Residual demand analysis of the carbonated soft drink industry

In this paper, residual demand analysis is applied to test whether carbonated soft drinks is a relevant product market. The residual demand elasticity for carbonated soft drinks is estimated using weekly A.C. Nielsen Scanner price and quantity data for carbonated soft drink products purchased in supermarkets in the United States. The estimated residual demand elasticity and average contribution margin for carbonated soft drinks suggest that a market for carbonated soft drinks is too narrow for purposes of merger analysis according to the Merger Guidelines established by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.Two of the authors, Kaplan and Tollison, have served as consultants to and received research support from PepsiCo, Inc. The present project, though an aoutgrowth of this earlier work, received no support from PepsiCo, Inc. or any other source. The views expressed in the article are soley those of the authors, and the authors are responsible for any errors or omissions.     

TV advertising spillovers and demand for private labels: the case of carbonated soft drinks

The expansion of private labels, or store brands, has transformed consumer choice sets and competition in retail markets, prompting manufacturers to fight back with renewed pricing and product and promotion strategies to forestall further private label expansion. This article examines the spillover effects of television advertising on brand-level consumer demand for carbonated soft drinks (CSDs), including private labels, using a random coefficients logit model with household purchasing and advertising viewing Nielsen data. As in previous work, we find that although brand spillover effects significantly increase demand for CSD brands in the same company and undermine demand facing other manufacturers’ CSD brands, surprisingly, there are positive spillover effects on the demand for private label brands. This indicates that brand advertising is persuasive with respect to manufacturers’ brands but complementary with respect to private labels. Further results show that eliminating television advertising for CSDs would lower aggregate CSD sales as consumers migrate to other beverages, although private labels stand to gain, particularly Wal-Mart brands.     

消费理性成瘾、公共健康与政府行为-基于消费者对碳酸饮料过度消费行为的案例研究

本文以碳酸饮料为例,从健康经济学的角度探究消费者过度消费不健康食品的经济学成因。本文发现,消费者对不健康食品的过度消费,是由于其消费行为所具有的理性成瘾特性决定的。这种特性导致了消费者对不健康食品的需求价格弹性过低。市场无法通过自身的价格机制,将此类产品的消费量保持在一个健康的水平。即此类商品的消费市场中存在着市场失灵现象。政府应该对不健康食品的消费市场进行积极地干预,以纠正市场失灵。     

Quantile regression with sample selection: Estimating women's return to education in the U.S.

This study uses quantile regression techniques to analyze changes in the returns to education for women. The data used is the March Current Population Survey for the years 1968, 1973, 1979, 1986 and 1990. The first step in estimating the single (linear) index selection equation uses Ichimura's (1993) semiparametric procedure. To correct for an unknown form of a sample selection bias in the quantile regression, the second step incorporates a nonparametric method, using an idea similar to one developed by Heckman (1980) and Newey (1991) for mean regression, and Buchinsky (1998) for quantile regression.  The results show that: (a) the returns to education increased enormously for the younger cohorts, but very little for the older cohorts; (b) in general the returns are higher at the lower quantiles in the beginning of the sample period and higher at the higher quantiles by the end of the sample period; (c) there is a significant sample selection bias for all age groups at almost all quantiles; (d) toward the end of the sample period there is a significant convergence of the returns at the various quantiles, especially for the younger cohorts and age groups; and (e) the semiparametric estimates of the selection equation are considerably different from those obtained for a parametric probit model.     

Testing for uniform wage trends in West-Germany: A cohort analysis using quantile regressions for censored data

The rise of unemployment in West Germany is often attributed to an inflexibility of the wage structure in the face of a skill bias in labor demand trends. In addition, there is concern in Germany that during the 70s and 80s unions were pursuing a too egalitarian wage policy. In a cohort analysis, we estimate quantile regressions of wages taking account of the censoring in the data. We present a new framework to describe trends in the entire wage distribution across education and age groups in a parsimonious way. We explore whether wage trends are uniform across cohorts, thus defining a macroeconomic wage trend. Our findings are that wages of workers with intermediate education levels, among them especially those of young workers, deteriorated slightly relative to both high and low education levels. Wage inequality within age-education groups stayed fairly constant. Nevertheless, the German wage structure was fairly stable, especially in international comparison. The results appear consistent with a skill bias in labor demand trends, recognizing that union wages are only likely to be binding floors for low-wage earners.     

Educational mobility in Canada: results from the 2001 general social survey

This research examines mobility in the Canadian educational system and how it has evolved over the last 50 years of the twentieth century. Mixtures of ordered probability models which control for unobserved heterogeneity are estimated for both male and female respondents for two age groups: those between age 25 and 49 and those aged 50 or older in 2001. The main result is that educational attainments depend significantly less on family background variables for the younger cohorts. This is a qualitatively different result from what Canadian sociologists have found. They argue that there is little mobility in the Canadian educational system which has remained much as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. The data used in the analysis comes from the 2001 general social survey.     

SCHOOLING AND OCCUPATIONAL EARNINGS*

This paper investigates the relation between schooling and earnings across and within occupations. Across occupations earnings are positively related to mean education. Within occupations the variance in schooling levels is generally substantial, but within two thirds of the occupations no relation between schooling and earnings is observed, while in the remaining third the pattern of sensitivity varies considerably. The sensitivity of earnings to education is greater for white males than white females and substantially greater for whites than blacks. When the white sample is divided into age cohorts, the degree of sensitivity of earnings to schooling is found to be greater for younger cohorts than older ones, except for the youngest cohort in 1970. In the conclusion, a structural interpretation of the distribution of earnings is proposed to account for the findings.     

Life Course Perspective on Economic Shocks and Income Inequality Through Age-Period-Cohort Analysis: Evidence From Finland

Utilizing age-period-cohort analysis, this paper examines the development of income distribution across periodic economic fluctuations in relation to cohorts and age groups. The empirical analysis is based on the Finnish Income Distribution Statistics and Household Expenditure Surveys covering the period of 1966–2015. The findings suggest that the period and cohort effects can be identified as the main effects on relative income, while the age effects have no meaningful impact when the control variables are taken into account. This result reveals a connection between the effects of economic shocks and cohort placement on labor market entry. Additionally, absolute income analysis suggests that economic shocks create stagnation points in income development, which are especially detrimental to cohorts who are transitioning into labor markets. Additionally, middle-income attainment has not changed due to periodic shocks but rather is related to inter-cohort inequalities and relative income differences, where the baby boomer generation is a clear winner.     

(En-)‘lightening’ children: Assessing the impacts of access to electricity on learning achievement levels

The welfare impacts of electrification are well documented in the literature, including the effects of electricity on school enrolment. However, the spillover effects of electrification on children's achievement levels are scarce. We use three complementary but distinct econometric models to establish a causal relationship between electrification and test scores using nationally representative household panel data from India. We find positive results irrespective of the choice of econometric model, and these results seem to be mediated by changing time-use patterns of children with access to electricity. We first exploit the plausibly exogenous variation in access to electricity due to a universal electrification program in the state of West Bengal in India and we find positive effects of electrification on children's test scores. By age group, we find that younger cohorts benefit more in terms of their reading scores than older cohorts. Then, to ascertain external validity of these results, we replicate them over a nationally representative sample using fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation and find similar results. At the intensive margin, we find that access to more hours of electricity positively affects test scores. We identify an increase in time spent by children on study-related activities as the potential channel for these results.     

Do gender and age impact the time‐varying Okun's law? Evidence from South Korea

This study investigates the time‐varying Okun's law for different age and gender cohorts in South Korea over the 1980–2014 period. We found that the absolute value of the estimated Okun coefficients for all age cohorts and both genders become larger in a recession than in an expansion. We also found that the youth cohort (15–24 years old) for both genders is more sensitive to a negative economic impact than are older cohorts. These differences imply that when policymakers try to find a way of reducing the unemployment rate, they should consider differences in behaviour among these groups. Furthermore, the policies should be combined with age‐specific policies.     

My Choice: Women’s Contraceptive-Use Autonomy in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Using a nationally representative household survey for two cohorts of married women, this study examines women’s contraceptive-use autonomy (CUA) incidence and correlates in Bangladesh, focusing on the role of education. Previous research has examined the incidence and correlates of contraceptive use and of several dimensions of female autonomy but only rarely the intersection of the two – that is, CUA. This study finds that women from the younger cohort are far more likely to have complete autonomy over contraceptive use than women from the older cohort. Detailed decompositions reveal that the improvement in education across cohorts is the main correlate of the improved generational CUA gap. Health knowledge, especially knowledge that the use of condoms can help avoid contracting HIV/AIDS, is part of the transmission mechanism between women’s education and women’s CUA but also exerts an additional influence on CUA.     

Losers amongst the Losers:: The welfare effects of the great recession across cohorts

This paper studies the effect of deep recessions on intergenerational inequality by quantifying the welfare effects on households at different phases of the life cycle. Deep recessionary episodes are characterized by large declines in the prices of real and financial assets and in employment. The former levies high welfare costs on older households who own financial wealth, the latter determines labour income losses and destroys the human capital of younger cohorts, lowering their productivity. The paper extends previous analyses in the literature by including permanent labour income losses in an OLG model calibrated to match the Great Recession. The analysis shows that younger households lose more than double of all other living cohorts, as younger household become unemployed and experience a decline in their future income. The dynamics of households’ consumption and portfolio composition between 2007 and 2013 in the US are consistent with the predictions of the model.     

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE DEMAND FOR ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

This paper adopts a systems approach to estimate budget share equations for four categories of alcoholic drinks and for tobacco, using quarterly expenditure data for the period 1964 to 1983. The emphasis is on the importance of the tolerance effects of addiction and on the smoker's participation decision in correctly specifying the model of demand. The model makes explicit recognition of a separate participation decision and the estimates suggest that there is something to be gained by introducing variables to indicate changes in the distribution of income and the demographic structure of the population.     

企业生产率的代际效应和年龄效应

本文利用1998年到2004年中国制造业企业数据,从企业代际和年龄的角度研究了中国制造业企业的生产率变动,得到三个基本发现:(1)新进入企业总是能够将当时先进的技术知识和组织制度"物化"在企业的物质和组织资本中,存续企业也能通过"干中学"而提升其生产效率;而且只有在改革开始以后成立的企业才显现出显著的日益上升的代际优势;(2)中国制造业企业的代际和年龄优势并没有相应反映在外资企业上,外资企业的代际优势几乎没有,正年龄效应在第6年后也几乎消失;(3)尽管国有企业平均来看较其他所有制企业的生产率低,但在1988年之后新成立的国有企业日益增加的代际优势,表现出了明显的"追赶"效应。     

The evolution of wage inequality in Italy

This article analyses the evolution of inequality in yearly and daily wages between and within groups of blue and white collar, using the INPS-ISFOL database for the period 1985 to 1999 in Italy. Between-group inequality increased in the 1990s as clerical wages grew slowly, whereas blue collars' wages remained nearly constant. Within-group inequality increased only if measured by daily wages. The covariance structure analysis shows that inequality comes from persistent differentials among older workers and from high income volatility for younger cohorts. Within inequalities in office and manual workers are driven by the growth of permanency for the older cohorts (individual abilities, say experience, matter more) and by the growth of income volatility for the younger cohorts (luck in the labour market). Within each group, low paid workers during their career acquire earning gains for their abilities and reduce differentials with respect to high paid workers.     

Cohort,age and time effects in alcohol consumption by Italian households: a double-hurdle approach

This paper describes the life-cycle alcohol consumption patterns of Italian households by decomposing gender, cohort, age and time effects and estimates the importance of demographic characteristics using a double-hurdle model. The application is based on ISTAT households expenditure survey for the period 1997–2002 organized in cohorts. As expected, cohort and age effects are significant in both participation and consumptions. The significance of gender and geographic differences suggests important policy implications.      

国外年轻领导对年长员工领导有效性的研究述评及展望

在当前工作场所中，年轻领导管理年长员工的现象越来越普遍，引发了学者们的广泛关注。基于年轻领导对年长员工领导有效性的文献梳理，厘清了年龄和年轻领导-年长员工年龄差异性的具体内涵，界定了领导-下属对偶关系；阐释了年轻领导-年长员工年龄差异从无方向性到有方向性的研究现状；提炼现有研究成果构建了整合研究框架，试图全面揭示年轻领导对年长员工领导有效性的影响效应及其作用机制。最后，在剖析现有研究不足的基础上，有针对性地指出了未来研究方向。     

Resource constraints and educational attainment in developing countries: Colombia 1945–2005

In this paper, I investigate the extent to which secondary and higher education supply constraints affected aggregate educational attainment in Colombia for cohorts born between 1945 and 1981. As was the case in many other countries after World War II, in Colombia, industrialization, urbanization and rapid population growth increased the demand for education and the return to schooling. Although educational expenditures from the central government and the states increased after the 1950s, secondary and tertiary schools' per-pupil inputs declined. Using variation in cohort size within states and over time to proxy for changes in education demand, I find that for cohorts born after 1945, a 10% increase in cohort size reduced high school completion rate by 3%, the college completion rate by 4% and average years of schooling by 1%. Compared to women's educational attainment rates, changes in cohort size had greater negative effects on men's rates.     

Labor supply effects of the recent social security benefit cuts: Empirical estimates using cohort discontinuities

In response to a “crisis” in Social Security financing two decades ago Congress implemented an increase in the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) of 2 months per year for cohorts born in 1938 and after. These cohorts began reaching retirement age in 2000. This paper studies the effects of these benefit cuts on recent retirement behavior. The evidence suggests that the mean retirement age of the affected cohorts has increased by about half as much as the increase in the NRA. If older workers continue to increase their labor supply in the same way, there might be important implications for the estimates of Social Security trust fund exhaustion that have played such a major role in recent discussions of Social Security reform.     

For better or for worse: the long-term effects of postwar mobilization on family formation

This article estimates the long-term legacies of female labour force mobilization on women’s family formation outcomes such as marriage, age at first marriage and divorce. We identify the long-term marriage effects of female labour force mobilization by exploring postwar mandatory employment in Germany. Using difference-in-differences analysis, we find that participation in postwar reconstruction efforts increased women’s probability of being currently married, ever married and marrying at younger ages. We also find that postwar employment had no differential effect on divorce rates of the affected cohorts of women. These results persist after accounting for the potential changes in the composition of the population, demand for female labour, war relief payments and postwar state-specific policies.