Income Distribution Dynamics with Endogenous Fertility

Developing countries with highly unequal income distributions, such as Brazil or South Africa, face an uphill battle in reducing inequality. Educated workers in these countries have a much lower birthrate than uneducated workers. Assuming children of educated workers are more likely to become educated, this fertility differential increases the proportion of unskilled workers, reducing their wages, and thus their opportunity cost of having children, creating a vicious cycle. A model incorporating this effect generates multiple steady-state levels of inequality, suggesting that in some circumstances, temporarily increasing access to educational opportunities could permanently reduce inequality. Empirical evidence suggests that the fertility differential between the educated and uneducated is greater in less equal countries, consistent with the model.     

Increasing the skill utilization of expatriates

This article examines the utilization, underutilization, and misutilization of expatriate skills in overseas assignments. Using quantitative data from 268 expatriates from six Fortune 500 multinational corporations, the research first examines expatriates' utilization of eight distinct skills and how patterns of skill utilization influence important job attitudes. Then, using qualitative data from the expatriates, the research examines the subsidiary‐level, corporate‐level, and country‐ level factors which facilitate (or inhibit) skill utilization. The study highlights the idea that effective skill utilization depends not only on the selection and training of expatriates themselves, but also upon the level of skill and teamwork among host country nationals and the quality of support provided by the MNC as a whole. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Optimal management of a flammable forest providing timber and carbon sequestration benefits: an Australian case study*

In deciding to keep or fell a forest stand given its age, the risk of loss of timber through wildfire is an important consideration. If trees also have value from sequestration of carbon, another effect of fire is the unplanned loss of stored carbon. Factors affecting the decision to keep or fell trees, and how much to spend on fire protection, are investigated using stochastic dynamic programming, using carbon sequestration in stands of mountain ash in Victoria as a case study. The effect of treating sawlogs as a permanent carbon sink after harvesting is explored.     

The Power of the Pill for the Next Generation: Oral Contraception's Effects on Fertility, Abortion, and Maternal & Child Characteristics

This paper considers how oral contraception's diffusion to young unmarried women affected the number and parental characteristics of children born to these women. In the short-term, pill access caused declines in fertility and increases in both the share of children born with low birthweight and the share born to poor households. In the long-term, access led to negligible changes in fertility while increasing the share of children with college-educated mothers and decreasing the share with divorced mothers. The short-term effects appear to be driven by upwardly-mobile women opting out of early childbearing while the long-term effects appear to be driven by a retiming of births to later ages. These effects differ from those of abortion legalization, although we find suggestive evidence that pill diffusion lowered abortions. Our results suggest that abortion and the pill are on average used for different purposes by different women, but on the margin some women substitute from abortion towards the pill when both are available. JELNo. I0, J13, N12.     

Generic functions of railway stations—A conceptual basis for the development of common system understanding and assessment criteria

The redevelopment of railway stations calls for the integration of many different objectives. Two crucial challenges thereby are the development of a common system understanding among the multiple stakeholders with potentially conflicting interests and the structured definition of comprehensive assessment criteria. Defining the functions of the system railway station, i.e. discussing what the system should do, can support solving these challenges. Based on a review of Swiss railway stations in a transdisciplinary research project applying four focus groups (n=38), 28 expert interviews and two expert workshops, we present a structured framework of five generic functions of railway stations and their interdependencies. The five generic functions are: linking catchment area and transport network, supporting transfer between modes of transport, facilitating commercial use of real estate, providing public space, and contributing to the identity of the surrounding area. Potential conflicts between functions are identified. They concern the competition of multiple functions for space, for customer attention or for revenues as well as increasing system complexities with station size. We illustrate how the framework of functions can be used to foster a common system understanding and to develop assessment criteria. Although elaborated from a Swiss perspective the framework is perceived adaptable to railway stations of other countries.     

Distance from core competences and new export survival: Evidence from multi‐product exporters

We study the determinants of the survival of new export products of multi‐product firms. We use micro‐level data from Chile to estimate linear fixed‐effects and non‐linear survival models to show that a measure of “distance” between a firm's new export and its previous export basket is a negative and significant determinant of the survival of the new export, especially during its first year. Our interpretation of this finding is that exports further away from firms’ core competences have lower chances of survival in exports since it is more difficult for firms to achieve competitiveness in them. Our results suggest that country‐level diversification, at least through existing firms, should be gradual.     

Information Technology and Establishment Size in America: Rybczynski Redivivus☆

The Rybczynski Theorem is one of the staples of international trade theory. In their article in this issue of the journal, J.J. Rosa and J. Hanoteau apply the theorem to a two-by-two world in which the two “industries” are small firms and large firms, and the two inputs are information and all other. The assumption that small firms are more information intensive, coupled with the fact that information has become pervasive in recent decades, allows them to derive the prediction that small firms will account for increasingly larger proportions of total output and employment in the economy. We highlight a couple of issues that we find problematic in the Rosa–Hanoteau study, and then develop two different empirical strategies to probe the connections between IT and the size distribution of establishments. First, we combine County Business Patterns with input–output data to explore whether the share of small plants has grown at a faster pace among industries that demand IT more heavily. Second, we explore, on an industry-by-industry basis and taking into account the potential endogeneity of IT location, whether clustering of IT firms in specific US counties is associated with a relatively large share of small establishments, on average, in those counties.