Part–Time Work During Post–Compulsory Education And Examination Performance: Help Or Hindrance?

This paper examines the effects on examination performance of having a part–time job whilst in full–time post–sixteen education, using new data on young people in Northern Ireland. Around 35% engaged in part time employment during their education spell, compared to over 60% found by recent GB studies. This may be related to Northern Ireland's comparatively slack youth labour market and might reflect part–time employment levels in other peripheral regions. Our estimations suggest working part–time per se is not detrimental to examination performance, although working long hours is. Policy makers might improve educational performance by reducing incentives to work long hours.     

Behavioural Microsimulation with Labour Supply Responses

This paper provides a technical survey of recent developments in behavioural microsimulation. We discuss the criteria by which models of labour supply may be chosen for application to behavioural microsimulation, and consider how such models may be augmented to control for fixed costs, child–related work costs, preference heterogeneity and endogeneity in wages. We describe methods by which non–linear budget constraints may be accommodated in estimation, policy simulations and welfare analysis, and discuss how stochastic terms may be factored into the simulation of behavioural responses to a policy shock.     

Entrepreneurship,Austrian Economics,and the Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry

I consider whether entrepreneurship is a distinct category within economic theory. More generally, I consider the links between discussions of entrepreneurship and philosophic debates over the nature of the aesthetic. For instance, Kant's attempt to elevate the category of the aesthetic has much in common with Kirzner's attempt to elevate the concept of the entrepreneur. Shackle's theory of choice refers very directly to the notion of the aesthetic. Theories of the aesthetic and theories of the entrepreneur have common strengths and weaknesses.     

Interest-only and principal-only mortgage strips as interest-rate contingent claims

Interest-only (IO) and principal-only (PO) mortgage strips are valued in a stochastic interest-rate environment. The prepayment rate of the underlying mortgages is affected by two considerations not present in the pure financially rational model: (1) The property owner's holding period is assumed to follow a Gamma distribution, resulting in the possibility of prepayment due to the sale of the property (i.e., prepayment that is too early based on market interest rates); and (2) borrowers are assumed to face heterogeneous transaction costs related to refinancing the existing mortgage, and delay refinancing when market conditions make it optimal to do so (refinancing too late). Properties of IO/PO strips are identified by the finite difference method.     

Life histories in housing research: the case of Pakistanis in Glasgow

The discussion centers on three key criticisms of life history techniques, which are reviewed and evaluated with reference to data from research on Pakistani housing histories in Glasgow. Firstly, the problem of bias is reframed as an issue of reflexivity, which enhances research findings. Secondly, awareness of the cultural construction of life histories allows greater depth of analysis. And thirdly the problem of the relationship between the life history and wider social forces is argued to increase awareness and understanding of social actor agency. In conclusion, we argue that life history techniques can develop research on housing careers, particularly of Pakistanis, provided certain of their properties are recognised in the process of analysis.     

Testing Alternative Regression Frameworks for Predictive Modeling of Health Care Costs

Predictive models of health care costs have become mainstream in much health care actuarial work. The Affordable Care Act requires the use of predictive modeling-based risk-adjuster models to transfer revenue between different health exchange participants. Although the predictive accuracy of these models has been investigated in a number of studies, the accuracy and use of models for applications other than risk adjustment have not been the subject of much investigation. We investigate predictive modeling of future health care costs using several statistical techniques. Our analysis was performed based on a dataset of 30,000 insureds containing claims information from two contiguous years. The dataset contains more than 100 covariates for each insured, including detailed breakdown of past costs and causes encoded via coexisting condition flags. We discuss statistical models for the relationship between next-year costs and medical and cost information to predict the mean and quantiles of future cost, ranking risks and identifying most predictive covariates. A comparison of multiple models is presented, including (in addition to the traditional linear regression model underlying risk adjusters) Lasso GLM, multivariate adaptive regression splines, random forests, decision trees, and boosted trees. A detailed performance analysis shows that the traditional regression approach does not perform well and that more accurate models are possible.     

Personal income tax mimicry: evidence from international panel data

This paper investigates personal income tax (PIT) mimicry at the international level. It is the first to empirically investigate the extent to which PIT mimicry varies along the tax schedule and the first to include nations which are not part of the OECD. We use data on international personal income tax schedules from the world tax indicators to estimate marginal and average tax rates at various multiples of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). These tax rates are then used to estimate the extent to which countries respond to their neighbors’ PIT policy. We find evidence of PIT mimicry using a balanced panel of 53 countries over 24 years. This finding is strongest for tax rates at lower multiples of per capita GDP and survives several robustness checks.     

Unequal inequalities: Do progressive taxes reduce income inequality?

This paper analyzes the effect of changes in the structural progressivity of national income tax systems on observed and actual income inequality. Using several unique measures of progressivity over the 1981–2005 period for a large panel of countries, we find that progressivity reduces inequality in observed income, but has a significantly smaller impact on actual inequality, approximated by consumption-based Ginis. An empirical comparative analysis shows that the differential effect on observed versus actual inequality is much larger in countries with weaker legal institutions. We also find that structural progressivity has a greater equalizing effect in environments that support pro-poor redistribution. Substantial differences in inequality response to changes in top versus bottom rates are also uncovered.     

On the Relation between Local Amenities and House Price Dynamics

This study explores the extent to which local amenities are related to house price volatility, returns and risk‐adjusted returns across 238 MSAs. We find strong evidence that high amenity areas experience greater price volatility. In regards to returns, high amenity areas experience greater (lower) real returns in appreciating (depreciating) markets. However, high amenity areas experience little to no abnormal risk‐adjusted returns. Results from the study are robust to an endogenous treatment of amenities and land supply elasticity. Overall, we conclude that the desirability of a metropolitan area is a significant channel through which land values drive house price dynamics.