Factors Affecting Alcohol Purchase Decisions and Expenditures: A Sample Selection Analysis by Ethnicity in Malaysia

Heckman’s sample selection model was applied to data from the Malaysian Household Expenditure Survey 2004/2005 to examine the factors influencing the likelihood of purchasing and the amount spent on alcohol in Malaysia. Results of the marginal effects suggest that while socio-demographic factors are important determinants of household purchase decisions and expenditure levels on alcohol in Malaysia, the effects vary across ethnic groups. Specifically, although education had a significant but modest impact in reducing the probability of alcohol purchases and expenditure levels among ethnic Chinese households, this effect was not evident among the ethnic Indians and other races. While increasing household size lowered the likelihood of purchasing alcohol and its expenditure levels for all ethnic groups, the reinforcing effects of both income and gender were relevant only for ethnic Chinese and Indian households. Last, urban Indian households were less likely to purchase alcohol and spend less compared to rural Indian households.

Measuring sport performances under pressure by classification trees with application to basketball shooting

Measuring players'' performance in team sports is fundamental since managers need to evaluate players with respect to the ability to score during crucial moments of the game. Using Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and play-by-play basketball data, we estimate the probabilities to score the shot with respect to a selection of game covariates related to game pressure. We use scoring probabilities to develop a player-specific shooting performance index that takes into account for the difficulty associated to score different types of shots. By applying this procedure to a large sample of 2016–2017 Basketball Champions League (BCL) and 2017–2018 National Basketball Association (NBA) games, we compare the factors affecting shooting performance in Europe and in the United States and we evaluate a selection of players in terms of the proposed shooting performance index with the final aim of providing useful guidelines for the team strategy.     

District elections and the power of municipal employee unions

Very little prior research has been devoted to the effects of the institutional structure of local government on public sector labor markets. This study addresses the differential effects of the two main systems used to elect city council members — district versus citywide (at-large) elections. The study hypothesizes that, in district-election cities, municipal employees, especially those who are unionized, face a lower cost of influencing city council candidates and, consequently, will have greater power to influence employment conditions. To test this hypothesis, data on U.S. cities over 25,000 population are used to estimate both reduced form and structural wage and employment equations. The results are consistent with the basic hypothesis: district elections provide a more fertile ground for municipal employees, especially those organized in unions, to affect their employment conditions. The authors acknowledge the helpful comments of Tim Sass, Tom Means, and participants in a session at the 1991 Public Choice Society meetings.     

Social Class Differentials During Fertility Decline: England and Wales Revisited

This paper reviews the relationship between landholdings and fertility. Two dimensions of land are identified as salient for fertility behaviour: size of operational holdings and land ownership. It is suggested that these two dimensions and the resulting income streams have disparate effects on fertility. Size of holdings is assumed to have a positive influence on fertility due to the greater labour demands of larger holdings, while land ownership is posited to exert a negative long-term effect because of the increase in old-age security associated with the income returns to equity. In addition to these effects on the demand for children, landholding is also thought to influence the supply of children. A systematic review of the literature finds support for the impact of both dimensions of landholding on fertility preferences, contraceptive behaviour, the proximate determinants and fertility. Both the demand and supply of children appear to be influenced by landholdings. The observed regularities suggest the need for further research on this connection, not the abandonment of this line of inquiry.     

Municipal residency laws: Effects on police employment,compensation, and productivity

This paper offers an alternative model of the effects of residency laws in municipal labor markets. Unlike previous studies, the model assumes that public employee labor markets are characterized by conditions of excess supply and that public services are produced under noncompetitive conditions. The model also implies that productivity improvements increase rather than reduce labor demand, yielding different results with respect to the wage and employment effects of residency requirements. The non-clearing market model is tested using data on municipal police officers. The results are more compatible with the disequilibrium model than with models based on a competitive equilibrium.     

Diversity of vascular plants growing on walls of a Brazilian city

City walls are very specialized environments, conditioned by human activities. There is little information about plants that invade human-made habitats, and no study done in Brazil with plants growing up on walls. The aim of the present study was to survey the wall vascular flora of a Brazilian city, comparing the diversity found in its downtown and neighborhoods. Fieldwork was done in Jundiaí, São Paulo State, where data was collected in downtown and in five neighborhoods. In each place, three transects of 1 km were established and every plant individual was registered. Twenty-eight species were identified, all of them on the downtown transect and most also on the neighborhood transects. Five species were the most frequent, although none were dominant. The diversity indicies of the six transects were not significantly different, with an overall diversity of H′ = 2.93.     

Modeling Technology as a Dynamic Error Components Process: The Case of the Inter-country Agricultural Production Function

In this paper, we propose a dynamic error-components model to represent the unobserved level of technology. This specification implies a well-defined common factor dynamic model for per capita output that can be tested explicitly. The model is applied to data on aggregates of agricultural inputs and outputs for groups of countries from the OECD, Africa (AF), Latin America (LA) as well as centrally planned countries, over a period of 31 years. We find that the proposed model fits the data better than alternative static specifications and satisfies the implied common factor restrictions in two of the samples. The results suggest that although technological change seems to have been a faster process for less developed countries relative to the OECD countries, it has not been fast enough to reduce appreciably the enormous differences in average technological levels that still persist between them.     

The relative effect of unionization and interjurisdictional competition on municipal wages

This study analyzes the effect on municipal employee wages of interjurisdictional competition in municipal service markets. The impact of market conditions are analyzed utilizing a bureaucracy model of local governmental decision making. The study develops hypotheses concerning the degree of competition in this market, constructs empirical measures of competition, and investigates the relationship between competition and wage levels for three categories of municipal workers. The empirical results suggest that local market conditions may be as important a determinant of local wages as local labor market conditions, including union membership. Also, the wage effect of unionization appears to be greater in less competitive local government environments. Financial support from the Earhart Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We would also like to thank Werner Hirsch, Roger Folsom, and Geoffrey Nunn for helpful comments.