Maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in Canada: evidence from the NLSCY

Abstract.  This paper investigates the socioeconomic factors affecting childhood overweight and obesity in Canada using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. In particular, I attempt to address the issue of whether an increase in the mother's work intensity is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese. I also attempt to evaluate the causality of this relationship and the mechanisms that might facilitate this link. The results suggest that an increase in the mother's work intensity when she first returned to work in the period after the child's birth and before the child started school is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese later in childhood. Conditional on the mother returning to work in the period between the child's birth and the start of school for the child, a 10-hour increase in the number of hours worked per week when the mother first returned to work is associated with an increase in the probability that the child later becomes overweight or obese that is in the range of 2.5 to 4 percentage points.     

Income effects and physician labour supply: evidence from the threshold system in Ontario

Abstract. We examine a reform to the physician threshold system in Ontario that provides a unique opportunity to assess the effect of fee changes on physician behaviour, free from the biases that potentially affect simple time‐series or cross‐section inference. We find that: (1) the income effects of fee changes are small, but significant; (2) the income effect dominates the substitution effect only for a minority of services with relatively low prices and high volumes; and (3) the cross effects of fee changes tend to be significant only for services with relatively high prices and low volumes.     

Determinants of household supply of labour in food-for-work programme in Tigray,Ethiopia

We study the factors that determine the household supply of labour in food-for-work (FFW) projects that seek to address food insecurity and help capital formation in development. Based on data from a survey conducted in 2003 in Tigray, Ethiopia, our probit analysis identifies factors that significantly affect the household decision to participate in FFW programmes. We correct for selection bias, and estimate total and excess supply of FFW labour. Our finding of substantial leakages in targeting that allow relatively well-off households to obtain FFW employment yield important implications for the prevailing FFW wage. We also argue that FFW programmes will be more effective if they are designed to account for geographic heterogeneity in such factors as male to female labour participation differences and the incidence of debilitating diseases.     

Teen families,welfare transfers,and the minimum wage: evidence from Canada

Abstract This study evaluates the impacts of welfare transfers and the minimum wage on teen family formation by pooling provincial data from Canada between 1990 and 2005. OLS estimates suggest that welfare transfers have had limited impact on teen births. On the other hand, a 10% increase in the minimum wage is significantly correlated with a 3%–5% rise in teen birth rates. This finding is explained by further regressions, which reveal that an increase in the minimum wage is significantly associated with (1) higher earnings among male teens, (2) an increase in teen marriage rates, and (3) an increase in fertility among married teens but not among unmarried females. Finally, estimates based on the 2003 and 2005 waves of the Canadian Community Health Surveys demonstrate that married teens are more likely to engage in sex as well as unprotected intercourse in comparison with single teens.     

Market potential and welfare: evidence from the Iberian Peninsula

We present a methodology to quantify market potential in the context of an economic geography model. The model is then applied to the NUTS 2 regions of Portugal and Spain. Some results can be pointed out. First, the Iberian Peninsula presents a clear centre-periphery pattern. The market potential pike is situated in the region of Madrid, followed very closely by Cataluña and Pais Vasco. Also all Portuguese regions are at the bottom of the market potential rank, i.e.: Portugal is at the periphery of Spain. Second, the regional welfare index confirms market potential results. There is therefore a direct correlation between market potential and regional welfare. Third, a scenario of complete integration between the Portuguese and the Spanish economy is favourable to the most laggard regions. On the contrary, the most advanced regions of each country loose a little. However, ‘lock-in’ effects allow the most central regions to continue in the forefront of development and welfare.Received: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, Accepted: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, JEL Classification: C68, F12, F15, R12, R13The author is in debt to Renato Flôres and Paula Fontoura for helpful discussions during the preparation of this work. A first version of this paper was presented at the conference “Portuguese Economic Development in the European Context” organized by the Portuguese Central Bank. I am thankful to José Braga de Macedo, Pedro Duarte Neves and to all participants for very useful observations and comments. This version benefited greatly from the remarks and suggestions by Mahahisa Fujita, Alireza Naghavi and two anonymous referees. I am also in debt to José Pedro Pontes for inviting me to the “Luso-Japanese Workshop in Geographical Economics” and for encouraging me to submit this paper to this special issue of the Portuguese Economic Journal. The research conducted here was supported by a grant from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(Praxis XXI/BM/17786/98). The usual disclaimer however applies.     

Household formation rules,fertility and female labour supply: Evidence from post-communist countries

This paper explains how household formation rules affect the fertility and labour supply of women in the Former Soviet Union and neighbouring countries. Women who bear a male first child in countries dominated by traditional, patrilocal households are shown to have substantially lower subsequent fertility from those whose first child is female. Where households are generally nuclear, male first borns do not reduce subsequent fertility. Middle-aged women in more patrilocal contexts often work less if their first child is male, despite reduced fertility and being more likely to reside with a daughter-in-law. In more nuclear contexts, they tend to work more. These findings suggest that household formation rules are strongly related both to women’s demand for sons and to the direction of intergenerational transfers.     

The dynamics of food insecurity and overall health: evidence from the Canadian National Population Health Survey

The paper explores whether the responses to household food insecurity questions in cycles two and three of the Canadian National Population Health Survey help explain the links between socioeconomic status and health at the individual level. Short-term transitions in food insecurity status are correlated with changes in health status. There is some evidence for females but not for males that conditional on current health, current household food insecurity can lead to lower future health status, even in the short run. There is stronger evidence for both males and females that conditional on current household food insecurity status, lower current health status can lead to an increased probability of future household food insecurity.     

Geographic labour mobility and the cost of housing: evidence from Italy

In recent years, internal migration in Italy has declined markedly, notwithstanding the widening of the North-South gap in terms of unemployment rates and real income. Here, the extent to which the housing market has contributed to the decline is examined. Preliminary to this analysis, differentials in the cost of housing between the macro-areas of the country are estimated using data on the market price of houses located in 96 provincial capitals. Econometric evidence is provided supporting the view that the North-South housing price differential is a notable factor in explaining the falling pattern of mobility. The positive impact on migration from the South to the North of a wider gap in the two areas in terms of income and employment prospects has been offset by the housing price differential, which has steadily risen at least from the mid-1980s onwards. Yet, a considerable share of the decrease in mobility remains unexplained, possibly owing to the heterogeneity in the composition of migration flows across different cohorts.     

Regulation, innovation and public welfare: the example of the food industry

The complex relationship between innovation and regulation in the food industry is analyzed with a view to identifying the ways in which regulation both promotes and inhibits particular kinds of innovation, and also the relevance of both innovation and regulation to the protection and improvement of public health. The effects of regulation on innovation are complex, since regulation simultaneously inhibits some kinds of development while encouraging others, but those which are inhibited are typically unsafe or undesirale. There is, however, no evidence that public welfare is being undermined by excessive regulations or by too few innovations in the food sector.     

Illicit drug use and labour market achievement: evidence from the UK

This study, using data from the British Crime Survey (BCS), examines the effect of drug use on occupational achievement. It starts by attempting to overcome the identification problem that results from the limited set of drug use questions presented in the BCS. Taking this into account, and allowing for the endogeneity of drug use in equations for unemployment and labour market outcomes, that a mild positive association with ‘soft’ drugs and occupational achievement is observed that diminishes with age. This relationship holds for males but not for females. In contrast, it is also found that past use of ‘hard’ drugs significantly increases the likelihood of current unemployment, although it appears to be unrelated to occupational success, conditional on achieving employment.     

Trust,risk and time preferences: evidence from survey data

The paper shows that time preferences and risk preferences are key covariates of self-reported trust. They both predict negatively a measure of generalized trust; however, risk aversion is positively correlated with an index of particularized trusting behaviour (which refers to the circle of known people).     

Structure, conduct, and performance: evidence from the Indonesian food and beverages industry

This article employs the Structure–Conduct–Performance (SCP) paradigm to investigate the simultaneous relationship between industrial concentration, price rigidity, technical efficiency, and price-cost margin in the Indonesian food and beverages industry. This research extends the SCP framework by including price rigidity and technical efficiency as additional key variables. The results suggest that there is a simultaneous relationship between industrial concentration, price rigidity, technical efficiency, and price-cost margin with a positive bi-directional relationship between industrial concentration and price-cost margin. These findings imply that an appropriate course of action for the regulator in this highly concentrated industry is to reduce industrial concentration in order to increase competition, reduce upward price flexibility, and increase technical efficiency in the long run.     

Sector specific foreign investment,labour inflow,economies of scale and welfare

This paper argues that the impact of foreign investment on welfare depends on the sector that attracts the investment and certain characteristics of the economy. It is shown that, as long as the intermediate good is non-traded, foreign investment in a sector that is subject to economies of scale increases welfare by increasing the size of the intermediate good sector. On the other hand, foreign investment in a sector that is subject to constant returns to scale decreases welfare by decreasing the size of the intermediate good sector. The impact of foreign investment (in either sector) on welfare depends on relative factor intensities when the intermediate good is traded.     

Federal and union job queues: further evidence from the US labour market

Recent research on union differentials suggests that although the premium to unionization is higher in the private sector, it can hardly be ignored in the federal sector. Consequently, the nature and length of the federal queue may differ between union and non-union sectors. Similarly, the union queue may not necessarily be homogeneous between federal and private sectors. We estimate separate queues for federal-union, federal-non-union and private-union jobs from the same sample. This avoids the problem of simultaneity between the federal queue and the union queue. In addition, it explores several important differences that exist between these queues.     

Sectoral shifts, diversification and regional unemployment: evidence from local labour systems in Italy

Using Local Labour Systems (LLSs) data, this work aims at assessing the effects of sectoral shifts and industry specialization patterns on regional unemployment in Italy over the years 2004–2008. Italy represents an interesting case study because of the high degree of spatial heterogeneity in local labour market performance and the well-known North–South divide. Furthermore, the presence of strongly specialized LLSs (Industrial Districts, IDs) allows us to test whether IDs perform better than highly diversified urban areas thanks to the effect of agglomeration economies, or viceversa. Building on a semiparametric spatial auto-regressive framework, our empirical investigation documents that sectoral shifts and the degree of specialization exert a negative role on unemployment dynamics. By contrast, highly diversified areas turn out to be characterized by better labour market performances.     

Natural capital, subjective well-being, and the new welfare economics of sustainability: Some evidence from cross-country regressions

The measurement of natural capital and its management during the economic development process are important aspects of the capital approach to sustainable development. However, the assessment of social welfare in terms of genuine savings (or changes in total wealth per capita) is arguably too limited. This paper tries to make a case for the incorporation of subjective well-being measures in debates about sustainable development by exploring the macro-level relationship between subjective well-being and natural capital in a cross-country setting. It is tested whether natural capital per capita is correlated with subjective well-being in a sample of fifty-eight developed and developing countries, using natural capital data from the World Bank's Millennium Capital Assessment. Bivariate regressions indicate that it is. When multiple regression models are estimated that include (a) major country-level determinants of subjective well-being (GNI per capita, social capital, income distribution, unemployment, inflation), and (b) regional dummy variables for ex-Soviet Union and Latin American countries, the positive correlation remains. The role of data outliers is carefully explored, and the sensitivity of the results to the use of alternative subjective well-being measures (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and a combined life satisfaction and happiness index) is investigated. This does not change the nature of the results. The findings arguably strengthen the case for a ‘new welfare economics of sustainability’ that takes subjective well-being measures into account.     

Work experience,earnings and participation: evidence from the women and employment survey

This paper presents a probit model of labour force participation and a set of earnings equations estimated using data from the 1980 Women and Employment Survey. The results of the participation model compare with previous findings and the earnings models give typical results of human capital and job characteristics variables. Exclusion of the sample selection effect appears to be of importance and a linear piecewise experience variable outperforms the quadratic specification.     

Preferences and the labour supply of married women

The paper reports the main results of using British cross-section data to estimate a labour supply function in which preference variables are interacted with terms measuring the slope and position of the budget constraint.     

Deregulation, competition and consumer welfare in a banking market: evidence from Hong Kong

This paper examines competition among commercial banks following deregulation in a small open economy. I jointly estimate a system of differentiated product demand and pricing equations, and use conduct parameters to identify market structure. Overall, I find positive outcomes for the banking deregulation, which suggest that the benefits of deregulation understood in large industrialized economies indeed apply to a small open economy. Encouragingly, the industry becomes more competitive and the consumers are better-off after the deregulation. Empirical results also indicate that the banking sector is characterized by non-cooperative competitive behavior. Bank size is an important determinant of consumer’s bank choice.     

Child care voucher and labour market behaviour: experimental evidence from Finland

This article provides experimental estimates of the impact of a voucher for private care on labour force participation and use of private and public child care within the Nordic system of universal provision of public care. In a market that was providing high-quality, low-cost public child care, a voucher is nevertheless found to have a significant, positive effect for the use of private child care with zero effects on either use of public care or labour force participation. The use of private increased by five percentage points in the whole country and by five to seven percentage points in areas that suffer from excess demand for child care as a result of the introduction of the private child care voucher.