explaining agricultural productivity growth an international perspective this article presents multi output multi input total factor productivity tfp growth rates in agriculture for 88 countries over the 1970 2001 period estimated with both stochastic frontier analysis sfa and the more commonly employed data envelopment analysis dea we find results with sfa to be more plausible than with dea and use them to analyze trends across countries and the determinants of tfp growth in developing countries the central finding is that policy and institutional variables including public agricultural expenditure and proagricultural price policy reforms are significant correlates of tfp growth the most significant geographic correlate of tfp growth is distance to the nearest oecd country

women s fertility market work and marital status a test of the new household economics with international data since its emergence from the pioneering efforts of becker 1960 and mincer 1962 the new household economics has inspired a wide range of theoretical and empirical models of demographic behaviour with particular emphasis on fertility female labour force participation and marriage a central principle of these models has been to assign critical roles to the values of men s and women s time in the decision making process in the present paper i adhere to that principle while seeking to contribute to the empirical literature in two important respects 1 the econometric model developed in this paper incorporates several improvements over prior models although women s fertility market work and marital status are closely interconnected their endogeneity has not been fully reflected in previous econometric work 2 in the present model all these demographic variables are endogenous and are subject to a common set of incomes and prices another distinctive feature represents an extension of the approach developed by butz and ward 1979 they used interaction termsmen s and women s earnings weighted by female labour force participation to explain variation in us birth rates here earnings are interacted with the endogenous demographic variables in all equations simulation experiments are used to gauge the total impacts of changes in men s and women s pay under alternative sets of initial conditions 2 for the first time so far as known cross national data are used in a direct test of the new household economics although the literature contains

an empirical analysis of life cycle fertility and female labor supply this paper examines us household fertility and female labor supply over the life cycle using data from the panel study of income dynamics the authors investigate how maternal time inputs and market expenditures on offspring as well as the benefits they yield their parents vary with ages of offspring and influence female labor supply and contraceptive behavior the econometric framework combines a female labor supply model and a contraceptive choice index function it also accounts for the fact that conceptions are not perfectly controllable events using longitudinal data on married couples the authors estimate these equations and test alternative specifications of the technologies governing child care the findings suggest that while parents cannot perfectly control conceptions variations in child care costs do affect life cycle spacing of births furthermore the results demonstrate the gains of modeling the linkages between female labor supply and fertility behavior at the household level authors modified

long term drivers of global virtual water trade a trade gravity approach for 1965 2010 abstract in the era of globalisation over the last half century there has been an increase in the exchange of agricultural and food products this internationalisation process has led to intense environmental pressures on a global level which has been the case of water resources this paper studies the determinants of global virtual water trade flows between 1965 and 2010 using panel data techniques we have evaluated and quantified the explanatory factors of bilateral virtual water transfers between 70 countries as a result of agri food trade we have used the well known trade gravity equation to explain exchanges of water embodied in agricultural goods on the basis of economic geographical institutional and environmental factors the analysis considers economic country heterogeneity in order to evaluate how trade impacts water resources depending on different development patterns our main findings indicate that the traditional economic institutional and geographic factors played a key role as drivers of virtual water bilateral trade flows between 1965 and 2010 in addition the natural endowments also exerted a notable influence on these trends

the price of innovation new estimates of drug development costs the research and development costs of 68 randomly selected new drugs were obtained from a survey of 10 pharmaceutical firms these data were used to estimate the average pre tax cost of new drug development the costs of compounds abandoned during testing were linked to the costs of compounds that obtained marketing approval the estimated average out of pocket cost per new drug is us 403 million 2000 dollars capitalizing out of pocket costs to the point of marketing approval at a real discount rate of 11 yields a total pre approval cost estimate of us 802 million 2000 dollars when compared to the results of an earlier study with a similar methodology total capitalized costs were shown to have increased at an annual rate of 7 4 above general price inflation 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

how does parental leave affect fertility and return to work evidence from two natural experiments this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the duration of paid job protected parental leave on mothers higher order fertility and postbirth labor market careers identification is based on a major austrian reform increasing the duration of parental leave from one year to two years for any child born on or after july 1 1990 we find that mothers who give birth to their first child immediately after the reform have more second children than prereform mothers and that extended parental leave significantly reduces return to work employment and earnings also decrease in the short run but not in the long run fertility and work responses vary across the population in ways suggesting that both cash transfers and job protection are relevant increasing parental leave for a future child increases fertility strongly but leaves short run postbirth careers relatively unaffected partially reversing the 1990 extension a second 1996 reform improves employment and earnings while compressing the time between births

tax incentives and fertility in canada quantum vs tempo effects using inter jurisdictional differences in the implementation of the family allowance program in canada in the mid 1970s this paper first shows that quebec families with two or more children prior to being exposed to the program responded quite strongly to the added incentives in the short run relative to women in other canadian provinces tracking down the cohorts across censuses we find that the same group of quebec families subsequently showed a decrease in fertility relative to the rest of canada leaving ultimate family size unaffected these results are consistent with the program having generated only a timing effect utilisant les differences entre juridictions dans la mise en uvre du programme d allocations familiales au canada au milieu des annees 70 ce memoire montre d abord que les familles quebecoises qui avaient deux enfants ou plus avant d etre exposees au programme ont repondu tres fortement aux incitations additionnelles a court terme en comparaison avec ce qui s est passe dans les autres provinces canadiennes en suivant les cohortes a travers les recensements on montre que ce meme groupe de familles du quebec a par la suite subi un declin de fecondite par rapport au reste du canada ce qui a eu pour effet de laisser la taille de la famille ultimement non affectee d une maniere relative ces resultats sont coherents avec la conclusion que le programme a seulement eu un effet sur le profil temporel de la fecondite

post war fertility and female labour force participation rates this paper provides an explanation for the change in fertility and female labour supply over the post war period in england and wales a model of fertility and labour force participation is outlined and estimated over the period 1953 82 for six age groups of women the most significant factors to influence fertility and participation are found to be male and female earnings and education interest rates number of children and the state of the labour market are also important excerpt

four themes in fertility research this study is concerned with four main themes that have been combined to describe u s fertility trends since 1920 these themes are identified as a time adjustment mechanism income the wifes labor force activities and some intergenerational factor in order to obtain an unambiguous picture each theme will be represented by only one variable after selecting the variables and estimating a model an examination of the changing role these variables have had in explaining changes in fertility the total fertility rate throughout much of this century will be made finally the implications these themes have for future fertility will be examined the authors conclude that in interpreting historical u s fertility rates the results seem to indicate that much of the early decline in u s fertility was due to falling infant mortality after the second world war fertility rose sharply as the age structure variable declined and income rose eventually both womens labor force participation rates and the age structure variable rose and consequently fertility fell they also suggest that the age structure variable may cause a temporary upward swing in fertility in the near future excerpt

what have we learned from the economics of the family the family is distinguished from other social institutions such as firms by its crucial role in the production and nurture of children and its rationale is ultimately to be found in the preferences of individuals for own children sexual reproduction means that the production of one s own child requires the participation of another person of the opposite sex the production of a child who will survive become a successful adult and produce his or her own children requires the expenditure of both personal and purchased resources over a lengthy period of time although interesting insights on the family can be culled from the classics systematic development of the economics of the family is a recent phenomenon beginning in the late 1950 s when harvey leibenstein 1957 and gary becker 1960 attempted to address the determinants of fertility behavior within the framework of consumer theory in this paper i provide a brief overview of the history of family economics since 1960 and along the way offer a selective assessment of what has been learned from it i attempt this assessment by asking how far we have progressed in answering a few of the larger theoretical empirical and policy questions that have motivated economists interests in an area customarily studied by sociologists and demographers or that have caused economists dealing with more traditional subject matter to incorporate the family into their work among the set of questions that have been addressed within the literature during the past twenty five years are 1 what are the causes of the historical association between economic growth and development and demographic transition from high to low levels of fertility and mortality of what relevance is the historical experience of currently developed countries to contemporary ldcs should fertility reduction be a primary goal of policy in the developing countries are the developed countries in danger of extinction because of fertility below replacement levels 2 what was the cause of the post world war ii baby boom and subsequent baby bust was the baby boom a one time aberration from a secular decline in fertility or can we expect substantial fluctuations in the birth rate in the future what are the consequences of the baby boom for the economic welfare of cohorts born during and after the boom 3 is the traditional family dead in the united states and other developed countries why did the divorce rate double in a decade why the growth in female headed households why do so many divorced fathers fail to support their children has the sexual division of labor within the family changed as a consequence of the growth of female labor supply to what extent are these changes in the family caused by social policy and to what extent are they a product of basic market forces associated with modern economic development what are the consequences of these changes for the welfare of future generations i attempt to touch on some issues from each of the three areas in which the questions are grouped however constraints imposed by limitations of space time and most imtdiscussants kenneth wolpin ohio state university robert pollak university of pennsylvania t paul schultz yale university

childbearing age family allowances and social security although the optimal policy under endogenous fertility has been widely studied the optimal public intervention under endogenous childbearing age has remained largely unexplored this paper examines the optimal family policy in a context where the number and the timing of births are chosen by individuals who differ as to how early fertility can weaken future earnings growth we analyze the design of a policy of family allowances and of public pensions in such a setting under distinct informational environments we show how endogenous childbearing ages affect the optimal policy through the redistribution across the earnings dimension and the internalization of fertility externalities it is also shown that contrary to common practice children benefits differentiated according to the age of parents can under some conditions be part of the optimal family policy

fertility and the personal exemption implicit pronatalist policy in the united states the personal exemption in the us provides households with an income tax subsidy for each child this paper uses aggregate time series data for the us from 1913 to 1984 to estimate the impact of the tax value of the personal exemption on the aggregate birth rate the empirical results indicate that the personal exemption has a positive and significant impact on fertility and this result is robust to a variety of specifications the us therefore pursues an implicit pronatalist policy through the income tax and the empirical results indicate that the recent tax reform act of 1986 will on average increase this subsidy for fertility authors

who are the producers and consumers value chains and food policy effects in the wheat sector in pakistan we develop a disaggregated nominal rate of assistance nra methodology to disentangle the welfare impacts of policies for various interest groups along the value chain to disaggregate effects within the producer and consumer umbrellas we apply our value chain nra methodology to the case of pakistan s wheat price and trade policy we analyze the welfare implications for various agents in the wheat flour value chain from 2000 to 2013 a period characterized by major global price volatility and by regular adjustments of domestic policies we find that the wheat policy has generally benefitted flour consumers and wheat traders at the expense of wheat farmers with limited effects on flour millers our findings illustrate that the welfare implications of policies can be quite different within the producer and consumer umbrellas which has potentially important implications for economic and political economy analyses and for the design of policies that aim to target the poorest groups along value chains

implications of domestic price insulation for global food price behavior abstract rapid changes in global food prices in recent years are widely viewed as a serious threat to global development while various sources of price instability in agriculture have been identified little attention appears to have been given to the importance of changes in trade policies that insulate domestic prices from world markets as a source of volatility in world prices a contribution of this paper is to show that these interventions are dynamically more complex than simple proportional insulation insulation against an initial price increase in world prices increases the magnitude of that increase while subsequent adjustments to the level of protection change the fundamental nature of price volatility we find such policies are widespread and increase the volatility of world prices while not reducing the volatility of domestic prices because of the collective action problem involved in this form of policy intervention

food security policy options for china lessons from other countries the authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the world bank and australia s rural industries research and development corporation

a time series model of fertility and female labour supply in the uk multiple time series procedures suitable for estimation and testing with nonstationary data are applied to uk data on age specific fertility rates age specific female labour force participation rates and women s and men s wages cointegration tests establish the existence of two long run equilibrium relations identified as a fertility relation and a labour supply equation for each age group maximum likelihood estimates of these equations are consistent with the new home economics model of fertility and tests of granger causality show evidence of extensive feedback among the variables

women and affirmative action abstract this paper reviews evidence indicating that as it has been enforced so far affirmative action has contributed negligibly to women s progress in the workplace affirmative action can be modeled as a tax on employers whose female employment growth falls below a certain rate clearly if labor supply shifts result in female employment growth greater than the regulatory standard the tax constraint will not be binding as we shall see this may help explain an affirmative action program that is generally ineffective for women although it has been effective for minorities federal anti bias policies in general and the system of affirmative action goals in particular have been accused of instituting employment quotas this paper reviews evidence on the homogenization of the workplace predicted by the quota theory as well as considering more direct evidence on whether affirmative action goals are really quotas in lambs clothing i shall also review the slim evidence on the most fundamental and co

booms busts and fertility testing the becker model using gender specific labor demand in this paper i present estimates of the effect of local labor demand shocks on birth rates to identify exogenous variation in male and female labor demand i create indices that exploit cross sectional variation in industry composition changes in gender education composition within industries and growth in national industry employment consistent with economic theory i find that improvements in men s labor market conditions are associated with increases in fertility while improvements in women s labor market conditions have smaller negative effects i separately find that increases in unemployment rates are associated with small decreases in birth rates at the state level

fertility and the size of the u s labor force this paper reviews and interprets from an economic perspective the demographic trends in the u s since the turn of the century the primary focus will be upon the interplay between the fertility and labor force participation of women and how they may be interpreted within simple economic models we will begin by stating what economic demography is and why careful analytic methods are needed section ii provides a brief demographic history of the u s section iii describes the major economic theories of fertility and section iv discusses the empirical performance of these theories section v discusses the linkages between fertility and the size of the labor force and section vi concludes excerpt

innovation in the pharmaceutical industry new estimates of r d costs the research and development costs of 106 randomly selected new drugs were obtained from a survey of 10 pharmaceutical firms these data were used to estimate the average pre tax cost of new drug and biologics development the costs of compounds abandoned during testing were linked to the costs of compounds that obtained marketing approval the estimated average out of pocket cost per approved new compound is 1395 million 2013 dollars capitalizing out of pocket costs to the point of marketing approval at a real discount rate of 10 5 yields a total pre approval cost estimate of 2558 million 2013 dollars when compared to the results of the previous study in this series total capitalized costs were shown to have increased at an annual rate of 8 5 above general price inflation adding an estimate of post approval r d costs increases the cost estimate to 2870 million 2013 dollars

food prices wages and welfare in rural india this paper considers the welfare and distributional consequences of higher relative food prices in rural india through the lens of a specific factors general equilibrium trade model applied at the district level the evidence shows that nominal wages for manual labor both within and outside agriculture respond elastically to increases in producer prices that is wages rose faster in rural districts growing more of those crops with large price run ups over 2004 09 accounting for such wage gains the analysis finds that rural households across the income spectrum benefit from higher agricultural commodity prices indeed rural wage adjustment appears to play a much greater role in protecting the welfare of the poor than the public distribution system india s giant food rationing scheme moreover policies like agricultural export bans which insulate producers as well as consumers from international price increases are particularly harmful to the poor of rural india conventional welfare analyses that assume fixed wages and focus on households net sales position lead to radically different conclusions

the effect of house price on fertility evidence from hong kong i introduction the mechanism underlying the demographic transition coinciding with industrialization still remains an unresolved debate in economics and demography early contributions to the new family economics formulated the choice of fertility into the beckerian time allocation model and derived that the secular decline of fertility rates in developed countries over the past 50 yr was mainly attributed to the increase of the opportunity cost of childbearing and rearing represented by the increase of female education levels wage rates and labor force participation rates becker 1960 1991 willis 1973 although this negative relationship between fertility rates and female labor market activities has been verified by later empirical studies butz and ward 1979 heckman and walker 1989 1990 it cannot fully explain the demographic transition pattern in western europe and elsewhere as contended by becker and murphy 2000 an illustration in point of the insufficiency of this female labor market story comes from the demographic transition pattern that has occurred with the east asian tigers during the past four decades while these four economies south korea taiwan hong kong and singapore have experienced both economic takeoff and fertility decrease synchronously macunovich 2000 their female labor market behavior changed mildly and female labor force participation rates flfprs are still much lower than their western counterparts 1 the typical representation of this new demographic transition pattern happened in hong kong on the one hand the economy of hong kong has been booming and has experienced one of the fastest per capita gross domestic product gdp growth rates around the world in the past four decades however the total fertility rate tfr has sharply decreased by 75 at the same period from 3 459 in 1971 downward to 966 in 2005 one of the lowest in the world and far below the required replacement level of 2 100 2 on the other hand however the extent to which the female labor market behavior has responded to the economic prosperity has been very limited for example the flfprs just increased from 42 8 in 1971 to 52 0 in 2005 3 since it is unbelievable that a 9 2 increase of flfprs is the primary driving force for the almost 75 decrease of tfrs other factors influencing the shadow price of childbearing and rearing should also be taken into account 4 the dominant factor responsible for the drastic decrease of fertility rates in hong kong suggested by the present article is the house price hp the justification of the hp into a fertility decrease story involves the standard income and substitution effects first of all the increase of hps impoverishes parents and exerts a negative income effect on the demand for children in the standard economic theory of fertility becker 1991 following the conventional practice in which the child is assumed to be a normal good the negative income effect decreases the demand for children second hp is a part of the shadow price for children the increase of the hp should also decrease the demand for children in the hicksian sense and this negative compensated substitution effect reinforces the pure negative income effect overall both effects may cause many relatively young or poor households to be unable to afford to set up a household in a lifecycle context consequently to the extent that owning house or renting house of a sufficient size may be a precondition for having children many such households may be highly constrained to have any children at all for relatively wealthy couples rising housing prices would diminish the house size they could afford to buy or to rent and decrease the demand for children accordingly more importantly the magnitude of the increase of hp may be large enough to trigger the sharp decrease of fertility rates in hong kong in fact the growth rates of hps have dominated the growth rates of both real per capita gdp and real wage rates during the past four decades

symposium on women in the labor market t his symposium contains four essays on the general topic of women in the labor market the essays are varied not only in focus but also in philosophical outlook the topic is of central importance today few economic trends have been more pronounced or sustained than the increased labor force participation of women in 1948 the labor force participation rate of females was 32 7 percent at the end of 1987 it stood at 56 4 percent the growth has been significant even during the 1980s in 1980 the rate was 51 5 percent and it shows little sign of tapering off during the same period the labor force participation rate of males has fallen in 1948 the rate for males was 86 6 percent whereas it was 76 1 percent in 1987 trends toward earlier retirement among males account for some of the change along with other demographic shifts the relative economic position of females has improved during the 1980s a rough look at current population survey data reveals that the ratio of average female weekly wages to average male weekly wages was 58 in 1976 and 59 in 1980 by 1986 it had risen to 62 although some have attributed this narrowing to the lack of appreciable growth in male weekly wages rather than to progress in female weekly wages no similar trend exists for other groups in particular black males have not done well over the same period relative to white men in 1976 the ratio of black male weekly wages to white male weekly wages was 70 in 1986 it was 66 thus there is something significant about females that is absent for other disadvantaged groups in the labor market this progress is confined to white women for the most part the ratio of black female weekly wages to white female weekly wages was 89 in 1974 and reached a peak of 93 in 1979 it fell back to 88 by 1986

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

the dynamics of fertility family planning and female education in a developing economy unlike most empirical works on fertility analysis this study is the first attempt to analyse the dynamics of fertility and its determinants with a particular focus on the role played by female education and family planning programmes in the context of a traditional society the analysis is based on the application of the following dynamic time series techniques in a multivariate context cointegration vector error correction modelling and variance decompositions these dynamic tools are recently developed and hitherto untried in fertility analysis in the context of a poor developing economy such as india the results based on the above most recently developed methodology broadly indicate that in the complex dynamic interactions the importance of conventional structural hypothesis as a granger causal factor in bringing fertility down in the longer term cannot be denied however overall in the short to long term the findings appear to be more consistent with the recent ideational hypothesis

impacts of economic reform in poland incidence and welfare changes within a consistent framework the costs of shortages and rationing are not captured by standard consumer price indices thus the change in real gdp per capita is an overestimate of welfare losses in transition economics in this study virtual prices are used to calculate new cost of living indices clis the results for polant show that from 1987 to 1992 the cli ignoring the rationing effects is biased upward from 1 53 to 3 71 percentage points per year compared to the estimates of welfare loss that neglect the rationing effects during the prereform period the estimated welfare losses that reflect the rationing are reduced by 50 using hausman virtual prices and by 75 using external proxy virtual prices

the effect of economic opportunity and family background on adolescent cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation and childbearing among low income blacks this article uses a hazards model permitting continuous covariates and fixed effects to estimate the effect of local employment opportunity and family background on the cohabitation and childbearing of black youths from low income households support is found for w j wilson s hypothesis that employment opportunity encourages the formation of cohabitational unions as well as for the opportunity cost hypothesis that employment opportunity discourages childbearing outside such unions however the latter effect appears to be larger suggesting that the opportunity cost hypothesis is the primary channel through which higher employment rates result in lower rates of illegitimacy among underclass youths

fertility choice and economic growth theory and evidence this proposed theoretical model is based on new models of barro and becker and becker murphy and tamura and explains the interaction of family decisions about fertility and the macroeconomy in a growth situation the proposed model captures a dynamic interaction between labor leisure and fertility choice and a structural fertility preference shock endogenous factor are consumption labor leisure and fertility while exogenous factors are production and utility parameters the aim was to develop a general equilibrium model which expresses short and long term dynamics to test the impact of economic disturbances on fertility and to explain the us baby boom and subsequent fertility patterns savings in capital accumulation and in labor supply were expected to have ambiguous effects while improved productivity was expected to increase steady state consumption the methodology a structural vector auto regression var model was developed by blanchard and quah and ihmed ickes wang and yoo structural impacts include disturbances in employment fertility theoretical preference shift and output long term restrictions are based on theory rather than on ad hoc causal orderings sims method or current responses bernanke method the structural var model is estimated using the logged differences of labor fertility rate and output the empirical results are based on analysis of us data 1949 88 on fertility weekly hours worked and real gross national product the model revealed that fertility choice should not be considered exogenous to the labor market or to economic growth variance of the forecast error for the fertility rate was significantly explained by employment shocks the effect was reduced fertility and increased labor force effort output responses to fertility and technology shocks were similar to those reported by shapiro and watson in the variance decomposition analysis output shocks explained about 33 of output variance fertility shocks explained about 33 of labor growth and 25 of output growth after the first year with a lag of one year about 37 of fertility variance was explained by employment shocks concluding remarks underscore the importance of knowing which shock initiated the motion and causal ordering

technology policy for a world of skew distributed outcomes abstract this paper draws implications for technology policy from evidence on the size distribution of returns from eight sets of data on inventions and innovations attributable to private sector firms and universities the distributions are all highly skew the top 10 of sample members captured from 48 to 93 percent of total sample returns it follows that programs seeking to advance technology should not be judged negatively if they lead to numerous economic failures rather emphasis should be placed on the relatively few big successes to achieve noteworthy success with appreciable confidence a sizeable array of projects must often be supported the outcome distributions are sufficiently skewed that even with large numbers of projects it is not possible to diversify away substantial residual variability through portfolio strategies

semiparametric bayesian inference for dynamic tobit panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity summary this paper develops semiparametric bayesian methods for inference of dynamic tobit panel data models our approach requires that the conditional mean dependence of the unobserved heterogeneity on the initial conditions and the strictly exogenous variables be specified important quantities of economic interest such as the average partial effect and average transition probabilities can be readily obtained as a by product of the markov chain monte carlo run we apply our method to study female labor supply using a panel data set from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

family economics and macro behavior in this 1987 presidential address to the american economic association the author explores the contributions of the field of family economics to macroeconomic analysis the focus is on family behavior as an active endogenous factor that both affects and is affected by the evolution of the economy much of the time is spent on long term economic growth although i also discuss short and long cycles in economic activity and the interaction between overlapping generations through social security transmission of inequality and in other ways many conclusions in these and presumably other macro areas change radically when family choices get the attention they deserve excerpt

gains from trade inefficiency of government programs and the net economic effects of trading a great deal has been written on the inefficiencies of government farm programs and associated welfare effects e g just hueth and schmitz 1982 gardner 1983 1987 schmitz sigurdson and doering 1986 schmitz 1988 however common measures of inefficiency and distributional impact have not addressed the following question how are gains from trade and the inefficiencies of government programs related from a policy perspective knowing the trade impacts of government programs is at least as important as knowing the inefficiency effects for example is it possible for gains from trade to outweigh farm program inefficiencies alternatively could it be that negative trade impacts combined with farm program inefficiencies create situations in which no trade would be preferred to trade under existing government policy distortions in this paper we establish the link between classic gains from trade and the inefficiency of distortionary government programs using this framework we show both theoretically and empirically that the net economic effects of trading can be negative i e no trade would be preferred to trade under distortions we show that

econometric analysis of birth rate dynamics in britain the author presents an econometric model to estimate annual fluctuations in the birth rate in the united kingdom since 1950 the new model has been improved by 1 adding additional economic variables to the model particularly child allowances real house prices and following easterlin 1980 womens cohort size 2 using mens and womens net after tax wages rather than gross wages and 3 employing econometric techniques developed from the theory of cointegrated series to deal with the nonstationarity of most of the data excerpt

the impact of r d cooperations and mergers in pharmaceuticals on research activities and drugs offered on the market in the last 10 years the pharmaceutical industry has experienced steep unprecedented price increases which are frequently attributed to increasing drug development costs to cope with rocketing development costs companies engage in research and development r d cooperations we study the impact of r d cooperations on firms research activities and drugs offered on the market using a comprehensive dataset we find that r d cooperations formed at the early stage of the drug development process increase the number of r d projects and the number of drugs offered on the market late stage r d cooperations formed among larger firms in technology and product markets increase firms research activities but reduce the number of drugs launched on the product market results suggest that large firms cooperating in the late research stage re optimize their r d pipelines and eliminate similarly aligned research projects

liberalization endogenous institutions and growth a comparative analysis of agricultural reforms in africa asia and europe thirty years ago a vast share of low and middle income countries was heavily state controlled the liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s had greatly different effects on growth in countries in africa asia and europe a comparative framework is used to document these differences and a model is developed to formally analyze how liberalization affects production and income distribution when the institutions that govern production and exchange are also affected hypotheses are derived for how endogenous institutional adjustments affect the growth response to liberalization these insights motivate a series of explanations for the differences in performance across regions and commodities following liberalization

adapting natural resource enterprises under global warming in south america a mixed logit analysis this paper develops an integrated model of adapting natural resource intensive enterprises in latin america to future climate changes based on about 2 000 rural household surveys we model six specialized and diversified resource enterprises across seventeen land covers we estimate random coefficients of climatic parameters with a mixed logit model by 2020 under a hotter and drier ccc scenario crops only and cropforests enterprises are predicted to fall by 6 2 and 0 6 respectively offsetting these losses livestock only enterprise increases by 5 5 and crops livestock forests enterprise increases by 0 7 these changes magnify over time through 2060 by which time the crops livestock enterprise increases by more than 5 adaptation measures should be designed in a manner that captures the unique characteristics of latin american ecosystems

the baby boom and world war ii a macroeconomic analysis we argue that one major cause of the u s postwar baby boom was the rise in female labor supply during world war ii we develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor force participation decisions we use the model to assess the impact of the war on female labor supply and fertility in the decades following the war for the war generation of women the high demand for female labor brought about by mobilization leads to an increase in labor supply that persists after the war as a result younger women who reach adulthood in the 1950s face increased labor market competition which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier the effect is amplified by the rise in taxes necessary to pay down wartime government debt in our calibrated model the war generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust

a cointegration model of age specific fertility and female labor supply in the united states 1 introductionmodels of fertility based on economic theories of behavior have been subjected to rigorous conceptual and empirical scrutiny for surveys see olsen 1994 and macunovich 1996a for critical reviews see murphy 1992 and smith 1981 however much empirical analysis of aggregate fertility patterns in the united states has relied on traditional regression methods with little influence from recent developments in multiple time series methods appropriate for nonstationary variables although important theoretical propositions are testable with individual data understanding of trends and patterns in fertility behavior at the societal level requires aggregate analysis ryder 1980 the aggregation of individual effects to make statements about total fertility is problematic as the composition of the population changes over time some effects that are measured at the individual level may reflect changes in individuals positions within a society and these effects will not be present at the societal level alternatively social interaction may induce behavioral changes across a population that are not reflected in individual responses as described by kohler 2001 changes in societal norms and institutions can create feedback loops between aggregate variables and individual incentives toward childbearing so that effects between aggregates may exceed substantially the responses measured at the level of the household 1analysis of aggregate time series data has its own considerable challenges fertility and its determinants are most likely nonstationary time series that trend or drift persistently away from their initial values such nonstationarity may undermine classical estimation and inference with traditional regression procedures leading to spurious inferences about relations among variables furthermore the principal determinants of fertility for example women s wages and education levels female labor force participation unemployment rates and husband s incomes are quite possibly endogenously determined in conjunction with fertility decisions this problem of endogenous regressons can undermine the identifiability of the fertility model rendering the relations unestimable even if the relations are identified the problem of endogenous regressors leads to inconsistent least squares estimators of model parameters the objective of this paper is to revisit a simple economic model of fertility employing the cointegration model of johansen 1995 that is appropriate for analyzing relations between nonstationary time series johansen s procedure allows the empirical determination of the number of stationary relations and produces maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of these relations that are consistent and normally distributed even in the presence of endogenous explanatory variables furthermore to capture information on both the level and the timing of fertility the analysis is applied to two age specific fertility rates covering the prime childbearing years of u s women 2 empirical studies of fertility with aggregate dataeconomic models of fertility are grounded in either easterlin s 1980a relative income hypothesis or the new home economics nhe of willis 1973 and becker 1981 the former theory emphasizes the role of male incomes relative to economic aspirations as the driving force behind fertility and female labor force participation economic aspirations of young adults are determined by material conditions prevailing in their parental homes during their teenage years when their parents would be close to their prime in earnings capacity an increase in relative income shifts preferences in favor of childbearing and away from labor force activity by young adult women in the full easterlin model relative income is determined by the size of the young adult cohort relative to that of prime aged adults both measured contemporaneously easterlin 1980b

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

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

on the empirical implementation of some game theoretic models of household labor supply this paper discusses some issues in the empirical implementation of game theoretic models of household labor supply in particular we focus on the identification problems inherent in many of these models as an illustration we estimate a game theoretic model which uses data on preferred working hours as additional identifying information

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

women in the labor market and in the family t here are two themes in this paper the first an exercise in revisionist history argues that the conventional wisdom of an absence of any substantial labor market progress for women is mistaken instead throughout this century women s wages have been steadily rising relative to those of men a progress likely to accelerate in the next few decades our second theme contends that this labor market progress is not enough alongside their labor market advances the relative economic plight of many women is worsening the downside news is the increasing feminization of poverty a reflection of the growing instability of the american family

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

cotton subsidies the wto and the cotton problem following an 8 year long dispute over cotton subsidies brazil and the united states signed a memorandum of understanding on april 21 2010 effectively paving the way for settling the dispute this paper argues that cotton subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg while a number of other perhaps more important issues require attention and indeed political will chief among them is the persistent divergence between cotton prices and the prices of other agricultural commodities which reflects for the most part the large supply response by china and india a direct consequence of con version to biotech cotton varieties in these and other countries such response which kept cotton prices low compared with other commodities imposes a competitive disadvantage to non users of biotech cotton the paper also highlights two additional constraints faced by the cotton producing countries of west and central africa namely the structural inefficiencies of their primary processing industries also known as ginning and the appreciation of the cfa franc against the us dollar without downplaying the importance of subsidy elimination the paper concludes that these impediments should receive high priority in the policy agenda

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

a positive theory of agricultural protection the present paper analyses the political economy of agricultural protection in a general equilibrium framework rational politicians offer protectionist policies in return for political support from their constituency individuals in the economy have different factor endowments politicians exploit these differences in establishing redistributive policies when maximizing political support changes in economic variables such as the urban rural income gap capital intensity the share of agriculture in total output and total employment and the share of food in consumer expenditures affect the political equilibrium policy the analysis concludes that the observed correlation between economic development and agricultural protection is caused by a multiplicity of factors

time series growth in the female labor force in this paper we investigate the reasons for the growth in the female labor force in america during the twentieth century in our research we study the longer term trends since 1900 and conduct a more intensive examination of developments after the second world war on the basis of our work we conclude that rising real wages accounted for 60 of the total growth in the female labor force half of this wage effect in expanding labor supply was the fertility reducing consequence of a higher female wage

late stage pharmaceutical r d and pricing policies under two stage regulation 2016 elsevier b v we present a model combining the two regulatory stages relevant to the approval of a new health technology the authorisation of its commercialisation and the insurer s decision about whether to reimburse its cost we show that the degree of uncertainty concerning the true value of the insurer s maximum willingness to pay for a unit increase in effectiveness has a non monotonic impact on the optimal price of the innovation the firm s expected profit and the optimal sample size of the clinical trial a key result is that there exists a range of values of the uncertainty parameter over which a reduction in uncertainty benefits the firm the insurer and patients we consider how different policy parameters may be used as incentive mechanisms and the incentives to invest in r d for marginal projects such as those targeting rare diseases the model is calibrated using data on a new treatment for cystic fibrosis

profiles of fertility labour supply and wages of married women a complete life cycle model of all the major economic and demographic events in the postwar united states period the trends in fertility and female labour supply stand out as among the most dramatic fertility rates after their depression lows rose unexpectedly after world war ii far more than was anticipated as an adjustment to the war and continued to rise until the late 1950 s and early 1960 s when they again took an unexpected turn downward all the way to today s historical lows female labour force participation rates continuing their historical climb grew throughout the postwar period at an increasing pace by 4 percentage points during the 1950 s by 5 percentage points during the 1960 s and by 8 percentage points during the 1970 s these two trends are of course closely related for most married women have traditionally spent at least some minimal time out of the labour force while caring for their own children thus for example the slower growth rate of labour force participation rates in the 1950 s is probably connected with the higher fertility rates in that period in this paper a complete model of female labour supply and fertility choice is constructed and estimated the model is more complete than previous models in several respects first labour supply and fertility decisions are modelled as completely joint in the same sense as the consumption of two goods is joint second both are modelled as life cycle decisions that is as decisions regarding sequences of labour supply and fertility events rather than levels of the same hence the timing of both is important third the life cycle path of wage rates is made endogenous to the model given a wage function showing the effect of work experience on future wages the path of wages is determined automatically by the chosen path of labour supply which in turn is related to fertility decisions that require some period of non work econometrically the three profiles for labour supply fertility and wages are estimated with a full information maximum likelihood technique that solves several econometric problems such as the problem of heterogeneity of tastes the selectivity problem of missing wage rates for non workers and the problem of simultaneous equations bias the value of constructing a complete model is best seen by briefly reviewing past work in this area the modern literature in the area is based upon the work of becker

the impact of remittances on economic growth an econometric model abstract remittances in the world represent one of major international financial resources which sometimes they exceed the flows of foreign direct investment fdi for centuries there have been heated debates on the sources of economic growth in developing economies and also why some countries reflect strong economic growth comparing to others this study aims to observe the impacts of remittances on economic growth using panel data set of six high remittances receiving countries albania bulgaria macedonia moldova romania and bosnia herzegovina during the period 1999 2013 these countries have experienced a major increase in remittance inflows and at this time accounts for the bulk of total remittance receipts compared with other regions most countries remittances represent the largest source of foreign exchange earnings and represent more than 10 percent of gdp in other words the econometric analysis will be based on those six remittance receiving countries the paper is then to review the empirical literature devoted to the impact of remittances on economic growth in order to identify empirically if there are significant relationships between remittances and growth in these countries the results suggest that remittances have a positive impact on growth and that this impact increases at higher levels of remittances relative to gdp

female earnings and the divorce rate a simultaneous equations model economists have contributed a great deal of research both theoretical and empirical to the study of marital formation and dissolution many empirical examinations of marriage and divorce rates exist based on becker s seminal contributions to the literature all of these divorce studies are single equation models with female earnings assumed exogenous as discussed by becker 1981 however causality may run in the opposite direction as well the divorce rate may influence female earnings this paper estimates a simultaneous equations model in which divorce rates and female earnings are the jointly endogenous variables data are by state for 1960 1970 1980 and 1990 the state wide divorce rate equation is an extension of waters and ressler 1999 and the specification of a state wide earnings equation follows standard human capital theory the specification of joint endogeneity between female earnings and the divorce rate allows valid inferences to be made regarding the effect of female earnings on

the butz ward fertility model in the light of more recent data butz and ward b w in their 1979 article the emergence of countercyclical us fertility postulated a change in the longstanding pattern of procyclical fertility first documented by dorothy thomas in 1927 the paucity of published data on female wages led b w to approximate a time series using a number of disparate sources there has been some criticism of the b w methodology focusing mainly on the problem of autocorrelation in time series analysis and misspecification 15 years after the 1979 article a great deal of both micro and macro data exist which were not available at the time of the original b w research the author tests the robustness of the b w results by first updating them using their original sources then with data drawn from the march current population survey cps the results indicate that there are wide divergences between the original b w estimates of female wages and the cps time series in particular the cps time series shows that much of the dramatic increase in the female hourly wage in the 1960s as estimated by b w appears to have been the result of the proxy they used for average hours worked that proxy was a series of average hours of all workers in the retail trade which trends sharply downward contrary to the actual pattern for married women estimates of the b w model using the new cps series fail to work neither in terms of the signs nor significance of the variables even using the original b w data their model no longer fits in the period after about 1954 their results seem to have been driven by relationships exhibited during 1947 54 almost 10 years before the increases in female labor force participation which began in the 1960s

policy coherence and food security the effects of oecd countries agricultural policies there have been important changes to agricultural policies in many oecd countries over the past decade and the international spill over effects of support and protection have diminished now would be a good time to eliminate remaining distortions and put in place more efficient alternatives including social safety nets and tools to help farmers manage risk this would lock in the benefits of reform and simultaneously address charges of policy incoherence in the context of high food prices new issues have emerged with potential implications for food security they include export restrictions the use of biofuel mandates and the opportunities and threats presented by increased foreign investment in agriculture on these issues as well as in terms of conventional support mechanisms policies in emerging economies in particular the briics are increasingly important a pro active agenda for policy coherence would involve not just eliminating policies that distort trade but also enacting positive measures to increase food availability for example by raising agricultural productivity using resources sustainably and eliminating waste and over consumption across countries there are important gains to be realised from knowledge sharing and from multilateral action to provide global public goods not least smoother functioning of the multilateral trading system