Why do people drink? Tests of the rational addiction model

The rational addiction (RA) model applied to alcoho consumption is tested using 1983 US Health Interview Survey data. The RA model yields refutable hypotheses concerning effects of current, past, and future prices, past and future consumption, time preference and marginal utility of wealth on addictive good consumption. The estimations provide relatively strong support for the RA model. Past and present consumption had strong positive relationship with current consumption. Coefficients on past, present, and future money prices and fines for first oflence drunk driving (as a form of price for alcohol consumption) were significant and of the predical sign.     

Why do rich countries prefer free trade over free migration? The role of the modern welfare state

"According to traditional trade theory (Heckscher-Ohlin), free trade and free migration are equivalent measures of economic integration leading both to an equalization of factor prices. This prediction is in sharp opposition to the observed preference of rich countries for free trade over free migration. We provide an explanation for this inconsistency: the redistribution policies in the countries. Social welfare in countries with a relatively small number of low-skilled native workers is higher with free trade than with free migration due to redistribution of income towards immigrating workers."     

Is consumption too smooth? The case of the United Kingdom

This study consider whether, for the UK, the restrictions of the rational expectations permanent income (REPI) model of consumption are consistent with the data and whether consumption is too smooth given innovations in labour income. Some of the findings confirm those for the USA: the REPI restrictions are rejected. However, in marked contrast to the result of Campbell and Deaton (1989), little is found to support the view that consumption is too smooth; indeed there is some support for the view that consumption is too volatile. Some insight is given as to how such results can arise.     

Does deflation affect household spending? The case of the Netherlands

This article investigates the impact of deflation on real private consumption and residential investment by Dutch households during the 1980–2013 period. We estimate theoretically founded consumption and investment equations and show that a fall in the general price level significantly negatively affects both growth in real consumption and residential investment. The impact on residential investment is more delayed, but stronger.     

Does the quality of institutions enhance savings? The case of Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the last three decades, there has been increasing disparity in savings across regions and income groupings globally. In this paper, we investigate whether the quality of institutions explains the saving disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Utilizing comprehensive panel data and spanning the period 1980–2015, we estimate a savings model using the two-step instrumental variable generalized method of moment (2SIV-GMM) estimator. Our results show that the impact of institutions on savings behaviour differs across regions and income groupings, and in SSA, in aggregate. We find that the level and growth of per capita income and terms of trade enhance savings whereas government consumption expenditure, financial sector development and the elderly dependency rate are savings impeding. The findings are robust to alternative model specification and highlight the importance of institutions in influencing savings behaviour in SSA.     

What drives intermediation costs? A case of tennis betting market

We demonstrate that there is a considerable variation in bookmaker margins across matches, time and bookmakers. Our results imply that using match, tournament and players’ characteristics explains the variations in margins hence, they can be helpful in managing intermediation cost in a market of state-contingent assets: fixed-odds betting markets. We also provide evidence that bookmakers protect themselves by increasing odds on the favourite player, thus attracting more bettors to the favourite player, while deterring bettors from betting on the underdog by reducing the odds. By that process, bookmakers are possibly sacrificing a portion of their margin.     

Why do education vouchers fail at the ballot box?

We compare a uniform voucher regime against the status quo mix of public and private education, focusing on the distribution of welfare gains and losses across households by income. We argue that the topping-up option available under uniform vouchers is not sufficiently valuable for the poorer households, so the voucher regime is defeated at the polls. Our result is robust to partial voter turnout and efficiency differences between public and private schools, but depends critically on the opting-out feature in the current system.     

Lost in translation? The relative wages of immigrants in the Portuguese labour market

This article examines the wage gaps between immigrant and Portuguese workers using matched employer–employee data for the 2002–2008 period. We found that most of the wage gap is not due to the worst endowments of the immigrants but to differences in the returns to those characteristics and to the immigrant status effect. In particular, immigrants’ education and foreign experience are significantly less valued in the Portuguese labour market. Overall, the wages of immigrants do not fully converge to those of comparable natives as domestic experience increases. The assimilation rates tend to be stronger in the first years after migration and for immigrants with higher levels of foreign experience. Total immigrants are a heterogeneous group of different nationalities, with immigrants from the EU15 and China starring as the two extreme cases.     

The market for corporate control: do countries and technological regimes matter?

Using DATASTREAM and LexisNexis databases, we examine the experience from 1995 to 2005 for eight European countries and 21 sectors, and compute the frequency of merger transactions at sectoral level, controlling for the roles of country variables and focusing on distinct technological patterns of innovation. We found that, even in market‐based countries, where transfer of control is a frequent phenomenon, mergers are less frequent in those sectors where innovation follows cumulative processes and where takeovers represent a ‘breach of knowledge.’ This study provides empirical support to the fruitful line of research of varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001 Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D., eds. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) and shows that sectoral differences in M&A (mergers and acquisitions) may be seen in their complementarities with differences by country and their institutional frameworks. Results confirm that acquisitions may occur even in those economies where block‐holders are present, but where the good quality of institutions leaves no space for defence against takeovers. It also highlights the significant role played by takeover regulation, and suggests that the recent reforms in European harmonization should be implemented, so that the obstacles impeding takeovers can be removed. However, policy‐makers should also try to identify for which economies and sectoral fields of specialization, merger activities produce more beneficial effects and which turn out to be detrimental.     

What are the determinants of hiring? The importance of product market demand and search frictions

In this article, we study the importance of product market demand and search frictions for hiring. We use a search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labour market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. If product markets are imperfectly competitive, product demand shocks should have a direct effect on employment for given levels of prices and wages. Our main finding is that product demand has such a direct effect on hiring. This highlights the importance of taking imperfect competition in the product market into account in studies of employment dynamics and hiring. We also find that, for given levels of prices, wages, and product demand, the number of unemployed workers in a local labour market has a positive effect on hiring, suggesting that search frictions matter. Quantitatively, product demand shocks seem to be more important for understanding the variation in hiring than shocks to the number of unemployed workers.     

Is utility additive? The case of alcohol

By using the quantile regressions of earnings equation, we find that the educational wage premium is higher in industries with rapid technological change than in industries with slower technological change at every decile in the distribution of wage residuals. The wage premium associated with the technological change is mostly explained by the returns to workers' unobserved heterogeneities, which are correlated with education, rather than the rents of high-tech industries.     

How well do tree plantations comply with the twin targets of the Clean Development Mechanism? — The case of tree plantations in Tanzania

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is supposed to provide both carbon mitigation and poverty reduction. This article reports from a model based study of market related carbon leakage and poverty reduction in the wake of a CDM tree-planting project in Tanzania. A tree plantation was incorporated in a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with income differentiated household segments. The study focused on sensitivity of carbon leakage and income distribution to different project ownerships and carbon premium allocations. It turned out that the project value in terms of carbon premium has clear shortcomings as indicator of induced GDP growth and poverty alleviation. The non-poor rural and urban households benefit considerably more than the poor households. However, rising household income in all domestic project ownership arrangements increases demand for food, raises use of fertilizer and crop yields. A carbon cycle module for agricultural land use was incorporated in the CGE model, showing an increased carbon sequestration in agricultural soil, representing a negative leakage through markets in the range of 60-120% of the certified emissions reductions as registered in the CDM tree plantation project.     

Are international environmental policies effective? The case of the Rotterdam and the Stockholm Conventions

This is the first paper to show that participation in an international environmental agreement has some effectiveness. Our identification strategy consists of applying difference-in-differences techniques in a panel data framework to various levels of data aggregation. We find that ratification of the Rotterdam Convention (RC) and the Stockholm Convention (SC) leads to a reduction in trade of hazardous substances from OECD to non-OECD countries. In particular, we find that when the exporter ratifies the RC, there is a reduction in the import of hazardous chemicals of about 7 percent. In the case of the SC, the results show significant reductions of around 16 percent in trade shipments of persistent organic pollutants. This reduction is more than double the effect found for the RC, which was expected due to a more restricted obligation imposed by the SC convention.     

Does PPP hold in the transition economies? The case of poland Hungary

This paper uses non-stationarity and cointegration of time series to investigate the validity of long-run purchasing power parity for Poland and Hungary for the period 1981:1-1993:2. Long-run PPP is examined vis-à-vis three countries, the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Although the nominal exchange rates and relative price ratios between Poland and Hungary and each of the three countries are non-stationaary, they are not cointegrated indicating a rejection of the hypothesis. This conclusion is supported by the real exchange rate, which follows a random walk.     

Does mutual recognition of qualifications stimulate services trade? The case of the European Union

This article analyses the services trade impact of recognition of professional qualifications using a unique database compiled by the European Commission. It observes that there is large variation in the number of regulated professions across the EU. The number of recognitions is small relative to total employment in regulated professions. Nevertheless, a robust positive relationship between services trade and recognition of qualifications is found. Recognition stimulates two-way trade between the source and the host country, suggesting that arms-length exports as well as cross-border outsourcing take place. Recognitions in health and education professions are most strongly related to services trade.     

Why did policy ignore the harbingers of the crisis?

An analysis of the monetary authorities’ reports for 2005 to 2007 reveals that they were well aware of the risks of the financial crisis. They, however, tended to overemphasise the risks outside their control and to neglect those, at least partially under their control. Central banks should and could have acted already in 2005. Academic studies and their own assessments clearly indicated an accumulation of risks. Monetary authorities didn’t react as (1) they believe in self-regulating markets, and (2) in monetary instruments’ ineffectiveness to prevent bubbles, as well as (3) their tendency to assigning an extremely low probability to potential risks. This is not untypical for expert assessments: Risk assessment for complex systems is extremely complicated. If feasible at all, it would require extraordinarily complex techniques to take into account the tight coupling of system components and their complex interaction. This will not be possible in the foreseeable future. As a result reducing the system’s complexity appears to be the only way to reduce the probability and the severity of future financial crises.     

Why do diners tip: rule-of-thumb or valuation of service?

When diners decide how much to tip, is the decision based on social convention or on conscientious appraisal of server productivity? Previous researchers in economics and social psychology are generally inconclusive on this question. A common finding in the literature is that tip size and service quality are unrelated, a result usually obtained from OLS regressions. OLS is only appropriate if service quality is exogenous. It is argued that service quality is very likely endogenous in any regression of tip size; good quality encourages good tips, but server expectations of good tips encourage good quality. This simultaneity is accounted for by jointly estimating percentage tips and customer rankings of service quality on a sample of 247 diners in a Central Minnesota restaurant. Included are explanatory variables consistent with both the social psychology and economic views of tipping. In contrast to previous studies, it is found that service quality significantly affects tip size and when servers expect higher tips, customers rank service quality higher. Also it is found that patronage frequency and coupon redemption have no effect on percentage tips, but server gender influences quality significantly. It is concluded that the results are generally supportive of an economic hypothesis of tipping.     

Why do similar firms export differently?

Eaton et al. (2011) underline that firms with similar production costs, entry costs and demand export to different countries. In this theoretical article, I provide a rationale for this feature of the data. I demonstrate that similar firms exporting differently can be explained by a baseline trade-off between attractiveness and competition that is present in any model with monopolistic competition. I then show that this trade-off also generates valuable theoretical features including distance-related mark-ups, third country effect and equivalence with random utility models.     

Why do promises affect trustworthiness,or do they?

We set out to test whether the effect of promises on trustworthiness derives from the fact that they are made (internal consistency) or that they are received (social obligation). The results of an experimental trust game appeared at first to support the former mechanism. Even when trustee messages are not delivered to trustors, trustees who make a promise are more likely to act trustworthy than those who do not make a promise. However, we subsequently ran a control treatment with restricted (non-promise) communication to examine whether the correlation between promises and trustworthiness is causal. The results show that the absence of promises does not decrease average cooperation rates. This indicates that promises do not induce trustworthiness, they are just more likely to be sent by cooperators than by non-cooperators.