is there a penalty for registered women is there a premium for registered men evidence from a sample of transsexual workers abstract in this paper we study the earnings of transsexual workers using a large administrative sample drawn from the dutch labor force in particular we make two comparisons first we compare transsexual workers to other women and men and find that they earn more than women and less than men second we compare transsexual workers before and after their administrative gender transition and find that male to female transsexual workers earn less as registered women and female to male transsexual workers earn as much if not marginally more as registered men these patterns hold for annual and hourly earnings and do not change when we account for individual fixed effects together our results are consistent with a labor market model in which transsexual workers are discriminated against as a registered female as well as a lgbt worker

intergenerational economic mobility in the united states 1940 to 2000 we estimate trends in intergenerational economic mobility by matching men in the census to synthetic parents in the prior generation we find that mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980 while our estimator places greater weight on location effects than the standard intergenerational coefficient the size of the bias appears to be small our preferred results suggest that earnings are regressing to the mean more slowly now than at any time since world war ii causing economic differences between families to become more persistent however current rates of positional mobility appear historically normal

beauty and the labor market the authors examine the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers ratings of respondents physical appearance plain people earn less than average looking people who earn less than the good looking the plainness penalty is 5 to 10 percent slightly larger than the beauty premium effects for men are at least as great as for women unattractive women have lower labor force participation rates and marry men with less human capital better looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive but the impact of individuals looks is mostly independent of occupation suggesting the existence of pure employer discrimination copyright 1994 by american economic association

earnings instability and earnings inequality of males in the united states 1967 1991 although much research has focused on recent increases in annual earnings inequality in the united states the increases could have come from either of two sources the distribution of lifetime earnings could have become more unequal or the receipt of lifetime earnings could have become more unstable based on an analysis of the 1968 92 panel study of income dynamics we find that lifetime earnings inequality increased during the early 1980s and that earnings instability increased during the 1970s we also examine how these trends are related to changes in the distribution of wages and hours and the returns to education

optimal design for multinomial choice experiments abstract the author derives d optimal designs for main effects multinomial choice experiments using attribute levels as design parameters the design solutions are similar to standard main effects designs except that one attribute is used to manipulate response probabilities the manipulator is key to implementing optimal designs in practice

alcohol availability prenatal conditions and long term economic outcomes this study examines how a policy that sharply increased alcohol availability during 8 5 months affected the labor productivity of those exposed to it in utero compared to the surrounding cohorts the prenatally exposed children have substantially worse labor market and educational outcomes and lower cognitive and noncognitive ability effects on earnings are found throughout the distribution but are largest below the median males are more affected than females consistent with growing evidence that boys are less resilient to early environmental insults the long term effects seem primarily driven by changes in prenatal health rather than changes in the childhood environment

growth rate heterogeneity and the covariance structure of life cycle earnings using u s panel data on adult males i compare the profile heterogeneity model of earnings dynamics in which the earnings experience profile varies across individuals to a competing model in which earnings has a unit root the latter specification enjoys increasing popularity among researchers my analysis questions this favor suggesting the profile heterogeneity model provides a more consistent representation of the data i also provide new estimates of the variation in earnings growth rates previous evidence is from relatively unrepresentative samples individuals one standard deviation above the mean enjoy a 20 30 earnings advantage in just 10 years

labor supply differences between married heterosexual women and partnered lesbians a semi parametric decomposition approach i introduction partnered lesbian women have substantially higher labor supply than married women leppel 2008 tebaldi and elmslie 2006 what might account for the sexual orientation gap in partnered female labor supply everyday conversation and casual empiricism suggests that partnered lesbian women have a stronger attachment to the labor market relative to married women because of their choice to have fewer children than their married counterparts yet this has not been formally analyzed the primary goal of this study is to determine the role observable characteristics particularly children play in explaining the differences in labor supply between partnered lesbian women and married women while empirical research on the determinants of partnered lesbian women s labor supply is limited 1 the determinants of married women s labor supply have been studied in great detail see blundell and macurdy 1999 for a survey of the literature in general married women s labor supply is found to be positively related to own wages negatively related to spouse wages and nonlabor income and negatively related to the presence of children particularly young children in the household 2 importantly the same control variables are not found to have the same effect on married men s labor supply in particular men are not responsive to their wife s earnings and tend to have higher labor supply because of the presence of children these findings are consistent with a traditional division of labor into market and household work which results in married men being viewed as the primary earners and married women being viewed as the secondary earners 3 in particular becker 1981 argues that increasing returns from investments in specific human capital encourages a division of labor in market work and household work among household members the sexual division of labor however arises from intrinsically different comparative advantages of men and women e g in the production of children which would determine the direction of the division of tasks by gender this in turn leads to differences in specific human capital accumulation which reinforces the intrinsically different comparative advantages of men and women even in the face of rising female labor force participation increased divorce rates and lower fertility male and female earnings would not be equalized becker 1985 specifically becker argues that married women with household responsibilities e g child care and food preparation would expend less energy on market work make lower investments in market oriented human capital face lower hourly earnings and choose less demanding jobs occupations than married men even when they work the same number of hours because household responsibilities are time and effort intensive relative to leisure and other nonmarket uses of time by men moreover married women would have lower labor force participation than their husbands because of the lower earnings they would face because of less energy expended on market work and lower investments in market oriented human capital and a full equilibrium could involve complete specialization by married women in household production although married men have increased their time spent on child care production there is strong evidence that married women continue to spend more time on child care production than their spouses bianchi robinson and milkie 2006 drago and lee 2008a 2008b kalenkoski ribar and stratton 2005 2007 lundberg pabilonia and ward batts 2007 in addition the sociology literature argues that married women are more likely to identify themselves in the context of family and market work while married men are more likely to identify themselves in the context of market work alone see e g bielby and bielby 1989 finally there is a large literature that tests the specialization hypothesis bardasi and taylor 2008 daniel 1992 gray 1997 hersch and stratton 2000 kenny 1983 loh 1996 stratton 2002

testing preference formation in learning design contingent valuation using advance information and repetitive treatments policymakers have largely replaced single bounded discrete choice valuation by the more statistically efficient repetitive method double bounded discrete choice and discrete choice experiments repetitive valuation permits classification into rational and irrational preferences 1 a priori well formed 2 consistent nonarbitrary values discovered through repetition and experience 3 consistent but arbitrary values as shaped by preceding bid level and 4 inconsistent and arbitrary values policy valuations should demonstrate behaviorally rational preferences we outline novel methods for testing this in double bounded discrete choice experiments applied to renewable energy premiums in chile

the impact of psychological and human capital on wages historically economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable thus heretofore little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages using data drawn from two different waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect via self esteem and an indirect effect through locus of control on an individual s real wage we find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital both relative wages and human capital contribute to self esteem

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

as time goes by examination of temporal stability across stated preference question formats we evaluate the temporal stability of willingness to pay values obtained from two identical stated preference surveys undertaken in 2004 and 2012 the surveys employ two discrete choice elicitation formats to value reductions in two health endpoints related to tap water consumption and are explicitly designed to make direct comparisons between formats we find no significant differences in real willingness to pay between the two surveys for either format a result that is robust to the structure of heterogeneity used to model respondent preferences findings lend support at least within the context of tap water quality to the temporal transfer of nonmarket benefits over extended time periods

starting point bias in dichotomous choice valuation with follow up questioning abstract follow up questions are frequently used to improve the efficiency of dichotomous choice contingent valuation questionnaires however a number of authors e g 12 16 have noted a significant difference between the wtp distributions implied by initial and follow up question responses this paper investigates starting point bias as one explanation for the phenomenon we develop a model of starting point bias in the context of dichotomous choice questioning with follow up using a monte carlo simulation to illustrate the potential bias imparted to wtp estimates an application is provided based on data from a cv study in northcentral iowa

designing transactions without framing effects in iterative question formats abstract several studies document that iterative question formats used in contingent valuation studies produce anomalies in respondent behavior that appear to threaten the validity of welfare estimates by decomposing iterative question formats into their ascending and descending sequences we show that these anomalies occur only in ascending sequences we describe the conditions under which comparable patterns of behavior are likely to be found in other iterative question formats that begin with a discrete willingness to pay question we then develop a unified explanation of these anomalies using our model of framing based on prospect theory we provide the first head to head test of rival explanations of these behavioral patterns by developing refutable hypotheses for the strategic behavior yea saying anchoring and cost expectations models finally based on our own statistically robust model we show how these anomalies can be eliminated without loss of the statistical efficiency of most iterative question formats

cost efficiency measurement with price uncertainty a dea application to bank branch assessments this paper enhances cost efficiency measurement methods to account for different scenarios relating to input price information these consist of situations where prices are known exactly at each decision making unit dmu and situations with incomplete price information the main contribution of this paper consists of the development of a method for the estimation of upper and lower bounds for the cost efficiency ce measure in situations of price uncertainty where only the maximal and minimal bounds of input prices can be estimated for each dmu the bounds of the ce measure are obtained from assessments in the light of the most favourable price scenario optimistic perspective and the least favourable price scenario pessimistic perspective the assessments under price uncertainty are based on extensions to the data envelopment analysis dea model that incorporate weight restrictions of the form of input cone assurance regions the applicability of the models developed is illustrated in the context of the analysis of bank branch performance the results obtained in the case study showed that the dea models can provide robust estimates of cost efficiency even in situations of price uncertainty

pay differences among the highly paid the male female earnings gap in lawyers salaries this article uses very detailed information on graduates of the university of michigan law school to examine male female pay differences in that population men and women in this population have virtually identical human capital on graduation from law school allowing us to examine carefully the different impact of children and work history on men s and women s careers and earnings taking time from work in order to care for children reduces wages significantly but a rich set of controls including childcare work history school performance and job setting measures still leave one fourth to one third of the earnings gap unexplained

on the stability of age earnings profiles age earnings profiles are compared across three countries japan sweden and the united states dynamic changes in period age and cohort characteristics and permanent differences across countries are discussed observed differences in profiles are explained partly by intertemporal country differences in the labor market situation and partly by institutional differences

the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments abstract this paper provides with a review of the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments dces the growing body of literature on this field serves to emphasize the increasing role that dces are playing in environmental decision making in the last decade the paper attempts to cover the full process of undertaking a choice experiment including survey and experimental design econometric analysis of choice data and welfare analysis the research on this field is found to be intense although many challenges are put forward e g choice task complexity and cognitive effort experimental design preference and scale heterogeneity endogeneity or model uncertainty reviewing the state of the art of dces serves to draw attention to the main challenges that this methodological approach will need to overcome in the coming years and to identify the frontiers in discrete choice analysis

position dependent order effects on the prediction of consumer preferences in repeated choice experiments abstractusing stated choice data collected by experimental design with repeated choice tasks this study developed an approach to quantify the position dependent order effects on the prediction of

sexual orientation and labour relations new evidence from athens greece we use data from the 2008 2009 athens area study aas to provide the first evidence on the relationship between men s sexual orientation and wages in the greek capital athens gay and bisexual men are found to receive significantly lower monthly wages than heterosexual male workers after accounting for demographic and occupational characteristics the estimations reveal that educated gay and bisexual workers face lower wage differentials than less educated gay and bisexual workers which is consistent with the statistical theory of discrimination however wage gaps are significant at all educational attainment levels suggesting that these workers face strong prejudices in the athenian labour market the same pattern holds also across all occupations and sectors furthermore to better understand the determinants of the wage gaps we compare gay bisexual men with both married and unmarried heterosexual men by making these comparisons we are able to disentangle the penalty associated with being unmarr

changes in life cycle earnings what do social security data show a matched sample of social security and current population survey records is used to examine life cycle earnings patterns of white males over the 1951 1976 period estimated direct effects of schooling and experience compare well with other studies but interaction effects with cohort do not younger cohorts exhibit smaller marginal returns to schooling and larger marginal returns to experience but differences between cohorts are very small when demographic factors namely veteran status are controlled direct cohort effects are linear in these data and show no tendency to vary with cohort size

ordering effects and choice set awareness in repeat response stated preference studies we present an experiment designed to investigate the presence and nature of ordering effects within repeat response stated preference sp studies our experiment takes the form of a large sample full factorial discrete choice sp exercise investigating preferences for tap water quality improvements our study simultaneously investigates a variety of different forms of position dependent and precedent dependent ordering effect in preferences for attributes and options and in response randomness we also examine whether advanced disclosure of the choice tasks impacts on the probability of exhibiting ordering effects of those different types we analyze our data both non parametrically and parametrically and find robust evidence for ordering effects we also find that the patterns of order effect in respondents preferences are significantly changed but not eradicated by the advanced disclosure of choice tasks a finding that offers insights into the choice behaviors underpinning order effects

uncovering context induced status quo effects in choice experiments abstract in this study five design dimensions are varied systematically investigating context induced status quo effects in choice experiments additionally two structural complexity measures entropy and the number of attribute level changes are used to capture status quo effects from the similarity between alternatives and the number of trade offs a crucial finding is that the frequency of status quo choices is negatively associated with the number of alternatives indicating preference matching effects by contrast the probability of choosing the status quo increases with a higher number of choice tasks a wider level range and the similarity between alternatives status quo choices are further affected by the current environmental situation perceived by respondents we also find that marginal and non marginal welfare estimates are significantly affected by the choice design one key finding is that the most used choice task format in environmental economics i e two hypothetical and a status quo alternative is likely to increase the propensity to choose the status quo option

ordering anomalies in choice experiments this paper investigates whether responses to choice experiments ces are subject to ordering anomalies while previous research has focussed on the possibility that such anomalies relate to position in the sequence of choice tasks our research reveals that the particular order of tasks matters using a novel experimental design that allows us to test our hypotheses using simple nonparametric statistics we observe ordering anomalies in ce data similar to those recorded in the dichotomous choice contingent valuation literature those ordering effects operate in both price and commodity dimensions and are observed to compound over a series of choice tasks our findings cast serious doubt on the current practice of asking each respondent to undertake several choice tasks in a ce while treating each response as an independent observation on that individual s preferences

trends in intergenerational income mobility previous studies of recent u s trends in intergenerational income mobility have produced widely varying results partly because of large sampling errors by making more efficient use of the available information in the panel study of income dynamics we generate more reliable estimates of the recent time series variation in intergenerational mobility our results which pertain to the cohorts born between 1952 and 1975 do not reveal major changes in intergenerational mobility

early career work experience and gender wage differentials we estimate a wage model that includes an array of variables measuring the fraction of time worked during each year of the career this array fully characterizes past employment experience regardless of how sporadic it has been our model yields substantially higher estimated returns to experience and lower returns to tenure than do models that measure experience cumulatively and use the standard quadratic functional form we find that the data reject the standard model but fail to reject our model furthermore we find that 12 of the male female wage gap is due to differences in the timing of work experience

energy and environmental efficiency of china s transportation sectors under the constraints of energy consumption and environmental pollutions abstract the rapid growth of the economy in china has caused many problems for the country particularly the energy shortage and environmental pollution thus establishing a sustainable development of society has attracted considerable attention in recent years in this paper we evaluate the sustainability efficiency in terms of energy usage and environmental impact by using a new equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis eefdea approach for the first time dea is used in the context of required fixed reductions in both total energy consumption and total environmental pollution which is a realistic context that introduces a zero sum aspect to the problem as part of the analysis the generalized equilibrium efficient frontier eef is constructed based on minimum satisfaction degree maximization of all units considering both minimum and maximum adjustment strategy while most existing studies only minimized the weighted sum reduction finally the sustainability efficiency of transportation sectors of china s 30 main regions is analyzed by using our proposed model the results show that more effective measures should be taken for sustainable development

the sexual orientation wage gap the role of occupational sorting and human capital using data from the 2000 u s census the authors explore two alternative explanations for the sexual orientation wage gap occupational sorting and human capital differences they find that lesbian women earned more than heterosexual women irrespective of marital status while gay men earned less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts results of a oaxaca blinder decomposition indicate that the relative wage advantages observed for some groups of lesbians and gay men were mainly owing to greater levels of human capital accumulation particularly education while occupational sorting had little or no influence the relative wage penalties that were observed in other cases however cannot be attributed either to differences in occupational sorting or to human capital an analysis employing a dinardo fortin and lemieux decomposition which allows for variation in the wage gap at different points along the wage distribution broadly confir

a comment on cost efficiency in data envelopment analysis with data uncertainty abstract in a recent paper by mostafaee and saljooghi mostafaee a saljooghi f h 2010 cost efficiency in data envelopment analysis with data uncertainty european journal of operational research 202 595 603 the authors extend the classical cost efficiency model to address data uncertainty they claim that the upper bound of the cost efficiency can be obtained at extreme points when the input prices appear in the form of ranges in this paper we present our counterexamples and comments on the contention by mostafaee and saljooghi

response strategies and learning in discrete choice experiments this study explores ordering effects and response strategies in repeated binary discrete choice experiments mechanism design theory and empirical evidence suggest that repeated choice tasks per respondent induce strategic behaviour we find evidence that strategic opportunities provided by the order in which choice sets are presented to respondents affect choice decisions strategic response the results suggest however that respondents may solely respond to high cost rather than low cost inconsistencies that is respondents are more cost sensitive and thus have a lower willingness to pay wtp if the same or a similar level of provision was offered in a previous choice set at a lower cost than if it was not yet the cost sensitivity and thus wtp remains unaffected if the same or a similar level of provision was offered in a previous choice set at a higher cost our findings further indicate that cost sensitivity increases and thus wtp decreases when respondents progress through the choice task with this increase decrease lessening as more choice questions are answered possible explanations are value learning and strategic learning

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

an empirical analysis of homosexual heterosexual male earnings differentials unmarried and unequal using data from the 1990 u s census pums 5 the authors present the first large scale study of wage differentials between heterosexual and homosexual men the homosexual sample consisting of gay men in unmarried partnered relationships are estimated to have earned 15 6 less than similarly qualified married heterosexual men and 2 4 less than similarly qualified unmarried partnered heterosexual men the authors interpret these two figures as upper and lower bound estimates of the differential between homosexual and heterosexual men the dual comparison enables the authors to disentangle the penalty to being unmarried from other determinants of the wage differential estimated at 14 1 this variable appears to be the main source of the wage gap

snapshots versus movies empirical studies of the intergenerational inheritance of economic status should use observations on complete lifetime status profiles of parents and children to be consistent with underlying theory but they cannot only snapshots rather than movies on status are currently available in samples estimates of the degree of intergenerational inheritance may therefore be subject to lifecycle biases the paper investigates these in the context of a lifecycle earnings model and shows that these biases may be large that their direction varies and that correction methods suggested hitherto have questionable reliability until more complete data sets become available researchers should be more temperate in the conclusions they draw

procedural invariance testing of the one and one half bound dichotomous choice elicitation method the contingent valuation method for estimating willingness to pay for public goods typically adopts a single referendum question format which is relatively statistically inefficient as an alternative cooper hanemann and signorello 2002 propose the one and one half bound oohb format allowing researchers to question respondents about both a lower and higher limit on project costs thereby securing substantial gains in statistical efficiency using an experimental design we find that responses to oohb valuation questions fail crucial tests of procedural invariance we test various competing models of observed response patterns including strategic misrepresentation of standard preferences and nonstandard models of preference formation

decoy effects in choice experiments and contingent valuation asymmetric dominance while a dominated choice involves a situation in which one option clearly dominates another on all relevant dimensions an asymmetrically dominated choice typically arises where at least two options do not dominate each other and one but not both of those options does dominate a third option we demonstrate that the introduction of such an asymmetrically dominated option can have a significant impact upon choices between non dominated options within the same choice set for non market goods furthermore we show that this effect can then translate into significant impacts upon subsequent valuations for those non dominated options

reducing gain loss asymmetry a virtual reality choice experiment valuing land use change abstract in the majority of choice experiments ces the attributes of non market goods are conveyed to respondents as a table of numeric and or categorical data recent research suggests that respondents may have difficulties evaluating data in this format in the context of a ce eliciting preferences for changes in coastal land use this study uses a split sample experiment to compare standard presentations with virtual reality vr visualisations conveying objectively identical information we find that compared to the standard presentation preferences elicited in vr treatments are less variable and exhibit a significant reduction in asymmetry between willingness to pay wtp for gains and willingness to accept wta for corresponding losses we conjecture that the greater evaluability of the vr presentation reduces respondent judgement error and moderates reliance on the loss aversion heuristic

the impact of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness we examine whether competitiveness in women is influenced by biological factors female participants in a laboratory experiment solve a simple arithmetics task first under a piece rate and then under a competitive tournament scheme participants can then choose which compensation scheme to apply in a third round we find that the likelihood of selecting into the competitive environment varies strongly and significantly over the menstrual cycle and with the intake of hormonal contraceptives the observed patterns are consistent with a negative impact of the sex hormone progesterone on competitiveness we show that the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness is due neither to an impact on performance nor to an impact on risk aversion or overconfidence

school tracking and intergenerational income mobility evidence from the finnish comprehensive school reform abstract this paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on intergenerational income mobility the finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972 1977 replaced the old two track school system with a uniform nine year comprehensive school and shifted the selection of students to vocational and academic tracks from age 11 to age 16 we estimate the effect of this reform on the intergenerational income elasticity using a representative sample of males born between 1960 and 1966 the identification strategy relies on a differences in differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across the country during a six year period the results indicate that the reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by 23 from the pre reform elasticity of 0 30 to post reform elasticity of 0 23

estimating stated preferences with rated pair data environmental health and employment effects of energy programs abstract respondents stated preferences for attributes related to various electricity generation scenarios are analyzed using a series of pairwise ratings multiple observations for each respondent facilitate estimating individual scale parameters scale estimates can identify uninformative rating patterns and make it possible to delete such observations or adjust wtp calculations cross section time series analysis of the data indicates that nonprice attributes increase in salience during the course of the experiment thus later responses may be better indicators of preferences than earlier responses comparisons of polychotomous with dichotomous models indicate that most respondents relative preference ratings are not simply dichotomous but discriminate systematically along the rating scale

estimation using contingent valuation data from a dichotomous choice with follow up questionnaire reply abstract our original article proposed that the two yes no willingness to pay wtp responses produced by this survey format should be viewed as a pair of jointly distributed correlated discrete random variables the comparison model the conventional approach to estimation using these types of data contained a programming error correction alters the results from the comparison model but our original claim that estimation by conventional methods can produce misleading inferences if ours is the appropriate specification still stands this is especially true if negative wtp is precluded when e wtp is calculated

the causes of order effects in contingent valuation surveys an experimental investigation contingent valuation researchers have found that the hypothetical values respondents place on a nested sequence of environmental goods are sensitive to the order in which the goods are presented typically the smallest bundle of goods is valued more highly if presented first than if following more comprehensive bundles such effects appear even when each bundle is valued from an exclusive list or as an alternative to any other so that income and substitution effects are controlled we conduct lab experiments where participants are asked to value sequences of nested goods for purchase from an exclusive list using an incentive compatible becker degroot marschak mechanism we test whether order effects occur in valuation for a induced value goods b actual private goods and c identical private goods that are to be donated to charities we find significant order effects when the goods are valued for own use but not when they are valued for donation

the disappearing gay income penalty abstract since 1995 labor economists have reported on the income disparities between individuals who engage in same sex behavior and those that do not many of these papers report a significant wage penalty while others find no effect but few look at the trend over time we find using national health and examination survey nhanes data from 1988 to 2007 that the income gap has reversed over time from a penalty to a premium

industry performance and structural efficiency measures solutions to problems in firm models abstract it is shown that average unit structural efficiency measures do not measure the level of technical efficiency in a firm model of an industry alternative structural efficiency measures generalized to multiple input and multiple output technologies are presented as a solution to the problem of how to estimate the relative performance of an industry as a whole where reallocation of inputs across firms is not feasible compared to existing measures the proposed measures require additional information therefore the linear programming dea models needed to obtain this information are presented this non parametric approach to relative efficiency measurement is also used to obtain economic efficiency estimates for an industry as a whole without imposing a priori restrictions on the relative input and output weights

economic inequality and intolerance attitudes toward homosexuality in 35 democracies using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the world values survey and national statistics for 35 countries this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality it provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises for professionals and managers the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes on the other hand attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis are seemingly unaffected by economic development in other words economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most these findings have political implications suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy i nglehart s 1987 1990 1997 postmaterialist thesis suggests that liberal values result from democracy economic development and modernization important to this argument is the idea that the prosperity of modern societies allows people to shift their attentionfrommaterialconcernstoso called postmaterialist concerns such as social issues and self expression this shift to postmaterialist values allegedly results in greater social tolerance moreover by focusing on average value differences across country and time the postmaterialist thesis implies that economic prosperity affects the attitudes of citizens in all economic positions within a given nationinmuchthesameway althoughinequalitywithin nationsisnotentirelydiscounted thetheoryassumesthat once economic development reaches a particularly high level inequality lessens to the point that it no longer influences values inglehart 1987 the present research takes issue with the assumption that national economic prosperity affects all members within a nation in a similar manner given the vast differences in economic conditions and life chances according to income group social class and occupation even within rich democracies it is not controversial to argue

the law of one price in data envelopment analysis restricting weight flexibility across firms abstract the law of one price loop states that all firms face the same prices for their inputs and outputs under market equilibrium taken here as a normative condition for efficiency prices this law has powerful implications for productive efficiency analysis which have remained unexploited thus far this paper shows how loop based weight restrictions can be incorporated in data envelopment analysis dea utilizing the relation between industry level and firm level cost efficiency measures we propose to apply a set of input prices that is common for all firms and that maximizes the cost efficiency of the industry our framework allows for firm specific output weights and for variable returns to scale and preserves the linear programming structure of the standard dea we apply the proposed methodology to the evaluation of the research efficiency of economics departments of dutch universities this application shows that the methodology is computationally tractable for practical efficiency analysis and that it helps in deepening the dea analysis

a measure of price advantage and its decomposition into output and input specific effects abstract in this paper we develop a price advantage measure obtained as the difference between efficiency scores computed with quantity based and value based data this measure is interpreted as an increase in the firm s profit rate due to a favourable input and output price environment compared to traditional allocative efficiency measure which uses only the evaluated firm s prices price advantage measure considers prices of peers in the market our main contribution is to show that total price advantage decomposes into the sum of output and input specific price advantages the application of the measure to a french farm s dataset in the context of the successive common agricultural policy reforms aiming at the liberalization of agricultural prices 1992 2013 illustrates our theoretical model

an investigation into sexual orientation discrimination as an explanation for wage differences this study explores the effects of sexual orientation on earnings it is found that ceteris paribus men living with male partners tend to earn less than other men and women living with female partners tend to earn more than other women these earnings differentials tend to vary by region they also vary by education and occupation for men and with the presence of minor children for women in addition the age earnings profiles of women living with female partners tend to be higher flatter and less concave than those of other women

a generalized dea model for centralized resource allocation abstract in this paper we introduced a new generalized centralized resource allocation model which extends lozano and villa s and asmild et al s models to a more general case in order to uncover the sources of such total input contraction in the generalized centralized resource allocation model we applied the structural efficiency to further decompose it into three components the aggregate technical efficiency the aggregate allocative efficiency and re transferable efficiency components the proposed models are not only flexible enough for the central decision maker to adjust the inputs and outputs to achieve the total input contraction but also identify the sources of such total input contraction thereby giving rise to an important interpretation and understanding of the generalized centralized resource allocation model finally an empirical example is used to illustrate the approach

dea ar profit ratios and sensitivity of 100 large u s banks abstract several important dea ar concepts were applied here to banking for the first time this application includes classification sensitivity uniqueness linked cones lcs and profit ratios notably large bank behavior seems to be explained better by profit ratios than by relative efficiency measures of dea efficiency ar efficiency and lc profit ratios were made for a bank panel of the u s s 100 largest banks in asset size from 1986 to 1991 high levels of inefficiency were found as in previous studies classification of the dea efficiency measures identified the inefficient dmus with some positive primal slacks sensitivity analysis of the dea efficiency measures showed that the extreme efficient classification was generally relatively insensitive to errors in the data the ars eliminated i 44 to 60 of the dea extreme efficient dmus and ii all of the banks with unprofitable actual profit ratios some statistical analyses highlight the superiority of the lc profit ratios relative to the ar efficiency measures

coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences economic theories of valuation generally assume that prices of commodities and assets are derived from underlying fundamental values for example in finance theory asset prices are believed to reflect the market estimate of the discounted present value of the asset s payoff stream in labor theory the supply of labor is established by the tradeoff between the desire for consumption and the displeasure of work finally and most importantly for this chapter consumer microeconomics assumes that the demand curves for consumer products chocolates cds movies vacations drugs and so forth can be ultimately traced to the valuation of pleasures that consumers anticipate receiving from these products because it is difficult as a rule to measure fundamental values directly empirical tests of economic theory typically examine whether the effects of changes in circumstances on valuations are consistent with theoretical prediction for example whether labor supply responds appropriately to a change in the wage rate whether compensated demand curves for commodities are downward sloping or whether stock prices respond in the predicted way to share repurchases however such comparative static relationships are a necessary but not sufficient condition for fundamental valuation e g summers 1986 becker 1962 was perhaps the first to make this point explicitly when he observed that consumers choosing commodity bundles randomly from their budget set would nevertheless produce downward sloping demand curves

the crowding out of complex social goods the valuation of ecosystem services to inform natural resource management and development has gained acceptance in many arenas yet contemporary economic valuation is constrained to the appraisal of simple goods that generate benefits that accrue to individuals neglecting complex goods that generate benefits that accrue to society more broadly methodological barriers to the valuation of complex social goods have led to their frequent omission from natural resource management deliberations the prevailing valuation paradigm that focuses on simple individual goods may erode conservation efforts by crowding out the institutions and behaviours that support socially constructed ecosystem service values erosion of these values ultimately harms the environment and society as a whole the institutionalisation of appropriate methods for estimating the value of complex social goods alongside existing methods for valuing simple individual goods within international conservation development and policy making discourses is therefore an important evolution for sustainable natural resource management

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

modeling individual preferences for energy sources the case of iv generation nuclear energy in italy the planned re introduction of nuclear energy in italy was abandoned in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear accident twenty years earlier soon after the chernobyl accident italians had also voted against nuclear energy however a new nuclear energy technology i e fourth generation is under research and development this paper investigates its social acceptance by means of a robust methodology employing 1 choice experiments 2 structural equation modeling and 3 information treatments within an online nation wide survey results show a great deal of preference heterogeneity the majority of the sampled respondents oppose new nuclear plants in italy with some not willing to accept any monetary compensation at all however another segment of respondents more confident that fourth generation nuclear energy goals will be achieved show a modest support towards the implementation of new nuclear projects additional variables were found to affect opposition

sexual orientation and labour supply this is the first study of the effects of sexual orientation on labour supply after discussing various reasons to expect that labour supply could differ by sexual orientation the 2001 current population survey is used to test for differences in both labour supply and labour market status part time full time and not employed it is found that gay men supply less labour than married and unmarried heterosexual men with regard to women it is found that lesbians supply more labour and are more likely to be employed full time than either married or unmarried heterosexual women extensive controls are used and links to the discrimination literature are found

preference anomalies preference elicitation and the discovered preference hypothesis there is wide ranging evidence much of it deriving from economics experiments of anomalies in behaviour that challenge standard preference theories this paper explores the implications of these anomalies for preference elicitation methods because methods that are used to inform public policy such as contingent valuation are based on standard preference theories their validity may be called into question by the anomaly data however on a new interpretation these anomalies do not contradict standard theory but are errors in stated preference that can be expected to disappear as people become more experienced in relevant decision environments we explore the evidence for this interpretation and what implications follow for preference elicitation methodology

anti discrimination or reverse discrimination the impact of changing demographics title vii and affirmative action on productivity this study estimates the changes over time in the relative productivities of minorities and females i find no significant evidence that the productivity of minorities or females decreased relative to that of white males as relative minority and female employment increased during the 1960s and 1970s this study also compares the impact of title vii and affirmative action and presents evidence that title vii litigation has played a significant role in increasing black employment this suggests that the employment of minorities and females has not entailed large efficiency costs and that title vii litigation has had some success in fighting racial discrimination the eeoc has sometimes been credited with opening up new pools of labor that corporations somehow contrived to ignore and occasionally with hastening the breakdown of traditional barriers to labor mobility but in the context of the market s endless search for efficiency these anomalies would have been eliminated anyway leaving only the question of whether they were worth the expenditures compelled by law affirmative action is a net cost to the economy and the true dynamic effects the opportunity cost of all this expense and effort the diminution of competition inefficiencies due to the employment and promotion of marginal labor and the consequent demoralization of good workers can only be a matter of conjecture although they are clearly the most important of all senator orrin hatch 1980

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

biases in standard measures of intergenerational income dependence abstract estimates of the most common mobility measure the intergenerational elasticity can be severely biased if snapshots are used to approximate lifetime income however little is known about biases in other popular dependence measures using long swedish income series we provide such evidence for log linear and rank correlations and rank based transition probabilities attenuation bias is considerably weaker in rank based measures life cycle bias is strongest in the elasticity moderate in log linear correlations and small in rank based measures however there are important exceptions persistence in the tails of the distribution is considerably higher and long distance downward mobility lower than estimates from short run income suggest

on research efficiency a micro analysis of dutch university research in economics and business management we argue that efficiency assessments of academic research should focus on micro units of research production rather than on conventionally employed aggregated macro units and show that such a detailed analysis of research performance provides interesting insights in addition we propose a non parametric methodology that is specially tailored for analyzing the productive efficiency of research it starts from a specification of the managerial objectives of research activities while imposing minimal structure on the typically unknown production technology we illustrate our points by assessing the productive efficiency of research in economics and business management faculties of dutch universities next to measuring productive efficiency we look for specific patterns in efficiency distributions over universities years and areas of specialization in addition we investigate the impact of external funding and the size of research programs on academic research efficiency we argue that our analysis has some interesting policy implications most notably our results show that a micro analysis of research efficiency may yield a more effective allocation of the limited financial resources that are available

adolescent time preferences predict lifetime outcomes this study investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic outcomes we use a swedish longitudinal data set that links information from a large survey on children s time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades our results indicate a substantial adverse relationship between high discount rates and school performance health labour supply and lifetime income males and high ability children gain significantly more from being future oriented these discrepancies are largest regarding outcomes later in life we also show that the relationship between time preferences and long run outcomes operates through early human capital investments

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

position bias in best worst scaling surveys a case study on trust in institutions this paper investigates the effect of physical position on best and worst choices in the bestworst scaling technique although the best worst scaling technique has been used widely in many fields the phenomenon of consumers adoption of processing strategies while making choices has been largely overlooked we examine this issue in the context of consumers perception of trust in institutions to provide information about a new food technology namely nanotechnology and its use in food processing our results show that around half of the consumers used position as a schematic cue when making choices we find the position bias is particularly strong when consumers chose their most trustworthy institution compared to their least trustworthy institution in light of our findings we recommend researchers in the field to be aware of the possibility of position bias when designing best worst scaling surveys we also encourage researchers who have already collected best worst data to investigate whether their data shows such heuristics

firm and industry level profit efficiency analysis using absolute and uniform shadow prices we discuss the nonparametric approach to profit efficiency analysis at the firm and industry levels in the absence of complete price information two new insights are developed first we measure profit inefficiency in monetary terms using absolute shadow prices second we evaluate all firms using the same input output prices this allows us to aggregate firm level profit inefficiencies to the overall industry inefficiency besides the measurement of profit losses the presented approach enables one to recover absolute price information from quantity data we conduct a series of monte carlo simulations to study the performance of the proposed approach in controlled production environments

on visible choice sets and scope sensitivity abstract in this paper we argue that the burgeoning empirical debate over scope sensitivity within contingent valuation studies is fundamentally incomplete in that it has neglected a systematic examination of certain effects of study design upon observed scope sensitivity in particular we highlight the fact that in certain study designs the choice set initially offered or visible to respondents is changed in a stepwise manner as they progress through a valuation exercise while other designs involve advance disclosure regarding the full extent of the final visible choice set prior to any choices or values being elicited the issue of changes in the visible choice set is alluded to by smith j environ econom manage 22 1 71 who identifies this as a primary challenge to kahneman and knetsch s j environ econom manage 22 1 57 well known experimental results kahneman and knetsch contend that it seems highly implausible that this minor procedural change would significantly alter results p 61 but do not test this assertion we present experimental and field tests of the impact upon contingent values of varying the visible choice set through stepwise and advance disclosure these dimensions of design are interacted with changes in the order in which nested goods are presented bottom up versus top down when a stepwise disclosure procedure is adopted the observed scope sensitivity is substantially and significantly affected by the order in which goods are presented but such procedural variance is not observed within advance disclosure designs conjectures regarding the origin and implications of such findings are presented

exploring scale effects of best worst rank ordered choice data to estimate benefits of tourism in alpine grazing commons in many environmental valuation applications standard sample sizes for choice modelling surveys are impractical to achieve one can improve data quality using more in depth surveys administered to fewer respondents we report on a study using high quality rank ordered data elicited with the best worst approach the resulting exploded logit choice model estimated on 64 responses per person was used to study the willingness to pay for external benefits by visitors for policies which maintain the cultural heritage of alpine grazing commons we find evidence supporting this approach and reasonable estimates of mean wtp which appear theoretically valid and policy informative

learning and fatigue effects revisited investigating the effects of accounting for unobservable preference and scale heterogeneity using multiple choice tasks per respondent in discrete choice experiment studies increases the amount of available information however respondents learning and fatigue may lead to changes in observed utility function preference taste parameters as well as the variance in its error term scale they need to be controlled to avoid potential bias a sizable body of empirical research offers mixed evidence in terms of whether these ordering effects are observed we point to a significant component in explaining these differences we show how accounting for unobservable preference and scale heterogeneity can influence the magnitude of observed ordering effects

life cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime income replication and extension for sweden we apply haider and solon s generalized errors in variables model to swedish income tax data to produce estimates of the association between current and lifetime income our estimates demonstrate strong life cycle patterns this implies that the widespread use of current income as a proxy for lifetime income leads to inconsistent parameter estimates i e life cycle bias even when the proxy is used as the dependent variable estimates for comparable cohorts of swedish and american men demonstrate surprising similarities there are however significant gender and cohort differences in this association that lead to statistically significant and quantitatively meaningful differences in life cycle biases

cost efficiency in data envelopment analysis under the law of one price abstract to impose the law of one price loop restrictions which state that all firms face the same input prices kuosmanen cherchye and sipilainen 2006 developed the top down and bottom up approaches to maximizing the industry level cost efficiency however the optimal input shadow prices generated by the above approaches need not be unique which influences the distribution of the efficiency indices at the individual firm level to solve this problem in this paper we developed a pair of two level mathematical programming models to calculate the upper and lower bounds of cost efficiency for each firm in the case of non unique loop prices while keeping the industry cost efficiency optimal furthermore a base enumerating algorithm is proposed to solve the lower bound models of the cost efficiency measure which are bi level linear programs and np hard problems lastly a numerical example is used to demonstrate the proposed approach

lifetime income and housing affordability in singapore most commonly used measures of housing affordability are essentially short run indicators that compare current income with house prices or housing costs despite the emphasis in the literature on t

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

stability of willingness to pay for coastal management a choice experiment across three time periods a key assumption of stated preference methods is that individuals have well formed preferences that are robust over time both the discovered and constructed preference perspectives imply this is not necessarily the case there can be a large situational component to expressed preferences that add to the uncertainty of sampling error most non market valuation studies only collect data from one point in time so the degree of temporal variability cannot be tested test retest studies that provide data from two points in time generally find significant differences in preference structure and willingness to pay wtp in this study we test stability of wtp for beach erosion management using a fully ranked discrete choice experiment survey with not one but two retests over a six month period we find that stability does not improve with the additional repetition as the preference discovery hypothesis implies it might wtp confidence intervals overlap but the models are significantly different at each point in time even after allowing for variation in choice error either the survey did not facilitate sufficient preference discovery or preferences were reconstructed however respondents with high scores of self reported certainty in their choices in the first survey had significantly more stable wtp estimates

dynamic learning and context dependence in sequential attribute based stated preference valuation questions a hybrid stated preference model is presented that combines the referendum contingent valuation response format with an experimentally designed set of attributes a sequence of valuation questions is asked to a random sample in a mailout mail back format econometric analysis shows greater discrimination between alternatives in the final choice in the sequence and the vector of preference parameters shifts lead and lag choice sets have a structural influence on current choices and unobserved factors induce positive correlation across the responses these results indicate that people learn about their preferences for attributebased environmental goods by comparing attribute levels across choice sets

learning design contingent valuation ldcv noaa guidelines preference learning and coherent arbitrariness we extend the contingent valuation cv method to test three differing conceptions of individuals preferences as either i a priori well formed or readily divined and revealed through a single dichotomous choice question as per the noaa cv guidelines k arrow r solow p r portney e e leamer r radner h schuman report of the noaa panel on contingent valuation fed reg 58 1993 4601 4614 ii learned or discovered through a process of repetition and experience j a list does market experience eliminate market anomalies q j econ 2003 41 72 c r plott rational individual behaviour in markets and social choice processes the discovered preference hypothesis in k arrow e colombatto m perleman c schmidt eds rational foundations of economic behaviour macmillan london st martin s new york 1996 pp 225 250 iii internally coherent but strongly influenced by some initial arbitrary anchor d ariely g loewenstein d prelec coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences q j econ 118 1 2003 73 105 findings reject both the first and last of these conceptions in favour of a model in which preferences converge towards standard expectations through a process of repetition and learning in doing so we show that such a learning design cv method overturns the stylised facts of bias and anchoring within the double bound dichotomous choice elicitation format

the influence of task complexity on consumer choice a latent class model of decision strategy switching the literature indicating that person context and task specific factors cause consumers to utilize different decision strategies has generally failed to affect the specification of choice models used by practitioners and academics alike who still tend to assume an utility maximizing omniscient indefatigable consumer this article 1 introduces decision strategy selection within a maintained compensatory framework into aggregate choice models via latent classes which arise because of task complexity 2 it demonstrates that within an experimental choice task the model reflects changing aggregate preferences as choice complexity changes and as the task progresses the import of these findings for current practice model interpretation and future research needs is examined

designing choice sets for stated preference methods the effects of complexity on choice consistency abstract we vary the complexity of choice sets used in stated preference methods to evaluate the impact on choice consistency we define five measures of complexity that capture either the amount of information or the correlational structure of information in a choice set using these measures as randomly assigned treatments in a large experiment we analyze the consistency of respondents choices using a heteroskedastic multinomial logit model we find that i all of our measures of choice set complexity affect choice consistency ii changes in the correlational structure of information have the largest impact on choice consistency and iii choice complexity significantly distorts welfare estimates our results confirm economists initial worry that moving from contingent valuation to conjoint methods will increase complexity induced choice inconsistency however our analysis also shows that these negative impacts may be mitigated if precautions are taken at the design and estimation stages of stated preference methods

lifetime earnings inequality in germany we employ german social security records to investigate intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality and mobility of yearly earnings for 35 cohorts starting with the birth year 1935 our main result is a striking secular rise of intragenerational inequality in lifetime earnings west german men born in the early 1960s are likely to experience about 85 more lifetime inequality than their fathers in contrast both short term and long term intragenerational mobility are stable longer unemployment spells of workers at the bottom of the distribution of younger cohorts contribute to explaining 20 40 of the overall increase in lifetime earnings inequality

preference uncertainty in non market valuation a fuzzy approach in this article we consider uncertain preferences for non market goods but we move away from a probabilistic representation of uncertainty and propose the use of fuzzy contingent valuation we assume that a decision maker never fully knows her own utility function and we treat utility as a fuzzy number the methodology is illustrated using data on forest valuation in sweden fuzzy contingent valuation provides estimates of resource value in the form of a fuzzy number and includes estimates obtained using a standard probabilistic approach