indeterminacy of stationary equilibrium in stochastic overlapping generations models abstract in this paper we consider the local uniqueness properties of stationary rational expectations equilibria ree in a stochastic overlapping generations olg model it is known that in non stochastic olg models steady state equilibria are locally isolated although there may exist indeterminate non stationary perfect foresight equilibria we show by construction that in the stochastic model even stationary equilibrium may be indeterminate we also show that this result is robust in the sense that there exists a non empty open set of economies for which the result is true

on the existence of sunspot equilibria in an overlapping generations model abstract the existence of sunspot equilibria is shown in a one commodity overlapping generations model without stationarity assumptions on preferences endowments or nominal taxes the essential assumption is that there is a continuum of perfect foresight equilibria the technique is also useful for constructing stationary sunspot equilibria when they exist consumption in a sunspot equilibrium is shown to lie within the range consistent with perfect foresight

the gains from self ownership and the expansion of women s rights throughout history wives have been the property of their husbands only in the past two centuries has this institution broken down in the world s most developed regions in america and england the doctrine of coverture restricted women s choices in virtually every aspect of their lives until the beginning of the 20th century a married woman a feme covert could not make contracts buy and sell property sue or be sued or draft wills joel p bishop 1875 john c wells 1878 john f kelly 1882 her husband owned any wages she earned and he controlled any property she brought to the marriage a husband also could control his wife s economic activities outside the home such as limiting a particular shopkeeper from selling to his wife marylynn salmon 1986 even in the rare case of divorce the children of the marriage fell under the father s custody today the doctrine of coverture is extinct in most developed countries women now control rights to themselves and the products of their labor no formal restrictions remain on a woman s ability to own or convey title to land or other forms of real property women are able to contract freely and enforce their contractual rights no formal restrictions remain on a woman s capacity to sue or be sued in tort rape is no longer a crime against a husband s property interest in his wife but a crime in which the woman is the sole victim no formal restrictions limit a woman s ability to alienate her labor and own the wages she earns whether married or single women today have practically all the rights of their male counterparts we use a property rights analysis to explain the demise of coverture in the united states we characterize the modern property rights structure to human beings as a system in which all adults are self owners men and women have essentially equal rights and are able to contract fully inside and outside of marriage so marriage is a share contract douglas w allen 1992 coverture in contrast to self ownership is characterized as a principal agent system in which the man husband legally owned his wife and her flow of value under coverture a wife was an agent severely constrained by the system of property rights which denied her the right to freely choose human capital investments and consumption as well as to capture the full returns from her actions the husband s economic ownership was imperfect however allowing the woman to deviate from the man s directives human ownership regimes are important because they affect incentives to acquire and develop human capital t w schultz 1968 stanley engerman 1973 in particular we argue that economic growth with attendant increases in wealth and specialized markets leads geddes department of policy analysis and management cornell university 107 mvr hall ithaca ny 14853 and hoover institution e mail rrg24 cornell edu lueck montana state university and university of virginia school of law e mail lueck virginia edu geddes was supported by the earhart foundation lueck was supported as john m olin faculty fellow at the yale law school cynthia powell hui ping chao and mary godfrey provided research assistance we have also benefited from comments from doug allen lee alston ian ayres david barker parantap basu gary becker mary beth combs lee craig joe ferrie andy hanssen gillian hamilton shawn kantor dean lillard robin lumsdaine steve margolis joel mokyr bart moore lee redding glen whitman paul zak two anonymous referees and participants in numerous seminars and conferences 1 while married women s property belonged to their husbands most single women were dependents of their male relatives although a single woman legally had the same property rights as a man powerful norms and private restrictions severely limited the rights of divorcees spinsters and widows mary beth norton 1980 2 we recognize a potential divergence between economic and purely legal rights because enforcement costs limit the application of legal doctrine yoram barzel 1977 here however we treat economic and legal rights as virtually synonymous since coverture codified customs and norms and because coverture s restrictions extended beyond the family into markets and society

measurement of social well being alternatives to gross domestic product abstract gross domestic product gdp is widely acknowledged to be a poor measure of social well being this paper surveys several substitutes for and modifications of gdp which have been offered as measures of society s welfare the index of sustainable economic welfare a measure endorsed by many ecological economists is found to possess a variety of virtues but also several imperfections the search for a social welfare measure has not yet ended

technology and u s corn yields plateaus and price responsiveness corn yields in the united states have increased at a slower rate during the 1970s than in the previous two decades fitting straight lines to aggregate corn yields over the period 1954 80 figure 1 suggests a curvilinear relationship different slopes are obtained by splitting the sample at any one of the years 1969 1970 1971 for the split shown in figure 1 the slope is 2 67 for 1954 70 and 1 34 for 197180 since 1970 events have caused corn yields to drop the 1970 corn blight drought in 1974 and 1980 and drops in nitrogen application rates in 1974 and 1975 whether the slowdown in corn yield increases is temporary permanent or signals a plateauing of u s corn yields is not clear swanson and nyankori to analyze this issue the recent historical data 1954 80 on u s corn yields is examined swanson cautioned against extrapolating past trends into the future without decomposing technology into its components multicollinearity problems dictate a limited decomposition into nitrogen and nonnitrogen components the basis for this distinction is found in microagronomic data a second objective is to check whether developments over the last decade have significantly changed the elasticity of u s corn yields with respect to the fertilizer corn price ratio

existence and optimality of currency equilibrium in stochastic overlapping generations models the pure endowment case abstract we consider a pure exchange stochastic overlapping generations economy sufficient conditions for the existence of a monetary equilibrium and a characterization of optimality are provided it is shown that in a monetary equilibrium currency provides partial insurance and that the equilibrium allocation is optimal it is also shown that if an allocation is optimal the contingent claim prices associated with it are such that in an average sense the present value of the social endowment is bounded

resource degradation technical change and the productivity of energy use in u s agriculture abstract two important issues surrounding future food production are the reliance of industrial agriculture on large quantities of fossil fuels and the degree to which technical change and farm management can offset degradation in the form of soil erosion groundwater depletion reduced genetic diversity pest resistance and so on this analysis uses new and more consistent data on energy use in u s agriculture to assess the forces that shape the productivity of energy use from 1950 to 1990 the results of an econometric model indicate that changes in the quantity of energy used per hectare the average size of farms the quantity of land harvested the ratio of livestock to crop production and weather influence the productivity of energy use in order of decreasing importance energy productivity shows strong diminishing returns to increases in energy use per hectare of land the model indirectly tests for the effects of of resource degradation and technical change on energy productivity the results do not support the hypothesis that the effects of soil erosion and other forms of resource degradation have diminished the productivity of energy use in the u s farm sector presumably due to advances in technology and behavioral responses on the part of farmers the significant increase in energy productivity since 1980 is due to a sharp reduction in energy use per hectare a reduction in the quantity of land utilized and continuing increases in average farm size these results are consistent with other empirical analyses of aggregate energy productivity in industrial agriculture that indicate an improvement in energy productivity in response to the energy price increases

what does she see in him the effect of sharing on the choice of spouse all husbands and wives share in the spoils of marriage sharing makes each partner a residual claimant and encourages spouses to provide marital inputs however because each spouse is only a partial residual claimant each may be inclined to provide a suboptimal level of marital inputs the choice of spouse influences the level of distortion and under some circumstances the eficient mating is between individuals of equal value people tend to end up choosing partners of approximately their own social worth romantic choices appear to be a delicate compromise between one s desire to capture an ideal partner and one s realization that he must eventually settle for what he deserves

productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities abstract based on recent theoretical developments the argument is made that the average level of human capital is a local public good cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents after conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and dwellings this prediction is supported by data for standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas in the united states where the smsa average levels of formal education and work experience are used as proxies for the average level of human capital the alternative explanations of omitted smsa variables and self selection are evaluated an estimate of the effect of an additional year of average education on total factor productivity is computed

bargaining and distribution in marriage the standard economic model of the family is a common preference model that assumes that a family maximizes a single utility function and implies that family behavior is independent of which individuals receive income or control resources in recent years this model has been challenged by game theoretic models of marriage that do not impose pooling and are therefore consistent with empirical evidence that income controlled by husbands and wives does have different effects on family behavior in this paper the authors review a number of simple bargaining models and relevant empirical evidence and discuss their implications for distribution within marriage

the role of technology in sustaining agriculture and the environment abstract visions of sustainable development often leave unanswered the question what actions taken by the current generation will ensure that future generations can meet their economic and environmental needs in this context we assess the role of technology in steering agriculture along a more sustainable path from the agricultural sector s perspective this requires an optimal investment plan for a nation s stock of environmental assets that accounts for an intergenerational fulfillment of sustainability s dual goals 1 satisfying food and fiber needs at reasonable costs to consumers and 2 providing environmental service flows in reviewing agricultural indicators to assess the nation s performance in meeting these goals we find productivity growth has increased while rates of soil erosion wetland conversion and pesticide application have declined however individuals continue to demand more environmental services while private markets undersupply environmental services the capacity of the agricultural sector to meet food and fiber and environmental service demands partially depends on the availability and adoption of new technology several market impediments explain the undersupply of sustainable technologies 1 firms cannot fully appropriate rents from technology development 2 success may vary with farm structure 3 the heterogeneity of the resource base influences adoption and 4 farmers cannot capture the benefits of environmental services to address these market failures sustainable agriculture policy should 1 support research and development in sustainable technologies and provide incentives to encourage adoption 2 ensure that conservation efforts reflect the efficient and sustainable allocation of environmental assets and 3 legitimize markets for foods produced under more sustainable practices

market uncertainty correlated and sunspot equilibria in imperfectly competitive economies first version received june 1988 final version accepted november 1990 eds an imperfectly competitive economy is very prone to market uncertainty including uncertainty about the liquidity or thickness of markets we show in particular that there exist stochastic equilibrium outcomes in nonstochastic market games if and only if the endowments are not pareto optimal we also provide a link between extrinsic uncertainty arising in games e g correlated equilibria and extrinsic uncertainty in market economies e g sunspot equilibria a correlated equilibria to the market game is either a sunspot equilibrium or a non sunspot equilibrium to the related securities games but the converse is not true in general

correlated equilibrium as an expression of bayesian rationality if it is common knowledge that the players in a game are bayesian utility maximizers who treat uncertainty about other players actions like any other uncertainty then the outcome is necessarily a correlated equilibrium random strategies appear as an expression of each player s uncertainty about what the others will do not as the result of willful randomization use is made of the common prior assumption according to which differences in probability assessments by different individuals are due to the different information that they have where information may be interpreted broadly to include experience upbringing and genetic makeup copyright 1987 by the econometric society

sunspot like effects of random endowments abstract random endowments can affect economic outcomes in two ways directly by affecting resources and indirectly by endogenously affecting expectations this second effect which we call a sunspot like effect allows prices to overreact to movements in fundamentals we prove that sunspot equilibria can be viewed as the limiting case of markets overreacting to small shocks to fundamentals two examples illustrate the theorem and show that sunspot like effects can be present even with significant shocks to fundamentals

yours mine and ours do divorce laws affect the intertemporal behavior of married couples divorce laws establish spouses individual property rights over household resources and determine when divorce is allowed this paper examines how such laws inuence the intertemporal behavior and the welfare of u s married couples i build a model of household choice about consumption labor supply and divorce under multiple divorce law regimes and i estimate it using exogenous variation in u s divorce laws from the 1970s to the 1990s couples responded to equal division of property and unilateral divorce by increasing tangible assets up to 19 which suggests the presence of a strong income eect for the primary earner and by reducing female employment by over 5 percentage points because the threat of divorce granted additional bargaining power to married woman the bargaining weight of women implied by these responses in the model corresponds to a third of the weight of men this indicates that equal division of assets beneted women when it was

women s liberation what s in it for men the nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men in this paper we investigate men s incentives for sharing power with women in our model women s legal rights set the marital bargaining power of husbands and wives we show that men face a tradeoff between the rights they want for their own wives namely none and the rights of other women in the economy men prefer other men s wives to have rights because men care about their own daughters and because an expansion of women s rights increases educational investments in children we show that men may agree to relinquish some of their power once technological change increases the importance of human capital we corroborate our argument with historical evidence on the expansion of women s rights in england and the united states

human capital accumulation and the expansion of women s economic rights abstractbetween 1850 and 1920 most u s states enacted laws expanding the rights of married women to own and control their separate property and to own their market earnings the economic approach to property rights implies that as married women gain economic rights the incentive to invest in girls human capital will rise this prediction is tested by examining the impact of these legal changes on girls school attendance rates relative to boys state level census data are used to examine the effects of these changes on school attendance among all school aged children integrated public use microdata series data are used to examine their effect on school attendance among children ages 15 19 who are just beyond compulsory schooling ages consistent with hypothesized effects the empirical analysis shows that expanding women s economic rights resulted in higher relative rates of school attendance by girls and had the largest effect on the 15 19 age group

the enfranchisement of women and the welfare state abstract we offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico economic model where men are richer than women women display a higher preference for public goods and women s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost men and women are matched within households which are the center of the decision process we derive the optimal tax rate under two alternative regimes a males only enfranchisement regime and a universal enfranchisement regime the latter is associated with a higher tax rate but as industrialization raises the reward to intellectual labor relative to physical labor women s relative wage increases thus decreasing the difference between the tax rates when the cost of disenfranchisement becomes higher than the cost of the higher tax rate which applies under universal enfranchisement the male median voter is better off extending the franchise to women a consequent expansion of the size of government is only to be expected in societies with a relatively high cost of disenfranchisement we empirically test the implications of the model over the 1870 1930 period we proxy the gender wage gap with the level of per capita income and the cost of disenfranchisement with the presence of catholicism which is associated with a more traditional view of women s role and thus a lower cost the gender gap in the preferences for public goods is proxied by the availability of divorce which implies marital instability and a more vulnerable economic position for women consistently with the model s predictions women s suffrage is correlated positively with per capita income and negatively with the presence of catholicism and the availability of divorce while women s suffrage increases the size of government only in non catholic countries

precision guided or blunt the effects of us economic sanctions on human rights this study analyzes the consequences of economic sanctions for the target country s human rights situation we offer a political economy explanation for different types of human rights infringements or improvements in reaction to economic shocks caused by sanctions based on that explanation we derive hypotheses linking sanctions to four types of human rights economic rights political and civil rights basic human rights and emancipatory rights we use endogenous treatment regression models to test those hypotheses by estimating the causal average treatment effect of us economic sanctions on each type of human rights within a uniform empirical framework unlike previous studies we find no support for adverse effects of sanctions on economic rights or basic human rights once the endogenous selection of sanctioned countries is modelled with respect to women s rights our findings even indicate a positive effect of sanctions that is associated with improvements in women s economic rights only our results for political rights and civil liberties suggest significant deterioration under economic sanctions we conclude that it is important to account for the potential endogeneity of economic sanctions and to distinguish different dimensions of human rights as the effects of economic sanctions along those dimensions may vary considerably

women s liberation as a financial innovation in one of the greatest extensions of property rights in human history common law countries began giving rights to married women in the 1850s before this women s liberation the doctrine of coverture strongly incentivized parents of daughters to hold real estate rather than financial assets such as money stocks or bonds we exploit the staggered nature of coverture s demise across u s states to show that women s rights led to shifts in household portfolios a positive shock to the supply of credit and a reallocation of labor toward nonagriculture and capital intensive industries investor protection thus deepened financial markets aiding industrialization

environmental sustainability in agriculture diet matters abstract there is no agreement that diet matters for environmental sustainability in the agriculture sector much current agriculture is unsustainable and worsening the environmental impact of agriculture degrades natural capital e g loss of topsoil waste and pollution of water nutrient loss extinction of species cattle raising is one of the most damaging components of agriculture livestock now eat about half of global grain production there is limited scope for improving food supply and what scope there is will further damage the environment all means to improve nutrition especially for the poor will be needed as population increases one such means is to improve diets of the rich by eating lower down the food chain while most people in the world thrive on mainly grain based diets carnivory is high in oecd and is increasing in ldcs in order to reduce food wastage and to improve health and food availability a food conversion efficiency tax is proposed the least efficient converters pork beef would be highly taxed more efficient converters poultry eggs dairy would be moderately taxed most efficient converters ocean fish would be taxed lowest grain for human food would not be taxed while coarse grains might be modestly subsidized non food agriculture also would be taxed highest on tobacco and on starches destined for alcoholic beverages produced from land suitable for food production

is energy cost an accurate indicator of natural resource quality abstract the use of energy cost as an indicator of natural resource quality is examined energy cost is the direct and indirect energy used to produce a unit of a resource commodity different approaches to the role of energy in the economy are discussed and it is demonstrated theoretically that energy cost can give false indications of changes in resource quality this is because energy cost is only an accurate indicator of resource quality if either energy is the single primary factor of production and the economy can be represented by an input output model or if there is substitutability between the factors of production then marginal products must be proportional to the factors embodied energy these conditions are tested empirically using data from the us agricultural sector the results show that there is substitutability and marginal products are not proportional to embodied energy however the strong neoclassical assumption of price taking profit maximization can be rejected at a 5 level of significance though not at the 3 5 level the generality of the empirical results may be restricted due to data limitations but the theoretical framework can be applied to other data sets other resources and even other indicators

property rights over marital transfers in developing countries the extent to which women possess property rights is shaped in large part by transfers received at the time of marriage focusing on dowry we develop a simple model of the marriage market with intra household bargaining in order to understand the incentives for brides parents to allocate the rights over the dowry between their daughter and her groom in doing so we clarify and formalize the dual role of dowry as a pre mortem bequest and as a market clearing price identified in the literature we use the model to shed light on the intriguing observation that in contrast to other rights women s rights over the dowry tend to deteriorate with development we show how marriage payments are utilized even when they are inefficient and how the marriage market mitigates changes in other dimensions of women s rights even to the point where women are worse off following a strengthening of such rights we also generate predictions for when marital transfers will disappear and highlight the importance of female human capital for the welfare of women

intrahousehold bargaining female autonomy and labor supply theory and evidence from india standard models of labor supply predict that unearned income decreases labor supply we propose an alternative noncooperative household model in which a woman s unearned income improves her autonomy within the household which raises her gains from working and can increase her labor supply we find empirical support for this model using women s exposure to the hindu succession act in india as a source of exogenous variation in their unearned income exposure to the hindu succession act increases a woman s labor supply by between 3 8 and 6 1 percentage points particularly into high paying jobs autonomy increased by 0 17 standard deviations suggesting that control of income is a potential channel for these effects thus policies that empower women can have an additional impact on the labor market which can further reinforce autonomy increases

rational expectations in the overlapping generations model abstract this paper reports results on the character of the rational expectations equilibria of a stochastic overlapping generations model with heterogenous markets the model considered is a stationary overlapping generations model in which the endowments of young agents are subject to i i d random shocks the main result shown is that if there are l 1 commodities traded in every period then for most preferences the rational expectations equilibrium stochastic process of prices and allocations necessarily exhibits serial correlation this is in marked contrast to the one commodity model in which there always exists an equilibrium which is measure isomorphic to the endowment process

the role of energy productivity in u s agriculture abstract this paper investigates the role of energy on u s agricultural productivity using panel data at the state level for the period 1960 2004 we first provide a historical account of energy use in u s agriculture to do this we rely on the bennet cost indicator to study how the price and volume components of energy costs have developed over time we then proceed to analyze the contribution of energy to productivity in u s agriculture employing the bennet bowley productivity indicator an important feature of the bennet bowley indicator is its direct association with the change in normalized profits thus our study is also able to analyze the link between profitability and productivity panel regression estimates indicate that energy prices have a negative effect on profitability in the u s agricultural sector we also find that energy productivity has generally remained below total farm productivity following the 1973 1974 global energy crisis