Franco Peracchi

Trends in Labor Force Transitions of Older Men and Women

We use the Current Population Survey to describe what we believe are the most salient aspects of labor force behavior of older men and women during the last 2 decades. First, we show that early retirement has increased dramatically, and this trend continued through the 1980s. Second, we show that the factors that most sharply distinguish propensities toward early retirement are those usually associated with low wages. Third, we show that trends in reduced participation for older men parallel those for younger men, while a pattern of increasing female participation is to be expected given the behavior of younger cohorts.

Survey response and survey characteristics: microlevel evidence from the European Community Household Panel

The paper presents microlevel evidence on the role of the sociodemographic characteristics of a population and the characteristics of the data collection process as predictors of survey response. Our evidence is based on the public use files of the European Community Household Panel, a longitudinal household survey covering the countries of the European Union, whose attractive feature is the high level of comparability across countries and over time. We model the response process as the outcome of two sequential events: contact between the interviewer and an eligible interviewee, and co-operation by the interviewee. Our model allows for dependence between the ease of contact and the propensity to co-operate, taking into account the censoring problem caused by the fact that we observe whether a person is a respondent only if she has been contacted. Copyright 2005 Royal Statistical Society.

How representative are matched cross-sections? Evidence from the Current Population Survey

Abstract In this paper we use the Current Population Survey (CPS) to illustrate some problems that arise in analyzing longitudinal data constructed by matching person records across files of rotating cross-section surveys. After studying the determinants of attrition from the CPS, we focus on two issues. The first is the effect of attrition on estimates of several labor market outcomes, such as participation rates, wages, and transitions rates between labor force states. The second is possible uses of the matched CPS to understand the nature of the measurement error process.

The Conditional Distribution of Excess Returns: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract In this article we describe the cumulative distribution function of excess returns conditional on a broad set of predictors that summarize the state of the economy. We do so by estimating a sequence of conditional logit models over a grid of values of the response variable. Our method uncovers higher-order multidimensional structure that cannot be found by modeling only the first two moments of the distribution. We compare two approaches to modeling: one based on a conventional linear logit model and the other based on an additive logit. The second approach avoids the “curse of dimensionality” problem of fully nonparametric methods while retaining both interpretability and the ability to let the data determine the shape of the relationship between the response variable and the predictors. We find that the additive logit fits better and reveals aspects of the data that remain undetected by the linear logit. The additive model retains its superiority even in out-of-sample prediction and portfolio s...

Height and the Normal Distribution: Evidence from Italian Military Data

Researchers modeling historical heights have typically relied on the restrictive assumption of a normal distribution, only the mean of which is affected by age, income, nutrition, disease, and similar influences. To avoid these restrictive assumptions, we develop a new semiparametric approach in which covariates are allowed to affect the entire distribution without imposing any parametric shape. We apply our method to a new database of height distributions for Italian provinces, drawn from conscription records, of unprecedented length and geographical disaggregation. Our method allows us to standardize distributions to a single age and calculate moments of the distribution that are comparable through time. Our method also allows us to generate counterfactual distributions for a range of ages, from which we derive age-height profiles. These profiles reveal how the adolescent growth spurt (AGS) distorts the distribution of stature, and they document the earlier and earlier onset of the AGS as living conditions improved over the second half of the nineteenth century. Our new estimates of provincial mean height also reveal a previously unnoticed “regime switch” from regional convergence to divergence in this period.

Educational wage premia and the distribution of earnings: an international perspective

This chapter analyzes the international evidence on the relationship between educational wage premia and the distribution of personal labor earnings. The aim is to review what is known about the contribution of differences in relative wages across schooling levels to the degree of variability, between countries and over time, in the pecuniary returns to work. Definition and measurement problems are of paramount importance in analyses of this kind, and so a large part of the chapter is devoted to some of these issues.

Early-life environment, height and BMI of young men in Italy

This paper explores the relationship between the two main dimensions of early-life environment, namely disease burden (measured by infant mortality) and economic conditions (measured by income or consumption per capita), and height and body-mass index (BMI) for six annual cohorts of young Italian men born between 1973 and 1978. By combining micro-level data on height and weight with regional- and province-level information, we are able to link individual height and BMI at age 18 to regional and provincial averages of environmental variables in the year of birth. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that, in rich low-mortality settings, the negative effects of childhood disease dominate the positive selection effects of mortality. We find that both income and disease matter, although income matters more than disease for height, while the opposite is true for BMI.

Robust m-estimators

This paper provides a summary of the influence function approach to robust estimation of parametric models. Hampels optimality results for M-estimators with a bounded influence function is generalized to allow for arbitrary choices of the asymptotic efficiency criterion and the norm of the influence function. Further extensions to other cases of practical interest are also considered.

Robust M-Tests

This paper investigates the local robustness properties of a general class of multidimensional tests based on M -estimators. These tests are shown to inherit the efficiency and robustness properties of the estimators on which they are based. In particular, it is shown that small perturbations of the distribution of the observations can have arbitrarily large effects on the asymptotic level and power of tests based on estimators that do not possess a bounded influence function. An asymptotic ‘admissibility’ result is also presented, which provides a justification for tests based on optimal bounded-influence estimators.

Ageing in Europe: What Can We Learn from the Europanel?

This paper describes what the European Community Household Panel (Echp) can tell us about health status, labour force behaviour, income and wealth of the elderly across the European Union (EU). Information of this kind is very important for public policy given the rapidly increasing share of the elderly in the European population.