Retirement and Home Production: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption by home production, but do not consider joint behaviour of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production of both partners in a couple. Our identification strategy exploits the earliest age retirement laws in France, enabling a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach. We find that own retirement significantly increases own hours of home production and the effect is larger for men than for women. Moreover, retirement of the female partner significantly reduces male hours of home production but not vice versa.time allocation, house work, couples

Does Income Taxation Affect Partners' Household Chores?

We study the impact of income taxation on both partners' allocation of time to market work and unpaid house work in households with two adults. We estimate a structural household utility model in which the marginal utilities of leisure and house work of both partners are modelled as random coefficients, depending on observed and unobserved characteristics of the household and the two partners. We use a discrete choice model with choice sets of 2,401 points for each couple, distinguishing seven market work intervals and seven house work intervals for each partner. The model is estimated using data for France, which taxes incomes of married couples jointly, like, for instance, Germany and the US. We find that both partners’ market and non-market time allocation decisions are responsive to changes in the tax system or other policy changes that change the financial incentives. Women's time allocation is more responsive to the own and the partner’s wage rate than men's. Tax policy simulations suggest that moving from joint taxation for married couples to separate taxation of each spouse would go a small step in the direction of equalizing market and non-market work of spouses. Selective taxation with smaller tax rates for women than for men would magnify these effects.time use, taxation, labour supply, discrete choice models

Land degradation in Ethiopia: What do stoves have to do with it?

Land degradation is a particularly vexing problem in developing countries; as forests are depleted, crop residues and dung are used for fuel, which degrades cropland. In Ethiopia, the government encourages tree planting and adoption of energy efficient stove technologies to mitigate land degradation. We use data from 200 households in Tigrai, Ethiopia to examine the adoption of new stove technologies. Adoption is an economic decision, related to savings in time spent collecting fuel and cooking, and cattle required for everyday purposes. Results indicate adopters of efficient stoves reduce respective wood and dung use by 68 and 316 kg per month.land degradation, technology adoption, Africa, Ethiopia

Land Degradation in Ethiopia: What Do Stoves Have To Do With It?

In Ethiopia deforestation is a major problem and many peasants have switched from fuelwood to dung for cooking and heating purposes, thereby damaging the agricultural productivity of cropland. The Ethiopian government has embarked on a two-pronged policy in an effort to stem deforestation and the degradation of agricultural lands: (i) tree planting or afforestation; (ii) dissemination of more efficient stove technologies. The motivation in here is, therefore, to examine the potential of the strategy of disseminating improved stoves in the rehabilitation of agricultural and forests lands. For empirical analysis we used a dataset on cross-section of 200 farm households from the highlands of Tigrai, northern Ethiopia. We used a two-step procedure reminiscent of hedonic pricing. Results in this paper indicate that farm households in Tigrai/ Ethiopia are willing to adopt new/improved stove innovations if these result in economic savings. Moreover, results suggest a significant positive impact in slowing the degradation of agricultural and forested lands. On a per household basis, we found that adopters will collect 68.3 kg less wood each month, while more dung in the form of manure becomes available as 19.899 kg less dung is collected each month. In terms of wood alone, assuming an average of 79 t of biomass per ha, we found the potential reduction in deforestation amounts to some 1,794 ha per year, not an inconsequential savings.land degradation, technology adoption, fuel-savings efficiency, stoves, Ethiopia, Land Economics/Use, Q12, Q16, Q24,

Large-scale validation of SCIAMACHY reflectance in the ultraviolet

In this paper we present an extensive validation of calibrated SCIAMACHY nadir reflectance in the UV (240-400 nm) by comparison with spectra calculated with a fast radiative transfer model. We use operationally delivered near-real-time level 1 data, processed with standard calibration tools. A total of 9 months of data has been analysed. This is the first reflectance validation study incorporating such a large amount of data. It is shown that this method is a valuable tool for spotting spatial and temporal anomalies. We conclude that SCIAMACHY reflectance data in this wavelength range are stable over the investigated period. In addition, we show an example of an anomaly in the data due to an error in the processing chain that could be detected by our comparison. This validation method could be extremely useful too for validation of other satellite spectrometers, such as OMI and GOME-2

Alignment issues in photonic crystal device fabrication

An important requirement in the fabrication of photonic crystal structures is the correct relative alignment of structural elements. Accuracy should be in the order of some tens of nanometres. Some of the options for providing such accuracy are discussed. Examples are given of aligning defects with respect to a predefined 2D lattice, aligning access waveguides with respect to a small local photonic crystal structure, and the alignment of successive periodically structured layers in a 3D "woodpile" structure

Individual heterogeneity and pension choices: How to communicate an effective message?

We use the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explain how communication influences the heterogeneity in pension choices. To this end we exploit the 2007 Italian reform that allowed transferring future severance pay contributions into a pension fund and was accompanied by an information campaign with a clear message. According to ELM, individuals follow either a “central route” or a “peripheral route” depending on their motivation and ability to think, and eventually change or retain their initial attitude. Based on Logit models and data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth, we find that the decision to transfer the severance pay into a pension fund was taken by more educated and older individuals, with high household income. Since the reform was mainly directed at low income and younger individuals, this result suggest that the information campaign was not very effective. Moreover, our findings show that generic financial literacy does not significantly affect decision consciousness, pointing at a more relevant role in the elaboration process for: the individual’s comprehension of the specific choice object (pension funds), cognitive skills, and influential contextual factors (i.e., unions and employer’s pressure)

Individual Heterogeneity and Pension Choices How to Communicate an Effective Message?

We use the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explain how communication influences pension choices in a heterogeneous population. We exploit the 2007 Italian reform that allowed transferring future severance pay contributions into a pension fund and was accompanied by an information campaign with a clear message. According to ELM, individuals follow either a “central route” or a “peripheral route” depending on their motivation and ability to process, and eventually change or retain their initial attitude. Based on data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth, we find that not only financial literacy plays a relevant role in the employees’ elaboration process, but also the individual’s comprehension of the specific choice object, the personal relevance of the decision, cognitive skills, and contextual elements (e.g. unions, employer pressure). These considerations have policy implications for the effectiveness of information messages in the pension domain

Individual heterogeneity and pension choices: how to communicate an effective message?

We use the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explain how communication influences the heterogeneity in pension choices. To this end we exploit the 2007 Italian reform that allowed transferring future severance pay contributions into a pension fund and was accompanied by an information campaign with a clear message. According to ELM, individuals follow either a “central route” or a “peripheral route” depending on their motivation and ability to think, and eventually change or retain their initial attitude. Based on Logit models and data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth, we find that the decision to transfer the severance pay into a pension fund was taken by more educated and older individuals, with high household income. Since the reform was mainly directed at low income and younger individuals, this result suggest that the information campaign was not very effective. Moreover, our findings show that generic financial literacy does not significantly affect decision consciousness, pointing at a more relevant role in the elaboration process for: the individual’s comprehension of the specific choice object (pension funds), cognitive skills, and influential contextual factors (i.e., unions and employer’s pressure)