dynamic adjustment process of retail store density in cointegrated panels evidence from japan using recently developed econometric techniques for testing the existence of unit roots and cointegration in panel datasets this article investigates the dynamic adjustment process of the number of retail stores per person by business type specifically the major objective of this article is to examine whether there is a long term relationship between retail store density and consumers ability to transport and store goods that is the relative costs of performing distributive tasks as suggested in previous studies relating to store density the first conclusion from this article is that a cointegration relationship exists between store density for most types of retail businesses and proxies for consumers ability to transport and store goods second the estimation results of an error correction model reveal that the density of stores dealing in convenience goods exhibits a slow adjustment speed to recover the long run equilibrium density level while the density of stores selling shopping goods show

fdi and taxation a meta study despite the continuing political interest in the usefulness of tax competition and tax coordination as well as the wealth of theoretical analyses it still remains open whether or when tax competition is harmful moreover the influence of tax differentials on multinationals decisions is still insufficiently analyzed thus economists have increasingly resorted to empirical analysis in order to gain insights on the elasticity of fdi with respect to company taxation as a result the empirical literature on taxation and international capital flows has grown to a similar abundance during the last 25 years as the respective theoretical literature its heterogeneity leads to a rising need for concise reviews on the existing empirical evidence in this paper we extend former meta analyses on fdi and taxation in three ways first we add the most recent publications unconsidered in meta analyses up to date second we apply a different methodology by using a broad set of meta regression estimators and explicitly discuss which one is most suitable for application to our meta data third we address some important issues in research on fdi and taxation to the clarification of which meta analysis can make valuable contributions these issues are mainly the influence of variables which might moderate effects of tax differentials e g public spending the implications of using aggregate fdi data as opposed to firm level information on measured tax effects the implications of bilateral effective tax rates and the possible presence of publication bias in primary research

tax exporting regional economic growth and welfare abstract long run exporting and importing of regional taxes is assessed theoretically and empirically using a six region nonlinear general equilibrium model of the united states the relationships between tax exporting and three aggregate measures of regional change value added welfare of all residents and welfare of original residents only are examined empirically the ability of states to adopt tax structures that successfully impose more of a burden on out of state residents does not necessarily promote regional economic growth or welfare and evaluating tax policy based on its ability to promote economic growth may be misleading if regional welfare is the primary objective

individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

determinants of foreign direct investment in spain this study utilizes panel data as a means of examining the determinants of foreign direct investment fdi in spain data that are taken in the period 1993 2002 are used in order to estimate the determinants of fdi at the sectoral level by differentiating the manufacturing sectors and at the regional level the analysis investigates the sectoral regional and macroeconomic variables that have successfully attracted fdi inflows from those that have not empirical results suggest that the differential between labour productivity and the cost of labour has been an important determinant of fdi in spain during the period 1993 2002 factors related to demand the evolution of human capital the export potential of the sectors and certain macroeconomic determinants that measure the differential between spain and the european union average also play a very important role in attracting flows of fdi certain policy issues that are relevant to the results are also discussed

the location of foreign direct investment an empirical analysis in this piece of research those factors are analysed which determine the choice of location for fdi the analysis is conducted using two models a multicountry model containing seven industrializ

global economic integration in developing countries the role of corruption and human capital investment globalization is multifaceted and involves the interaction among businesses services governments and societies beyond national borders as a result the flow of foreign direct investment fdi international trade in goods and services and the economic interdependence of the nations of the world have been increasing at the same time much attention has been paid to the effect of corruption prevalent within many cultures and societies and its impact on the economies especially developing economies this paper examines the relationship between human capital investment the level of national corruption and the global economic integration gei of a nation in developing countries based on the data collected from over 60 countries and building on the fdi and human capital theories it was found that human capital investment and corruption are related to gei it was also found that the level of corruption moderates the relationship between human capital investment and gei of developing economies the findings of the study can help to deepen our understanding of gei and have practical implications for developing countries in terms developing human capital which plays a critical role in today s knowledge based economy

analysis of determinants of the inflow of foreign direct investment to poland part i theoretical considerations this study contains an analysis of the main determinants of the inflow of foreign direct investment to poland this article is the first of the two parts of the cycle and covers theoretical considerations regarding the determinants of foreign direct investment serving as the introduction to the second empirical part in which the research results will be discussed this study focused on determining the cause and effect relationship between the scale of inflow of foreign direct investment and selected macroeconomic parameters of the economy based on the theories and results from previous research a model was developed in which the variables and the nature of their relationship were determined the model is based on four latent exogenous variables describing fdi determinants and one latent endogenous variable describing fdi inflow in the article structural equation modeling was indicated as a method for analyzing the factors conditioning the inflow of foreign direct investment the proposed research concept will allow supplementing and extending the analysis of fdi determinants in poland

socio economic status health and lifestyle abstract the role of lifestyle in mediating the relationship between socio economic characteristics and health has been discussed extensively in the epidemiological and economic literatures previous analyses have not considered a formal framework incorporating unobservable heterogeneity in this paper we develop a simple economic model in which health is determined partially by lifestyle which depends on preferences budget and time constraints and unobservable characteristics we estimate a recursive empirical specification consisting of a health production function and reduced forms for the lifestyle equations using maximum simulated likelihood msl for a multivariate probit mvp model with discrete indicators of lifestyle choices and self assessed health sah on british panel data from the 1984 and 1991 health and lifestyle survey hals we find that sleeping well exercising and not smoking in 1984 have dramatic positive effects on the probability of reporting excellent or good sah in 1991 and that these effects are much larger having accounted for endogeneity the failure of epidemiological analyses to account for unobserved heterogeneity can explain their low estimates of the relevance of lifestyle in the socio economic status health relationship indicators for prudent alcohol consumption and eating breakfast in 1984 are not found to be statistically significant determinants of sah in 1991

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

tallest in the world native americans of the great plains in the nineteenth century historians often portray native americans as merely unfortunate victims of european disease and aggression with lives in disarray that followed the arrival of columbus and other explorers or conquerors the data we analyze on human stature show in contrast that some native americans such as the equestrian plains nomads were remarkably ingenious and adaptive in the face of exceptional demographic stress using anthropometric data originally collected by franz boas we show that the plains nomads were tallest in the world during the mid nineteenth century we link this extraordinary achievement to a rich and varied diet modest disease loads other than epidemics a remarkable facility at reorganization following demographic disasters and egalitarian principles of operation the analysis provides a useful mirror for understanding the health of euro americans this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

wash and nutrition synergies the case of tunisia abstractthis paper develops a simple econometric strategy to operationalise the united nations children s fund s unicef s conceptual framework for nutrition it estimates the extent to which chil

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research longitudinal studies of health this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

education and freedom of choice evidence from arranged marriages in vietnam abstractusing household data from vietnam we provide evidence on the effects of education on freedom of spouse choice we use war disruptions and spatial indicators of schooling supply as instruments the point estimates indicate that a year of additional schooling reduces the probability of an arranged marriage by about 14 percentage points for an individual with eight years of schooling we also estimate bounds on the effect of education on arranged marriage when exclusion restrictions are violated locally the lower bound is six to seven percentage points the impact of education is strong for women but significantly weaker for men

stature and the standard of living research on the standard of living now emphasizes alternatives or supplements to the national income accounts this paper reviews the results of two decades of research using stature as a measure of health aspects of human welfare after comparing and contrasting stature with per capita income i consider height patterns discovered by economic historians that challenge traditional beliefs about the past including long term trends cycles in heights and the dreadfully small stature of slave children that was followed by catch up growth the paper concludes with comparisons to work in development economics and suggestions for research

what happens to diet and child health when migration splits households evidence from a migration lottery program the impact of migration on food security and child health is likely to differ depending on whether children themselves migrate or whether they remain behind while other household members migrate however existing studies have not been able to examine how impacts differ in these two scenarios because parallel data are required for both the sending and receiving country moreover self selection into migration makes unbiased estimation of either impact difficult we overcome these problems by using a unique survey of tongan households that applied to migrate to new zealand through a migrant quota which selects households through a random ballot this survey covers both migrant children in new zealand and non migrant children in tonga with the migration policy rules providing a source of exogenous variation for identifying impacts our estimates of short run impacts show that diets diverge upon migration children who migrate experience improvements while diets worsen for children who remain there is also suggestive evidence of a divergence in health outcomes with increases in weight for age and height for age found for migrant children and decreases found for children who remain behind while other household members migrate

measuring the distribution of material well being u s trends abstract economists with a few exceptions have automatically assumed that the important measure of well being is income in contrast economic historians have broadened the measure of well being with particular interest in mortality morbidity nutrition education and leisure when one takes this broader view of the standard of living there appears to be a strong trend toward more equality in the distribution of well being since the industrial revolution gini coefficients calculated for the distributions of lifespan and educational attainment have declined dramatically since the mid nineteenth century for the united states mortality and educational differentials have also declined inequality of leisure time and consumption though not as consistently measured also show trends toward equality over the twentieth century these trends toward equality in well being as measured by indicators other than income and wealth seem to be generated by provision of public goods natural boundaries to lifespan educational attainment and leisure and by the growth in mean per capita income the divergent trends in the distributions of income and the other measures of well being caution against reliance on the distribution of income to interpret trends in inequality

what drives the capital flows into brics economies understanding what drives the capital flows has important policy implications for countries in managing the direction and magnitude of such flows this paper empirically investigates the main drivers of capital flows into the fast growing brics countries in the backdrop of their growing inward capital flows employing a fully balanced panel for the period 1995 2015 we focus on among others the hitherto commonly untested variables sovereign credit ratings economic freedom and ease of doing business ranking of these countries in searching for the relevant interaction and causality among the drivers of capital flows we employ the panel granger causality test to arrive at the policy implications the results suggest that market size is a significant driver of capital flows in addition to infrastructure economic freedom in the host countries ease of doing business ranking and sovereign credit ratings are the main drivers in the long run growth of capital flows

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

health economics and applications in developing countries the concept of health human capital guides the statistical study of 1 health production functions 2 derived demands for medical and behavioral health inputs and 3 determinants of health and productivity outcomes health inputs are generally endogenous to health outcomes and prices of health inputs are the most common instrumental variable for identifying estimates of the causal effects of health inputs but when health input prices are modified by individual regional migration the regional prices no longer satisfy the requirement of being independent of preferences and omitted variables then the difficulty of evaluating health program effects reinforces the need to design randomized regional treatments in order to be able to evaluate without bias the consequences of critical health interventions such as are needed today to deal with the hiv aids epidemic

the market evaluation of criminality evidence from the auction of british convict labor in america 1767 1775 approximately 50 000 british convicts were sentenced to servitude and forcibly transported to america between 1718 and 1775 1 this transatlantic market for british convict labor was a vast experiment in privatizing posttrial criminal justice by the early eighteenth century removal of criminals from society was seen as a more effective deterrent to recidivism than physical chastisement removal of noncapital offenders through mass hangings or employment as chain gangs in england was considered too barbaric and too politically risky removal through imprisonment was too expensive given the absence of penitentiaries designed for long term incarceration thus banishment overseas became the preferred policy 2 convict transportees were given one of only three possible sentences namely 7 years 14 years or a lifetime of banishment 74 24 and 2 percent respectively which in turn became the length of their servant contracts in america 3 to minimize the cost of overseas disposal the british government channelled convicts through the existing transatlantic market for voluntary servant labor 4 the government fixed the length of all convict labor contracts prior to embarkation and then turned the convicts over to the private shipping market thereafter government penal policy exerted little direct influence the transportation and disposal of convict labor was handled by the private sector for profit shippers auctioned convicts upon arrival in america to the private employers who bid the highest with the monies received going to defray the shippers transportation expenses the trade was competitive numerous shippers from many british ports transported convicts and auctioned them in populated american markets such as annapolis and baltimore convicts also competed directly with voluntary indentured servants for cargo space on ships leaving britain 5 in addition upon landing in america convict labor competed with european immigrant servant and african department of economics university of delaware newark de 19716 e mail grubbf be udel edu brian golden anne pfaelzer de ortiz and jianmin zhang provided research assistance and anne pfaelzer de ortiz provided editorial assistance preliminary versions were presented at the university of delaware harvard university university lumiere lyon 2 france university pompeu fabra spain the university of virginia and the economic history society meeting bristol u k the author thanks the participants of these seminars and pieter emmer claudia goldin leslie goldstein bernard harris saul hoffman kyle kauffmann john murray ralph shlomowitz and richard steckel for helpful comments 1 they represented roughly a quarter of all british arrivals and half of all english arrivals in this period the 1717 transportation act was passed in response to the crime wave accompanying the end of queen anne s war see a roger ekirch 1987 p 27 peter w coldham 1992a pp 1 6 aaron s fogelman 1998 pp 55 71 2 in the absence of penitentiaries designed for long term incarceration ciiminals were punished by physical chastisement e g whipping branding in the hand or hanging this menu of punishment left little middle ground for adjusting punishment to fit variation in the severity of a given crime forced servitude overseas provided that middle ground for those convicted of noncapital crimes e g larceny mitigating circumstances could lead to a whipping or branding in the hand whereas those considered to deserve less mercy or to be a continuing menace to society were sentenced to 7 or 14 years of servitude overseas for those convicted of capital crimes e g horse or sheep stealing grand larceny murder etc mitigating circumstances could lead to sentences of 7 years 14 years or a lifetime of servitude overseas whereas those considered to deserve no mercy or to be a continuing menace to society were hanged see baltimore j m beattie 1986 3 see table 1 baltimore grubb 2000b the punishment for returning to britain before the completion of one s sentence was hanging 4 in 1697 the british admiralty demanded eight pounds a head to transport convicts to america by contrast the private sector ended up transporting the majority of the convicts for no subsidy whatsoever and the highest subsidy the crown ever paid a shipper to transport convicts was five pounds per head see abbot e smith 1947 pp 105 11316 frederick h schmidt 1976 pp 35 38 89 ekirch 1987 pp 70 74 grubb 2000b 5 many shippers carried both convict and voluntary indentured servants on the same voyage see annapolis baltimore cheston galloway papers grubb 2000b

the effect of foreign direct investment on the urban wage in china an empirical examination how does foreign direct investment fdi affect the wage levels of cities in a host country this paper uses a panel dataset of chinese cities to examine the impact of inward fdi on the urban real wage the results suggest that the existence of fdi has a significant and positive effect on urban real wages and that this impact remains significant after controlling for other city characteristics cross city variation of fdi intensity is one important factor contributing to intercity wage inequality

disease and development the effect of life expectancy on economic growth we exploit the major international health improvements from the 1940s to estimate the effect of life expectancy on economic performance we construct predicted mortality using preintervention mortality rates from various diseases and dates of global interventions predicted mortality has a large impact on changes in life expectancy starting in 1940 but no effect before 1940 using predicted mortality as an instrument we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy leads to a 1 7 2 percent increase in population life expectancy has a much smaller effect on total gdp however consequently there is no evidence that the large increase in life expectancy raised income per capita

information asymmetry and international strategic alliances abstract this paper examines how information asymmetry affects cross border strategic alliance formation by us firms over the period 2000 2008 we construct a measure information costs based on both geographical distance and the proportion of worldwide gdp the partner s home country represents consistent with our expectations we find an inverse association between information costs and cross border strategic alliances when considering the proportion of alliances formed with publicly quoted overseas partners we find this is unaffected by the level of information costs but rather the level of stock market development tax rate and general economic conditions information costs are however significantly negatively related to alliances with overseas private organizations our results offer clear support for the on going importance of information asymmetry in corporate decision making

u s foreign direct investment in latin america and the caribbean a case of remittances and market size abstractthis article investigates the effect of remittances on u s foreign direct investment fdi flows to latin america and the caribbean lac it covers 26 countries for the period 1983 2010 the results show a positive and significant impact of remittances on u s fdi flows however this effect depends upon the level of gross domestic product gdp per capita of the host country on average the results show that increasing remittances by one standard deviation increases u s fdi flows by 0 44 percent a year also host country demand positively affects u s fdi flows which supports the market size hypothesis

drinking and academic performance in high school i investigate the extent to which negative alcohol use coefficients in grade point average regressions reflect unobserved heterogeneity rather than direct effects of drinking using 2001 and 2003 youth risk behaviour survey data on high school students results illustrate that omitted factors are quite important drinking coefficient magnitudes fall substantially in regressions that control for risk and time preference mental health self esteem and consumption of other addictive substances moreover the impact of binge drinking is negligible for students who are less risk averse heavily discount the future or use other drugs however effects that remain significant after accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and are relatively large for risk averse future oriented and drug free students suggest that binge drinking might slightly worsen academic performance consistent with this the relationship between grades and drinking without binging is small and insignificant on the extensive margin and posi

wage and labor supply effects of illness in cote d ivoire and ghana instrumental variable estimates for days disabled abstract sickness should make individuals less productive but there are problems in measuring this effect first how is adult morbidity measured in a household survey second how is the impact or morbidity on productivity inferred if earning is partly used to improve health self reported functional activity limitation due to illness is considered an indicator of morbidity for wage earners and self employed people to deal with both the measurement and joint determination problems an instrumental variable estimation approach is used where local food prices and health services instrument for disability days that reduce wages by at least 10 and hours by 3 or more

affluence and food a simple way to infer incomes accurate and timely measures of cross country real incomes are still a rarity as the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available we use engel s law in reciprocal form to measure affluence analysis of real income data for over 100 countries indicates that this approach is viable to recognize the role of uncertainty in the analysis we present the results in the form of stochastic cross country income comparisons

health human capital height and wages in china abstract we estimate the returns to height using data from 12 chinese cities we present both ordinary least squares ols and two stage least squares tsls estimates in the latter height is instrumented using proxies for health human capital accumulated in childhood and adolescence which influence adult height the tsls estimates are much higher reflecting the fact that the ols estimates are determined by the random genetic factors influencing height while the tsls estimates also take into account returns from investment in health human capital during childhood and adolescence these results imply considerable returns to investment in health human capital

stature skills and adult life outcomes evidence from indonesia abstractwe investigate the effect of height on earnings occupational choices and a subjective measure of wellbeing among indonesian men we explore the extent to which height captures the effects of endowments set before entry in the labour market physical and cognitive skills co determined with stature early in life do not explain much of the height earnings premium directly yet human capital more broadly including cognition educational attainment and other factors related to childhood conditions explains around half of the height premium and does so through occupational sorting indeed taller workers tend to have more education and educated workers tend to work in more lucrative occupations that require brain and social skills not brawn the unexplained share of the height earnings premium may reflect a specific role of stature on social interaction labour market advantages or self assurance we also find a height premium in happiness half of which simply accounts for the educational and e

physiology and development why the west is taller than the rest we hypothesise that the timing of the fertility transition is an important determinant of comparative physiological development in support we provide a model of long run growth that elucidates the links between population size average body size and income during development industrialisation is shown to be accompanied by a reduction in family size and an intensification of nutrition per child early transition countries are therefore expected to be more developed today economically and physiologically empirically the timing of the fertility transition is strongly correlated with average body size across countries

natural disasters and foreign direct investment the world s population has witnessed the concurrence of two powerful global trends an unprecedented growth in foreign direct investment fdi and an increase in natural disasters since investment decisions are based on an evaluation of expected risks and returns we consider whether fdi decisions are influenced by natural disasters we do so by considering the relation between fdi in 94 countries between 1984 and 2004 and the number of disasters striking those countries across a variety of empirical tests that control for two way fixed effects we find natural disasters to be negatively and statistically significantly associated with a country s fdi

inequality at birth some causes and consequences recent research shows that health at birth is affected by many factors including maternal education behaviors and participation in social programs in turn endowments at birth are predictive of adult outcomes and of the outcomes of future generations exposure to environmental pollution is one potential determinant of health at birth that has received increasing attention a large literature outside of economics advocates for environmental justice and argues that poor and minority families are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards i provide new evidence on this question showing that children born to less educated and minority mothers are more likely to be exposed to pollution in utero and that white college educated mothers are particularly responsive to changes in environmental amenities i estimate that differences in exposure to toxic releases may explain 6 of the gap in incidence of low birth weight between infants of white college educated mothers and infants of black high school dropout mothers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

welfare measures an international comparison abstract based on previous work by sen and the author alternative welfare measures are proposed that take into account both the level and distribution of income an empirical application shows that there are substantial differences among countries with respect to the level of welfare even among subgroups such as mature capitalist economies

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

the effect of national corporate responsibility environment on japanese foreign direct investment we examine the relationship between japanese foreign direct investment fdi and the national corporate responsibility ncr environment in host countries using corporate social responsibility and international business theories based on data from the japanese government s ministry of finance accountability and other sources we find that the level of ncr has a positive relationship with fdi inflow for developing countries the relationship for developed countries is negative but not statistically significant the underlying host country development stage moderates the relationship the results can help deepen understanding of fdi behaviors and have practical implications for host countries in terms of attracting fdi

numeracy and the impact of high food prices in industrializing britain 1780 1850 abstract using census based data on the ability to recall one s age we show that low levels of nutrition impaired numeracy in industrializing england 1780 to 1850 cognitive ability declined among those born during the napoleonic wars the effect was stronger in areas where grain was expensive and relief for the poor an early form of welfare support was limited nutritional shortages had a nonlinear effect on numeracy with severe shortages impairing numeracy more nutrition during childhood also mattered for labor market outcomes individuals born in periods or counties with low numeracy typically worked in occupations with lower earnings

theory general equilibrium and political economy in development economics i discuss the role of economic theory in empirical work in development economics with special emphasis on general equilibrium and political economy considerations i argue that economic theory plays should play a central role in formulating models estimates of which can be used for counterfactual and policy analysis i discuss why counterfactual analysis based on microdata that ignores general equilibrium and political economy issues may lead to misleading conclusions i illustrate the main arguments using examples from recent work in development economics and political economy

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

corporate tax rates and foreign direct investment in the united states a significant research effort has been directed at establishing the determinants of foreign direct investment fdi with taxation policy identified as an important factor however the empirical literature has been limited in several respects with most work focused exclusively on host country tax regimes this paper seeks to extend the boundaries of fdi empirical inquiry by using a panel of nine investing tax exemption and tax credit countries over the period 1982 2000 constituting more than 85 of total us fdi inflows and incorporating home country tax rates to analyse two as yet unanswered questions first are corporate income tax rates an important determinant of fdi in the us secondly do investors from tax credit countries differ significantly in their tax response relative to those from tax exemption countries

regional effects of taxes in canada an applied general equilibrium approach this paper reports on an applied general equilibrium regional model for canada which is used to investigate the regional effects of taxes earlier literature on regional tax effects is reviewed and the main features of the model are briefly described existing literature on regional tax effects is largely non quantitative and does not discuss several important regional features of taxes such as taxes which are predominantly on products or industries located in particular regions results suggest that regional effects of taxes can be significant and in the canadian case at least do not tend to counterbalance one another in general richer regions tend to lose and poorer regions gain from federal taxes but other regional characteristics such as manufacturing non manufacturing or resource non resource can be important this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

institutions and inflows of foreign direct investment a fuzzy set analysis this study addresses the essential question of causal complexity and diversity related to the influence of institutions on the direct investments fdi of multinational enterprises using a relatively new methodological approach of fuzzy set analysis and 47 host countries from the period 1999 to 2003 the paper analyses how and why countries with different degrees of membership in different institutional constraints either attract or do not attract fdi the findings show that institutional factors have diverse influences similar institutions may even be associated with different outcomes if different regional categories of countries are examined countries may neither be attractive nor unattractive owing to the presence or absence of a single institutional factor instead the outcome usually results from a combination of institutional conditions moreover there typically are several possible paths to a specific outcome the study confirms some of the propositions of previous theory but most importantly it explains why earlier research has provided conflicting conclusions related to institutional factors the study also offers an approach for future international business research to apply fuzzy set methods and develop mid range theories

information learning and wage rates in low income rural areas in this essay we present evidence that employers in rural areas of developing countries have imperfect information with regard to the productivity of heterogeneous workers in addition to obtaining direct measures of the completeness of employer information we consider the implications of information asymmetries for the structure of casual labor markets we then evaluate the extent to which casual labor markets do in fact exhibit these attributes we find that 1 there is adverse selection out of the time rate labor market 2 employers discriminate statistically given two workers with different observed characteristics but the same actual productivity the worker from the group with the higher average productivity will have a higher wage 3 employers exhibit learning over time the extent of employer ignorance is negatively related to labor market exposure on the part of the workers and 4 calorie consumption affects productivity but is not rewarded in the time rate labor market in concluding we argue that an analysis of wage and employment patterns and the implications of these patterns for human capital investment in rural areas of developing countries that ignored the role of information problems could yield misleading conclusions

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

exploring the regional distribution of inbound foreign direct investment in the uk in theory and practice evidence from a five region study fallon g and cook m exploring the regional distribution of inbound foreign direct investment in the uk in theory and practice evidence from a five region study regional studies this paper examines the main factors that attract inbound foreign direct investment fdi at the uk regional level using econometric data from five sample uk regions the south east the west midlands the north west wales and scotland broadly representing the country s regional economic divide the findings indicate that regional and national but not european union level factors linked to several underlying strategic determinants help determine the regional distribution of inbound foreign direct investment and its inter regional variation the paper concludes that governmental policy makers at the national and regional levels can have an important role to play in drawing targeted foreign direct investment inflows to the uk regions fallon g et cook m examiner la distribution regionale de l ide au royaume uni en the

wage gains associated with height as a form of health human capital height is consulted as a latent indicator of early nutrition and lifetime health status height is observed to increase in recent decades in populations where per capita national income has increased and public health activities have grown height is determined by genetic make up and realized in part through satisfactory nutrition and health related care and conditions alternative instrumental variables iv are explored which proxy price and income constraints which are expected to influence the latter reproducible human capital investments in height i report ols and iv estimates of the partial effect of height on log hourly wages in recent national surveys from three countries ghana brazil and the united states i conclude that the human capital productivity effect of height estimated by parent education ivs in the us and ghana are many times larger than the ols estimates and in ghana and brazil the regional price ivs estimates also imply a substantially larger human capital wage effects of height compared with the ols estimates the ols estimates of height effects on wages are dominated by the genetic variation in height and appear to understate substantially the human capital returns to health and nutrition inputs which increase adult height this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

risk financial markets and human capital in a developing country this paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation we examine how child school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural india to pinpoint market imperfections we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic as well as to anticipated and unanticipated income shocks our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self insurance but one which does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average

the effect of corruption on japanese foreign direct investment in an effort to reduce risk and uncertainty we hypothesize that investors avoid countries where high corruption exists we investigate this issue by examining the relationship of levels of perceived corruption on japanese foreign direct investment fdi in both industrialized and emerging economies the analysis presented utilizes a sample of 29 546 investments in 59 countries results suggest that in emerging nations where comprehensive legal and regulatory frameworks do not exist to effectively curtail fraudulent activity corruption serves to reduce fdi managers need to consider the level of perceived corruption in their assessment of any market prior to potential investment

the effect of adolescent experience on labor market outcomes the case of height taller workers receive a wage premium net of differences in family background the disparity is similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps we exploit variation in an individual s height over time to explore how height affects wages controlling for teen height essentially eliminates the effect of adult height on wages for white men the teen height premium is not explained by differences in resources or endowments the teen height premium is partially mediated through participation in high school sports and clubs we estimate the monetary benefits of a medical treatment for children that increases height

income productivity in china on the role of health this study provides empirical evidence regarding the income productivity of health human capital in china we appeal to concepts from human capital theory to support a basic model that treats health as a form of human capital in the income production process our model examines the economic return at the household level from the health of its individual members we estimate this with a longitudinal sample drawn from the china health and nutrition survey chns allowing us to exploit within variation in health and income to address possible unobservables biasing estimates of the impact of health on income in the simple cross sectional setting household income is strongly influenced by the health of its members particularly in rural areas these findings could have important implications for health and economic policy making aimed at reducing the long standing urban rural economic gap and more comprehensively insuring the rural population against health and economic risk

statistical discrimination productivity and the height of immigrants building on the economic research that demonstrates a positive relationship between height and worker ability the author compares wage returns to height for immigrants and for natives to explore possible explanations for the positive wage height gradient using multiple data sets the article presents a robust empirical finding that the wage gains associated with height are almost twice as large for immigrants as for native born individuals this wage relationship occurs because the productivity gap between tall and short immigrants is greater than the productivity gap between tall and short native born workers the author next tests for the possibility that in the relative absence of other sources of information about immigrants employers place more importance on height for immigrants than for native born individuals the evidence does not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination based on height

will a shrink make you richer gender differences in the effects of psychotherapy on labour efficiency this paper provides a first theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of psychotherapy on individual productivity we build a simple model in which a deterioration of mental health endogenously causes a decrease in productivity which is counterbalanced by psychotherapy we test our hypotheses on the british household panel survey data we find that individuals suffering from mental health problems benefit economically from consulting a psychotherapist moreover we find that the returns are higher for men than for women even though women are more likely to seek help

the welfare analysis of a free trade zone intermediate goods and the asian tigers we analyse trade reform among the asean countries which recently began removing all mutual trade barriers the standard method to avoid complete specialisation in traded goods is to distinguish goods both by physical type and place of origin the so called armington assumption this methodology is not suitable for the sort of intermediate goods produced by the asean countries we develop a computational approach in the context of a non armington dynamic general equilibrium model analysing the results of a calibrated version of the model we find that trade liberalisation is generally welfare improving for the asean countries

the effect of population health on foreign direct investment inflows to low and middle income countries this paper investigates the effect of population health on gross inflows of foreign direct investment fdi we conduct a panel data analysis of 74 industrialized and developing countries over 1980 2000 our main finding is that gross inflows of fdi are strongly and positively influenced by population health in low and middle income countries our estimates suggest that raising life expectancy by one year increases gross fdi inflows by 9 after controlling for other relevant variables these findings are consistent with the view that health is an integral component of human capital for developing countries

height and earnings the role of cognitive and noncognitive skills we use large scale register data on 450 000 swedish males who underwent mandatory military enlistment at age 18 and a subsample of 150 000 siblings to examine why tall people earn more we show the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as family background and muscular strength for the height earnings relationship in addition we show that a substantial height premium remains after these factors have been accounted for which originates from very short people having low earnings this is mostly explained by the sorting of short people into low paid occupations which may indicate discrimination by stature

rising food prices and undernourishment a cross country inquiry households welfare in developing countries has been hit by dramatic food prices increases which occurred between 2005 and 2008 in this paper we adopt a partial equilibrium approach to analyze the short time effects of a staple food price increase on nutritional attainments as a measure of welfare the analysis consists of first approximating complete food demand systems and then performing household level micro simulations instead of focusing on a single country profile we provide a more complete snapshot by comparing the evidence through a cross country assessment made possible by the use of nationally representative household surveys comparability is assured by the adoption of the same methodological choices in the treatment of the micro data we find that food price spikes not only reduce the mean consumption of dietary energy but also worsen the distribution of food calories further deteriorating the nutritional status of populations we also discovered that access to agricultural land plays a significant role in ensuring adequate nutritional attainments in rural areas and surprisingly even in urban areas

biological measures of the standard of living when economists investigate long term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product which has occupied center stage for over 50 years in recent decades however scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives this essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures life expectancy morbidity stature and certain features of skeletal remains to understand levels and changes in human well being people desire far more than material goods and in fact they are quite willing to trade or give up material things in return for better physical or psychological health for most people health is so important to their quality of life that it is useful to refer to the biological standard of living biological measures may be especially valuable for historical studies and for other research circumstances where monetary measures are thin or lacking a concluding section ruminates on the future evolution of biological approaches in measuring happiness

the global economy as instituted process the case of central and eastern europe i argue that economic globalization indicated by the tremendous rise in world foreign direct investment fdi in recent decades is not driven simply by investor considerations of economic risk and return but is significantly shaped by the construction of demand for foreign capital by receiving states states signal this demand through the levels of formal and substantive legitimacy they grant to fdi they institutionalize globalization in formal rule as a normatively desirable development strategy states substantiate this commitment by providing domestic and foreign actors with ideational and organizational resources to facilitate fdi to illustrate this argument i use the case of central and eastern europe which was largely closed to global capital before the collapse of communism analyses of quantitative and qualitative data show that substantive legitimacy granted to fdi by host states more than formal regulations determined the size of foreign capital flows into postsocialist countries in the

war and stature growing up during the nigerian civil war the nigerian civil war of 1967 70 was precipitated by secession of the igbo dominated south eastern region to create the state of biafra it was the first civil war in africa the predecessor of many we investigate the legacies of this war four decades later using variation across ethnicity and cohort we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings

sorting by height education and economic outcomes of women in less developed countries abstracttaller height is commonly found to correlate with educational and economic outcomes most studies focus on a relationship to earnings and consider samples from individual countries this p

accounting for the effect of health on economic growth i use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on gdp per capita i employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health which i combine with cross country and historical data on height adult survival rates and age at menarche using my preferred estimate eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log gdp per worker by 9 9 percent and reduce the ratio of gdp per worker at the 90th percentile to gdp per worker at the loth percentile from 20 5 to 17 9 while this effect is economically significant it is also substantially smaller than estimates of the effect of health on economic growth that are derived from cross country regressions

firm and country level trade offs and contingencies in the evaluation of foreign investment the semiconductor industry 1994 2002 this paper examines the joint impact of firm and country level factors on the international plant location decisions of semiconductor firms from 1994 2002 we find that these factors interact to influence the location decisions of firms investing abroad in a given host country firms with more advanced technological capabilities are more likely to make investments in countries with greater technological sophistication but not in politically hazardous countries where they face greater expropriation hazards firms with less advanced technology are more willing to accept a trade off between country level political hazards and technological sophistication firms also trade off own versus other firm experience as sources of critical knowledge regarding the foreign investment environment

bank failures and fiscal austerity policy prescriptions for a developing country abstract this work employs a dynamic general equilibrium model to evaluate the causes and implications of bank insolvencies we apply the model to stylized data from bangladesh a country whose banking system is currently suffering from large stocks of non performing assets the model is used to derive positive conclusions about alternative policy instruments designed to alleviate the impact of these insolvencies a benchmark case is simulated using historical exogenous parameters we then generate a bank failure by assuming that firms cannot service their debt if their interest obligations rise above their anticipated return on capital the public withdraws deposits from the banking system in reaction to worries about defaulting bank assets if banks optimize by restricting credit to risky borrowers these failures can be partially avoided such bank behavior is often prohibited in developing countries so we investigate an active monetary policy that compensates banks for withdrawn deposits the resulting outcome indicates that such a policy can slow the pace of bank failures although at the cost of certain macro imbalances our final simulation imposes a reduction in public spending in order to tighten fiscal policy and thereby reduce budgetary pressure the resulting decline in interest rates eliminates all investor defaults and bank failures we conclude that the combination of compensating monetary policy and restrictive fiscal policy may offer the best way of responding to a bank crisis

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

effects of physical activity on earnings in the brazilian labor market abstract this article investigates the effects of physical activity on earnings in the brazilian labor market analyzing workers aged between 30 and 50 years to that end quantile regression was applied to analyze microdata from the 2008 national household sample survey pnad the results showed that workers who engage in regular physical exercise exhibit better social and economic conditions compared to sedentary individuals sedentary lifestyles are typically more common among female employees than their male counterparts and this is reflected in earnings in the labor market the impact of physical activity on wages varied from 15 0 to 31 0 and was greater among the highest quantiles the lowest salaries were recorded among non white sedentary women

inequality in sub saharan africa new data and new insights from anthropometric estimates reliable information on inequality within countries is highly scarce especially for less developed countries ldcs using anthropometric measures we extend the inequality database for sub saharan africa to no less than 28 countries over six five year periods from 1950 to 1980 and to some 200 regions within those countries in this process we also test in depth the validity of objections against the derivation of inequality measures from height data in a second step we test the determinants of inequality within and between the 200 regions under study our set of explanatory variables includes protein supply cash cropping industrial structure mineral resources distance to the countries capital urbanization education population density and ethnic fractionalization we find that monoculture cash cropping increases inequality whereas diversified cash cropping has the opposite effect

height health and inequality the distribution of adult heights in india this paper explores the relationship between adult heights and the distribution of income across populations of individuals there is a long literature that examines the relationship between mean adult heights and living standards if adult height is set by the balance between food intake and charges to disease in early childhood it is informative about economic and epidemiological conditions in childhood because taller populations are better off more productive and live longer the relationship between childhood conditions and adult height has become an important focus in the study of the relationship between health and wealth here i follow one of the tributaries of this main stream a relationship between income and height at the individual level has implications for the effects of income inequality on the distribution of heights these relationships parallel but are somewhat more concrete than the various relationships between income inequality and health that have been debated in the economic and epidemiological literatures richard g wilkinson 1996 angus deaton 2003 if height is an increasing but concave function of income average height will be negatively related to income inequality richard steckel 1995 income inequality will also have implications for the dispersion of height so that inequality in height might serve as an indicator of inequality of income in the absence of data on the latter just as mean height might serve as an indicator of mean income aravinda m guntupalli and joerg baten 2006 and alexander moradi and baten 2005 differences in height between subpopulations such as lords and vassals or highlanders and lowlanders may also provide information on the distribution of resources between such subpopulations carles boix and frances rosenbluth 2006 in section 2 below i present a theoretical discussion of what to expect in section 3 i provide an analysis of adult heights in india where i can look at the relationship across states between a mean heights and expenditure inequality b inequality in height and expenditure inequality c men s and women s heights the difference in heights between men and women is of considerable importance in its own right india has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world with around 55 percent of young children stunted a leading explanation for this is health discrimination against women vulimiri ramalingaswami urban jonsson and jon rohde 1996 if discrimination starts in early childhood and since all evidence suggests that there are regional differences in the treatment of women there should be clear traces in spatial patterns of relative heights between men and women

fathers employment and sons stature the long run effects of a positive regional employment shock in south africa s mining industry abstracti exploit the unexpected increase in employment in 1975 1976 and 1977 in the south african homelands to compare the long term adult outcomes of children whose fathers benefited from the employment increase to those who did not using a standard difference in difference approach i find that the shock affected males who were either newborn or in utero at the time providing support to the fetal origins hypothesis and showing the importance of mother s nutrition the income increases did not raise household income above the poverty datum line explaining why older individuals were not affected this study provides previously unmeasured individual level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid an era when african living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection