The effect of disability pension incentives on early retirement decisions

I investigate the incentive effects of disability pensions on disability retirement entry as a special type of early retirement. The implicit tax rate on further work is included as a forward looking incentive measure. A substantial change of the disability pension legislation caused exogenous variation in disability benefits in Germany in 2001 and is used to obtain estimates of individual's responses to financial incentives. Benefit levels appear to have no effect on the labour market behaviour. At the same time, there is a sizable and significant disincentive effect of implicit taxes on labour market income, indicating that alleviating such disincentives would likely increase labour force participation. Since the response to financial incentives occurs mainly among those in good health, such a policy might on the other hand imperil the aim of providing insurance against a health‐induced loss of one's working capacity.     

Modelling the participation decision and duration of sporting activity in Scotland

Motivating individuals to actively engage in physical activity due to its beneficial health effects has been an integral part of Scotland's health policy agenda. The current Scottish guidelines recommend individuals participate in physical activity of moderate vigour for 30 min at least five times per week. For an individual contemplating the recommendation, decisions have to be made in regard of participation, intensity, duration and multiplicity. For the policy maker, understanding the determinants of each decision will assist in designing an intervention to effect the recommended policy. With secondary data sourced from the 2003 Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) we statistically model the combined decisions process, employing a copula approach to model specification. In taking this approach the model flexibly accounts for any statistical associations that may exist between the component decisions. Thus, we model the endogenous relationship between the decision of individuals to participate in sporting activities and, amongst those who participate, the duration of time spent undertaking their chosen activities. The main focus is to establish whether dependence exists between the two random variables assuming the vigour with which sporting activity is performed to be independent of the participation and duration decision. We allow for a variety of controls including demographic factors such as age and gender, economic factors such as income and educational attainment, lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, healthy eating and medical history. We use the model to compare the effect of interventions designed to increase the vigour with which individuals undertake their sport, relating it to obesity as a health outcome.     

An alternative method for identifying booms and busts in the Euro area housing market

This article develops a model-based method to detect booms and busts in the Euro area housing market. A model is constructed and tested, whereby the user cost rate, a demographic variable, unemployment rate, disposable income, debt-to-income ratio and housing stock are fundamental variables significantly explaining house price (HP) developments. Booms/busts are identified as episodes when the HP index exceeds the levels implied by those economic fundamentals. Furthermore, a cross-check with boom/bust episodes based on other methods is carried out to substantiate the results, while the ability of the model in predicting booms/busts in real time is also tested.     

Optimization of Thermal Energy Storage Systems in Distributed Generation Systems

The distributed generation as well as the combined production of electrical energy and heat for domestic use in order to increase the energy efficiency becomes more important and both technically and financially feasible. However, feasibility and efficiency can be significantly increased by decoupling the production of heat or power or the referring demand in order to operate the production units in the most efficient way. Thermal storage systems connected to combined heat and power units offer the opportunity of such a decoupling of production and demand for heat in domestic or industrial use. In this article, based on an analysis of different thermal storage technologies, a model is introduced for optimal operation of thermal storage connected to combined heat and power units in terms of the generation costs or contribution margin as extension of an energy generation planning and trading optimization method. Moreover, the application, coordinated operation and participation in spot markets of such plant-storage-combinations are evaluated.     

Impact of Modeling Approaches on Dispatch Optimization of Combined Cycle Gas Turbines

Due to the age structure of the German generation system and the nuclear phase out, a significant amount of older power plants will be substituted during the coming years by newly built generation units. Such projects are frequently realized as combined gas and steam turbines, so-called Combined Cycle Power Plants or Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT). These power plants, mostly fired by natural gas, possess high efficiency factors combined with low specific CO₂-emissions compared to other conventional power plants, e.g. fired by coal and moreover provide a high operational flexibility. As they represent a combination of several thermal processes, their generation planning and optimized dispatch are more demanding than those of existing steam or gas turbines. Therefore, a new formulation of the unit commitment problem is required, including all relevant technical and economic restrictions for scheduling CCGT. In this paper, the relevant characteristics of the different types of CCGT are analyzed. This especially includes part load efficiency and the permitted modes of operation. For modeling of these characteristics and for optimizing the CCGT dispatch, a decomposition approach as well as a linearized closed-loop formulation is introduced. In the decomposition the optimization problem is split into sub problems, which can be solved with specialized algorithms. As the recombination of these sub problems may result in a limitation of the overall solution quality, the closed-loop approach considers the entire problem, but has to linearize the formulation to ensure solvability. By applying both methods on an exemplary case the advantages and shortcomings of both approaches can be analyzed in detail. This comprises model accuracy, overall solution quality and a detailed schedule analysis and comparison. The paper??s results will also show the deviations caused by the different modeling approaches. Finally, the results show the added value of the adequate modeling of combined cycle power plants towards gas or steam turbines.     

The gender pay gap in the ICT labour market: comparative experiences from the UK and New Zealand

This paper addresses the issues surrounding gender pay gaps focusing on the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector of the labour market. Reporting on research conducted in the UK and New Zealand (NZ) we adopted a mixed method approach using comparable qualitative and quantitative research techniques to investigate pay issues amongst women working in ICT in the UK and NZ. Our findings reveal commonalities of experience and some interesting differences. Unlike with the UK sample, for example, in NZ women working in ICT do not believe that their pay reflects their workload, skills and their position within their own organisation. Our study found that non‐transparent pay and reward systems and salary secrets exacerbate inequality and discrimination in the UK and NZ. The paper concludes by offering some policy directions to encourage a narrowing of the gender pay gap and reflects on the benefits of doing cross‐national research.     

Conceptualizing Work,Family and Community: A Socio‐Ecological Systems Model,Taking Account of Power,Time, Space and Life Stage

A large body of empirical research now exists about ‘work and family’, much of it in agreement on critical issues. However, it is under‐conceptualized, it over‐researches professional and managerial workers and it under‐attends the larger terrain of work, family and community. This contribution argues the case for a stronger analytical framework around work, family and community and the ways in which they intersect, drawing on concepts commonly used in the field of employment relations. The article utilizes a body of empirical research about work, family and community in Australia to develop Voydanoff's ecological systems model of work, home and community, arguing that it is vital to unpack the ‘black box’ of ‘work’ in a multi‐layered way, to give appropriate weight to various sources of power, and to avoid an individualistic approach to the reconciliation of work, home and community life by locating analysis in a larger social and political context. The contribution proposes a ‘socio‐ecological systems’ model of work, home and community that delineates the four issues of power, time, space and life stage.     

The Institutional Barriers to Heterodox Pluralism

This paper applies the feminist concept of epistemological communities to the project of promoting pluralism in the economics discipline. I argue that the economics profession does not resemble a unified and coherent epistemological community and is better viewed as many different yet overlapping and intersecting smaller communities. I argue that this reimaging of the community of economists implies a different conception of pluralism. In an environment where theory is developed at different intersections of epistemological communities, pluralism requires distinguishing between the public process of debate that provides critical evaluation of knowledge claims and the private process of determining what is published and it requires different strategies for evaluating work for publication.     

Privatizations around the world: economic or political determinants?

The article examines economic, political, and institutional determinants of privatization using a panel of 50 countries over the period of 1988–2006. Our sample includes developed, developing, and transition economies. Privatization activity is measured by the number of privatization deals as well as the revenue raised and analyzed using the negative binomial regression and Tobit regression respectively. Although more privatization activity is usually taking place in countries displaying satisfactory economic performance in some respect, the role of economic factors turns out to be limited. The results identify a number of political and institutional determinants but some effects are specific to a particular type of economy. For example, in developing countries, right‐wing governments are associated with privatizations while new, not necessarily right‐wing governments, are behind privatization in Eastern Europe. The role of financial development is also varied, with sound financial institutions related to successful privatization in developed and developing countries but not in transition economies.