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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Martha A. Starr |
| Abstract: | Recent years have seen rising discussion of ethical consumption as a means of stemming global warming, challenging unsavory business practices, and promoting other pro-social goals. This paper first lays out a conceptual framework for understanding the spread of ethical consumption, in which heterogeneous preferences and sensitivity to social norms feature centrally. It then presents empirical evidence from a well-known nationally representative survey on factors associated with tendencies to buy ethically. It is found that, ceteris paribus, people are more likely to buy ethically when others around them do too, consistent with a role of social norms in promoting ethical-consumption behaviors. |
| JEL: | A13 D63 D64 E21 D12 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amu:wpaper:2009-07&r=pke |
| By: | Martha A. Starr; Cynthia Bansak |
| Abstract: | There has been much debate in recent years about whether the Federal Reserve should have taken action against the housing-price bubble as it was forming. One argument in favor of using monetary policy to offset asset-price bubbles is that it may be impossible after the bubble bursts to ease policy hard enough or fast enough to offset a strong contraction. While the fall in housing prices since 2006 has clearly increased unemployment and depressed growth, much less is known about how the costs have been distributed across households of different means. This paper uses data from the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey (ACS) to examine this question. We first lay out the mechanisms via which a housing-market bust would be expected to affect households, in terms of incomes, employment, assets, and ability to service debt. We then use the ACS data to analyze how the house-price bust has affected households with different characteristics, differentiating between communities in which home prices did and did not boom and bust. Our results suggest that costs of the bubble have tended to fall on households less able to endure periods of financial distress. This lends further support to the argument that monetary policy oriented to social welfare should tackle bubbles ex ante rather than ex post. |
| Date: | 2010–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amu:wpaper:2010-02&r=pke |
| By: | Andy Dickerson (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield Author-Person=pdi125); Francis Green |
| Abstract: | We investigate the validity of subjective data on expectations of job loss and on the probability of re-employment consequent on job loss, by examining associations between expectations and realisations. We find that subjective expectations data reveal private information about subsequent realisations of both job loss and of subsequent re-employment. As predictors of subsequent job loss, the expectations data perform better with numerical descriptors than with ordinal verbal descriptors. On average, employees overestimate the chance of losing their job; while they underestimate the difficulty of finding another job as good as the currently-held one. We recommend that survey items on employment insecurity should be explicit about each risk under investigation, and utilise a cardinal probability scale with discrete numerical descriptors. |
| Keywords: | Job insecurity, Expectations, Employability |
| JEL: | C81 D84 J01 J6 |
| Date: | 2009–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2009016&r=pke |