Suchergebnisse

Abstract
A growing empirical literature has found that neighborhood heterogeneity lowers people's likelihood of contributing to public goods. However, this literature has been mostly cross-sectional, and so struggled to address the effects of unobserved influences on contributions that may be correlated with heterogeneity. It has also paid little attention to how heterogeneity's estimated effects are influenced by neighborhood size or the concavity of heterogeneity measures. With access to a panel of three waves of census data on volunteering rates in New Zealand, released at two fine levels of aggregation, we can control for stable unobserved neighborhood characteristics that may affect volunteering rates. We use pooled cross-section, between and fixed effects regressions to test whether volunteering rates are lowered by heterogeneity in race/ethnicity, language, birthplace, or income. We find that estimates are affected by neighborhood definition, and that ethnic and language heterogeneity are robustly associated with lower volunteering rates in New Zealand.

Self‐employment income is believed to be understated in economic statistics but there is debate about the extent of under‐reporting. This paper refines the widely used method of Pissarides and Weber (Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1989), pp. 17–32) that relies on discrepancies between food shares and reported incomes. Our panel data approach disentangles under‐reporting from fluctuations in transitory income and gives a point estimate of the under‐reporting rate. Previous studies just give an interval estimate and also make the unlikely assumption that under‐reporting is independent of transitory income fluctuations. Panel data from Korea and Russia are used to illustrate the method, and suggest that in both countries almost one‐quarter of the income of self‐employed households is not reported.

Abstract Young people with little 'social or health capital' may be more likely to take up hazardous consumption and shun investments in human capital, raising their likelihood of a 'rags to rags' sequence. First, diminishing marginal utility could raise the marginal benefit of hazardous consumption and the cost of investment. But poor youths may also have lower expectations of future success, independent of the choices they make. Lower expectations of success could reduce the future cost of hazardous consumption and benefit of investment. We test the effect of expectations on decisions to smoke, drink hazardously, exercise, and complete high school, using a longitudinal study of youth in New Zealand. We find that 15‐year‐olds' expectations of success predict the subsequent onset of smoking, lack of exercise, and failure to complete high school, but not hazardous drinking. While some of the influence of expectations can be explained by low social and health capital, IQ, and other factors, expectations retain a direct effect on smoking and exercise once these other factors are controlled for.