计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Offering a unifying theoretical perspective not readily available in any other text, this innovative guide to econometrics uses simple geometrical arguments to develop students' intuitive understanding of basic and advanced topics, emphasizing throughout the practical applications of modern theory and nonlinear techniques of estimation. One theme of the text is the use of artificial regressions for estimation, reference, and specification testing of nonlinear models, including diagnostic tests for parameter constancy, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and other types of mis-specification. Explaining how estimates can be obtained and tests can be carried out, the authors go beyond a mere algebraic description to one that can be easily translated into the commands of a standard econometric software package. Covering an unprecedented range of problems with a consistent emphasis on those that arise in applied work, this accessible and coherent guide to the most vital topics in econometrics today is indispensable for advanced students of econometrics and students of statistics interested in regression and related topics. It will also suit practising econometricians who want to update their skills. Flexibly designed to accommodate a variety of course levels, it offers both complete coverage of the basic material and separate chapters on areas of specialized interest.

Estimation and Inference in Econometrics

This paper aims to present a theoretical survey of the capability approach in an interdisciplinary and accessible way. It focuses on the main conceptual and theoretical aspects of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and others. The capability approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well‐being and social arrangements, the design of policies, and proposals about social change in society. Its main characteristics are its highly interdisciplinary character, and the focus on the plural or multidimensional aspects of well‐being. The approach highlights the difference between means and ends, and between substantive freedoms (capabilities) and outcomes (achieved functionings).

The Capability Approach: a theoretical survey

In India, there are strong and intimate links between traditional notions of caste, purity and pollution and the preparation and consumption of food. This article studies trajectories of social change within small South Indian eating places, popularly known as Udupi hotels. During the second half of the 20th century such enterprises absorbed a large number of unskilled migrants, mainly from Karnataka's coastal belt. We explore the relationship between caste and employability within the industry and the impact of caste on individual career progress. Combining case studies of enterprises from villages, small towns and cities with data from in-depth interviews with a sample of hotel workers, we argue that small South Indian eating places are elusive social arenas that can shed new light on the nature, persistence and change in caste-based exclusion in important markets for unskilled labour in modern India.

What the signboard hides : Food, caste and employability in small south indian eating places

This paper explores the relationship between household literacy and the labour market outcomes of illiterate household members which Basu, Narayan and Ravallion (2002) report using Household Income and Expenditure data from Bangladesh. BNR attribute a considerable wage premium for proximate-illiterate women in off-farm employment to labour productivity gains from intra-household literacy sharing. This wage premium also suggests that women may be more efficient recipients of literacy externalities than men. We propose that any such relationship might not be due to higher labour productivity but may have other explanations such as systematically different and unobserved attributes of illiterate females married into literate households. We also pay attention to the negative selection of illiterate females into non-farm wage employment, which contrary to received wisdom suggests that household literacy may not be unambiguously progressive for females. We propose that the widely reported finding that ...

Literacy Sharing, Assortative Mating, or What? Labour Market Advantages and Proximate Illiteracy Revisited

Banerjee and Iyer find that districts which the British assigned to landlord revenue systems systematically underperform districts with non-landlord based revenue systems in agricultural performance, after the onset of the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s. Based on colonial documents, archival research and the work of historians, we correct a mis-interpretation of the land revenue system in Central Provinces, which BI characterise as landlord based. The historical evidence suggests that this region should be attributed to a mixed landlord/non-landlord based revenue system. Using a more appropriate classification, we find no evidence that agricultural performance of Indian districts in the post-independence period was adversely affected by the landlord land revenue system.

/pdf/on-the-colonial-origins-of-agricultural-development-in-india-1oknzhq9bj.pdf

On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India: A Re-examination of Banerjee and Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance’

Economists have focused on job search and supply-side explanations for network effects in labour transactions. This paper develops and tests an alternative explanation for the high prevalence of network-based labour market entry in developing countries. In our theoretical framework, employers use employee networks as screening and incentive mechanisms to improve the quality of recruitment. Our framework suggests a negative relationship between network use and the skill intensity of jobs, a positive association between economic activity and network use and a negative relationship between network use and pro-labour legislation. Furthermore, social identity effects are expected to intensify when compared to information-sharing and other network mechanisms. Using data from an all-India Employment Survey, we implement a novel empirical strategy to test these relationships and find support for our demand-side explanation.

/pdf/job-recruitment-networks-and-migration-to-cities-in-india-zlcp8s1x0f.pdf

Job Recruitment Networks and Migration to Cities in India

........................................................................................................... iii List of figures and tables .................................................................................... v Abbreviations and acronyms ............................................................................. vi

Vegard Iversen

Papers

What the signboard hides : Food, caste and employability in small south indian eating places

Literacy Sharing, Assortative Mating, or What? Labour Market Advantages and Proximate Illiteracy Revisited

On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India: A Re-examination of Banerjee and Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance’

Job Recruitment Networks and Migration to Cities in India

TV, female empowerment and demographic change in rural India