We analyze the association between spouses’ earnings taking account of non-linearities along both spouses’ distribution of earnings. We also document the non-linearity of the relationships between earnings and labor force participation, earnings and couple formation, and earnings and number of children. Using simulations, we then analyze how changes in spouses’ rank-dependence structure, labor force participation and couple formation contribute to the upsurge in inequality in the U.S between 1967 and 2018. We find that an increased tendency towards positive sorting contributed substantially to the rise in inequality only among dual-earner couples, while it contributed little to overall inequality across households. Temporal and distributional heterogeneity are important, as earnings association had a more substantial role in the bottom of the earnings distribution and in recent years. The decline in couple formation contributed substantially to the rise in inequality, while the increase in female labor force participation and the fertility decline had equalizing effects.
We examine the effects of child policies on both transitional dynamics and long-term demo-economic outcomes in an overlapping-generations neoclassical growth model à la Chakraborty (J Econ Theory 116(1):119–137, 2004) extended with endogenous fertility under the assumption of weak altruism towards children. The government invests in public health, and an individual’s survival probability at the end of youth depends on health expenditure. We show that multiple development regimes can exist. However, poverty or prosperity does not necessarily depend on the initial conditions, since they are the result of how a child policy is designed. A child tax, for example, can be used effectively to enable those economies that were entrapped in poverty to prosper. There is also a long-term welfare-maximising level of the child tax. We show that a child tax can be used to increase capital accumulation, escape from poverty and maximise long-term welfare also when (a) a public pay-as-you-go pension system is in place and (b) the government issues an amount of public debt. Interestingly, there also exists a couple child tax–health tax that can be used to find the second-best optimum optimorum. In addition, we show that results are robust to the inclusion of decisions regarding the child quantity–quality trade-off under the assumption of impure altruism. In particular, there exists a threshold value of the child tax below (resp. above) which child quality spending is unaffordable (resp. affordable) and different scenarios are in existence. 相似文献
This paper extends de Finetti’s betting-odds method for assessing subjective beliefs to ambiguous events. Thus, a tractable
manner for measuring decision weights under ambiguity is obtained. De Finetti’s method is so transparent that decision makers
can evaluate the relevant tradeoffs in complex situations. The resulting data can easily be analyzed, using nonparametric
techniques. Our extension is implemented in an experiment on predicting next-day’s performance of the Dow Jones and Nikkei
stock indexes, where we test the existence and nature of rank dependence, finding usual patterns. We also find violations
of rank dependence.
Peter P. WakkerEmail: URL: http://www.few.eur.nl/few/people/wakker/
We present a unified look at myopic stability concepts for hedonic games, and discuss the status of the existence problems
of stable coalition structures. In particular, we show that contractual strictly core stable coalition structures always exist,
and present a sufficient condition for the existence of contractually Nash stable coalition structures on the class of separable
games.
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (D. Dimitrov)“by “D. Dimitrov gratefully
acknowledges financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 相似文献
We examine the collective risk attitude of a group with heterogeneous beliefs. We prove that the wealth-dependent probability
distribution used by the representative agent is biased in favor of the beliefs of the more risk tolerant consumers. Moreover,
increasing disagreement on the state probability raises the state probability of the representative agent. It implies that
when most disagreements are concentrated in the tails of the distribution, the perceived collective risk is magnified. This
can help to solve the equity premium puzzle. We show that the trade volume and the equity premium are positively correlated.
Unexpected events such as environmental catastrophes capture wide public attention. Soon after five major shocks—Three Mile
Island, Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill—Congress voted on new risk regulation. This paper conducts
an event study to test whether individual congressional representatives were “shocked” by these environmental disasters into
increasing their probability of voting in favor of risk legislation. On average, representatives were less likely to vote
in favor of bills tied to these five events. Significant heterogeneity in representatives’ responses to these shocks is documented.
Liberal Northeast representatives were most likely to increase their pro-environment voting in the aftermath of these shocks.
This paper reports two experiments which examine the use of ranking methods to elicit ‘certainty equivalent’ values. It investigates
whether such methods are able to eliminate the disparities between choice and value which constitute the ‘preference reversal
phenomenon’ and which thereby pose serious problems for both theory and policy application. The results show that ranking
methods are vulnerable to distorting effects of their own, but that when such effects are controlled for, the preference reversal
phenomenon, previously so strong and striking, is very considerably attenuated.
We analyze the risk levels chosen by agents who have private information regarding their quality, and whose performance will
be judged and rewarded by outsiders. Assume that risk choice is observable. Agents will choose risk strategically to enhance
their expected reputations. We show that conspicuous conservatism results: agents of different qualities choose levels below
those that would be chosen if quality were observable. This happens because bad agents must cloak their identity by choosing
the same risk level as good agents, and good agents are more likely to distinguish themselves if they reduce the risk level.
Our results contrast starkly with those for the case when risk choice cannot be observed.
The ratio bias—according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively
equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers—has recently gained momentum, with researchers
especially in health economics emphasizing the policy importance of the phenomenon. Although the bias has been replicated
several times, some doubts remain about its economic significance. Our two experiments show that the bias disappears once
order effects are excluded, and once salient and dominant incentives are provided. This holds true for both choice and valuation
tasks. Also, adding context to the decision problem does not alter this finding. No ratio bias could be found in between-subject
tests either, which leads us to the conclusion that the policy relevance of the phenomenon is doubtful at best. 相似文献