The effects of domestic rice market interventions outside business-as-usual conditions for imported rice prices

The Philippine government intervenes in the domestic rice market through the imposition of import tariffs and the provision of producer and consumer subsidies. While policymakers are aware that these programmes come with allocative efficiency costs, they justify the programmes on the grounds that they insulate the domestic economy from unexpected price spikes in the international rice market. An interesting matter for policy evaluation is to quantify the insulation benefit that the programmes provide in circumstances of sudden severe import price spikes. To examine this question, we undertake a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation in which the Philippines is subject to an external rice price shock. We find that the insulation benefit of the support programmes under a 2008-like event is worth approximately 0.10% of real consumption. However, the cost of insuring against these price spikes is significant. We estimate the annual cost of the rice market interventions at approximately 0.40% of real consumption.     

On measuring the utilization rate of employed labour

This paper deals with the factors that influence plans to retire from the labour force. We use a theoretical model to explain the empirical findings from a bivariate probit model relating economic, demographic, and social characteristics to retirement plans for over 7000 women and men between the ages of 40 and 64. The results of the analysis concerning retirement intentions suggest that personal, economic and household characteristics are more important determinants of retirement plans for women than men.     

Out of Recession?

Britain is emerging uncertainly from recession. This essay looks at the character of the recession, the financial crisis that inaugurated it and the key issues that will dominate the recovery phase. In particular, it argues that the underlying and deeply entrenched political conditions which underpinned the crisis, notably bi-partisan encouragement of a ‘property-owning democracy’, show no signs of abating. Without such a change, a recurrence of the crisis appears highly likely.     

The employability of new graduates: a study of differences between UK universities

The non-stationarity tests of Phillips-Perron (1988) (PP tests) suggest that Australian macroeconomic output possesses a stochastic rather than a deterministic log-linear trend. Kwiatkowski et al. (1991) argue that such tests have low power and propose the KPSS test, in which the null is stationary. However, the KPSS test results reinforce the PP findings for Australia. Cochrane (1988) variance ratio (VR) tests further suggest that there may be a very strong random-walk component in the Australian business cycle. Rappoport and Reichlin (1989), however, argue that all such tests are biased in favour of the stochastic trend alternative if there are trend breaks in the data. Following up on this point, the paper finds that, in Australia's case, the stochastic trend alternative is statistically dominated when the data are allowed to be characterized by a probabilistic, regime-switching, segmented trend specification. Therefore, to the extent that real business-cycle theories of the business cycle gain support from stochastic trends in real output, this latter piece of Australian evidence does not strengthen their case.     

The warren court,inequality and the poor

This paper presents a gender perspective of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. The TAA is the primary US policy to assist the transition of workers displaced due to trade related economic restructuring. In comparison to the relatively substantial research on gendering trade policies in developing economies there is very limited focus on gendering policy responses to trade in the US. We argue that there is a specific gender trend in the trade-displacement patterns in the US which calls for a gender sensitive policy response. We examine the TAA in light of this trend and offer some suggestions for a gendered approach to providing assistance to workers negotiating an increasingly flexible global labor market.     

Sample attrition and labor force dynamics: Evidence from the Spanish labor force survey

In this paper we examine a number of issues that arise in investigating labor force dynamics using the Spanish Labor Force Survey (EPA). These issues are by no means specific to the Spanish case and apply to most European-style labor force surveys. Our main conclusions may be summarized as follows. First, survey nonresponse cannot be neglected. Second, the EPA tends to underestimate employment and participation of high-educated young people, and to overestimate those of the low-educated elderly. Finally, we find little evidence that attrition causes important selection biases in estimating quarterly transition probabilities.     

Higher Tax for Top Earners

The literature can justify both increasing and decreasing marginal taxes (IMT & DMT) on top incomes under different welfare objectives and income distributions. Even when DMT are theoretically optimal, they are often politically infeasible. Then a flat tax seems to be a constrained optimal solution. We show however that, given any flat tax we can increase the total utility of a poor majority by raising the top income tax rate under a simple condition, which can be checked with empirical data. We further generalize our main results allowing different welfare weights, declining elasticity of labor supply and more tax bands.