cost sharing design matters a comparison of the rebate and deductible in healthcare since 2006 the dutch population has faced two different cost sharing schemes in health insurance for curative care a mandatory rebate of 255 euros in 2006 and 2007 and since 2008 a mandatory deductible using administrative data for the entire dutch population we compare the effect of both cost sharing schemes on healthcare consumption between 2006 and 2013 we use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the fact that persons younger than eighteen years old neither face a rebate nor a deductible our fixed effect estimate shows that for individuals around the age of eighteen a one euro increase of the deductible reduces healthcare expenditures 18 eurocents more than a euro increase of the rebate these results demonstrate that differences in the design of a cost sharing scheme can lead to substantial different effects on total healthcare expenditure

do better schools matter parental valuation of elementary education the evaluation of numerous school reforms requires an understanding of the value of better schools given the difficulty of calculating the relationship between school quality and student outcomes i turn to another method and use house prices to infer the value parents place on school quality i look within school districts at houses located on attendance district boundaries houses then differ only by the elementary school the child attends i thereby effectively remove the variation in neighborhoods taxes and school spending i find that parents are willing to pay 2 5 percent more for a 5 percent increase in test scores this finding is robust to a number of sensitivity checks

does asymmetric information matter in the early insurance market evidence from the auto insurance market in the late 1960s the performance of automobile insurance declined dramatically in japan in spite of rapid growth in the diffusion rate and the premiums were sharply raised several times in order to improve the situation this observation indicates the possible presence of adverse selection death spiral and provides an ideal situation for assessing informational asymmetry using bodily injury liability bil insurance data from 46 japanese prefectures over the period 1966 to 1975 this article tests two hypotheses of adverse selection i high risk drivers were more likely to join the bil insurance market and ii sharp premium increases drove low risk policyholders away various empirical analyses show that there is little evidence for either type of adverse selection we also test whether a risk misperception hypothesis can explain our results and find some evidence that the population density have a significantly positive impact on the demand for bil insurance an earlier version of this artic

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

trade ecologically unequal exchange and colonial legacy the case of france and its former colonies 1962 2015 abstract the role of trade in global environmental change is receiving increasing attention and there is a lively debate about ecologically unequal exchange eue little is known however about the role of colonial legacy for the evolution of physical trade patterns this study provides empirical evidence on the basis of a systematic evaluation of global trade data we quantify in physical and monetary terms the development of trade relations between france its former colonies and the rest the world from the immediate post colonial period until 2015 we use a set of physical trade indicators including physical trade balance and terms of trade to analyse differences in trade patterns and eue the results indicate that colonial ties were very strong in the 1960s but thereafter quickly diminished we find strong evidence for eue between france and its former colonies in the post colonial period and that the colonial factor explains eue between centre and peripheries better than income differences until the 1970s in recent decades colonial legacy increasingly vanished our findings corroborate that socio political factors and in particular colonial legacy play an important role for eue relations and that they deserve more attention in quantitative empirical research on trade

do informal risk sharing networks crowd out public voluntary health insurance evidence from vietnam many governments in low income countries have promoted voluntary health insurance schemes in recent years with the principal aim of improving access to services amongst those working in the informal economy few attempts to understand demand for such schemes exist particularly in light of the importance of informal social security arrangements for many households a model of demand for health insurance is developed reflecting this context and estimated using data from vietnam the results show that informal financial networks may crowd out government promoted health insurance implications for theory and policy are discussed

how effective is lifetime health cover in raising private health insurance coverage in australia an assessment using regression discontinuity the australian government introduced three major private health insurance policy initiatives in recent years these are in chronological order i the private health insurance incentives scheme phiis which imposes a tax levy on high income earners who do not have private health insurance and provides a means tested subsidy schedule for low income earners who purchase phi ii a 30 premium rebate for all private health insurance policies to replace the means tested component under phiis and iii lifetime health cover which permits a limited form of age related risk rating by insurance funds together these policy changes have been effective in encouraging the uptake of phi the percentage of the population covered by phi rose from 31 in 1999 to 45 at the end of 2001 the difficult issue however is in disentangling the effects of the three policy changes given that they were introduced in quick succession this article attempts to evaluate the effect of lifetime health cover using a regressi

the medicaid notch labor supply and welfare participation evidence from eligibility expansions i assess the impact of losing public health insurance on labor market decisions of women by examining a series of medicaid eligibility expansions targeted toward young children these targeted expansions severed the historical tie between afdc and medicaid eligibility the reforms allowed a mother s earnings to increase without losing public health insurance for her young children increasing the income limit for medicaid resulted in a decrease in afdc participation and an increase in labor force participation among these women the effects were large for ever married women and negligible for never married women

tracing the impacts of a northern open economy on the global environment the globalization of the world economy has increased resource flows around the planet raising pressures on the environment historically northern industrialized economies have been responsible for the majority of resource consumption while developing countries have suffered the associated social and environmental impacts this article analyzes the extra territorial responsibility of the basque economy europe to illustrate the responsibility of northern open economies towards the global environment to do this we i analyze the material and energy flows of the basque economy their source and impacts on other regions of the world ii study the impact of the economic and investment activities of basque companies abroad and iii examine together with other paradigmatic examples three case studies from latin america east africa and southeast asia that represent the liabilities of northern economies in the global south this approach allows us to connect production and consumption processes in affluent countries with associated socio ecological impacts in the extraction frontiers in order to better understand and potentially transform current economic patterns and their consequences in addition the study indicates how to bridge the gap between local and global scales creating a useful approach to raising social awareness and informing public policies in resource intensive societies

the role of income and health risk in the choice of health insurance evidence from australia abstract health insurance choice is investigated using individual data from australia where all people faced a common limited set of possible health insurance policies the data cover two separate regimes one in which insurance choice was for a more generous level of coverage and one in which the choice was a more dramatic one between insurance and no insurance coverage in determining health insurance choice the results indicate a major role for income a major role for premium notably in the first regime and a minor role for observed factors related to health risk aside from age and sex

footprints in the cotton fields the industrial revolution as time space appropriation and environmental load displacement this paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of natural space and labor time underlying the economic success of the british textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production respectively estimates are made of the amount of british land and labor that were saved by displacing fibre production to north america by comparing inputs of land and labor in the textile exports of england with those in some commodities imported from its colonial periphery and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates estimates are also made of unequal exchange using such methods it is possible to bring together the marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time on one hand with the more recent concern with ecological footprints on the other

global effects of national biomass production and consumption austria s embodied hanpp related to agricultural biomass in the year 2000 global trade of biomass related products is growing exponentially resulting in increasing teleconnections between producing and consuming regions sustainable management of the earth s lands requires indicators to monitor these connections across regions and scales the embodied human appropriation of npp ehanpp allows one to consistently attribute the hanpp resulting from production chains to consumers hanpp is the sum of land use induced npp changes and biomass harvest we present the first national level assessment of embodied hanpp related to agriculture based on a calculation using bilateral trade matrices the dataset allows 1 the tracing of the biomass based products consumed in austria in the year 2000 to their countries of origin and quantifying the hanpp caused in production and 2 the assigning of the national level hanpp on austria s territory to the consumers of the products on the national level the dataset is constructed along a consistent system boundary between society and ecosystems and can be used to assess austria s physical trade balance in terms of ehanpp austria s ehanpp trade balance is slightly negative imports are larger than exports import and export flows are large in relation to national hanpp our findings show how the ehanpp approach can be used for quantifying and mapping the teleconnections related to a nation s biomass metabolism

unravelling the argument for bioenergy production in developing countries a world economy perspective this paper offers a critical look at how energy security food and agriculture and climate change oriented international organizations frame biomass energy production in developing countries in particular ethanol production in brazil using the world economy system as a theoretical lens the paper raises a concern as to whether the way these global institutions frame bioenergy s role in developing regions manifests energy and ecological inequalities between the core and the periphery as well as creates internal contradictions that perpetuate unequal exchange embedded in the system simultaneously these organizations frame brazil as a semi peripheral state that while successful in finding a niche concurring with the core s demand for cheap energy and cost effective decarbonization strategies is not necessarily a suitable role model for the periphery s socio economic development

public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures this article studies the determinants of the willingness to pay wtp for long term care ltc insurance coverage two alternatives are considered one compulsory financed through taxes the other purchased on a voluntary basis and paid through a premium wtp was elicited through open ended contingent valuation within a survey conducted in the italian region emilia romagna about ltc population needs we model information on individual wtp as a two stage process where respondents first establish their interest for ltc cover then state their wtp results show that interest and wtp are influenced by different variables and that differences arise also between the wtp for public and private coverage

caloric unequal exchange in latin america and the caribbean the existence of an unequal exchange between rich and poor countries has been well studied in the literature explained by differences in labour costs that were reflected in the prices of traded goods research has also demonstrated that the failure to include environmental impacts in prices of traded goods concealed an ecologically unequal exchange this paper contributes to the discussion with the newly coined concept of caloric unequal exchange that defines the deterioration of terms of trade in food in units of calories exports and imports to and from latin america and the caribbean are analysed for the period 1961 through 2011 in volume value and calories for different groups of products the study concludes that although calories exported by the region to the rest of the world are more expensive than those imported the ratio is deteriorating over time this trend is found to be dependent of the trading partner involved the region is helping the rest of the world in supplying their diets at a lower cost a side result is that globalisation is homogenising diets over time concentrating most food consumption in a reduced number of products and therefore increasing interdependency among countries and affecting food security

semiparametric estimation of selection models some empirical results among the central theoretical developments in the econometric analysis of nonexperimental microeconomic data has been the analysis of selectivity bias following the work of james heckman 1974 statistical techniques were developed in the 1970s to consistently estimate the parameters of these models one potential drawback to the application of these techniques is their sensitivity to the assumed parametric distribution of the unobservable error terms in the model in recent years a number of estimation methods for selection models have been developed which do not impose parametric forms on error distributions these methods are termed semiparametric since only part of the model of interest the regression function is parametrically specified while the statistical theory of these semiparametric estimators has received much attention practical applications of the methods are lacking an exception being the paper by joel horowitz and george neumann 1987 in this paper we use semiparametric methods to reanalyze data on the labor supply of married women first studied by thomas mroz 1987 using parametric methods the object of this reanalysis is to determine whether mroz s results are sensitive to his parametric assumptions

canada and the gold standard balance of payments adjustment 1871 1913 list of tables and figures preface 1 introduction 2 the standard neoclassical specie flow mechanism 3 a new view of gold standard adjustment 4 an empirical overview 5 statistical tests of goods and asset market adjustments 6 evidence on the process of balance of payments adjustment 7 some further evidence on structure and timing 8 canada s balance viner and his critics 9 the theoretical implications of capital mobility 10 canada s balance of indebtedness reinterpretating the historical evidence 11 conclusions how the gold standard worked appendices references index

payments for ecosystem services as commodity fetishism abstract payments for ecosystem services pes economically reward resource managers for the provision of ecosystem services and are thus characterised by i an ecological function subject to trade ii the establishment of a standard unit of exchange iii and supply demand and intermediation flows between those who sell and buy ecosystem services this paper departs from the term commodity fetishism broadly understood as the masking of the social relationships underlying the process of production to illuminate three invisibilities in the commodification of ecosystem services firstly we argue that narrowing down the complexity of ecosystems to a single service has serious technical difficulties and ethical implications on the way we relate to and perceive nature secondly the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services since it requires that a single exchange value is adopted for trading finally we suggest that the process of production exchange and consumption of ecosystem services is characterised by power asymmetries which may contribute to reproducing rather than addressing existing inequalities in the access to natural resources and services

private sector training and graduate earnings this paper uses a survey of british graduates to estimate the impact of employer provided training on the earnings of men and women graduates the results indicate that although the training impact is reduced after controlling for endogeneity some forms of training have a considerable impact however there are substantial gender differences in the earnings impact of various typ es of training moreover men graduates are more likely to receive training than otherwise identical women

evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees older than age 40 this discontinuity in a firm s training cost is exploited to identify the tax deduction s effects on training participation and of training participation on wages the results show that the training rate of workers just above age 40 is 15 20 higher than that of workers just below age 40 this difference mainly results from the postponement of training and is not a stimulating effect of the measure the two stage least squares estimate of the wage effect of training is not statistically different from zero

the role of exports fdi and imports in development evidence from sub saharan african countries the disappointing economic performance of sub saharan african ssa economies in the late 1980s prompted reforms in foreign trade and foreign direct investment fdi in the early 1990s using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach and pedroni panel estimation procedures that allow for heterogeneity this study found that exports and fdi have a significant impact on economic growth granger type causality tests show the interrelatedness of exports fdi imports and income variables the results also provide evidence of a two stage causal chain of exports imports and income this article calls for more market oriented policy reforms in ssa countries

antitrust and higher education was there a conspiracy to restrict financial aid in 1991 the u s justice department s antitrust division accused mit and the ivy league schools of fixing prices the schools claimed that their cooperative behavior enabled them to concentrate financial aid on needy students and did not affect price we analyze the empirical determinants of tuition and find no evidence that the schools agreement raised price we also analyze the appropriate application of the antitrust laws to nonprofit institutions and conclude that in the absence of adverse price or output effects the justification for the collective action should be considered under the rule of reason

commercial and biophysical deficits in south america 1990 2013 abstract this article analyses the physical trade balances ptb of five south american economies since 1990 both exports and imports measured in tonnes increased but exports were consistently much larger than imports such large physical trade deficits ptd persisted throughout the 1990s and 2000s export prices of primary goods increased but by 2013 export prices had declined and the exports could no longer pay for imports countries started to show commercial trade deficits in money terms these findings hold for all the south american countries analysed and they show that the optimism generated by the improving terms of trade in south america at the beginning of the 21st century was premature first there were ptds even in the boom years second the deterioration in the terms of trade after 2012 was accompanied by a counterproductive deficit in the monetary trade balance it is counterproductive because in principle it leads to greater external debts or to outflows of currency reserves it can also create pressure to increase physical exports we argue that deficits in the monetary trade balances tend to be compensated by increasing the deficit in the ptb which can lead to enhanced environmental pressures and therefore to local protests

linking political ecology with ecological economics in tree plantation conflicts in cameroon and ecuador abstract industrial tree plantations are rapidly expanding worldwide and notably causing a growing number of conflicts between companies and local populations such conflicts the focus of the article have been neglected by ecological economists although there is a proliferation of related reports by environmental non governmental organizations this paper uses empirical evidence to show how elements of political ecology and ecological economics can be combined for understanding the languages of valuation deployed in tree plantation conflicts in southern countries combining qualitative fieldwork on a cameroonian rubber plantation and an ecuadorian eucalypt plantation with a methodological framework taken from the study of social metabolism we find that both conflicts although with different emphasis arise because of land and biomass appropriation ground clearing pollution from agrochemicals and water shortage and are expressed as conflicts on valuation the metabolism of such tree plantations through the exchanges of materials with the local environment explains the bio physical basis of such conflicts in the cameroon case resistance is mainly sporadic and individual while in ecuador a grassroots organization has been able to respond to rural demands in a structured way both patterns of resistance are found in other present day resource extraction conflicts

mexico and export led growth the porfirian period revisited this paper examines mexico s development experience during the golden age of export led growth in latin america propelled by liberal reforms under the porfirio diaz regime 1877 1910 mexico s exports expanded at unprecedented rates and this is widely believed to have brought about rapid growth and far reaching structural changes to the domestic economy this paper questions this view using a new and more comprehensive data set it argues that buoyant export performance had relatively little impact on key macroeconomic and sectoral indicators the pre 1911 mexican experience is thus shown to be quite distinct from that of other large primary producing countries such as argentina and canada where rapid economic growth was largely export led a distinctive feature of the mexican economy during the 1877 1911 period was the rapid

material implication of chile s economic growth combining material flow accounting mfa and structural decomposition analysis sda abstract over the last three decades the economic integration of the chilean economy into global markets has been taking place at a rapid pace for example in 1986 exports represented 29 of gdp while in 1996 they had increased to 38 of gdp this period of time was characterized by strong economic growth with an average annual growth rate of about 10 from a physical perspective material requirements more than doubled from 220 to 500 million tons of direct material inputs dmi during the same decade the rate of material growth requirements was around 13 per year the main objective of this study is to explain the changes in dmi by using a structural decomposition analysis sda the changes in material flow accounting mfa were broken down into the effects caused by changes in resource use per unit of output material intensity effect changes between and within sectors structural change effect changes in the composition of final demand mix effect changes due to shifting shares of domestic final demand and export categories category effect and finally changes in the overall level of economic activities level effects the results as a percentage of the total level of dmi used in 1986 indicate that economic growth was the major source of material changes 109 the material intensity and category effects explained 31 and 14 of the increase respectively the increase in the material intensity is mainly due to a declining quality of ores in copper production however these components were partly compensated by the structure 14 and mix 13 effects therefore for a southern american country such as chile the main causes of these changes in material consumption have been a combination of the nature of economic growth along with an increase in export production and material intensity of production

valuation languages along the coal chain from colombia to the netherlands and to turkey environmental goods and bads are accumulated and unequally distributed along the coal supply chain producing environmental injustices where actors deployed values and representations of coal to either resist or legitimize its extraction and consumption this paper analyzes those valuation languages along the coal chain and their relationships with the territory where coal is extracted and burned the paper examines and compares the coal chains between colombia netherlands and colombia turkey assessing the various dimensions of the ecological distribution conflicts the coal chain is analyzed through different layers and scales to identify the valuation languages along both coal chains semi structured interviews and secondary data analysis were conducted discourse analysis methodologies were used to determine the frequency and relevance of the valuation languages results show that multiple valuation languages appear which are peculiar to each country and to the economic and political contexts in which the different stages of coal chain are embedded environmental justice actions taken along the coal chain with the focus on acknowledging these multiple valuation languages are also discussed in conclusion the analysis reveals that these actions depend on the willingness of social actors to give up or negotiate their valuation languages or on the power to impose them

logging conflicts in southern cameroon a feminist ecological economics perspective abstract growing attention has been paid to gender in ecological economics political ecology and development studies but a focus on gender in resource extraction conflicts is still rare this article explores women led resistance movements to commercial logging in south eastern cameroon focusing on the moabi tree baillonella toxisperma the latter provides oil medicine and other non timber products and use values to local forest societies and particularly to women resistances arise because most socio environmental costs of the international logging trade are imposed on the rural populations and especially on women of the extractive regions the aim of this paper is to analyze the root causes of the gender structure of such mobilisations as well as the impacts on gender relations induced by such resource extraction conflicts after proposing a typology of different environmental currents and their gender counterparts this paper focuses on the gender construction of local bantu societies taking as a point of departure paola tabet s thesis that masculine control over production tools is the objective factor revealing the sexual division of work in our case study we found that the men s control over technology not only highlights the sexual work division but also the gendered division of access rights to natural resources thereby we argue that the sexual division of access rights and work revealed through differentiated control over technology are two key institutions explaining the gendered structure of local mobilizations we then discuss the empowerment allowed by the new forms of women s organizations with a particular focus on the appropriation of new production tools by women this highlights a non western form of environmental feminism

preference heterogeneity and selection in private health insurance the case of australia a basic prediction of theoretical models of insurance is that if consumers have private information about their risk of suffering a loss there will be a positive correlation between risk and the level of insurance coverage we test this prediction in the context of the market for private health insurance in australia despite a universal public system that provides comprehensive coverage for inpatient and outpatient care roughly half of the adult population also carries private health insurance the main benefit of which is more timely access to elective hospital treatment like several studies on different types of insurance in other countries we find no support for the positive correlation hypothesis because strict underwriting regulations create strong information asymmetries this result suggests the importance of multi dimensional private information additional analyses suggest that the advantageous selection observed in this market is driven by the effect of risk aversion the ability to make complex financial decisions and income

sources of training and their impact on wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth from 1986 to 1990 the author investigates the wage impact of various sources of training among them company training programs apprenticeships business schools vocational and technical institutes correspondence courses and seminars outside the workplace time spent in training of whatever kind apparently did not affect 1990 wage levels the incidence of two kinds of training however company training and seminars outside work was positively related to wage levels as well as to wage change between 1986 and 1990 that is workers who undertook such training enjoyed higher wages than those who did not time spent in vocational schools was also positively associated with wage change though not with 1990 wage levels the other forms of training had no apparent impact on either wage levels or wage change

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

demand for health a generalised grossman model the demand for health and medical care is analysed within a generalised grossman type health investment model its underlying assumptions are shown to differ from those employed earlier in a manner which avoids some of the criticisms levelled at grossman s model the comparative static predictions of the generalised model are examined and it is demonstrated that most previous health investment models are derivable from it also the present model is applicable to a new wider range of problems thus increasing the scope of economic explanations of health behaviour

ecological economics marxism and technological progress some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchange abstract almost regardless of ideological persuasion the seemingly self evident concept of technological progress inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth the increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power i discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what technology really is technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value while marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

shipbreaking at alang sosiya india an ecological distribution conflict article i nfo article history more than 80 of international trade in goods by volume is carried by sea the shipping industry constitutes a key element in the infrastructure of the world s social metabolism ocean going ships are owned and used for their trade by developed countries but are often demolished together with their toxic materials in developing countries ship breaking is the process of dismantling an obsolete vessel s structure for scrapping or disposal the alang sosiya yard india one of the world largest shipbreaking yards is studied here with particular attention to toxic waste management ship owners and ship breakers obtain large profits dumping the environmental costs on workers local farmers and fishers this unequal distribution of benefits and burdens due to an international and national uneven distribution of power has led to an ecological distribution conflict the controversy at the indian supreme court in 2006 over the dismantling of the ocean liner blue lady shows how the different languages of valuation expressed by different social groups clashed and how a language that expresses sustainability as monetary benefit at the national scale dominated shipbreaking in the developing world is not just an externality but a successful case of cost shifting or else profit accumulation by contamination

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange articulating world system theory and ecological economics abstract the focus of this paper is on how an ecological perspective might provide us with an analytically more precise way of defining unequal exchange it is only by looking at the ecological conditions of human economies that we can adequately conceptualize the mechanisms which generate inequalities in distribution considerations of market power aside neoclassical economic ideology has dispelled all possible criteria for assessing a market transaction as unequal or unfair one way to assess the occurrence of unequal exchange may be to look at the direction of net flows of energy and materials concrete productive potential but without falling into the trap of equating productive potential with economic value on the contrary it can be analytically demonstrated that unequal exchange emerges from a kind of inverse relationship between productive potential and economic value the notion of a reasonable market price conceals the fact that what is being exchanged are intact resources for products representing resources already spent if we consider longitudinally along the production process any given set of fuels and raw materials destined to be transformed into a given product plus waste its content of available energy will be inversely related to its utility or price in other words the more of its original energy that has been dissipated the higher its price this means that production i e the dissipation of resources will continuously be rewarded with ever more resources to dissipate generating ecological destruction and global core periphery inequalities as two sides of the same coin

are tax subsidies for private medical insurance self financing evidence from a microsimulation model this paper develops an empirical strategy to estimate whether subsidies to private medical insurance are self financing in countries where public and private insurance coexist and the latter covers the same treatments as the former we construct a simulation routine based on a micro econometric discrete choice model that allows us to evaluate the impact of premium changes on the utilization of outpatient and inpatient health care services as an application we estimate the budgetary effects of scrapping a subsidy from the purchase of individual private policies using micro data from catalonia our results suggest that the subsidy is not self financing this result is driven by the fact that private medical insurance holders make concurrent use of public and private services and by the price inelasticity of the demand for private policies

unequal raw material exchange between and within countries galicia nw spain as a core periphery economy abstract a global multi regional input output model with sub national resolution for galicia north west spain was used to study physical and value added trade balances between galicia the rest of spain and the world within the framework of ecologically unequal exchange theory we argue that a region such as galicia can play a twofold role as core and periphery in the global division of extractive activities we show that galicia is a sink i e net importer of natural resources from middle and low income economies and that the lower the income of the trade partner the more raw material intensive the imports measured as upstream kg per usd imported value added however this physical deficit is less accentuated than for the rest of spain and galicia s material footprint is significantly lower 14 2 compared with 24 5 t capita moreover galicia is a source i e net exporter of raw materials compared with more thriving european union economies and even for some key trade partners such as germany uk and the rest of spain it is a net importer of value added

the response of employees to severance incentives the university of california s faculty 1991 94 in response to huge budgetary shortfalls in the early 1990s the university of california offered its older and longer service employees financial inducements to leave this paper analyzes the responses of uc s faculty to three waves of buyout incentives it is estimated that an individual presented with 10 percent higher severance benefits has a 7 8 percent higher probability of quitting however quit probabilities are very difficult to forecast with accuracy this casts doubt on arguments that maintain that buyouts are superior to employer initiated layoffs as a mechanism to effect large employment changes

an econometric analysis of the demand for private health insurance in england and wales this paper discusses the nature of demand for private health insurance in a health care market in which the consumer can neither opt out of tax payments for nor lose his entitlement to public health care a single equation econometric model of the demand for private health cover is estimated using the 1982 general household survey the results indicate that income and employment status are significant determinants of the probability of health insurance purchase

private health insurance and utilization of health services in chile this paper analyses the choice of private health insurance in chile and how this relates to the utilization of health services the results show the importance of some demographics on the insurance decision particularly age gender and marital status socio economic factors such as education income employment status and zone of residence all influence the probability of purchasing private insurance the relevance of these determinants is confirmed using a simulation analysis with four representative decision makers this simulation also provides evidence of a positive selection into private insurance although this would be driven by the different criteria used to set premiums under private and public insurance schemes the potential linkage between utilization of health services and private health insurance is examined using a simultaneous two equation framework two measures of utilization are estimated outpatient health services and length of stay in hospital a number of explanatory variables s

stratification and public utility services in colombia subsidies to households or distortion of housing prices domiciliary public utility services in colombia have a cross subsidy system which charges subsidized rates to the households who live in houses located in strata associated to low wealth levels and taxed rates to the better off we assesses the hypothesis that the flow of subsidies that potentially come from a particular house are discounted by housing market agents so that most of them are transferred to the prices of the houses that generate the subsidies by estimating a hedonic prices model applying a regression discontinuity approach we find that the increment in house value estimated because of subsidies is similar in magnitude to the present value of the flow of subsidies likely effects are found on the rent amount we conclude that subsidies to the poor population through public spending in domiciliary public utility services in colombia is being achieved if anything in a very limited way most of the financial effort on this subject ends up distorting housing relative prices according to socioeconomic strata with an annual cost of up to 0 7 of gdp in supposed gross subsidies to domiciliary public utility services

tuition fees and sunk cost effects this article reports on a field experiment testing for sunk cost effects in an education setting students signing up for extra curricular tutorial sessions randomly received a discount on the tuition fee the sunk cost effect predicts that students who pay more will attend more tutorial sessions with possibly beneficial effects on their performance for our full sample we find no support for this hypothesis neither on attendance nor on performance results are consistent with a sunk cost effect for the subsample of students who based on hypothetical survey questions are identified as sunk cost prone we do not find differential effects by students income or parental contributions

constrained choice sets in the u k demand for private medical insurance abstract the paper examines the demand for a privately supplied good private medical insurance in a market dominated by a large public supplier it is argued that the high political visibility of the public alternative means that individual demand for private medical insurance is the outcome of two processes the first process is one of choice set generation the second process is that of the choice between the insurance and the no insurance prospects the factors affecting these processes are discussed and an econometric specification suggested the estimation results indicate the importance of political belief in determining choice sets and of income and health in determining choice between the two prospects

the ecological economics of economic democracy abstract ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face we argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline s ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future we outline an agenda for future ecological economics research on economic alternatives that are shaped by the concrete ways in which economic democracy deals with issues of uncertainty complexity and value incommensurability and contribute to a kind of political economy that ecological economics would advocate we lay out how this question could be operationalised within the context of allocation and exchange i e alternatives to market production and investment i e alternatives to capitalist firm and economic subjectivities i e alternatives to self interest

optimal financial aid policies for a selective university our paper provides a model of optimal financial aid policies for a selective university the model implies that the financial aid package to be offered to each category of admitted applicants depends on the elasticity of the fraction who accept offers of admission with respect to the financial aid package offered them the propensity of the category to enroll the elasticity of the category s average quality with respect to the number admitted and the relative weight the university assigns them in the utility function while the latter must be determined subjectively the former parameters are subject to empirical estimation we conclude with a study of one institution s data and illustrate how they may be estimated these estimates are then applied to illustrate what the optimal financial aid policy would be for the university

risk based pricing and risk reducing effort does the private insurance market reduce environmental accidents abstract this paper examines whether risk based pricing promotes risk reducing effort risk based pricing is common in private insurance markets but rare in government assurance programs we analyze accidental underground fuel tank leaks a source of environmental damage to water supplies over a 14 year period using disaggregated facility level data and policy variation in financing the cleanup of tank leaks over time the data indicate that eliminating a state level government assurance program and switching to private insurance markets to finance cleanups reduce the frequency of underground fuel tank leaks by more than 20 percent this corresponds to more than 3 000 fuel tank release accidents forgone over 8 years in one state alone a benefit in avoided cleanup costs exceeding 400 million these benefits arise because private insurers mitigate moral hazard by providing financial incentives for tank owners to close or replace leak prone tanks prior to costly accidents

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

why do low educated workers invest less in further training several studies document that low educated workers participate less often in further training than high educated workers this article investigates two possible explanations low educated workers invest less in training because of 1 the lower economic returns to these investments or 2 their lower willingness to participate in training controlling for unobserved heterogeneity we find that the economic returns to training for low educated workers are positive and not significantly different from those for high educated workers however low educated workers are significantly less willing to participate in training we show that this lesser willingness to train is driven by economic preferences and personality traits

foreign trade and early industrialisation in the habsburg monarchy and the united kingdom two extremes in comparison the concept of socio ecological transitions is used to analyse the quantitative importance of physical imports and exports for the habsburg empire and the united kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries for the habsburg empire a new dataset of foreign trade and social metabolism is presented for the united kingdom the analysis relies on previously published data foreign trade volumes increased in both countries in the long run total trade volumes were much higher in the united kingdom throughout the entire time period on average by around a factor four physical factors explaining the disparities in structure and volume of foreign trade in the two countries are differences in 1 the temporal patterns of the socio ecological transition and 2 domestic resource endowments in both countries energy carrying materials i e fossil fuels and biomass were the dominant resources in physical foreign trade the analysis focuses on the physically most important material groups coal wood and cereals and discusses the role of imports and exports in relation to domestic resource provision and environmental pressures physical foreign trade increased at a faster pace than domestic resource extraction and consumption the socio ecological transition was thus accompanied by rising international integration of resource supply

the determinants of the demand for private health insurance under medicare since the introduction of medicare in 1984 the proportion of the australian population with private health insurance has declined considerably insurance for health care consumption is compulsory for the public health sector but optional for the private health sector in this paper we explore a number of important issues in the demand for private health insurance in australia the socio economic variables which influence demand are examined using a binary logit model a number of simulations are performed to highlight the influence and relative importance of various characteristics such as age income health status and geographical location on demand a number of important policy issues in the private health insurance market are highlighted first evidence is provided of adverse selection in the private health insurance pool second the notion of the wealthy uninsured is refuted and finally it is confirmed that there are significant interstate differences in the demand for private health insurance

estimating the effect of financial aid offers on college enrollment a regression discontinuity approach an important problem faced by colleges and universities that of evaluating the effect of their financial aid offers on student enrollment decisions is complicated by the likely endogeneity of the aid offer variable in a student enrollment equation this article shows how discontinuities in an east coast college s aid assignment rule can be exploited to obtain credible estimates of the aid effect without having to rely on arbitrary exclusion restrictions and functional form assumptions semiparametric estimates based on a regression discontinuity rd approach affirm the importance of financial aid as an effective instrument in competing with other colleges for students

international copper flow network a blockmodel analysis industrial ecology is looking for new tools to combine social and economic dimensions with the already well developed physical flow analysis of the human economic system this article introduces a tool from social network analysis as complementary to the existing multilevel substance flow analysis by exploring the concept of space and region in which substance flows happen we use the blockmodel from network analysis in the characterization of the multilevel anthropogenic copper cycle to group countries according to their structural equivalence in the international trade networks related to copper instead of using a priori aggregation standards such as geographical proximity gdp per capita or widely accepted classification of industrial developing countries this approach depicts the patterns of material movement through trade which reflects the inherent structure of the world system regarding copper production and consumption the results highlight the uneven distribution of global copper stocks and flows across countries in the middle 1990s and illustrate the core peripheral structure among different country groups in which a close interconnected core exist with sparse ties to peripheral groups and copper are flowing from the peripheral to the core in terms of net flows

biophysical structure of the ecuadorian economy foreign trade and policy implications abstract at the core of this paper lays the notion that a systematic analysis of material flow accounts enables us to discuss the sustainability of an economic model ecuador is going through a socio ecological transition from an agrarian towards an industrial regime based on the use of nonrenewable sources of materials and energy direct material flow indicators are used in this article to analyze the ecological dimension of the economy of ecuador during 1970 2007 this approach enables the concept of societal metabolism to become operative the paper compares societal metabolic profiles showing that per capita use of materials is still at about one fifth of the average in the high income countries of the world physical flows of trade indicate that there is an ecologically unequal exchange whereas a positive trade balance is desirable from an economic policy its counterpart in physical units has been a persistent net outflow of material resources the extraction of which causes environmental impacts and social conflicts

competition for land a sociometabolic perspective abstract possible negative effects of increased competition for land include pressures on biodiversity rising food prices and ghg emissions however neoclassical economists often highlight positive aspects of competition e g increased efficiency and innovation competition for land occurs when several agents demand the same good or service produced from a limited area it implies that when one agent acquires scarce resources from land less resource is available for competing agents the resource competed for is often not land but rather its function for biomass production which may be supplanted by other inputs that raise yields increased competition may stimulate efficiency but negative environmental effects are likely in the absence of appropriate regulations competition between affluent countries with poor people in subsistence economies likely results in adverse social and development outcomes if not mitigated through effective policies the socioecological metabolism approach is a framework to analyze land related limits and functions in particular with respect to production and consumption of biomass and carbon sequestration it can generate databases that consistently link land used with biomass flows which are useful in understanding interlinkages between different products and services and thereby help to analyze systemic feedbacks in the global land system

nonparametric bounds on treatment effects assume that each member of a population is characterized by values for the variables ya yb z x here x is a vector describing a person and z is a binary variable indicating which of two treatments this person receives the treatments are labelled a and b the variables ya and yb are scalar measures of the outcomes of the two treatments for example a cancer patient might be treated by a drug therapy or b surgery the relevant outcome y might be life span following treatment an unemployed worker might be given a vocational training or b job search assistance here the relevant outcome might be labor force status following treatment assume that a random sample is drawn and that one observes the realizations of z x and of the outcome under the treatment received thus ya is observed if treatment a is received but is a latent variable if treatment b is received similarly yb is either observed or latent suppose that one wants to learn the difference in expected outcome if all persons with attributes x were assigned to treatment a or b this treatment effect is

on the north south trade in the americas and its ecological asymmetries there has been a long and intensive debate within the scientific community about the role of international trade in the development of countries during the last decades the focus of attention has moved from the pure economic level to the environmental aspects of international trade establishing a simplified system of north south trade for one reference period 2003 this paper attempts to test empirically the extent of potential asymmetries with regard to extracted material flows and contrasts the results with the economic benefits from trade in terms of value added the south is thereby represented by a selection of latin american countries brazil chile colombia ecuador and mexico the north comprises one of their main commercial partners the united states at the methodological level a multi regional input output analysis is used as the tool of investigation results generally support the hypothesis that the south was feeding the north s societal metabolism south north material exports were 1 6 times larger than north south material exports resulting in a net deficit for the south of 324 million tons moreover material intensity of exported commodities from the south was twice as high as that from the north it is worth highlighting however that part of the north south hypothesis fails for the sample of countries since the larger part of the economic surplus has remained in the south contrarily to what would have been expected

health insurance and lifestyles this article contributes to the discussion surrounding the existence of ex ante moral hazard and propitious selection in a voluntary private health insurance scenario moreover it provides an estimation of the determinants of lifestyle choices and of private health insurance demand a multivariate probit is estimated for health insurance demand and lifestyle decisions to take into account the potential endogeneity of these decisions the results indicate that there is evidence of ex ante moral hazard in deciding to do sports and eating healthy snacks hence no propitious selection has been found for these decisions another relevant result shows that there is no individual heterogeneity for the lifestyle choices except for smoking and private health insurance choice evidence from the results also supports the idea that there are nonobservable variables playing a role in the lifestyle decisions these results provide some directions for policymakers such as the promotion of precautionary behaviours a