inheritance patterns in migration prone communities of the peruvian highlands abstract on the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in depth survey of three andean communities of peru and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying the main factors associated with particular patterns of land bequests a central result is that the positive relationship between caring and a favourable access to land bequest indeed exists yet is only observed for migrant children whether urban or rural long distance or short distance migrants combined with other findings and observations this result strengthens the case for an interpretation based on an active role of potential heirs in the determination of inheritance outcomes it therefore calls into question the strategic bequest theory which presumes that parents are the ultimate decision makers in this matter in addition our study shows that inheritance patterns are complex besides migration and caring behavior personal characteristics of potential heirs such as gender birth order and family status having children or not do appear to influence division of parental land

housing choices and uncertainty the impact of stochastic events abstract in our model a household recognizes that family size is stochastic when making its tenure and housing consumption decisions it also recognizes that initial choices constrain later behavior because they affect the amount of savings simulations of the model show that housing consumption and the duration of stay in a residence are sensitive to whether the realization of the stochastic event is the expected value based on this observation we suggest that empirical housing studies should include both the expected and realized values of stochastic explanatory variables we find few behavioral responses to changes in the variance of an uncertain event even though increased uncertainty is passed through to after tax income and the user cost of owning a notable exception is that if a household knows that a change in an influential variable will occur but it does not know the direction of change it is more likely to rent initially

the tenure imbalance in spain the need for social housing policy spain is usually chosen as an example of an unbalanced picture among tenures the owner occupied sector has been growing since the 1950s while the rental sector has become smaller surprisingly other european countries are at present following the same pattern but mostly we also see an important function for social housing taking into account that public housing built by public developers is almost negligible and that government housing policy programmes basically stimulate ownership the social housing concept lacks an adequate definition in spanish housing policy in this sense the encouragement of the rental sector through public policy should provide an alternative for low income families despite different cultural housing backgrounds the emergence of a reliable rental sector in spain appears to be the most promising strategy for solving current housing problems the aim of the paper is twofold on the one hand it analyses the evolution of the rental sector through recent decades stressing

intra metropolitan variation in earnings and labor market discrimination an econometric analysis of the atlanta labor market one of the most enduring debates concerning racial differences in earnings is whether housing segregation within metropolitan areas adversely affects the employment opportunities of urban blacks two possible negative effects can be listed first the decentralization of lower skilled jobs combined with the suburban residential exclusion of low income households may have caused wage rates within the suburban labor market to rise above those paid within the central city if this is the case and if housing market discrimination restricts the relative ability of blacks to offer their labor supply to suburban employers then at least part of the racial difference in earnings can be attributed to housing segregation second housing segregation may cause private sector labor market discrimination to be more severe within the central city in comparison to suburban areas as suggested by becker s taste for discriminating model 3 a relatively large black labor supply within the central city may require a lower black to white earnings ratio in order to induce prejudiced employers to hire large numbers of black workers with the workforce of most central cities becoming increasingly black this may be an important factor in explaining racial differences in earnings surprisingly while variation in discrimination among occupations regions industries and sectors have been examined in some detail spatial differences in discrimination between the central city and suburbs have largely escaped analysis in this paper the earnings of private sector workers broken down by occupation race and sex are compared between worksite areas encompassing the metropolitan area of atlanta georgia while an extensive literature can be found on interregional differences in earnings little evidence exists on the spatial variation in wage rates within metropolitan regions in fact virtually nothing has been done on this issue since the classic study of the chicago labor market by rees and shultz 19

marriage bequest and assortative matching in rural ethiopia abstract this article examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage using detailed data from rural ethiopia we find that assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner for first unions assets brought to marriage are positively associated with parents wealth indicating that a bequest motive affects assets at marriage parental wealth affects the inheritance of neither groom nor bride sibling competition from brothers affects grooms inheritance but sisters have no effect the marriage market is a major conduit for rural and gender inequality although avenues do exist for couples to accumulate wealth over their life cycle

the determinants of homeownership affordability among the sandwich class empirical findings from guangzhou china the sandwich class is an east asian term referring to the lower middle class using a large and unique micro dataset collected in guangzhou this paper examines empirically the potential determin

are ghettos good or bad spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups may theoretically have positive or negative effects on the economic performance of those groups we examine the effects of segregation on outcomes for blacks in schooling employment and single parenthood we find that blacks in more segregated areas have significantly worse outcomes than blacks in less segregated areas we control for the endogeneity of location choice using instruments based on political factors topographical features and residence before adulthood a one standard deviation decrease in segregation would eliminate one third of the black white differences in most of our outcomes

sustainable management of waste to energy facilities abstract in 1995 porter and van der linde defined pollution as a manifestation of economic waste currently incorrect information and conflicting theories among scientists hinder the diffusion of sustainable practices in waste management 1 new industrial market research reports highlight that the value of the global waste incineration market has increased in recent years 1 3 billion dollars from 2008 to 2012 and this sector will continue to grow 6 8 billion dollars from 2012 to 2022 2 the paper focuses on the italian situation on which urgent actions are required because more than 50 of waste is landfilled 3 the correct environmental management increases the financial performance because waste investments offer both environmental and economic benefits the problem to solve is related to both waste management and high levels of recycling where an unsorted fraction of waste will remain based on a thorough review of the topic a national waste management plan nwmp for energy recovery is herein proposed for evaluating all the aspects of sustainability of waste to energy wte plants the reduction of greenhouse gases ghgs with respect to landfill the estimation of financial net present value fnpv and the economic net present value enpv and finally the estimation of new employment opportunity

multiproduct two part tariffs abstract two part pricing by a multiproduct monopoly and a differentiated oligopoly are examined and compared two part pricing policies are seen to depend on whether products are complements or substitutes and on whether or not the market is segmented a principle result is that although competition tends to lower unit prices there is no corresponding tendency for competition to reduce entry fees the unit pricing rule is related to the ramsey pricing rule oligopoly equilibrium unit prices equal marginal cost when there is one consumer type

son preference children s gender and parents time allocation evidence from china this article investigates the effect of children s gender on parents time allocation in developing countries due to the long existing tradition of son preference a collective model generates pred

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

conceptualising environmental responsibility abstract downstream responsibility is rarely addressed in the academic literature and in corporate sustainability reporting we conceptualise downstream responsibility for the example of carbon emissions by establishing a terminology as well as a framework for quantifying downstream carbon footprints by extracting emissions intensive sales chains for a number of australian industry sectors and comparing these to emissions intensive supply chains we demonstrated the ability of input output analysis to quantify emissions responsibility in both directions we extend the definition of downstream responsibility beyond the product use and disposal phases to include what we call enabled emissions this term implies that whatever is sold downstream enables our customers to operate and emit irrespective of whether it is our product that is combusted or that directly combusts fuels or not our structural path analyses and threshold capture relationships reveal stark differences between industries with regard to the data collection efforts necessary to achieve a reasonably complete footprint assessment industries appear to have their own specific carbon footprint profiles and one cannot design generic relevance tests that tell which data to collect moreover we conclude that current completeness standards in carbon reporting cannot be satisfied using relevance thresholds input output analysis and structural path analysis are excellent tools that can help companies undertake screening exercises which in turn help prioritising and streamlining the collection of data needed to establish a corporate downstream carbon footprint compared to conventional manual approaches hybrid life cycle assessments assisted by input output analysis and structural path analysis achieve more complete results with substantially less staff money and time

evidence on discrimination in mortgage lending much of the controversy about whether mortgage lenders discriminate against minorities can be explained in terms of the confusion about how to define discrimination based on the legal definition careful studies of loan denial rates such as that done by the federal reserve bank of boston represent an appropriate method for testing for discrimination by lenders based on that study it is quite clear that lenders discriminate the fact that minorities have higher default rates on average than whites is irrelevant to the interpretation of the race coefficient in such models nonetheless more research on and discussion about the relationship between the race of the applicant and delinquencies defaults and losses would be desirable

micro economic applications of marginal changes in risk abstract extending a recent definition we propose a theorem on the impact of marginal changes in risk on the optimal decision of a risk averse individual several micro economic applications are then provided

optimal two part tariffs in a model of discrete choice abstract in this paper we study welfare optimal two part tariffs in a model of discrete choice the determinants of the sign and magnitude of the fixed and variable tax are analysed in terms of the nature and degree of consumer heterogeneity the price sensitivities of participation probabilities and conditional demands and the nature of distributional concerns in the absence of distributional concerns the model generalises the corrected ramsey rule for the variable tax and it shows that in the absence of collection or fixed participation costs the fixed fee may be negative the conditions that determine the sign of the participation fee turn out to have an intuitive economic interpretation finally the implications of distributional concerns for the optimal fixed and variable taxes are analysed

the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money publisher summary this chapter discusses the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money in january 1969 issue of the review of economic studies karl borch and martin feldstein separately criticized the widely used mean variance analysis of portfolio selection borch contended that any system of upward sloping mean standard deviation e s indifference curves can be shown to be inconsistent with the basic axiom of choice under uncertainty he pointed out that one can always pick any two points on an upward sloping indifference curve to represent two bernoulli distributions with probability 1 p of gaining the same amount x in both the cases and probability p of gaining y1 in the case of one distribution and y2 in the case of the second distribution with y2 y1 if the second distribution represents the point to the northeast of the other point then by the dominance axiom the second distribution must be preferred to the first which contradicts the basic meaning of indifference curves feldstein by using a log utility function and a lognormal distribution for investment outcome showed that e s indifference curves for a risk averter need not be convex downwards though upward sloping they would change from convex to concave once the standard deviation of the outcome exceeds the mean multiplied by on the face of it this seems to suggest that risk aversion might decrease as risk is increased beyond a certain extent

you are close to your rival and everybody hates a winner a study of rivalry in college football we use a recent survey of college american football fans to study rivalry where we find the most intense rivalries occur between in state teams relatedly within a conference fans are more likely to target rivalrous feelings toward the winningest teams and in bowl championship series conferences teams who have been conference members for a longer proportion of time while the stakes are different from other settings such as warring nations college football teams compete for resources and often have loyal followings with strong emotional ties thus examining rivalrous feeling in this setting provides insights into rivalry more generally besides being of interest in its own right as college football is a multi billion dollar industry jel l22 l83 i introduction for millions of americans saturdays in the fall are synonymous with college american football college football has a pageantry all its own as people gather in groups sometimes in excess of 100 000 to cheer for their team and socialize even though many fans have no real connection to the university on the field the teams compete to win games and over the course of a season teams compete to win their conference title however many fans do not view all opponents in the conference in the same way games against some opponents are considered more important irrespective from their impact on conference standings for example the university of arizona and arizona state university have played for the territorial cup for over 100 years 1 similarly the university of wisconsin and the university of minnesota compete for paul bunyan s axe while the university of alabama and the university of tennessee play on the third saturday in october 2 sanford and scott 2014 find that fans are willing to pay higher ticket prices for rivalry games and these games generate significant television revenue despite the amateur status of the players college football is an 8 billion industry 3 several high profile teams are valued at over 100 million dollars each brewer et al 2011 team revenue comes from a variety of sources television rights merchandising fan support etc and on the field success and profit are connected through these channels in addition teams find themselves repeatedly battling over the resources needed to compete on the field namely players and coaches in this sense football rivalries are similar to rivalries between siblings firms or nations sibling rivalries form when children compete for scarce resources financial attention etc from their parents garg and morduch 1998 morduch 2000 the cola wars between coke and pepsi and the diaper wars between kimberly clark and procter gamble arise because these comparable companies offer slightly differentiated products in the same markets rivalries between warring nations also often involve prolonged competition over scarce resources goertz and diehl 1993 klein goertz and diehl 2006 rivalry is a subjective phenomenon kilduff elfenbein and staw 2010 but it has an identifiable set of antecedents geographical proximity is typically an important determinant of conflict even in the context of firm level rivalries as argued for instance in yu and canella 2007 identity also plays an important role in the creation of a rivalry menon thompson and choi 2006 finally history and the outcomes of previous interactions are another key determinant of rivalries kahneman and miller 1986 miller and chen 1996 all three of these factors are at play in college football conferences are typically comprised of comparable schools in a particular region fans identify with their team by wearing certain clothes and in more extreme cases with body paint and other adornments despite periodic conference realignment many teams play each other year after year thus we believe that in addition to being interesting in its own right examining what drives rivalrous feelings in college football can provide insight into rivalry more generally

location decisions under uncertainty and the urban model abstract this letter uses a simple urban model to analyze the impact of random transportation costs on residential location decisions of households it is shown that such uncertainty steepens the fall of land prices with distance from the cbd and can in a specific example cause an increase in optimal city size

entry to home ownership in germany some comparisons with the united states new research on migration mobility and housing tenure choice using the concept of the life course is providing an enriched analysis of the context within which housing choices are made and of the demographic and economic variables which are critical determinants of the decisions to move and to change tenures the availability of panel series data for the us and germany allows cross national comparisons of the migration and tenure choice processes there are substantial differences in the rates of mobility and the rates of moves of households from the rental sector to ownership especially for couples but the results confirm the overall similarities in the mobility and tenure choice processes despite the differing government commitments to housing policy the models show that it is primarily couples and families who make the transition to ownership and that income and number of earners are important in both contexts and german households have even higher incomes before they make the transition to ownersh

hidden child labor determinants of housework and family business work of children in 16 developing countries summary two forms of hidden child labor housework and family business work are studied for 178 000 children in 16 african and asian countries about 30 of african children and 11 of asian children work over 15 h a week in hidden child labor girls are more involved in housework and boys more in family business work but this division is not strict most 80 90 of variation is due to household factors children work less in urban less traditional and more educated areas gender differences are larger in asia probably due to a stricter form of patriarchy

pathways into and out of poverty a study of rural household wealth dynamics in kenya this study identifies the factors associated with smallholder farm households that have risen out of poverty or descended into poverty between 1997 and 2007 in kenya the study uses data from a nationwide balanced panel of 1 275 households and data from detailed retrospective life history survey of 84 households that had experienced either an appreciable improvement or decline in their asset wealth over the 10 year panel period the results indicate that household welfare dynamics are associated with a disparate set of idiosyncratic and unexpected shocks such as death and chronic illness demographic factors proximity to infrastructural facilities as well as intergenerational wealth transfers

auto pollution and congestion in an urban model an analysis of alternative strategies abstract congestion and pollution externalities associated with automobile driving are examined for their effect on urban structure a monocentric urban model which incorporates household preferences for both an unpolluted environment and for leisure time is presented and used to evaluate alternative pricing and emissions policies on automobile use and their effects on city structure optimal tax gradients for driving are derived and compared with second best cases of per mile taxes and no taxes as externalities gradients become more nonlinear the welfare gains from employing optimal taxes rather than a per mile tax are increased the appropriate choices of an emission standard highway capacity and highway pricing policy must be made simultaneously and depend on household preferences

all for one family size and children s educational distribution under credit constraints this paper examines the possibility that a child s years of schooling could increase in the number of siblings instead of being diminished by competition for parents resources if unable to finance the education of their younger children parents may do so through their older children s labor income we examine this possibility in a model combining convex returns to education and credit constraints our model predicts correlations among family size years of schooling and birth order which would not exist when either of these two elements is absent empirical patterns shown in the united states mexico and south korea support the model predictions

residential energy demand for space heating in the nordic countries accounting for interfuel substitution abstract reliable estimation of fuel consumption in residential sector is crucial for the future development of fuel supply system three approaches are compared in this study to capture climate impact as well as and interfuel substitution between fuels on residential fuel consumption for space heating in the nordic countries the first approach aims at directly estimating the demand for each energy carrier as a function of explanatory variables including heating degree days fuels price and gdp per capita the second approach is a two stage model combing an econometric model for total energy use for space heating and the market share for energy carriers based on cross price elasticities while in the third approach a set of simultaneous equations models were estimated based on the results of the mean average error and root mean square error criteria for three approaches across the nordic countries it was found that the second and third approaches were able to capture the complementary and substitution effects between fuels this finding confirms our hypothesis that the interfuel substitution is a key factor for estimating changes in fuel demand and should be accounted for when residential energy demand is projected the results additionally have important implications for climate change policy by exploring the impact of fuel price on residential energy demand for space heating

price stabilization and the risk averse firm an analytically simple and tractable approach to firm level welfare analysis of complete and partial mean preserving price stabilization for producers with general risk averse preferences facing a stochastic technology is developed necessary and sufficient conditions for price stabilization to be welfare enhancing are derived under different assumptions of the producer s preferences and the producer s technology existing stabilization results for the risk averse firm are shown to be corollaries of these more general results

bid rents under unemployment risk delayed versus timeless uncertainty in this paper we analyze the impact of uncertainty on the level and properties of the bid rent function we show that these properties strongly depend upon the vr ay in which uncertainty is introduced into the model delayed versus timeless uncertainty we also investigate the implication of income uncertainty for the city equilibrium we show that under timeless uncertainty a more generous unemployment benefits program may be in the long run welfare reducing in an urban setting c 1997 academic press

production efficiency and optimal pricing in intermediate good regulated industries abstract this paper reconsiders the relationship that exists between the production efficiency result of diamond and mirrlees and the ramsey rule specifically the paper considers a general equilibrium hierarchical structure of production one industry sells at least some of its output to another regulated industry a single regulatory agency must balance the budgets of all regulated industries in the aggregate so as to maximize the utility of a representative individual the ramsey rule always holds pricing rules however are far more complex the optimum may have some negative price cost margins and may not involve production efficiency

photovoltaic energy systems with battery storage for residential areas an economic analysis abstract the global energy market is characterized by the strong growth of photovoltaic pv energy this renewable source contributes to sustainable development and is a strategic player in the electricity market the profitability of pv systems is determined by incentive tariffs in developing markets and by the share of self consumption in developed markets this paper aims to evaluate i the profitability of pv systems in the residential sector without subsidies and ii the profitability of energy storage in a mature market italy in this way it is possible to define the economic results of integrated pv battery systems and the indicator used is the net present value furthermore a sensitivity analysis is conducted on the critical variables the mathematical model proposed in this paper defines the break even point of the increase of self consumption at which residential pv battery systems become economically viable in a mature market energy storage systems are useful only when the relationship between supply and demand permits them to induce a significant increase of energy self consumption

child labour a review of recent theory and evidence with policy implications in recent years a growing number of authors have turned their attention to the question of why children work the purpose of this paper is to review some of the more recent theoretical and empirical research into the topic of child labour and to illustrate the fact that no one factor on its own can account for the phenomenon of child labour therefore policies aimed at eradicating child labour will need to address the broad range of underlying factors that contribute to the incidence of child labour such as poverty market imperfections and access to education

the global child labor problem what do we know and what can we do the problem of child labor has moved from a matter of regional and national concern to one of international debate and possible global persuasion and policy intervention in crafting policy for mitigating this enormous problem of our times it is important to start with a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the phenomenon what gives rise to child labor and what are its consequences what interventions might end child labor without hurting children a well meaning but poorly designed policy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring children live even leading to starvation the article surveys the large and rapidly growing literature on this subject focusing mainly on the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics it also looks at some of the broad policy implications of these new findings with the objective of contributing to better informed discussion and policy design

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

role of renewable energy investment in india an alternative to co2 mitigation abstract this paper discusses the potential of renewable energy investment and co2 mitigation by renewable energy technologies currently india s per capita emissions are around one tonne of co2 year the present energy scene offers india a window of opportunity to invest in renewable energy the annual turnover of renewable energy industry has reached 12 3 billion in 2011 which is 36 higher than 2010 investment of 7 5 billion increasing the share of renewable energy in overall energy mix is an effective option to mitigate co2 emission presently the share of renewable energy is around 12 in the energy mix the present study estimated co2 mitigation potential of indian renewable energy sector about 203 million tonnes with an installed capacity of 24 gw in 2012 however enormous potential identified in renewable energy sector with favorable co2 mitigation the government is compromising with limited financial resources however policy efforts need to be strengthened to encourage a massive scale up of renewable technologies to build sustained low carbon economy

the effect of sibling sex composition on women s education and earnings this paper documents the impact of siblings on the education of men and women born in the united states between 1920 and 1965 we examine the effect of the number and sex composition of a boy or girl s siblings on that child s educational attainment we find that throughout the century women s educational choices have been systematically affected by the sex composition of her siblings and that men s choices have not women raised only with brothers have received on average significantly more education than women raised with any sisters controlling for household size since sibling sex composition affects women s educational attainment and plausibly may be unrelated to other determinants of earnings it may provide a useful instrument for education in earnings functions for women our results suggest that standard estimates significantly underestimate the return to schooling for women

bounded price variation models with rational expectations and price risk abstract the bounded price variation model under rational expectations is extended to include higher moments of price in the supply equation the resulting framework is then used to estimate a disequilibrium model of the u s corn market that includes price risk

commitment risk and consumption do birds of a feather have bigger nests abstract consumption commitments goods like housing for which adjustment is costly change the relationship between risk and consumption commitment provides a motive to reduce consumption when possible future losses are too small to warrant adjustment but not when losses are large enough that adjustment would be worthwhile this implies conditions under which mean preserving increases in risk can increase housing consumption our empirical evidence exploits the interaction of these conditions with a novel proxy for unemployment risk couples sharing an occupation consistent with our model same occupation couples consume more housing only when adjustment costs are high and potential losses are sufficiently large

conceptual developments in the economics of transportation an interpretive survey the objective in this paper is to survey the literature in transportation economics exploring two basic themes first the conceptual developments in the analysis of supply and demand which recognizes noteworthy aggregation biases in the empirical work on aggregate data and indicate that a correct analysis of the issues should take place at a highly disaggregated level second the use of these conceptual developments to evaluate efficiency aspects of transportation pricing investment and the impact of government regulation on resource allocation and distribution in the transportation sector it is important to acknowledge that the survey is based on research throughout the world but our institutional perspective and to some extent the topics that are covered is based largely on the u s experience author

investment planning in electricity production under co2 price uncertainty the electricity markets have undergone significant changes during the last years on the one hand the market deregulation has increased significantly the uncertainty on future electricity prices on the other hand the kyoto protocol and the establishment of emission restrictions as well as the development of emission trading systems has added another expense stream for conventional fuel electricity producers and a potential income stream for renewable electricity producers the emission allowance prices are another source of uncertainty for electricity producers the scope of this work is to investigate the effect that various scenarios for emission allowance price evolution may have on the orders for new electricity generation technologies and therefore on the future electricity generation mix of greece the renewable energy generation targets are taken into consideration as a constraint of the system and the learning rates of the various technologies are included in the calculations the national electricity generation system is modelled for long term analysis and an optimisation method is applied in order to come up with the optimal generating mix that minimises electricity generation cost while satisfying the national emissions reduction targets and incorporating the uncertainty of emission allowance prices in addition an investigation is made to identify if a point should be expected when renewable energy will be more profitable than conventional fuel electricity generation the work is interesting for investment planning in the electricity market as it may provide directions on which technologies are most probable to dominate the market in the future and therefore are of interest to be included in the future power portfolios of related investors

unintended consequences of sanctions for human rights conflict minerals and infant mortality abstractare victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators we study this question in the context of a us human rights policy the conflict minerals section of the 2010 dodd frank act by discouraging companies from sourcing tin tungsten and tantalum from the eastern democratic republic of the congo the policy has acted as a de facto boycott on mineral purchases that may finance warlords and armed militias we estimate the policy s impact on the mortality of children born before 2013 and find that it increased the probability of infant deaths in villages near the policy targeted mines by at least 143 percent we find suggestive evidence that the legislation induced boycott did so by reducing mothers consumption of infant health care goods and services

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

birth spacing fertility selection and child survival analysis using a correlated hazard model if fertility reflects the choice of households results of their choice duration between successive births and health of the children cannot be considered to be determined randomly most existing studies of child health however tend to overlook the effects of fertility selection on child health this paper argues that not accounting for this selection issue yields biased estimates and it is difficult a priori to predict the direction of this bias we find that the estimates of birth spacing on child mortality are different when we do not account for fertility selection additionally the correlated hazard estimates that we present here better fit our samples than the corresponding bivariate probit estimates used in the literature a comparison of the fertility behaviour of households in the indian and the pakistani punjab highlights the differential nature of institutions on demographic transition in these neighbouring regions

theories of regulation and the deregulation movement we started this paper with what seemed a paradox no sooner had the various special interest theories of regulation achieved a degree of acceptance than regulatory reforms were instituted in many industries consistent with the public interest on the face of it this appeared to give reason to doubt the validity of the special interest theories

marriage institutions and sibling competition evidence from south asia using data from south asia this article examines how arranged marriage cultivates rivalry among sisters during marriage search parents with multiple daughters reduce the reservation quality for an older daughters groom rushing her marriage to allow sufficient time to marry off her younger sisters relative to younger brothers younger sisters increase a girls marriage risk relative to younger singleton sisters younger twin sisters have the same effect these effects intensify in marriage markets with lower sex ratios or greater parental involvement in marriage arrangements in contrast older sisters delay a girls marriage because girls leave school when they marry and face limited earning opportunities when they reach adulthood the number of sisters has well being consequences over the life cycle younger sisters cause earlier school leaving lower literacy a match to a husband with less education and a less skilled occupation and marginally lower adult economic status data from a broader set of countries indicate that these cross sister pressures on marriage age are common throughout the developing world although the schooling costs vary by setting

a model of redlining abstract we develop a model of mortgage redlining which captures the dynamic information gathering which is implied by the use of appraisals in mortgage granting in our model the precision of appraisals depends on the quantity of previous home sales in turn the precision of appraisals influences current home sales since when appraisals are inaccurate lenders require larger down payments there is thus a dynamic information externality in which past purchases influence current purchases as a consequence differential mortgage lending behavior will be sub optimal and the appearance of redlining may be justifiably subject to corrective action

education and human capital externalities evidence from colonial benin colonial benin we investigate the effect of education on living standards occupation and political participation since both school locations and student cohorts were selected with very little information treatment and control groups are balanced on observables we can therefore estimate the effect of education by comparing the treated to the untreated living in the same village as well as those living in villages where no schools were set up we find a significant positive treatment effect of education for the first generation of students as well as their descendants they have higher living standards are less likely to be farmers and are more likely to be politically active we find large village level externalities descendants of the uneducated in villages with schools do better than those in control villages we also find extended family externalities nephews and nieces directly benefit from their uncle s education and show that this represents a family tax as educated uncles transfer resources to the extended family

racial discrimination and redlining in cities we propose a model where employers have two types of prejudices racial and spatial discriminations because of the rst one black workers have less chance than white workers to nd a job because of the second one workers living closer to the city center have less chances than suburban workers to nd a job in this context we show that depending on the importance of access costs to employment centers two urban equilibria may emerge in equilibrium 1 the access cost for blacks is quite large black and white workers are totally separated while in equilibrium 2 the access cost for blacks is relatively small workers are separated by their employment status the unemployed versus the employed we then study the labor market equilibrium and its interactions with the land market we show in particular that both race and space matter to explain high unemployment rates among blacks

school inputs and educational outcomes in south africa we examine the relationship between educational inputs primarily pupilteacher ratios and school outcomes in south africa immediately before the end of apartheid government black households were severely limited in their residential choice under apartheid and attended schools for which funding decisions were made centrally by white controlled entities over which they had no control the allocations resulted in marked disparities in average class sizes controlling for household background variables we find strong and significant effects of pupilteacher ratios on enrollment on educational achievement and on test scores for numeracy

labor income uncertainty skewness and homeownership a panel data study for germany and spain abstract in this paper we empirically investigate the effect of labor income uncertainty on the probability of homeownership in germany and spain this study is motivated by two facts firstly theoretical models tend to provide ambiguous results on this issue secondly previous empirical evidence focuses exclusively on the us housing market to carry out our analysis we propose more precise income uncertainty measures based on panel data labor income equations we observe that households facing high levels of income uncertainty display a preference for renting while those located in more positively skewed income distributions show a greater propensity for homeownership

compensating wage differentials for schooling risk in denmark in this paper we analyse the association between wage differentials and risk using detailed information on length and type of education as seen in danish administrative registers our contribution to the literature is that we distinguish between transitory time series and permanent cross sectional income shocks and estimate the compensation for both sorts of risk we find that wage risk in a given education cell is associated with higher wages while skewness is associated with lower wages as a robustness check we see that ad hoc risk measures based on earnings mobility indicators confirm these findings

the comparative statics of cumulative distribution function changes for the class of risk averse agents abstract the primary question addressed is when does a particular change in the cumulative distribution function cdf describing a random variable always cause all risk averse decision makers to adjust the choice variable in the same direction a necessary and sufficient condition involving both the decision model and the cdf change is derived this condition allows the researcher to determine the tradeoff between assumptions on the economic model and the cdf changes which are necessary and or sufficient to yield determinate comparative static results several applications are included

economic effects of non binding price constraints for decades the conventional wisdom among economists has been that a non binding price floor or price ceiling has no effect whatsoever on the market equilibrium and quantity 1 this hypothesis rests on the shaky theoretical assumption that the competitive firm s perception of future market conditions is not altered when the government imposes a price control recent experiments by isaac and plott 6 and smith and williams 18 cast doubt on this conventional wisdom but they offer no theory to explain their findings similarly working 19 benedict 1 and johnson 8 alluded that price supports set below the market equilibrium price would distort the supply response offarmers without explaining why only lee 10 and eeckhoudt and hansen 4 have developed theories to explain why firms react this way lee used an intertemporal decision making model to show that a price ceiling implemented above the current price would affect both price and output in the current period however lee discussed only those cases where resources have a finite inventory non renewable resources which once depleted cannot be produced again following sandmo 15 ishii 7 and coes 3 eeckhoudt and hansen analyzed the restraining effects of minimum and maximum prices on a competitive firm using a static equilibrium model they explained the short run response of a utility maximizing firm to the imposition of price constraints however eeckhoudt and hansen were unable to sign the effect that a price ceiling has on the volume of industrial output furthermore they ignored all long run adjustments our model differs from the previous studies in that we assume firms maximize the market value of the firm in so doing we are able to determine both the short run and the long run effects that currently non binding price restrictions have on a competitive industry consider the conventional competitive market in which the long run equilibrium is achieved when all the firms in the industry have an expected net worth comparable to their next best alternative for simplicity assume a price floor pf is inacted that is lower than the current market price and will remain constant for the forseeable future furthermore assume the government agrees

equity and efficiency in human capital investment the local connection a general model of community formation and human capital accumulation with social spillovers and decentralized school funding is used to analyse the causes of economic segregation and its consequences for equity and efficiency significant polarization arises from minor differences in endowments preferences or access to capital markets this makes income inequality more persistent across generations but the same need not be true for wealth equilibrium stratification tends to be excessive resulting in low aggregate surplus whether state equalization of school resources can remedy these problems hinges on how purchased social and family inputs interact in education and in mobility decisions

effects of a sibship extension to foster children on children s school enrolment a sibling rivalry analysis for indonesia in this paper we question whether and how the sibship extension to foster children a common practice in many developing countries affects children s school enrolment status based on indonesian data we show that children s school enrolment increases with the number of foster grandchildren in their sibship given that grandchildren fostering is associated with positive transfers from biological to host parents this result reflects either a release of liquidity constraints in the host household or the uncommon preferences of host grandparents conversely the proportion of other foster children in a sibship does not have any effect the latter result s explanation depends on the reason children other than grandchildren are fostered

the global child labor problem the problem of child labor has moved from a matter of regional and national concern to one of international debate and possible global persuasion and policy intervention in crafting policy for mitigating this enormous problem of our times it is important to start with a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the phenomenon what gives rise to child labor and what are its consequences what interventions might end child labor without hurting children a well meaning but poorly designed policy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring children live even leading to starvation the article surveys the large and rapidly growing literature on this subject focusing mainly on the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics it also looks at some of the broad policy implications of these new findings with the objective of contributing to better informed discussion and policy design

effects of income variability on the demand for owner occupied housing abstract this study investigates whether the uncertainty associated with an income stream affects the demand for owner occupied housing theoretical models yield an ambiguous sign for the direction of change in consumption but our empirical findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the consumption of housing falls when the uncertainty of receipt of income increases specifically in a sample of military employees the income earned by wives had little or no effect on the demand for housing we also find evidence that suggests the demand for housing is affected by pension rights the closer to retirement the stronger the effect

housing price bubbles new supply and within city dynamics abstract although there is broad recognition that cities differ in their tendency to experience house price bubbles most studies assume away any possibility of within city heterogeneity in response to a bubble we develop a model that suggests that this assumption may be appropriate when markets are rising but can be far from reality on the bust side of a bubble during a housing boom new construction and related supply adjustments by developers ensure stable relative prices between low and high quality segments of the housing market on the bust side of a bubble however reduced housing starts allow demand side forces and mortgage default to create pressure for relative prices to diverge across market segments absent a change in technology as markets recover and new construction rebounds relative prices should revert back to pre crash levels evidence based on 2000 2013 single family home sales in phoenix arizona supports this modeling framework additional evidence also suggests that high rates of mortgage default contributed to divergence in relative prices when markets crashed

urban economic theory land use and city size this book examines the economic reasons why people choose to live where they live and develops through analysis of the bid rent function a unified theory of urban land use and city size the first part of the book explicates the basic theory of urban land use and optimal city size residential location behavior of households is examined in a microeconomic framework and equilibrium and optimal patterns of residential land use are discussed the corresponding equilibrium and optimal city sizes are studied in a variety of contexts part two extends the classical theories of von thunen and alonso with the addition of externality factors such as local public goods crowding and congestion and racial prejudice the rigorous mathematical approach and theoretical treatment of the material make urban economic theory of interest to researchers in urban economics location theory urban geography and urban planning

interactions between agricultural and resource policy the importance of attitudes toward risk using a method proposed by meyer for deriving comparative statics results in the presence of risk this paper analyzes the effects of various agricultural and environmental policy alternatives on the choices of a risk averse producer with a just and pope production function many commonly held beliefs about policy effects are not supported unambiguously by economic theory for example a tax on pesticides will not necessarily reduce pesticide use or average output and a reduction in price of agricultural output will not necessarily lead to a reduction in use of water or agricultural chemicals

general trends in financing social housing in spain the affordability of houses has become one of the main problems for spanish families in recent decades the government has been actively involved in designing policies to solve this problem theoretically the characteristics of the housing stock and population always determine the type of public intervention in the spanish case there are some features that give rise to a particular approach which is slightly different from that of the rest of europe the following elements among other things have been taken into account when designing housing policies in spain the cultural importance of home ownership the evolution of prices the distinct condition of large cities such as barcelona and madrid the high proportion of mortgage burdens in relation to family income and the role played by the several levels of government in present spanish housing policy it is possible to identify at least two main trends both the 1992 95 scheme and the 1996 99 scheme seek to provide financial support basically to t

household behavior under income uncertainty in a monocentric urban area abstract for a household living outside of but commuting to and from the cbd of an urban area and experiencing income uncertainty housing consumption and location distance from the cbd are inversely related to the probability of unemployment and directly related to the level of unemployment compensation under fairly unrestrictive assumptions under more restrictive assumptions it is found that these variables are inversely related to housing price and transportation costs finally income compensation causes housing consumption and location to be directly related to the probability of unemployment and the level of unemployment compensation

spatial mismatch in search equilibrium we construct a search equilibrium model for a city with central and suburban labor markets that is consistent with the set of empirical regularities commonly associated with the spatial mismatch hypothesis a higher rate of unemployment for central city residents than suburban residents a higher job vacancy rate for suburban firms and reverse commuting and higher suburban wages the effectiveness and welfare implications of public policy programs that might be used to remedy the underlying mismatch are examined

mean variance preferences and investor behaviour we study the comparative statics implications of mean variance preferences for optimal portfolios specifically we show that all risk averse mean variance investors raise their investment in a risky asset in response to a change in that asset s return distribution if and only if the change lowers both the mean and standard deviation of the return by the same percentage besides being of interest in its own right our results allow us to compare some comparative statics implications and the expected utility and mean variance models systematically

the spatial mismatch hypothesis what has the evidence shown this paper reviews 20 years worth of empirical evidence on the spatial mismatch hypothesis after briefly surveying the relevant models from urban and labour economics and recent trends in employment and population suburbanisation the empirical evidence on spatial effects is examined this literature includes evidence on the effects of residential segregation residential suburbanisation and employment suburbanisation and direct measures of access such as travel times the most recent evidence suggests that spatial mismatch is relevant for explaining black white employment differences though the magnitudes of these effects remain unclear

on the optimal structure of government subsidies for enterprise zones and other locational development programs abstract government locational development programs often reward businesses for decisions they would have made or that are going to be quickly reversed this paper presents a model to determine the amount and structure of government locational subsidies that minimize this problem we model the firm s decision to switch locations as an option whose value depends on stochastic operating costs the costs to switch locations and subsidies offered by the government the government maximizes the expected benefit from the operation of the firm within its preferred location by choosing a subsidy package that explicitly and endogenously recognizes the firm s switching option

stochastically dominating shifts and the competitive firm abstract the production responses of the competitive firm to stochastically dominating shifts in the distribution of output price have been the object of much research in a recent paper simpson and sproule metroeconomica 51 2 2000 168 181 present five sets of sufficient conditions any one of which may be used to jointly sign the production responses of the competitive firm to first second and third order stochastically dominating shifts this paper demonstrates that one of the conditions outlined in the above mentioned reference is unnecessarily restrictive in the case of the logarithmic and the positive power utility functions

housing purchases and transitory income a study with panel data in this paper we explore the role of transitory income in the housing purchase decision because of moral hazard considerations banks typically require downpayments to be financed internally hence transitory income is potentially important in overcoming the downpayment constraint using a novel approach to the measurement of permanent and transitory income we estimate a two stage model in which households decide whether to purchase housing in the first stage and the quantity to be purchased in the second the results indicate a significant role for transitory income in both decision stages

the role of human capital in earnings differences between black and white men d uring the past 50 years the earnings of black men have increased substantially both in absolute terms and relative to those of white men as shown in figure 1 in 1940 the black white weekly earnings ratio among men ages 25 34 was 49 percent by 1980 it had increased to 79 percent during the 1980s however the overall black white earnings gap did not narrow and at younger ages the gap actually widened although the 1980s is not the first decade since 1940 in which black men made little or no gains in relative earnings the 1950s was another the lack of progress in the 1980s is nevertheless puzzling and a source of concern this article examines the factors underlying the differential in earnings between black men and white men with a focus on the role of human capital since 1940 successive generations of black men entering the labor force have been increasingly more educated relative to white men both in terms of years of school completed and in the quality of schooling obtained as the education and income levels of black parents increased racial differences in the transmission of human capital in the home were also likely to have narrowed this convergence in educational differences combined with the migration of blacks out of the south contributed to the narrowing in the racial gap in earnings over the 1940 80 period particularly in the first half of the period but human capital factors education and migration were not the only source of convergence in black white differences in earnings the patterns of change in the earnings gap support the contention that declining labor market discrimination against blacks has also contributed to the rise in the black white earnings ratio moreover the acquisition of human capital itself has been strongly affected by societal and governmental discrimination since blacks were long provided with greatly inferior schooling resources

sibling rivalry endowment and intrahousehold allocation in gansu province china abstractthis article evaluates the strategies employed by households in rural china to allocate educational expenditure to children of different physical endowments examining whether parents use educational funding to reinforce or compensate for these differences climatic shocks are employed as an instrument for endowment measured as height for age allowing for the identification of the impact of quasi exogenous variation in endowment on parental allocations conditional on household fixed effects the results suggest that educational expenditure is directed to the relatively weaker child in response to the mean difference in height for age between siblings parents redirect around 25 of discretionary educational spending to the child with the lower height for age and this effect is robust to the potentially confounding effects of gender and birth order there is some evidence that time allocation may also be a relevant margin of compensation but no evidence that medical expenditure responds to diff

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers

review of the economic viability of investing and exploiting biogas electricity plant case study vizelj serbia construction and operation of plants that produce energy from renewable energy sources is the subject for discussion in all the countries that have accepted the sustainable development concept and kyoto protocol as their own development direction enlargement of the renewable energy production is clearly an imperative but only economically viable construction and operation can result in long term sustainability which is initially the goal when deciding upon such investments in line with this goal this paper presents the estimation of the economic viability of constructing and operating biogas electricity plant on the farm vizelj in serbia the timeframe for this estimation is from 2011 until 2020 this paper also presents all parameters which are necessary for performing this estimation respectively analysis of revenues and expenditures projection of economic and financial flow ratio analysis dynamic and static analysis and analysis of sensitivity of the project i e impact of the changes in prices and raw material on the overall performance of the project the observed investment is predicted to be financed from the ebrd s credit line for renewable energy in western balkans while the total investment is estimated at euro 958 000 00 after the performed economic assessment the conclusion is that the observed investment in biogas electricity plant is very acceptable and it can serve as a role model for similar investments in the region