Social Security and Well-Being of the Elderly: the Case of France

We use the 1982 and 1993 reforms of the French pension system in the private sector to study the relationship between Social Security benefits and the well-being of the elderly between the late 70s and the beginning of the new century. Affecting people in a different way, depending on year of birth, gender or socio-economic status, these reforms provide some sources of identification to estimate the effect of benefit changes on the standard of living of elderly families. To avoid spurious correlation or endogeneity problems in the determination of the impact of Social Security benefits on well-being we compute simulated social security payments and compare their evolution to various measures of well-being based on income, consumption, poverty, inequality or life satisfaction for both elderly and non-elderly families. We then focus on the 1982 and 1993 reforms. Our estimations conclude to a general increase in income, consumption and subjective well-being. However, a one euro increases in simulated benefit does not induce a one euro increase in after tax income (except at the top of the distribution), which shows some substitution between the different sources of income available for the elderly households. Estimation of difference in difference models to evaluate the impact on income and consumption of the 1982 and 1993 reforms underlines that it may exist asymmetry in the substitution effect between the different sources of income of the elderly depending on the sign of the change in generosity of the pension reforms.Retirement policies, Income, Poverty

Measuring the International Dimension of Output Volatility

This paper studies output fluctuations in a panel of OECD economies with the aim to decompose the evolution in output volatility into domestic and international factors. To this end we use a factor-augmented dynamic panel model with both domestic and international shocks and spillovers between countries through trade linkages. Changes in the volatility of output growth can be due to a time-varying sensitivity to these shocks, changes in the propagation mechanism or shifts in the variances of shocks. We explicitly model cross-sectional dependence in the variance equation by specifying a common factor structure in the volatility of domestic shocks. The results show that while the size of international shocks and spillovers does not decrease in most countries, the volatilities of domestic shocks share a clear common decreasing trend. Hence, the 'Great Moderation' appears to be mainly driven by a decline in the volatility of domestic shocks rather than smaller international shocks

Analyzing Controllable Factors Influencing Cycle Time Distribution in Semiconductor Industries

abstract: Semiconductor manufacturing is one of the most complex manufacturing systems in today’s times. Since semiconductor industry is extremely consumer driven, market demands within this industry change rapidly. It is therefore very crucial for these industries to be able to predict cycle time very accurately in order to quote accurate delivery dates. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models are often used to model these complex manufacturing systems in order to generate estimates of the cycle time distribution. However, building models and executing them consumes sufficient time and resources. The objective of this research is to determine the influence of input parameters on the cycle time distribution of a semiconductor or high volume electronics manufacturing system. This will help the decision makers to implement system changes to improve the predictability of their cycle time distribution without having to run simulation models. In order to understand how input parameters impact the cycle time, Design of Experiments (DOE) is performed. The response variables considered are the attributes of cycle time distribution which include the four moments and percentiles. The input to this DOE is the output from the simulation runs. Main effects, two-way and three-way interactions for these input variables are analyzed. The implications of these results to real world scenarios are explained which would help manufactures understand the effects of the interactions between the input factors on the estimates of cycle time distribution. The shape of the cycle time distributions is different for different types of systems. Also, DES requires substantial resources and time to run. In an effort to generalize the results obtained in semiconductor manufacturing analysis, a non- complex system is considered.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Mechanical Engineering 201

The Extensive Margin of Exporting Products: A Firm-level Analysis

We use a panel of Brazilian exporters, their products, and destination markets to document a set of regularities for multi-product exporters: (i) few top-selling products account for the bulk of a firm’s exports in a market, (ii) the distribution of exporter scope (the number of products per firm in a market) is similar across markets, and (iii) within each market, exporter scope is positively associated with average sales per product. Our data also show that firms systematically export their highest-sales products across multiple destinations. To account for these regularities, we develop a model of firm-product heterogeneity with entry costs that depend on exporter scope. Estimating this model for the within-firm sales distribution we identify the nature and components of product entry costs. We find that firms face a strong decline in product sales with scope but also that market-specific entry costs drop fast. Counterfactual experiments with globally falling entry costs indicate that a large share of the simulated increase in trade is attributable to declines in the firm’s entry cost for the first product.international trade, heterogeneous firms, multi-product firms, firm and product panel data, Brazil

The competition effect in business cycles : [Version 21 März 2012]

How do changes in market structure affect the US business cycle? We estimate a monetary DSGE model with endogenous rm/product entry and a translog expenditure function by Bayesian methods. The dynamics of net business formation allow us to identify the 'competition effect', by which desired price markups and inflation decrease when entry rises. We find that a 1 percent increase in the number of competitors lowers desired markups by 0.18 percent. Most of the cyclical variability in inflation is driven by markup fluctuations due to sticky prices or exogenous shocks rather than endogenous changes in desired markups

A Kriging Method for Modeling Cycle Time-Throughput Profiles in Manufacturing

In semiconductor manufacturing, the steady-state behavior of a wafer fab system can be characterized by its cycle time-throughput profiles. These profiles quantify the relationship between the cycle time of a product and the system throughput and product mix. The objective of this work is to efficiently generate such cycle time-throughput profiles in manufacturing which can further assist decision makings in production planning.;In this research, a metamodeling approach based on Stochastic Kriging model with Qualitative factors (SKQ) has been adopted to quantify the target relationship of interest. Furthermore, a sequential experimental design procedure is developed to improve the efficiency of simulation experiments. For the initial design, a Sequential Conditional Maximin algorithm is utilized. Regarding the follow-up designs, batches of design points are determined using a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm.;The procedure is applied to a Jackson network, as well as a scale-down wafer fab system. In both examples, the prediction performance of the SKQ model is promising. It is also shown that the SKQ model provides narrower confidence intervals compared to the Stochastic Kriging model (SK) by pooling the information of the qualitative variables

Saving for Retirement: Wage Growth and Unexpected Events

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Propagating Uncertainty in Solar Panel Performance for Life Cycle Modeling in Early Stage Design

One of the challenges in accurately applying metrics for life cycle assessment lies in accounting for both irreducible and inherent uncertainties in how a design will perform under real world conditions. This paper presents a preliminary study that compares two strategies, one simulation-based and one set-based, for propagating uncertainty in a system. These strategies for uncertainty propagation are then aggregated. This work is conducted in the context of an amorphous photovoltaic (PV) panel, using data gathered from the National Solar Radiation Database, as well as realistic data collected from an experimental hardware setup specifically for this study. Results show that the influence of various sources of uncertainty can vary widely, and in particular that solar radiation intensity is a more significant source of uncertainty than the efficiency of a PV panel. This work also shows both set-based and simulation-based approaches have limitations and must be applied thoughtfully to prevent unrealistic results. Finally, it was found that aggregation of the two uncertainty propagation methods provided faster results than either method alone.Center for Scalable and Integrated NanomanufacturingNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center

Assessing poverty and distributional impacts of the global crisis in the Philippines : a microsimulation approach

As the financial crisis has spread through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it difficult to track its impact in developing countries. This paper uses a micro-simulation approach to assess the poverty and distributional effects of the crisis in the Philippines. The authors find increases in both the level and the depth of aggregate poverty. Income shocks are relatively large in the middle part of the income distribution. They also find that characteristics of people who become poor because of the crisis are different from those of both chronically poor people and the general population. The findings can be useful for policy makers wishing to identify leading monitoring indicators to track the impact of macroeconomic shocks and to design policies that protect vulnerable groups.Rural Poverty Reduction,Regional Economic Development,Labor Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research