social assistance and labour supply the longitudinal 1988 89 lmas makes it possible to study the interaction between social assistance and labour supply while allowing for substantial time dependence tobit equations for hours worked on and off social assistance which allow for endogenous selection of social assistance status are estimated by using fiml small but statistically significant effects for a social assistance benefit variable are obtained particularly for females a claw back variable is not consistently useful the wage rate has a consistently negative coefficient in the selection equations and is important in the tobit equations in this paper an attempt is made to reconcile results found in earlier literature jel classification i38 j22 aide sociale et offre de travail l etude longitudinale de l enquete de 1988 89 sur la population active rend possible l etude de l interaction entre l aide sociale et l offre de travail tout en permettant la prise en compte de l effet d inertie herite du passe on calibre des equations tobit pour les heures travaillees separement pour les personnes qui recoivent et ne recoivent pas d aide sociale et une equation probit qui permet une selection endogene du statut d assiste social en utilisant la methode du maximum de vraisemblance avec pleine information on obtient des impacts faibles mais statistiquement significatifs des prestations d aide sociale sur l offre de travail pour les femmes une variable qui tente de capturer les effets de recouvrement fiscal des prestations n est pas uniformement utile comme source d explication le taux de salaire a un coefficient negatif de maniere generale dans les equations de selection et est important dans les equations tobit le memoire tente de reconcilier ces resultats avec ceux que contiennent les etudes anterieures

nash implementation a complete characterization the authors extend e maskin s results on nash implementation first they establish a condition that is both necessary and sufficient for nash implementability if there are three or more agents the case covered by maskin s sufficiency result second and more important they examine the two agent case for which there existed no general sufficiency results the two agent model is the leading case for applications to contracting and bargaining for this case too they establish a condition that is both necessary and sufficient the authors use their theorems to derive simpler sufficiency conditions that are applicable in a wide variety of economic environments copyright 1990 by the econometric society

lone female headship and welfare policy in canada the principal qualifying condition for welfare in canada unlike the us is financial need there are no demographic criteria we use a time series of annual national cross sections for the period 1981 through 1993 to estimate a model of lone female headship our findings do not support the hypothesis that welfare benefit levels for one parent and two parent families are important determinants of the likelihood that a canadian woman is a lone mother in all models with provincial fixed effects the coefficients for welfare benefits are small statistically insignificant and often of the unexpected sign we do find that the probability that a woman is a lone mother is generally associated in the expected fashion with her earnings capacity and the earnings capacity of her potential male partner and with her age and schooling

simple mechanisms and preferences for honesty we consider full implementation in complete information environments when agents have an arbitrarily small preference for honesty we offer a condition called separable punishment and show that when it holds and there are at least two agents any social choice function can be implemented by a simple mechanism in two rounds of iterated deletion of strictly dominated strategies

implementing a surplus division rule we show that in the class of surplus division problems where the size of the surplus may be dependent on how it is shared the nash bargaining solution is the unique symmetric and nash implementable division rule d 2005 published by elsevier b v

soak up the sun impact of solar energy systems on residential home values in arizona abstract recent increase of installations of solar energy systems on residential properties begs the question of whether such investments are being recognized by the market studies that estimate the impact of solar technologies on home values have been scarce using transaction and valuation data for a sample of residential properties in arizona and matching methodology results show that solar photovoltaics installation indeed has positive impacts on both house value and transaction prices this is the first empirical study conducted in arizona a state of crucial importance for solar energy development with its abundant solar resources in particular properties with electricity generating solar panels enjoy an average premium of approximately 45 000 15 of medium home value and transaction price premium of 28 000 17 of medium home sales price we do not find a statistically significant premium on homes with solar water heaters alone

electricity tariff reforms welfare impacts and energy poverty implications abstract like other energy exporting countries brunei darussalam has pursued an energy pricing policy that sets energy prices below market rates the country introduced tariff reforms replacing the declining block tariff dbt scheme by an increasing block tariff ibt structure in 2012 the reform however was a rate structure change and not a subsidy removal and electricity tariffs in the country remained lower than the long run marginal cost the study investigated a subsidy removal scenario setting the tariff rate at the short run marginal cost which is around 200 higher than the current average tariff rate the results show that with ibt welfare losses and the increase in electricity expenditures would be high for non poor households for those living in urban areas and for those engaged in white collar jobs and it would have been the reverse had the government not introduced tariff rate structure reforms under price elasticity scenarios welfare losses would be high under inelastic than elastic demand case for both ibt and dbt cases electricity expenditures however would remain below 5 level far lower than the energy poverty threshold level of 10 of household income the tariff structure reform therefore shielded the lowest income households from potential impacts of subsidy removal

whose opinion counts implementation by sortition abstract sortition is the process of selecting decision makers or senators by a lottery we introduce sortition in implementation theory by augmenting a mechanism with a kleroterion or lottery machine p that selects the senators an outcome is implemented after consulting only the opinions of the senators we call the corresponding notion of implementation as p implementation and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for p implementation our main result is that in economic environments every nash implementable social choice rule scr is also p implementable if p selects every quartet of players with positive probability and always selects at least three senators we apply this result to two kleroteria oligarchic democracy and random sampling in economic environments every nash implementable scr can be implemented by oligarchic democracy of three oligarchs in economic environments every nash implementable scr can be implemented by randomly selecting four senators

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

incentive effects of the u s welfare system a review the author would like to acknowledge support for prior work on this topic from the u s department of health and human services and helpful comments from three anonymous referees rebecca blank howard chernick john fitzgerald irwin garfinkel peter gottschalk edward gramlich david greenberg judith gueron james heckman v joseph hotz robert hutchens michael keane frank levy larry mead michael murray robert plotnick anuradha rangarajan philip robins howard rolston jeffrey smith and daniel weinberg all opinions and errors are those of the author alone

maskin s theorem with limited veto power abstract we weaken the no veto power condition of maskin maskin e 1999 nash equilibrium and welfare optimality rev econ stud 66 23 38 to limited veto power and prove that any monotonic social choice rule is nash implementable if it satisfies this weaker condition the result is obtained by using the canonical maskin mechanism without modification an immediate corollary is that the weak core is nash implementable in any coalitional game environment an example is given to show that the strong core need not be implementable even when it is monotonic

did canadian welfare reform work the effects of new reform strategies on social assistance participation this paper measures the extent to which declines in social assistance sa participation were associated with novel and aggressive reforms referred to as new reform strategies work requirements diversion earning exemptions and time limits controlling for province specific benefit levels eligibility requirements gdp growth labour market conditions and demographics sa participation rates were more than one percentage point lower equivalent to a 13 decline in provinces with new reforms work requirements with strong sanctions had the sharpest negative associations new reform strategies explain at least 10 of observed declines in sa participation twice that of benefit levels and eligibility requirements

statistical models of consumer behavior with heterogeneous values and constraints in a market with heterogeneous individuals the fact that a particular group of individuals are the consumers of a particular product already indicates that there exist systematic differences between them and the average person simple tools from statistical theory are used here to analyze the implications of consumer diversity it is argued that an increase in consumer diversity will increase the gains from trade and that there is a shadow price of heterogeneity associated with product quality throughout the discussion the significance of consumer self selection and the distinction between average and marginal will be emphasized

the determinants of welfare participation of female heads of household in canada this paper assesses the impact on the probability of welfare participation of budget constraint variables such as the expected wage welfare benefit level and implicit welfare tax rate the empirical results are based on a model of welfare participation that is estimated using a sample of female heads of household in canada the coefficients on the budget constraint variables are significant and carry signs that are generally consistent with the predictions of the model and the results of related studies based on data from the united states in addition to the budget constraint variables which include important policy tools a wide range of sociodemographic variables are included in the specification

on nash implementation of social choice correspondences abstract in this paper we extend danilov s conditions for nash implementation to weak preferences over an arbitrary set of alternatives we show that a certain condition of strong monotonicity is necessary for nash implementation if the domain of preferences is sufficiently large furthermore in any preference domain of weak orders it is also sufficient for nash implementation if there are at least three agents

estimating the implicit price of energy efficiency improvements in the residential housing market a hedonic approach abstract in this study a hedonic price model has been used to examine the impact which efficiency improvements have on housing values our study represents an improvement over a previous attempt to examine this issue in that the independent variable used in our analysis is designed to reflect variation in structural efficiency levels among sample homes rather than variation in occupant lifestyles and preferences in addition a flexible functional form is used to prevent bias due to misspecification of the hedonic price equation the study results reveal that efficiency improvements are capitalized into housing prices in des moines iowa at the average efficiency level of homes in the sample an efficiency improvement which results in a 1 decrease in the level of expenditures necessary to maintain the house at 65 f in the average heating season will increase the expected selling price of the house by 11 63 the premium obtained for an equivalent efficiency improvement will be greater than 11 63 in a relatively efficient home and less than 11 63 in a relatively inefficient home without further information concerning the price expectations and discount rates utilized by des moines home buyers and the average remaining life of fuels saving investments in the sample it cannot be determined whether the housing market is pricing fuel savings efficiently regardless of whether or not the implicit price of fuel savings is the outcome of an efficient market information on this implicit price facilitates the estimation of an average resale value of fuel saving investments in addition the results of this study refute the hypothesis that efficiency improving investments are not capitalized into housing prices

energy efficient housing stimulus that pays for itself abstract this paper describes an energy efficient housing stimulus strategy that can 1 quickly provide large scale job creation 2 reduce home energy bills by 30 50 with associated reductions in emissions and energy assistance spending 3 stabilize home values and reduce foreclosure inventory 4 help to eliminate childhood lead poisoning and 5 implement regulatory reforms that highlight market incentives for cost effective energy efficiency and alternative home energy investments these benefits far in excess of costs can be achieved by combining lead safe window replacement with other weatherization activities and simple regulatory and market reforms this strategy can help to coordinate american recovery and reinvestment act funding for energy efficiency the 75 billion making home affordable plan to reduce foreclosures and the recently announced partnership between the departments of energy doe and housing and urban development hud to streamline weatherization efforts and spur job creation

continuous and feasible implementation of rational expectations lindahl allocations abstract in this paper we consider bayesian implementation of rational expectations lindahl allocations for economic environments with public goods when agents are incompletely informed about environments we construct a continuous and feasible mechanism whose bayesian equilibrium allocations coincide with rational expectations lindahl allocations we not only allow the types of individuals to be unknown but also allow both the preferences and the initial endowments to be unknown to the designer in addition we allow some types of boundary equilibrium allocations and a continuous information structure journal of economic literatureclassification number c72 d71 d82 h41

economic response to a guaranteed annual income experience from canada and the united states this article reviews research from the five income maintenance experiments in canada and the united states after sketching the historical and political context of the experiments we compare their designs and discuss some important analytic difficulties our primary focus is the work incentive issue both nonstructural estimates of the experimental effects and elasticity estimates of structural labor supply functions we provide initial estimates of nonstructural and structural models for the canadian experiment we discuss more briefly some non work response findings associated with a guaranteed annual income and offer some personal comments on social experimentation and the policy process

implementing the core of a two person pure allocation game without free disposal or integer games abstract we show that implementation of the core of a two person pure allocation game can be achieved without the use of free disposal integer games or any refinement of nash equilibria

canadian lone mother employment rates policy change and the us welfare reform literature the article examines the rise in canadian lone mother employment rates during the 1990s using data from the canadian labour force survey and methods borrowed from the united states welfare reform literature patterns of lone mother employment rate increases in canada are found to be similar to those in the united states income support policies in both countries changed in similar directions and in both cases increased the incentive to work despite these parallel changes it appears that unlike the united states policy reforms account for only a small part of the rise in canadian lone mother employment rates

work and welfare as determinants of female poverty and household headship this paper formulates and estimates a model of the determinants of female household headship headship responds to variations in the levels of well being a woman can expect if she marries or if she heads her own household the authors measure the opportunity cost of female headship and the effects of welfare benefits and womens work in the market on female headship and poverty they find that if welfare benefits were reduced there would be small reductions in the proportion of women heading households for whites and nonwhites but a substantial increase in poverty for nonwhites they also find that wives work in the market reduces poverty and female headship for nonwhites and reduces poverty but increases headship for whites the study is based on 1975 u s data excerpt

reexamination of maskin s theorem on nash implementability abstract we reexamine maskin s theorem by proposing slight modifications on maskin s conditions of monotonicity and no veto power we show that any social choice correspondence scc that satisfies strict monotonicity strict no veto power and unanimity can be implemented in nash equilibria

is energy efficiency capitalized into home prices evidence from three u s cities abstract we test for evidence that energy efficiency features are capitalized into home prices in three u s metropolitan areas using hedonic regressions and multiple matching procedures we find that energy star certification is associated with higher sales prices in two of the markets the research triangle region of north carolina and portland oregon we find that local green certifications in portland and in austin texas are also associated with higher prices and that the estimated price impacts are larger than those from energy star matching on observables proves to be important in some cases reducing the estimated impacts compared with models without matching we calculate the implied energy savings from the estimated premiums and find that in the research triangle market the energy star premiums approximately equal the savings that program is designed to achieve but in portland the premiums are slightly greater than the program s savings due to low energy costs in the region

feasible bayesian implementation with state dependent feasible sets this paper considers feasible bayesian implementation for an environment with state dependent feasible sets we assume no externality in individual feasibility constraint sets and no exaggeration on the part of agents but allow for flexible information structures bayesian incentive compatibility closure and bayesian monotonicity are found to be necessary and sufficient for feasible bayesian implementation this result is applied to an exchange economy where agents have fixed preferences but uncertain initial endowments and complete information a condition called the endowment condition which is weaker than individual rationality is identified as necessary and sufficient for feasible nash implementation journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d70 d71 d74 d82

is the general public licence a rational choice open source projects are networks of developers distributors and end users of non proprietary created knowledge goods it has been argued that this form of organization has some advantages over the firm or market coordination i show that for sufficiently convex and modular projects proprietary licences are not able to sustain sequential knowledge production which however can be carried out if the project is run on the open source basis

nash implementation of the nash bargaining solution using intuitive message spaces abstract we provide mechanisms for the nash implementation of the nash bargaining solution if the set of possible payoff allocations is unknown to the planner while the status quo is known agents report payoff regions compatible with the status quo we remark that message spaces can be further reduced

reaching consensus through approval bargaining in the approval bargaining game two players bargain over a finite set of alternatives to this end each one simultaneously submits a utility function u jointly with a real number by doing so she approves the lotteries whose expected utility according to u is at least the lottery to be implemented is randomly selected among the most approved ones we first prove that there is an equilibrium where players truthfully reveal their utility function we also show that in any equilibrium the equilibrium outcome is approved by both players finally every equilibrium is sincere and pareto efficient as long as both players are partially honest

the price of virtue this article offers new evidence on the determinants of u s unwed birth rates from 1981 to 1990 we show that illegitimacy rates are positively and significantly correlated with payments under the aid to families with dependent children program over a period in which real afdc payments declined we attribute this result to a decline in the social sanctions for illegitimacy because social sanctions declined so did the cost of deviance as well as the price for which unwed women sold their virtue

coalition formation in games of fair division abstract i consider economies with a single indivisible good and money allowing agents to form coalitions i show that the set of equilibrium allocations in the manipulation game associated with any subcorrespondence of the no envy correspondence coincides with the set of envy free allocations for the true preference profile

zero energy homes are they economically viable whilst net zero energy homes are espoused in many policy circles and many bespoke examples have been constructed to demonstrate their technical feasibility there is a scarcity of evidence demonstrating such a standard would be economically rational particularly for large scale housing development where orientation and aspect may not always be optimal drawing on energy monitoring evidence and construction economics associated with a nearly zero energy housing estate in adelaide australia this paper explores the economic feasibility of the net zero energy home policy in warm temperate climates the results demonstrate that using economic tools and assumptions typically applied for building energy regulatory policy changes net societal economic benefits significantly outweigh costs the clear economic outcomes combined with expected health and productivity benefits from improved levels of thermal comfort should provide security to policy makers to progress home energy standards towards net zero energy performance

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data with kevin hassett using panel data on individual tax returns and variat ion in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservat ion inves tment on the probabili ty of making these investments unl ike previous work we account for unobserved heterogenei ty in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlat ion with tax policy at the state level we find that controll ing for unobserved heterogenei ty is very important based on our preferred point est imate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy inves tment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probabili ty of making an investment

nash implementation in pure public good economies abstract i study nash implementation in a model of pure public good economies without the controversial no veto power condition i prove that any social choice correspondence that is monotonic and satisfies unanimity and minimal liberty can be implemented in nash equilibrium

the specification of hedonic indexes for urban housing most studies evaluating the effect on housing prices of regulatory programs for controlling urban growth use econometric methods hedonic price models without considering the research design aspects of the task this article examines the strengths and

nash implementation in exchange economies with single peaked preferences abstract in exchange economies with single peaked preferences we find that 1 several solutions satisfy theorem 1 of doghmi and ziad doghmi a ziad a 2008 this issue reexamination of maskin s theorem on nash implementability economics letters 2 strict monotonicity is equivalent to maskin monotonicity we examine also the implementation of the weak core in coalitional games

economic efficiency v energy efficiency do model conservation standards make good sense abstract the incremental market value of higher thermal efficiency standards in new houses and the resulting energy savings are estimated using linear regression techniques based on the empirical findings a homebuyer discount rate is calculated and cost effectiveness tests are performed the findings indicate that the real estate market operates efficiently in capitalizing the value of energy savings into sale prices it appears that under current pricing mechanisms the thermal performance improvements provide net benefits to the homebuyer and to the sponsoring utility

housing market capitalization of thermal integrity abstract the extent to which housing markets capitalize investments in energy efficiency is important to observe the uncertainty now associated with this process can lead households to allocate resources inefficiently in the production of thermal comfort by substituting more fuel inputs for less capital from a policy perspective the end result of this is the continued construction of units in the housing stock with sub optimal levels of energy efficiency this study is a cross sectional analysis of houses constructed through the energy efficient housing demonstration program of the minnesota housing finance agency values of investments in energy efficiency are derived from a hedonic regression which includes a vector of thermal integrity factors as an independent variable

the 2007 nobel memorial prize in mechanism design theory this paper provides an overview of mechanism design theory and explains the roles played by leonid hurwicz eric maskin and roger myerson in the development of this field

housing market capitalization of energy saving durable good investments energy conservation in the residential sector depends in large measure upon the willingness of builders and homeowners to invest in the durable goods which result in an energy efficient house since these durable goods generally become attached permanently to the dwelling unit and since ownership of the unit is likely to change within the expected lifetime of the installed equipment the incentive to invest in conservation measures depends upon the efficiency of the housing market in capitalizing the financial benefits of future fuel savings this paper examines housing market efficiency in this regard by first estimating an hedonic price index with the annual fuel bill included as an explicit attribute of the structure then from the estimated hedonic price of a one dollar reduction in annual fuel costs and assumed fuel price escalation rates and remaining lifetimes of the equipment implicit housing market discount rates are calculated the relatively low estimated discount rates indicate that the housing market performs efficiently in capitalizing future fuel savings

the revelation approach to nash implementation abstract recent work on implementation has established necessary and sufficient conditions for a social choice rule to be implementable in nash equilibrium strategies these conditions need to distinguish the case of two agents from that of three or more agents in the organization we interpret and unify these conditions in terms of the icse incentive compatibility and selective elimination condition which is necessary for implementation irrespective of the number of agents or the underlying information structure

the impact of welfare benefits on the conjugal status of single mothers in canada estimates from a hazard model this paper focuses on the determinants of the likelihood of a remarriage marriage for female heads with children using retrospective data from statistics canada s 1990 family history survey the study attempts to identify which socioeconomic characteristics of single mothers are conducive to conjugal union formation formal or informal particular attention is given to external time varying economic covariates so as to disentangle the impact they exert on single mothers propensity to start living with a new partner the empirical analysis is carried out using a proportional hazards model which permits the estimation of the effects of various covariates on the hazard of exiting single parenthood the most striking result is the strong effect of provincial welfare benefits on conjugal union formation however the analysis reveals that single motherhood far from representing a final state remains a transitory situation for a majority of women

earnings unemployment and the allocation of time over time since an individual s labour market history can be described by a markov chain in state space it is possible to calculate the steady states it is natural to interpret the steady state proportion in unemployment for a group of identical workers as the natural rate of unemployment for this group i e it is the expected proportion that would be employed if the environment were to remain constant it is shown how the natural rate of unemployment is different for different groups the model is estimated using data from a large u s income maintenance experiment the predictions of the model with some exceptions bear up well to confrontation by data the empirical findings also accord well with existing evidence on cross section studies of labour supply we find that labour force participation rates implied by the estimated models are positively related to earnings for all age sex and race groups as expected we demonstrate that the elasticities of the unemployment rates for all groups with respect to expected wage rates are negative and large in absolute value in the case of adults while the role of the wage in allocation of time is not novel the existing neoclassical labour literature uses static labour supply models to interpret participation rate studies

estimating the demand for the characteristics of housing a hstract estimates of the demand for the characteristics contained in a differentiated product such as housing can be based on hedonic regressions however previous studies have not dealt with several potential problems in such estimation a more appropriate framework for the estimation is provided in this paper also data from a number of cities are used to eliminate the identification problem and the endogeneity of the marginal prices derived from non linear hedonic equations is considered in the estimation the results on own and cross price elasticities expenditure elasticities and the effects of socio economic vafiables accord well with expectations

welfare effects on female headship with area effects the existing literature on welfare effects on female headship in the united states shows significant positive correlations in cross section possibly increasing over time however when geographic or area effects are permitted in the estimation these correlations either disappear or reverse in sign the results have implications for the study of welfare effects in other countries including canada where benefits vary considerably across provinces and localities within them

estimating the net implicit price of energy efficient building codes on u s households abstract requiring energy efficiency building codes raises housing prices or the monthly rental equivalent but theoretically this effect might be fully offset by reductions in household energy expenditures whether there is a full compensating differential or how much households are paying implicitly is an empirical question this study estimates the net implicit price of energy efficient buildings codes iecc 2003 through iecc 2006 for american households using sample data from the american community survey 2007 a heteroskedastic seemingly unrelated estimation approach is used to estimate hedonic price house rent and energy expenditure models the value of energy efficiency building codes is capitalized into housing rents which are estimated to increase by 23 25 percent with the codes however the codes provide households a compensating differential of about a 6 47 percent reduction about 7 71 in monthly energy expenditure results indicate that the mean household net implicit price for these codes is about 140 87 per month in 2006 dollars 163 19 in 2013 dollars however this estimated price is shown to vary significantly by region energy type and the rent gradient

resource allocation auctions within firms there is growing interest in the use of markets within firms proponents have noted that markets are a simple and efficient mechanism for allocating resources in economies in which information is dispersed in contrast to the use of markets in the broader economy the efficiency of an internal market is determined in large part by the endogenous contractual incentives provided to the participating privately informed agents in this paper we study the optimal design of managerial incentives when resources are allocated by an internal auction market as well as the efficiency of the resulting resource allocations we show that the internal auction market can achieve first best resource allocations and decisions but only at an excessive cost in compensation payments we then identify conditions under which the internal auction market and associated optimal incentive contracts achieve the benchmark second best outcome as determined using a direct revelation mechanism the advantage of the auction is that it is easier to implement than the direct revelation mechanism when the internal auction mechanism is unable to achieve second best we characterize the factors that determine the magnitude of the shortfall overall our results speak to the robust performance of relatively simple market mechanisms and associated incentive systems in resolving resource allocation problems within firms

the evolution of welfare participation among canadian lone mothers 1973 1991 canadian lone mothers under age thirty five exhibited an increasing reliance on welfare income along with stagnant wages and declining levels of market work and earnings between 1973 and 1991 in contrast lone mothers age thirty five and over exhibited a decreasing reliance on welfare income along with rising levels of market work wages and earnings a key factor accounting for rising welfare use among younger lone mothers was a decline in wages relative to welfare benefits accompanied by a mixed pattern of demographic change falling family size offset by growing proportions of lone mothers who are never married much of the declining welfare use among older lone mothers can be explained by decreasing family size and increasing education accompanied by market wages that grew at the same rate as welfare benefits

welfare participation and labour market behaviour in canada in this paper bivariate probit estimation procedures and nonindependent selectivity adjustments are employed to investigate the determinants of the joint welfare participation labor supply decisions made by single males single females lone fathers and lone mothers using data from the 1988 89 labour market activity survey the bivariate probit results indicate that the welfare and labor force participation decisions are not independent welfare program parameters however such as the basic allowance and the program tax rate generally do not appear to influence the welfare participation labor force participation or hours worked decisions rather these decisions are more strongly associated with personal characteristics and labor market conditions

an untold story the characteristics of welfare use in british columbia the dynamics of welfare participation are analyzed using a unique longitudinal data set derived from provincial administrative records over the period 1980 92 the principal findings are that the majority of welfare spells are experienced by single men and women without children and that while most welfare spells are short there is a high incidence of recidivism although continuous long term use and dependence on welfare is not characteristic of most recipients experiences the program does not provide an effective route to financial independence since most users periodically return to the program

subgame perfect implementation under information perturbations we consider the robustness of extensive form mechanisms to deviations from common knowledge about the state of nature which we refer to as information perturbations first we show that even under arbitrarily small information perturbations the moore repullo mechanism does not yield even approximately truthful revelation and that in addition the mechanism has sequential equilibria with undesirable outcomes more generally we prove that any extensive form mechanism is fragile in the sense that if a non maskin monotonic social objective can be implemented with this mechanism then there are arbitrarily small information perturbations under which an undesirable sequential equilibrium also exists finally we argue that outside options can help improve efficiency in asymmetric information environments and that these options can be thought of as reflecting ownership of an asset

marital status and fertility in the united states welfare and labor market effects the incidence of marriage and the proportion of childbearing that occurs within marriage have decreased sharply in the united states in the last several decades this paper examines whether the probability that a woman is currently married and the number of children she has borne as reported in the 1980 u s census are related to two identifiable factors the variation in welfare programs across states specifically afdc and medicaid benefits and afdc up expenditures or the variation in the market wage opportunities available to women and to their potential husbands afdc and medicaid benefit levels are associated with fewer women being currently married medicaid benefits are related to lower fertility levels for both black and white women whereas afdc benefits in cash and food are associated with lower fertility among white women ages 15 24 those states that extend afdc benefits to families with unemployed parents in other words fathers in intact poor families do not have significantly more women married or higher fertility rates contrary to what might be expected from economic incentives men s market wages are associated with more frequent marriage and higher fertility whereas higher market wage opportunities for women have substantial effects in the opposite direction all of which are consistent with standard models of gender specialization and the demand for marriage and fertility

an inquiry into the state s role in marriage abstract i view state intervention in marriage as a means of avoiding large transaction costs between men and women i define transaction costs as the resources devoted towards wealth capture and protection and i argue that they are high within a cohabitational contract state intervention is successful because marriage creates incentives that make private enforcement relatively costly and because marriages tend to be homogeneous i test the hypothesis by examining state responses to changing divorce laws and i find that these actions are consistent with the state increasing the social value of marriage by mitigating transaction costs

simultaneity in the market for housing characteristics abstract the nature of simultaneity in the markets for housing characteristics is examined simultaneity is found to arise in the implicit markets for individual characteristics because of the presence of nonlinearity in the market hedonic price function for housing however this simultaneity is not the kind discussed by s rosen j political econ 82 34 55 1974 between firm supplies and household demands as a result the rosen suggestion of identifying demand with firm supply shifters is inappropriate among the alternative approaches to identification the most desirable involve use of data over two or more markets in which residence for a given household is exogenous to the choice of housing

efficient repeated implementation this paper examines repeated implementation of a social choice function scf with innitely lived agents whose preferences are determined randomly in each period an scf is repeated implementable in nash equilibrium if there exists a sequence of possibly history dependent mechanisms such that i its nash equilibrium set is non empty and ii every nash equilibrium outcome corresponds to the desired social choice at every possible history of past play and realizations of uncertainty we show with minor qualications that in the complete information environment an scf is repeated implementable in nash equilibrium if and only if it is ecient we also discuss several extensions of our analysis including constructions employing only nite mechanisms

the impact of energy prices a housing market analysis abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy costs on the housing market response as the effect of energy costs has not been specifically investigated before in the literature both a linear and non linear model were investigated the choice of the appropriate model was determined using the box cox transformation technique the chosen model was then validated the results reveal that in the spokane washington area where energy costs are relatively low energy prices do not have a significant effect on market response however applying the same methodology to areas where energy costs are higher might produce different results

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data using panel data on individual tax returns and variation in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservation investment on the probability of making these investments unlike previous work we account for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlation with tax policy at the state level we find that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is very important based on our preferred point estimate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy investment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probability of making an investment

the impact of leniency and whistle blowing programs on cartels antitrust authorities have set up leniency programs for cartel members that denounce their collusive agreements these programs help prosecute participants and can thereby deter collusion we compare the impact of reduced fines and positive rewards and argue that rewarding individuals including firm employees can deter collusion in a more effective way we discuss possible adverse effects of whistle blowing programs on firms behavior and particularly on turnover incentives to innovate and cooperation we also explore explanations for the puzzling fact that managers keep incriminating evidence and argue reward programs actually provide additional incentives for keeping such evidence

welfare and the family the canadian experience canada has a universal social assistance program that is almost completely administered through the federal canada assistance program however provinces determine the levels of assistance for various groups eligible for welfare this article exploits the variation in payments and uses microdata to estimate the effect of changes in welfare benefits on welfare participation single parenthood births out of wedlock divorce and labor force participation among low income women in canada it would appear that welfare benefits influence these decisions

welfare and the family the u s experience after describing the development and dimensions of the american welfare system this paper explores the relationship of illegitimacy to welfare alternative measures of illegitimacy are discussed the relationship of the welfare package and the illegitimacy ratio is examined over time and across states by race a bivariate relationship of welfare and illegitimacy exists among whites but not among blacks among blacks a strong cross state relationship exists between density of the black population and the illegitimacy ratio the relationship is robust persisting after controlling for a variety of demographic and economic variables and persisting across time

comments on danzon maki murray and allen the two studies on disability by patricia danzon and dennis maki nicely complement each other danzon provides a very fine theoretical analysis of the effects of disability insurance while maki s is a good empirical study of the canadian experience why are governments so extensively involved in disability programs two very different explanations are 1 that governments offset failures in the private insurance market or 2 that government disability programs redistribute resources to some groups at the expense of others some analysts claim that private insurance markets do not work well because of the difficulties in handling self selection and moral hazard empirical studies in both the united states and canada typically find that public disability programs significantly reduce labor force participation rates for example maki finds that about a third of the reduction in participation rates of canadian males aged 45 64 in recent years is due to disability programs sizable effects are also found with u s data although danzon shows the large unexplained differences in estimates from different studies she states it is often implicitly assumed that all reduction in labor supply associated with disability insurance is moral hazard and entails an excess burden p s188 her theoretical analysis helps evaluate this implicit assumption for she shows that an optimal first best disability program might well reduce labor supply relative to a world with no insurance even when there is full information about disabilities indeed she shows more than this that under certain conditions with first best insurance the insuree is better off by suffering a disability than not insurees then have a strong incentive to fake disabilities it is not yet possible to evaluate how much of the reduction in labor supply in either canada or the united states is due to redistributive aspects

improving the economics of building energy code change a review of the inputs and assumptions of economic models abstract building energy code change in australia and many other developed nations is subject to standardised economic tests with a net present value calculation at the heart of the economic analysis although many nations have introduced minimum energy efficiency standards for residential and commercial buildings increases in stringency have been hindered by limitations to the range of private and societal impacts typically incorporated in regulatory impact assessments given the policy move towards net zero energy homes a more comprehensive set of inputs and robust assumptions are needed to support further regulatory change yet the literature provides substantial evidence of many private and societal costs and benefits not commonly incorporated into the economic assessments that underpin regulatory change drawing on a case study of australian and uk residential regulatory change assessments this paper highlights limitations to the range of inputs and assumptions currently incorporated within the economic arguments applied during residential energy code change processes and presents a more comprehensive economic argument that could support further stringency improvements

marriage and divorce informational constraints and private contracting the relationship between divorce rates in the united states and laws regulating divorce are analyzed using data from a special current population survey undertaken in 1979 with particular reference to the adoption by many states of no fault divorce laws the author utilizes a contract theoretic framework to examine the impact of both legal and informational constraints on several aspects of the marriage relationship 1 the probability of divorce 2 compensation at divorce i e the terms of the divorce settlement 3 the probability of entering marriage and 4 incentives for investment in marriage specific capital two different models are developed the first assumes that ex post information about the value of each spouses opportunites at divorce is symmetric and that since divorce would only occur if the joint benefits outweigh the joint costs the law has no effect on the divorce rate the second model asserts that the existence of asymmetric information results in a fixed wage marriage contract and that divorce would be higher in states that allow unilateral divorce the evidence supports the first of these hypotheses excerpt

complexity and repeated implementation this paper examines the problem of repeatedly implementing an ecient social choice function when the agents preferences evolve randomly we show that the freedom to set dierent mechanisms at dierent histories can give the planner an additional leverage to deter undesirable behavior even if the mechanisms are restricted to be simple and nite specically we construct a history dependent sequence of simple mechanisms such that with minor qualications every pure subgame perfect equilibrium delivers the correct social choice at every history while every mixed equilibrium is strictly pareto dominated more importantly when faced with agents with a preference for less complex strategies at the margin the ecient social choice function can be repeatedly implemented in subgame perfect equilibrium in pure or mixed strategies our results demonstrate a positive role for complexity considerations in mechanism design

implementing the efficient allocation of pollution we provide simple mechanisms to implement the efficient allocation of pollution first assuming complete information across firms and then allowing for incomplete information both mechanisms operate by inducing firms to monitor one another using firms reports to determine pollution allotments and transfers the complete information mechanism determines a firm s transfer according to a linear pollution price set by other firms both mechanisms can be modified to be budget balanced in and out of equilibrium the complete information mechanism implements the efficient allocation even when firms are allowed to use mixed strategies under a single crossing condition the same holds for the incomplete information mechanism this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

why is the rate of single parenthood lower in canada than in the u s a dynamic equilibrium analysis of welfare policies a critical question in the design of welfare policies is whether to target aid according to household composition as was done in the u s under the aid to families with dependent children afdc program or to rely exclusively on means testing as in canada restricting aid to single mothers for instance has the potential to distort behavior along three demographic margins marriage fertility and divorce we contrast the canadian and the u s policies within an equilibrium model of household formation and human capital investment on children policy differences we consider are eligibility dependence of transfers on the number of children and generosity of transfers our simulations indicate that the policy differences can account for the higher rate of single parenthood in the u s they also show that canadian welfare policy is more effective for fostering human capital accumulation among children from poor families interestingly a majority of agents in our benchmark economy prefers a welfare system that targets single mothers as the u s system does yet does not unlike the u s system make transfers dependent on the number of children

social assistance and conjugal union dissolution in canada a dynamic analysis using statistics canadas general social survey on family and friends carried out in 1990 we piece together the matrimonial and conjugal life history of a large sample of canadian men and women we then estimate duration models coxs proportional hazard models describing the evolutionary laws of marriages and unions which depend on various economic or socio demographic explanatory variables the empirical modelling focuses primarily on estimating the impact of couples earned incomes and of provincial welfare programs on the dissolution rate of first marriages and unions we find that welfare benefits do not have an impact on the hazard of union dissolution and that earned incomes have a positive effect on conjugal stability excerpt summary in fre

the effect of incomes wages and afdc benefits on marital disruption this paper uses a choice based model to estimate the effects of a broad set of economic factors including afdc benefit levels husband s earnings and a woman s wage rate on the probability of marital dissolution we find that the probability of divorce is lower for marriages in which the husband s labor income is higher we also find that while afdc income has a substantial effect on welfare receipt by a divorced woman it has a relatively small effect on the probability that a married woman will become divorced finally we find no support for the hypothesis that rising wages for women have increased marital instability

hedonic prices property values and measuring environmental benefits a survey of the issues this paper provides a review of the theoretical basis and the assumptions required in order to use hedonic price equations derived from property value data to obtain measures of the prices and the inverse demand functions for environmental amenities such as air quality it also includes a review and assessment of existing empirical applications of the technique to problems of air and water quality and urban noise

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

who was affected by new welfare reform strategies microdata estimates from canada abstracta heterogeneous mix of aggressive welfare reforms took effect in different provinces and years starting in the 1990s welfare participation rates subsequently declined previous investigations of these declines focused on cuts in benefits and stricter eligibility requirements this article focuses instead on work requirements diversion earning exemptions and time limits referred to jointly as new welfare reform strategies while controlling for benefit levels eligibility requirements province specific labour market conditions and gdp growth as well as individual level socio economic information province year specific variation in new reform strategies produce estimates implying that their presence is associated with a large decline in welfare participation of 1 3 percentage points 14 relative to the unconditional mean participation rate of 9 2 our coding scheme generates new measures of policy variation that distinguish reductions in benefit levels and tighter eligibility restriction

nash equilibrium and welfare optimality if is a set of social alternatives a social choice rule scr assigns a subset of a to each potential profile of individuals preferences over a where the subset is interpreted as the set of welfare optima a game form or mechanism implements the social choice rule if for any potential profile of preferences 1 any welfare optimum can arise as a nash equilibrium of the game form implying in particular that a nash equilibrium exists and 2 all nash equilibria are welfare optimal the main result of this paper establishes that any scr that satisfies two properties monotonicity and no veto power can be implemented by a game form if there are three or more individuals the proof is constructive