Malthus in cointegration space: evidence of a post-Malthusian pre-industrial England

This paper re-examines the interaction between population growth and income per capita in pre-industrial England. Our results suggest that, as early as two centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, England had already escaped the Malthusian Epoch and entered a post-Malthusian regime, where income per capita continued to spur population growth but was no longer stagnant. Our formulation of a post-Malthusian hypothesis implies cointegration between vital rates (birth- and death rates) and income and builds explicitly on a simple model of Malthusian stagnation. We show that this hypothesis can be interpreted as an extension of the latter model where the negative Malthusian feedback effect from population on income, as implied by diminishing returns to labor, is offset by a positive Boserupian and/or Smithian scale effect of population on technology.     

The inflation rates may accelerate after all: panel evidence from 19 OECD economies

The stationarity of inflation has many important economic implications. Most panel-based empirical studies do not handle cross-sectional dependence, which will result in power distortion. This paper applies a nonlinear IV estimator to calculate the test statistic of panel unit root (Chang in J Econom 110:261–292, 2002), which accounts for general cross-sectional correlation. Using monthly inflation rates, two statistics proposed by Im et al. (J Econom 115:53–74, 2003) reject the unit root; however, the nonlinear IV statistic accepts the unit root. That is, the ignored cross-sectional correlation may lead to over-rejection of the unit root null. In a nutshell, unlike current literature, the inflation rates may accelerate after all.     

Date of birth and selective schooling: Some lessons from the 1944 education reforms in England and Wales

We compare the probabilities of selective (grammar) school entry in England and Wales before and after the 1944 Education Act. The Act had direct and indirect influences on the costs of grammar education and on entry-exam coverage, design and marking methodology. Post-1944, grammar school entry among children born in the middle of the school year improved considerably. We argue that age-adjusted group standardized testing was an important contributory factor. The youngest pupils remained significantly disadvantaged. We produce evidence that this is consistent with the practice of streaming (tracking) junior school children at age 7 into classes delineated by average ability.     

Existence of singularity bifurcation in an Euler-equations model of the United States economy: Grandmont was right

Grandmont (1985) found that the parameter space of the most classical dynamic general-equilibrium macroeconomic models are stratified into an infinite number of subsets supporting an infinite number of different kinds of dynamics, from monotonic stability at one extreme to chaos at the other extreme, and with all forms of multiperiodic dynamics between.     

It's all the miners' fault: On the nonlinearity in U.S. unemployment rates

The U.S. unemployment rate is generally regarded as nonlinear. In this study, we show that if there had been no miners' general strike in October of 1949, and if the aggregate unemployment rate had been 0.3% lower during that month, the 1948–2002 U.S. unemployment rate would have been linear. Hence, just a single alteration of past events would have resulted in significantly different findings regarding the linearity in the U.S. unemployment rate. This finding illustrates a need for linearity tests to be developed that are robust against the effects of outliers.     

One size may not fit all: Welfare benefits and cost reductions with optional differentiated household electricity rates

We consider optional time-of-use (TOU) pricing for residential consumers, offered by a publicly regulated electricity supplier, as an alternative to a single TOU or flat rate structure. An equilibrium model explores and quantifies the effects of such pricing on welfare, consumption, and production costs. The supplier offers to each household a menu of possible rate structures obtained by maximizing a collective welfare function subject to three restrictions: Pareto efficiency, incentive compatibility, sufficiency of supplier revenue to cover costs. Simulations based on realistic calibration of the model demonstrate that optional pricing can increase overall consumer welfare and reduce average cost.     

中国农村劳动力转移动因与障碍的一种解释

农村劳动力转移是我国实现工业化必须面对的重大课题,也是解决我国“三农”问题的根本途径。本文运用动态宏观经济学的递归方法并结合推拉理论,通过所建立的模型表明城镇的拉力,特别是城镇工业技术进步,是农村劳动力转移的根本动因。而基于宏观经济变量的logit模型和基于微观经济变量的描述性分析都很好地验证了该结论。研究同时表明,加强农村基础文化教育对我国农村劳动力转移具有深远的意义;性别、家庭收入水平、区位等因素的差异也对农村劳动力转移有较明显的影响。     

One for all and all for one: privatization and Universal Service provision in the postal sector

Universal Service provision has a special role for the public utilities sector in many Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. These public utilities have largely been subject to privatization during the last 3 decades. Efficiency effects of privatization are widely documented while the impacts on the quality and accessibility of the Universal Service are not much examined. By using a unique dataset on privatization for 21 countries over the period 1980–2007 for the postal sector, we are able to show that privatization, in particular formal privatization, has led to a decrease in the quality of the Universal Service.     

Disease-related expenditures and revision rates in chronic rhinosinusitis patients after endoscopic sinus surgery

Aims: The objective of this study was to quantify the treatment costs and revision surgery rates in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) patients, with and without nasal polyposis (CRSwNP and CRSsNP), who require treatment with endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). The additive contributions of nasal polyposis (NP) and revision surgery to 1-year costs were a primary focus.

Materials and methods: Adults (aged 18–64 years) undergoing ESS for CRS in 2012–2015 were identified within the Blue Health Intelligence database and used to estimate revision rates. Patients with ±1 year of enrollment around the index ESS were used to estimate 1-year healthcare expenditures. Revision ESS rates were evaluated via Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression models. Disease-related healthcare and pharmacy expenditures were modeled with generalized linear regression to assess the impact of baseline patient characteristics.

Results: A total of 86,052 patients underwent ESS for CRS (43.5?±?12.4 years; 49.3% male), and a sub-set of 23,542 patients were available for 1-year healthcare expenditure analysis (44.0?±?12.1 years; 50.0% male). Revision ESS rates within 1 year were 3.5% in the CRSwNP cohort and 1.6% in the CRSsNP cohort. NP, deviated septum, gender, and region were statistically significant predictors of revision surgery. Mean 1-year treatment expenditures, including the index ESS, were $8,824 for CRSsNP and $11,166 for CRSwNP patients without revision ESS. CRSwNP doubled the risk of revision surgery in the first year after ESS compared with CRSsNP and cost 24% more in the absence of a second procedure. Revision ESS within the first year increased mean 1-year expenditures by $11,150 and $13,139 for CRSsNP and CRSwNP, respectively.

Limitations: The primary limitation was the limited length of follow-up available for estimating revision ESS rates.

Conclusions: In a large commercially insured US population, disease-related expenditures for patients having ESS for CRS are substantial, as are the additive impacts of NP and revision surgery.     

Piece rates, time rates, and teams: Explaining patterns in the employment relation

This paper illustrates how the economics of internal organization can be used to explain patterns in agricultural labor contracts. Piece rates tend to be chosen over time rates for tasks when shirking is easy monitor by ex post inspection. The incidence of piece rates is also higher where the work force is more heterogeneous, where high opportunity wages prevail and where some agricultural operations are done by specialized teams. These relationships are implied by the proposition that contracts minimize excess burden in the face of enforcement and information costs.     

Small firms,bigger changes: health insurance coverage take-up rates in small firms after the ACA

Measuring the impact of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) on employer-sponsored health insurance is essential in an era of constant changes to health policy. Using data from the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Survey, we focus on firms with fewer than 50 employees in order to isolate the effect of the ACA on small firms. We utilize a differences‐in‐differences approach with a time fixed effect structure to provide analysis for a treatment group of small firms and a control group of large firms. After excluding firms with grandfathered plans, we find that the ACA provisions reduced health insurance coverage take-up rates in small firms by 1.96 to 2.67 percentage points (compared to large firms).     

Asylum recognition rates in Europe: Policies and performance

A minority of applicants for asylum in Europe gain some form of recognition as refugees, and this has been a controversial issue. From the early 2000s, the EU introduced a series of directives to prevent a race to the bottom in asylum policies and to harmonise policy between destination countries, but the results have not been fully assessed. In this paper I examine the determinants of recognition rates for asylum applicants from 65 origin countries to 20 European destinations from 2003 to 2017. The outcomes of the EU directives have been mixed, but taken together they are associated with increased recognition rates. These made a modest contribution to the trend increase in recognition rates, most of which is due to increased political terror and human rights repression in origin countries. But differences between European countries remain large, even after accounting for origin-country composition and for differences in the adoption of EU directives. Some of this may be accounted for by differences in bureaucratic frameworks through which policy is administered.     

The god of the poor: Economics and religion in Latin America

The new political economy struggles to incorporate political processes into economic models. Religious institutions and commitments might similarly be incorporated into models of personal and social choice. This essay explores appropriate modeling strategies and suggests areas in which religion may prove relevant to the design of economic policy, particularly in Latin America. The paper concludes with points of discussion in a hypothetical dialogue between a North American economist and a Latin American theologian.     

Collective choice and individual action: Education policy and social mobility in England

It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more important to make policies expressively appealing. But policies are even more attractive if they can be made both expressively and instrumentally appealing. This paper studies education policy in England and proposes that the argument for increased state spending in school education is expressively appealing as it appears equitable, but the allocation of students to schools by catchment area is also instrumentally appealing to middle-class families. Allocation to schools by lottery may be expressively but not instrumentally appealing. Cutting education spending and dividing the proceeds between a tax cut to the affluent and a cash transfer to the poor may be instrumentally but not expressively appealing. The effort to provide instrumentally appealing policies with sufficient ethical content to satisfy expressive preferences may lead to inefficiency and distract attention from more serious ethical problems related to the policies.     

Marriage,Divorce and Prostitution: Economicc Sociology in Medieval England and Enlightenment Spain

“Marriage, Divorce and Prostitution: Economicc Sociology in Medieval England and Enlightenment Spain” by Robert B. Ekelund,Jr., Donald R. Street and Audrey B. Davidson.

This paper studies the medieval insititutions of marriage, divorce and prostitution through the prism of the economic sociology and rent-seeking behaviour on the part of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Regulation by Church or state-Particular prohibitions and regulation of recontracting – created costly alternatives and substitutes for low-cost recontracting of marriage vows. In addition to a brief survey of the instititional situation in medieval England, we bring to light the economic sociology of the Spaniard Francisco de Cabarrùs relating to the marriage market and marital utitlity. Indirectly we suggest that exogenous restrictions in marriage markeers create unappropriated costs and the impetus for change in social institutions over time over time.     

Doing it all: Women’s employment and reproductive work in Tajikistan

Central Asia has low labor force participation rates for women, despite high levels of poverty in the non-oil producing countries. Female labor force participation is related to competing uses for women’s time, especially in a context of poor infrastructure and limited availability of purchased replacements for household labor. We examine factors affecting women’s participation in employment and reproductive household work in Tajikistan, drawing on the 2003 Tajikistan Living Standards Survey. We incorporate specific conditions in Central Asia, including the prevalence of extended family households, norms about how women share household work, an absence of market substitutes for caring and reproductive labor, employment in family enterprises and poor infrastructure, especially in rural areas. We estimate the system using a Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) approach. We find that few individual and household characteristics are related to time in employment. Time in noncare reproductive work decreases if a woman receives direct remuneration for her employment (compared to working in a family farm or enterprise but receiving no direct remuneration), but increases if the woman has less access to infrastructure. Rural women spend more time in both employment and non-care reproductive work than urban women, but less time in care work. Lack of infrastructure may leave women with few choices with respect to non-care reproductive work, while overall levels of time poverty create pressures on care time.     

The relationship between exchange rates and interest rates in a small open emerging economy: The case of Romania

This paper revisits the relationship between interest rates and exchange rates in a small open emerging economy using wavelet-based methodologies. Based on data for Romania, our results confirm the theoretical predictions on the interest rate - exchange rate relationship during turmoil or policy changes. In the short term, the relationship is negative, confirming the sticky-price models, and over the long term, the relationship is positive, confirming the Purchasing Power Parity theory. At the beginning of the turmoil, the exchange rate movements generally take the lead over the interest rates for the first month, but the monetary authorities take the lead afterwards. Our results reveal that in a small open emerging economy with a direct inflation targeting monetary policy regime, the relationship between exchange rates and interest rate is fundamentally different from that in an advanced economy. Also, our results stress the necessity that the central bank must pay simultaneous attention to both variables in order to achieve their monetary policy targets.     

Stock returns and interest rates in China: the prequential approach

This article aims to study whether interest rates help to forecast stock returns in China using the prequential approach. A bivariate VAR model and a univariate autoregressive model are examined. Out-of-sample probability forecasts, generated based on both a bootstrap-like simulation method and a nonparametric kernel-based simulation method, are evaluated from both calibration (reliability) and sorting (resolution) perspectives. The results from calibration test indicate that including interest rates in the model improves the model’s ability to issue realistic probability forecasts of stock returns (be well-calibrated). Considering stock returns also enhances the prediction of interest rates with respect to calibration. Assessment through Brier score and Yates partition suggests that the model performs better in distinguishing stock returns that actually occur and stock returns that do not occur after incorporating the influence of interest rates. Overall, interest rates help in forecasting stock returns in China in terms of both calibration and sorting.     

Determinants of violent and property crimes in England and Wales: a panel data analysis

We examine various determinants of property and violent crimes by using police force area level (PFA) data on England and Wales over the period of 1992–2008. Our list of potential determinants includes two law enforcement variables namely crime-specific detection rate and prison population, and various socio-economic variables such as unemployment rate, real earnings, proportion of young people and the Gini Coefficient. By adopting a fixed effect dynamic GMM estimation methodology we attempt to address the potential bias that arises from the presence of time-invariant unobserved characteristics of a PFA and the endogeneity of several regressors. There is a significant positive effect of own-lagged crime rate. The own-lagged effect is stronger for property crime, on an average, than violent crime. We find that, on an average, higher detection rate and prison population leads to lower property and violent crimes. This is robust to various specifications. However, socio-economic variables with the exception of real earnings play a limited role in explaining different crime types.