an economic or political kuznets curve this paper examines two closely related empirical hypotheses an economic kuznets curve and a political kuznets curve we find a robust inverted u relationship between income inequality and political development but not one between income inequality and economic development exploring the cross section aspect of the panel data we find that the economic kuznets curve is sensitive to different control specifications and to different functional specifications but the political kuznets curve is robust using dynamic panel data estimation we find that the economic kuznets curve does not hold up intertemporally while the political kuznets curve does

the effects of bailouts and soft budget constraints on the environment this paper investigates the effects of financial relief programs commonly referred to as bailouts on pollution a partial equilibrium soft budget constraint model of the firm is developed to identify the effect of bailouts on the emission decisions of firms the results from the model indicate that the expectation of bailouts increases ex ante emissions a more stringent emissions tax is required to achieve the same level of emissions if bailouts are available than if bailouts are not available however a tradable permit system will maintain the same emissions level if bailouts are available as when bailouts are not available

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

how effective is green regulatory threat governments use green regulatory threat as an instrument to induce voluntary pollution abatement by firms if threats suffice to induce adequate reductions in emissions they may save considerable implementation and monitoring costs however green regulatory threat can only induce emission reductions when firms find the threat credible and do not free ride on other firms abatement effort the effect of regulatory threat can be backed out from the data by conditioning abatement effort on firm characteristics 1 theory suggests a measure of environmental exposure that combines a firm s 1 composition and toxicity of emissions 2 its size and pollution intensity and 3 its location that determines the size of the population at risk furthermore firms abatement effort is conditioned on whether they meet participation and incentive constraints determined by their unabated pollution intensity and unit abatement cost then firms position relative to other firms their rung on the abatement ladder determines their participation in abatement activity

the disposition effect in farmers selling behavior an experimental investigation the identification of the optimal selling time of stored goods is among the most essential economic decisions on a farm beyond monetary aspects behavioral factors influence farmers selling decisions in financial economics the disposition effect is a commonly observed phenomenon it describes the fact that investors hold losing stocks too long while they sell stocks that gained in value too early in the context of agriculture this behavioral bias has not been analyzed thoroughly yet to close this research gap we conducted an incentivized online experiment with 112 farmers from germany the experimental design was based on a well proven experiment from financial economics and adapted to an agricultural decision context where stored goods must be sold farmers were provided information on the uncertain price developments in addition lotteries were conducted to elicit farmers risk attitude probability weighting and loss aversion results indicate that there is a robust disposition effect in farmers selling behavior furthermore more loss averse farmers exhibited a higher realization of gains

toxic release inventories and green consumerism empirical evidence from canada we investigate the empirical relevance of green consumerism as a reaction to the dissemination of information through toxic relase inventories assuming that consumers cannot attribute pollution to individual products from a multi product firm we identify the effect from green consumerism through intra firminter plant spillover effects in pollution abatement when consumers reduce demand equally across all product lines of the multi product firm we subject the predictions from a simple theoretical model to empirical tests using 1993 98 panel data from canada s national pollutant release inventory npri in conjunction with related census data we adjust our analysis for the toxicity of pollutants the empirical results establish that green consumerism works the dissemination of information through toxic release inventories positively affects pollution abatement activities of firms

u shaped female labor participation with economic development some panel data evidence abstract using a panel data of about 130 countries from 1950 to 1980 we use dynamic panel data estimation to demonstrate that the u shaped relationship between feminization of the labor force and real gdp per capita holds up as an intertemporal relationship

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

convenience yield without the convenience a spatial temporal interpretation of storage under backwardation a mathematical programming model of the wheat marketing system of western australia manifests a typical pattern of regionwide stocks held at a negative intertemporal spread measured at the port no stocks are held at a monetary loss in terms of local prices any apparent loss is an illusion from spatial aggregation of stocks and attribution of incentives at one locality to storers at all locations moreover as the premium for immediate delivery at the port rises stocks increase at relatively inaccessible inconvenient locations where prices are low allowing more to be shipped from locations more convenient to the port

why is the labour force participation of women declining in india summary this paper explores the recent fall in female labour force participation and its socio economic determinants in india the major contribution of this paper is to explore both micro and macro level factors which determine female labour force participation rate lfpr to examine the u shape female lfpr by examining the likely income and substitution effects of the real wage increase to identify the sub sectors within manufacturing and service sectors that could create jobs for new female job aspirants and those older women displaced from agriculture in recent years and thus to understand the conditions under which female lfpr could be raised using both macro level and household survey nss data we find that the recent fillip in the process of structural transformation has pushed a large number of females out of agriculture the growing mechanization in agriculture and rising capital intensity in manufacturing sectors together have limited the opportunity for females because of their low education and skill and due to other cultural constraints we also found that the rise in real wages in rural areas and the consequent improvement in the standard of living has produced a strong negative income effect which outweighs the positive substitution effect and as a result female lfpr has declined substantially however with the massive increase in female enrollment in secondary and higher levels of education it could be expected that the substitution effect of the increase in real wage would become stronger if appropriate measures are taken by the government which are suggested

gender differences in marketing styles recent research has found that men trade stocks more frequently than women and receive a lower price as a result the behavioral finance literature attributes this greater trading activity to men s overconfidence women s lack of overconfidence and past agricultural economics research suggest the possibility that women may be better at marketing grain than men this article uses actual transactions of farmers marketing wheat and also finds that men trade more often than women women also sell two weeks later in the marketing year there is no direct effect of gender on price received but by storing longer women receive 1 4 cents bushel less than men on average in contrast to the arguments in previous research we argue that men s greater number of trades can be better explained by men enjoying trading rather than by overconfidence

female labour force participation and economic growth in the south mediterranean countries abstract we investigate the relationship between female labour force participation and economic growth in the south mediterranean countries with a two step methodology of econometric exercise and general equilibrium modelling econometric estimations on female labour participation confirm the u shaped function and the presence of region specific barriers estimations have been employed in a satellite manner to a general equilibrium model for the simulation of i changes in female labour force participation as a result of income developments and ii lowering of region specific barriers to female labour force participation the results suggest that while the first may lead to marginally lower economic growth the second may have a considerable positive impact on growth

land price volatility in a geographically dispersed market historical evidence and theory lead to a hypothesis that land price variation increases with distance to market this hypothesis is tested with county data from five cornbelt states during the period 1969 to 1987 when price changes were unusually large our data support the hypothesis in the 70s prices increased more in the western cornbelt than in the eastern cornbelt in the 80s the western cornbelt experienced the more precipitous price declines our hypothesis explains why great plains farmers have experienced greater financial problems during times of stress than have many other farmers

what explains the stagnation of female labor force participation in urban india female labor force participation rates in urban india between 1987 and 2011 are surprisingly low and have stagnated since the late 1980s despite rising growth fertility decline and rising wages and education levels married women s labor force participation hovered around 18 percent analysis of five large cross sectional micro surveys shows that a combination of supply and demand effects have contributed to this stagnation the main supply side factors are rising household incomes and husband s education as well as the falling selectivity of highly educated women on the demand side the sectors that draw in female workers have expanded least so that changes in the sectoral structure of employment alone would have actually led to declining participation rates

feminization of the labor force the effects of long term development and structural adjustment abstract using crosscountry data pooled for 1985 and 1990 we analyze the relationship between women s share of the labor force and the processes of long term economic development and macroeconomic changes associated with structural adjustment we find that the relationship between long term development and women s share of the labor force is u shaped controlling for the feminization u we also find that structural adjustment policies have led to an increase in feminization of the labor force via worsening income distribution and increased openness

oil and women a re examination abstract in a seminal article ross 2008 reports a negative correlation between oil production and women s representation in the labour force and politics across countries this article re examines these relationships exploiting variations in oil endowments to address endogeneity concerns we confirm that oil production causes decline in women s representation additionally we show that consistent with dutch disease effects oil production decreases women s employment in the traded sector however it also leads to an increase in women s employment in the nontraded sector we explore some social consequences of oil production and show that it results in women marrying earlier and having more children

marketing performance of oklahoma farmers relative to marketing most agricultural commodities the dominant academic paradigm is the efficient market hypothesis that suggests that little profits can be made by trying to time when to sell wheat the paradigm says that farmers will on average receive an average price a view that has been expounded at cooperative extension meetings and in farm press articles is that most farmers receive a below average market price for example at a recent farm bureau meeting the master of ceremonies made the statement producers tend to sell on the bottom third of the market also in a mid march 2001 issue of the progressive farmer d r g a barnaby from kansas state university was quoted as saying maybe that s why most farmers sell in the bottom third of the market batchelor p 25 1 the research question then is do farmers really sell in the bottom third of the market or is this just a clever marketing gimmick by market advisory services the idea of farmers selling in the bottom third of the market is not without theoretical foundation results from behavioral finance find that people have systematic psychological biases brorsen and anderson these biases could result in herding behavior in such a way that the majority could always be wrong a study by slusher based on a narrow survey of indiana corn farmers and conducted in 1986 is the only one that we know of that has addressed the issue of actual farmer perfor

optimal storage and marketing over space and time borrowing from the theory of optimal resource extraction we develop the mechanism guiding efficient commodity storage and marketing over producing regions through the crop year optimal storage occurs at producing areas and time in storage varies directly with distance to market prices grow with interest rates in locations where storage is efficient but more slowly elsewhere which explains why market prices i e prices at the market grow more slowly than interest rates the model is empirically supported by examining storage in the corn belt rates of price growth at various points and quarterly grain marketings

can real option values explain apparent storage at a loss since decisions to sell grain are irreversible waiting to sell grain can have a real option value this real option value may explain why producers appear to store too long a new seasonal mean reversion model is estimated that allows prices to be a random walk with drift within a season but mean reverting across crop years unless prices are extremely low selling before mean reversion begins is optimal thus the real option value of waiting does not explain why some producers seem to store at a loss in the latter part of crop years

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

a model of spatial arbitrage with transport capacity constraints and endogenous transport prices this article solves a high frequency model of price arbitrage incorporating storage and trade when the amount of trade is limited by transport capacity constraints in equilibrium there is considerable variation in transport costs because transport costs rise when the demand to ship goods exceeds the capacity limit this variation is necessary to attract shipping capacity into the industry in turn prices in different locations differ by a time varying amount thus while the law of one price holds it holds because of endogenous variation in transport costs

environmental performance and equilibrium firms or industries ranking in terms of environmental performance may be influenced by equilibrium and not only by ex ante technological characteristics we adopt a natural definition of relative eco efficiency between two industries operating within the same environmental constraint the more eco efficient one is the one that has the higher output level we compare the relative eco efficiency of two technologies characterizing two industries and then of two firms within the same industry we show that all these comparisons depend through the equilibrium on the environmental constraint imposed at the industry level we also show that firm s profitability at the equilibrium depends on its eco efficiency but also on its labour elasticity and permits allocation the more eco efficient firm is not necessarily the more profitable one

growth and poverty evidence for developing countries in the 1980s abstract measures of consumption poverty for a sample of developing countries in the 1980s respond elastically to changes in mean consumption although there is a high variance in poverty outcomes at a given rate of growth there is no sign of systematic effects of growth on inequality