Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Turkish Wage Curve; Evidence From The Household Labor Force Survey, Badi H. Baltagi, Yusuf Soner Baskaya, Timur Hulagu

Center for Policy Research

This paper examines the Turkish wage curve using individual data from the Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) including 26 NUTS-2 regions over the period 2005 - 2008. When the local unemployment rate is treated as predetermined, there is evidence in favor of the wage curve only for younger and female workers. However, if the lagged unemployment rate is used as an instrument for current unemployment rate, we find an unemployment elasticity of -0.099. We also find a higher elasticity for younger, less educated, low experienced workers than for older, more educated and more experienced workers. Another important finding is that …

Social Interactions In The Labor Market, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner, John A. Bishop

Center for Policy Research

We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present.

Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group average. The demand for a good may also be influenced by either a spillover effect or a conformity effect. Positive spillover increases the demand for the good with interactions, and a conformity effect makes the demand curve pivot to become less price sensitive. Similar social interactions effects appear in the associated derived demands for labor.

Individual and community factors may …

Losers And Losers: Some Demographics Of Medical Malpractice Tort Reforms, Andrew I. Friedson, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

Our research examines individual differences in the effects of medical malpractice tort reforms on pre-trial settlement speed and settlement amounts by age and most likely settlement size. Findings of note include that, unlike previously assumed, both absolute and percentage losses from tort reform are small for infants in an asset value sense and that the prime-aged working population is the group most negatively affected by tort reform. Maximum entropy quantile regressions highlight the robustness of our conclusions and reveal that the settlement losses most informative for policy evaluation differ greatly from mean regression estimates.

Test Of Hypotheses In Panel Data Models When The Regressor And Disturbances Are Possibly Nonstationary, Badi H. Baltagi, Chihwa Kao, Sanggon Na

Center for Policy Research

This paper considers the problem of hypotheses testing in a simple panel data regression model with random individual effects and serially correlated disturbances. Following Baltagi, Kao and Liu (2008), we allow for the possibility of non-stationarity in the regressor and/or the disturbance term. While Baltagi et al. (2008) focus on the asymptotic properties and distributions of the standard panel data estimators, this paper focuses on test of hypotheses in this setting. One important finding is that unlike the time series case, one does not necessarily need to rely on the “super-efficient” type AR estimator by Perron and Yabu (2009) to …

Medical Technology And The Production Of Health Care, Badi H. Baltagi, Francesco Moscone, Elisa Tosetti

Center for Policy Research

This paper investigates the factors that determine differences across OECD countries in health outcomes, using data on life expectancy at age 65, over the period 1960 to 2007. We estimate a production function where life expectancy depends on health and social spending, lifestyle variables, and medical innovation. Our first set of regressions includes a set of observed medical technologies by country. Our second set of regressions proxy technology using a spatial process. The paper also tests whether in the long-run countries tend to achieve similar levels of health outcomes. Our results show that health spending has a significant and mild …

Testing For Breaks In Cointegrated Panels With Common And Idiosyncratic Stochastic Trends, Chihwa Kao, Lorenzo Trapani, Giovanni Urga

Center for Policy Research

In this paper, we develop tests for structural change in cointegrated panel regressions with common and idiosyncratic trends. We consider both the cases of observable and nonobservable common trends, deriving a Functional Central Limit Theorem for the partial sample estimators under the null of no break. We show that tests based on sup-Wald statistics are powerful versus breaks of size , also proving that power is present when the time of change differs across units and when only some units have a break. Our framework is extended to the case of cross correlated regressors and endogeneity. Monte Carlo evidence shows …

Instrumental Variable Estimation Of A Spatial Autoregressive Panel Model With Random Effects, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper extends the instrumental variable estimators of Kelejian and Prucha (1998) and Lee (2003) proposed for the cross-sectional spatial autoregressive model to the random effects spatial autoregressive panel data model. It also suggests an extension of the Baltagi (1981) error component 2SLS estimator to this spatial panel model.