Over the last decade there has been much interest by labor economists in the evaluation of so-called Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP), i.e. policy measures such as training programs, wage subsidy schemes, or direct job creation in the public sector. These measures, generally, aim at increasing the employment probability and/or the earnings performance of program participants.
Households make financial decisions along two main dimensions. They decide how to allocate their income between consumption and savings and how to allocate their savings between risky and risk-free assets. The literature often models such decisions using a unitary framework, which treats the house hold as a single decision-making unit with one utility function and pooled income. A limitation of this approach is that it cannot analyze the influence of individual household members with different preferences on household financial decisions. Papers that do allow household members to have separate preferences have shown that this is an important consideration. For example, Browning (2000) and Mazzocco (2004) find that the allocation of resources within the household affects the consumption-savings decision when spouses differ in their preferences. Empirical estimates show that a majority of spouses do indeed differ in risk preferences (Barsky, Juster, Kimball, and Shapiro, 1997; Kimball, Sahm, and Shapiro, 2008).
Strong securities markets are necessary for economic growth and development of any country. Efficient capital raising and allocation of financial resources are an integral part of economic development. It is now well established that securities markets are not casinos but are essential for the growth and development of a country. Recent literature documents the direct linkage between capital market development and economic growth.
