Building a Set of Internationally Comparable Value of Statistical Life Studies: Estimates of Chinese Willingness to Pay to Reduce Mortality Risk

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

This study is the eighth in a series of stated-preference studies designed to enhance the basis for international benefits transfer of value of statistical life (VSL) estimates. The series has fielded essentially similar stated-preference surveys in Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This Chinese study estimates the willingness to pay for contemporaneous and future mortality risk reductions of residents of Shanghai, Jiujiang, and Nanning, China using a stated-preference payment-card survey.

Endogenous borrowing constraints and wealth inequality

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This paper studies the evolution of wealth inequality in an economy with endogenous borrowing constraints. In the model economy, young agents need to borrow to finance human capital investments but cannot commit to repaying their loans. Creditors can punish defaulters by banishing them permanently from the credit market. At equilibrium, loan default is prevented by imposing a borrowing limit tied to the borrower's inheritance.

Fairness versus Efficiency: How Procedural Fairness Concerns Affect Coordination

Submitted by Eugenia Leon on

What happens if a mechanism that aims at improving coordination between individuals treats selected individuals unfairly? We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether procedural fairness concerns affect how well individuals are able to solve a coordination problem in a two-player Volunteer's Dilemma. Subjects receive external action recommendations that can help them avoid miscoordination if followed by both players.

Policy Design

Positional preferences in time and space: Optimal income taxation with dynamic social comparisons

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

This paper concerns optimal redistributive non-linear income taxation in an OLG model, where people care about their own consumption relative to (i) other people's current consumption, (ii) own past consumption, and (iii) other people's past consumption. We show that both (i) and (iii) affect the marginal income tax structure whereas (ii) does not. We also derive conditions under which atemporal and intertemporal consumption comparisons give rise to exactly the same tax policy responses.

Policy Design

Does Religious Affiliation Affect Migration?

Submitted by NENRE Concepcion on

In this paper we tested if social networks at the origin, measured by religious affiliation, can affect the out-migration decision. For this purpose, we estimated a conditional logit model and a mixed logit model for the decision to migrate to one of 13 destinations, or to stay at the original location. In general, the results were as expected, given theoretical considerations, and were robust to model specification and estimation procedures. Moreover, the results support the hypothesis that religious attachment affects migration decisions.

Experiments