Estimating the wetland rental fee: a case study involving a Taiwan wetland

Wetlands provide many functions that are both economic and recreational and are valuable in terms of their ecological diversity, while at the same time being nonmarket value products. The purpose of this study is to estimate the optimal wetland rental through estimations of both the demand and supply functions in relation to wetland. The wetland supply function is directly estimated based on the data provided by the owners of the wetland, while the estimation of the wetland input demand function involves using the bootstrapping and contingent visitation approaches. Such estimation approaches could also be applied to other nonmarket value products that give rise to environmental externalities. The estimation of rental fee could provide a long-term leasing contract that gives the landlord with a particular rent to lease their lands to support a wetland eco-tourism park to maintain wetland for substantial management. Several environmental management policy implications are also addressed.     

Children's welfare exposure and subsequent development

We examine the extent to which children are exposed to the welfare system through their mother's receipt of benefits and its impact on several developmental outcomes. Using data from the matched mother-child file from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that children's welfare exposure is substantial. By age 10, over one-third of all children will have lived in a welfare household; black, non-Hispanic children face a much higher rate of exposure. Simple correlations suggest a strong negative relationship between maternal welfare receipt and children's outcomes. In this paper, we implement three alternative strategies (instrumental variables, sibling differences, and child fixed effects models) designed to identify whether this correlation can be attributed to the mother's welfare receipt directly or to other characteristics of mothers who receive welfare, regardless of whether or not those characteristics are observable to the researcher. Based on the results of all three estimation strategies, we find little evidence of any causal link between maternal welfare receipt and children's developmental outcomes.     

More on stochastic index numbers

There are three major approaches used to estimate index numbers. The first is Fisher's test approach whereby indexes are judged on their ability to satisfy certain criteria. The economic theory of index numbers is the second approach and this deals with their foundations in utility theory. The third approach is a less well-known methodology, but one which is now attracting considerable attention, the stochastic approach which is a new way of viewing index numbers in which uncertainty and statistical ideas play a central role. While providing a point estimate for the index number like the other two approaches, the stochastic approach additionally provides the SE of the point estimate. This article enhances understanding of stochastic index numbers by showing that they are formally equivalent to the familiar optimal combination of forecasts with the individual prices playing the role of n forecasts of the overall rate of inflation. This leads to new analytical results on the impact of adding additional information within the stochastic approach framework. We provide two concrete examples of the sources of such additional information: (i) the quantity theory of money; and (ii) the use of quantity data in addition to price data. We also illustrate some of these theoretical results using real data.     

The effects of demographics and maternal behavior on the distribution of birth outcomes

This paper utilizes quantile-regression techniques in order to estimate the effects of demographics and maternal behavior during pregnancy at various quantiles of the birthweight distribution. Due to the high costs and long-term effects (both medical and economic) associated with low-birthweight babies, there is a great deal of interest in quantifying these effects, particularly at the lower end of the birthweight distribution. Using large samples of 1992 and 1996 births in the United States, the quantile-regression estimates indicate that several factors (including race, education, and prenatal care) have a significantly higher impact at lower quantiles and lower impact at higher quantiles. These effects at lower quantiles are underestimated by least-squares regression estimates. The inequality in birthweights implied by these results is quite significant, and there is little indication that the inequality has changed much in recent years.     

The causal effects of parents’ schooling on children's schooling in urban China

Parental schooling is widely thought to improve child outcomes. But most studies on parental-child relations are associative, without control for estimation problems, such as unobserved intergenerationally-correlated endowments, if causality is of interest. The few exceptions are relatively recent studies that focus on high-income countries (HICs), with their much different contexts than the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in which the vast majority of children globally are growing up. This paper estimates the causal (conditional on the assumptions for the model) relationships between parents’ schooling and their children's schooling in the most populous LMIC, using adult identical (monozygotic, MZ) twins data from urban China. Our ordinary least-squares estimates show that one-year increases in maternal and paternal schooling are associated, respectively, with 0.4 and 0.5 more years of children's schooling. However, if we control for genetic and other endowment effects by using within-MZ fixed effects, the results indicate that mothers''and fathers’ schooling have no significant effects on children's schooling. Our main results remain with various robustness checks, including controlling for measurement error. These results suggest that the positive associations between children's and parents’ schooling in standard cross-sectional estimates in this major LMIC are mainly due to the correlation between parents’ unobserved endowments and their schooling and not the effects of their schooling per se.     

The role of pregnancy health problems on maternal smoking behaviours

To explore the effects of pregnancy health problems (PHPs) on smoking behaviours during and after pregnancy (‘smoking-inducing’ effect), we estimate a two-period model that jointly determines prenatal and postnatal smoking decisions, taking into consideration the presence of PHPs. While PHPs are likely to reduce prenatal (except for heavy smokers) and postnatal smoking propensity, we still observe considerable postnatal relapse in the sample, which can be attributed to smoking addiction, as well as information asymmetries and maternal stress associated with PHPs. Thus, we advocate for smoking cessation policies and programmes throughout and beyond pregnancy to avoid potential intertemporal substitution between prenatal and postnatal cigarette consumption.     

A META‐ANALYSIS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INCOME INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

In recent years there is a growing interest in determining the impact of inequality on economic growth. Theoretical papers as well as empirical applications have, however, produced controversial results. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality detrimental to growth, more recent studies have challenged this result and found a positive effect of inequality on growth. In this paper, we provide a contribution to the empirical puzzle by using meta‐analysis to systematically describe, identify and analyse the variation in outcomes of empirical studies. We find that estimation methods, data quality and sample coverage systematically affect the results. The results point out that it will be particularly useful to increasingly focus research on determining the impact of income inequality on economic growth using single‐country data at the regional level, or a relatively homogeneous set of countries with adequate controls for country‐wide differences in economic, social and institutional characteristics.     

Testing for forward-looking behaviour: evidence from the enactment of smoking restrictions

This paper develops a new test for forward-looking behaviour based on the establishment of public smoking restrictions. Given that the announcement of these restrictions effectively increases the future cost of smoking, we should expect forward-looking smokers to curb their consumption before the restriction is effective due to complementarity between present and future consumption. I perform the estimation using detailed, high-frequency household-level purchase data. The results provide evidence against the forward-looking behaviour of smokers. Households do not reduce their cigarette purchases before announced public smoking restrictions are established; they only do so once the restriction is in effect.     

Recombinant estimation for normal-form games,with applications to auctions and bargaining

When analyzing economic games, researchers frequently estimate quantities describing group outcomes, such as the expected revenue in an auction. For such applications, we propose an improved statistical estimation technique called “recombinant estimation.” The technique takes observations of players' strategies and recombines them to compute all possible group outcomes that could have resulted from different player combinations. In applications to an auction and a bargaining game, the improved efficiency of our estimator is equivalent to increasing the sample size between 25 and 200%. We discuss how to design experiments in order to utilize recombinant estimation. We also discuss practical computational issues, and provide software for computing estimates and standard errors.     

两种基于不同理论的绿色国民核算方法比较

本文主要介绍了两种基于不同理论的绿色国民核算方法--GREENSTAMP(GREEned National Statistical and Modelling Procedures)方法和GARP(Green Accounting Research Project)方法的发展和应用.GREENSTAMP方法是以可持续发展理论为基础的模型计量方法,目的在于发展一种理论上严密、实行上可行的衡量满足可持续环境标准的经济产出总量的方法.GARP方法是搜集能够用于估计绿色NNP或者能够用于解释标准国民账户(SNA)的卫星账户的信息的实证研究方法,目的在于给出一个经济活动净福利的准确计量值.通过比较发现,两种绿色国民核算方法均存在一定的优点和缺点.因此,本文提出了将以可持续发展为基础的方法和以福利为基础的方法相结合的两种潜在方法.     

Viewpoint: Estimating the causal effects of policies and programs

Estimation, inference and interpretation of the causal effects of programs and policies have all advanced dramatically over the past 25 years. We highlight three particularly important intellectual trends: an improved appreciation of the substantive importance of heterogeneous responses and of their methodological implications, a stronger focus on internal validity brought about by the “credibility revolution,” and the scientific value that follows from grounding estimation and interpretation in economic theory. We discuss a menu of commonly employed partial equilibrium approaches to the identification of causal effects, emphasizing that the researcher's central intellectual contribution always consists of making an explicit case for a specific causal interpretation given the relevant economic theory, the data, the institutional context and the economic question of interest. We also touch on the importance of general equilibrium effects and full cost–benefit analyses.     

Gender Effects of Trade Openness in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

More than thirty years into the modern era of globalization, scholars are now in a position to evaluate the distributive effects of the policy shifts that have led to greater economic integration. One region of the world for which little robust empirical evidence exists on gendered employment effects is Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To identify whether there is an impact of economic and trade structure on women's relative access to work, this contribution empirically explores these issues for thirty-eight SSA countries, and for two subgroups. Panel data for the period 1991–2010 is examined using fixed effects, random effects and two-stage least-squares estimation techniques. Findings suggest that trade liberalization has gendered employment effects, with the direction depending on the structure of the economy. However, the more robust finding is that a country's infrastructure has played a determining role in gendered labor market outcomes in SSA since the early 1990s.     

Does urbanization increase pollutant emission and energy intensity? evidence from some Asian developing economies

This paper aims to investigate the effects of urbanization on pollutant emissions and energy intensity in selected Asian developing countries after controlling for the effects of disaggregated (renewable and non-renewable) energy consumption, trade liberalization, and economic growth. We use both linear and nonlinear panel data econometric techniques and employ recently introduced mean group estimation methods, allowing for heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. However, to check the robustness of our panel results, we also apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bound testing approach to country-level data. In addition, the relationship between affluence and CO₂ emissions is examined in the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The estimation results identify the population, affluence, and non-renewable energy consumption as major factors in pollutant emissions in Asian countries. However, the results of the EKC hypothesis show that when countries achieve a certain level of economic growth, their emissions tend to decline. Whereas nonlinear results show that renewable energy, urbanization, and trade liberalization reduce emissions, linear estimations do not confirm these outcomes. Thus, substitution of non-renewable for renewable energy consumption, cautious and planned urbanization programs and more liberal trading regimes may be viable options for sustainable growth of these developing Asian economies.     

Estimating the causal effect of fertility on economic wellbeing: data requirements, identifying assumptions and estimation methods

This article aims to answer to what extent fertility has a causal effect on households’ economic wellbeing—an issue that has received considerable interest in development studies and policy analysis. However, only recently has this literature begun to give importance to adequate modelling for estimation of causal effects. We discuss several strategies for causal inference, stressing that their validity must be judged on the assumptions we can plausibly formulate in a given application, which in turn depends on the richness of available data. We contrast methods relying on the unconfoundedness assumption, which include regressions and propensity score matching, with instrumental variable methods. This discussion has a general importance, representing a set of guidelines that are useful for choosing an appropriate strategy of analysis. The discussion is valid for both cross-sectional or panel data.     

A tale of minorities: evidence on religious ethics and entrepreneurship

Does Protestantism favour entrepreneurship more than Catholicism does? We provide a novel way to answer this question by comparing Protestant and Catholic minorities using Swiss census data. Exploiting the strong adhesion of religious minorities to their denomination’ ethical principles and the historical determination of the geographical distribution of denominations across Swiss cantons, we find that Protestantism is associated with a significantly higher propensity for entrepreneurship. The estimated difference ranges between 1.5 and 3.2 % points, it is larger the smaller the size of the religious minority, it is mainly driven by prime age male entrepreneurs and it stands up to a number of robustness checks. No effects are found when comparing religious majorities, suggesting that the implications of religious ethical norms on economic outcomes emerge only when such norms are fully internalized.     

Determinants of long-term growth: New results applying robust estimation and extreme bounds analysis

Two important problems exist in cross-country growth studies: outliers and model uncertainty. Employing Sala-i-Martin’s (1997a,b) data set, we first use robust estimation and analyze to what extent outliers influence OLS regressions. We then use both OLS and robust estimation techniques in applying the Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) to deal with the problem of model uncertainty. We find that the use of robust estimation affects the list of variables that are significant determinants of economic growth. Also the magnitude of the impact of these variables differs sometimes under the various approaches.First version received: March 2003 / Final version received: June 2004We like to thank two referees for their very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Interrogating inclusive growth: Implications for conceptualisation,measurement and policy practice

The idea that economic growth ought to be inclusive—that governments and economic policy makers should concern themselves with not just the “pace but also the pattern” of growth—has gained considerable traction in recent years. Actors ranging from local, state, regional and national governments to civic or non-government actors to multinational corporations have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive growth, with many also developing their own suite of corresponding policy, strategy, or measurement approaches. Despite—or perhaps even because of—its popularity and proliferation, there is very little agreement around what inclusive growth actually is, how and at what spatial scale it should be pursued, and how outcomes ought to be measured. In this paper, we provide a conceptual synopsis of how and where inclusive growth emerged, what its aims are, and how it is understood and measured by its many different practitioners. We conclude with an assessment of whether this potentially valuable concept can be refined and incorporated into a unified and useful framework to inform policy and decision making.     

Change and Continuity

Although there is considerable evidence that efforts to teach economic concepts to elementary school children are increasing, little research is being done at this level. William Walstad's article is, then, one of those rare pieces that reports the results of a controlled study in the elementary grades. In addition, it includes a discussion of research design and statistical techniques, and considers some of the problems one encounters in this type of research (such as problems in parameter estimation). The author measured the effects of a teacher in-service program that provided instruction in economics as applied to the Unified Sciences and Mathematics for Elementary School program. The new Test of Economic Literacy was administered to the teachers, while their pupils took the Test of Elementary Economics. Control groups were also tested. Pupil attitudes toward economics were measured, and it was found that achievement in economics had a direct influence on attitude toward economics. Walstad concludes that “teachers and students gain substantial benefits from the in-service program in practical economic problem solving.”     

The Effects of Inflation and the Business Cycle on Revisions of Macroeconomic Data

Although national accounts data provide the most comprehensive overview of economic activity, preliminary estimates are subject to much revision before they are regarded as reliable indicators. Oddly enough, the market acts on the preliminary estimates as though they were final and complete. Even though there exists a considerable international literature on the statistical properties of these revisions, little attention has been devoted to the effects of inflation and the business cycle on the size and direction of these early revisions. The aim of this article is to provide the first known examination of these effects. The findings in this article suggest that preliminary estimates are more reliable in periods of low inflationary economic growth.     

Noncognitive skills in economics: Models,measurement, and empirical evidence

There is an increasing economic literature considering personality traits as a source of individual differences in labor market productivity and other outcomes. This paper provides an overview on the role of these skills with a particular focus on measurement and estimation. Based on the relevant literature from different disciplines, common psychometric measures used to assess personality are discussed and critical assumptions for their applications are highlighted. Moreover, we report and describe ideas of recent research that aims at incorporating personality traits into economic models of decision making. Based on these foundations, the main results of the empirical literature regarding noncognitive skills are summarized. Finally, we provide a brief guide to econometric analysis with consideration of common econometric pitfalls that evolve in empirical analysis of personality traits and review possible solutions.