Airborne diseases: Tuberculosis in the Union Army

This paper examines the medical histories of a sample of 25,000 Union Army soldiers and veterans to study the determinants of diagnosis, discharge, and mortality from tuberculosis. We find that water and airborne diseases during the war contributed significantly to the presence of tuberculosis. Height and a higher body mass index (BMI) are also associated with protection against TB but these effects are not always robust. As an upper bound, we estimate that the contribution of modern gains in height and in BMI to the mortality decline of tuberculosis ranges from one-fourth to one-half with the rest explained by the decline in the prevalence of water and airborne diseases, especially diarrhea, dysentery, and typhoid played. The paper finds weaker support for alternative hypotheses that rely on occupational influences and exogenous changes in the virulence of tuberculosis.     

Taxes and Pensions

Pension benefit rules depend on individual history far more than taxes do, and age plays a much larger role in pension determination than in tax determination. Apart from some simulation studies, theoretical studies of optimal tax design typically contain neither a mandatory pension system nor the behavioral dimensions that lie behind justifications commonly offered for mandatory pensions. Conversely, optimizing models of pension design typically do not include annual taxation of labor and capital incomes. After spelling out this contrast and reviewing (and rejecting) zero taxation of capital income based on the Atkinson‐Stiglitz and Chamley‐Judd results, this article raises the issue of tax‐favored retirement savings, a topic where the two subjects come together.     

Ethnoracial Differences in Early Union Experiences Among Young Adult Women

This paper uses data from the 1997 cohort of National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine racial differences in the first coresidential union experiences of young adult women in early adulthood. Young adults increasingly choose to delay marriage and opt to live with a significant other during their early adulthood years. Results from early studies of racial differences in relationship formation reported that Blacks had a higher probability that their first coresidential relationship was a cohabiting one despite a lower overall probability of being in a cohabiting relationship. Little is known about whether and how these early relationship experiences changed in the ensuing years, and the underlying causes for the racial differences in young adult union formation behaviors remain poorly understood. I use multivariate analyzes and decomposition techniques on a recent cohort of young women, between the ages of 12 and 18 in 1997, to examine the role of family background characteristics, sexual history, and economic and educational measures on the probability of an early coresidential relationship. I conclude with a brief examination of the fertility patterns surrounding that first union and the state of the union by age 24.     

French Retirement Reforms and Intragenerational Equity in Retirement Duration

As most developed countries, France has gone over the last 20 years through a process of pension system reforms, mainly aiming at increasing the average retirement age, through increasing the required number of contribution years or through postponing legal (minimal and/or normal) ages. Public debates over which lever should be preferred have been paramount in France, with concerns focusing on redistribution issues between high wage high life-expectancy and low-wage low life-expectancy workers. In this paper, we empirically address this issue by simulating the differentiated impacts of the past French reforms on average retirement ages across wage quartiles. Our simulations show that increasing the required duration criterion—as was done by the 1993 and 2003 reforms–have redistributive impact as regards retirement age, while increasing the normal age—as was done by the 2010 reform—has a counter-distributive impact. The redistributive impact on average of the required duration criterion however only holds thanks to the fact that disabled workers—most of them in the lowest wage quartile—are exempted from it. Last, increasing minimal age has ambiguous impacts according to gender: redistributive among women but counter-distributive among men.     

Military positions and post-service occupational mobility of Union Army veterans, 1861–1880

Although the Civil War has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, little is known about how different wartime experiences of soldiers influenced their civilian lives after the war. This paper examines how military rank and duty of Union Army soldiers while in service affected their post-service occupational mobility. Higher ranks and non-infantry duties appear to have provided more opportunities for developing skills, especially those required for white-collar jobs. Among the recruits who were unskilled workers at the time of enlistment, commissioned and non-commissioned officers were much more likely to move up to a white-collar job by 1880. Similarly, unskilled recruits assigned to white-collar military duties were more likely to enter a white-collar occupation by 1880. The higher occupational mobility of higher-ranking soldiers is likely to have resulted from disparate human capital accumulations offered by their military positions rather than from their superior abilities.     

Redesigning Regulation of Pensions and Other Financial Products

We observe that financial regulation is ever-growing, with thelatest area to experience increased supervisory attention beingpensions. Yet this has not made the financial world or consumerssafer, and for pensions in particular there are unexpected andundesired consequences. We explore the current policy approachto supervision, which is ‘bottom up’, i.e. assessmentand regulation of individual institutions, with the aim ofmakingthe financial system safe by making each institution safe. Weshow that this is both damaging (because it stifles innovation)and does not work (because risk will always be squeezed fromthe regulated institutions to the less regulated and less seen).Instead, we advocate a ‘top-down’ approach, whichfocuses on making the system safe first. We conclude that onceyou have made systems safe, detailed supervision of individualinstitutions is less necessary, thus reducing the burden ofsupervision. We believe that this approach will lead to a moresuitable and diverse treatment of different risks that willincrease both systemic and consumer safety. ‘If you haveten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law’,Winston Churchill (1931). ‘The ultimate result of shieldingmen from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools’,Herbert Spencer (1891). Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: n.barr{at}lse.ac.uk; john_nugee{at}ssga.com     

秘密调查“中国黑室”重庆破译日本密电遗址探秘

2010年,以谍战电视连续剧《暗算》、《风声》、《风语》走红的著名作家麦家,听说“中国黑室”就在重庆,便专程来渝。在重庆南山黄桷垭重庆中药研究所里,麦家看到了“中国黑室”旧址,并在黄桷垭的人头山,     

Mandatory Pensions and Personal Savings in The Netherlands*

The Netherlands has a relatively generous social security system and a wide coverage of individuals by private (occupational) pension schemes. Total household savings are rather high and fairly stable, although the amount of contractual savings apears to be going up at the expense of non-contractual (free) savings. Using an approach originally pioneered by Feldstein (1974) we employ microdata to investigate the displacement effect of security and pension wealth on free household savings. It turns out that the data available are too noisy to make precise statements about the displacement effects. Our results do suggest, however, that a one-for-one displacement of free savings by social security is consistent with the data. For pensions such a complete offset is less likely. This suggests that increase of coverage by private pensions is an effective way of raising savings.     

Gradual Retirement: Preferences and Limitations

In the traditional retirement scenario, individuals work full-time or part-time until a given age, and then stop working abruptly. From the individual’s point of view, it seems more attractive to have a smooth transition, with gradual retirement. In Sweden and other European countries, specific gradual retirement programs have been created in the past 20 years, first in combination with early retirement programs and later to increase labour market participation of older workers. This paper surveys the existing literature on gradual retirement in the US and Europe and analyzes the relevance of gradual retirement in the Netherlands as a tool to keep people employed longer.      

论企业战略联盟与动态联盟

竞争和联盟是现代企业谋求生存与发展的两大策略 ,如何寻求并充分利用企业之间的联盟关系 ,取人之长 ,补己之短 ,共同完成市场价值的创造 ,在当今复杂多变的市场环境中显得尤为重要。本文按联盟存续时间长短将其分为战略联盟和动态联盟 ,并从二者的联盟动机 ,组织结构要求 ,联     

Retirement Saving in Japan: With Emphasis on the Impact of Social Security and Retirement Payments

In this paper, we apply Kazuo Sato's target wealth hypothesis to saving for life after retirement and analyze the impact of social security wealth, retirement payments, permanent income, and other factors on people's retirement saving using micro data from the Survey of Social Security and Self Help, which was conducted in 1996 by the Japan Institute of Life Insurance. Our findings provide strong confirmation of the target wealth hypothesis and of the life cycle model and imply that the Japanese take account of their future social security benefits and retirement payments, their permanent income, etc., when saving for life after retirement. J. Japan. Int. Econ., June 2001, 15(2), pp. 131–159. Graduate School of Economics, and Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, 6-1, Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka, 567-0047, Japan. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D12, D91, E21, H55.     

Economic,Political, and Institutional Prerequisites for Monetary Union Among the Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council

The paper reviews the arguments for and against monetary union among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—the United Arab Emirates, the State of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait. Both technical economic arguments and political economy considerations are discussed. I conclude that there is an economic case for GCC monetary union, but that it is not overwhelming. The lack of economic integration among the GCC members is striking. Without anything approaching the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons among the six GCC member countries, the case for monetary union is mainly based on the small size of all GCC members other than Saudi Arabia, and their high degree of openness. Indeed, even without the creation of a monetary union, there could be significant advantages to all GCC members, from both an economic and a security perspective, from greater economic integration, through the creation of a true common market for goods, services, capital and labour, and from deeper political integration. The political arguments against monetary union at this juncture appear overwhelming, however. The absence of effective supranational political institutions encompassing the six GCC members means that there could be no effective political accountability of the GCC central bank. The surrender of political sovereignty inherent in joining a monetary union would therefore not be perceived as legitimate by an increasingly politically sophisticated citizenry. I believe that monetary union among the GCC members will occur only as part of a broad and broadly based movement towards far-reaching political integration. And there is little evidence of that as yet.

Strategic Interactions Among Central Bank and National Fiscal Authorities in a Monetary Union Subject to Asymmetric Country Shocks

In this paper we extend Nordhaus’ (Brookings Pap Econ Act (2):139–199, 1994) results to an environment which may represent the current European situation, characterised by a single monetary authority and several fiscal bodies. We show that, even assuming that the monetary and the fiscal authorities share the same ideal targets, in the presence of asymmetric shocks the “symbiosis” result found by Dixit and Lambertini (J Int Econ 60:235–247, 2003) no longer obtains. Thus, fiscal rules as those envisaged in the Maastricht Treaty and in the Stability and Growth Pact may work as monetary/fiscal coordination devices that improve welfare. The imposition of common targets, however, may work as a substitute for policy coordination only if these are made state contingent, an aspect that the recent version of the Stability and Growth Pact takes into account in a more appropriate way than its original version.

红三军攻占彭水

1934年,红军从彭水南渡沱西渡乌江,挺进黔东北,建立了云贵高原第一块革命根据地——黔东特区革命根据地。     

Retirement and health: Evidence from China

One typical feature of China's pension system is that retirement is mandatory. By exploiting the exogenous change created by this mandatory retirement policy, we use the mandatory retirement age as an instrument for retirement status to examine the effect of retirement on individual health using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Our main finding is that the probability of “fair” or “poor” self-reported health among white-collar workers decreases by 34 percentage point after retirement. This result is generally robust to different model specifications, alternative measures of health, and different subsamples. In addition, we deliver evidence that increased health-related exercises and the cultivation of a better lifestyle are two possible channels through which retirement affects health.     

Reforming Occupational Pensions in the Netherlands: Contract and Intergenerational Aspects

De Economist - In the summer of 2020 the Dutch government and social partners have agreed on a pension reform involving the transformation of occupational pensions from the current defined-benefit...