THE IMPACT OF LABOR MARKET REGULATION ON EMPLOYMENT IN LOW‐INCOME COUNTRIES: A META‐ANALYSIS

Controversy over labor market policy often centers on achieving a balance between preventing worker exploitation, and avoiding loss of productivity or employment through excessive regulation. Although the literature documenting the impact of labor market regulation on employment is extensive, there is a dearth of evidence on the impact of such policies in low‐income countries (LICs). Since it is easier for workers, especially women, to slip into the informal sector in LICs, regulations are likely to have stronger impacts on formal employment in these countries (but lower impacts on unemployment). We systematically reviewed available research from countries that are, or were until recently, LICs. Most studies document that more stringent labor regulations are associated with lower formal sector employment and higher informal sector employment. We also conducted a metaregression analysis of the impact of minimum wages on formal and informal employment. After controlling for publication bias, higher minimum wages are associated with lower formal employment and a higher share of informal workers.     

THE IMPACT OF ANTISMOKING POLICIES IN KOREA ON QUIT SUCCESS AND SMOKING INTENTIONS

In 2001 and 2002, the Korean government dramatically increased cigarette taxes, anti‐smoking advertisements, and smoking prohibitions as part of an anti‐smoking campaign. This paper examines the impacts of these policy changes by modeling quit success and smoking intentions pre‐ and post‐policy and attributing model differences to anti‐smoking policies. Model results provide evidence that national anti‐smoking policies increased both quitting success and intention to quit. However, the impacts of these policies are uneven throughout Korean society. Females and those who exercise for health maintenance experienced higher quit success. Heavy smokers and high frequency alcohol drinkers stated they are less likely to quit smoking post‐policy. One impact of national anti‐smoking policies is reduced provincial differences among Koreans in both quit success and intention to quit. Future anti‐smoking policies should address the different needs of these groups. (JEL D12, I19)     

Understanding Equity in the Recreation User Fee Context

Equity is a major public concern related to recreation fees on public lands. The purpose of this study was to test a three-dimensional model of equity and to examine the perceptions of equity across demographic segments. Data were collected by a telephone survey with residents (N = 366) of two western states. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-dimensional equity model in a recreation fee context. People tended to support democratic equity more than compensatory equity. Greater support was shown for discounted fees for the elderly and persons with disabilities than for discounts for ethnic minorities, low income people, or large families, suggesting the possibility of two sub-dimensions of the compensatory equity construct. Overall, the results do not support that disadvantaged groups seek discounted fees.     

Category management and consumer choice

This paper shows the results of an exploratory analysis of the structure of a complex product category: Wine. In complex categories, a usual strategy of consumers is the partitioning of alternatives into homogeneous subsets and the sequential eliminations of subsets until a product/brand is chosen from among few homogeneous alternatives in the last subset. To identify if there is such a kind of strategy and the product attributes involved is of great interest for the retailer. After a discussion of the different modelling alternatives of the choice process, the authors provide an application of the additive trees (ADDTREE) model to explore the hierarchical structure. The ADDTREE results provide a first overview of the competitive market structure of the wine category: competition becomes more intense as the wine category is partitioned by, first, the type of wine criteria and, second, the designation of origin (DO) criteria.     

Impact of standards adoption on healthcare transaction performance: The case of HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a standard for the healthcare industry mandating, in part, use of the EDI X12 protocol set for data exchanges among industry members. The motivation underlying this change was the view that lack of a standard format for healthcare data created significant inefficiencies, resulting in increased costs within the industry. With regulators’ supposition that the standard would improve data exchange performance, we set out to determine the actual performance implications of HIPAA.Using data on transactions occurring over 106 months from 1998 to 2004, we study the impact of the HIPAA standardization requirement on transaction performance in the form of transaction delivery time and transaction quality measured as percentage errors. Performance is expected to deteriorate immediately following HIPAA compliance, due to system disruption, before a longer-term trend toward improved performance. Transaction performance immediately following HIPAA compliance shows deterioration in transaction delivery time, as expected, but a surprising improvement in transaction quality. The longer-term trends associated with HIPAA compliance for both transaction quality and transaction delivery time show that both are trending toward improvement. However, when we compare performance three, six, and 12 months before and after HIPAA compliance, we find that neither delivery time nor quality has improved. The implications for practice and theory are discussed.     

Strategic planning of complex economic systems ∗

A major drawback of conventional models of the behavior of economic systems (and derived tools for policy intervention) is that the desire for tractability leads generally to a high degree of abstraction from reality. This article suggests an alternative, and arguably complementary, approach which engages specifically with economic complexity. The technique used is one of interactive spatial modelling over long time periods where the principle economic agents base decisions on incomplete heuristic information. For illustrative purposes the model has been calibrated on the basis of Senegalese data for 1981–91 and broad generic equations presented. The article argues that such a methodological approach holds out considerable advantages for strategic planning of sustainable economic systems. In particular it permits the direct engagement of noneconomic disciplines and client stakeholders in the planning process.     

Intrapreneurial intentions versus entrepreneurial intentions: distinct constructs with different antecedents

We posit that entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship are distinct entrepreneurial behaviors that differ in terms of their salient outcomes for the individual. Since individuals are likely to differ in their attitudes to these salient outcomes, and in their entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we hypothesize that a different strength of intention for entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship will be due to individual differences in self-efficacy and in their attitudes to the outcomes from entrepreneurial, as compared to intrapreneurial, behavior. We find that while self-efficacy is significantly related to both entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial intentions, attitudes to income, ownership, and autonomy relate only to entrepreneurial intentions, while attitude to risk relates only to intrapreneurial intentions.     

Deposit insurance and bank risk-taking: Evidence from internal loan ratings

We analyze the effect of deposit insurance on the risk-taking behavior of banks in the context of a quasi-natural experiment using detailed credit registry data. Using the case of an emerging economy, Bolivia, which introduced a deposit insurance system during the sample period, we compare the risk-taking behavior of banks before and after the introduction of this system. We find that in the post-deposit insurance period, banks are more likely to initiate riskier loans (i.e., loans with worse internal ratings at origination). These loans carry higher interest rates and are associated with worse ex-post performance (i.e., they have higher default and delinquency rates). Banks do not seem to compensate for the extra risk by increasing collateral requirements or decreasing loan maturities. We also find evidence that the increase in risk-taking is due to the decrease in market discipline from large depositors. Finally, differences between large (too-big-to-fail) and small banks diminished in the post-deposit insurance period.