New Evidence on Gay and Lesbian Household Incomes

Using independent data from the Centers for Disease Control, the author tests a key assumption of previous research on gay and lesbian incomes: that same-sex unmarried partner households are, indeed, gay or lesbian. The author shows that this independent data suffers from less severe underreporting of same-sex unmarried partner households than the 1990 Decennial Census. Furthermore, individual level information on sexual behavior and family planning is used to show that these households exhibit sexual behavior that is systematically different from married and different-sex couples and that is consistent with a large body of public health and HIV literature on gay men and lesbians. Finally, the author replicates, confirms, and extends previously published Census-based results on the household income penalty faced by gay male couples, showing that these results are not an artifact of deficient data. He finds similar results for lesbian couples. (JEL J1 , J3 )     

Intra‐household bargaining power and household expenditure allocation: Evidence from Iran

This article examines the role of intra‐household bargaining power on household expenditure patterns in Iran to see whether women’s empowerment can achieve similar results in Iran as we have seen it achieve in other countries of the world. This study is insightful because it tells us whether Iranian women, who have experienced both economic and noneconomic constraints over many years, can utilize increased power toward economic development. The bargaining power is measured by the sex ratio in the marriage market. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey in Iran, we find that greater bargaining power of women contributes significantly toward greater provision of education and health expenditure within the household, creating a potential for an increase in welfare for the next generation.     

Intra‐household allocation of parental leave

We introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behaviour to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave. The concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration. Using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors, we cannot reject Pareto efficiency in childcare sharing. Higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner, respectively. Households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare.     

Pro‐girl Bias in Intra‐household Allocation in the Rural Philippines: Revisiting the “Adult Goods” Approach

This paper detects pro‐girl (age 5–15) bias in intra‐household allocation of consumption budget in the rural Philippines using Deaton's “adult goods” method. Based on additional checks (including those for endogeneity), the results appear to be robust. The paper also finds that a larger share of girls among household members is positively associated with a larger budget share on transportation, suggesting that parents pay more for girls' transportation, possibly because of safety concerns. The results also suggest that, despite some earlier results in the literature, the adult goods method is capable of detecting gender bias, although alcohol and tobacco may not be suitable for detecting gender bias.     

Alimony Rights and Intrahousehold Allocation of Resources: Evidence from Brazil

Can family policy affect well-being of individuals without altering the resources available to their families? This article examines the extension of alimony rights and obligations to cohabiting couples in Brazil. For women in intact relationships, alimony rights upon dissolution should improve outside options, strengthening their negotiating positions, and increasing their influence over intrahousehold allocation of resources. Robust econometric evidence indicates that more decision power in the hands of women impacts hours worked by female adults and investments in the education of children. This suggests that family policy and models of family decision making should take intrahousehold heterogeneity of preferences into account.     

议价能力变化对家务劳动时间配置的影响——来自中国双收入家庭的经验证据

本文在纳什议价模型基础上,使用来自中国9个省的双收入家庭的调查数据,检验了议价能力变化对家务劳动时间配置的影响。结果发现,议价能力提高将减少本人的家务劳动时间和家务分担比例,并使本人家务劳动时间和家务分担比例对其他因素的弹性增大。议价能力的影响存在明显的性别差异,对男性的效果强于对女性的效果。本文拓展了已有的关于家庭内部时间配置的研究成果,对议价能力的定义和衡量方法做了探讨,并通过实证分析显示出议价能力在家务劳动时间配置上起着不可忽视的作用。     

Reverse Causality in Global and Intra‐European Imbalances

The paper discusses global current account imbalances in the context of an asymmetric world monetary system. It identifies the USA and Germany as center countries with rising/high current account deficits (USA) and surpluses (Germany). These are matched by current account surpluses of countries stabilizing their exchange rates against the dollar (dollar periphery) and current account deficits of countries stabilizing their exchange rates against the euro or members of the euro area (euro periphery). The paper finds that changes of world current account positions are closely linked to the monetary policy decision patterns both in the centers and peripheries. Whereas in the centers current account positions are affected by monetary policies, in the peripheries exchange rate stabilization cum sterilization matters. In specific, monetary expansion in the USA as well as exchange rate stabilization and sterilization policies in the dollar periphery are found to have contributed to global imbalances.     

Intra‐industry Trade Liberalization and the Environment

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects national and global pollution in a multi‐country model incorporating monopolistic competition and intra‐industry trade as well as inter‐industry trade. Each country produces skill‐intensive differentiated goods and labor‐intensive goods. Pollution is a by‐product of production but pollution abatement can be undertaken. Regardless of country characteristics, if the differentiated‐good sector is sufficiently cleaner (dirtier) then, without any change in environmental taxes, a multilateral reduction in import protection accorded to the differentiated good or to both goods typically leads to a decline (rise) in pollution in all countries. Pollution havens tend not to arise.     

The Impact of Non-Labor Income Given Job Heterogeneity on Household Time Allocation: The Evidence from China

This paper proposes a theoretical framework based on new household economic theories. A dataset from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) is used. Given heterogeneity in major family members’ jobs, the effect of non-labor income on household time allocation is discussed under two scenarios: jobs with flexible work hours and jobs with fixed work hours in the market. Based on the nature of the employer the major family member works for, employers can be categorized into four categories: government-owned, family contract, privately-owned, and foreign-funded. Each of the four categories is used for dissecting the data into different sets for analysis by category. The results imply that job heterogeneity is significantly correlated to household time allocation. An increase in non-labor income results in a decrease in the time allocated to housework for all households. However, leisure time is allocated differently among different households due to job heterogeneity. An increase in non-labor income leads to less leisure time for households working for government-owned or foreign-funded enterprises, and more leisure time for households working for family contract or privately-owned enterprises.     

Intra‐Week Price Patterns in the Housing Market*

In this paper, I demonstrate the existence of city‐specific intra‐week price patterns in the Norwegian housing market. I use a data set with exact sell dates to show that sell prices are higher on certain days. Using ask prices and observations on repeat sales in fixed‐effect models, I seek to control for composition effects and unobserved heterogeneity. The intra‐week price patterns are shown to be associated with patterns in the frequency of public‐showing days. I argue that the findings are consistent with optimizing agents acting on new information.     

The Role of Trade in Intra‐Industry Productivity Growth—the Case of Old and New European Union Countries

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of trade in productivity growth in a sample of 30 sectors in 25 EU countries in the period of rapid East–West integration (1995–2007). Shift‐share analysis is used to show that changes in value added per hour worked in these countries appear to be mainly due to positive developments (rising productivity) within single industries and only to a lower extent result from a shift towards higher productivity activities. Trade is found to be an important positive determinant of intra‐industry productivity growth in European countries. Exports and imports alike can be associated with efficiency gains, but intermediate good exchange and trade with New Member States exert a particularly strong influence on intra‐industry productivity growth in the EU.     

Endowment Differences and the Composition of Intra‐Industry Trade

The empirical relationship between differences in endowments and different types of trade is investigated in this paper. Although net trade (NT) and vertical intra‐industry trade (IIT) are both broadly viewed as reflecting endowment differences, we suggest that there will be systematic differences in the way their shares of trade adjust as endowment differences become larger. Empirical evidence for European Union trade with its 52 major trading partners confirms this. The share of horizontal IIT (net trade) decreases (increases) for all increases in absolute endowment differences, but the share of vertical IIT can both increase and decrease with increases in endowment differences.     

On Gravity,Specialization and Intra‐industry Trade

Contrary to the popular belief, specialization is not necessary for gravity equations. This paper shows that the simple gravity equation holds if and only if the market share of an exporting country is constant across all importing countries. Specialization is just one special case satisfying this condition. The constant‐share condition can hold in a variety of situations where multiple producers compete with a homogeneous good. Further, this paper shows that the ratio of bilateral trade to the product of partner incomes is increasing in the extent of specialization and in the intensity of intra‐industry trade. Since the relationship is not model‐specific, the correlations among these variables do not support any specific model.     

城镇家庭金融资产配置的财富效应

随着经济的发展和国民财富的增加,家庭资产结构从单一的储蓄型资产转变为丰富多样的风险型金融资产,其配置金融资产的异质性导致了家庭资产选择和消费行为的差异.本文通过实证检验了城镇家庭金融资产配置及其财富效应,结果显示:城镇家庭风险性金融资产持有情况和高流动性金融资产持有情况对城镇家庭消费水平存在显著影响,而金融资产占比的影响不显著,金融资产占比、风险性金融资产持有情况和高流动性金融资产持有情况三个变量对城镇家庭消费结构的影响均不显著;分组情况下,影响高收入城镇家庭消费水平的因素主要是风险性金融资产持有情况和高流动性金融资产持有情况,而对于高收入城镇家庭消费结构、低收入城镇家庭消费水平和消费结构,城镇家庭金融资产配置维度的三个变量对其的影响均不显著.     

住房对家庭金融资产配置的影响

通过建立一个包含住房的家庭跨期资产决策模型并进行参数赋值,从理论层面分析了住房资产对家庭金融资产配置的影响,且在此基础上使用西南财经大学中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)2013年全国调查数据进行了实证检验,研究表明住房资产对家庭金融市场参与和风险金融资产配置存在挤出效应,而当家庭财富水平或分布区域不同时,挤出效应存在明显的异质性。本文的研究结论从微观上说明了完善家庭资产结构、分散家庭投资风险的必要性,从宏观上解释了住房市场过度繁荣对金融市场的资源挤占问题。据此,本文提出合理配置住房资产、缓解中低收入家庭住房压力、合理引导发达地区房地产市场发展,实现房价平稳回归等政策建议。     

Within‐Subject Intra‐ and Inter‐Method Consistency of Two Experimental Risk Attitude Elicitation Methods

We compare the consistency of choices in two methods used to elicit risk preferences on an aggregate as well as on an individual level. We ask subjects to choose twice from a list of nine decisions between two lotteries, as introduced by Holt and Laury 2002, 2005 ) alternating with nine decisions using the budget approach introduced by Andreoni and Harbaugh ( 2009 ). We find that, while on an aggregate (subject pool) level the results are consistent, on an individual (within‐subject) level, behaviour is far from consistent. Within each method as well as across methods we observe low (simple and rank) correlations.     

新型农村合作医疗的福利效应分析:微观数据的证据

利用2000年和2006年的中国健康与营养调查(CHNS)数据和倍差方法, 以参合农民为作用组, 非参合农民为对照组, 对新型农村合作医疗政策的福利效应作了实证分析。新型农村合作医疗政策增加了医疗服务利用;但新型农村合作医疗政策对净医疗费用(扣除合作医疗补偿后的费用)没有影响。     

Intra‐industry Knowledge Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Research and Development: Evidence from China's “Silicon Valley”

This study examines a specific channel of technology diffusion from multinational enterprises to domestic firms in less developed regions: research and development (R&D) activities of multinational enterprises in the host country. Using firm‐level panel data from a Chinese science park, known as China's “Silicon Valley,” we find that the R&D stock of foreign‐owned firms has a positive effect on the productivity of domestic firms in the same industry, while the capital stock of foreign firms has no such effect. These results suggest that foreign firms' knowledge spills over within industries through their R&D activities, but not through their production activities. In addition, we find no evidence of spillovers from domestic firms or firms from Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan, suggesting that the size of knowledge spillovers is larger when the technology gap between source and recipient firms is larger.