Bounded rationality,expectations, and child labour

This paper develops a model with overlapping generations, where the household's optimal fertility, child labour, and education decisions depend on the parents’ expectations or beliefs about the return to education. It is shown that there exists a range of parental income where the fertility rate is high and children participate in the labour market and receive an incomplete education if a parent believes the return to education is low. The act of participating in the labour market reduces the child's ability to accumulate human capital; thus, the action of sending a child into the labour market is sufficient to ensure that the parents’ initially pessimistic expectations are fulfilled. It is then shown that a one‐time policy intervention, such as banning child labour and mandatory education, can be enough to move a country from the positive child labour equilibrium to an equilibrium with no child labour.     

为能源而战--亚洲今夏节能新举措

由于最近一轮破纪录的油价飙升,许多能源紧缺的亚洲国家政府纷纷带头推动节能举措,以抑制今夏的能源需求。继中国政府宣布26℃为办公场所室内最佳的空调温度之后,韩国一位部长亲自走上T型台,加入一场“不打领带”的时装秀,以鼓励办公室工作人员身着更凉爽的服装;而在印度尼西亚,政府为节约能源,     

The U.S. Television Set Market

The U.S. television set market is projected to reach the $27 billion mark by 2010, up from $25 billion in 2006. The bulk of this growth will come from the flat-panel television set segment, which is projected to grow 65 percent from 2006-2010. The transition to digital television continues to be a major underpinning of the television set market in the United States. Additionally, consumers are increasingly looking to use their television sets for a myriad of non-traditional activities including accessing the Internet, checking e-mail, and watching content accessed from hardware devices like digital video recorders. JEL Classification L63     

Factors influencing participation in the Nova Scotia Environmental Farm Plan Program

There is growing interest in Nova Scotia's Environmental Farm Plan (NS EFP) program among farmers and policy makers because of several reasons. First, effectiveness of standardized or uniform beneficial management practices in mitigating the negative environmental impacts from agriculture is limited by inherent heterogeneities in agricultural production systems. In addition, there is heightened interest in farmers generating ecological goods and services to society. This study investigates the determinants of participation in the NS EFP program. A discrete choice model of NS EFP participation was applied to a sample of 83 farmers (representing a 31% response rate). To increase relevance of the study to program administrators, the study also examined farmers’ use of various channels and sources of information on farm conservation practices. The most used sources of information on farm conservation practices include a mix of interpersonal sources and government agencies. Although online information (especially those available for free) appears to be gaining popularity in usage, overall, electronic and computer channels of information (especially radio and television) were used less compared with traditional channels of communicating farm conservation information (such as newsletters and agricultural magazines). Regression analysis suggests that farm characteristics (i.e., farm type, farm size, farm income) and farmer capacity variables (i.e., specialized training and knowledge from EFP program information sessions and workshops, and on-farm stewardship demonstrations) were significant determinants of environmental farm planning.