policy equilibria in a federal system the effects of higher tax ceilings for unemployment insurance abstract in many federal systems a higher authority imposes changes that may alter lower level policies depending on the type of change and differences among lower level parties for example we model changes in the parameters of american states unemployment insurance ui systems when the federal government raises the ui tax ceiling bargaining among interested parties alters ui benefits and taxes we estimate a difference in differences model describing ui tax payments when federal increases in 1972 1978 and 1983 increased some states ceilings where the federal constraint was binding taxes rose nearly 20 percent the theory and empirical analysis suggest themselves as examples for future research on topics in public finance labor economics and international trade

labor market effects of hawaii s mandatory employer provided health insurance the author analyzes how mandatory employer provision of health insurance in hawaii which became law in 1974 affected workers wages employment and insurance coverage between 1970 and 1990 the

the effect of social security contributions on coverage and wages a gender perspective using a natural experiment from colombia author affiliation andres j vargas andres vargas ttu edu acknowledgment i would like to thank steve trejo dan hamermesh gerald oettinger jacqueline angel dan slesnick adriana kugler stefano farne two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the university of texas at austin the second conference on aging in the americas and texas tech university for their insightful and valuable comments i am also grateful to cesar caballero and alejandra corchuelo from the colombian national department of statistics dane for providing me with the data all remaining errors are mine 1 introductiontheoretically social security contributions are considered a benefit linked payroll tax because of the connection between the taxes paid by or on behalf of each worker and that individual s expected benefits hence with the presence of tax benefits linkages workers receive a higher compensation and the contributions are analogous to a price paid for a privately supplied commodity summers 1989 a general payroll tax on the other hand has no linkage to benefits for the individual taxpayer and therefore carries efficiency costs the benefit linkages of social security contributions depend on the extent to which workers perceive that they are getting the contributions back as benefits and on how much the individual values those benefits this depends in turn on the quality of the services offered by the entities financed by the tax if they are perceived as good employees will consider the contributions as a deferred compensation or insurance program and will accept a reduction in the net wage with no employment effects if they are perceived as bad the contributions will be considered as a pure tax with the corresponding effects on employment kesselman 1997 the objective of this article is to investigate from a gender and marital status perspective the effects of pension and health care contributions on the employment and wages of workers covered by social security regulations it is interesting to study colombia because the country implemented a large social security reform in 1993 that allows the identification the labor market effects of these contributions furthermore payments for pension and health care provisions amount to a quarter of the wage bill there this in conjunction with an 11 average contribution for other payroll taxes positions colombia as the country with the highest payroll tax rate in latin america the end of the 1980s and early 1990s was a period of deep structural transformations in latin america these reforms were part of efforts to liberalize economies and increase the participation of the market in the production and allocation of goods and services and were the product of the collapse most economies in the region experienced during the 1980s due to their mounting fiscal and monetary imbalances heckman and pages 2004 these large exogenous shifts in policy regimes offer very good case studies of the interaction between institutions and labor market outcomes the main reforms in colombia during this period included the approval of a new constitution key reforms to the labor market a major trade reform and liberalization in direct foreign investment more than two years after these reforms were put in place colombia implemented a social security reorganization that transformed the institutional framework for pension funds and health care provision law 100 of december 1993 regarding the health care regime the social security reform replaced the existing discretionary affiliation system that covered only the worker with a mandatory one that features a stricter prepayment system and covers also the family of the worker on the subject of pensions the reform introduced a fully funded social security system and gave the workers the choice between this new scheme of individual capitalization of public funds and the existing pay as you go system

mandate based health reform and the labor market evidence from the massachusetts reform we model the labor market impact of the key provisions of the national and massachusetts mandate based health reforms individual mandates employer mandates and subsidies we characterize the compensating differential for employer sponsored health insurance eshi and the welfare impact of reform in terms of sufficient statistics we compare welfare under mandate based reform to welfare in a counterfactual world where individuals do not value eshi relying on the massachusetts reform we find that jobs with eshi pay 2812 less annually somewhat less than the cost of eshi to employers accordingly the deadweight loss of mandate based health reform was approximately 8 percent of its potential size

optimal income taxation with adverse selection in the labour market this article studies optimal linear and non linear redistributive income taxation when there is adverse selection in the labour market unlike in standard taxation models firms do not know workers abilities and competitively screen them through non linear compensation contracts unobservable to the government in a miyazaki wilson spence equilibrium adverse selection leads to different optimal tax formulas than in the standard mirrlees 1971 model because of the use of work hours as a screening tool by firms which for higher talent workers results in a rat race and for lower talent workers in informational rents and cross subsidies the most surprising result is that if the government has sufficiently strong redistributive goals welfare is higher when there is adverse selection than when there is not policies that endogenously affect adverse selection are discussed the model has practical implications for the interpretation estimation and use of taxable income elasticities which are central to optimal tax design

perceived price in residential water demand evidence from a natural experiment abstract under complicated billing structures the price to which consumers respond remains inconclusive in this paper i exploit a quasi experiment to estimate a causal effect of price for residential water customers during the introduction of increasing block rates for a north carolina utility perceived price is identified through a billing anomaly in which changes in marginal and average prices move in opposite directions empirical results contribute evidence that residential water customers respond to average price average price elasticity estimates vary from 0 43 to 1 14 across the distribution of consumption in triple difference models with an estimate of 0 31 in the tightest bandwidth of regression discontinuity specifications

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

did the affordable care act young adult provision affect labor market outcomes analysis using tax data using a data set of us tax records spanning 2008 to 2013 the authors study the impact of the affordable care act aca young adult dependent coverage requirement on labor market related outcomes including measures of employment status job characteristics and postsecondary education they find that the aca provision did not result in substantial changes in labor market outcomes results show that employment and self employment are not statistically significantly affected although some evidence supports the increased likelihood of young adults earning lower wages not receiving fringe benefits enrolling as full time or graduate students and young men being self employed the magnitudes imply extremely small impacts on these outcomes in absolute terms and when compared to other estimates in the literature the authors find these results to be consistent with health insurance being less salient to young adults compared to other populations when making labor market decisions

electoral cycles in savings bank lending we provide evidence that german savings banks which are controlled by county level politicians systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles the different timings of county elections across states and the existence of a comparable group of cooperative banks that are very similar to savings banks but lack their political connectedness allow for identification of the effects of county elections on savings bank lending these effects are economically meaningful and very robust to various specifications we find that election induced lending negatively impacts savings bank profitability and is associated with an increase in credit defaults roughly three years after an election examining the political economy aspects of our findings we provide evidence that savings bank excess lending and public spending at the county level are substitute levers for county politicians finally we find indications that subpar pre election economic county performance hurts re election prospects and increases the intensity of lending cycles

the effect of old age assistance on retirement abstract researchers have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the impact of social security on retirement with mixed findings however the means tested program old age assistance oaa dwarfed social security until the 1950s and coincided with the early decline in elderly labor force participation also oaa benefits were determined by the states a key source of policy variation i estimate the relationship between oaa benefits and elderly participation using individual data from the 1940 and 1950 censuses oaa s impact is found to be strong and implies that participation would have risen slightly instead of falling if benefits had not increased during the 1940s

participatory environmental education and willingness to pay for river basin management empirical evidence from nigeria this paper examines the role of participation as a tool for improving individuals perceptions and environmental values using a test retest experiment conducted in south eastern nigeria two identical contingent valuation experiments were interspersed by participatory workshops designed to involve respondents in framing and forming the valuation scenario econometric analyses found that participatory education significantly developed individuals perceptions of pollution problems and increased the magnitude and precision of their wtp for a river basin management scheme the extent of changes in perceptions declined with increasing levels of formal education suggesting that less educated respondents are more likely to hold weakly formed preferences

biophysical causality and environmental preference elicitation evaluating the validity of welfare analysis over intermediate outcomes stated preference scenarios often describe outcomes to be valued in terms of intermediate biophysical processes or ecosystem services with indirect utility effects rather than in terms of final directly welfare relevant consequences this article evaluates whether valid welfare estimates can emerge from this practice we begin with a theoretical model demonstrating conditions under which stated preference scenarios that include intermediate outcomes will elicit welfare estimates identical to those from parallel scenarios that include associated final outcomes i e convergent validity will hold the model demonstrates that a necessary condition for convergent validity is the ability of respondents to correctly predict biophysical production functions linking intermediate to final outcomes hypotheses from the theoretical model are then evaluated empirically using an application of choice experiments to migratory fish restoration in the u s state of rhode island empirical results are mixed but generally reject convergent validity welfare estimates are not robust to the use of an intermediate outcome in lieu of a related final outcome in stated preference scenarios as predicted by theory results of the analysis suggest that greater attention should be given to the reliability of welfare estimation when final outcomes cannot be quantified

the consequences of the growth of health insurance premiums in the united states two thirds of the nonelderly population is covered by employerprovided health insurance ehi according to a kaiser family foundation national survey 2003 the cost of ehi has increased by over 59 percent since 2000 with no accompanying increase in the scale or scope of benefits these increases in health insurance premiums may have significant effects on labor markets including changes in the number of jobs hours worked per employee wages and compensation packages indeed it is possible that a significant portion of the increase in the uninsured population may be a consequence of employers shedding this benefit as health insurance premiums rise understanding how labor market characteristics affect adjustments to increased health insurance costs is of vital policy importance some proposals to cover the uninsured rely on employer mandates requiring employers to cover eligible workers other proposals provide tax credits for the purchase of non employer health insurance the effects of these proposals on employment wages and health insurance coverage will be driven by the elasticities of labor supply and demand institutional constraints on wages and compensation packages and how much workers value the increase in health insurance costs since employers provide such coverage voluntarily if workers fully value these benefits and are able to sort between firms based on their preferences then in the absence of other institutional constraints they will bear the cost of the increase via reduced wages with no accompanying change in employment employment costs or employee utility there are many reasons to believe however that firms are limited in their ability to offset increases in the price of health insurance premiums through lower compensation so that increases in the cost of providing health insurance may affect both employment and the structure of work identifying the magnitude of these effects empirically is difficult both because of data availability and because of multiple avenues for causality in this paper we uncover the causal effect of increases in the cost of benefits on labor market outcomes by exploiting an exogenous source of variation in the cost of providing health insurance the recent medical malpractice crisis in which malpractice costs for physicians grew dramatically in some states but not in others the growth in malpractice payments affects malpractice insurance premiums and health insurance premiums but it should not affect other aspects of employment see baicker and chandra 2005b using this source of variation we examine the effect of increases in health insurance premiums on employment patterns earnings and health insurance coverage we find that the cost of increases in health insurance premiums is borne in large part by workers through increased unemployment and also through decreased hours for those workers moved from full time jobs with benefits to parttime jobs without these results have strong implications for the distributional impact of health care reforms both authors economics department dartmouth college 6106 rockefeller hall hanover nh 03755 dartmouth medical school and national bureau of economic research e mails kbaicker dartmouth edu achandra dartmouth edu we thank alan garber seth seabury jonathan skinner and douglas staiger for helpful conversations that have influenced this research program and derek neal aaron yelowitz and conference participants at the berger conference for very insightful comments we are grateful for funding from nia p01 ag19783 02 the opinions in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the nia or nber 1 based on tabulations of population under age 65 from the march current population survey for 1988 2003 2 there is a wide literature estimating the wage fringe trade off a 1 increase in the value of fringes may be offset by a 1 reduction in wages or a 1 1 tax rate reduction for tax favored benefits for example jonathan gruber 1994 demonstrates that the passage of the pregnancy discrimination act in 1978 resulted in employers shifting the entire cost of the mandate onto employees

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

capture and the bureaucratic mafia does the revolving door erode bureaucratic integrity does the revolving door phenomenon erode bureaucratic integrity to answer this question we undertake a quantitative case study of a private university in south korea that recruited a former vice minister of education as its president specifically we investigate whether after employing this high ranking former public official the university received favorable treatment from the education ministry in terms of funding estimates from difference in difference triple difference and synthetic control methods all suggest that the high profile public official s recruitment is associated with financial benefits from the official s former employing agency no such advantage however was observed for benefits from other agencies this result offers suggestive but compelling evidence that the revolving door distorts the allocation of government resources the financial benefits the university received are due not to the recruited official s greater competence expertise or knowledge but rather to his implicit collusion with the government

information effects in contingent markets information bias in contingent markets is poorly understood in this paper testable hypotheses concerning beneficial contingent market information effects are developed conceptually perspective information and relative expenditure information were expected to increase comprehension and increase bids provision cost information was expected to counteract free riding behavior and also increase bids hypothesis tests using experimental markets suggested that each information type induced small statistically insignificant bid increases however the combined effect of the three information types induced a desirable statistically significant increase in bids this result supports the contention that not all contingent market information effects are biases

the housing market impact of state level anti discrimination laws 1960 1970 abstract this paper measures the housing market impact of state level anti discrimination laws in the 1960s using household level and census tract data state fair housing laws were the direct antecedents of the federal fair housing act of 1968 and policy variation across states facilitates estimates of the laws impact during the 1960s blacks housing market outcomes improved relative to whites and the proportion of exclusively white census tracts declined markedly but there is little evidence that the fair housing laws contributed to those changes there is some evidence that black renters may have benefited from the laws but the bulk of the evidence suggests insignificant effects on blacks housing market outcomes the level of residential segregation and the value of property in predominantly black neighborhoods

the incidence of medicare abstract the medicare program transfers nearly 300 billion annually from taxpayers to beneficiaries this paper considers the incidence of such transfers in the context of a life cycle model with uncertainty about future health care expenditures we find the distributional consequences of the medicare program are roughly neutral in dollar terms households living in high income neighborhoods pay more in taxes but they also receive more in benefits these dollar flows however ignore the insurance value of the medicare system given the incomplete insurance coverage of lower income elderly households prior to the medicare program the money metric benefits to lower income groups exceed the dollar flows suggesting that medicare redistributes more than a simple accounting exercise would suggest

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

valuing environmental commodities some recent experiments a general model of consumer behavior is proposed to assess six recent experiments that have attempted to reveal preferences for environmental goals each experiment used a mix of both the techniques and the theory of demand for non market commodities and each was designed to estimate a non market attitude associated with the environment and to analyze potential biases in the techniques the six cases show some consistency in results the linkage within the contingent market between the environmental attribute institutional setting and the bidding instrument must be realistic and accepted by the respondent to avoid biased results possibly the most important result is the replication of results using a traditional property value study and a contingent bidding approach all evidence obtained to date suggests that hedonic studies of property values or wages travel costs and survey techniques all yield values well one order of magnitude in accuracy 41 references 2 tables

an examination of firms employment costs the existence of quasi fixed costs of work may affect firms desired employee hours and number of workers which has important implications for the estimation of labour supply parameters firm level data from the 1982 employment opportunity pilot project is used to estimate the importance to firms of employee quasi fixed costs related to searching hiring training and firing specifically this paper examines how these costs affect number of workers and hours per worker turnover and vacancies to the extent that the costs are determined by the firm s presumably exogenous industrial classification an attempt is made to control for biases due to employee heterogeneity as well results show that higher costs are associated with lower turnover fewer vacancies and longer hours as predicted by a model of labour demand

individualized geocoding in stated preference questionnaires implications for survey design and welfare estimation this paper evaluates the common practice of generic mapping in stated preference valuation in which identical policy area maps are shown to all respondents this is compared to a more information intensive alternative in which individualized maps identify the location of each respondent s home relative to policy effects the evaluation is grounded in a theoretical model clarifying the impact of individualized spatial information on preferences for non market outcomes the model is illustrated using an application of choice experiments to riparian restoration in coastal maine results characterize valuation contexts for which valid preference elicitation likely requires the provision of individualized spatial information

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

fast food consumption and the ban on advertising targeting children the quebec experience abstract amid growing concerns about childhood obesity and the associated health risks several countries are considering banning fast food advertising targeting children in this article the authors study the effect of such a ban in the canadian province of quebec using household expenditure survey data from 1984 to 1992 authors examine whether expenditure on fast food is lower in those groups affected by the ban than in those that are not the authors use a triple difference indifference methodology by appropriately defining treatment and control groups and find that the ban s effectiveness is not a result of the decrease in fast food expenditures per week but rather of the decrease in purchase propensity by 13 per week overall the authors estimate that the ban reduced fast food consumption by us 88 million per year the study suggests that advertising bans can be effective provided media markets do not overlap

the employment effects of low wage subsidies abstract low wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled but the empirical evidence on their effects is still scarce this paper examines the employment effects of a finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme which is targeted at the employers of older full time low wage workers the system s clear eligibility criteria open up an opportunity for a reliable estimation of the causal impacts of the subsidy scheme our results indicate that the subsidy system had no effect on the employment rate or wages of the eligible groups but it increased slightly working hours among those already at work

the elusive wage benefit trade off the case of employer provided health insurance this study shows that standard regressions estimated to measure a trade off between wages and health insurance are misspecified by insufficiently accounting for establishment and firm size an interactive size corrected specification is more likely to reveal a trade off furthermore because insurance decisions are typically made by firms and wages set by establishments the insurance constraint on establishments in multi establishment firms weakens the trade off we use model generated data to show that both factors contribute to the failure in previous research to identify a trade off and data from a cross section of northern californian establishments to test for a trade off in multi establishment and single establishment firms

who pays for public employee health costs abstract we analyze the incidence of public employee health benefits because these benefits are negotiated through the political process relevant labor market institutions deviate significantly from the competitive private sector benchmark empirically we find that roughly 15 percent of the cost of recent benefit growth was passed onto school district employees through reductions in wages and salaries strong teachers unions were associated with relatively strong linkages between benefit growth and growth in total compensation our analysis is consistent with the view that the costs of public workers benefits are difficult to monitor contributing to benefit oriented and often under funded compensation schemes

the role of uncertainty in the relationship between fairness evaluations and willingness to pay participants in contingent valuation studies may be uncertain about a number of aspects of the policy and survey context the uncertainty management model of fairness judgments states that individuals will evaluate a policy in terms of its fairness when they do not know whether they can trust the relevant managing authority or experience uncertainty due to insufficient knowledge of the general issues surrounding the environmental policy similarly some researchers have suggested that not knowing how to answer wtp questions participants convey their general attitudes toward the public good rather than report well defined economic preferences these contentions were investigated in a sample of 840 residents in four urban catchments across australia who were interviewed about their wtp for stormwater pollution abatement four sources of uncertainty were measured amount of prior issue related thought trustworthiness of the water authority insufficient scenario information and wtp response uncertainty a logistic regression model was estimated in each subsample to test the main effects of the uncertainty sources on wtp as well as their interaction with fairness and proenvironmental attitudes results indicated support for the uncertainty management model in only one of the four samples similarly proenvironmental attitudes interacted rarely with uncertainty to a significant level and in ways that were more complex than hypothesised it was concluded that uncertain individuals were generally not more likely than other participants to draw on either fairness evaluations or proenvironmental attitudes when making decisions about paying for stormwater pollution abatement

parental leave a policy evaluation of the swedish daddy month reform abstract many governments are making attempts to increase fathers share of parental leave in order to correct for unequal labor market outcomes using swedish data we ask whether fathers can be encouraged to take more parental leave in order to mitigate the negative consequences of mothers career interruptions the unique data stem from a reform of parental leave resulting in a clean natural experiment data comprise all children born before control group and after treatment group the date of implementation of the reform in cohorts of up to 27 000 newborns mothers and fathers we find strong short term effects of the incentives on male parental leave but no behavioral effects in the household fathers in the treatment group do not take larger shares of the leave taken for care of sick children which is our measure for household work we also investigate a second data set on fathers and mothers long term wages and employment without finding evidence for substantial effects of the reform

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

the effects of the unemployment insurance payroll tax on wages employment claims and denials abstract following a 13 year period when all employers in washington paid the same unemployment insurance ui tax rate washington was forced to adopt an experience rated tax system in 1985 we use this natural experiment to explore both tax incidence and the effects of experience rating we find that industry average tax rates are largely passed on to workers through lower earnings however our estimates imply that a firm can shift much less of the difference between its tax rate and the industry average rate our results also indicate that experience rating reduces turnover and ui claims and increases claim denials

the united kingdom demand for renewable electricity in a liberalised market abstract this paper analyses how the liberalisation of the uk electricity market in 1998 may encourage demand for renewable electricity through pricing and informational incentives the analysis argues that prices and beliefs will be crucial for influencing customers willingness to pay for environmental costs associated with electricity generation as well as their decision to not just buy the cheapest electricity in 1998 when uk electricity markets are liberated a small price differential between renewable and standard electricity certainly less than 20 and clear credible and captivating information about the external costs of electricity generation could create a considerable demand for renewable electricity but because renewable generating capacity will initially be small and slow to adjust to incentives initially high demand may drive up prices discouraging customers from wanting to buy renewable electricity low demand on the other hand will not provide the incentives to invest new capacity which probably means that renewable technology will not be able to reduce its unit costs of electricity generation and compete in a liberalised market without continued financial support to avoid either scenario this paper recommends that government should extend the non fossil fuel obligation nffo to promote investment in renewable technology provide tax incentives to minimise the price differential between renewable and standard electricity encouarge non governmental organisations to develop schemes for providing customers with clear consistent and reliable information about sources of renewable electricity and stagger the introduction of electricity liberalisation while the analysis is of a speculative nature such policies may create incentives for markets to reduce environmental damage associated with electricity generation

informality and the expansion of social protection programs evidence from mexico many countries are moving from employer based to universal health coverage which can generate crowd out in mexico seguro popular provides public health coverage to the uninsured using the gradual roll out of the system at the municipality level we estimate that seguro popular had no effect on informality in the overall population informality did increase by 1 7 for less educated workers but the wage gains for workers who switch between the formal and the informal sector were not significantly affected this suggests that marginal workers do not choose between formal and informal jobs on the basis of health insurance coverage

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

the application of laboratory experimental economics to the contingent valuation of public goods we have implicitly argued in the last section that a dynamic iterative survey mechanism may well need to be employed in the design of contingent valuation survey instruments in order to improve the accuracy of responses furthermore due to the current inaccuracy of hedonic and travel cost approaches for valuing public goods the least cost method in our view for establishing anchor or true individual values for testing alternative survey instruments is to use laboratory experiments the objective of these experiments should be the development of the most simple survey design which gives accurate responses subject to the budget of the investigator is a complex iterative voting procedure required how fast will such a procedure converge to true values what is the effect on incentives of relaxing the unanimity voting feature for large groups all of these operational questions can at least qualitatively be answered in an experimental laboratory setting

dynamic inefficiencies in an employment based health insurance system theory and evidence we investigate the effects of the institutional settings of the us health care system on individuals life cycle medical expenditures health is a form of general human capital labor turnover and labor market frictions prevent an employer employee pair from capturing the entire surplus from investment in an employee s health thus the pair underinvests in health during working years thereby increasing medical expenditures during retirement we provide empirical evidence consistent with the comparative statics predictions of our model using the medical expenditure panel survey meps and the health and retirement study hrs our estimates suggest significant inefficiencies in health investment in the united states

the industrial organization of health care markets the u s health care sector is large and growing health care spending in 2011 amounted to 2 7 trillion and 18 percent of gdp approximately half of health care output is allocated via markets in this paper we analyze the industrial organization literature on health care markets focusing on the impact of competition on price quality and treatment decisions for health care providers and health insurers we conclude with a discussion of research opportunities for industrial organization economists including opportunities created by the u s patient protection and affordable care act

do private transfers displace the benefits of public transfers evidence from south africa abstract this paper investigates whether government transfer programs displace or crowd out private support focusing on a large increase in state old age pensions in south africa using data spanning the period of the expansion we find that each rand of public pension income to the elderly leads to a 0 25 0 30 rand reduction in private transfers from children living away from home however despite the large increase in income there were no significant changes in migration labor supply or household composition we also show that evaluations of the distributional effects of the pension are overstated when crowding out is ignored

the costs of wrongful discharge laws we estimate the effects on employment and wages of wrongful discharge protections adopted by u s state courts during the last three decades we find robust evidence that one wrongful discharge doctrine the implied contract exception reduced state employment rates by 0 8 to 1 7 the initial impact is largest for female and less educated workers those who change jobs frequently while the longer term effect is greater for older and more educated workers those most likely to litigate by contrast we find no robust employment or wage effects of two other widely recognized wrongful discharge laws the public policy and good faith exceptions i introduction w hat is the price of protection this paper estimates the social costs in possibly lower employment and wages of common law protections designed to protect american workers from wrongful discharge economic the ory suggests that employment protection is a double edged sword it provides employment security to incumbent work ers but makes employers reluctant to hire leading to a less flexible labor market with potentially lower employment and wages it is frequently argued that the stagnant employment performance of many european economies during the 1980s and 1990s eurosclerosis can be attributed in part to the significant employment protection given european workers see lazear 1990 and blanchard and wolfers 1999 krueger and pischke 1998 provide a contrasting view among the obstacles to testing this hypothesis is the difficulty of making reliable inferences using cross country comparisons in this paper we study the effects of employment protec tion in the united states numerous scholars have examined the effects of american federal employment laws on em ployment and unemployment acemoglu and angrist 2001 deleire 2000 and jolls and prescott 2004 present evidence that the americans with disabilities act ada decreased employment of disabled persons oyer and schaefer 2000 2002 conclude that the federal civil rights act of 1991 increased the frequency of mass layoffs and raised the returns to experience for workers who have a downward sloping age litigation profile hahn todd and van der klaauw 2001 also evaluate the costs of federal antidiscrimination laws a major hurdle for each of these studies is that these federal statutes apply all at once to the entire country this makes it difficult to separate the effects of the statute from all other changes occurring simulta neously cf donohue 1998 donohue and heckman

is there job lock evidence from the pre hipaa era we estimate discrete time hazard models of employment duration and standard logarithmic wage equations using the 1987 and 1990 panels of the survey of income and program participation sipp to examine the phenomenon of job lock we test for job lock using differences in differences approaches among those with and without employer provided health insurance and family members with and without health problems we find no statistically significant evidence of job lock on employment duration or wages using this approach we do find some evidence of shorter employment spells for those with employer provided health insurance and spouse provided health insurance and longer employment spells for those with employer provided health insurance and large families others have interpreted these findings as evidence of job lock however the wage equation results using these measures are not consistent with job lock although anecdotal evidence makes it clear that some workers have been locked into less than optimal jobs because of the combination of health problems and employer provided health insurance our results do not suggest that this phenomenon is pervasive in the u s economy

contingent valuation techniques for assessing environmental impacts further evidence abstract this paper provides further evidence on the development and application of the iterative bidding technique used to assess environmental impacts three specific issues the hypothetical nature of the survey technique the questionnaire information structure and the bidding procedure starting point are examined theoretically and empirically to determine their effect on individual bid behavior the empirical results indicate that the importance of these influences may have been overstated in earlier studies

the role of asset testing in public health insurance reform abstract starting slowly with the 1996 welfare reform act and culminating in the 2010 affordable care act means tested public health insurance eligibility expanded to include adults in low income families regardless of their asset holdings this paper quantifies the effects of these eligibility expansions within the context of the 2010 affordable care act i construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with indivisible labor supply expanded to include an endogenous household choice of health insurance coverage and calibrate it to u s data i establish that changes in the distribution of labor and welfare associated with removal of asset testing are driven by exit of high productivity and high wealth households from the labor market i then expand my analysis to the 2010 affordable care act to demonstrate that removal of asset testing is critical to the obtained results even when combined with other provisions of the act finally i find that a simple asset test for eligibility of health insurance transfers undoes the distortion to the household labor supply decision among high productivity types these results are robust to the introduction of employer premium contributions an independent health insurance market and idiosyncratic shocks to eligibility for employment based health insurance

the demand for hours of labor direct evidence from california california s longstanding requirement that most women receive time and a half pay for workhours beyond eight in one day was extended to men in 1980 analyzing current population survey data from 1973 1985 and 1991 we find that this overtime penalty substantially reduced the amount of daily overtime worked by california men relative to men in other states comparisons that use women to control for california specific shocks show even stronger effects the estimates imply a price elasticity of demand for overtime hours of at least 20 5

who pays the high health costs of older workers evidence from prostate cancer screening mandates between 1992 and 2009 30 us states adopted laws mandating that health insurance plans cover screenings for prostate cancer because prostate cancer screenings are used almost exclusively by men over age 50 these mandates raise the cost of insuring older men relative to other groups this article uses a triple difference empirical strategy to take advantage of this quasi random natural experiment in raising the cost of employing older workers using integrated public use microdata series data from the march supplement of the current population survey i find that the increased cost of insuring older workers results in their receiving 2 8 lower hourly wages being 2 less likely to be employed and being 0 7 less likely to have employer sponsored health insurance

the gender and intergenerational consequences of the demographic dividend an assessment of the micro and macrolinkages between the demographic transition and economic development the demographic transition changes the age composition of a population potentially affecting resource allocation at the household level and exerting general equilibrium effects at the aggregate level if age profiles of income consumption and savings were stable and estimable for the entire population they might imply how the demographic transition will affect national savings rates but there is little agreement on the impact of age composition these age profiles differ by gender and are affected by human capital investments whereas an existing micro simulation are estimated from samples of wage earners that are not distinguished by sex or schooling and make no effort to model family labor supply behavior or physical and human capital accumulation considering these shortcomings of assessments of the demographic dividend a case study based on household surveys and long run social experiments may be more informative matlab bangladesh extended a family planning and maternal and child health program to half the villages in the district in 1977 and recorded fertility in the program villages was 15 16 percent lower than in the control villages for two decades households in the program villages realized health and productivity gains that were concentrated among women survival and schooling increased among children and after 19 years household physical assets were 25 percent greater per adult than in the control villages these large gains in the wake of the program induced demographic transition suggest reasons for designing new labor market and microcredit policies to help women during the demographic transition invest in productive skills shift their time more efficiently from child care to home production self employment and wage labor and invest more in the human capital of their children

employment effects of payroll taxes an empirical test for germany this study tests to what degree the incidence of payroll taxes in germany is on employment and whether in consequence payroll taxes in particular social insurance contributions are the culprit behind the growing unemployment problem using industry level data for 18 years 1977 1994 a system of five dynamic factor demand equations is estimated various simulations indicate that the employment effects of payroll taxes are minimal

contingent valuation a new perspective after several decades of academic research on the contingent valuation cv method a consistent behavioral explanation of hypothetical bias is still lacking based on evidence from economics economic psychology and the political sciences i propose an explanation that is based on two simple working hypotheses about respondent behaviour in contingent valuation surveys the first hypothesis is that survey respondents are unable to form consistent preferences about unfamiliar goods unless the choice context offers reliable informative cues that can be rationally exploited in simplified heuristics the second hypothesis is that the probability and impact of strategic responses in dichotomous choice questions about public goods depends on the extent to which the presented hypothetical costs differ from the actual costs the literature on hypothetical bias is revisited in the light of these behavioral hypotheses i find that the hypotheses are generally supported by the empirical data moreover the hypotheses are able to explain several important empirical phenomena that previous research has not been able to explain in particular they solve the puzzle that pre election polls but not cv surveys are able to predict actual referendum outcomes and they explain why income effects on willingness to pay are lower in cv responses than in actual votes if confirmed by further studies the hypotheses will have important implications for future research and practice first the hypothetical costs presented in the dichotomous choice question should to be close enough to the actual costs to be credible to all respondents this can be achieved by specifying the costs as a percentage rather than absolute change in taxes second the respondents should be given the option to answer based on information about the positions of large parties and interest groups with known political orientation rather than based on the raw policy information theory and evidence suggest that this new survey paradigm largely eliminates the fundamental problems of the conventional stated preference methods

the incidence of mandated maternity benefits i consider the labor market effects of mandates which raise the costs of employing a demographically identifiable group the efficiency of these policies will be largely dependent on the extent to which their costs are shifted to group specific wages i study several state and federal mandates which stipulated that childbirth be covered comprehensively in health insurance plans raising the relative cost of insuring women of childbearing age i find substantial shifting of the costs of these mandates to the wages of the targeted group correspondingly i find little effect on total labor input for that group jel 118 j32 h51 in an era of tight fiscal budget constraints mandating employer provision of workplace benefits to employees is an attractive means for a government to finance its policy agenda consequently in recent years there has been a growth of interest in mandated benefits as a tool of social policy for example the centerpiece of president bill clinton s health care proposal is mandated employer provision of health insurance and more than 20 states have man

labor market effects of employer provided health insurance i introduction increasing health insurance coverage is arguably an important policy goal the congressional budget office 2003 estimates that in 1998 20 30 million americans had no health insurance for the entire year approximately 40 million were uninsured at a specific point in time in the year and nearly 60 million were without coverage some time during the year most individuals who have health insurance in the united states obtain it through their employer in 1999 65 8 of nonelderly americans had employer provided insurance also called group insurance or employer sponsored insurance either through their own employer or through the employer of another household member see gruber 2001 employer provided insurance plans generally have lower premiums and offer more benefits than individual insurance plans health insurance providers can offer cheaper and better plans to company employees for at least two reasons first the average administrative cost of such plans is lower than individual plans second employment based plans are typically subject to less adverse selection than individual plans particularly so for large employers furthermore the tax subsidy afforded employment based health insurance renders the effective consumer price substantially lower than the cost see pauly 1986 and gruber 2001 together these various factors give a strong incentive for employers to offer and employees to accept coverage as part of their employment contract as employer provided insurance is by far the most prevalent form of coverage in the private sector policy makers look for further expansion of this base as a way to insure the uninsured while avoiding direct public financing as a way to increase employer based health insurance coverage some states either have or are considering government mandates that require employers to provide insurance to certain types of workers 1 the state of hawaii requires private sector employers to offer health insurance to all workers who work for more than 20 h a week and requires these workers to have insurance the state of california is currently considering a similar mandate there is a considerable interest from policy makers on the effects of such mandates on labor market outcomes in this study we report on an experiment that was designed to provide some insights about possible effects of alternative health insurance regulations on the competitive labor market with a particular focus on mandates since we only considered a competitive market setting with complete contracts and no wage rigidities our results may not be directly applicable to all labor market situations 2 however the study provides useful insights about the interaction of health insurance benefit provision wages and employment structure for labor markets where the competitive wage setting and the complete contracts assumptions are reasonable with these limitations in mind our results can be also generalized to other types of employer provided fringe benefits such as paid vacations or pension plans as any government intervention health insurance regulation may affect the labor market theory predicts that in perfectly competitive labor markets health insurance creates no distortionary effects on the labor market equilibrium as long as the coverage is not mandated and there are no wage rigidities 3 all workers who value insurance above its cost of provision are offered insurance and accept it the wages are adjusted downward see rosen 1986 and gruber 2000 summers 1989 used a simple supply and demand analysis to show that the effect of increases in premiums on equilibrium labor hours and wage depends both on the elasticity of labor demand and labor supply and on how fully workers value changes in the cost of health insurance if the demand or the supply of labor is completely inelastic or if workers fully value the insurance then an increase in the premium would result in an equal decrease shift in wages

assessing the effect of payroll taxes on formal employment the case of the 2012 tax reform in colombia in 2013 colombia implemented a tax reform that reduced payroll taxes by a total of 13 5 percentage points of wages this paper evaluates the effects of this component of the 2012 colombian tax reform on firms formal employment and average wages we construct a panel of firms based on their employees administrative records to account for the endogeneity of the treatment we use an instrumental variables technique that exploits the exogenous variation from the decisions of firms that are similar to each other in several dimensions but belong to different economic sectors based on our preferred specification we estimate a positive and significant increase in formal employment as a result of the implementation of the reform of approximately 213 000 jobs in existing pre reform firms in the long run these effects will increase to more than 600 000 jobs the effect of the reform on the average wages paid by firms was also found to be positive for some sizes of firms but the overall effect in the short run is rather small

the incidence of payroll taxation evidence from chile i provide new evidence on the incidence of payroll taxation by examining the experience of chile before and after the privatization of its social security system this policy change led to a sharp exogenous reduction in the payroll tax burden on chilean firms on average payroll tax rates fell by 25 over 6 years using data from a census of manufacturing firms i estimate that the incidence of payroll taxation is fully on wages with no effect on employment this finding is robust to a variety of empirical approaches to the problem of measurement error in firm level measures of taxes worker

estimating welfare in insurance markets using variation in prices we provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection we then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance such variation together with quantity data allows us to estimate the demand for insurance the same variation together with cost data allows us to estimate how insurers costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price the slope of this estimated cost curve provides a direct test for both the existence and the nature of selection and the combination of demand and cost curves can be used to estimate welfare we illustrate our approach by applying it to data on employerprovided health insurance from one specific company we detect adverse selection but estimate that the quantitative welfare implications associated with inefficient pricing in our particular application are small in both absolute and relative terms

raising taxes through equalization a simple theory suggests that a common form of federal horizontal equalization grants should cause subnational governments to levy higher tax rates distorting local tax bases and so increasing federal transfers to test this i examine canadian provincial tax policies in the 1972 2002 period consistent with the theory provinces respond to expansions of equalization transfers by increasing their own tax rates i estimate that on average tax rates in grant receiving provinces were substantially and significantly higher as a consequence of the transfer formula jel classification h21 une theorie simple suggere qu une forme usuelle d octrois federaux de perequation horizontale devrait entrainer les gouvernements sub nationaux a imposer de plus hauts taux d imposition modifiant ainsi les bases de fiscalite locale et ce faisant accroissant les transferts federaux pour mettre au test cette hypothese on examine les politiques fiscales des provinces canadiennes pour la periode entre 1972 et 2002 d une maniere qui semble supporter l hypothese les provinces ont repondu a un accroissement des transferts de perequation en accroissant leur propre taux d imposition on estime que les taux moyens d imposition dans les provinces qui recoivent des transferts sont plus eleves de maniere substantielle et significative en raison de la formule de transferts

heterogeneity and the effect of mental health parity mandates on the labor market health insurance benefit mandates are believed to have adverse effects on the labor market but efforts to document such effects for mental health parity mandates have had limited success i show that one reason for this failure is that the association between parity mandates and labor market outcomes vary with mental distress accounting for this heterogeneity i find adverse labor market effects for non distressed individuals but favorable effects for moderately distressed individuals and individuals with a moderately distressed family member on net i conclude that the mandates are welfare increasing for moderately distressed workers and their families but may be welfare decreasing for non distressed individuals

the welfare implications of increasing disability insurance benefit generosity abstract in order to evaluate whether workers are over or under insured through the disability insurance di program we develop a framework that allows us to simulate the benefits as well as the costs associated with marginal changes in payment generosity from a representative cross sectional sample of the population under the assumption that individuals are reasonably risk averse we find that the typical worker would value increased benefits somewhat above the average costs of providing them however whether the benefit increases tend to lower or raise utility when we average across all individuals in our sample is sensitive to assumptions that affect the relative marginal utility of income to disabled individuals

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

auctions experiments and contingent valuation laboratory experiments are a welcome development that promise to make a significant contribution to the study of economic behavior heiner 1985 plott 1982 smith 1982 1985 while relatively new to economics controlled laboratory studies of human behavior have long constituted the core of experimental psychology where there is a wealth of methodological experience from which experimental economists might profitably draw in particular current attempts to apply laboratory auction methods to valuing nonmarket environmental goods would be improved by more rigorous experimental design and data analysis procedures

the craft of labormetrics using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates the author examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics at least as much craft as statistical technique among the subjects discussed are the appropriateness and cleanliness of data problems of extreme observations the validity of attempts to produce exogeneity using instrumental variables natural experiments and structural models and the treatment of selectivity and unobservable individual effects the author stresses the importance of testing empirical results to ensure that they make sense and of presenting them clearly and economically

formal but less equal gender wage gaps in formal and informal jobs in urban brazil in developing countries a large share of employees work informally and are not covered by employment protection legislation i study here how gender wage inequality differs across formal and informal jobs in brazil the raw gender wage gap is higher in informal jobs 13 compared to formal jobs 5 but i show that this difference is an artefact of different male and female selection processes first women have better observable characteristics than men and the female advantage is stronger among formal employees second men and women entering formal and informal jobs have different unobservable characteristics controlling for endogenous selection into formal vs informal jobs i find that the gender gap in wage offers is high and increases with education in formal jobs in informal jobs however estimated wage offers are the same for men and women i discuss the potential implications of these findings regarding the effect of labour market regulation on gender wage gaps

the dark side of sunshine regulatory oversight and status quo bias abstract as the mortgage foreclosure crisis accelerated in the u s in the late 2000s state level policymakers implemented measures designed to protect consumers and stem the tide of foreclosures one form of policy was simply to require lenders to report on foreclosure prevention activities such policies represented a shift from the status quo for mortgage loan servicing firms operating under incomplete information doing nothing with non paying loans while waiting for more information to be revealed to either foreclosing on the borrower or offering the borrower a modification of loan terms using a difference in difference in differences empirical strategy we exploit one policy implemented in maryland for a subset of mortgage servicers and find evidence that firms perform more loan modifications as well as file more foreclosures increasing foreclosure filings was contrary to the intent of the policy suggesting that policymakers should be aware of how firms exhibit systematic biases much like individuals

nudging acceptability for wood ash recycling in forests a choice experiment abstract in this paper our objective is to assess the general french population s acceptability of application of wood ash in forests a measure currently not allowed but under consideration by the government the main originality of our approach is that we test how a nudge can be used as an instrument to increase social acceptability conveying objective information regarding ash recycling furthermore although we do not consider it as a welfare measure we show how the estimation of the willingness to pay can be considered as a complement to the more traditional social acceptability measure three nudges were introduced as three treatments in a discrete choice experiment in the first treatment the options with wood ash application were highlighted to indicate to the respondents that they corresponded to pro environmental measures positive framing in the second treatment we changed the wording of the two non status quo options to highlight the recycling aspect of wood ash application in the last treatment we adopted a productive wording to highlight the fact that wood ash application increases wood production treatments in particular positive framing and productive wording influence the willingness to pay but depend on the attitudes of the respondents

do payroll tax breaks stimulate formality evidence from colombia s reform alternative work arrangements have grown rapidly around the world in latin america these alternative work arrangements have long been part of the labor market and have continued to grow the informal sector grew rapidly in latin america over the past few decades comprising up to half of the working population in many countries some attribute the growth in alternative work arrangements and informality to regulations and taxes while others argue that it is precisely the lack of enforcement of regulations that allows unprotected employment arrangements to flourish we examine whether reducing taxes associated with employment stimulates formal sector employment we exploit the fact that the tax reform introduced in colombia in 2012 affected only certain types of workers and not others in particular workers earning less than ten times the minimum wage and self employed workers with more than two employees experienced a reduction of payroll taxes of 13 5 percent between 2013 and 2014 we use the colombian household surveys social security records and the monthly manufacturing sample to conduct difference in differences analyses of the reform we find evidence of increased formal employment for the affected groups after the reform using all three data sets we find that the probability of formal employment and the likelihood of transitioning into registered employment increased for the affected groups after the reform we also find that the level and share of permanent employment relative to temporary employment grew after the reform for those earnings less than ten times the minimum wage the results are greatest for those in smaller firms and for those earnings close to the minimum wage

labor market effects of payroll taxes in developing countries evidence from colombia abstract we use a panel of manufacturing plants from colombia to analyze how the rise in payroll tax rates over the 1980s and 1990s affected the labor market our estimates indicate that formal wages fall by between 1 4 and 2 3 as a result of a 10 rise in payroll taxes this less than full shifting is likely to be the result of weak linkages between benefits and taxes and the presence of downward wage rigidities in colombia because the costs of taxation are only partly shifted from employers to employees employment also falls our results indicate that a 10 increase in payroll taxes lowered formal employment by between 4 and 5 in addition we find some evidence of less shifting and larger disemployment effects for production than for nonproduction workers these results suggest that policies aimed at boosting the relative demand of less skilled workers by reducing social security taxes may be effective in latin american countries where minimum wages bind and benefits are often not directly lin

a cure for discrimination affirmative action and the case of california s proposition 209 proposition 209 enacted in california in 1996 and made effective the following year ended state affirmative action programs not only in education but also for public employment and government contracting this paper uses cps data and triple difference techniques to take advantage of the natural experiment presented by this change in state law to gauge the labor market impacts of ending affirmative action programs employment among women and minorities dropped sharply a change that was nearly completely explained by a decline in participation rather than by increases in unemployment this decline suggests that either affirmative action programs in california had been inefficient or that they failed to create lasting change in prejudicial attitudes

households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana abstract access to reliable electricity is important in increasing the living standards of households and promoting sustainable development however ghanaian households have had to grapple with frequent power outages and poor quality electricity services in recent times this study examines the factors influencing households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana using data collected from 950 households in the cape coast metropolitan area and the tobit regression technique it was revealed that monthly income prior notice on power outages business ownership separate meter ownership household size and education significantly affect willingness to pay for reliable electricity services on the average households were prepared to pay 44 percent gh 6 80 us 3 42 more relative to the mean monthly electricity bill in the sample to improve electricity services it is envisaged that the findings would be used by policy makers and utility companies to make electricity generation and distribution more sustainable and efficient

the labor market impact of state level anti discrimination laws 1940 1960 by the time congress passed the 1964 civil rights act 98 of non southern blacks 40 of all blacks already resided in states with fair employment laws prohibiting labor market discrimination using census data from the integrated public use microdata series the author assesses the impact of fair employment legislation on black workers relative income unemployment labor force participation migration and occupational and industrial distributions in general the fair employment laws adopted in the 1940s appear to have had larger effects than those adopted in the 1950s and the laws had considerably smaller effects on the labor market outcomes of black men than on those of black women

labor market effects of u s sick pay mandates this paper exploits temporal and spatial variation in the implementation of nine city and four state level u s sick pay mandates to assess their labor market consequences we use the synthetic control group method and traditional difference in differences models along with the quarterly census of employment and wages to estimate the causal effects of mandated sick pay on employment and wages we do not find much evidence that employment or wages were significantly affected by the mandates that typically allow employees to earn one hour of paid sick leave per work week up to seven days per year employment decreases of 2 percent lie outside the 92 percent confidence interval and wage decreases of 3 percent lie outside the 95 percent confidence interval abstract from author

who pays for obesity evidence from health insurance benefit mandates is there an obesity externality in the late 1990s and early 2000s many state governments began requiring health insurance plans to cover treatments for diabetes using difference in difference analysis of restricted geocode data from the 1979 national longitudinal survey of youth to compare wages across states with and without diabetes mandates i find that obese people pay for all of their own increased health costs in the form of lower wages rather than passing them on to employers insurers and co workers

the effects of expanding the generosity of the statutory sickness insurance system summary this article evaluates an expansion of employer mandated sick leave from 80 to 100 of forgone gross wages in germany we employ and compare parametric difference in difference did matching did and mixed approaches overall workplace absences increased by at least 10 or 1 day per worker per year we show that taking partial compliance into account increases coefficient estimates further heterogeneity in response behavior was of great importance there is no evidence that the increase in sick leave improved employee health a finding that supports a shirking explanation finally we provide evidence on potential labor market adjustments to the reform copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

health insurance market reform and employee compensation the case of pure community rating in new york abstract pure community rating which was enacted to improve access to health insurance in new york s small group market in 1993 prevents carriers from charging different premiums based on the ages of a firm s workers if small firms were adjusting compensation packages prior to reform to offset higher health care costs of older workers then community rating could lead to greater relative wages for older workers post reform and not necessarily induce adverse selection that results in changes in who is insured i present evidence showing that relative wages of older workers in small firms increased in comparison with other states and with large firms within new york following reform

reserve reporting in the united states coal industry united states energy policymaking can be better supported with accurate and consistent data on coal reserves both in the public and private sectors in particular reserve data for coal and other energy resources should be directly comparable so that decision makers can easily understand the relationship among available resources long term policy and investment choices regarding energy security the environment and resource allocation depend on accurate information but existing and easily available data on the magnitude of geologically environmentally economically socially and legally accessible coal reserves are of insufficient quality to guide such decisions even still these data are often presented for use in policy and energy analysis currently coal reserves are overstated relative to competitor energy resource reserves in part because coal reporting standards have historically been more liberal and vague than standards for resources like natural gas overstating the marketable coal resource could lead to inefficient allocation of limited capital investment that can be difficult to reverse us government bodies like the energy information administration united states geological survey securities and exchange commission and bureau of land management can help correct deficiencies by clarifying standards and collecting data that are relevant for decision makers such as energy based reserve information