| 51. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975, et al.
(författare)
-
Local Unemployment and the Earnings-Assimilation of Immigrant Men in Sweden: Evidence from Longitudinal Data, 1990-2000
- 2007
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The earnings-assimilation of first-generation immigrant men in Sweden was analyzed using eleven waves of panel-data, 1990-2000. Employment-probabilities and earnings were estimated simultaneously in a random-effects model, using a quasifixed effects to control for both individual effects and panel-selectivity due to missing earnings-information. Assuming equal-period effects produced bias which could distort the findings. To correct the bias, local unemployment-rates were used to proxy for changing economy-wide conditions. Labour-market outcomes differed consider- ably across immigrant arrival cohorts, region and country of origin, and educational levels.
|
|
| 52. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975
(författare)
-
Monte Carlo Investigation of the Initial Values Problem in Censored Dynamic Random-Effects Panel Data Model
- 2007
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Three designs of Monte Carlo experiments are used to investigate the initial-value problem in censored dynamic random-effects (Tobit type 1) models. We compared three widely used solution methods: naive method based on exogenous initial values assumption; Heckman's approximation; and the simple method of Wooldridge. The results suggest that the initial values problem is a serious issue: using a method which misspecifies the conditional distribution of initial values can cause misleading results on the magnitude of true (structural) and spurious state-dependence. The naive exogenous method is substantially biased for panels of short duration. Heckman's approximation works well. The simple method of Wooldridge works better than naive exogenous method in short panels, but it is not as good as Heckman's approximation. It is also observed that these methods performs equally well for panels of long duration.
|
|
| 53. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975
(författare)
-
Personality and Positionality
- 2019
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper employs survey experiments to examine the relationship between personality characteristics and positional concerns across a wide range of “goods,” e.g., income and market value of a car, and “bads,” e.g., infant mortality and poverty rates. Personality characteristics are measured using the five-factor model (Big-5), the locus of control, and the reciprocity. We demonstrate that there are significant relationships between personality types and positional concerns, which differ both by the type of personality and by the nature of a good. The results are highly consistent with the predictions presented in the field of personality psychology. That is, while agreeableness is negatively associated, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and external locus of control are positively associated with positional concerns for most goods. Importantly, there is also a substantial heterogeneity in the mean degree of positional concerns across the low and high values of most personality characteristics and goods.
|
|
| 54. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975, et al.
(författare)
-
Remittances and Relative Concerns in Rural China
- 2015
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The paper investigates the impact of remittances on the relative concerns of households in rural China. Using the Rural to Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) dataset we estimate a series of well-being functions to simultaneously explore the relative concerns with respect to income and remittances. Our results show that although rural households experience substantial utility loss due to income comparisons, they gain utility by comparing their remittances with those received by their reference group. In other words, we find evidence of a “status-effect” with respect to income and of a “signal-effect” with respect to remittances. The magnitudes of these two opposite effects are very similar, implying that the utility reduction due to relative income is compensated by the utility gain due to relative remittances. This finding is robust to various specifications, controlling for the endogeneity of remittances and selective migration, as well as a measure of current migrants’ net remittances calculated using counterfactual income and expenditures.
|
|
| 55. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975, et al.
(författare)
-
Second Order Approximation for the Average Marginal Effect of Heckman's Two Step Procedure
- 2006
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper we discuss the differences between the average marginal effect and the marginal effect of the average individual in sample selection models, estimated by Heckman's two step procedure. We show that the bias that emerges as a consequence of interchanging them, could be very signifcant, even in the limit. We suggest a computationally cheap approximation method, which corrects the bias in a large extent. We illustrate the implications of our method with an empirical application of earnings assimilation and a small Monte Carlo simulation.
|
|
| 56. |
- Akay, Alpaslan, 1975, et al.
(författare)
-
Standing in Others' Shoes: Empathy and Positional Behavior
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - Gothenburg : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 10
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies show that people are concerned with other people's consumption position in a varying degree with respect to the type of goods consumed and individual characteristics. Using both survey experiments and a large survey of subjective well-being (SWB) dataset, this paper aims to investigate the association between the degree of empathic capacity and positional concerns for consumption items involving pleasure and pain. The paper exploits both empathy quotient (EQ) and interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) measures of empathic capacity, i.e., dispositional empathy, which are sufficient measures capturing affective and cognitive aspects of empathy. Positional concerns are identified directly using a series of stated choice experiments and indirectly using the SWB approach. The main result of the paper is that positional concerns vary substantially with the levels of empathic capacity. Both EQ and IRI are found to be positively associated with positional concerns for "goods" (e.g., after-tax income, market value of a luxury car), reflecting a degree of self-regarded feelings and behavior to reduce personal distress, and negatively associated with positional concerns for "bads" (e.g., working hours and poverty rates), reflecting a degree of other-regarding feelings and behavior. The results are robust with respect to various checks including statistical specifications, reference groups, and omitted variables (e.g., prosocial behavior and competitivity) that could bias the results.
|
|
| 57. |
- Akpalu, Wisdom, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Bio-economics of Conservation Agriculture and Soil Carbon Sequestration in Developing Countries
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Improvement in soil carbon through conservation agriculture in developing countries may generate some private benefits to farmers as well as sequester carbon emissions, which is a positive externality to society. Leaving crop residue on the farm has become an important option in conservation agriculture practice. However, in developing countries, using crop residue for conservation agriculture has the opportunity cost of say feed for livestock. In this paper, we model and develop an expression for an optimum economic incentive that is necessary to internalize the positive externality. A crude value of the tax is calculated using data from Kenya. We also empirically investigated the determinants of the crop residue left on the farm and found that it depends on cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soil, the prices of maize, whether extension officers visit the plot or not, household size, the level of education of the household head and alternative cost of soil conservation.
|
|
| 58. |
- Akpalu, Wisdom, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Bioeconomic model of spatial fishery management in developing countries
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fishers in developing countries do not have the resources to acquire advanced technologies to exploit offshore fish stocks. As a result, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires countries to sign partnership agreements with distant water fishing nations (DWFNs) to exploit offshore stocks. However, for migratory stocks, the offshore may serve as a natural marine reserve (i.e., a source) to the inshore (i.e., sink); hence these partnership agreements generate spatial externality. In this paper, we present a bioeconomic model in which a social planner uses a landing tax (ad valorem tax) to internalize this spatial externality. We found that the tax must reflect the biological connectivity between the two patches, intrinsic growth rate, the price of fish, cost per unit effort and social discount rate. The results are empirically illustrated using data on Ghana.
|
|
| 59. |
- Akpalu, Wisdom, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Enforcement of Exogenous Environmental Regulations, Social Disapproval, and Bribery
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Many resource users are not directly involved in the formulation and enforcement of resource management rules and regulations in developing countries. As a result, resource users do not generally accept such rules. Enforcement officers who have social ties to the resource users may encounter social disapproval and possible social exclusion from the resource users if they enforce regulations zealously. The officers, however, may avoid this social disapproval by accepting bribes. In this paper, we present a simple model that characterizes this situation and derives results for situations where officers are passively and actively involved in the bribery.
|
|
| 60. |
- Akpalu, Wisdom, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Natural Resource use Conflict: Gold Mining in Tropical Rainforest in Ghana
- 2005
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Gold is frequently mined in rainforests that can provide either gold or forest benefits, but not both. This conflict in resource use occurs in Ghana, a developing country in the tropics where the capital needed for mining is obtained from foreign direct investment (FDI). We use a dynamic model to show that an ad valorem severance tax on gross revenue can be used to internalize environmental opportunity costs. The optimal tax must equal the ratio of marginal benefits from forest use to marginal benefits from gold extraction. Over time, this tax must change at a rate equal to the difference between the discount rate and the rate of change in the price of gold. Empirical results suggest that the 3 percent tax rate currently used in Ghana is too low to fully represent the external cost of extraction (i.e., lost forest benefits).
|
|
