order backlogs and strategic pricing the case of the u s large turbine generator industry this paper illustrates the usefulness of game theory for strategic management through theoretical and empirical analysis of price competition in the presence of production backlogs game theoretic analysis predicts a different relationship between relative prices and backlog levels than does analysis that ignores the sorts of interactive considerations emphasized by game theory empirical analysis based on data for the u s market for large turbine generators between 1951 and 1963 corroborates the game theoretic prediction the paper concludes with a discussion of the sorts of situations in which game theoretic reasoning is particularly likely to prove useful 1998 john wiley sons ltd

occupational self selection a human capital approach to sex differences in occupational structure a rich and diverse literature exists concerning the distribution of labor incomes one approach namely that of human capital concentrates on lifetime accumulation paths of earnings capacity units human capital individual variations in human capital imply differences in earnings power thereby yielding strong implications concerning earnings distribution within a population despite its explanatory power the human capital model has been widely criticized one criticism centers on its inability to obtain inferences concerning occupational distribution the purpose of this paper is to alleviate at least some such criticism by applying the hedonic price approach so as to embed occupational choice into the human capital framework the significance is that neoclassical economic theory can be used to obtain implications concerning the determinants of occupational structure excerpt

interrupted work careers depreciation and restoration of human capital the quantitative effects and even the existence of a human capital depreciation phenomenon have been a subject of controversy in the recent literature prior work however was largely cross sectional and the longitudinal dimension if any was retrospective using longitudinal panel data on married women in nls we have now established that real wages at reentry are indeed lower than at the point of labor force withdrawal and the decline in wages is greater the longer the interruption another striking finding is a relatively rapid growth in wages after the return to work this rapid growth appears to reflect the restoration or repair of previously eroded human capital the phenomenon of depreciation and restoration is also visible in data for immigrants to the united states however while immigrants eventually catch up with and often surpass natives returnees from the nonmarket do not fully restore their earnings potential

obsolescence of knowledge and career publication profiles some evidence of differences among fields in costs of interrupted careers in recent years women have received about 45 percent of all baccalaureate degrees but only approximately 20 percent of all ph d s does this imply that academic careers as compared with careers of the wider market for college graduates are less conducive to dual career family objectives evidence suggesting the relative tradeoff of these objectives is shown by the fact that over the last thirty years the zero order correlation between average cohort fertility and the proportion of ph d recipients who are women is 0 939 a female recipient of a doctorate is twice as likely as a male recipient to have specialized in the humanities and only one third as likely to have specialized in a physical science field furthermore of those who receive a doctorate in physical science a male is 60 percent more likely than a female to pursue research as a primary work activity in the humanities on the other hand a woman is at least as likely as a man to have research as an initial postdoctoral work activity obviously many factors affect opportunities and resultant decisions to enter particular careers and to select specific occupational specialties this study considers only onethe rate of obsolescence or depreciation of knowledge as reflected in the age profile of cited works this measure of the obsolescence of knowledge refers to the rate of decay in the relative frequency at which citations are made to a particular vintage of research communications as the communications age in other words the usefulness of older published research papers as an input to current research depreciates over time the rate at which this depreciation occurs is interpreted as measuring the durability of a professor s accumulated stock of knowledge evidence presented in section ii indicates that the durability of knowledge varies considerably from discipline to discipline this information raises a number of questions concerning how the durability of knowledge influences career decisions one influence considered here is that of a temporary career interruption for example if a woman experiences a break in her academic career such as for the purpose of raising children she will incur an opportunity cost in the sense that her research knowledge will to some extent become obsolete consequently her accumulated stock of knowledge will decline relative to those professors who have continuous careers the relative cost imposed on a woman who pursues dual family career objectives is higher the less durable the jobrelated knowledge this difference in relative costs is expected to alter career incentives the results presented here suggest that women who pursue academic careers have responded to these incentives before discussing the evidence on female careers i consider a more general model in which a professor is assumed to have a continuous career profile this model which is more appropriately viewed as a male model of investment behavior is used to analyze how the durability of a professor s knowledge affects his research productivity over a career interestingly the evidence suggests that a professor s response to less durable knowledge is not to compact all learning early in his career but rather to smooth learning over the career perhaps the most assistant professor arizona state university i would like to thank an anonymous referee and many friends for helpful comments on earlier drafts i am especially indebted to finis welch for valuable suggestions throughout the development of this paper the views expressed are my own and i am responsible for any possible errors

in school work experience and the returns to schooling students often accumulate substantial work experience before leaving school because conventional earnings functions do not control for in school work experience their estimates of the return to schooling include the benefit of work experience gained along the way using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth i estimate wage models with and without controls for in school work experience the estimated schooling coefficients are 25 44 higher depending on how i control for ability bias when in school work experience is omitted than when it is included these findings indicate that conventional models significantly overstate the wage effects of school only

local pay determination theoretical models of local pay are reviewed ranging from neoclassical perspectives unemployment wage trade off models and segmented labor market approaches the empirical work on u s north south differentials is discussed for the u k studies of the extent of and trends in geographical pay differentials are considered as well as behavioral explanations focusing on the role of excess demand the issue of adjustment processes is then discussed both in theory and in relation to empirical work for the u s and u k this discussion focuses largely on geographical spillover effects in terms of origins evidence and issues of identification finally the impact of certain impediments in the adjustment process are considered specifically in relation to the u k these concern the role and influence of national wage bargaining as well as factors inhibiting labor migration stemming from the housing market and the climate of the national labor market copyright 1992 by blackwell publishers ltd

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

nonresponse and delayed response to competitive moves the roles of competitor dependence and action irreversibility competitive moves that are unchallenged or to which response is delayed are important weapons in a strategist s arsenal so variables that discourage or delay response are of great interest using

european telecommunications markets on the verge of full liberalization telecommunications was not a very important or active sector at a political or regulatory level in europe until the late 1980s the common assumption before that time with a few exceptions such as the united kingdom sweden and finland was that private ownership or competition in telecommunications was unlikely to be beneficial instead the publicly owned national monopoly telecommunications company was viewed as an important ingredient in industrial policy public procurement was typically used to build a local telecommunications equipment industry also the monopoly telecommunications firm was often treated as a cash cow for example deutsche telecom in 1991 paid the german government a tax of 10 percent of its revenue as well as a 4 percent special reunification tax and a 6 percent tax to cover the losses of the post office which was another fully state owned monopoly however the 1980s brought a wave of technological developments in the telecommunications sector along with the u s break up of at t telecommunications began to move upwards on the industrial policies priority list of the european commission this institution is the guardian of the various treaties signed by member states of the european union the initiator of policy and the body responsible for proposing legislation to the european council such as directives which require liberalization in telecommunications the commission also has the authority to control and regulate anticompetitive practices the commission became increasingly convinced that inefficiencies and high prices plagued european

emergence of entrepreneurs following exogenous technological change this paper explains how after an exogenous technological change occurs entrepreneurs displace incumbents who were ex ante capable of exploiting any innovations that resulted from the change the model initially considers classical economic assumptions in the context of process innovations and then its robustness to uncertainty bounded rationality firm asymmetry and product innovations are discussed the model is preliminarily tested against industry trends using both results from an analysis of the information technology sector and from the literature the paper does not suffer from the inconsistency of explaining how capable incumbents are displaced by resorting to characterizations of incumbents as incapable due to some inefficiency the paper models incumbents as efficient yet rationally choosing in some instances to be displaced copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

reciprocity in international business a study of telecommunications alliances and contracts reciprocity has been identified as a messy concept to study within international cooperative ventures theoretically grounded in international cooperation transaction cost theory and economic anthropology reciprocity is operationalized and explored in this study specifically the effects of cultural distance economic nearness country level risk and governance mechanisms are analyzed in relationship to three distinct measures of reciprocity the international long distance industry provides the research setting during the 1980s and 1990s as this industry has become more competitive within the united states foreign partners have been slow to reciprocate regarding the sharing of revenues derived from increased overseas calling to study reciprocity between u s international long distance carriers and their partnering foreign entities a pooled time series cross sectional technique is used 11 years of contractual arrangements between the u s firms and the telecom administrations of 109 countries are analyzed governance mechanisms test as highly significant with all measures of reciprocity while the other independent variables exhibit varying degrees of significance with the respective dependent measures

alternative models of earnings determination and labor market structures there are three distinct research traditions in the analysis of individual earnings determination human capital or earnings function analyses aggregate wage analyses and labor demand analyses an important and incongruous aspect of each is the treatment of geographical differences in labor markets this paper first investigates the magnitude and character of geographical wage differentials the sizable differences discovered there are then related to the existing and highly simplified models of labor market differences while the two major classes of models compensating differentials and labor demand differ significantly in assumptions and implications it is impossible to distinguish adequately between them there appears to be a clear need for more structural analyses of labor market operations

labor supply and taxes a survey i survey the male and female labor supply literatures focusing on implications for effects of wages and taxes for males i describe and contrast results from three basic types of model static models especially those that account for nonlinear taxes life cycle models with savings and life cycle models with both savings and human capital for women more important distinctions are whether models include fixed costs of work and whether they treat demographics like fertility and marriage and human capital as exogenous or endogenous the literature is characterized by considerable controversy over the responsiveness of labor supply to changes in wages and taxes at least for males it is fair to say that most economists believe labor supply elasticities are small but a sizeable minority of studies that i examine obtain large values hence there is no clear consensus on this point in fact a simple average of hicks elasticities across all the studies i examine is 0 30 several simulation studies have shown that such a value is large enough to generate large welfare costs of income taxation for males i conclude that two factors drive many of the differences in results across studies one factor is use of direct vs ratio wage measures with studies that use the former tending to find larger elasticties another factor is the failure of most studies to account for human capital returns to work experience i argue that this may lead to downward bias in elasticity estimates in a model that includes human capital i show how even modest elasticities as conventionally measured can be consistent with large welfare costs of taxation

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

the importance of bundling in a gorman lancaster model of earnings the idea that the labor market of individuals can be decomposed into payments to separate productive attributes has an enduring appeal in economics assuming that demographic groups differ only in their endowments of productive characteristics it is possible to rationalize observed demographic earnings differentials without invoking the arguments that characteristics specific to a particular demographic group are direct objects of employer demand by aggregating skills over all demographic groups it is possible to produce a theory of the market determination of the prices of skills held in different amounts by different demographic groups this paper considers conditions under which characteristics are uniformly priced across sectors of a multisector economy the paper presents empirical evidence that rejects uniform pricing of characteristics as a description of the us labor market bundling may account for this evudence but other hypotheses do as well authors

market structure and inefficiency in the foreign exchange market abstract this paper investigates the intradaily operational efficiency of the us foreign exchange market by conducting computer simulation experiments with market structure the numbers of market makers brokers and customers the results indicate significant operational inefficiencies which can be explained by temporary inventory imbalances inherent in a decentralized market the results also suggest that much of this inefficiency could be alleviated through a centralization of price information jel f31 g15

investment and technical progress models in which the growth rate is exogenous provide no role for government in determining growth in our model growth is associated with investment through externalities from learning by watching rather than with the level of the capital stock presumption of a technical progress function with first increasing and then decreasing returns leads to multiple steady state growth equilibria there is also an explicit role of government policy in setting tax rates on output it follows that two economies with identical structures and stochastic tax policies may exhibit very different growth paths over sustained periods although the stationary distribution of growth rates is the same given the desirability in principle of subsidizing investment various practical methods are considered copyright 1992 by oxford university press

expected interruptions in labor force participation and sex related differences in earnings growth the paper analyzes the joint determination of wives earnings and labor force participation over the life cycle given the interruptions in wives work careers the interruptions affect the profitability of the investment in human capital which in turn determines earnings the earnings prospects feed back into the participation decision namely the decision whether and for how long to drop out of the labor force the formal analysis compares the age earnings profiles of persons who drop out of the labor force with those who do not during the pre and post interruption period the comparison is carried out where interruptions are assumed to be exogenous and when they are endogenous the effect of productivity at home the initial stock of human capital and its rental value on the length of the interruption is investigated this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the relation between price changes and trading volume a survey this paper reviews previous and current research on the relation between price changes and trading volume in financial markets and makes four contributions first two empiri cal relations are established volume is positively related to the magnitude of the price change and in equity markets to the price change per se second previous theoretical research on the price volume relation is summarized and critiqued and major insights are emphasized third a simple model ofthe price volume relation is proposed that is consis tent with several seemingly unrelated or contradictory observations and fourth several directions for future research are identified

international expansion of telecommunication carriers the influence of market structure network characteristics and entry imperfections this paper examines the internationalization process of telecommunication carriers in this industry early entrants gain substantial first mover advantages due to the transient nature of the windows of market opportunity and the potential to influence the regulatory process as an incumbent to capture these strategic and economic advantages firms follow a strategy of preemption both of markets and partners the authors argue for the need to augment prevailing theory with contextual idiosyncrasies that characterize specific industries

pension portability and labor market efficiency a survey of the literature this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature evaluating the labor market effects of policies to enhance pension portability one perspective is that reducing the cost of job change w

informational differences between limit and market orders for a market maker markets for exchange typically evolve over time and the organized security exchanges in the united states have evolved in such a manner as to give specialists a major role as market makers specialists are responsible for maintaining a fair and orderly market in the securities listed on an exchange they specify prices to reflect supply and demand and adjust these prices in response to shifts in supply and demand

market structure and the multinational enterprise a game theoretic approach since at least the late 1950s it has been recognized that multinational enterprises operate in imperfect markets characterized by oligopoly the dominant transactions cost theory of multinational enterprises does not wholly account for why this is so the reductio ad absurdum of this theory would predict imperfect markets to be sure but they would be monopolistic rather than oligopolistic in this article a simple model based on noncooperative game theory shows how oligopolistic markets can evolve from monopolistic ones also shown is that it is neither necessary nor sufficient that a firm have lower costs than its rivals in order to have an incentive to become multinational

estimation of optimal human capital accumulation parameters for the netherlands abstract using the theory of optimal investments in human capital in general and rosen s 1975 1976 version of it in particular we tried to model and explain aggregate life cycle income profiles for the netherlands in 1965 1972 and 1979 the model allowed us to estimate and impute human capital accumulation parameters and paths changes in rates of return depreciation rates the value of the human capital stock and of lifetime human wealth could be identified and compared for the sample years it was found that in terms of some of these parameters public sector employees gained compared with private sector employees and employees with higher vocational training gained ground over university trained employees

between free trade and protectionism strategic trade policy and a theory of corporate trade demands conventional theories of the political economy of trade argue that industries in import competing businesses favor protectionism while multinational firms and export dependent corporations advocate unconditional free trade however many multinational industries have recently advocated strategic trade policies that is they are willing to support free trade at home only if foreign markets are opened or foreign governments reduce subsidies to their firms if demands for strategic trade policy were adopted by the united states they could represent a threat to the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt and the multilateral trading system this article seeks to explain the emergence of these new corporate trade demands and thereby broaden theories of the political economy of trade the article begins with the widely supported position that multinational and export oriented firms prefer unconditional free trade building on concepts from theories of industrial organization and international trade the article then hypothesizes that rising economies of scale and steep learning curves will necessitate that these firms have access to global markets via exports if growing dependence on world markets is combined with foreign government subsidies or protection the trade preferences of firms will shift from unconditional free trade to demands that openness at home be contingent on openness overseas the manner in which firm demands then get translated into industry demands will vary with the industry s structure if the industry consists of firms with symmetric strategies it will seek strategic trade policy but if the industry is highly segmented it will turn toward protectionism the article concludes with a preliminary test of these hypotheses in four brief studies of the politics of trade in the semiconductor commercial aircraft telecommunications equipment and machine tool industries