Residential Mobility and Social Capital

This paper empirically investigates the role of social capital in households’residential mobility behavior by considering its spatial dimension. This study focuses on a household’s social ties with people living nearby, which we refer to as its “local social capital”. Local social capital may deter residential mobility, because the resources stemming from them are location-specific and will be less valuable if a household moves. We conjecture that a household’s possession of local social capital has a negative effect on its residential mobility, and this negative effect of local social capital may be stronger on long-distance mobility than on short-distance mobility. Our empirical investigation is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We obtain evidence which is supportive of these conjectures.

Entrepreneurship and Risk Aversion

Evans and Jovanovic (1989) find that wealth is an important determinant of business startups due to liquidity constraints. However, Cressy (2000) argues that if risk aversion is a negative function of wealth, Evans and Jovanovic's empirical results could be spurious and the positive effect of wealth could be due to the omission of risk aversion in the regression equation. In other words, according to Cressy, one's wealth does not have any e®ect on business startups once the degree of risk aversion is accounted for. This paper attempts to inves-tigate the validity of Cressy's conjecture. We empirically examine the e®ect of wealth on the transition into self-employment, while allowing for the effect of risk aversion. Our empirical findings show that Evans and Jovanovic's (1989) results are robust, i.e., wealth has a positive e®ect on business startups even allowing for the confounding e®ects of risk aversion.Business Startup, Self-employment, Liquidity Constraints

Cigarette smoking and self-control

This paper empirically studies time inconsistent preferences in the context of cigarette smoking behavior. With hyperbolic discounting, an individual has time inconsistent preferences, which give rise to a lack of self-control, i.e., she may perpetually postpone the execution of a plan. This implies that a smoker who wants to quit has a demand for control devices, e.g., a smoking ban in public areas or a hike in cigarette excise taxes. This paper empirically tests this implication, using a sample that is based on survey data from Taiwan. The estimation results indicate that a smoker’s intention to quit has a positive effect on the smoker’s support for smoking bans and a cigarette excise tax increase. These results suggest that time inconsistent preferences are valid in the context of cigarette smoking behavior. This casts doubt on the validity of the assumption that individuals have time consistent preferences in Becker and Murphy’s (1988) rational addiction model.

ANALYSIS OF HOUSEWIVES' GROCERY SHOPPING BEHAVIOR IN TAIWAN: AN APPLICATION OF THE POISSON SWITCHING REGRESSION

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate Taiwanese married women's grocery shopping behavior in relation to their labor force participation status. In this study, focus is limited to their grocery shopping frequency which is meant to be a proxy for an input to household production, i.e., food at home. A Poisson switching regression model is developed to estimate parameters of married women's shopping behavior. The results show that the labor force participation status does have a great impact on time allocation behavior.Household production, Labor supply rationing, Poisson switching regression, Shopping frequency, Time allocation, Consumer/Household Economics,

Obesity and Risk Knowledge

Obesity is an epidemic health problem in many developed countries, and it is an emerging public health concern in developing, transitional, and newly-developed countries. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between individuals' knowledge concerning the health risks of obesity and their tendency to be obese (as measured by the \body mass index"). Instead of assuming that obesity is a pure physiological problem as in previous studies, we allow an individual's cost/bene¯t evaluation to play a role. Based on survey data from Taiwan, we investigate the relationship with the quantile regression technique. The results suggest that such a relationship does exist and it is di®erent for males and females.Obesity, Overweight, Risk Knowledge, Quantile Regression

The Labor Market Effects of National Health Insurance : Evidence From Taiwan

This paper investigates the impacts of national health insurance on the labor market, by considering the case of Taiwan, which implemented national health insurance in March 1995. Taiwan’s national health insurance is financed by premiums, which are proportional to an employee’s salary. These premiums may introduce distortions to the labor market. Based on repeated cross-sections of individual data we find that, on average, private sector employees’ work hours declined relative to their public sector counterparts, while their relative wage rates were almost unchanged with the introduction of national health insurance. The results suggest that neither private sector employers nor their employees were able to shift their premium burden to each other.National Health Insurance, Labor Supply, Wage Rate, Difference-in-Difference

Simulation-Based Two-Step Estimation with Endogenous Regressors

This paper considers models with latent/discrete endogenous regressors and presents a simulation-based two-step (STS) estimator. The endogeneity is corrected by adopting a simulation-based control function approach. The first step consists of simulating the residuals of the reduced-form equation for endogenous regressors. The second step is a regression model (linear, latent or discrete) with the simulated residual as an additional regressor. In this paper we develop the asymptotic theory for the STS estimator and its rate of convergence

Money, Random Matching and Endogenous Growth: A Quantitative Analysis

In this study, we develop a search-and-matching monetary growth model to analyze the effects of inflation on economic growth and social welfare by introducing endogenous economic growth via capital externality into a two-sector search-and-matching model. We find that the channel through which inflation affects economic growth in the search-and-matching model is different from the traditional cash-in-advance model. To facilitate the calibration, we obtain an empirical estimate of the effects of inflation on economic growth using panel regressions. In the simulation analysis, we quantitatively evaluate the welfare effect of inflation in the search-and-matching endogenous growth model and compare it to a search-and-matching exogenous growth model. We find that the welfare effect of inflation is nonlinear in the endogenous growth model whereas it is linear in the exogenous growth model. Furthermore, we find that the welfare cost of inflation under endogenous growth is up to four times as large as the welfare cost of inflation under exogenous growth