We study the effect of outdoor air pollution on the productivity of indoor workers at a pear-packing factory. Increases in fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a pollutant that readily penetrates indoors, leads to significant decreases in productivity, with effects arising at levels below air quality standards. In contrast, pollutants that do not travel indoors, such as ozone, have little, if any, ...

The Transition from Welfare to Work and the Role of Potential Labor Income It is often argued that the high level of welfare claims in Germany causes little incentive for workers with low productivity to seek for a job. We examine the influence of the ratio between estimated potential labor income and the welfare payment level on the probability of leaving social welfare. Using the GSOEP, we es...

Attempting to shed light on the optimal size of government, economists have analyzed planning problems that specify a set of feasible taxation-spending policies and a social welfare function. The analysis characterizes the optimal policy choice of a planner who knows the welfare achieved by each policy. This paper examines choice of size of government by a planner who has partial knowledge of p...

Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) is a numeric index that is of great importance in measuring productivity and its changes. In recent years, tools like DEA have been utilized for determining MPI. In the present paper, some models are recommended for calculating MPI when there are just ratio data available. Then, using DEA and DEA-R, some models are proposed under the constant returns to scale ...

Selection for high productivity has been the long term focus of pig breeding programs worldwide, however, Rauw et al. (1998) highlighted that selection for productivity alone has unfavourable consequences for a number of metabolic, reproduction and health traits across species. More recently, Prunier et al. (2010) reviewed relationships between high physiological demands and the health and welf...