EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF HEALTH SHOCKS: THE ROLE OF FRINGE BENEFITS

This paper examines whether health shocks influence labour supply. Estimates rely on detailed health measures that not only are more homogeneous than commonly‐used self‐reported health measures, but they also can be interpreted as plausibly exogenous with respect to labour supply. Further, this paper investigates the unique role that certain fringe benefits, namely health insurance and paid sick leave, play in the link between health shocks and subsequent employment activity. Results show that, compared to commonly‐used self‐reported measures of health, health problems defined by the US government as ‘priority’ conditions correlate with smaller labour supply shifts, but non‐work‐related injuries lead to larger shifts. Second, the arrival of a health shock appears to reduce the probability of remaining employed full time, while also increasing the likelihood of quitting work. Relatively few full‐time workers who acquire health problems switch to part‐time employment. Third, in the event of a health shock, sick leave appears to facilitate reductions in employment activities, while employer‐provided insurance appears to hinder such adjustments.     

人民币升值的逆传递效应： 基于供给冲击和需求冲击的分析

基于供给冲击与需求冲击的研究视角,本文阐述了人民币升值的逆传递效应的传导机制。运用协整与向量误差修正模型,实证检验了人民币名义有效汇率与人民币对美元的双边名义汇率的逆传递效应。结果表明,无论在长期还是在短期,人民币升值都不具有通货紧缩效应,而是具有逆传递效应,并且名义有效汇率的逆传递效应强于双边名义汇率。     

POOR AND SICK: ESTIMATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HOUSEHOLD INCOME AND HEALTH

This study evaluates the effect of the individual's household income on their health at the later stages of working life. A structural equation model is utilized in order to derive a composite and continuous index of the latent health status from qualitative health status indicators. The endogenous relationship between health status and household income status is taken into account by using IV estimators. The findings reveal a significant effect of individual household income on health before and after endogeneity is taken into account as well as a host of other factors known to influence health, including hereditary factors and the individual's locus of control. Importantly, it is also shown that the childhood socioeconomic position of the individual has long lasting effects on health as it appears to play a significant role in determining health during the later stages of working life.     

RISK OF ACCIDENTS AND THE POLICY OF FORCED RETIREMENT

In 1960, the Federal Aviation Administration put in place the Age 60 rule forcing airline pilots to retire upon reaching the age of 60 years. This paper uses data from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration to determine if having pilots above 59 years of age carries a social cost. Statistical evidence indicates that the severity of aircraft accidents is related to pilot age for some classes of pilots but not for others. Findings are that small-airplane accidents tend to be more severe for pilots over 59 with private and commercial licenses than for younger pilots with equal qualifications. Thus, some (though not convincing) evidence suggests that private and commercial pilots above 59 years of age impose a greater social cost on the flying public than do younger pilots. However, among ATP pilots—that is, those who are licensed to fly large airplanes—no evidence indicates that pilots over 59 have more severe accidents when flying small airplanes than do younger ATP pilots flying such airplanes. Moreover, no evidence indicates that age is a factor in serious and fatal accidents for ATP pilots flying large airplanes up to the mandatory retirement age of 60 years. The extra screening and training of ATP pilots may explain the differences in accident severity between these and other pilots.     

MARKUPS AND THE REAL EFFECTS OF VOLATILITY SHOCKS

This article studies the role of endogenous markups in the transmission of volatility shocks in real models. I design a variant of a small open economy model with volatility shocks and firm dynamics that gives rise to endogenous markups. I calibrate this model to match the business cycle facts in emerging economies and show that the impact of volatility shocks is substantially amplified if markups are endogenously time varying. Volatility shocks increase savings, due to precautionary motives, and markups, which act as a wedge that endogenously decreases real wages and labor supply with further negative aggregate dynamics that are absent in the models with constant markups.     

THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF PAY-AS-YOU-GO RETIREMENT PROGRAMS: THE ROLE OF TAX AND BENEFIT TIMING

It is well known that pay-as-you-go retirement programs reduce steady-state welfare and the capital stock in dynamically efficient overlapping generation (OLG) economies. The common two-period OLG model obscures, however, the relationship between the magnitude of these effects and the ages at which taxes are paid and benefits received. Program changes that shift taxes to older workers or benefits to younger retirees have effects similar to reductions in program size, yielding steady-state welfare gains and increases in capital accumulation while imposing transition costs on current generations. This analysis has policy implications for both tax and benefit timing . ( JEL H55, E62)     

HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION AND NATIONAL PRODUCTION: AN IMPROVEMENT OF THE RECORD

1 By no means is the home based production of housewives the only or even the most important aspect of nonmarket production. The entire question of work vs. leisure, and the distinction between leisure and nonmarket oriented production, are currently under intensive scrutiny. See for instance the work of Nordhaus and Tobin [7, especially appendix section A.3], Gronau [2] and items cited in Gronau. The omission from the national income accounts of work performed at home by males, non-married females, and “working wives” is extremely important. This paper is concerned only with married females because (1) they are the subject of what must be one of the oldest jokes in the subject of social accounting, and (2) the relationship of production by housewives to total production has changed in the past ten years or so, and that deserves some attention even if it is not the most important thing which has been happening with respect to the GNP.
Specifically, we will present estimates of the value of home based nonmarket production by housewives. These estimates will then be used to supplement various national product aggregates in order to calculate more accurate growth rates for the U.S. economy. We find that the value of nonmarket production by married women during the 1960's has averaged approximately thirty percent of the GNP and close to 40 percent of the national income. The inclusion of the nonmarket work of housewives in GNP would reduce the measured rate of growth of real GNP per potential worker by about ten percent, the exact amount depending on how the value of nonmarket work is estimated. Our estimates indicate a reduction in the absolute rate of growth of almost 0.25 percent.     

外部冲击与奥肯定律的存在性和非线性

本文在传统的线性奥肯定律和平滑转换回归模型基础上,构建了一个非线性奥肯定律模型,结合国际油价的外部供给冲击,系统地考察了奥肯定律这一经验规律在我国的存在性和非线性。研究结果表明,传统的线性奥肯定律在我国已经失效,但呈现出明显的非线性特征,经济扩张和经济收缩对失业的影响具有截然不同的非对称效应。考虑到外部供给冲击的影响,奥肯定律会出现一定程度的偏移,而且呈现出线性与非线性特征的频繁转换。     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN NEIGHBORHOOD INCOME AND UNIT NON‐RESPONSE IN THE SURVEY OF HEALTH,AGEING, AND RETIREMENT IN EUROPE

This paper estimates associations between individual and neighborhood characteristics and unit non‐response in a survey of the population aged 50 and over in the Netherlands in 2004. The statistical model includes interviewer fixed effects to control for the non‐random distribution of addresses over interviewers. The empirical analysis shows that, relative to individuals living in apartments, there is a lower unit non‐response among individuals living in houses and a higher unit non‐response among individuals living in old age institutions. Unit non‐response is positively associated with the size of a city. No age and gender effects are found. Unit non‐response is about 25 percent lower among individuals in the top than among individuals in the bottom of the distribution of neighborhood average income. This latter result implies that the response sample is biased toward individuals living in the more wealthy neighborhoods.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF HOUSEHOLD INCOME AND EXPENDITURE IN PORTUGAL: 1980 AND 1990

From 1980 to 1990 Portugal experienced a generalized liberalization of economic activity, due in large part to its 1986 integration in the European Union. This paper studies the changes in the Portuguese distribution of household income and expenditure during this period, using micro-data on household budgets and applying recent developments in statistical inference for Lorenz curves. We find a significant increase in six measures of welfare and an unambiguous decrease in the inequality of the respective distributions. Different explanations for the findings of decreased inequality are discussed.     

中国人口老化、退休金缺口与农村养老保障

该文对中国人口老龄化的主要特征与养老金缺口的严重问题进行了概要的分析,并讨论建立农村储备积累式养老保障制度的必要性、紧迫性与可行性.该文认为,我们必须充分利用今后20年左右劳力资源丰富、少儿抚养比下降、老年抚养比仍然较低的"人口红利"机遇,大力发挥我国在劳力密集型产业方面的比较优势,努力建立农村社会养老保障体系,以应对2025年之后人口老龄化高峰期到来的严峻挑战以及扭转出生性别比与女婴死亡率大幅超常偏高的危险倾向.     

CHANGING PENSION POLICY AND THE AGING OF AMERICA

The recently enacted Tax Reform Act of 1986 contains a number of pension policy provisions including faster vesting for private-sector, single-employer pension plans and imposing tax penalties on preretirement pension plan distributions that are not saved until retirement age. Since pensions are a long-term commitment, the impact of pension policy changes may not be fully realized for a number of years. For that reason, the effects of the Tax Reform Act's pension provisions are investigated using both short-run and long-run simulation models. Faster vesting would immediately entitle an additional 1.9 million pension plan participants to pension benefits at retirement. This increase would not, however, be translated directly into significant gains in pension recipiency for workers currently in their 50s. Nevertheless, by the time the baby boom generation retires, faster vesting and lump-sum penalties could provide more retirees with pensions and increase the standard of living of pension recipients.     

THE EFFECTS OF FISCAL SHOCKS ON EMPLOYMENT AND THE REAL WAGE*

We study the transmission of fiscal shocks in the labor market. We employ a structural VAR and base identification on the restrictions that shocks to government consumption, investment, and employment must raise output and deficits. These restrictions hold in both prototype Real Business Cycle (RBC) and New Keynesian models. Shocks to government consumption and investment increase real wages and employment contemporaneously, both at state level and in the aggregate. The dynamics in response to employment shocks are mixed: Increases in government employment raise the real wage and total employment in the aggregate. However, in one third of the states they reduce total employment.     

THE DISSAVING OF ANNUITY WEALTH AND MARKETABLE WEALTH IN RETIREMENT

This paper compares the automatic dissaving of annuity wealth with the discretionary dissaving of marketable wealth that would result from life-cycle consumption behavior by retired persons. In simulations of a life-cycle model based on the isoelastic utility function and realistic parameter values, we find that marketable wealth normally would be dissaved more rapidly than annuity wealth. This suggests that empirical findings that show the opposite relation-slow dissaving of marketable wealth being accompanied by faster dissaving of annuity wealth (or total wealth)-should not be interpreted as evidence that supports the life-cycle theory.     

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF VALUING HEALTH INSURANCE ON LEVELS AND TRENDS IN INEQUALITY AND HOW THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT OF 2010 COULD AFFECT THEM

A substantial part of the U.S. inequality literature focuses on yearly levels and trends in pre‐tax, post‐transfer cash income and its distribution over time and finds that median income appears to be stagnating, with income growth primarily coming at higher income levels. When we use data from the Current Population Survey for 1995–2008 and add the value of employer‐ and government‐provided health insurance coverage, not only does it increase the upward trend in the level of resources controlled by Americans, but also reduces the level of inequality in these resources and its upward trend. We then provide a highly stylized example of this broader income measure's value in capturing the impact of two key provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010—an expansion in Medicaid and the provision of subsidies to lower‐income families for purchasing private coverage on state‐run exchanges. Even though these incremental expansions build on existing systems of government‐provided health insurance, we find that the vast majority of the benefits would still accrue to the bottom three deciles of the income distribution when we include the value of employer‐ and government‐provided health insurance in our expanded yearly income measure. (JEL D31, H51, I14)     

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL: THE EFFECT OF UNEQUAL ACCESS TO EMPLOYMENT-BASED HEALTH INSURANCE ON SAME-SEX AND UNMARRIED DIFFERENT-SEX COUPLES

Employers' health insurance coverage for legal spouses places unmarried couples at a disadvantage for obtaining coverage. Data from the Current Population Survey confirm that people with same-sex or different-sex unmarried partners are two to three times more likely to be uninsured than married people, even after controlling for factors influencing coverage. Universal partner coverage would cut that uninsured rate by as much as 50%. Employers offering domestic partner benefits would see a small enrollment increase: 0.1%–0.3% for gay and lesbian partners and 1.3%–1.8% for heterosexual partners. We find no evidence of adverse selection. (JEL J32 , J38 , J71 )     

THE ROLE OF PREFERENCE SHOCKS AND CAPITAL UTILIZATION IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION*

The article examines the proposition that preference shocks play a central role in our understanding of the Great Depression. I identify a series of unusually large negative shocks that destabilized the U.S. economy during the 1930s. When the artificial economy is paired with variable capital utilization and mildly increasing returns to scale in production, it is able to account for most of the decline in economic activity and it predicts a tepid recovery.     

MEASURING THE VALUE OF HOUSEHOLD OUTPUT: A COMPARISON OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT APPROACHES

Economists have traditionally measured household production (HP) by multiplying hours spent by a wage rate. This practice tends to misstate HP by ignoring the contribution of capital and entrepreneurship and by making questionable marginal productivity assumptions. Quantifying the HP and multiplying by the market value per unit avoids these problems and yields a value estimated by the same method as GNP. We measure HP by this direct method and find HP to be 44 percent more than that obtained by the traditional approach. We further make average productivity comparisons between firms and households for typical HP items.