factor use and productivity change in the alcoholic beverage industries 1 introductiondemands for wine beer and spirits are in view of their substitutable nature often studied in conjunction with one another heien and pompelli 1989 nelson 1999 yet the alcoholic beverage industries are connected by similarities in their production processes and inputs as well as by the demand substitutability of their products lea and piggott 1995 these industries are therefore usefully examined together when questions about technical change and productivity growth arise little recent attention has been given to the nature of technical adjustments in the beer sector and no such work seems ever to have been published on wine and spirits 1brewing and distilling and to a smaller extent winemaking have become increasingly mechanized during the past half century as they have in most other manufacturing sectors packaging rates are higher shelf lives longer and storage and transportation technology improved tremblay 1987 elzinga 1990 pp 216 219 iserentant 1995 piggott and conner 1995 gisser 1999 the fixed costs associated with these innovations have broadly speaking served as an incentive to build fewer and larger plants industry concentration in the beer sector rose dramatically from the mid 1930s through the mid 1980s plant numbers then expanded as microbreweries catered to the new demand for product variety and idiosyncrasy although four firm concentration continued to rise through the mid 1990s in the spirits sector domiciled largely in the south distillery numbers continue to decline spurred by declining aggregate demand as well as scale economies no such broad consolidation is taking place in the wine industry where several california and new york firms long have occupied a substantial market share instead wineries numbers have grown rapidly and uninterruptedly since 1970 proliferating in regions long thought inhospitable to wine grape production growing consumer interest in wine variety and microclimates a trend similar to that for microbrews has abetted this diversification goodhue et al 2000 prices in the alcoholic beverage industries have in real terms fallen substantially in the past 40 years net prices to brewers have dropped 37 to wineries 16 and to distillers 31 at the same time real wage rates generally have risen and except for brief instability during the 1970s so have capital rental prices real material prices in all three sectors rose from the 1950s through the 1960s fell through the 1970s then recovered by the mid 1990s to their early 1970s levels relative factor prices in the beer industry broadly representative of those in the other two sectors are shown in figure 1 wage rates rose relative to both capital and material prices until 1980 thereafter wages fell relative to capital but continued to rise relative to material prices u s bureau of the census various years expenditure shares illustrated in figure 2 suggest that the beer industry is the most capital intensive of the three sectors by the mid 1990s capital expenditures represented one third of beer production costs compared to only one fifth of wine and distilling costs on the other hand raw materials constituted little more than half of beer expenses but nearly 70 of wine and distilling costs labor accounted for only 10 12 of expenditures in any of these industries figure 2 seems to suggest that at least since the mid 1970s or early 1980s capital has substituted for labor and materials in all three sectors yet as figure 1 reveals much of these share changes are accounted for by the rising relative price of capital the substantial narrowing of output input price margins in the alcoholic beverage sector suggests that the sector has become more cost efficient through either technical change scale economies improved utilization rates or other means technical changes themselves can alter potential scale economies and productive capacities and hence prospects for future variations in industry structure

advertising effects in complete demand systems a rationale for including advertising in complete demand systems is presented an advertising analogue of the slutsky equation is derived and properties of the expenditure and indirect utility functions characterized empirical estimates of a complete demand system incorporating dynamic advertising effects support neoclassical restrictions we do not reject homogeneity or symmetry at the 1 level this represents surprisingly strong support for neoclassical theory relative to prior parametric studies

the demand for beer wine and spirits a survey of the literature the demand for alcohol literature is vast and much conflicting information about the nature of the demand for alcoholic beverages has been published this paper presents a survey of the literature and then uses the technique of meta regression analysis to establish insights into the nature of the demand for beer wine and spirits unlike previous meta studies of the demand for alcoholic beverages this study adjusts for the precision of each elasticity estimate the analysis presented suggests reported elasticity estimates will be influenced by such factors as estimation technique data frequency and time period under consideration with respect to time the findings suggest that the demand for alcoholic beverages has become less inelastic since the mid 1950s and that the income elasticity has been falling since the mid 1960s the analysis also found support for the idea that alcohol as a commodity group is a necessity and that consumers respond to price discounting with inventory behaviour rather than true substitution behaviour little support is found for the idea that the demand for alcoholic beverages varies fundamentally across most countries although wine may be an exception language en

broadcast advertising and u s demand for alcoholic beverages quarterly data for 1977 1994 on alcohol consumption and advertising are used to estimate a differential demand system including explanatory variables for broadcast advertising and print advertising the model explains the growth rate of per capita consumption dependent on explanatory variables for prices real income demographic changes and real advertising by media and beverage empirical results also are reported for total consumption of pure alcohol the results for the three beverages and total alcohol indicate that advertising has little or no effect on demand the empirical evidence thus supports the notion that regardless of media advertising affects mainly brand shares

understanding alcohol consumption across countries with unpublished data from the international comparison program that cover the consumption of three alcoholic beverages in over 150 countries we analyse drinking patterns around the world with an

on welfare frameworks and catastrophic climate risks recent theoretical work in the economics of climate change has suggested that climate policy is highly sensitive to fat tailed risks of catastrophic outcomes weitzman 2009 68 such risks are suggested to be an inevitable consequence of scientific uncertainty about the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations on climate criticisms of this controversial result fall into three categories the first suggests that it may be irrelevant to cost benefit analysis of climate policy the second challenges the fat tails assumption and the third questions the behavior of the utility function assumed in the result this paper analyses these critiques and suggests that those in the first two categories have formal validity but that they apply only to the restricted setup of the original result which may be extended to address their concerns they are thus ultimately unconvincing critiques in the third category are shown to be robust however they open up new ethical and empirical challenges for climate economics that have thus far been neglected how should we value catastrophes as a society i demonstrate that applying results from social choice to this problem can lead to counterintuitive results in which society values catastrophes as infinitely bad even though each individual s utility function is bounded finally i suggest that the welfare functions traditionally used in climate economics are ill equipped to deal with climate catastrophes in which population size changes drawing on recent work in population ethics i propose an alternative welfare framework with normatively desirable properties which has the effect of dampening the contribution of catastrophes to welfare

advertising and the us market demand for beer the us per capita market demand for beer is empirically estimated to determine the effect of advertising on the demand for beer the empirical results indicate that the most important determinants of demand are the price of beer the price of substitutes demographic factors and a light beer dummy variable the positive effects of income and lagged consumption appear to be small although many have argued that advertising promotes beer consumption the empirical results of this study do not support this hypothesis

alcohol control laws and the consumption of distilled spirits and beer this article tests the social marketing effectiveness of alcohol control laws designed to reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages the study uses state level historical data to estimate the demand for distilled spirits and beer using economic sociodemographic and control law explanatory variables spirits and beer consumption are found to react differently to changes in economic sociodemographic and regulatory variables these differences suggest a consumer and product segment based approach to alcohol control laws or social marketing that emphasizes measures directed at youths for beer and at price for spirits

climate change policy what do the models tell us very little a plethora of integrated assessment models iams have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon scc and evaluate alternative abatement policies these models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis certain inputs e g the discount rate are arbitrary but have huge effects on the scc estimates the models produce the models descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc with no theoretical or empirical foundation and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the scc the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome iam based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision but that perception is illusory and misleading jel c51 q54 q58

a class of differential demand systems abstract the rotterdam almost ideal demand system cbs and nbr models constitute a class of differential demand systems they correspond to alternative assumptions made concerning the constancy of certain parameters this paper discusses the restrictions that they impose on the evolution of demand elasticities over time

the impact of the 1962 repatriates from algeria on the french labor market this paper uses census data to examine the impact on the french labor market of the 900 000 people repatriated from algeria in 1962 repatriates settled in regions culturally and climatically simil

differential consumer demand systems it is shown in this paper that several well known systems like the rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system can be seen as different parametrizations of the budget share differential equation using a third parametrization a new system called the cbs system is developed and discussed special attention is given to the relative price version of the system and in particular to the special case of preference independence some estimates for the netherlands based on time series for 1953 1981 using various approaches are presented

economic conditions and alcohol problems this study investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and two alcohol related outcomes liquor consumption and highway vehicle fatalities fixed effect models are estimated for the 48 contiguous states over the 1975 1988 time period alcohol consumption and traffic deaths vary procyclically with a major portion of the effect of economic downturns attributed to reductions in incomes rather than employment the intake of hard liquor is the most sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy there is no evidence however that fluctuations in economic conditions have a disproportionate impact on the drunk driving of young adults

consumption patterns of food tobacco and beverages a cross country analysis this study considers the consumption patterns of food tobacco soft drinks and alcohol in 43 developed and developing countries such an analysis is important for policy issues associated with tobacco alcohol and soft drinks the results show that consumers in the developing countries spend a much higher proportion of their income on food than consumers in developed countries the proportion of expenditure allocated to the other three commodities tobacco alcohol and soft drinks are similar in the two groups of countries on average people around the world allocate about one quarter of their income on food 2 6 on tobacco 3 2 on alcohol and 1 2 on soft drinks the income elasticity estimates reveal that food is a necessity in most countries while tobacco and alcohol are necessities in most of the developed countries and luxuries in a majority of developing countries soft drinks are a luxury in a majority of the developing as well as the developed countries the own price elasticities show th

economic and demographic factors in australian alcohol demand in the last two decades total pure alcohol consumption in australia has declined by about 31 and currently it is at the same level as it was in the 1950s australians consumed about 10 litres of pure alcohol per person in 1982 and now the level has declined to about 7 litres of pure alcohol per person during the last four decades per capita beer consumption has reached a peak of 140 litres in 1975 and has fallen to a low 93 litres in 1999 wine consumption has increased four fold while spirits consumption has stayed around the same level this paper using the australian consumption data for beer wine and spirits for the period 1956 1999 aims to explain the change in consumption patterns of beer wine and spirits by considering the effects due to changes in economic and demographic factors the results show that while income and prices significantly influence the consumption patterns of alcohol the increasing australian elderly population also plays an important role

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

a note on economic conditions and alcohol problems this paper reexamines the effect of the business cycle on alcohol consumption using u s state level analysis introduced by rhum ruhm c j 1995 economic conditions and alcohol problems journal of health economics 14 583 603 using an extended panel this analysis finds that ruhm s estimates are biased and inconsistent due to the problem of non stationarity in alcohol consumption and state economic condition time series corrected estimation using logarithmic first differences confirms ruhm s original finding of pro cyclical alcohol consumption but these results unlike ruhm s are robust to sample period

fat tails and the social cost of carbon at high enough greenhouse gas ghg concentrations climate change might conceivably cause catastrophic damages with small but nonnegligible probabilities other things being equal this should lower the discount rate used to evaluate mitigation investment decisions and raise the social cost of carbon scc if the bad tail of climate damages is sufficiently fat with probability and if the utility function has relative risk aversion greater than one then at least in theory for at least some formulations this insurance like catastrophe reducing aspect of mitigation investments can be very powerful in the most extreme limit this tail hedge insurance effect can be infinitely strong and can dominate the economic analysis by making the scc infinite this kind of extreme and empirically unbelievable limiting result is a version of what i have previously labeled the dismal theorem 1 in this paper i use the simplest possible model to lay bare the basic structure of the argument i then attempt to place the underlying issues in a balanced perspective the dismal theorem of an infinite scc is a theoretical limiting result which relies on particular assumptions that may or may not have actual relevance for climatechange policy depending upon the interaction of a variety of empirical factors functional forms and parameter values i argue that the main value of the dismal theorem is to serve as a warning flag that a credible economic analysis of climate change should seriously consider extreme tail values of damages and their associated probabilities because they may have the potential to increase the scc significantly

the demand for alcohol in the united kingdom using the aids model we show that there exists for the uk a stable long run relationship between expenditure shares on beer cider spirits and wine alcohol prices total alcohol expenditure and a range of non economic variables relating to advertising licensing the employment social class and demographic characteristics of consumers and climate our estimates of key price and income elasticities generally lie between those found from other time series studies which exclude most of these non economic variables and those found from cross section studies which generally include them however the restrictions required for separability homegeneity and symmetry although not those for perfect price aggregation are decisively rejected

the demand for beer wine and spirits a systemwide analysis the systemwide approach to the analysis of consumer demand considers the multivariate structure of the problem in which the consumer allocates his income to all goods simultaneously this approach combines the theory of the consumer with empirical analysis and has enjoyed much popularity over the past decade for surveys of these developments see brown and deaton 1972 phlips 1974 powell 1974 theil 1975 76 1980 barten 1977 and theil and clements 1980 most previous applications of the systemwide approach have used national accounts commodity groups food clothing housing and so on for many business and government policy purposes however these groups are much too broad for example to analyze the effects on consumption of all but the simplest changes in indirect taxes we would need considerably more disaggregation similarly market researchers need to analyze demand at the individual product level for purposes of forecasting and formulating pricing and other policies the objective of this paper is to use the consumption of beer wine and spirits to illustrate how the approach can be apthis paper illustrates how the systemwide approach to consumer demand can be extended so that it can be applied to narrowly defined commodity groups we use the consumption of beer wine and spirits to show how the approach can be applied to estimate income and price elasticities of demand when the consumer s utility function is appropriately separable in alcoholic beverages and all other goods it is possible to confine our attention to the three beverages and ignore all other goods we use the demand model for a number of simulations designed to analyze the rapid growth of wine consumption we are indebted to john davis peter goldschmidt and kal stening for excellent research assistance to michael wohlgenant and henri theil for helpful comments and discussion and to the new south wales drug and alcohol authority for their partial financial support of this research

alcohol marketing adolescent drinking and publication bias in longitudinal studies a critical survey using meta analysis this paper presents a meta analysis of prospective cohort longitudinal studies of alcohol marketing and adolescent drinking which accounts for publication bias the paper provides a summary of 12 primary studies of the marketing drinking relationship each primary study surveyed a sample of youth to determine baseline drinking status and marketing exposure and re surveyed the youth to determine subsequent drinking outcomes logistic analyses provide estimates of the odds ratio for effects of baseline marketing variables on adolescent drinking at follow up using meta regression analysis two samples are examined in this paper 23 effect size estimates for drinking onset initiation and 40 estimates for other drinking behaviours frequency amount bingeing marketing variables include ads in mass media promotion portrayals brand recognition and subjective evaluations by survey respondents publication bias is assessed using funnel plots that account for missing studies bivariate regressions and multivariate meta regressions that account for primary study heterogeneity heteroskedasticity data dependencies publication bias and truncated samples the empirical results are consistent with publication bias omitted variable bias in some studies and lack of a genuine effect especially for mass media the paper also discusses dissemination bias in the use of research results by primary investigators and health policy interest groups

advertising and us alcoholic beverage demand system wide estimates the effects of advertising on consumption of alcoholic beverages in the us are analysed the goal is to obtain evidence on the importance of advertising at the level of beverage demand beer wine spirits and for total consumption of alcohol per capita gallons of ethanol a three equation conditional demand system is estimated that includes own and cros beverage advertising as explanatory variables four models of the differential demand system are estimated including the rotterdam aid cbs and nbr models using annual us data for the period 1964 90 on beverage consumption prices expednitures and real advertising estimates are obtained of the complete matrix of own and cross elascities for each beverage price and advertising at the beverage level the results indicate a positive butr very small effect of advertising on beverage consumption with most of the impact due to wine advertising and non due to beer advertising there is no efect of advertising in the composite demand function for al

demand for differentiated products price and advertising evidence from the u s beer market abstract this paper employs a nation wide sample of supermarket scanner data to estimate a large brand level demand system for beer in the u s using the distance metric method of pinkse slade and brett pinkse j slade m brett c 2002 spatial price competition a semiparametric approach econometrica 70 1111 1155 unlike previous studies this work estimates the own and cross advertising elasticities in addition to price elasticities positive and negative cross advertising elasticities imply the presence of both cooperative and predatory effects of advertising expenditures across brands however the former effect appears to dominate suggesting that advertising increases the overall demand for beer we discuss the implications of these results in this industry

informative advertising in differentiated oligopoly markets abstract this paper examines the welfare implications of informative advertising in differentiated product oligopoly markets the analysis reconciles the conflicting results in previous studies that find advertising to be undersupplied in homogeneous product markets but oversupplied in differentiated product markets when the degree of differentiation is small in equilibrium purely informative advertising is undersupplied when brands are sufficiently close substitutes and oversupplied when brands are more differentiated product differentiation also has welfare implications for the effect of technological change in the advertising sector in response to an advertising cost innovation equilibrium prices fall and the market converges to the socially optimal resource allocation for brands that are sufficiently close substitutes whereas equilibrium prices rise and divergence occurs when brands are more differentiated

alcohol advertising bans consumption and control policies in seventeen oecd countries 1975 2000 this article uses cross country panel data to study the effects of advertising bans and other control policies on alcohol demand the null hypothesis is that advertising bans do not decrease alcohol consumption the study addresses several shortcomings in four previous cross country studies first an explanatory variable is included for other alcohol control policies second the study examines the history of advertising bans in oecd countries third the study also examines differences in cross country trends that characterize developed countries including aging of the population increased tourism higher unemployment rates and increased consumption of wine the mediterranean wine drinking countries are shown to be categorically distinct from the beer drinking countries and nordic spirits drinking countries fourth the study examines the panel data for unit roots and employs model specifications that correct for nonstationary data the empirical results indicate a significantly negative effect for th

the impact of mass migration on the israeli labor market mass migration from the former soviet union increased the israeli population by 12 in the first half of the 1990s this exodus was precipitated by the lifting of emigration restrictions in an unstable ussr and by the open immigration policy of israel toward soviet jews who faced more restrictive entry policies elsewhere i use this natural experiment to study the impact of immigration on the labor market outcomes of native israelis ols yields significant reductions in wages and small reductions in employment however ols is biased if the distribution of immigrants across occupations in israel was not exogenous to relative wage and employment conditions i instrument for the entry of russians into an occupation in israel using information on their former occupations in the ussr there is a significant positive correlation between the former presence of the immigrants in an occupation in the ussr and their presence in that occupation in israel but the previous occupational choices of russians abroad were independent of israeli wage and employment growth subsequent to their migration iv estimates indicate that immigration did not have an adverse impact on native israeli labor market outcomes

cross country alcohol consumption comparison an application of the rotterdam demand system this paper analyses the consumption patterns of the three beverages beer wine and spirits in nine countries australia canada finland japan new zealand norway sweden the uk and the us using the rotterdam demand system a cross country comparison of the results shows that in most countries i wine consumption has grown at a fasteer rate than beer and spirits ii the proportion of consumers expenditure on alcohol is declining iii beer is a necessity and spirits is a luxury iv the demand for the three beverages is price inelastic and iv all three beverages are pair wise substitutes we also investigated the hypothesis of identical parameters for all countries by pooling the data across countries and found that the data do not support the hypothesis

modeling the demand for alcoholic beverages and advertising specifications in this paper the demand for beer wine spirits and soft drinks in ontario is modeled in two parts an equation is specified to endogenize group expenditures and a demand system is set up to allocate budgeted group expenditures across types of beverages advertising is allowed to influence both the level of group expenditures and its allocation three popular advertising specifications are compared using the j test and the likelihood dominance criterion even though all three specifications fitted well according to standard criteria the calculated expenditure price and advertising elasticities were sensitive to the manner with which advertising is specified this clearly highlights the need to rely on a sound criterion to identify a dominant specification from the identified dominant specification we found that advertising has very subtle effects on expenditures on alcoholic beverages group and individual beverages thus advertising is not effective in enlarging markets and this suggests that firms especially breweries use advertising to compete in zero sum market share games from a public policy perspective our results are comforting but future research should investigate whether the neutral effect of advertising on aggregated expenditures hide substantial offsetting changes in the drinking habits of individuals 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

advertising in demand systems testing a galbraithian hypothesis in this paper we argue that the influence of advertising upon the inter product distribution of demand is a system wide phenomenon which is investigated better through a demand equation system rather than through single equation methods attention is focused upon a dynamic version of deaton muellbauer s aids model modified to include advertising terms within this framework using data on consumer s non durable expenditure in the uk we carry out a preliminary test of galbraith hypothesis that advertising may affect the composition of aggregate consumer demand

further results on aggregation of differential demand equations barnett 1979a 1981 theil s extending 1971 work aggregates differential demand equations in absolute undeflated prices this paper extends further these results by deriving aggregate macro demand equations in relative prices under stated assumptions these equations are analogous to the individual consumer s micro demand equations and the properties of the microcoefricients carry over

labor market consequences of internal migration in turkey abstractduring the past 30 years turkey has undergone profound economic and social transformations including fundamental shifts from a state oriented economy to a market oriented economy large scale modernization investments in telecommunication and transportation services and low intensity ongoing armed conflict concentrated in the country s southeastern region for such a period using the 1990 and 2000 turkish censuses i evaluated the labor market consequences of internal migration that might have been sparked by such significant economic and social changes overall the results suggest that provinces with a higher share of recent migrants may observe decreases in their native population s labor market opportunities while this adverse impact of the recent migrant inflows remains robust it exhibits heterogeneity with respect to the skill level of natives as well as for the labor market outcomes of different native and migrant groups

alcohol consumption and alcohol advertising bans the purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between alcohol advertising bans and alcohol consumption most prior studies have found no effect of advertising on total alcohol consumption a simple economic model is provided which explains these prior results the data set used in this study is a pooled time series of data from 20 countries over 26 years the empirical model is a simultaneous equations system which treats both alcohol consumption and alcohol advertising bans as endogenous the primary conclusions of this study are that alcohol advertising bans decrease alcohol consumption and that alcohol consumption has a positive effect on the legislation of advertising bans the results indicate that an increase of one ban could reduce alcohol consumption by 5 to 8 the alcohol price elasticity is estimated at about 0 2 the results suggest that recent exogenous decreases in alcohol consumption will decrease the probability of enactment of new bans and undermine the continuance

how similar are alcohol drinkers international evidence stigler and becker 1977 argue that tastes neither change capriciously nor differ importantly between people it is differences in prices and incomes that determine differences in behaviour in this paper we analyse the alcohol consumption patterns of drinkers from 8 industrialized countries we identify a number of empirical regularities and verify stigler and becker s hypothesis that income and price elasticities of demand are international constants by showing that alcohol consumption patterns in the eight countries exhibit intriguing similarities the income and price elasticities of alcohol are found to be about 0 8 and 0 6 respectively in all eight countries

temporal aggregation the data interval bias and empirical estimation of bimonthly relations from annual data in an important study reviewing the literature on econometric studies of the relationship between advertising and sales clarke clarke darral g 1976 econometric measurement of the duration of advertising effects on sales j marketing res 13 november 345 357 concluded that the implied duration interval of the effects of advertising on sales were too long when the studies used annual data a theoretical explanation is provided here for the observation of parameter estimates which vary with the data interval employed in the analysis parameter estimates are developed on the basis of data aggregated at various levels of temporal aggregation and compared with theoretical values it is demonstrated that it is possible to recover bimonthly parameters when only annual data are available

promotion and fast food demand many believe that fast food promotion is a significant cause of the obesity epidemic in north america industry members argue that promotion only reallocates brand shares and does not increase overall demand we study the effect of fast food promotion on market share and total demand by estimating a discrete continuous model of fast food restaurant choice and food expenditure that explicitly accounts for both spatial and temporal determinants of demand estimates are obtained using a unique panel of canadian fast food consumers the results show that promotion primarily increases demand and has a smaller effect on restaurant market shares

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

poverty in america trends and explanations despite robust growth in real gdp per capita in the last three decades u s poverty rates have changed very little we summarize some basic facts about poverty in the united states relying on a combination of previously published data from the census bureau and our own tabulations based on current population survey data we then discuss and evaluate four determinants of changes in the poverty rate that have been advanced in the literature the impact of labor market opportunities the role of changes in family structure the role played by government antipoverty programs and the role of immigration

the effect of weather induced internal migration on local labor markets evidence from uganda relying on census data collected in 2002 and historical weather data for uganda this paper estimates the impact of weather induced internal migration on the probability for non migrants living in the destination regions to be employed consistent with the prediction of a simple theoretical model the results reveal a larger negative impact than the one documented for developed countries they further show that this negative impact is significantly stronger in ugandan regions with lower road density and therefore less conducive to capital mobility a 10 percentage points increase in the net in migration rate in these areas decreases the probability of being employed of non migrants by more than 10 percentage points

alternative panel estimates of alcohol demand taxation and the business cycle this paper uses a new technique of estimating dynamic heterogeneous panels developed by pesaran shin and smith 1999 on state level alcohol consumption as a function of income taxes and cyclical variables pooled mean group pmg estimators provide an alternative to extremes of pooling the data assuming slope homogeneity and estimating individual states assuming complete heterogeneity postsample tests indicate that a conventional fixed effects model outperforms both the pmg estimator and individual state estimators despite the heterogeneity of the sample current levels of taxation appear to have little effect on alcohol consumption and alcohol is found to be a procyclical good

taxing to control social costs the case of alcohol whether taxation of alcoholic beverages is an appropriate means of reducing social costs of alcohol consumption is a continuing public policy issue some argue that the public health costs and other external costs associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages are so significant as to justify substantial excise taxes on those beverages others counter that a tax on alcohol would reduce consumption indiscriminately and therefore reduce the satisfaction experienced by millions of sensible drinkers without necessarily reducing the harm caused by a few excessive drinkers 2 this paper presents and applies a framework for evaluating these two views of the efficiency welfare effects of alcohol taxes determining the efficiency implications of alcohol taxes is complicated by the question of whether and how much abusers especially alcoholics benefit from alcohol consumption standard welfare theory assumes that all consumers of alcohol enjoy positive net benefits consumer surplus however it is possible that alcoholics over consume in the sense that consumer surplus from their

advertising and consumer demand a differential approach abstract this paper uses a differential approach to derive demand equations to deal with advertising and show that the demand equations are natural extensions of the usual differential demand equations

is the new immigration really so bad this article reviews the recent evidence on us immigration focusing on two key questions 1 does immigration reduce the labour market opportunities of less skilled natives 2 have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 immigration reform act been successfully assimilated overall evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant on the question of assimilation the success of the us born children of immigrants is a key yardstick by this metric post 1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives

inter provincial migration and inequality during vietnam s transition abstract vietnam s economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces yet poverty has diminished across the entire country with capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth conversely rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration we first use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants we then examine the role of migration as an influence on income ratios between pairs of provinces the former analysis robustly confirms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty related labor immobility at the provincial level examination of income ratios between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive a robust inequality reducing impact of migration is found for migration flows into provinces where most of vietnam s trade oriented industrial investments are located

ecological sufficiency individual liberties and distributive justice implications for policy making we investigate the prospects of voluntary ecological sufficiency for environmental and climate policy under the constraints implied by political liberalism we find that freedom of choice restricts sufficiency to rather wealthy societies and that a sufficiency threshold cannot be derived by referring to the poor sufficiency can be in conflict with the demands of social justice i e if the sufficiency threshold is below the social minimum implied by social justice benefits from sufficiency are highly related to individual perceptions such benefits cannot be expressed in a standard preference framework consequently alternative measures of welfare and inequality are required if sufficiency is a significant phenomenon in society standard environmental policies can have a pronounced interaction with voluntary sufficiency i e if quantity regulation is present overall the voluntary notion of sufficiency causes a dilemma as sufficiency is largely a matter of civil society however voluntary sufficiency is expected to make important contributions to the preservation of ecological resources if properly balanced with social and environmental policies and framed by public discursive control

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

differential demand systems a further look at barten s synthesis barten s synthetic model is attractive to applied researchers since it is useful for testing the adequacy of the competing functional forms of differential demand systems including the popular rotterdam and almost ideal demand systems this article shows that the synthetic model is not a mere artificial composite of the known differential demand systems as it has been considered but rather viewed as a model in its own right it is demonstrated that at the individual consumer level barten s model has the same marginal budget shares as generated by specific forms of engel curves formulated by the box cox transformation

on modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change with climate change as prototype example this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low probability high impact catastrophes even when updated by bayesian learning uncertain structural parameters induce a critical tail fattening of posterior predictive distributions such fattened tails have strong im plications for situations like climate change where a catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages this paper shows that the economic consequences of fat tailed structural uncertainty along with unsureness about high temperature damages can readily outweigh the effects of discounting in climate change policy analysis

the macroeconomic relationship between advertising and consumption profit maximizing firms advertise in order to increase the demand for the goods they produce hence we would expect increases in a firm s advertising to be associated with increases in consumption of the firm s goods ceteris paribus the increased demand for the firm s goods may be associated with decreased demand of their rivals goods at the market level increases in advertising by the industry may not be accompanied by increased consumption of the industry s output this is because changes in the levels of advertising among firms in a particular industry could merely rearrange market shares if this is true then in that industry a firm which increases its advertising relative to its rivals will gain sales at the rivals expense advertising in this case is a zero sum game when we aggregate across markets to consider advertising at the national level the question of the effect of advertising upon consumption has still different implications if increased advertising levels for the economy are associated with increased consumption this suggests that consumers are increasing current consumption at the expense of future consumption i e savings if this is true then advertising affects aggregate consumption and the business cycle in this paper we consider the relationship between aggregate advertising and aggregate consumption while previous research e g ashley granger and schmalensee 2 and schmalensee 24 has suggested that consumption affects advertising most previous empirical studies of the causal relationship between aggregate advertising and aggregate consumption reject the hypothesis that advertising affects consumption 6 section 8 3 12 an early study was verdon mcconnell and roesler 28 who studied the relationship between advertising and aggregate demand gnp while they found advertising to be pro cyclical and to have a positive effect on aggregate demand correlations between various leads and lags led them to conclude that no clear pattern existed this study was followed by ekelund and gramm 14 who faulted the verdon mcconnell and roesler study for considering the relationship between advertising and aggregate demand instead ekelund and gramm concentrated upon the relationship between advertising and