international labor and capital flows complements or substitutes in a global context foreign direct investment fdi and migration substitute one another in the matching process between workers and firms yet migrants provide information about future investment opportunities in their country of origin evidence from u s data is consistent with contemporaneous substitutability and dynamic complementarity between migration and fdi

trade migration and integration evidence and policy implications this paper takes as its point of departure the unique position recently adopted by swedish policymakers emphasizing migration as a tool to increase trade we attempt to empirically scrutinize this

the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption abstract survey characteristics affect the quality of the measurement of food consumption within households thus it is important to identify best practices for designing surveys that collect food data this paper analyses the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption from a sample of 81 national surveys results highlight regularities that can inform best practices in designing surveys and promoting the use of the data for multiple purposes surveys focused on food acquisition collect higher food quantities compared to those that target food consumption surveys based on recall interviews collect higher food quantities compared to those based on diaries but the difference decreases with long reference periods the use of standard units of measurement as well as the consideration of partakers in meals and of seasonality generates significant differences in the survey results the impact of the different survey characteristics carries substantive implications when food consumption data are employed for assessing food security conditions the results are part of a wider work program aimed at improving the quality of household survey data more evidence is needed ideally through coordinated sets of analyses and experiments in different contexts additionally survey characteristics must be complemented by effective field work in order to generate high quality data towards this end statistical capacity development is crucial to promote better data and more evidence based decision making

integrative capabilities vertical integration and innovation over successive technology lifecycles the analysis presented here provides a new explanation for why vertically integrated and specialized firms may continue to coexist as industries evolve especially during time periods when conditions unequivocally favor lower cost specialized firms in contrast to the common view that firms should match their organizational form to the prevailing nature of technology vertically integrated firms may rationally choose to stay integrated and bear the sunk costs of developing integrative capabilities as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining them even when they lose money during some time periods due to competition from lower cost specialized firms in particular in industries characterized by successive systemic innovations which entail interdependence across stages of production some firms may remain vertically integrated to maintain their capability to innovate over multiple cycles of technological innovation the results hinge on the sunk costs of long lived investments in integrative capabilities an extension to the analysis suggests that vertically integrated firms may retain their organizational form to pioneer systemic innovations in other industries including industries not subject to frequent technology lifecycles providing another explanation of product market diversification and market entry over time

does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

immigrant trade links transplanted home bias and network effects macro level data for the us and 73 trading partners spanning the years 1980 to 2001 is used with a gravity specification to investigate the influence of immigration on bilateral trade prior research has identified immigrant stocks as a significant determinant of trade however this study indicates that the us immigrant trade link is driven by immigration from relatively low income countries a 10 increase in the immigrant stock is found to generate respectively 4 7 and 1 5 increases in domestic imports from and exports to the typical low income home country the observed link is decomposed into two hypothesized channels network effects and transplanted home bias considerable variation in per immigrant trade effects is found across home countries imports from the typical low income home country are estimated to increase by up to 2057 due to transplanted home bias and by as much as 2967 as a result of network effects while exports rise by up to 910 as a result of networks

where enterprises lead people follow links between migration and fdi in germany abstract standard neoclassical models of economic integration are based on the assumptions that capital and labor are substitutes and that the geography of factor market integration does not matter yet these two assumptions are violated if agglomeration forces among factors from specific source countries are at work agglomeration implies that factors behave as complements and that the country of origin matters this paper analyzes agglomeration between capital and labor empirically we use state level german data to answer the question whether and how migration and foreign direct investment fdi are linked stocks of inward fdi and of immigrants have similar determinants and the geography of factor market integration matters there are higher stocks of inward fdi in german states hosting a large foreign population from the same country of origin this agglomeration effect is confined to higher income source countries

transforming the energy sector the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology this paper analyses the development and diffusion of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources in germany sweden and the netherlands the analysis enlarges the life cycle model of industry evolution to one where the focus is on the formation and evolution of new technological systems particular focus is on explaining success and failures in shifting from a formative phase into one characterized by positive feedbacks a set of challenges is identified for policy makers attempting to influence the process of transforming the energy sector

decomposing response errors in food consumption measurement implications for survey design from a survey experiment in tanzania there is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time this variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate this study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types the observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to a the omission of any consumption and then b the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption the results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design in light of these findings the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item specific consumption reporting and consequently the measures of total household food consumption

why the microbrewery movement organizational dynamics of resource partitioning in the u s brewing industry1 the number of small specialty brewers in the u s beer brewing industry has increased dramatically in recent decades even as the market for beer became increasingly dominated by mass production brewing companies using the resource partitioning model of organizational ecology this article shows that these two apparently contradictory trends are fundamentally interrelated hypotheses developed here refine the way scale competition among generalist organizations is modeled and improve the theoretical development of the sociological bases for the appeal of specialist organizations products especially those related to organizational identity evidence drawn from qualitative and quantitative research provides strong support for the theory the article offers a brief discussion of the theoretical and substantive issues involved in application of the model to other industries and to other cultures

revisiting the trade migration nexus evidence from new oecd data international migrants contribute to bilateral trade creation if their presence reduces information costs or entails additional demand for goods from their source countries using new data on stocks of foreign born individuals by skill class we try to separately quantify those two channels we assume that improved information affects host countries imports and exports symmetrically while the preference channel matters for imports only on average for differentiated goods both channels contribute evenly toward the total trade creating effect of migration in line with expectations the relative importance of the trade cost channel is largest for homogeneous goods and for high skilled migrants

engel s what a response to gan and vernon gan and vernon s comment does not resolve the puzzle that we originally posed their description of the puzzle is unclear so we start by restating it the essence of the matter is this imagine two households one of which is larger than the other for example containing the same age and sex composition of people but with twice as many of everyone imagine too that both households have the same level of per capita total household expenditure so that in the example the household with twice as many people spends twice as much in total if there are economies of scale the second household is better off while it is possible for it to maintain exactly the same expenditure pattern as the smaller household with everyone having the same of everything it can also rearrange its purchases to take advantage of the differential economies of scale in different goods because food is a normal good we would expect the larger household to spend more per capita on food this is especially so in poor countries where there are few substitutes for food so that there is limited opportunity for substituting away from food toward goods with greater economies of scale the evidence contradicts this prediction we looked at household survey data from the united states the united kingdom france taiwan thailand pakistan and south africa in all cases and with per capita expenditures held constant larger households have lower per capita food consumption and the reduction with household size is greatest in the poorest countries what do gan and vernon do they show that for the united states russia and south africa when they increase household size holding constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for housing falls more rapidly than the per capita demand for food the same is also true for various combinations of housing and other goods compared with food alone or food combined with clothing this is correct and such results can be inferred from table 5 p 920 of our original paper but these findings do not address the central puzzle which is that larger households that are more than fully compensated for their

migration and trade theoretical and empirical research in economics suggests that bilateral migration triggers bilateral trade through a number of channels this paper assesses the functional form of the impact of migration on trade flows in a quasi experimental setting we provide evidence that the relationship is not log linear in particular at small levels of immigration stocks the elasticity of trade to migration is quite high and it declines to zero at about 4 000 immigrants if immigration stocks exceed such a level the evidence suggests that trade will not increase anymore this suggests that for cross country network and other effects flowing from immigration to materialise at a significant level for trade a high enough level of immigrant stocks is necessary but there appears to be satiation as immigrant numbers increase

immigration and trade creation econometric evidence from canada immigrants may expand trade with their country of origin owing to superior knowledge of or preferential access to market opportunities the authors test this proposition using canadian trade data with 136 partners from 1980 to 1992 in an augmented gravity equation they find that a 10 percent increase in immigrants is associated with a 1 percent increase in canadian exports to the immigrant s home country and a 3 percent increase in imports they also find that among the primary categories of immigrants independents have the greater influence on trade immigration via the entrepreneur class appears to have less impact on trade than all other classes except refugees

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

out of sight not out of mind education networks and international trade summary university students typically develop between them long lasting ties of friendship and trust as well as an attachment to their university if they are foreign students they also form a bond to their country of study this paper investigates the impact of university ties on the uk s trade with 167 countries during 1999 2009 i find robust evidence that education network ties boost the uk s bilateral trade flows specifically the impact of networks is stronger on trade between the united kingdom and countries with dissimilar institutions and culture and particularly with post communist economies results are robust to different econometric specifications and regressors

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

effects of ancestral populations on entrepreneurial founding and failure private liquor stores in alberta 1994 2003 until 1993 all liquor stores in the canadian province of alberta were government owned and run in the fall of 1993 the provincial government exited liquor retailing all government stores were shut down and entrepreneurs were allowed to open private liquor stores in this article we take advantage of this abrupt regulatory change in the alberta liquor retailing industry to address two related issues that have received little empirical attention first we investigate how an ancestral population affects processes of legitimation and competition while density dependence theory predicts that legitimation effects outweigh competitive effects at low levels of density will this be the case when a new population replaces a similar ancestral one second beyond density dependence we investigate how ancestral populations affect the locations of new entrepreneurial ventures will entrepreneurs follow ancestral location patterns and will these ancestral locations confer survival advantages to answer these questions we map all private liquor stores on the street map of calgary alberta s largest city from 1994 to 2003 and analyze store founding and failure we use our results to draw implications for theories of density dependence entrepreneurial behavior and industry spatial structure copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

examining the relationship between the use of supermarkets and over nutrition in indonesia this study examines the relationship between the use of modern food retailers and health outcomes using data from a survey of 1 180 urban households in indonesia the dependent variables include adult and child body mass index and the share of individuals overweight and obese after controlling for individual and household characteristics and using standard and lewbel instrumental variable approaches to control for unobservable characteristics we do not find a statistically significant relationship between use of supermarkets and adult nutrition measures on the other hand there is mixed evidence for a negative effect of supermarkets on child nutrition particularly for those in high income households

linguistic distance as a determinant of bilateral trade we introduce a measure of language difficulty called linguistic distance into a modified gravity model to determine whether a language being further away from english affects the level of trade our sample of 36 non english speaking countries includes japan and south korea which we argue are special cases because of world war ii the korean war and subsequent close political and economic ties with the united states presence of a stock of immigrants in the home country has been shown to enhance trade with the country of origin controlling for immigrant network and information attributes the special relationship with japan and korea and the standard gravity model variables we find that trade will be less between the united states and a country the further that country s language is from english these results hold for aggregate exports and imports and for exports and imports of consumer and producer manufactures

the old boy and girl network social network formation on university campuses this paper documents the structure and composition of social networks on university campuses and investigates the processes that lead to their formation using administrative data and information from facebook com we document the factors that are the strongest predictors of whether two students are friends race is strongly related to social ties even after controlling for a variety of measures of socioeconomic background ability and college activities we develop a model of the formation of social networks that decomposes the formation of social links into effects based upon the exogenous school environment and effects of endogenous choice arising from preferences for certain characteristics in one s friends we use student level data from an actual social network to calibrate the model we simulate the social network under alternative university policies aimed at reducing social segmentation we find that changes in the school environment that affect the likelihood that two students interact have only a limited potential to reduce the racial segmentation of the social network

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

household survey data from developing countries progress and prospects assessing the adequacy of household surveys from developing countries can only be done with reference to the purpose s the data are meant to serve we assume that the objective of data collection is to support analysis of a wide range of issues concerning household welfare and behavior especially the prevalence causes and effects of poverty in its multiple dimensions analyses that address these issues can be arrayed in two dimensions methodological complexity which ranges from simple crosstabulations to sophisticated econometric techniques and specificity of the contribution to knowledge which ranges from analysis that addresses a specific policy decision in a particular country to general contributions to knowledge on economic development or research methods a few examples illustrate this typology descriptive statistics on participation in a government program by consumption quintile region or year are methodologically simple and country policy specific compilation of such work across many countries to obtain stylized facts is also methodologically simple but contributes to general knowledge of development using a specific model of household behavior to estimate the impact of charging higher prices for publicly provided services in a particular country is methodologically complex yet countryand policy specific rigorous econometric tests of alternative models of household behavior are methodologically complex and contribute to general knowledge beyond application of the method to a particular data set we discuss the adequacy of household survey data with respect to seven criteria for some criteria the threshold for adequacy varies within the two dimensional methodologyspecificity space

immigrant links to the home country empirical implications for u s bilateral trade flows immigrants ties to their home countries can play a key role in fostering bilateral trade linkages immigrant ties include knowledge of home country markets language preferences and business contacts that have the potential to decrease trading transaction costs empirical results for the united states suggest that immigrant links have historically been important in increasing bilateral trade flows with immigrants home countries copyright 1994 by mit press

reliability of recall in agricultural data despite the importance of agriculture to economic development and a vast accompanying literature on the subject little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data due to survey logistics agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of events occurring during past agricultural seasons that took place a number of months prior to the interview this gap can lead to recall bias in reported data on agricultural activities the problem is further complicated when interviews are conducted over the course of several months thus leading to recall of variable length to test for such recall bias the length of time between harvest and interview is examined for three african countries with respect to several common agricultural input and harvest measures the analysis shows little evidence of recall bias impacting data quality there is some indication that more salient events are less subject to recall decay overall the results allay some concerns about the quality of some types of agricultural data collected through recall over lengthy periods

on the no arbitrage condition in option implied trees the aim of this paper is to discuss the no arbitrage condition in option implied trees based on forward induction and to propose a no arbitrage test that rules out the negative probabilities problem and hence enhances the pricing performance the no arbitrage condition takes into account two main features the position of the node in the tree and the relation between the dividend yield and the risk free rate the proposed methodology is tested in and out of sample with italian index options data and findings support a good pricing performance

the erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence high trade between countries with colonial ties may be explained by government policies that establish preferential access or as a consequence of networks formed through social interactions using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2003 we examine the eect of independence on post colonial trade the severing of formal colonial relations can lead to an immediate reduction in trade as preferential access is eliminated as well as a gradual reduction corresponding to the deterioration of trading networks our results reveal that independence reduces colonial trade with its colonizer metropole the reduction cumulates over a 30 year period and the disruption is particularly severe for hostile separations we also find that overall colonial trade falls subsequent to independence but to a lesser extent than trade with the metropole

long term evolutionary change in organizational populations theory models and empirical findings in industrial demography organizational ecology is a theoretical perspective on organizations that attempts to explain long term social evolution especially the rise and fall of organizational populations this artist review the most sustained demographic research program of the perspective one based on the density dependent model of legitimation and competition it discusses the theoretical model and evidence from industrial demography that has been offered in its support as well as criticisms that have been registered unresolved research problems of the program are identified and three major models in progress attempting to address these open questions are discussed and compared copyright 1997 by oxford university press

things change dynamic resource constraints and system dependent selection in the evolution of organizational populations an extensive empirical literature has demonstrated the existence of density dependent selection in organizational vital rates this research has also shown that historical trajectories followed by organizational populations only partly conform to the predictions of the original model inconsistencies with the model s predictions prompt a series of questions why do organizational populations suddenly collapse after reaching a peak why do organizational populations oscillate after collapsing what causes extinction of organizational forms to address these questions scholars have proposed a variety of modifications to the original model of density dependence all have merit but none is completely satisfying the main objective of this study is to narrow the gap between theories models and observed historical trajectories by identifying a unitary analytical framework that can account for the variety of empirical trajectories typically followed by mature organizational populations the model that we present is based on the hypothesis of system dependent selection according to which patterns of resource availability are produced by processes that are partly endogenous to organizational populations the main analytical insight of the study is that under conditions of dynamic resource constraints introduced by system dependent selection the presence of population level inertia leads to a rich variety of historical trajectories during population maturity we show that this result holds in the absence of any particular assumption about the microstructure of organizational populations possible trajectories include sustained oscillations resurgence and extinction

democracy and foreign education despite the large amount of private and public resources spent on foreign edu cation there is no systematic evidence that foreign educated individuals foster democracy in their home countries using a unique panel dataset on foreign stu dents starting in the 1950s i show that foreign educated individuals promote democracy in their home country but only if the foreign education is acquired in democratic countries the results are robust to several estimation techniques to different definitions of democracy and to the inclusion of a variety of control variables including democracy in trading partners neighboring countries level of income and level and stock of education jel d72 121 015 do foreign educated individuals play a role in fostering democracy in their home countries despite the large amount of resources spent on financing foreign education there is no systematic study on the effects of foreign education on democracy this paper fills this gap using a dataset on foreign students that includes almost all host and sending countries and spans over 50 years numerous policy initiatives and large investment in the united states are based on the notion that foreign educated students promote democracy in their countries of origin through the fulbright program the us government has financed more than 158 000 foreigners studying in the united states 1 the us government not only finances the education of foreign students but also annually issues more than 250 000 nonimmigrant visas for foreign students more than five million individuals have received visas to study in the united states since 1971 2 us efforts to educate foreign students have produced impressive results 46 current and 165 former heads of governments are products of us higher education foreign leaders educated in the united

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

the power of the vegetable patch how home grown food helps large rural households achieve economies of scale escape poverty this paper explores how the household s capacity to grow food impacts their ability to achieve economies of scale in food consumption and how this impacts the geographic distribution of poverty across rural and urban areas an accurate understanding of consumption economies of scale is vital for comparing poverty levels across households of varying size using sri lankan data on home grown food consumption we empirically confirm that such economies of scale exist and that large households tend to consume relatively more home grown food than smaller households the magnitude of these scale economies are found to be larger than those in market purchased food but smaller than those found in housing expenditure consuming more home grown food is also found to be positively correlated with per capita calories consumed taking these effects into account in poverty estimates leads to a 15 per cent decline in the number of household who fall below the poverty line in rural regions

capital requirements and business cycle regimes forward looking modelling of default probabilities abstract this paper proposes a forward looking model for time varying capital requirements which finds application within basel ii the model rests on the relationship between default rates and the business cycle by positing two regimes expansion and recession and by forecasting the associated probabilities the default probability for each rating class is defined as the expected value of a default rate whose distribution is a mixture of an expansion and a recession distribution the application to us data over the forecasting period 1971 2002 provides evidence that the model makes it possible to preserve the risk sensitivity of the capital requirement and at the same time to dampen procyclicality

testing the barten model of economies of scale in household consumption toward resolving a paradox of deaton and paxson households enhance the welfare of constituents by sharing shelter and appliances and economizing in services such as maintenance child care and food preparation resources so conserved can be applied to more personal goods such as food clothing or beauty care economizing by households is an important factor to consider when measuring poverty and inequality in 1895 ernst engel observed that the share of food consumption in total consumption can be used to measure economic welfare across households of different sizes and incomes larger or richer households spend a smaller share of their total expenditure on food although more elaborate methods have been developed see e g a survey by browning 1992 the use of food share or the budget share of other bundles of necessities as a proxy for welfare remains a viable method for measuring poverty and studying equivalence scales see e g deaton and muellbauer 1986 lanjouw and ravallion 1995 engel s method is popular for its simplicity it has only one demand equation to be estimated with the food share of total expenditure as a dependent variable a single cross sectional survey usually provides sufficient data for the analysis and no information on prices is required

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

the second engel law is it a paradox abstract the second engel law says that the engel curve for food moves out as family size increases thus showing a decrease in welfare what is puzzling though is that this regularity does not hold for equivalent income functions expressed in per capita terms deaton and paxon 1998 economies of scale household size and the demand for food journal of political economy 106 5 897 930 show that holding per capita total household expenditure constant per capita expenditure on food falls with the number of heads deaton and paxson s empirical evidence from developed and less developed countries seems to invalidate the claim of the second engel s law the main objective of this paper is to understand such paradoxical relationship between food consumption and household size our nonparametric empirical evidence drawn from the colombian 1985 urban survey shows that the food share is negatively related to total household per capita expenditure in line with deaton and paxson s claim but equivalent incomes shift to the right as theory predicts the regularity of our nonparametric results is an indication of a problem in the parametric specification of the engel curve modified by family size in fact using also the surveys of italy nepal djibouti and bangladesh we show that a theoretically plausible modified engel curve is coherent with the claim of the second engel law and explains deaton and paxson s paradox

economies of scale in the household puzzles and patterns from the american past i introduction in one example of economies of scale households with multiple members are able to achieve the same standard of living at lower per capita expenditures on public goods than smaller households for example if two adults unite to form one household the couple will be better off as they can share public goods such as housing lowering per capita expenditure on them the couple can funnel these savings into increased consumption of public goods more spacious housing than either could afford separately making each member better off than they were when they lived by themselves the basic idea has strong intuitive appeal living standards for households of different sizes could be equated with lower per capita expenditures for larger households who are able to economize on public goods household economies of scale are therefore fundamental to the measurement of living standards measuring the distribution of income the costs of children the extent of poverty and poverty thresholds necessitates an accounting for these economies of scale one difficulty with household economies of scale is that it can be difficult to estimate the size of the scale economy and household economies of scale are not as well defined as scale economies in production while economies of scale are a function of the size of the household the demand for goods and services generally derives from both household size and composition when researchers turned their attention to economies of scale in the household they overcame the problem of detection and measurement by concentrating on adult only households as in nelson 1988 measuring economies of scale for households where all members are the same type have identical tastes and are treated equally will not aid in the measurement of poverty the distribution of income and the costs of children where compositional heterogeneity matters a second difficulty lies in the income and substitution effects that scale economies have on private goods while both the income and substitution effects imply increased consumption of public goods the income and substitution effects work in opposite directions for private goods and it is not possible to know which effect will dominate unless we know more about the private good private goods that have low own and cross price elasticities and sizable income elasticities are goods whose consumption is likely to increase with household size the increased consumption of those private goods could be taken as a measure of household economies of scale where larger households are better off in terms of private consumption due to scale economies in public consumption using this insight deaton and paxson 1998 suggested that food would be a good choice for a private good where the income effect will dominate because food has few substitutes and they argue that substitution away from food will be less likely for households close to subsistence this implies that food expenditures should increase with household size the savings realized on public goods would be funneled to food a necessity that has few substitutes rather than increasing with household size deaton and paxson found that food expenditure per capita decreases with household size after considering and dismissing a number of possible explanations they conclude that their empirical results are a puzzle a literature analyzing this food puzzle has developed deaton and paxson 2003 gan and vernon 2003 gardes and starzec 2000 gibson 2002 gibson and kim 2007 horowitz 2002 perali 2001 vernon 2005 but research on household scale economies has yet to look at how or if scale economies change over time just as knowledge about scale economies at a point in time allows us to estimate the extent of poverty and inequality knowledge about changes in scale economies are useful for analyzing changes in living standards over time even more knowledge about changes in scale economies is important since average household size has changed over time

welfare measurement and measurement error the approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived they are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error contaminated income distribution but not on the form of the measurement error distribution and to be accurate within a rich class of error free income distributions and measurement error distributions the functionals of the error contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated so it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available to calculate corrected welfare measures the methods are illustrated in an application using indonesian household expenditure data

food stamps and food spending an engel function approach estimation of food stamp program fsp effects has been complicated by self selection and by a contradiction between observed spending patterns and the economic theory of consumer choice we developed a modified version of the traditional theory in which participant households may be partly extramarginal even if they have some cash spending on at home food using current population survey cps data for 2001 2005 we estimated engel functions for at home and away from home food spending for fsp participants and nonparticipants compared to nonparticipants with the same level of total income participants had higher at home food spending and lower away from home food spending copyright 2007 oxford university press

does trade credit redistribution thwart monetary policy evidence from italy italy is an ideal candidate for testing the credit view of the transmission mechanism because of a bank centred financial structure a sizeable trade debt and an economy titled towards small firms an empirical analysis of trade credit and debt on averaged panel data shows that small firms act as financially constrained and cycle sensitive whereas large ones aim at smoothing sales adopt an integrated management of inventories and receivables and have a higher trade debt to purchases elasticity on balance the net trade credit channel does not as implied by the credit view shield small firms from a monetary squeeze

parallel realities exploring poverty dynamics using mixed methods in rural bangladesh this paper explores the implications of using two methodological approaches to study poverty dynamics in rural bangladesh using data from a unique longitudinal study we show how different methods lead to very different assessments of socio economic mobility we suggest five ways of reconciling these differences considering assets in addition to expenditures proximity to the poverty line other aspects of well being household division and qualitative recall errors considering assets and proximity to the poverty line along with expenditures resolves three fifths of the qualitative and quantitative differences use of such integrated mixed methods can therefore improve the reliability of poverty dynamics research

steady change the 200 largest us manufacturing firms throughout the 20th century this paper discusses the existence of structural change in business activity and technological competence among the 200 largest us manufacturing companies throughout the 20th century the data were taken from chandler scale and scope 1990 and fortune magazine the analysis of corporate evolution in used to assess continuity versus turbulence of business organizations in the context of the neo schumpeterian long wave hypothesis the empirical results show that the giants of the late 20th century are not the same as those at the beginning of that period persistence in the sample is very limited moreover turbulence is not smooth but rather occurs by impulses that affect specific industries and it has increased over time overall the pattern of corporate entry and industry development is very indicative of the new opportunities emerging with information and communication technologies this process of open ended continuous transformation supports the case for putting change at the centre of economic analysis

when do trade credit discounts matter evidence from italian firm level data italian firms are top users of trade credit in an international comparison the paper offers some clues to the determinants of this stylized fact exploiting the answers of about 1900 manufacturing firms on a wide range of contractual features separately for domestic and foreign customers the main finding of the univariate analysis is that with the almost totality of transactions made on credit there is no evidence that this way of financing is more expensive than loans an econometric investigation shows that discounts offered have the expected effect of reducing payment delays mostly for customers located abroad where customary credit periods are shorter and creditors rights protection is more effective the result is consistent with the poor explanatory power of discounts received in regressions for the trade debt period of domestic firms