Comment on 'Stability of the semiclassical Einstein equation'

Some mathematical errors of the paper commented upon [W.-M. Suen, Phys. Rev. D 40, (1989) 315] are corrected.Comment: 3 pages, LaTeX, reprinted from Phys. Rev. D 50 (1994) 545

Market-procured housework: The demand for domestic servants and female labor supply

Domestic servants and a woman's own time are substitutes in the household production process. The demand for servants increases with the woman's market wage, her non-wage income, and the presence of young children in the family. A bivariate probit model using data from Hong Kong suggests that women who participate in the labor force have a 0.008 higher probability of having servants than women who are not in the labor force. Conversely, women who have servants have a 0.22 higher probability of labor force participation than women with no servants. In households that use market-procured domestic help, the presence of young children is found to have no negative effect on female labor force participation. © 1994.postprin

Testing rent sharing using individualized measures of rent: Evidence from domestic helpers

The market for resident domestic helpers offers a rare opportunity where the surplus from employment relationship can be quantitatively measured for each individual employee. Using the difference between employer's cost of time and employee's wage as a measure of rent, it is found that wages for domestic helpers are positively related to rent. However the apparent sharing of rent is better explained by matching than by efficiency wage models. Rent sharing is observed even in households where monitoring or turnover costs are low. Rent sharing is not observed among newly arrived foreign domestic helpers, whose ability remains to be revealed.postprin

Risk Avoidance under Limited Liability

When the expected flow returns from an investment is positive, bankruptcy carries a cost in terms of the future profit opportunities forgone. This paper demonstrates that, under limited liability, the one-shot gain from taking risky projects is offset by the long-term loss resulting from a higher probability of bankruptcy. In a multi-period model, the incentive problems associated with limited liability is less severe than what static models would suggest. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D81, G33. © 1995 Academic Press. All rights reserved.postprin

Retirement patterns in Hong Kong: A censored regression analysis

This paper provides an overview of retirement patterns in Hong Kong on the basis of limited data. A censored regression model is used to infer the retirement age from people's current retirement status and their current age. This model is equivalent to a restricted probit model, and the interpretation of parameters is straightforward. The results clearly show a negative income effect on the retirement decision. The retirement age seems to be positively related to lifetime earnings but negatively related to the rate of decline of earnings with age.postprin

Mutual admiration clubs

This article proposes a theory of group formation based on the motive to seek informed opinion. Because an individual evaluates whether others are informed or not using his own priors, he identifies people with similar beliefs to be more informed than those with different beliefs. The result is an equilibrium in which like-minded individuals self-select into distinct groups, with members of each group believing that their own group is superior.© 2009 Western Economic Association International.postprin

Estimating the effects of immigration in one city

This paper presents a new method of estimating the effects of immigration on the labor market that does not require variations in immigration across cities. With a two-stage CES model that aggregates immigrant groups by age cohorts and aggregates cohorts into effective labor, the econometric estimation and the interpretation of parameters are particularly straightforward. The paper uses data from Hong Kong to estimate the elasticities of complementarity associated with increased immigration. A simulation study indicates that a 40% increase in the stock of new immigrants will 5lower wages by no more than one percent.postprin

Marital transfer and intra-household allocation: A Nash-bargaining analysis

This paper explores the implications of inter-generational marital transfers on the allocation of resources within a conjugal household. Adopting a Nash-bargaining framework with alternative models of the threat points, it is argued that parents have greater incentive to make transfers to a married child than to a single child because of the efficiency gains from joint consumption and production of family public goods and because of the increase in bargaining power of the child in the allocation of private consumption. Such transfers also enhance marital stability by increasing the efficiency gains from marriage. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Media as watchdogs: The role of news media in electoral competition

We develop an equilibrium model to analyze the role of the media in electoral competition. When policy payoffs are state-dependent, party policies do not converge to the median voter's ideal policy if the media report only party policies. News analysis about the state, though possibly biased, can discipline off-equilibrium deviations and make the parties adopt more centrist policies. Since voters are rational, the party favored by the media need not win with a higher probability. Instead, media bias may reduce the effectiveness of electoral competition and lead to more polarized policies. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin