Wagner’s law versus displacement effect

The public sector has grown dramatically over the past few centuries in many developed countries. In this article, we use wavelet methods to distinguish between two leading explanations for this growth – Wagner’s law and the displacement effect. In doing so, we use the long-term data of 10 OECD countries for a maximum time span of 1800–2009. We find that the validity of Wagner’s law is likely to vary strongly over time for each country. A roughly similar feature in most of the countries is that the law is less valid in the earliest stage of economic development as well as in the advanced stages, with the validity tending to follow an inverted U-shaped pattern with economic development. Further, our results indicate that the long-run growth of government size cannot be adequately explained by Wagner’s law. On the other hand, the displacement effect appears to account for the bulk of the growth in most of the countries.     

A sectoral approach to Okun’s Law

The study adds to the existing literature on the relationship between output and unemployment by using a sectoral specification of Okun’s Law to capture the differential sensitivity of the unemployment rate to output developments in the services and manufacturing sectors. Using quarterly data for the period between 2000 and 2012, we show that Malta’s unemployment rate has been more sensitive to output developments in the services sector than to those in the manufacturing sector. We use different equation specifications and the youth unemployment rate to show that the impact resulting from developments in the manufacturing sector occurs mainly via lay-offs while developments in the services sector affect the unemployment rate via the hiring of new entrants into the labour market.     

Using partial identification methods to estimate the effect of violence against women on their children’s health outcomes

A growing literature in economics seeks to estimate the costs of violence against women by examining, for example, its impact on the health outcomes of their children. However, it is difficult to assign a causal interpretation to these nonexperimental studies due to the presence of unobservable characteristics affecting violence and health outcomes simultaneously. The lack of credible instrumental variables applicable in several countries further limits our knowledge. I address this gap by using new partial identification methods to estimate the relative size of the unobservables needed to eliminate the estimated effects in nonexperimental studies. I also expand the external validity of the analysis by using data from five standardized nationally representative household surveys in Latin America. Consistent with previous studies, cross-sectional estimates show large negative associations between violence against women and an array of child health outcomes. However, when accounting for omitted variable bias, at best, two-thirds of the estimates remain robust and they are concentrated on the outcomes with the largest cross-sectional estimated impacts.     

江汉大学男篮运动员专项素质现状及其分析

运用问卷调查法、文献资料法等方法,通过对江汉大学男篮运动员与湖北省3支CUBA男篮运动员的各项身体素质进行的调查和对比分析,研究表明江汉大学男篮运动员中锋、前锋的身高以及后卫的耐力素质与其他三所高校的男篮运动员相比有显著差异,对江汉大学男篮运动员专项身体素质的全面调查和分析,可以为教练员和运动员科学地认识专项身体素质提供新的理论基础,通过科学合理的训练,使运动员的身体素质和篮球技术得到提高,在CUBA的比赛中取得更好的成绩。     

中国服务业发展悖论——基于“两波”发展模式的研究

本文借鉴最新文献对服务业发展规律的测度方法,用中国1952—2010年的地区面板数据对我国服务业比重变化的长期规律和阶段性特征进行了测度,结果认为:宏观国家层面上,我国服务业比重的变化确实有悖于世界经济整体服务化的趋势;但在地区层面上,我国服务业比重与人均GDP的关系基本符合"服务业比重随经济发展不断上升"的普遍规律,所谓经济服务化的"中国悖论"在地区层面上并不存在;对服务业发展的阶段性特征和地区差异进行分析发现,我国大部分地区仍然处于以传统服务业为主的第一波发展阶段,只有少数地区进入了以现代服务业发展为主导的第二波。文章最后对我国服务业发展规律的成因进行了一般分析和实证检验。     

唐诗中的经济学——《卖炭翁》另解

文学作品来源于生活现实,不同时期的文学作品从各个不同的侧面记录了当时的社会经济面貌,唐诗作为中国古典文学的瑰宝,是中国古代经济不可忽略的研究对象。以白居易的名篇《卖炭翁》为例,可分析以长安为代表的唐代分工与交换的发展状况、货币制度、财产权和契约制度,并可根据基本的经济规律,推断出古代人民勤劳简朴,却难得温饱的经济学原因。     

Healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease patients treated with infliximab: a propensity weighted comparison of the effects of treatment adherence

Objective:

The objective for the research was to evaluate the direct healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease (CD) patients categorized by adherence status.

Methods:

Adult patients with ≥1 claim for infliximab and ≥2 claims for CD who were continuously insured for 12 months before and after their first infliximab infusion (index date) were identified in a 2006–2009 US managed care database. Patients were excluded if they had rheumatoid arthritis claims, received infliximab billed as a pharmacy benefit, or received another biologic drug. Patients were categorized as being either adherent or intermittently adherent to infliximab using a pre-defined algorithm. Total and component direct costs, CD-related costs, rates of surgery, and days of hospitalization were estimated for the 360-day post-index period. Propensity weighted generalized linear models were used to adjust the cost estimates for potential confounding variables.

Results:

The total propensity weighted cost for infliximab adherent patients was $40,425 (95% CI?=?[$38,686, $42,242]), compared to $41,082 (95% CI?=?[$38,163, $44,223]) for the intermittently adherent (p?=?0.71). However, adherent patients had lower total direct medical costs, exclusive of infliximab, that were $13,097 (95% CI?=?[$12,141, $14,127]) compared with $20,068 (95% CI?=?[$17,676, $22,784]) for intermittently adherent patients as a result of substantially lower hospital and outpatient costs (p?Conclusions:

Greater drug-related costs for infliximab adherent patients were offset by lower costs from hospitalization and outpatient visits. These findings indicate that adherent patients have improved clinical outcomes, at a similar aggregate cost, than patients who are only intermittently adherent to therapy.     

Debt monetization,inflation, and the ‘neutral’ interest rate

The main purpose of this study is to explore the potential expansionary effect stemming from the monetization of debt. We develop a simple macroeconomic model with Keynesian features and four sectors: creditor and debtor households, businesses, and the public sector. We show that such expansionary effect stems mainly from the reduction in the financial cost to servicing the public debt. The efficacy of the channel that operates allegedly through the compression of the risk/term premium on securities is found to be ambiguous. Finally, we show that countries that issue their own currency can avert getting stuck in a structural ‘liquidity trap’ provided their central banks are willing to monetize the debt created by a strong enough fiscal expansion.     

Does a lower (higher) labour force participation rate imply greater (lower) income tax evasion? An exploratory empirical inquiry for the U.S.

This exploratory study seeks to add to the income tax evasion literature by investigating a heretofore ignored potential determinant of aggregate federal personal income tax evasion in the U.S., namely, the labour force participation rate. It is hypothesized that the higher (lower) the labour force participation rate, the lower (greater) the degree of tax evasion. The empirical estimation supports this hypothesis, finding that a one unit (one percentage point) increase (decrease) in the labour force participation rate leads to a 9.1% decrease (increase) in income tax evasion. Thus, the declining labour force participation in recent years implies increased tax evasion problems for the U.S.     

Structural Changes in the Labor Market and the Rise of Early Retirement in France and Germany

The rise of early retirement in Europe is typically attributed to the European system of taxes and transfers. A model with an imperfectly competitive labor market allows us to consider also the effects of bargaining power and of matching efficiency on pre‐retirement. We find that lower bargaining power of workers and declining matching efficiency have been important determinants of early retirement in France and Germany. These structural changes, combined with early retirement transfers and population aging, are also consistent with the employment and unemployment rates, labor share and seniority premia.