested it is found that the unemployed who find a job are a self selecting group of individuals with a relatively low reservation wage

unemployment dynamics and duration dependence a major issue in the analysis of unemployment durations concerns distinguishing genuine duration dependence of the exit rate out of unemployment from unobserved heterogeneity we present a method for the nonparametric estimation of both phenomena designed to be applicable to time series data on aggregate outflows from different duration classes the model explicitly takes into account that individual exit rates are affected by the business cycle and by seasonal effects the method is applied to u s data we find diverging duration effects among black and white individuals however except for white males duration dependence is dominated by unobserved heterogeneity

the effects of benefits and duration dependence on re employment probabilities abstract forgone earnings have a greater effect on re employment probabilities than unemployment and other benefits education and age are important determinants of unemployment duration a negative duration dependence effect is found correcting for unmeasured heterogeneity does not improve the model

world product and income international comparisons of real gross product the volume reports on the third phase of the united nations international comparison project icp the main results provide comparisons of real gross domestic product gdp per capita for thirty four countries in 1975 quantity and price comparisons are given also for personal consumption capital formation and public consumption and further subdivisions of final expenditures on gdp are estimated