Cross-sectional earnings risk and occupational sorting: The role of risk attitudes

This paper investigates to what extent individuals' risk preferences are correlated with the cross-sectional earnings risk of their occupation. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which contains a direct survey question about willingness to take risks that has been shown to be a behaviorally valid measure of risk aversion. As a measure of earnings risk, we use the cross-sectional variation in earnings that is left unexplained by human capital variables in Mincerian wage regressions. Our evidence shows that individuals with low willingness to take risks are more likely to work in occupations with low earnings risk. This pattern is found regardless of the level of occupation categories, region, gender and labor market experience.     

Methods and tools for integrated assessment of land use policies on sustainable development in developing countries

For stimulating sustainable development in developing countries, land use patterns and land use changes are considered critical, and therefore effective and efficient land use policies are needed. In this paper we present a methodological framework that has been developed in a joint European and developing countries project (LUPIS – Land Use Policies and Sustainable Development in Developing Countries), to assess the impact of land use policies on sustainable development in developing countries. An illustrative application is presented for a case study in China, where water pollution due to agriculture in Taihu Basin is a major problem.     

THE UNPAID LEADERS OF FRENCH VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS

ABSTRACT ** :  This paper focuses on the voluntary workers who take on responsibilities in French voluntary associations. First, drawing on a national association survey, we contrast the characteristics of leadership volunteers, especially chairpersons, with those of the French population as a whole. We show that leaders are very different from the overall population even if these differences seem to diminish for organizations created more recently. Second, from a national household survey, we compare board members with other members of associations. Among other results, we find that the former are more rooted in their local environment and they participate more frequently in several associations. They are driven by more activist motives than are the other members. They give more time to their associations and they use more skills in their voluntary tasks than do the other volunteers.     

Beyond the Toledo agreement: the intergenerational impact of the Spanish Pension Reform

The paper examines the intergenerational impact of the Spanish public pension system after the 1997 Pension Reform Act. Within a Generational Accounting framework, we find that the new legal setting could leave future generations with liabilities as high as 176% of 1996 GDP. Hence, we analyse the impact of alternative reforms. Holding the pay-as-you-go setting, a further improvement to tax-benefit linkage in line with the Toledo Agreement proposals is shown to yield an intergenerationally more balanced outcome, than an increase in the retirement age or an expansion of public subsidies financed through indirect taxes. Finally, a move toward a partially funded pension system which restores the intergenerational balance is simulated.     

The theory of the labor-managed firm from the membership's perspective with implications for marshallian industry supply

The partial-equilibrium literature on labor-managed (L-M) firms argues that the property-rights structure inhibits economic efficiency and induces perverse responses to price parameters in the short run. But recent general-equilibrium literature demonstrates equivalence of equilibria between L-M and capitalist market economies with the relevant welfare results therefore applying to the L-M economy. Once the L-M firm's maximand is modified to incorporate members' property rights, the short-run industry supply curves of the two economics, under quasi-market conditions consistent with recent Yugoslav reforms, are seen to be equivalent. Hence, the property-rights structure in the L-M economy is compatible with efficiency and normal short-run price responses.     

Soft related lending: A tale of two Korean banks

In this paper, we present indirect evidence that the IMFs insistence on foreign control of two large nationwide Korean banks in exchange for short-term support during the 1997 financial crisis helped restrain soft related lending practices. News signaling the likely sale of a bank to a foreign financial institution yields an average daily decrease of about 2% in the stock price of related borrowers. News indicating difficulty in finding an interested foreign investor generates an increase in the stock price of related borrowers of about the same magnitude. These signals have larger impacts on less-profitable, less-liquid, and more bank-dependent firms.