monitoring and pay the shirking model of efficiency wages has been thought to imply that monitoring and pay are substitute instruments for motivating workers we demonstrate that this result is not generally true as monitoring becomes cheaper a given effort level will be implemented with more monitoring and less pay but it is typically also optimal to implement a higher effort the article provides conditions under which the latter scale effect dominates the former substitution effect and vice versa if the ease of monitoring varies across occupations the model predicts a nonmonotonic relationship between the wage level and workers rents

monitoring versus incentives abstract this paper analyzes the trade off between monitoring and incentives in a principal agent relationship with moral hazard we derive general results on the optimal monitoring incentives mix for the case where both parties are risk neutral and the agent faces a limited liability constraint we show that the principal uses less monitoring and stronger incentives if the agent s liability limit is relaxed or if monitoring costs increase to induce more effort on the part of the agent the principal resorts to more monitoring or to stronger incentives or both in particular there are cases where the cheapest way to induce more effort is to use lower powered money incentives but with much more precise monitoring

nonparametric structural estimation of labor supply in the presence of censoring this paper extends the nonparametric structural method to estimate labor supply developed by blomquist and newey 2002 to handle cases in which there are individuals who do not work the method is then applied to married women in sweden from 1973 to 1999 i find an uncompensated wage elasticity of 0 98 and an income elasticity of 0 10 with the participation margin accounting for one third of the wage elasticity and two thirds of the income elasticity the elasticities vary however a lot over time due to differences in tax systems and demographics i also find results consistent with tax rates being around the net government revenue maximizing rates

labour supply specification and the evaluation of tax reforms this paper investigates the practical importance of the functional specification of labour supply equations for the analysis of tax benefit reform we consider two labour supply specifications one derived from stone geary preferences and the other from a generalisation that relaxes some of the more critical restrictions in that model we use these equations to contrast the effects of two reforms to the u k income tax system one involves income effects almost exclusively while the other implies a significant number of large increases in marginal tax rates

more on tax perception and labour supply the spanish case abstract we estimate the marginal tax rate perceived by married spanish males the results suggest the existence of prominent divergences between subjective perception and formal income tax rules the efficiency and welfare implications of this tax rate gap are also assessed

labor supply responses and welfare effects of tax reforms during the late 1 980s and early 1 990s taxation of wage income has undergone a change towards a proportional tax regime in many countries our analysis shows that gradual tax reforms in norway may have removed some of the distortions on worker behavior moreover we find that proportional taxes may reduce the inequality in the distribution of disposable household income yet when the distributional consequences are related to changes in individual welfare we find that rich households may benefit far more than households at the other tail of the income distribution because they earn more without any significant increase in effort

the effect of income taxation on labor supply in the united states the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of prime age married men and women in the united states is examined using econometric methods similar to those used in the influential work of jerry hausman male labor supply is found to be relatively invariant to the net wage and virtual income in all specifications estimated the estimated impact of taxation on the labor supply of married women depends critically on the method used to estimate the labor supply function estimated net wage and virtual income elasticities are considerably larger when data on nonparticipants are included than when the estimation is conducted conditional on hours being greater than zero

labor supply deadweight loss and tax reform act of 1986 a nonparametric evaluation using panel data abstract tax reform act of 1986 tra 1986 has provided an invaluable source of variation in tax rates to study the effects of tax reforms on labor supply in the us most existing studies exploiting variation generated by tra 1986 have used cross sectional variation in tax rates or assumed a linear labor supply function or have not couched their analysis in a nonlinear budget set framework this paper uses the drastic variation in the budget set induced by tra 1986 as a source of identification and combines two novel approaches to estimate behavioral effects of tax reforms i first use nonparametric estimation methods with nonlinear budget sets blomquist soren newey w 2002 nonparametric estimation with nonlinear budget sets econometrica 70 6 2455 2480 to estimate a labor supply function using waves of psid just before and after tra 1986 nonparametric method developed in hausman and newey hausman j whitney newey 1995 nonparametric measurement of exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss econometrica 63 1145 76 is then applied to estimate the deadweight loss from tra 1986 the nonparametric estimate of the compensated wage elasticity is 0 22 i find that tra 1986 had a small but positive effect on labor supply of men of about 2 at the sample mean tra 1986 was associated with robust reduction in deadweight loss from the pre tra 1986 level and this reduction is positively correlated with income and wages

assessing empirical approaches for analyzing taxes and labor supply recent surveys on the labor supply responses of men document a divergence in the estimates of substitution and income effects obtained using various estimation approaches generally studies accounting for nonlinear tax schedules in a static setting via a piecewise linear approach produce estimates that typically imply higher substitution and lower income responses than are suggested by empirical work applying other approaches this paper demonstrates that maximum likelihood estimation of a consumer choice problem with nonlinear budget sets implicitly relies on the satisfaction of inequality constraints that translate into behaviorally meaningful restrictions these constraints arise not as a consequence of economic theory but instead as a requirement to create a properly defined statistical model in the analysis of piecewise linear budget sets the implicit constraints required by maximum likelihood in estimation amount to imposition of slutsky conditions at all wage income combinations associated with kink points in the analysis of differentiable budget sets the tacit constraints invoked by maximum likelihood also involve inequality restrictions on slutsky terms the empirical work presented in this study supports the contention that these implicit constraints play a major role in explaining the discrepancies in estimates found in the literature on men s labor supply

wages profits and capital intensity evidence from matched worker firm data swedish data on workers matched with firms balance sheet reports are used to examine the relation between wages and firms ability to pay results indicate that experienced and highly educated workers are sorted into profitable firms wages are positively correlated with profits and the capital labor ratio after controlling for worker quality degree of effort supervision job characteristics local unemployment firms employment history and employer size lester s range of pay due to rent sharing is around 12 24 of the mean wage in sweden which is close to the estimates for the united states and united kingdom

access based consumption the case of car sharing access based consumption defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place is becoming increasingly popular yet it is not well theorized this study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing specifically the consumer object consumer consumer and consumer marketer relationships six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access based consumptionscapes temporality anonymity market mediation consumer involvement the type of accessed object and political consumerism access based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of zipcar consumers four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified lack of identification varying significance of use and sign value negative reciprocity resulting in a big brother model of governance and a deterrence of brand community the implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange consumption and brand community are discussed

the effect of taxation on labour supply the case of moonlighting the authors provide a simple test of supply side economics by estimating the responsiveness of moonlighting labour supply to changes in the marginal tax rate and the wage rate while standard theory teachers that changes in taxes and wage should have opposite and equal effects on labour supply taxes affect the entire asset position of the household in the short run an adjustment of hours in the second job may be the only option available to an individual in responding to a tax change thus analyses based on after tax wages may understate supply side effects to estimate these effects a tobit procedure is employed the empirical results suggest a backward bending supply curve over thet range of moonlighting hours data consist of a subsample of male blue collar workers from the 1978 cross section of the panel study of income dynamics

labour supply in italy an empirical analysis of joint household decisions with taxes and quantity constraints this study applies an econometric framework which allows for complex non convex budget sets highly non linear labour supply curves and imperfect markets with institutional constraints a married couple s version of the model is estimated on italian microdata the empirical results show that male labour supply is rather inelastic while labour supply among females especially participation is considerably more elastic the elasticities depend strongly on household income the largest elasticities are found for females living in poor households the results of the tax simulations suggest that there are only modest labour supply responses from replacing the 1987 system by proportional taxes copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

what influences consumption consumers and beyond purposes contexts agents and history consumption of goods and services is a complex phenomenon at the root of environmental problems but it is still often framed in terms of individual behaviour which can be related to a lack of wide cross disciplinary explanations for consumption to contribute to filling this gap we conducted a literature review across ten disciplines we provide a cross disciplinary overview of what influences consumption juxtaposing dominant with less heard explanations for consumption and adding cross disciplinary evidence to counter the view of consumption as a chiefly individual phenomenon the resulting conceptual framework depicts consumption as influenced by three levels that undergo historical transformations the micro level of consumers purposes and products the meso level of the direct context in which consumption takes place and the macro level of societal contexts and agents future research should investigate which kinds of interactions between levels agents and contexts can lead to minimising social and environmental impacts of consumption

a decade of tax and benefit reforms in sweden effects on labour supply welfare and inequality sweden has experienced a sequence of tax and benefit reforms during the last decade in this paper we evaluate these reforms from labour supply welfare and inequality points of view we depart from a household labour supply model simulation of the model reveals that tax and benefit reforms have led to a considerable reduction of the excess burden regarding social welfare and inequality we show that the results depend to a large extent on the income inequality measure and the measure of social welfare as well as the income concept household disposable income or money metric utility

on the job search and moral hazard we analyze the interaction between intertemporal incentive contracts and search frictions associated with on the job search in our model agency problems call for wage contracts with deferred compensation at the same time workers do on the job search deferred compensation improves workers incentives to exert effort but distorts their on the job search decisions we show that deferred compensation is less attractive when the value to the worker firm pair of on the job search is high moreover the interplay between search frictions and wage contracts creates feedback effects if firms in equilibrium use contracts with deferred compensation fewer firms with vacancies enter the on the job search market and this in turn reduces the distortions created by deferred compensation these feedback effects between the incentive contracts used and the activity level in the search markets can lead to multiple equilibria a low turnover equilibrium where firms use deferred compensation and a high turnover equilibrium where they do not furthermore the model predicts that firms are more likely to use deferred compensation when search frictions are high and when the gains from on the job search are small

the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of married men in sweden abstract this paper presents labor supply functions estimated on a sample of prime age swedish males the model used takes account of the nonlinear character of individuals budget sets caused by the progressive income tax it also allows preferences to vary between individuals calculations with the estimated functions using a partial equilibrium framework indicate a sizeable effect of the income tax on hours of work the average expected deadweight loss of the income tax is found to be approximately 20 percent of tax revenue

nonlinear taxes and labor supply abstract many empirical studies where hours of work for males are regressed on the gross wage rate or a crudely corrected gross wage rate have yielded wage rate coefficients close to zero it is often believed that this implies that taxes do not affect labor supply in the present paper i show that this is a misinterpretation of the empirical results and that estimated wage rate coefficients often are close to zero because taxes affect labor supply i also show how the use of a proportional tax as an approximation of a nonlinear tax schedule can yield incorrect results when an estimated labor supply function is used to calculate the effect of taxes

equilibrium unemployment as a discipline device when finding employment is costly in this paper we study a model that incorporates costly job search into an efficiency wage model we show that the relationship between wages and detection rates is ambiguous in this framework the model can generate a positive relationship consistent with empirically reasonable values for unemployment rates job finding rates and employment duration dans ce memoire on etudie un modele qui incorpore une recherche d emploi couteuse dans un modele de salaire d efficience on montre que la relation entre salaires et taux de detection est ambigue le modele peut generer une relation positive consistante avec des valeurs empiriquement raisonnables pour les taux de chomage les taux de detection d emplois et les durees d emplois

the effect of taxes on male and female labor supply in sweden this paper estimates labor supply functions for married men and women in sweden using data from 1980 taking account of the complete form of individuals budget constraints both linear and quadratic supply functions are estimated with and without random preferences a novel feature is that for women the wage rate and labor supply functions are estimated simultaneously using a full information maximum likelihood method this method yields substantially larger wage and income elasticities than does the previously used two step methods another result is that the quadratic supply function wage elasticities for men and women are virtually the same if the elasticities are evaluated at the same net wage rate and hours of work for men and women the estimated functions are used to calculate the effect of tax reforms

nonlinear taxes and intertemporal resource management the case of timber the theory of forest management is applied by estimating a model of timber supply under nonlinear income taxation timber supply is derived from a two period optimization problem which provides a simple framework for dealing with intertemporal decisions a contribution of the paper is to allow for heterogeneity in the description of the biotechnological properties of the forest resource the model is estimated using cross section data over private nonindustrial forest owners in sweden by applying the maximum likelihood method behavioral resposes to taxation in terms of timber supply are also evaluated

does delegation increase worker training we model a principal firm offering training to its agent worker under two alternative organizational structures integration where the principal retains authority to overrule the investment project recommended by the worker and delegation where the principal cannot overrule the worker s preferred investment project we assume that training reduces the worker s effort cost of assembling information about alternative projects payoffs and identify the conditions under which delegation increases the profit maximizing intensity of training empirical estimates from matched employer employee data show that workplaces delegating authority do provide more worker training this result persists in two cross sections in panel fixed effect estimates and critically in an instrumental variable exercise that also controls for establishment fixed effects jel d21 d22 d23 m53 m54

a panel study of labour supply and taxes in denmark the labour supply of danish married couples is estimated on a longitudinal sample of about 3000 danish couples observed over the period 1980 86 the influence of the progressive tax system and the effect of the unemployment insurance system are evaluated the definition of unemployment in labour supply functions is discussed and two separate models are estimated where unemployment is considered either completely voluntary or completely involuntary the wage elasticity and the supply effects of tax reduction are estimated to be positive but numerically small for both men and women

progressive income taxes test of efficiency upper bounds on efficient tax rates in a progressive labor income tax schedule are derived within the standard framework of optimal taxation a tax rate is efficient if it is not pareto dominated by any other tax rate the formulas derived are applied to the swedish 1982 tax schedule inefficiency is revealed for the middle income groups copyright 1990 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

local public expenditure in sweden a model where the median voter is not necessarily decisive abstract this paper deals with local public expenditures and the analysis is based on cross section data for the swedish municipalities two models are estimated one is the basic median voter model where the decisive voter is assumed to be the voter with median income while the other is a more general statistical alternative the statistical alternative nests the basic median voter model as a special case which makes it easy to test the null hypothesis that the basic median voter model is the correct model given that the alternative is the true general structure although our results indicate a rejection of the null hypothesis the estimation results are nevertheless similar for the two models

a simulation based welfare loss calculation for labor taxes with piecewise linear budgets graduated income tax rates and transfer programs create piecewise linear budget constraints that consist of budget segments and kink points with any change in these tax rules each individual may switch between a kink point and a budget segment between two budget segments or between two kink points with errors in the estimated labor supply equation the new choice is uncertain and so the welfare effects of a tax change are uncertain we propose a simulation based method to compute expected welfare effects that is easy to implement and that fully accounts for uncertainties about choices around kink points our method also provides information about expected changes in working hours d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

labor supply and taxes a survey i survey the male and female labor supply literatures focusing on implications for effects of wages and taxes for males i describe and contrast results from three basic types of model static models especially those that account for nonlinear taxes life cycle models with savings and life cycle models with both savings and human capital for women more important distinctions are whether models include fixed costs of work and whether they treat demographics like fertility and marriage and human capital as exogenous or endogenous the literature is characterized by considerable controversy over the responsiveness of labor supply to changes in wages and taxes at least for males it is fair to say that most economists believe labor supply elasticities are small but a sizeable minority of studies that i examine obtain large values hence there is no clear consensus on this point in fact a simple average of hicks elasticities across all the studies i examine is 0 30 several simulation studies have shown that such a value is large enough to generate large welfare costs of income taxation for males i conclude that two factors drive many of the differences in results across studies one factor is use of direct vs ratio wage measures with studies that use the former tending to find larger elasticties another factor is the failure of most studies to account for human capital returns to work experience i argue that this may lead to downward bias in elasticity estimates in a model that includes human capital i show how even modest elasticities as conventionally measured can be consistent with large welfare costs of taxation

theoretical and practical arguments for modeling labor supply as a choice among latent jobs models of labor supply derived from stochastic utility representations and discretized sets of feasible hours of work have gained popularity because they are more practical than standard approaches based on marginal calculus in this paper we argue that practicality is not the only feature that can be addressed by means of stochastic choice theory this theory also offers a powerful framework for developing a more realistic model for labor supply choices founded on individuals having preferences over jobs and facing restrictions on the choice of jobs and hours of work we discuss and clarify how this modeling framework deviates from both the conventional discrete approach van soest 1995 as well as the standard textbook approach based on marginal calculus hausman 1985 we furthermore discuss how the model based on job choice offers the possibility of conducting a richer set of simulations of alternative policies

supervision and wages across industries this paper uses supervision data from a supplement to the 1977 wave of the panel survey of income dynamics to examine differences in supervision and wages across industries and to evaluate relationships between supervision practices and interindustry wage differentials the results demonstrate that workers in high wage industries are supervised with equal or greater stringency than secondary sector workers further the results offer no evidence that interindustry differences in monitoring contribute to interindustry wage differentials such findings appear to contradict explanations for industry wage premiums that are motivated by efficiency wage models of shirking copyright 1993 by mit press

interdependent behavior and the effect of taxes abstract the paper studies the effect of taxes on labor supply in a model with interdependent behavior i e individuals preferences depend on other people s behavior it is found that not taking the interdependency into account can lead to a serious bias in the predicted effects of a tax change it is also shown that interdependent behavior can give rise to spikes in the hours distribution such spikes often have been attributed to quantity constraints

the econometrics of piecewise linear budget constraints a survey and exposition of the maximum likelihood method in this article maximum likelihood techniques for estimating consumer demand functions when budget constraints are piecewise linear are exposited and surveyed consumer demand functions are formally derived under such constraints and it is shown that the functions are themselves nonlinear as a result the econometric problems in estimating such functions are exposited and the importance of the stochastic specification is stressed in particular the specification of both unobserved heterogeneity of preferences and measurement error econometric issues in estimation and testing are discussed and the results of the studies that have been conducted to date are surveyed

estimating the perceived tax scale within a labor supply model the swedish marginal tax scale is too complex to be known in detail by individuals this paper indicates that perceived tax scales can be estimated jointly with a labor supply equation the differe

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

carrots and sticks pay supervision and turnover the efficiency wage model ewm has been advanced as an explanation for large and persistent wage differentials the shirking version of the ewm assumes a trade off between self supervision and external supervision the turnover version assumes turnover is costly to the firm variation across firms in the cost of monitoring shirking or turnover then is hypothesized to account for wage variations across firms for homogeneous workers using a new sample of firm data this paper presents empirical evidence of the trade off of wage premiums for supervisory intensity and turnover little evidence is found to support either version of the ewm

contracting between firms empirical evidence abstract we analyze contracts between a large buyer and her suppliers we find that contracts with critical product suppliers contain more clauses that address moral hazard primarily through monitoring if holdup concerns are larger there are more contractual protections against it over time contracts with the same supplier include additional provisions that address moral hazard through monitoring this dynamic effect is strongest for service contracts where observability and verifiability are initially lower our findings indicate that contracts become more complete over time and provide support to incomplete contracting models that argue that contracts become more complete as contracting costs decrease jel classification d86 k12 l24

labor supply and taxation in france this paper provides sequential labor supply estimates for french married men and women under specifications analogous to those used by hausman to account for the effects of taxation upon the budget constraint results suggest that even though labor force participation follows the expected pattern work hours are quite rigid most of the variation in the latter being attributed to measurement errors the second part of the paper concentrates on the simultaneous estimation of male and female labor supply conditional maximum likelihood techniques are shown to permit the separate estimation of work hours for both spouses with an appropriate set of instruments aimed at correcting for the biases arising from simultaneity selectivity and the nonlinearity of the budget constraint although consistent the resulting estimates apparently contradict the usual rationality restrictions on family labor supply behavior and seem to confirm the lack of flexibility in work hours

tax reform and housing demand the distribution of welfare gains and losses abstract we study distributional effects of a recent reform of the swedish system of income taxation which affects the price of owner occupied housing in calculating the welfare effects we account both for the non linearities of the income tax schedule and the dichotomous choice aspect of housing demand to own or to rent small and rosen 1981 have shown how the standard harberger type approximation formulae can be adapted to handle discrete choices and we modify their analysis for a non linear budget constraint

supply determinants of part time work of dutch married women the influence of taxes and social premiums labour supply is classified into five classes one for zero hours a week i e nonparticipation and four for 1 14 15 24 25 34 and more than 34 hours a week respectively this allows us to investigate whether changes in the taz and social premium system have different effects on the labour supply in different hours classes such an investigation has been carried out by applying a multinomial logit analysis in combination with a method introduced by hausman to allow the incorporatin of taxes and social premiums in the estimation of labour supply functions of dutch married women comparing the 1983 and 1985 tax and social premium systems the results of the analysis indicate that the introduction of the new system has had only a small discouraging effect on the labour supply of dutch married women

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

the econometrics of nonlinear budget sets traditional empirical analysis of consumer demand has usually made the assumption of linear budget sets that is the consumer is assumed to purchase any desired quantity at a constant price subject to a budget constraint the major exception to this framework is the analysis of demand when some goods are rationed 2 in the rationed case the price is constant up to a quantity limit in contrast to the rationed case here i consider the situation where the price varies with the amount of the good purchased empirical situations with nonconstant prices come readily to mind and of course they have received much recent attention from theorists since mirrlees 44 paper on optimal nonlinear taxation the following examples are meant to give a partial listing of cases when nonlinear budget sets occur i electricity prices many electric utilities engage in declining block pricing that is the marginal price of successive kwh s of electricity decrease at a given number of points determined by total demand thus the budget set is piecewise linear houthakker 36 was the first to propose an approach to this problem taylor 51 analyzes the problem at length and hausman kinnucin and mcfadden 31 use an instrumental variables estimator to provide consistent estimates of the demand function

identifying interdependent behaviour in an empirical model of labour supply in this paper we test a particular form of interdependent behavior namely the hypothesis that individuals choices of hours of work are influenced by the average hours of work in a social reference group there are problems to empirically disentangle the effects of interdependent behavior and preference variation across groups we show that panel data or data from several points in time are needed in the empirical analysis we combine cross section data from 1973 1980 and 1990 our results support the hypothesis of interdependent behavior the implication is that conventional tax policy predictions in which preference interdependencies are neglected will tend to underestimate the effect of a tax reform on hours of work our point estimates suggest that conventional calculations would capture only about a third of the actual change in hours of work

the impact of a nonlinear income tax on the supply of roundwood in sweden a policy evaluation experiment based on cross section data abstract the purpose of this paper is to estimate a model of the supply of roundwood under nonlinear income taxation using swedish cross section data the supply of roundwood is derived from utility maximization over two periods subject to a forest production constraint and a nonlinear budget constraint given the appropriate empirical specification the model is estimated using the maximum likelihood method as a final part of the analysis tax consequences are presented both in the form of behavioural responses and in the form of measures of the excess burden

inequality aversion and marginal taxes the concept of a lower bound on optimal linear taxes is analyzed a marginal tax rate is defined to be optimal if the corresponding state of the economy is a welfare maximum for some social welfare function reflecting at least a minimal aversion to inequality the lower bound on optimal tax rates is proved to be strictly positive this tax rate is also calculated in a numerical example based on swedish data the value obtained is 29 per cent

effects of the swedish 1983 85 tax reform on the demand for owner occupied housing a microsimulation approach the effects of the swedish 1983 85 tax reform are analyzed with respect to the housing market a microsimulation model is used which takes into account the household s tenure choice owning vs renting as well as the quantity demanded conditional on the tenure choice the reform consists of a reduction in marginal tax rates and limitations on the deductibility of mortgage interest the simulations show that this will cause a general reduction in demand for owner occupied houses on a disaggregated level there will be an increase in the demand for small and medium sized houses while the demand for large units will fall sharply

social interactions and habit formation in a model of female labour supply this paper investigates the influence of habit formation and preference interdependence on labour supply behaviour of married females a novelty of the paper is that we incorporate direct survey information on reference groups of individuals in a neoclassical labour supply model for that purpose we first estimate a latent variables model relating the direct information to the true but unobserved reference groups one of the most interesting features of the model is that the presence of young children becomes an insignificant factor in the hours equation while it remains a significant factor in the participation decision in addition the labour supply curve is much flatter in a model with habit formation and preference interdependence than in a model without it both habit formation and preference interdependence contribute significantly to the explanation of female labour supply 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

bunching and non bunching at kink points of the swedish tax schedule recent microeconometric studies of taxpayers responsiveness to taxation have shown that intensive margin labor supply and earnings elasticities typically are modest and sometimes equal to zero however a common view is that long run responses might still be large since micro estimates are downward biased owing to optimization frictions in this paper we estimate the taxable income elasticity at a very large kink point of the swedish tax schedule using the bunching method during the period of study the change in the log net of tax rate reached a maximum value of 45 6 interestingly we obtain a precise elasticity estimate of zero for wage earners at this large kink the size of the kink allows us to derive tighter bounds on the long run elasticity than previous studies if wage earners on average tolerate 1 of their disposable income in optimization costs the upper bound on the long run taxable income elasticity is 0 39 we also evaluate the performance of the bunching estimator by performing monte carlo simulations

the role of local depositors in controlling expenses in small scale financial intermediation an empirical analysis using data on irish loan funds a nineteenth century quasi bank system we explore how the capital structure affects managerial agency to impact non interest expenses these organizations had no equity holders and were financed by deposits and capital comprising donations and accumulated profits creating problems of managerial moral hazard higher net income before non interest expenses is associated with higher salaries and other non interest expenses more surprisingly higher capital deposit ratios led to higher expenses even after controlling for net income while this institution is unique the findings suggest that depositors could assist in controlling expenses in microfinance organizations

a policy agenda for changing our relationship with consumption in this government initiatives contribution we present policy recommendations made available to the scottish government on how to change scottish consumers relationships with material goods and so contribute to its greenhouse gas emissions targets rather than focusing on the individual actions of consumers we discuss how the underlying neoliberal political narrative must be addressed as it creates the conditions in which invidious materialism can occur we then propose an alternative conceptualization of marketing that would harness marketing tools and concepts to help build connections between people and stimulate demand for pro environmental prosocial consumption this function stands in contrast to marketing acting in a way that contributes to the fragmentation of society and degradation of our planet a series of controls on marketing are then outlined which seek to facilitate changes to current dominant consumption narratives including using material input labelling as a mechanism to restrict unethical marketing practices overall these ideas represent a more interventionist perspective but one that we deem necessary when considered against the scale of the task now facing humanity in avoiding catastrophic climate change

tax reform evaluation using nonparametric methods sweden 1980 1991 this paper evaluates the tax reforms carried out in sweden between 1980 and 1991 we use a recently developed nonparametric labor supply function to account for the behavorial responses of the taxed individuals we decompose the tax reform to study how the separate components influence hours of work tax revenues and income distribution the results indicate that the reform was underfinanced and that the increased indirect taxation and redesigned transfer system almost eliminated the positive effects on hours of work due to the decreased marginal taxes on labor income further we compare the results to the predictions of a parametric estimated labor supply model the responses of the parametric model is almost twice the size of the nonparametric

child care subsidies and labor supply in sweden this paper utilizes data from a swedish household survey for 1984 the hus data in combination with data on public child care fees and spaces per child by community we argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household the joint out of home child care and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit and ordered probit choice models we find that the high quality public child care in sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when the spouse s income is high and that when spaces are not rationed a lower price encourages use

nonparametric panel estimation of labor supply in this article we estimate structural labor supply with piecewise linear budgets and nonseparable endogenous unobserved heterogeneity we propose a two stage method to address the endogeneity iss

labour supply the roles of human capital and the extensive margin we specify and estimate a life cycle labour supply model that expands on earlier work by simultaneously including human capital accumulation saving and bequests an active extensive margin a realistic specification of the progressive tax structure and the social security system and an accounting for private pensions and health expenditures by incorporating all these features we develop new insights into how taxes affect life cycle labour supply for instance we find that labour supply elasticities vary in important ways with age education and the tax structure itself we also show how human capital affects elasticities differently on the intensive versus extensive margins

sectoral labour supply choice restrictions and functional form this is the authors submitted article version which is the pre peer reviewed version of the article the article changed title in the peer reviewing process from analyzing labor supply behavior with latent job opportunity sets and institutional choice constraints later published as discussion paper no 399 http brage bibsys no ssb handle urn nbn no bibsys brage 21006

piece wise or differentiable budget constraint estimating labour supply function for finnish females various estimation approaches have been used in recent literature to study the effect of nonlinear income taxation on labour supply different techniques and data sets have produced a wide range of income and substitution elasticities in this study we utilize register data provided by the tax authorities this gives us good possibilities to construct detailed budget constraints for each individual in our sample we estimate labour supply function using the piece wise linear budget constraint approach and the differentiable budget constraint approach suggested by macurdy et al 1990 our results support the view that if one is able to mimic the actual budget set closely and if the degree of progression is high then these two methods are likely to produce similar results some sensitivity analysis is also carried out using alternative assumptions concerning the budget sets

radical political economy and the economics of labor markets this essay is the result of a long process involving many drafts and revisions i am grateful to duncan foley for the careful and constructive criticisms offered throughout the project the following people read the manuscript at different stages and although they often disagreed with me they generously provided helpful comments two anonymous referees for this journal samuel bowles william dickens greg dow robert drago richard edwards kathleen engel richard freeman james galbraith herbert gintis jody hoffer gittel sandfordjacoby tom kochan david levine lisa lynch paul osterman michael piore bob rebitzer gil skilman dan slesnick robert thomas and tsuyoshi tsuru comments from participants in seminars at the massachusetts institute of technology university of massachusetts at amherst and hitotsubashi university are also gratefully acknowledged