LONG‐RUN GROWTH AND WELFARE EFFECTS OF TAX REFORM

This paper introduces an endogenously‐determined fertility rate into a Romer‐type endogenous growth model and, accordingly, investigates the effects on fertility, economic growth and social welfare of a revenue‐neutral tax reform that involves switching from an income tax to a consumption tax. We show that, in a departure from the existing literature, tax reform could be harmful, rather than favourable, to both growth and welfare, due to an endogenous fertility rate. We also conduct a simple numerical analysis to investigate under what conditions the negative effect on growth and welfare occurs.     

CATCHING‐UP AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS OF THE ASEAN ECONOMIES

Total factor productivity growth of the five ASEAN founding members is estimated by decomposing total factor productivity growth into technical efficiency and technological progress. By using the stochastic frontier model with individual‐specific temporal pattern of technical efficiency for the period of 1981–2003, the present paper identifies the unique temporal pattern of productivity changes in each country, to analyze the relationship between country characteristics and the inherent efficiency and productivity changes. The empirical results indicate that over the study period, growth in Singapore and Malaysia was largely driven by both technological progress and input accumulation, whereas growth in Thailand was induced by an improvement in technical efficiency and through input accumulation.     

Asset Accumulation In Early Married Life

This longitudinal study of the factors influencing the accumulation of financial assets by young married couples in three metropolitan areas of Illinois, finds that couples that start out with a strong financial base tend to improve their relative financial position over time. Especially intriguing is the finding that those couples that acquired initially substantial amounts of debt were more likely to be well off financially at a later time, possibly because the principal asset purchased with these debts, own home, appreciated substantially during the period studied. The results also suggest that a measure of normal income becomes relevant to explaining variations in asset accumulation only after five or six years of the marriage, while socioeconomic variables other than income seemed to have relatively little effect on changes in asset holdings over time.     

Claiming the Grounds for Reform: Agrarian and Environmental Movements in Indonesia

This essay examines the convergences, tensions and mutual influences of agrarian and environmental movements in Indonesia and their connections to transnational movements under state-led development and neoliberal governance regimes. The authors argue that environmental movements of the last quarter of the twentieth century affected the strategies, struggles, mutual relations with, and public discourses of resurgent agrarian movements in diverse ways. Environmental movements had significant influences on national policy, law and practice within a decade of their emergence under the state-led development regime of President Suharto. Environmental activists used the appearance of technical 'apolitical' concerns to their advantage. They mobilized at multiple scales, targeting laws and other institutions of state power at the same time as organizing the grassroots. The repression of the Suharto regime forced agrarian reform activists underground, while environmental issues were mainstreamed. Agrarian movements in Indonesia today, under a decentralized regime dominated by neoliberal policies, have faced new opportunities and constraints due to national and transnational influences of environmental and agrarian reform discourses and networks. We show how these influences have changed the political fields within which Indonesian agrarian movement groups operate: forming, shifting and struggling over critical alliances.     

BEAUTY AND PRODUCTIVITY: THE CASE OF THE LADIES PROFESSIONAL GOLF ASSOCIATION

There is evidence that attractive looking workers earn more than average looking workers, even after controlling for a variety of individual characteristics. The presence of such beauty premiums may influence the labor supply decisions of attractive workers. For example, if one unit of a product by an attractive worker is more rewarded than that by her less attractive coworker, the attractive worker may put more effort into improving her productivity. We examine this possibility by analyzing panel data for individual female golfers participating in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour. We found that attractive golfers recorded lower than average scores and earn more prize money than average looking players, even when controlling for player experience and other variables related to their natural talents. This finding is consistent with the notion that physical appearance is associated with individual workers' accumulation of human capital or skills. If the human capital of attractive workers is at least partly an outcome of favoritism toward beauty, then the premium estimates obtained by previous studies may have been downwardly biased. (JEL J3, J7, L8)     

CREATION OF A SEPARATE TELECOM REGULATORY AGENCY: A DURATION ANALYSIS OF ITS TIME PATTERN

At the center of the issues set out in the 1997 WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunication Services was the creation of separate telecom regulatory agencies. Using the Cox proportional hazards model, this study examines how a country's socioeconomic factors affect the country's incentive to reorganize its regulatory structure and create a separate telecom regulatory agency. The main empirical findings suggest that a country's incentive to institute a separate telecom regulatory body is greater when its telecom sector performance is relatively poor and its political environment is more competitive with few institutional barriers. (JEL L52, L96 )