does trading non timber forest products drive specialisation in products gathered for consumption evidence from the brazilian amazon abstract diversification is a hallmark of family based rural production but what happens when autarkic rural communities integrate into markets economic theory predicts that households will maintain diversified strategies when faced with risk however many studies have claimed that openness to markets drives specialisation to enhance returns nevertheless there is little evidence about the association between trade in non timber forest products ntfps and the diversity of ntfps consumed relying on a household survey and systematic observations of brazilian amazonian caboclos we evaluated whether exposure to ntfp markets effort and cash income correlates with the diversity of ntfps consumed richness and simpson diversity the results were conflicting first there was variation across ntfp subtypes although the variety richness of terrestrial ntfps consumed vegetables and hunted animals was greater in households trading ntfps the richness of fish consumed was lower because fishing could not be pursued concurrently with activities related to ntfp trade second the observed effects differed across indicators of diversity which shows that intensification in the use of a few resources may occur third the associations with alternative definitions of exposure to the ntfp market also differed these results indicate that ntfp markets do not necessarily undermine local consumption diversity

supply shocks and monetary policy revisited written almost a decade after the first attempts in 1974 to develop a theory of policy response to supply shocks this paper uses a simple algebraic framework to summarize the central issues posed by supply shocks for macroeconomic policy primary emphasis goes to the case for and against monetary accommodation on the nature and extent of wage indexation and on the distinction between permanent and transitory shocks given the difficult tradeoffs faced by monetary policy makers supply side alternatives may represent the best available policy options 20 references

union wage hours and earnings differentials in the construction industry full information maximum likelihood is used to estimate union wage hours and earnings markups construction union wage markups are positive 58 2 at the sample means since union hours markups are negative 4 0 for most demographic groups union earnings markups 51 1 are smaller than the wage markups all exogenous variables are allowed to interact with the endogenous union dummy variable which allows us to test whether markups vary across demographic groups whether increased local unionization has a positive spillover effect in the nonunion sector and whether increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in the two sectors

strike coordination and dismissal in uniform wage settings abstract we study a gift exchange game with 12 employees and one employer when the employer can offer individually differentiated wages in a setting without collective action we observe high levels of wages effort choices and total earnings when the employer is restricted to offering a uniform wage trust and reciprocity drop dramatically due to widespread shirking the stepwise introduction of two collective action mechanisms strike and coordination increases the employees share of the total earnings but does not mitigate the free riding problem adding employment risk to the collective action setup drives up wages reduces free riding and leads to higher total earnings however this increase in productivity is not sufficient to achieve the high levels of wages efforts and earnings that we observe with individually differentiated wages

testing for the effectiveness of wage price controls an application to the carter program policies have been in effect in the united states more than half the time the kennedy johnson wage price guideposts lasted almost six years although they were tattered and torn by the time they were abandoned in 1967 the nixon administration s economic stabilization program esp the only peacetime mandatory controls program in the united states lasted four years although the second half of the program phases iii and iv was a period of decontrol the carter administration s pay and price standards program lasted a little more than two years although the second year was

direct price controls as a source of instability in the interest rate inflation rate relationship abstract we hypothesize that an efficient capital market is more concerned with effective inflation rates which investors experience than official ones which econometricians observe and that direct consumer goods price controls are likely to result in disparity between the two consequently direct price controls are also likely to affect the interest measured inflation rate relationship we ropose a dummy variable approach which enables us to explore empirically the effects of such controls on the interest inflation rate relationship in the context of dwyer s 1981 model using euro rates and inflation rates of the respective countries we explore the impact of the control programmes imposed in the 1970 s by governments of the united states canada and france france

union effects on nonunion wages evidence from panel data on industries and cities the authors test for threat and crowding effects of unions on non union wages at the industry and city levels using panel data on the percent organized and nonunion industry and city wage differentials constructed from current population surveys over the period 1973 89 at the industry level increases in the percent organized were associated with decreases in the nonunion industry wage differential suggesting that crowding effects were the predominant union effect on nonunion industry wage differentials in contrast at the city level increases in the percent organized were associated with increases in the nonunion city wage differential suggesting that threat effects predominated the authors also find evidence of negative cross occupation union effects on nonunion industry wage differentials supporting their hypothesis that the industry level results were partly driven by complementarity between union and nonunion labor

union effects on productivity evidence from western u s sawmills the authors conjecture that previous studies have tended to overestimate the productivity of union firms relative to nonunion firms due to inadequate controls for output quality and input usage important omissions if the higher cost of unionized labor leads to less labor intensive products and techniques to avoid those problems this study examines a fairly standardized commodity lumber and controls for detailed product attributes and inputs an analysis of data from a survey administered by the authors shows that unionized sawmills were between 12 and 21 less productive than nonunionized mills in fiscal year 1986 as predicted when product quality and raw material usage are not included in the analysis the estimate of union productivity is biased upward

the effect of unionization on productivity evidence from a long panel of coal mines the author measures the effect of unionization on productivity based on a panel of west virginia coal mines from 1897 to 1928 output and inputs are measured in physical terms and most of the mine

the 1971 1974 controls program and the price level an econometric post mortem abstract this paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of the nixon wage price controls on the price level the major new wrinkle is that the controls are created as a quantitative rather than just a qualitative phenomenon through the use of a specially constructed series indicating the fraction of the economy that was controlled according to the estimates by february 1974 controls had lowered the non food non energy price level by 3 4 percent after that point and especially after controls ended in april 1974 a period of rapid catch up inflation eroded the gains that had been achieved leaving the price level from zero to 2 percent below what it would have been in the absence of controls the dismantling of controls can thus account for most the burst of double digit inflation in non food and non energy prices during 1974

inflation and unemployment the world economy today is vastly different from the 1930s when seymour harris the chairman of this meeting infected me with his boundless enthusiasm for economics and his steadfast confidence in its capacity for good works economics is very different too both the science and its subject have changed and for the better since world war ii but there are some notable constants unemployment and inflation still preoccupy and perplex economists statesmen journalists housewives and everyone else the connection between them is the principal domestic economic burden of presidents and prime ministers and the major area of controversy and ignorance in macroeconomics i have chosen to review economic thought on this topic on this occasion partly because of its inevitable timeliness partly because of a personal interest reaching back to my first published work in 1941

commercial collection of ntfps and households living in or near the forests case study in que con cuong and ma tuong duong nghe an vietnam abstract in vietnam ntfps has become an important source of cash income for local people living in or near the forests the commercial collection of these products could reduce both the number of species and population of a species in the forests in order to keep the balance between biodiversity and commercial collection of ntfps this paper evaluates the dependence of forest dwellers on ntfps and identifies the relation between household characteristics and cash income generated by ntfp collection as a result commercial collection of ntfps is negatively correlated to dependency ratio poverty level and distance to the provincial city and positively correlated with female labors of households moreover ntfps are proved to be very important in poor households or in those who lack rice or high rate of female labor the households who have higher dependency ratio benefit less from ntfps sold while those who lack rice for their own consumption or have a higher rate of female labor depend more on ntfps poor households are more dependent on ntfp collection than other groups finally the result of this study highly recommends that the government of vietnam be aware of gender balance distance to provincial city poverty level and dependency ratio when applying a policy related to ntfp conservation an appropriate incentive policy for woman and poor households might be a possible solution for less commercial collection of ntfps the poor households who have low dependency ratio or high female labor rate should be encouraged to participate in the forest management system to control the balance between commercial collection of ntfp and conservation

price controls in liberia abstractin 2009 the liberian government removed a wide reaching set of price controls compared with goods never subject to price ceilings goods whose prices were liberalized showed increased pri

union organizing activity firm growth and the business cycle this paper analyzes the relationship between changes in unionization and firm growth average growth is significantly low er in manufacturing firms that experience successful union elections bu t these strong effects are largely illusory the authors find no evidence of a significant relationship between unionization and firm growth despite a strong cyclical pattern in election activity thei r results suggest that the significant negative effect of organizing activity on a firm s market value is not accompanied by any growth changes the authors therefore cannot reject the hypothesis that t he equity losses from union election activity represent a simple transf er of wealth from shareholders to workers copyright 1993 by american economic association

the economic importance of non timber forest products ntfps for livelihood maintenance of rural west african communities a case study from northern benin non timber forest products ntfps contribute significantly to a rural household s livelihood in the african semi arid tropics this study examines the income from ntfps and the dependency on these of different socio economic groups in northern benin using survey data from 230 households of two villages we firstly compared incomes of five different ethnic groups being differentiated by their traditional source of livelihood and regional provenance secondly we investigated disparities between three income groups on average income from ntfps accounted for 39 of total household income and had a strong equalizing effect on it however the economic relevance of ntfps differs between households poorer households are relatively more dependent on ntfps in order to fulfill basic needs than wealthier households however the latter extract more ntfps in quantitative terms and have significantly higher cash returns than poorer ones this is mainly due to a significant greater land holding moreover our study revealed that net income from ntfps reflects traditional sources of livelihoods of different ethnic groups in conclusion both conservation and development strategies should take into consideration the socio economic context of different beneficiaries of savanna woodland resources in order to apply appropriate measures to poverty reduction

the history of the phillips curve consensus and bifurcation while the early history of the phillips curve up to 1975 is well known less well understood is the post 1975 fork in the road the left fork developed a theory of policy responses to supply shocks in the context of price stickiness in the non shocked sector its econometric implementation interacts shocks with backward looking inertia the right fork approach emphasizes forward looking expectations that can jump in response to anticipated policy changes the left fork approach is better suited to explaining the postwar us inflation process while the right fork approach is essential for understanding behaviour in economies with unstable macroeconomic environments the history of the phillips curve pc has evolved in two phases before and after 1975 with a widespread consensus about the pre 1975 evolution which is well understood bifurcation begins in 1975 when the pc literature split down two forks of the road with little communication or interaction between the two forks the major contribution of this paper and hence the source of bifurcation in its subtitle is to examine contrast and test the contributions of the two post 1975 forks the pre 1975 history is straightforward and is covered in section i the initial discovery of the negative inflation unemployment relation by phillips popularized by samuelson and solow was followed by a brief period in which policy makers assumed that they could exploit the trade off to reduce unemployment at a small cost of additional inflation then the natural rate revolution of friedman phelps and lucas overturned the policy exploitable trade off in favour of long run monetary neutrality those who had implemented the econometric version of the trade off pc in the 1960s reeled in disbelief when sargent demonstrated the logical failure of their test of neutrality and finally were condemned to the wreckage of keynesian economics by lucas and sargent following the twist of the inflation unemployment correlation from negative in the 1960s to positive in the 1970s the architects of neutrality and the opponents of the keynesian trade off emerged triumphant with two major caveats that their own models based on information barriers were unconvincing and that their core result that business cycles were driven by monetary or price surprises floundered without supporting evidence after 1975 the evolution of the pc literature split in two directions each of which has largely failed to recognize the other s contributions section ii reviews the left fork of the road the revival of the pc trade off in a coherent and integrated dynamic aggregate supply and demand framework that emerged in the late 1970s in econometric tests in theoretical contributions and in intermediate macro textbooks this approach which i have called mainstream is resolutely keynesian because the inflation rate is dominated by persistence and inertia in the form of long lags on past inflation an important difference between the mainstream approach and other post 1975 developments is that the role of past inflation is not limited to the formation of expectations but also includes a pure persistence effect due to fixed duration wage and price contracts and lags between

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

are union productivity effects overestimated evidence from coal mining the empirical literature of the influence of unions on productivity is extended by considering the effect in an industry with heterogeneous firms recent theoretical papers suggest that in such an industry unions will tend to organize the exogenously more productive firms thus a spurious correlation between unions and productivity may emerge we test this hypothesis by estimating production functions for coal with data from eastern kentucky underground coal mines the aspect of mine heterogeneity that we focus on is the width of the mine s seam of coal wider seams increase productivity empirically we find that unions disproportionately organize mines with wider seams and this accounts for the positive relationship between unions and productivity observed in our data in fact once seam thickness is accounted for the estimated effect of unions on productivity is negative

market structure and worker quality it is frequently asserted although never directly tested that firms in more monopolistic industries hire better qualified workers this paper presents two new results first worker quality education in particular is a strong determinant of whether a worker is employed in a concentrated industry when using a traditional data source second upon expanding the data to include measures of research and development workers of better quality are actually no more likely to locate in concentrated industries these results fit with theories claiming that industries subject to technological opportunities may be more concentrated and that those opportunities demand higher quality workers i introduction at least a score of articles since the 1960s test the hypothesis that more concentrated industries pay workers higher wages other things equal this investigation has been part of a more general examination of whether or not concentrated structure generates inefficiencies beyond the deviation of price from cost unfortunately this large scale effort has not been rewarded with consistent results separate researchers both confirm and fail to confirm an independent role for industrial concentration in wage determination among those who fail to confirm the concentration earnings hypothesis one explanation is offered most often while concentrated industries pay higher wages they obtain better qualified workers the generally acknowledged simple correlation between wages and concentration becomes an insignificant partial correlation in the presence of a vector of controls while some of the typical controls could be considered measures of worker quality others clearly are not it may be one or more of these non quality controls which frequently include industry characteristics which eliminates the significance of concentration for example plant size and unionization known to be correlated with both wages and concentration are among the more likely non quality variables which could explain the lack of the authors thank william j adams william g shepherd gary solon and frank p stafford their suggestions improved early versions of this paper thanks is also expressed to almarin phillips who suggested the association with technological progress those confirming a positive statistical association between wages and industrial concentration include dalton and ford 119771 mellow 119831 kwoka 119831 long and link 119831 and heywood 119861 those failing to find such an association include weiss 119661 rapping 1967 pugel i9801 and freeman and medoff 119811

unionization and cost of production compensation productivity and factor use effects unionization affects cost of production through compensation premia technology shifts and deviations from the least cost combination of inputs the first two are familiar but the last is not this article distinguishes the three effects illustrates the factor use effect and suggests that it may resolve several apparent inconsistencies union induced cost effects appear larger than those implied by union compensation and productivity differentials union compensation and productivity differentials suggest a larger effect on labor intensity of output than is observed and employers complain that union work rules reduce productivity when there is little evidence that this is so

unionism and productivity in west virginia coal mining this study presents econometric estimates of the effects of unionism on productivity in 83 west virginia coal mines in the early 1920s the size detail and panel structure of the data set permit investigation of many possible links between unionism and productivity in contrast to the summary measures reported by most studies the results show that the union effect was not uniform across mines and cannot be represented by a simple shift parameter rather unionism significantly reduced productivity at small mines but not at large mines drawing on historical evidence the author ascribes this differential effect to systematic differences between small and large operations in the quality of management and union leadership

indexation and incomes policy a study of wage adjustment in unionized manufacturing data from nearly 200 collective bargaining units are used to study the frequency of wage change from 1957 to 1978 it is shown that incomes policies during the kennedy johnson and nixon administrations encouraged changes in the length of time between wage adjustments inflation often thought to be responsible for fluctuations in the coverage of indexing provisions is found to play virtually no role the conclusion is that government intervention in the wageprice process aroused fears that the government will intervene again in the future in the presence of this uncertainty the wage adjustment provisions of collective bargaining contracts were changed

unions and the incidence of performance linked pay schemes in britain abstract this paper examines the relationship between trade unions and the incidence of share ownership profit sharing and value added schemes in britain the first two schemes are more common in the union sector whilst the third occurs more in non union establishments a distinction is made between weak and strong unions and it is found that performance linked pay schemes are in general less likely to be present if an establishment has a strong union rather than a weak one

unionized construction workers are more productive this paper presents evidence on the effect of unionism on productivity in construction the linkages are distinct from those studied previously in industrial settings apprenticeship training and hiring halls probably raise union productivity while jurisdictional disputes and restrictive work rules lower it using brown and medoff s methodology union productivity measured by value added per employee is 44 to 52 percent higher than nonunion the estimate declines to 17 to 22 percent when estimates of interarea construction price differences are used to deflate value added occupational mix differences and possibly apprenticeship training account for 15 to 27 percent of this difference

an analysis of the implications of omitting variables from the monetary growth equation in a model of real output and unanticipated money growth abstract for a barro type model of output and unanticipated monetary growth the paper derives the conditions under which the underlying true model can be tested when the model actually being estimated has been misspecified in the sense that important explanatory variables have been omitted from the money growth equation

the impact of unionization on motor carrier costs i introduction the increasingly competitive markets fostered by the motor carrier act of 1980 have forced motor carriers to focus on cost saving strategies intended to reduce operating miles fuel consumption and capital and labor expenses there are two reasons unions firms may be at a competitive disadvantage in these efforts first although the union nonunion wage differential has decreased following regulatory reform rose 1987 and hirsch 1988 find that union firms still pay higher wages second managers of unionized firms may have less flexibility in the use of inputs since union work rules restrict the activities and substitutability of drivers terminal workers and terminal facilities indeed harrington 1987 reports that post 1980 trucking expenses are still 40 higher for unionized motor carriers than for nonunion firms unionization may affect carrier cost both by increasing the price of labor and by potentially affecting cost function parameters if union rules make labor less productive the entire cost function will shift upwards for a given set of factor input prices further freeman and medoff 1982 argue that work rules may be expected to result in reduced elasticities of substitution between labor and other inputs in the unionized setting indeed they find that substitution between production labor and other labor in manufacturing is generally lower in unionized settings the impact of unionization on production has been investigated in industries such as construction coal mining hospitals and the cement industry by allen 1984 1986a 1986b byrnes et al 1988 and clark 1980a 1980b the results have been inconclusive with unionized firms being more productive than nonunion firms in some instances and less productive in others studies such as allen 1986c and addison and hirsch 1989 have utilized production function methodologies that use restrictive functional forms which impose homogeneity and identical elasticities of substitution between pairs of inputs allen 1986c examines the relative efficiency of union and nonunion firms with a translog cost function allowing for union effects using intercept and slope parameters that vary by union status in his study of different types of construction projects he finds significant differences between the cost functions for union and nonunion firms but no evidence of the inelasticity of factor substitutions as hypothesized by medoff and freeman in fact his estimates of factor demand elasticities show no discernible pattern for union versus nonunion firms leading him to conclude that work rules do not have the anticipated impact on elasticity the purpose of this study is to test whether unionization impacts motor carrier costs and if so to determine the direction of the impact of particular interest is whether the work rules imposed by the teamster s union have had a significant impact on factor substitutability in unionized firms as argued by freeman and medoff 1982 friedlaender and spady 1981 daughety et al 1985 mcmullen and stanley 1988 grimm et al 1989 and ying s 1990 studies of motor carrier industry costs have used translog cost functions which implicitly assume that union and nonunion cost functions arise from the same production technology this is equivalent to accepting the hypothesis that unionization does not affect the production structure of motor carrier firms if unionization does affect a firm s production process the results from these studies could be biased accordingly this study uses a translog cost function to test for differences in the cost structure of union and nonunion carriers not only is the translog cost function standard in the motor carrier literature permitting comparison of these results with those of previous work it also allows the flexibility necessary to examine the differential impact of unions on cost function parameters and elasticities of substitution between factors

do unions contract for added employment the efficient contract model predicts unions will contract for added employment that is a level of employment higher than would be predicted by the demand curve for labor using three data sets on canadian industries in 1971 81 u s industries in 1972 and u s construction projects in 1973 74 and several estimation techniques the author estimates and compares labor demand equations for both union and nonunion firms some regressions that control for few variables support the added employment hypothesis but those with more complete specifications reject it