nutritional status during an economic crisis evidence from russia between 1996 and 1998 russia experienced a spectacular decline in economic activity which was followed by a dramatic rebound between 1998 and 2000 we use panel data to examine the impact of variation in household resources on six dimensions of nutritional status distinguishing longer run from short term fluctuations in resources nutritional status is very resilient to short term variation in household resources gross energy intake adult weight and child stature change very little as expenditure deviates from its long run average longer run resources have a substantively large positive and significant effect on energy intake diet quality adult weight and child stature the evidence indicates that individuals and households are able to weather short term fluctuations in economic resources at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake increased globalisation has resulted in many less developed countries becoming more integrated into world markets this integration carries both benefits and costs for the populations of those countries an oft cited cost is elevated risk of exposure to economic fluctuations which has been manifest in several spectacular economic crises across the globe in the last few decades there is however little evidence on the extent to which individuals and families are able to mitigate deleterious effects of these economic upheavals on their well being in spite of its importance for understanding the consequences of globalisation this article provides new evidence on this issue specifically we examine the relationship between several dimensions of nutritional well being and variation in household resources during the russian economic crisis in the late 1990s the economies of the former soviet bloc have been especially volatile since the transition to market based economies which began in the early 1990s nowhere has this been more true than in russia where in the last half of 1998 real gdp collapsed by around 30 and then rapid growth brought the economy back to its pre crisis level by 2000 the time path of changes in gdp is closely mimicked by changes in the incomes and expenditures of russian households using extremely rich longitudinal household survey data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms we examine the impact of these large fluctuations in household resources on nutrient intake and on anthropometric markers of nutritional status at the individual level in so doing we address an important issue in the literature regarding the extent to which households in low income settings are able

optimal retirement with increasing longevity we develop an optimizing life cycle model of retirement with perfect capital markets we show that longer healthy life expectancy usually leads to later retirement but with an elasticity less than unity we calibrate our model using data from the us and find that over the last century the effect of rising incomes which promote early retirement has dominated the effect of rising lifespans our model predicts continuing declines in the optimal retirement age despite rising life expectancy provided the rate of real wage growth remains as high as in the last century

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research longitudinal studies of health this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

will aging baby boomers bust the federal budget barely ten years from now the leading edge of the baby boom generation will turn 65 ushering in a sustained aging of the u s population many are concerned that through the first half of the 21st century the federal government will stagger under the weight of these elderly baby boomers as they receive the medical retirement and disability benefits promised them the number of people over age 65 in the population is projected to increase by a factor of 2 5 by 2040 lee and tuljapurkar 1994 with the number of nursing home residents growing even more rapidly schneider and guralnick 1990 long term forecasts suggest that nearly one third of gdp will be accounted for by health care by 2030 burner waldo and mckusick 1992 warshawsky 1994 the fiscal impact of this demographic change is potentially enormous shoven topper and wise 1994 an alternative view is much more optimistic about retirement prospects for the baby boom generation this view holds that disability and morbidity will continue to become more compressed leading to healthier years later in life manton stallard and liu 1993b manton corder and stallard 1997 the average retirement age will rise productivity gains and increased tax revenue will offset the demands that aging baby boomers place on the federal budget one projection suggests the percentage of those over age 65 requiring medicaid coverage for longterm care will decline in the next century wiener illston and hanley 1994 another is that long term health care costs will decline as a fraction of median

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

causes and effects of vertical intergration this paper sets out to define new measures of industry average forward and backward integration and incorporate them into an empirical stucture conduct performance model results suggest that integration is encouraged where there are relatively few firms in an industry and if sales are increasing forward integration occurs in reaction to large outgoing distribution margins backward integration acts to increase concentration at least in some parts of the manufacturing sector integratin has a complex and interactive effect on profitability serving sometimes to raise profitability and sometimes to lower it

the influential factors of china s regional energy intensity and its spatial linkages 1988 2007 abstract a large amount of literature on china s energy intensity seldom considers the regional differences of energy intensity inside china and the spatial effects based on spatial statistics methods this paper explores the regional imbalance of china s provincial energy intensity and the spatially correlation of energy intensity among provinces using spatial panel data models this paper finds that gdp per capita transportation infrastructure the level of marketization and scientific and technological input significantly reduce the energy intensity the ratio of heavy industries to total industries and the ratio of coal consumption to total energy consumption significantly expand the energy intensity meanwhile the coefficient of the ratio of export to gdp is not significant then the spillover and convergence of china s regional energy intensity have been tested the results indicate that the spillover effect between the eastern and western china is remarkable and there exist absolute convergence of provincial energy intensity moreover gdp per capita transportation infrastructure the level of marketization and scientific technological input are conducive to conditional convergence after the spatial effects are controlled according to the empirical results this paper proposes some policy suggestions on reducing china s energy intensity

domestic market power and foreign trade abstract this paper develops a conjectural variation model to include foreign trade and applies it to the swedish industry the main conclusions emerging from the empirical application are that the degree of implicit collusion is generally very low in sweden and further that while high seller concentration exerts a positive influence on this degree there is strong and counteracting competitive pressure from foreign trade a more general conclusion is that it is important to include foreign trade in analyses of market power in open economies

a model of longevity fertility and growth abstract economic and demographic outcomes are determined jointly in a dynamic general equilibrium model of longevity fertility and growth reproductive agents in overlapping generations mature safely through two periods of life and face an endogenous probability of surviving for a third period given this probability each agent maximises her expected lifetime utility by choosing consumption and the number of children child bearing is costly in the sense that time must be spent on child rearing activities rather than on production or education the model produces multiple development regimes which yield different predictions about life expectancy fertility timing of births and educational investment depending on initial conditions these predictions accord strongly with the empirical evidence on demography and development

the transformation of labor supply in the pre industrial world abstract in pre industrial economies labor supply curves bent backwards at very low levels of income this changed in england before the industrial revolution de vries 1994 de vries 2008 voth 1998 using a model of labor supply where consumption takes time this paper shows that both an increase in the cost of subsistence and a fall in the price of time intensive consumption could have generated an increase in hours worked but that only the latter would lead to an increase in the elasticity of labor supply this model clarifies the role played by consumption in the behavior of labor on the eve of the onset of modern economic growth distinguishing between an increase in hours worked caused by changing patterns of demand the case of england and an increase in hours worked caused by involution the case of italy and possibly japan

substitution possibilities and determinants of energy intensity for china abstract this paper measures technological change factor demand and inter factor and inter fuel substitutability measures for china we use individual fuel price data and a two stage approach to estimate total factor cost functions and fuel share equations both inter factor and inter fuel substitution elasticities are calculated and the change in energy intensity is decomposed into its driving forces the results suggest that energy is substitutable for capital regionally and for labor nationally capital substitutes for energy more easily than labor does energy intensity changes vary by region but the major drivers seem to be budget effect and the adoption of energy intensive technologies which might be embodied in high level energy using exports and sectors capital investment and even old technique and equipment imports whether the trend in rising energy intensity continues will be significant for china and the rest of the world

economic growth population theory and physiology the bearing of long term processes on the this lecture sketches a theory of the secular decline in morbidity and mortality that takes account of changes induced in physiological functioning since 1700 the synergism between technological and physiological improvements has produced a form of human evolution biological though not genetic rapid culturally transmitted and not necessarily stable which is still ongoing in both oecd and developing countries thermodynamic and physiological aspects of economic growth are defined and their impact on growth rates is assessed implications of this theory for population forecasting measurement of national income demand for leisure pension policies and demand for health care are considered excerpt

implications of population ageing for economic growth the share of the population aged 60 and over is projected to increase in nearly every country in the world during the period 2005 50 population ageing will tend to lower both labour force participation and savings rates thereby raising concerns about a future slowing of economic growth our calculations suggest that oecd countries are likely to see modest but not catastrophic declines in the rate of economic growth however behavioural responses including greater female labour force participation and policy reforms including an increase in the legal age of retirement can mitigate the economic consequences of an older population in most non oecd countries declining fertility rates will cause labour force to population ratios to rise as the shrinking share of young people will more than offset the skewing of adults towards the older ages these factors suggest that

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

government expenditure and energy intensity in china the recent economic stimulus package of china has raised growing concern about its potential impact on energy demand and efficiency to what extent does such expansion of government expenditure influence energy intensity this question has not been well answered by the previous research using provincial panel data this paper provides some evidence of a link between government expenditure and energy intensity in china the empirical results demonstrate that the expansion of government expenditure since asian financial crisis has exerted a significant influence on energy intensity an increase in government expenditure in china leads to an increase in energy intensity further analysis compares such relationships in different economic situations the comparison shows that such positive effect of government expenditure remains significant after the alteration in economic situation therefore the results suggest introducing some measures to consolidate china s existing gains in energy efficiency the analysis also explains why the downward trend in energy intensity is reversed in china since 2002

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

ecological total factor energy efficiency of regions in china most existing energy efficiency indices are computed without taking into account undesirable outputs such as co2 and so2 emissions this paper computes the ecological total factor energy efficiency etfee of 30 regions in china for the period 2005 2009 through the slack based model sbm with undesirable outputs we calculate the etfee index by comparing the target energy input obtained from sbm with undesirable outputs to the actual energy input findings show that china s regional etfee still remains a low level of around 0 600 and regional energy efficiency is overestimated by more than 0 100 when not looking at environmental impacts china s regional energy efficiency is extremely unbalanced the east area ranks first with the highest etfee of above 0 700 the northeast and central areas follow and the west area has the lowest etfee of less than 0 500 a monotone increasing relation exists between the area s etfee and china s per capita gdp the truncated regression model shows that the ratio of r d expenditure to gdp and the degree of foreign dependence have positive impacts whereas the ratio of the secondary industry to gdp and the ratio of government subsidies for industrial pollution treatment to gdp have negative effects on the etfee

economic evaluation of nutrition policy abstract the good news from prevention research is that it appears possible to dramatically improve health in the us by changing identified risk factors the goal of this paper is to discuss how to evaluate the economic consequences of improvements in nutrition and exercise related health cost benefit analysis and the related tools of cost effectiveness analysis and cost utility analysis are proposed as preferred methods the decision rule is simply if the sum of the potential gains to all those affected by a policy intervention exceed the sum of costs there is a potential gain in societal welfare by this standard preventive interventions can be worthwhile even when they do not reduce lifetime medical expenditures or increase lifetime earnings that is even when the intervention is not a free lunch the distinction between the internal costs for an individual patient versus the external costs an individual s illness imposes on others is an important conceptual issue practical issues include determining whether a poor health habit causes the costs and other results being attributed to it and the completeness of the analysis in principle the analysis should examine all of the effects and resource costs of the intervention including changes in morbidity mortality the quality of life allocations of patient time and caregiving by others as well as traditional health sector costs and changes in productivity improvements in nutrition and exercise related health may also have important implications for public sector finances of programs including medicare and social security

crime fertility and economic growth theory and evidence abstract this paper studies the link between crime and fertility and the way by which they jointly impact on economic growth in a three period overlapping generations model where health status in adulthood depends on health in childhood adult agents allocate their time to work leisure child rearing and criminal activities an autonomous increase in the probability offenders face in escaping apprehension increases both crime and fertility non monotonically giving rise to an ambiguous effect on growth a cross country empirical examination based on data that span four decades supports the non linear effects on both crime and fertility at the same time it reveals a negative effect on output growth

international medical technology diffusion abstract does medical technology generated in frontier countries have a significant impact on health outcomes in the rest of the world this paper considers a framework where non frontier countries may benefit from medical innovation that is embodied in medical imports or diffuses in the form of ideas using a novel dataset from a cross section of 63 technology importing countries we show that medical technology diffusion is an important contributor to improved health status as measured by life expectancy and mortality rates

height and economic development in italy 1730 1980 in this paper i review evidence on the longrun relation between height and economic development in italy this has been done for several countries but not for italy yet several reasons make this country an interesting case to consider after being at the center of the european economy during the renaissance italy went through a long period of decline by the time of political unification in 1861 italy had become a peripheral economy the country did not

china s ongoing energy efficiency drive origins progress and prospects abstract in 2004 china s government launched a vigorous programme to reverse the trend of rising national energy intensity and to reduce intensity by 20 over the period 2006 2010 the aim of this paper is to examine this programme in the context of nearly 30 years of measures to enhance energy efficiency in china and thus to evaluate the likelihood that today s policies will yield improvements over a longer period the country achieved a sustained decline of energy intensity in the period 1980 2001 but this trend was reversed in 2002 this reversal arose from a shift in the structure of the economy to more energy intensive industries and from a decline in the rate of technical innovation the measures taken since 2003 have been directed principally at energy intensive industries but have also addressed other sectors of the economy though the energy intensity target for the year 2010 may be achieved greater efforts will be needed to address a number of constraints which include the reluctance to use economic and financial instruments the dependency of energy policy on industrial and social policies the nature of political decision making and of public administration a shortage of skills and social attitudes to energy

trade tastes and nutrition in india this paper introduces habit formation into an otherwise standard model of international trade household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child the opening of trade causes preferred goods to rise in price as these were relatively inexpensive in autarky neglecting the correlation between tastes and agro climatic endowments overstates the short run nutritional gains from agricultural trade liberalization and masks potential caloric losses for laborers i examine the predictions of this model of trade with habit formation using household survey data from india both by looking across indian regions and by examining the consumption patterns of inter state migrants

endogenous evolution of heterogeneous consumers preferences multistability and coexistence between groups we propose an exchange economy evolutionary model with agents heterogeneous in the structure of preferences assuming that the share updating mechanism is non monotone in the calorie intake we find multistability phenomena involving equilibria characterized by the coexistence of heterogeneous agents

in pursuit of monopoly power recent quantitative work in industrial economics this paper reviews empirical work in industrial organization devoted to the question of inferring the existence of monopoly power from data on observed market outcomes like profits and prices the discussion covers inter industry work long conventional in the area newer developments in intra industry analysis and case studies and concludes with some remarks on a small but growing body of work assessing market dynamics the wide range of studies reviewed all generally reveal that market power exists in many industries

concentration profitability and trade in a simultaneous equation analysis the case of taiwan this paper is the first attempt to use a simultaneous four equation system to study the role of foreign trade in the analysis of market structure and performance and the determinants of trade intensity in a newly industrializing country taiwan a cross sectional analysis is carried out with the manufacturing censuses of 1976 the results indicate that public enterprises significantly influence market structures and performance also import control measures influence import intensity significantly and offset potential impacts of imports on concentration and on profitability however trade intensity is mainly explained by comparative advantage rather than market forces concentration and profitability

food aid and adult nutrition in rural ethiopia insight into the role of safety nets that contribute to adult nutrition is an important component to understanding the dynamics of poverty in developing countries this article uses panel data from rural ethiopia on individual nutritional status to test for an effect of public transfers on adult body mass index bmi results show that among adult household members male members are the primary beneficiaries of food aid as male and female aid recipients tend to invest aid receipts in male household members these results are consistent with a theory in which additional resources are allocated to members of the household whose market returns are higher or those who engage in activities that expend higher levels of energy for high asset households female household members benefit if the aid recipient is a female women in low asset households appear to be adversely affected by aid receipts and evidence suggests that women with little bargaining power suffer the most the results suggest that aid receipts are useful in mitigating fluctuations in adult bmi over a short time period

geography health and the pace of demo economic development abstract this paper investigates the impact of subsistence consumption and extrinsic and intrinsic causes of child mortality on fertility and child expenditure it offers a theory for why mankind multiplies at higher rates at geographically unfavorable tropical locations placed into a macroeconomic framework this behavior creates an indirect channel through which geography shapes economic performance it is explained why it are countries of low absolute latitude where we observe exceedingly slow if not stalled economic development and demographic transition

the welfare economic theory of green national accounts this paper takes a critical look at the literature on green national accounts the problem studied is to find a linear index of economic variables that responds to perturbations in the same direction as social well being the thesis of a large literature that net national product which is a flow is that index in closed economies is shown in some interpretations to be simply false and in others to suffer from deep estimation problems it is argued that capital depreciation using shadow prices should certainly be included in national accounts but that the right welfare index is a comprehensive measure of wealth defined as the shadow value of an economy s stock of all capital assets it is shown that comprehensive wealth is usable as a criterion for policy evaluation as well as for determining sustainable economic development

economic development and the escape from high mortality summary this paper studies the characteristic features of the escape from high mortality as recorded from the historical experience of northwestern europe and from the current experience of less developed countries the paper documents stylized facts of mortality change and measures the contribution of economic development represented by income per capita to the mortality decline during the second half of the 20th century the paper argues that improvements in economic conditions since the 18th century are an important factor behind the decline in death rates in developed countries and in the subsequent reduction of death rates in less developed countries we show that economic development lowers mortality through differential effects in infectious disease mortality and that quantitatively income growth is able to account for between one third and one half of the recent mortality decline

exploring the present through the past claudia goldin is one of the world s leading economists and economic historians and has made a series of outstanding and original contributions particularly to the cliometric or the new economic history literature in this interview professor goldin discusses with brian snowdon who first provides a background introduction several important issues relating to her research on economic history and cliometrics the economics of slavery us economic history corruption in america the role of human capital and education in us economic development wage inequality female labour force participation and the quiet revolution the influence of the contraceptive pill women s surnames the reversal of the college gender gap and women in the economics profession

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

physiology and development why the west is taller than the rest we hypothesise that the timing of the fertility transition is an important determinant of comparative physiological development in support we provide a model of long run growth that elucidates the links between population size average body size and income during development industrialisation is shown to be accompanied by a reduction in family size and an intensification of nutrition per child early transition countries are therefore expected to be more developed today economically and physiologically empirically the timing of the fertility transition is strongly correlated with average body size across countries

the economics of non convex ecosystems introduction the word convexity is ubiquitous in economics but absent from economics in this paper we explain why and show what difference it makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non convexities are taken seriously a simple proof is provided of the connection between self similarity and power laws we also provide an introduction to each of the papers in the symposium and draw out the way in which they form a linked set of contributions

longevity and life cycle savings we add health and longevity to a standard model of life cycle saving and show that under plausible assumptions increases in life expectancy lead to higher savings rates at every age even when retirement is endogenous in a stationary population these higher savings rates are offset by increased old age dependency but during the disequilibrium phase when longevity is rising the effect on aggregate savings rates can be substantial we find empirical support for this effect using a cross country panel of national savings rates

ironing out deficiencies evidence from the united states on the economic effects of iron deficiency iron deficiency reduces productive capacity in adults and impairs cognitive development in children in 1943 the united states government required the fortification of bread with iron to reduce iron deficiency in the working age population during world war ii this nationwide fortification of grain products increased per capita consumption of iron by 16 percent i find that areas with lower levels of iron consumption prior to the mandate experienced greater increases in income and school enrollment in the 1940s a long term followup suggests that adults in 1970 with more exposure to fortification during childhood earned higher wages

numeracy and the impact of high food prices in industrializing britain 1780 1850 abstract using census based data on the ability to recall one s age we show that low levels of nutrition impaired numeracy in industrializing england 1780 to 1850 cognitive ability declined among those born during the napoleonic wars the effect was stronger in areas where grain was expensive and relief for the poor an early form of welfare support was limited nutritional shortages had a nonlinear effect on numeracy with severe shortages impairing numeracy more nutrition during childhood also mattered for labor market outcomes individuals born in periods or counties with low numeracy typically worked in occupations with lower earnings

the child is father of the man implications for the demographic transition we propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence from natural sciences that physical development during childhood affects adult life expectancy positively this theory is embodied in a continuous time olg framework where fertility longevity and education all result from individual decisions we conclude that a sustained improvement in physical development is at the basis of the observed demographic transition in today s developed countries and may be an important factor in explaining the slow transition from the malthusian towards the modern era the dynamics of the proposed model reproduce the key features of the demographic transition including sustained improvements in child physical development permanent increase in life expectancy a hump shaped evolution of both population growth and fertility and late increases in secondary educational attainments

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

occupational variation in quantity quality trade off in a brawn based economy the paper revisits the theory of the quantity quality trade off and demonstrates that the relationship between quantity and health of children is subject to occupational variation in physical energ

the long term impact of health on economic growth in latin america abstract growth regressions adapted as granger type causality tests give strong evidence of 30 year causality from health to income in 18 latin american countries the health indicator is probability of survival by age and gender groups for 1950 90 a permanent increment of between 0 8 and 1 5 annual income is associated with typical adult and surprisingly old age health improvements the channels of causation from health to income are diverse and need to be identified in microeconomic studies that should however include a wide variety long term phenomena to account for the economic effects of health

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

health nutrition and economic growth today the most remarkable instances of rapid economic growth are in asian and latin american countries which together represent more than half of the population of the world this vast expansion of modern economic growth did not get under way until after world war ii but since then has proceeded with lightning speed these changes first became evident in the improvement in life expectancy in the case of india for example life expectancy at birth increased from 29 years in 1930 to 60 years in 1990 an increase of that magnitude required two and a half centuries in england and france the sharp drop in the death rates of developing nations led to an enormous surge in the growth of population which in turn led to widespread fears that the food supply could not keep up with population growth and that industrialization would be thwarted excerpt

measuring the power to monopolize a simple game theoretic approach abstract this paper proposes a measure of the power to monopolize based on the ability of firms to induce a shift from a competitive to a non competitive regime through coalition formation first in the framework of monotonic simple games we show how to use the shapley value in terms of a power index for individual firms within an industry second we construct an aggregate power index for industries it is based on axioms allowing to make explicit the respective roles of the number and size of the minimal winning coalitions and aggregates additively non normalized individual power indices

potatoes milk and the old world population boom abstract this paper explores the role of two foods potatoes and milk in explaining the increase in economic development experienced throughout the old world in the 18th and 19th centuries nunn and qian 2011 show the introduction of the potato from the new world has a significant explanatory role for within country population and urbanization growth over this period i expand on this by considering the role of milk consumption which is hypothesized to be a complement in diet to potatoes due to a differential composition of essential nutrients using a country level measure for the suitability of milk consumption the frequency of lactase persistence i show that the marginal effect of potatoes on post 1700 population and urbanization growth is positively related to milk consumption as the frequency of milk consumption approaches unity the marginal effect of potatoes more than doubles in magnitude compared to the baseline estimate of nunn and qian

calculation and decomposition of income inequality in low and middle income countries a survey data analysis this article estimates income inequality in a sample of four low and middle income lmi countries namely albania nepal tajikistan and tanzania using the household survey data nepal living st

eco localism and sustainability abstract economic sustainability is best secured by the creation of local or regional self reliant community economies this is the central argument of eco local economic theory drawing on the experience of local currencies community corporations regional food economies and other locally oriented efforts eco local theory presents a new analysis of the economy of place it focuses on locally symbiotic capital positive externalities of self reliance and negative externalities of long distance trade and its specific concepts and analyses of the economy efficiency and economies of scale and consumption and welfare given its specific values and assumptions it is an economic theory of the social economy that is compatible with but distinct from ecological economics

china s energy consumption change from 1987 to 2007 a multi regional structural decomposition analysis abstract increasing use of energy has helped to stimulate china s economy despite central planning china has great differences in economic development energy endowment and energy consumption across its regions this paper uses the structural decomposition approach to uncover the regional disparities in energy consumption from 1987 to 2007 we also examine six possible key factors for the change in energy consumption by region we find that final demand change outpaced efficiency improvements to drive up energy use in all regions between 1987 and 2007 more surprisingly from 2002 to 2007 it appears that changes in production structure enhanced energy consumption in most regions china produced more energy intensive goods for capital investment and export we contend that improving the energy efficiency of key energy intensive sectors would lead a significant decline in energy intensity energy directly or indirectly is flowing from northwest central and north china to coastal regions regional specific policies should be designed to promote production structure change and curb energy demand

on the nature and significance of collusive price leadership abstract with the help of a simple analytical model we are able to analyze and to further clarify the conditions for collusive price leadership as they were originally devised by jesse markham within the confines of this model we show how collusion increases price cost margins but at the same time decreases concentration in the industry

life expectancy and endogenous growth we consider an overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetime and endogenous growth individuals have to choose the length of time devoted to schooling before starting to work we show that it depends positively on life expectancy but that the positive effect of a longer life on growth could be offset by a decrease in the participation rate dynamics are characterized by a delay differential equation and human capital converges with oscillations to a balanced growth path

concentration and profitability in a dichotomous economy the case of taiwan this paper is an attempt to apply a two regime and a recursive structure performance analysis to one of the newly industrializing countries taiwan a two regime approach is employed because taiwan s market structure is hypothesized as being dichotomous the export oriented sector being distinct with the domestic oriented sector a recursive system is used because industry concentration is not only a determinant of profitability but is itself determined by other variables

endogenous labor supply growth and overlapping generations abstract this paper explores a simple model of endogenous growth in an overlapping generations framework when labor supply is made endogenous the following results are obtained if leisure and consumption are substitutes the economy can experience multiple equilibrium paths including high growth and high labor supply or no growth and low labor supply if the demand for leisure is inelastic then the economy enjoys steady growth as in standard models if leisure and consumption are complements then production remains bounded although endogenous growth is possible and socially desirable

tracing distant environmental impacts of agricultural products from a consumer perspective globally trade flows of agricultural products are increasing while value is typically added along the whole production chain certain environmental impacts such as land and water use biomass appropriation and soil degradation are intrinsically linked to where the primary products originate from when taking a consumer oriented approach on environmental problems bilateral trade statistics can help in providing a clearer picture about the location of impacts caused by consumption elsewhere however in today s increasingly globalized world consumer goods are often imported from countries other than where the primary product originated from for instance soybeans are transported from brazil to the netherlands where they are processed into soy oil which is shipped to austria where it is consumed utilizing bilateral trade matrices and matrix algebra we present a method that allows to clearly link consumption patterns to the origin of primary products in this the method can help to provide information about consumption related distant environmental impacts we employ the case of land and water use linked to austria s soy product consumption to demonstrate the approach s relevance finally we outline some possible applications of this method to show its potential in enhancing understanding for informed consumer based environmental decision making

consumption patterns and their effects on land required for food abstract vast amounts of land are required for the production of food but the area suitable for growing crops is limited in this paper attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages varying from subsistence to affluent leading to information on land requirements for food large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements while food consumption expenditure and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time a difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing european food patterns while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat it is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land lifestyle changes changes in consumer behavior on a household level can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land

cropland area embodied in international trade contradictory results from different approaches with rapidly increasing trade volumes resource use and environmental pressures related to traded products are high on research and policy agendas robust accounts of biophysical resources used in the production processes of traded goods are required to support sustainable consumption and to expose problem shifting related to environmental policies in this context multi region input output analysis mrio is becoming a widely applied tool to establish consumption based accounts and to analyse production consumption links along complex international supply chains using the example of china s trade in cropland products and embodied cropland we make the case for a re evaluation of its application to land and other resources while analyses based on physical trade matrices show that china is a major net importer of cropland products and embodied cropland mrio based results suggest exactly the opposite we do not find convincing arguments that could explain these large differences based on our knowledge of land systems and biomass metabolism and on the results from physical accounting we question the plausibility of mrio derived results we conclude by outlining next steps in research that are required to improve assessments of trade related resource use in order to produce more robust results a prerequisite for the formulation of policy recommendations

income productivity in china on the role of health this study provides empirical evidence regarding the income productivity of health human capital in china we appeal to concepts from human capital theory to support a basic model that treats health as a form of human capital in the income production process our model examines the economic return at the household level from the health of its individual members we estimate this with a longitudinal sample drawn from the china health and nutrition survey chns allowing us to exploit within variation in health and income to address possible unobservables biasing estimates of the impact of health on income in the simple cross sectional setting household income is strongly influenced by the health of its members particularly in rural areas these findings could have important implications for health and economic policy making aimed at reducing the long standing urban rural economic gap and more comprehensively insuring the rural population against health and economic risk

tele connecting urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales a case study of beef in taiwan abstract this study takes the first step to tele connect urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales by taking beef consumption of taiwan during 1990 2016 as a test case the novelty of this study is to make a quantitative effort in advancing the methodological approach in urban studies and facilitates future research in the subject area our numerical results support the hypothesis of ult associated with beef consumption and suggest that the phenomena of beef related land teleconnection are more significant in urban areas from the time dynamic perspective moreover trade liberalization extends the spatial spectrum of implied land use associated with beef consumption it allows imports towards relative land saving origins and alleviates beef related ult finally income growth plays a key role in driving up the implied land use of beef consumption at earlier stage of urban development in contrast at the later stage the increase in expenditure intensity of beef accounts for surging beef consumption in cities

a normative approach to industrial performance evaluation and concentration indices abstract in this paper we present a normative theory of industrial evaluation our framework provides a foundation for the notion of the equivalent number of equal sized firms which is an inverse measure of concentration from an axiomatic basis we develop a particular functional form for the evaluation of industry performance a cobb douglas function of the equivalent number of equal sized firms and total output

walking the tightrope on medicare reform a central controversy in the debate about medicare is whether the program spends too much money or whether instead it should be expanded to cover more i consider the value of increased medicare spending i argue that on average medicare spending is worth it the health gains brought by medicare have been greater than their cost at the margin however services are overused and have low value medicare reforms need to promote the high average value of care while eliminating care of low value many of the proposed reforms fall short of this goal

humanitarian aid fertility and economic growth this paper examines the effect of humanitarian aid on fertility and economic growth in an overlapping generations model where health status in adulthood depends on health in childhood adult agents allocate their time to work leisure and childrearing activities humanitarian aid influences the probability of survival to adulthood health in childhood and the time that adults allocate to childrearing giving rise to an ambiguous effect on both fertility and growth an empirical investigation for the period 1973 2007 suggests that humanitarian aid has on average a zero effect on the rates of fertility and of per capita output growth

analysis of the effect and potential of energy conservation in china in this paper a quantitative algorithm for direct and indirect energy savings is developed based on the database analysis of china s energy consumption per gdp in the last two decades the result shows that direct energy savings due to improved energy conversion and end use utilization efficiencies only account for 26 5 of the total energy savings and that indirect energy savings due to increased added value of products product shifts and structure shifts in industries account for 73 5 of the total energy savings factors affecting indirect energy savings are then analyzed and total energy system efficiencies and direct energy savings in 2020 are quantitatively estimated which shows that enlarging indirect energy savings is a more crucial task for china s macro energy conservation in the future the paper suggests that china should pay more attention to indirect energy savings to improve the energy utilization output benefits by increasing the added value of products optimizing product and industry structures and improving production technologies the potential of indirect energy savings in china is more significant compared with developed countries

modeling the effects of health on economic growth abstract this paper investigates the effects of health indicators such as adult survival rates asr on gdp growth rates at 5 year intervals in several countries panel data were analyzed on gdp series based on purchasing power adjustments and on exchange rates first we developed a framework for modeling the inter relationships between gdp growth rates and explanatory variables by re examining the life expectancy income relationship second models for growth rates were estimated taking into account the interaction between asr and lagged gdp level issues of endogeneity and reverse causality were addressed lastly we computed confidence intervals for the effect of asr on growth rate and applied a test for parameter stability the results showed positive effects of asr on gdp growth rates in low income countries

renewable resources property rights regimes and endogenous growth abstract we extend brander and taylor s brander j a taylor m s 1998 the simple economics of easter island a ricardo malthus model of renewable resource use am econ rev 88 119 138 model of feast and famine cycles on easter island using galor and weil s gailor o weil d n 2000 population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond am econ rev 90 806 28 model of endogenous technological advance where technological change is related to the population we note that different property rights regimes will influence the relative direction of technological advance whether that advance is in harvesting technologies or in technologies that influence the growth rate of some renewable biological resource property rights regimes that favor biological growth rates over harvest rates tend to dampen feast famine cycles while those that favor harvest efficiency worsen such cycles

industry energy use and structural change a case study of the people s republic of china abstract this paper examines the effects of structural change and improvements in energy intensities of individual industries in aggregate industry energy intensity changes in china during 1980 88 the divisia index is used to decompose the energy intensity effect and structural effect a major finding of this analysis is that the main contribution to changed aggregate energy intensity was from the changes in energy intensities of individual industries during the period structural effects were found to contribute little to the aggregate energy intensity changes

work intensity gender and sustainable development abstract is labour intensive employment compatible with social justice and environmental sustainability this paper examines the question of how far small scale intermediate technology based on energy intensive human work which is central to prescriptions for poverty alleviation and sustainable development is compatible with development objectives emphasizing gender equity work intensity is a neglected characteristic of labour but significant in the determination of human well being and in the intra household distribution of welfare the intensification of energy expenditure does not affect men and women in a uniform way and needs to be gender disaggregated in order to reveal potential trade offs between development strategies based on labour intensive growth and the well being of men and women the paper draws upon the experience with treadle pumps for irrigation in bangladesh as an illustration of such potential trade offs and argues for more rigorous analyses of gender divisions of labour which include work intensity in combination with time allocation

vintage human capital demographic trends and endogenous growth we study how economic growth is affected by demographics in an overlapping generations model with a realistic survival law individuals optimally chose the dates at which they leave school to enter the labor market and at which they retire endogenous growth arises thanks to the accumulation of generation specific human capital favorable shifts in the survival probabilities always induce longer schooling and later retirement but have an ambiguous effect on growth the relationship between the growth of population and per capita growth is hump shaped increases in longevity can be responsible for a switch from a no growth regime to a sustained growth regime and for a positive relationship between fertility and growth to vanish

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

on the specification of structure performance relationships this paper argues that most estimated structure profitability equations in industrial economics have not been derived from a single coherent view of the behaviour of firms the independent variables in such equations have often been derived on the basis of a literature search and by appeal to conflicting approaches e g constrained and unconstrained profit maximisation the use of a coherent approach indicates that structure performance equations are likely to be highly non linear and that simultaneous equation estimation is neither required nor appropriate in some cases single equation estimation is adequate and in other cases reduced form equations are needed

developmental drivers of nutritional change a cross country analysis summary we utilize a rich cross country data set to understand within country changes in nutrition with a focus on the role of general developmental factors we find that economic growth is a strong predictor of nutritional performance as is growth in food production although only in more food insecure countries we find no evidence that infrastructure is directly important but greater asset ownership improved access to health services higher rates of female secondary education and lower fertility rates are all strong predictors of improvements in nutrition we show that national success stories are largely consistent with these findings

hiv testing subjective beliefs and economic behavior this paper examines the effects of learning hiv status on economic behavior among rural malawians according to economic life cycle models if learning hiv results is informative about additional years of life being diagnosed hiv positive or negative should predict changes in consumption investment and savings behavior with important micro and macro economic implications using an experiment that randomly assigned incentives to learn hiv results i find that while learning hiv results had short term effects on subjective belief of hiv infection these differences did not persist after two years consistent with this there were relatively few differences two years later in savings income expenditures and employment between those who learned and did not learn their status