Laurence Levin - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Laurence Levin

Research Papers in Economics, Dec 1, 2014

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This paper is an empirical investigation of the behavioral life-cycle savings model. This model p... more This paper is an empirical investigation of the behavioral life-cycle savings model. This model posits that self-control problems causes individuals to depart substantially from rational behavior. I show that this model can explain how the consumption of individuals at or near retirement vary with changes in different types of financial assets. Specifically, consumption spending is sensitive to changes in income and in liquid assets, but not very sensitive to changes in the value of other types of assets such as houses and social security (even though the value of non-liquid assets is relatively large for most of the households in the sample). In general, the evidence presented here favors the Behavioral Life-Cycle Model over the conventional life-cycle model even when liquidity

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

We analyze the role of privatization in creating a constituency for economic reform, markets, and... more We analyze the role of privatization in creating a constituency for economic reform, markets, and democratic institutions, focusing on the Czech Republic. Drawing on a 1996 survey, we examine the 1459 respondents ’ opinions on reforms, economic policies and systems, the legitimacy of transition, and democratic values. Using ordered probit estimation, we find that receiving property through restitution is strongly associated with support for reform and markets. Concerning voucher privatization, we find positive effects for participants retaining shares, but little impact of participation alone. Our simulations suggest that policy designs have substantial The principal problem faced by a politician embarking upon a course of economic reform is how to ensure popular support through the long, uncertain, and frequently painful process of policy enactment and implementation. Serious economic reforms may impose large short-term costs — in production, unemployment, and living standards — ev...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around the hypothesis that peculiar fac... more We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around the hypothesis that peculiar factors create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Nationally representative, linked employee-employer panel data show intra- and inter-firm variation in arrears, and strong regional variation. Arrears are positively related to workers ' job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm; to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance; to regional decline and illiquidity; and to rural location, low hiring rate, employer concentration, and prevalence of the practice in the local labor market. The estimated effect of arrears on quit behavior varies negatively with local arrears, accounting for the persistently high level in some regions.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors th... more We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural regions with low hiring rates, concentrated labor markets, and more prevalent arrears in the past. We argue that wage arrears, unlike wage cuts, have a theoretically ambiguous effect on workers’ quit behavior, and we show empirically that the effect varies negatively with the extent of the practice in the local ...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Monthly Labor Review, 1995

Page 1. Labor Force Attachment Effects of intermittent labor force attachment on women's ear... more Page 1. Labor Force Attachment Effects of intermittent labor force attachment on women's earnings Women who leave the labor market for family reasons often return to wages lower than those of women who did not; they lose ...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Daily city-level expenditures and prices are used to estimate the price responsiveness of gasolin... more Daily city-level expenditures and prices are used to estimate the price responsiveness of gasoline demand in the United States. Using a frequency of purchase model that explicitly acknowledges the distinction between gasoline demand and gasoline expenditures, the price elasticity of demand is consistently found to be an order of magnitude larger than estimates from recent studies using more aggregated data. Estimating demand using higher levels of spatial and temporal aggregation is shown to produce increasingly inelastic estimates. A decomposition is then developed and implemented to understand the relative importance of several different factors in explaining this result.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Working papers from the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and East European Economies a... more Working papers from the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and East European Economies are preliminary in nature, and are circulated to promote discussion and critical comment. Any references to individual working papers should clearly state that the paper is preliminary. The views expressed here are the authors' own and not necessarily those of the Institute or any other organization or institution. Abstract We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around the hypothesis that the patterns and persistence of the practice reflect an institutional equilibrium arising from peculiar factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to reveal substantial intrafirm variation, with the probability of arrears positively related to job tenure and small shareholdi...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Social Science Quarterly, 1997

We calculate and compare the monetary returns to interstate mobility [in the United States] durin... more We calculate and compare the monetary returns to interstate mobility [in the United States] during the mid to late 1980s by sex and marital status both overall and for college graduates....We analyze data from the Surveys of Income and Program Participation....Returns exhibit high variance with a negative mean for couples and single men while single women and single college graduates receive positive returns from moving. Married women experience a large reduction in personal income upon moving because of their reduced employment rates which reflects their status as `tied movers. The findings of lower returns to migration compared with studies using data from the 1960s and the 1970s reflects fundamental changes in economic motivations for migrating. (EXCERPT)

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact