cyclical and causal relations between real wages and employment in the eu this paper analyses and compares the joint behaviour of real wages and employment over the business cycle in the european union eu economies using both annual and quarterly data since 1960 further investigation of the cointegrating properties and the existence of causal effects in the real wage employment relation is undertaken by employing appropriate var models the evidence suggests weak procyclical or acyclic behaviour of real wages relative to cyclical employment in the quarterly data and stronger procyclicality in the annual data thus confirming the dunlop tarshis result for the majority of the eu economies with a few exceptions no cointegrating relations were detected while the granger causality tests suggest either weak or lack of unidirectional causality finally the sensitivity analysis showed that the filtering method has not much influence on the results but the choice of deflator may overturn them in certain cases

retrieving unobserved consideration sets from household panel data the authors propose a new model to capture unobserved consideration from discrete choice data this approach allows for unobserved dependence in consideration among brands easily copes with many brands and accommodates different effects of the marketing mix on consideration and choice as well as unobserved consumer heterogeneity in both processes an important goal of this study is to establish the validity of the existing practice to infer consideration sets from observed choices in panel data the authors show with experimental data that underlying consideration sets can be reliably retrieved from choice data alone and that consideration is positively affected by display and shelf space next the model is applied to information resources inc panel data the findings suggest that promotion effects are larger when they are included in the consideration stage of the two stage model than in a single stage model the authors also find that consideration covaries across brands and that this covariation is mainly driven by unobserved consumer heterogeneity finally the authors show the implications of the model for promotion planning relative to a more standard model of choice

promotion signal proxy for a price cut evidence suggests that some consumers react to promotion signals without considering relative price information we adopt petty and cacioppo s elaboration likelihood model elm to explain this behavior in terms of the elm s peripheral route to persuasion in which the promotion signal is taken as a cue for a price cut experimental results show that low need for cognition individuals react to the simple presence of a promotion signal whether or not the price of the promoted brand is reduced but that high need for cognition individuals react to a promotion signal only when it is accompanied by a substantive price reduction

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

sustainable value and cleaner production research and application in 19 portuguese sme abstract eco efficiency aims at improving the economic and ecological efficiency of companies attaining a higher value with fewer inputs materials and energy more outputs but fewer wastes the result of implementing this strategy is the delivery of products and services that satisfy human needs at lower costs while reducing the ecological impacts and resource intensity this means a higher value for companies defined as the relationship between the satisfaction of needs and the resources used in achieving that satisfaction as well as the increase of their competitiveness the purpose of this research was to develop the sustainable value concept using the synergies between tools from value management value analysis and from eco efficiency cleaner production the result is an indicator that integrates the three aspects of sustainability economic environment and social and enables the monitoring of the evolution of those aspects in a company the aim of this approach is to increase the sustainable value of the study subject this being defined as the specific subject to which the methodology is applied either a product or a process in a company the satisfaction levels are evaluated considering environmental and social aspects the resources used to attain that satisfaction of needs are also characterized in an explicit way in terms of environmental social and economic aspects the proposed sustainable value methodology with an eight phases working plan developed by a team was validated by undertaking three projects involving 19 small and medium enterprises where sustainable value concept was implemented they represent a wide range of activity areas in different regions of the country covering almost the whole portuguese territory the application of the proposed methodology in the different companies shows the benefits concerning the inputs reduction water energy and materials as well as emissions and waste reduction the increase of the company s productivity and collaborators social welfare is also highlighted performance costs and sustainable value variations are quantified a first important conclusion that can be taken from the reported experiences is that the use of sustainable value methodology enables the diagnosis of the main problems related to processes and products and the quantification of the used resources and takes into account the three aspects of sustainability economic environmental and social another conclusion is the applicability of the methodology to companies of different size and sectors the same happens and is confirmed in existent literature about the subject with other approaches the improvement of sustainable value of the study subjects is reflected in the competitiveness of the companies some suggestions about conditions that must be fulfilled for the success of the introduction and implementation of this approach in a company are also presented

the returns to general experience job and occupational tenure a study using australian panel data this article uses australian panel data for the years 2001 2009 to estimate returns to general experience job and occupational tenure we pay particular attention to issues of unobserved heterogeneity bias in our estimations we find that both general experience and occupational tenure have statistically and numerically significant effects on wage outcomes even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity job tenure on the other hand only seems to matter in ols regressions that do not control for heterogeneity biases once these biases are controlled for only a modest effect from job tenure remains the inclusion of occupational tenure in the estimating equation tends to negate even this modest job tenure effect the only exception to this is for workers in large organizations for these workers a small but statistically significant effect from job tenure remains even once we have controlled for heterogeneity and included occupational tenure in the estimating equation the results reported in this

wages and the composition of experience this paper provides evidence on the relation between alternative forms of experience and wages using data drawn from the national longitudinal survey of youth prior labor market experience is segmented into mutually exclusive categories based on industry and occupation to examine how subsequent employers value skills acquired on previous jobs we find that most forms of experience including tenure at the current job provide a comparable return however the wage return to prior experience in a different occupation and industry is significantly lower such career changes constitute over half of all prior work experience among workers in their mid 30s

firm specific human capital a skill weights approach the theory of human capital is agnostic on what constitutes firm specific skills the theory specifies that specific skills contribute to productivity only at the current firm a broader approach lets all skills be general but firms use them with different weights attached for example computer programming economics and accounting are general skills but there may be only one firm that wants workers trained in all three one implication is that wage profiles and the split of human capital costs depend on thickness of the market another is that firms pay for what appears to be general training

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

data watch the panel study of income dynamics by collecting annual economic and demographic information from a large and representative sample of u s households for over a quarter century the panel study of income dynamics has compiled a remarkably useful set of microdata this article describes the psid and how its unique longitudinal and in some cases intergenerational features have been used for studies of intertemporal models of labor supply wages employment and job tenure consumption poverty dynamics extended family behavior and the intergenerational transmission of economic status

in search of a stylised fact do real wages exhibit a consistent pattern of cyclical variability the paper surveys the studies on the cyclical behaviour of real wages published from the twenties onwards the traditional simple neoclassical model of the labour market suggests that real wages tend to move countercyclically however from a theoretical viewpoint there are few reasons to expect this behaviour once the simple model is extended to account for imperfect competition uncertainty lagged responses or contracting between firms and workers empirical studies give different answers to the problem the contributions reviewed in the paper are arranged roughly in a chronological order the interwar period the postwar pre econometric studies the econometric work using aggregate data the evidence produced on the basis of longitudinal data the analyses of the shock responsiveness of real wages and finally the most recent papers attempting a reconciliation of the somewhat conflicting evidence derived from aggregate and panel data

eco efficiency in micro enterprises and small firms a case study in the automotive services sector abstract a significant number of small and micro enterprises worldwide make important contributions to global the economy however research studies that deal with this kind of enterprise especially regarding their environmental issues are limited this paper aims to demonstrate the viability of eco efficient practices among small firms and micro enterprises as a competitive advantage tool eco efficient practices were applied in a micro sized auto parts and electrical automotive services enterprise in brazil the procedures were applied based on the brazilian business council for sustainable development and the brazilian support for micro and small enterprises eco efficiency model the outcomes were evaluated and then measured again three years later to provide more consistent results the approach was carried out using qualitative action research followed by a statistical analysis of variance anova and an f test to compare the averages of the entire studied period together with a post hoc tukey statistical test to identify which averages among the studied years were driving significant differences levene s test was also performed to verify the homogeneity of the variance between all of the studied years in order to corroborate the analysis as important findings from this approach the micro sized enterprise attained better financial environmental and social performance and has purchased new financial incomings an important aspect was the engagement of the staff and owner during the implementation and evaluation of the new eco efficient practices eco efficient practices had positive and enduring results as verified by statistical analysis among the five studied years this provides evidence that eco efficient practices could provide low cost benefit for both environmental and small and micro enterprises

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

the costs of worker displacement this study identifies part of the social loss attendant upon displacement as the remaining value of the assets specific to the severed employment relationship a bargaining model is used to link wage tenure profiles to the amount of information firms and workers possess about the duration of that relationship if information is good the profile will flatten as displacement approaches using psid data for workers separated between 1977 and 1981 wage tenure profiles are found not to change this suggests that either workers or both firms and workers are surprised by the displacement the present value of that part of the social loss attributable to the worker s share of firm specific capital is around 7 000 1980 dollars

a formulation of the earnings function using the concept of occupational investment standard models of income determination specify income to be a function of two variables that measure postschool investment the years of labor market experience and the years of employer tenure this investigation develops a better proxy for general human capital investments by hypothesizing that the intensity of investment varies by occupation and that a proportion of the occupational skills are transferable with occupational change after developing exogenous measures of these features the occupational investment variable is calculated for the young men of the national longitudinal survey empirical work demonstrates that occupational investment is a strong determinant of income far superior to the experience variable

estimating a multinomial probit model of brand choice using the method of simulated moments the multinomial probit model of brand choice is theoretically appealing for marketing applications as it is free from the independence of irrelevant alternatives property of the multinomial logit model however difficulties in estimation have restricted its widespread use in marketing this paper presents an application of the method of simulated moments a new methodology that enables easy estimation of probit models with a large number of alternatives in the choice set we describe the theoretical development of the technique and using pseudo simulated data conduct numerical experiments to compare the method with existing techniques for estimating probit models using the scanner panel data on the purchases of catsup we provide an empirical application of the method of simulated moments to the estimation of the parameters of a multinomial probit model estimating the covariance structure associated with the underlying latent variable probit model enables us to identify broad patterns of similarities across alternatives it also enables us to derive a pairwise similarity matrix across choice alternatives which when input into a multi dimensional scaling routine provides us with a graphical representation of competitive structure in the catsup market for completeness we compare the substantive implications for the effects of marketing variables obtained from the multinomial probit model with those obtained from models in the extant marketing literature

semiparametric analysis to estimate the deal effect curve abstract the marketing literature suggests several phenomena that may contribute to the nature of the relationship between sales and price discounts these phenomena can produce complex nonlinearities and interactions in the deal effect curve that are best captured with a flexible approach because a fully nonparametric regression model suffers from the curse of dimensionality the authors propose a semiparametric regression model store level sales over time are modeled as a nonparametric function of own and cross item price discounts and a parametric function of other predictors the authors compare the predictive validity of the semiparametric model with that of two parametric benchmark models and obtain superior performance the results for three product categories indicate threshold and saturation effects for both ownand cross item temporary price cuts the authors also find that the nature of the own item curve depends on other items price discounts comparisons with restricted model specification

approaching the environmental sustainable value in agriculture how factor endowments foster the eco efficiency abstract small and labor intensive farms guarantee a higher degree of environmental sustainability compared to rich capital intensive farms this paper offers a methodological contribution to the value based sustainability approach consisting in computing a modified indicator of environmental sustainable value using this approach the authors test how factor endowments such as capital land and labor contribute to environmental sustainable value using a long term panel of region representative european union farm accountancy data network farms in 2004 2015 the seminal within between specification was employed to control time variant and time in variant space heterogeneity of european regions the articles main finding is that higher capital endowment and lower labor intensity is beneficial for environmental sustainable value the result that farming with higher labor endowment might be less eco efficient contradicts the commonly known perception of this problem in light of our findings we conclude that the pro investment direction of the common agricultural policy should be followed but one size fit all policy is not working

an examination of personality in occupational outcomes antagonistic managers careless workers and extraverted salespeople abstractthis article investigates the role of personality in the sorting of individuals between a number of occupations allowing for an extensive array of conditioning variables the focus is an examination of the relationship between occupational outcomes and personality using the five factor model we estimate a multinomial logit model using a panel data set from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey human capital variables are found to exhibit strong credentialism effects and there is evidence for some small dynasty hysteresis personality effects are found to be significant relatively large and persistent across all occupations the personality effects are strong enough to rival that of various education credentials these personality effects include but are not limited to managers being less agreeable and more antagonistic labourers being less conscientiousness and salespeople being more extraverted

the asymmetric share effect an empirical generalization on cross price effects abstract prior empirical literature states that asymmetry in cross price effect favors the high share brand that is when high share brands discount they have a greater impact on low share brands than the reverse this conclusion is based on consideration of cross price elasticities the authors point out that focusing on cross price elasticities for assessing asymmetry is inappropriate for determining the incremental profitability from price promotions instead asymmetries should be investigated in absolute cross price effects that is change in market share of a competing brand for a unit price change of the focal brand the authors theoretically and empirically demonstrate that asymmetry reverses when absolute cross price effect is considered that is the absolute cross price effect of a price reduction of a low share brand on the market share or sales of a high share brand is greater than the reverse the authors discuss the implications of the findings and future research directions

integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies an introduction to this special volume abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2013 the 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns the authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies raw material replacement renewable energy technological developments product and policy changes the central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of cleaner production into policies and practice multiple examples of successful integration of cp in national and local policy structures exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community at large the authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local regional national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well being

contracts job experience and cyclical labor market adjustments longitudinal estimates of the variability of individual wages hours and weeks worked over the course of changing demand states are provided for all workers generally and for workers of varied levels of job experience emphasis is placed on that part of job experience represented as years on current job a commonly used proxy for the magnitude of firm specific skills interpretation of resulting estimates in the context of the labor market contracting literature is attempted generally significant procyclical patterns are found for real weekly wages weekly hours and weeks worked the extent of weekly wage variability is much greater than is generally suggested in the literature furthermore workers with greater tenure exhibit greater cyclical wage and hours variability and less weeks variability finally empirical distinctions are drawn separately for white collar and blue collar as well as union and nonunion workers

the southern wage gap human capital and the quality of education this suggests that school quality can play an important role in explaining the racial wage gap welch 28 and smith 19 both provide anecdotal evidence that relates the narrowing of school quality to the falling racial gap in earnings the rising rate of return for black workers on years of school documented by weiss and williamson 27 welch 28 and smith and welch 20 also is consistent with the improving quality of their education nevertheless school quality has not been incorporated into systematic statistical analysis of the racial wage gap this is the main focus of this paper i examine 15 southern states which had data on the segregated white and black school systems i have attempted to link the demonstrated lower quality of education during segregation in the south to the persistent southern wage gap in addition i have tried to

an integrated choice model incorporating alternative mechanisms for consumers reactions to in store display and feature advertising the marketing literature has suggested two prominent decision mechanisms through which in store display and feature advertising can affect brand choice which i call the price cut proxy effect and the consideration set formation effect the primary objective of this study is to propose an integrated brand choice model that incorporates these two possible behavioral mechanisms which have been shown to work by previous research the model allows consumers to use various combinations of the decision mechanisms with different probabilities and thus enables one to jointly assess the extent to which each effect might occur in actual purchase data and to investigate how consumers might differ in their tendencies to engage in these decision processes by incorporating these likely behavioral mechanisms the proposed model alleviates the problems caused by multicollinearity and produces sensible parameter estimates for the joint effects of promotion vehicles in store display feature ad and price discount which contributes to better managerial decision making

thick market effects and churning in the labor market evidence from u s cities using u s census microdata we show that on average workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas the result is robust to standard demographic controls as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix analysis of the displaced worker surveys shows that this effect is present in cases of involuntary separation as well on the other hand we actually find the opposite result higher rates of occupational and industrial switching for the subsample of younger workers these results provide evidence in favor of increasing returns to scale matching in labor markets results from a back of the envelope calibration suggest that this mechanism has an important role in raising both wages and returns to experience in denser areas

the importance of lifetime jobs in the u s economy though the u s labor market is justly notorious for high turnover and consequent high unemployment it also provides stable near lifetime employment to an important fraction of the labor force this paper investigates patterns of job duration by age race and sex with the following major conclusions 1 the typical worker today is holding a job which has lasted or will last about eight years over a quarter of all workers are holding jobs which will last twenty years or more sixty percent hold jobs which will last five years or more 2 the jobs held by middle aged workers with more than ten years of tenure are extremely stable over the span of a decade only twenty to thirty percent come to an end 3 among workers aged thirty and above about forty percent are currently working in jobs which eventually will last twenty years or more three quarters are in jobs which will last five years or more 4 the duration of employment among blacks is just as long as among whites even though the jobs held by blacks are worse in almost every other dimension they are no more unstable than those held by whites 5 women s jobs are substantially shorter than men s on the average only about a quarter of all women over the age of thirty are employed in jobs which will last over twenty years whereas over half of men over thirty are holding these near lifetime jobs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

permanent differences in unemployment and permanent wage differentials this paper tests for the existence of wage premiums based on geographic and industry unemployment differences these differences are broken down into permanent and transitory components in equations controlling for variation in state generosity of unemployment insurance benefits findings indicate that wage premiums arise for long run unemployment differences but that negative short run shocks to industries generate wage cuts while positive shocks generate wage hikes therefore labor contracts accommodate long term anticipated unemployment and entail sharing of short term unemployment risks

decomposing the sales promotion bump with store data sales promotions generate substantial short term sales increases to determine whether the sales promotion bump is truly beneficial from a managerial perspective we propose a system of store level regression models that decomposes the sales promotion bump into three parts cross brand effects secondary demand cross period effects primary demand borrowed from other time periods and category expansion effects remaining primary demand across four store level scanner datasets we find that each of these three parts contribute about one third on average one extension we propose is the separation of the category expansion effect into cross store and market expansion effects another one is to split the cross item effect total across all other items into cannibalization and between brand effects we also allow for a flexible decomposition by allowing all effects to depend on the feature display support condition and on the magnitude of the price discount the latter dependence is achieved by local polynomial regression we find that feature supported price discounts are strongly associated with cross period effects while display only supported price discounts have especially strong category expansion effects while the role of the category expansion effect tends to increase with higher price discounts the roles of cross brand and cross period effects both tend to decrease

are workers willing to pay to join a better team using data from the major league baseball free agent market this study is the first to show that the productivity expected of the team a worker will join produces a significant negative compensating wage differential the younger workers in the sample drive this result trading 25 of their wages to join teams with an expected productivity one standard deviation higher this investment can be recouped if a reasonable increase in human capital occurs these results are robust to contract length wage simultaneity and indicate that investment in human capital motivates the observed tradeoff suggesting a new pathway through which human capital accumulation can affect wages reliable measures of workers own past productivity and the productivity expected of a worker s future team provide key advantages to identifying these effects jel j31 j24 m54

occupational mobility and wage inequality in this article we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related we are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the u s was as high as 16 a year in the early 1970 s and had increased to 21 by the mid 1990 s we develop a general equilibrium model with occupation specific human capital and heterogeneous experience levels within occupations we find that the model calibrated to match the level of occupational mobility in the 1970 s accounts quite well for the level of within group wage inequality in that period next we find that the model calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility accounts for over 90 of the increase in wage inequality between the 1970 s and the 1990 s the theory is also quantitatively consistent with the level and increase in the short term variability of earnings copyright wiley blackwell

regional and sectoral evidence of the macroeconomic effects of labor reallocation a panel data analysis this paper revisits the sectoral shifts hypothesis by examining unemployment fluctuations for 48 u s states over the period 1990 01 2011 12 we develop a panel approach that incorporates dynamics parameter heterogeneity aggregate factors and cross sectional dependence our findings provide support for a positive and significant effect of the employment dispersion index on unemployment this outcome is robust under alternative specifications and measures of employment dispersion the empirical evidence corroborates the presence and relevance of cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity among states the results show that once unobserved common factors and cross state heterogeneity are taken into account labor reallocation has a significant effect on unemployment that is half the size of the estimate when cross sectional dependence is not taken into account

pro poor growth and sustainable development framework evidence from two step gmm estimator abstract the environmental sustainability agenda is not easy to be achieved without implementing pro growth and pro poor growth policies across the globe pakistan s economy is no exception that strive hard to managed environmental resource capital and pro poor growth expenditures in order to reduce poverty incidence and carbon mitigation policies while many efforts need more sustainable instruments to be achieved united nation s assigned sustainable development target till 2030 the study selected an annual time series data from 1975 to 2016 and employed two step generalized method of moments gmm estimator for robust inferences the results show that higher economic growth decreases poverty incidence through social reforms while deforestation under 5 mortality rate trade openness carbon emissions and fdi inflows largely increases poverty incidence in a country the study confirmed environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis of carbon emissions in relation of per capita income and public spending on education while pollution haven hypothesis is confirmed due to high involvement of dirty polluting industries in country s economic transformation process the fossil fuel combustion and high population density increases carbon emissions that sabotage the process of sustainable development in a country thus it is imperative to device sustainable policies for mitigating carbon fossil emissions with cleaner production techniques and improves the quality of life of poor people through increase social expenditures that trickle down to the poor as compared to the non poor

occupational specificity of human capital we find that returns to occupational tenure are substantial everything else being constant 5 years of occupational tenure are associated with an increase in wages of 12 20 moreover when occupational experience is taken into account tenure with an industry or employer has relatively little importance in accounting for the wage one receives this finding is consistent with human capital being occupation specific

wage variability in the 1970s sectoral shifts or cyclical sensitivity the recent debate questioning whether unemployment in the 1970s represents sectoral adjustment or cyclical variation is expanded to examine comparable causes of real wage variability using panel study of income dynamics panel data real wages respond more to persistent sectoral shocks than cyclical shocks in the 1970s making recent estimates of procyclical wage variability appear weak in perspective employing a model of endogenous sector specific individual skills older workers earning economic rents are shown to have the greatest wage response to sectoral shocks these results are consistent with the hypothesis that short run cyclical shocks may be met with hours adjustment as specified in implicit or explicit contracts but that persistent shocks require wage adjustment copyright 1989 by mit press

a multiplicative fixed effects model of consumer choice the issue of consumer heterogeneity in discrete choice analysis has been attracting much attention recently research has suggested that heterogeneity can result in biased parameter estimates which in turn can lead to incorrect conclusions among the many methods proposed in the literature to handle heterogeneity fixed effects models seem to be the most attractive from a substantive point of view however in order to provide consistent estimates these models typically require long purchase histories this difficult constraint has prevented their widespread use in this paper we propose a new model which offers the benefits of fixed effects models without requiring long purchase histories our approach differs from the classic formulation in two ways first we calibrate the common and fixed effects sequentially rather than simultaneously this two stage estimation permits us to obtain unbiased estimates of the common parameters even when the sample has households with very few observations second we incorporate the fixed effects in a multiplicative rather than in an additive form our assumptions regarding the error term result in a probit model with heteroskedastic and temporally correlated random utilities we develop a method of moments based estimator to calibrate parameters of models with this type of error structure this procedure exploits the property that the method of moments yields estimates which are asymptotically as efficient as the maximum likelihood estimates given an appropriate starting point and a matrix of instruments this is a very general procedure in that its mechanics are not tied to the proposed model it can be readily applied to other problems where probit models are used to analyze data with serial correlation this is a methodological contribution of the paper the model and estimation procedure are illustrated on the a c nielsen scanner data base for the liquid detergent category our results indicate that the proposed model can provide a better fit than random effects and loyalty based models and better predictive performance than random effects models from a substantive perspective our analysis provides the following findings a the distribution of price sensitivities has a low variance thus most households have very similar price sensitivity in this category b the promotion response distribution has a high variance suggesting that there are some households that are highly responsive to promotions while there are quite a few households that are less influenced by promotions c preferences and price sensitivity have a negative covariance which is an indication that a reduction in preference for a brand is associated with an increase in price sensitivity and vice versa d preferences and promotion response have a positive covariance thus as the preference for a brand increases response to promotions by the brand also increases and e price sensitivity and promotion response have a negative covariance implying that as households become more price sensitive purchases may be driven more by price than by promotions in other words rather than responding to promotions such as displays and features as signals of a reduced price price sensitive households actively evaluate prices in arriving at a choice the proposed approach can be used by theoretical as well as applied researchers of brand choice behavior specifically estimates of fixed effects provided by the model can be used to cluster households into groups with similar parameters profiling the resulting groups in terms of demographics would provide interesting insights from a theoretical perspective regarding the household characteristics that are associated with different types of response behavior it would also help managers to better target their brands using the proposed approach for cross category analyses of fixed effects would be an interesting area of future research for instance given a sample of households and their purchase histories in multiple categories the proposed model can be used to explore the relationship between household behavior and category characteristics in particular issues such as the following can be investigated by comparing household level estimates across categories a are households that are highly price sensitive in one category also price sensitive in other categories b what household characteristics are associated with high low price sensitivity or high low promotion response across categories and c in what types of categories are households likely to exhibit high low price sensitivity or high low promotion response

price uncertainty and consumer search a structural model of consideration set formation we offer an econometric framework that models consumer s consideration set formation as an outcome of her costly information search behavior because frequently purchased products are characterized by frequent price promotions of varying depths of discounts a consumer faces significant uncertainty about the prices of the brands the consumers engage in a fixed sample search strategy that results in their discovering the posted prices of a subset of the available brands this subset is referred to as the consumer s consideration set the proposed model is estimated using the scanner data set for liquid detergents our key empirical results are i consumers zincur significant search costs to discover the posted prices of the brands ii whereas in store displays and feature ads do not influence consumers quality perceptions of the brands they significantly reduce search costs for observing the prices of the brands iii per capita income of consumer s household significantly increases her search costs and iv the consumers price sensitivity is seriously underestimated if we were to assume that consumers get to know all the posted prices at zero cost the proposed model is also estimated for the ketchup category to enable us to do cross category comparisons of consumers price search behavior

the costs of occupational mobility an aggregate analysis we estimate the costs of occupational mobility using a novel approach that relies on aggregate flows of workers across occupations rather than on wage data the theoretical underpinnings for this approach are derived from a model of occupation choice that delivers a gravity equation linking worker flows to occupation characteristics and to transition costs which we proxy using task data from the dictionary of occupational titles dot occupation flow data are constructed from the matched monthly current population survey cps between 1994 and 2012 we find that transition costs vary widely across occupations are increasing in task distance the dissimilarity in the mix of tasks performed in the two occupations and are higher for transitions across broad task categories however most of the transition costs are accounted for by general task independent entry costs specific to each destination occupation

do employers provide insurance against low frequency shocks industry employment and industry wages i use panel data to examine whether long term changes in industry wages are positively related to long term changes in industry employment previous research using repeated cross sectional data found no systematic relationship between these variables using standard fixed effects models to deal with individual heterogeneity i find a robust positive relationship between changes in composition constant industry wages and industry employment this suggests that growing industries attract less skilled individuals in a manner that biases down the estimated relationship between industry employment and wages in repeated cross sectional data the results imply that supply curves facing industries are elastic but upward sloping

internal labor markets firm specific human capital and heterogeneity antecedents of employee idiosyncratic deal requests a field study of 615 managers in 11 korean manufacturing firms extends theory regarding labor contracting to the study of idiosyncratic deals i deals despite i deals potential to benefit both employees and employers economic theory asserts that employers attempt to reduce individual contracting by use of internal labor markets ilms this study identifies limits to that assertion by identifying conditions under which i deals are sought despite employee participation in ilms furthermore we develop and test theory reconciling the roles of ilms and firm specific human capital in employee requests for i deals employee reports of ilm practices are negatively related to i deal requests whereas firm specific human capital is positively related to these requests in addition we find an interaction between the two such that the suppressive effects of ilm reports on i deal requests hold largely for workers with low firm specific human capital individuals with high firm specific human capital tend to seek i deals despite reported ilm practices i deal requests also increase with group level heterogeneity in firm specific human capital in all our findings suggest that ilms function as economic theory asserts for workers with limited firm specific human capital but they are less able to reduce i deal requests among workers with higher firm specific human capital

fiscal policy and occupational employment dynamics we document substantial heterogeneity in occupational employment dynamics in response to government spending shocks in the united states employment rises most strongly in service sales and office pink collar occupations by contrast employment in blue collar occupations is hardly affected by fiscal policy we provide evidence that occupation specific changes in labor demand are key for understanding these findings we develop a business cycle model that explains the heterogeneous occupational employment dynamics as a consequence of composition effects due to heterogeneous employment changes across industries and occupation specific within industry employment shifts due to differences in the short run substitutability between labor and capital services across occupations

patinkin on keynes and meltzer abstract don patinkin s discussion of alternative interpretations of keyne s general theory gave considerable weight to an author s motivation particularly mine patinkin also restates his view that the general theory offers a short run disequilibrium approach i suggest that textual interpretation in economics should not consider motives because better methods are available and are now used i propose three standards applying these standards i find little support for patinkin s interpretation of the general theory although my interpretation better meets the three standards i conclude that the general theory does not have a single correct interpretation

limited choice sets local price response and implied measures of price competition it is becoming increasingly evident that a consumer s brand choice decision in low involvement categories does not involve full search evaluation and comparison of price information of all brands available at point of purchase global price response the authors propose a two stage choice process in which the consumer first identifies a subset of brands within the universal set of brands called the choice set and then evaluates only those brands that are in the choice set relative to one another to select a single brand the authors find that consistent with reports of the extent of external price search of consumers response to shelf price variations is limited to the brands in the choice set local price response their results indicate that employing the assumption of global price response may lead to biased estimates of price elasticity and derived measures of clout and vulnerability to enable a managerially meaningful and useful assessment of a brand s competitive clout and vulnerability the