urban spatial structure urban structure is increasingly characterized by decentralization dispersion and multiple employment centers much is known empirically about such patterns and about how the interplay between agglomerative and dispersive forces generates spatial structures that are complex and prone to multiple equilibria and dynamic path dependence these forces operate at different spatial scales many entail unpriced interaction and external scale economies deriving from product differentiation and endogenous technical change appear particularly important because these forces interact in complex ways inefficiencies in urban structure are resistant to simple policy interventions

institutional structure finance and race in higher education public private sectoral differences this paper has examined and extended the range of economic implications implied by existing differences in the underlying institutional structure of higher education along the lines of lindsay 1976 sisk 1981 and weisbrod 1977 it was hypothesized that public private intersectoral and intrasectoral differences in the dependence on various sources of finance give rise to systematic differences in the input output mix of institutions and lead to corresponding differences in blacks relative access to and success in higher education empirical evidence was offered in support of the contention that blacks relative to whites are more likely to gain access to higher education through the public sector but once entered they relative to whites face a greater likelihood of success in the private compared to the public sector

international evidence on tradables and nontradables inflation abstract using 1970 1985 sectoral data for the oecd we find that inflation in nontradable goods exceeds inflation in tradables we identify a demand shift towards nontradables and faster growth of total factor productivity in the tradable goods sector as the prime causes of the differential inflation in addition disinflation attempts and the exchange rate regime appear to have exerted significant influence on the relative inflation rate

causes and consequences of layoffs using probit analysis this article finds that differential treatment accounts for a substantial portion of the higher layoff rates of blacks in comparison to whites however women are found to be considerably less prone to layoffs than men with similar characteristics among those who obtained subsequent employment taking into account the possible selectivity bias in such a subsample white males are hurt more by layoffs than black males in terms of both short term and long term earnings growth women s earnings are not necessarily affected by layoff at all however whites and males are found to be more likely to be reemployed than blacks and females respectively

a model of university admission and tuition policy this paper contains an analysis of the admission and tuition policy of a university that maximizes its utility which depends on the aggregate value of its students and the endowment left for the future higher academic ability increases a student s value to the university while higher tuition decreases the likelihood that an admitted application enrolls the effects of the endowment the number of applicants etc are studied both when applications differ in their academic ability only and when applicants also differ in some other aspect such as parental income sex or ethnic origin the effects of affirmative action are considered copyright 1990 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

credibility of trade policy reform and investment the mexican experience abstract this paper assesses whether the program of trade liberalization undertaken by mexico after 1985 was undermined by lack of credibility it provides an empirical counterpart to some of the credibility issues that have been discussed elsewhere in the literature and proposes a methodology based on the estimation of a probit model to measure the probability of trade policy reversal due to the likelihood of occurrence of a balance of payments crisis it is shown that the probability of trade policy reversal reduced indeed the rate of capital accumulation during the first years of the reform

international transmission mechanisms and contagion in housing markets this paper explores international transmission mechanism and its role in contagion effect in the housing markets across six major asian cities the analysis is based on the identification of house price diffusion effects through a global vector autoregressive gvar model estimated using quarterly data for six major asian cities hong kong tokyo seoul singapore taipei and bangkok from 1991q1 to 2011q2 the empirical results indicate that the open economies heavily relying on international trade such as singapore japan tokyo taiwan taipei and thailand bangkok show positive correlations between the economy s openness and house prices which is consistent with the balassa samuelson hypothesis interestingly some region specific conditions also appear to play important roles as determinants of house price movements which may be driven by restrictive housing policies and demand supply imbalances such as singapore and bangkok these results are reasonably robust across several model specifications the findings bear significant implications for formulation of investment strategy and public policies

the wage effects of cumulative job mobility this analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of youth shows that cumulative job mobility had statistically significant effects on wages in the years 1979 88 the direction of the wage effects positive or negative and their magnitude varied depending on the type of cumulative mobility examined employee initiated versus employerinitiated separations economic versus family related quits layoffs versus discharges the results also indicate that although men and women had different mobility histories men for example had been discharged more often than women and women had quit for family related reasons more often than men the wage effects of each type of cumulative mobility economic quits family related quits layoffs and discharges were similar for men and women tn this paper we examine the impact of cumulative job mobility on the subsequent wages of young men and women most previous work on this subject has focused on the impact of specific mobility events such as quits or layoffs rather than on the impact of total job history on wages researchers looking at single mobility decisions have consistently reported evidence that a change in employers does affect a worker s subsequent wage therefore it is reasonable to ask whether the impact ofjob change is cumulative that is does a worker s current wage reflect the impact of all past mobility decisions quits layoffs and discharges also since most of the

a note on globalization and urban residential rents abstract we present evidence on the impact of international economic openness upon residential real estate consistent with the well known balassa samuelson effect which suggests that increasing openness raises relative prices of non tradable goods and services using a data set for 46 cities in different countries we find that urban rents are positively affected by the openness of the economy and by city size

the impact of income economic openness and interest rates on housing prices in china evidence from dynamic panel quantile regression the rapid growth of housing prices has attracted the attention of the whole of society in china this article adopts the dynamic panel quantile regression to investigate the impact of income econo

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

the unemployment rates of men and women a transition probability analysis women s unemployment rates were considerably higher than men s for many years but during the 1980s this difference has virtually disappeared this study is the first to examine that change through an analysis of trends in the probabilities of labor force transitions movements between employment unemployment and nonparticipation in the labor force using bls data the authors find that about half of the narrowing of the unemployment rate differential during the 1968 85 period was due to the increasing labor force attachment of women and the decreasing attachment of men the other half reflects changes in men s and women s tendencies to move between employment and unemployment which the authors attribute primarily to the secular decline of male dominated industries

optimal financial aid policies for a selective university our paper provides a model of optimal financial aid policies for a selective university the model implies that the financial aid package to be offered to each category of admitted applicants depends on the elasticity of the fraction who accept offers of admission with respect to the financial aid package offered them the propensity of the category to enroll the elasticity of the category s average quality with respect to the number admitted and the relative weight the university assigns them in the utility function while the latter must be determined subjectively the former parameters are subject to empirical estimation we conclude with a study of one institution s data and illustrate how they may be estimated these estimates are then applied to illustrate what the optimal financial aid policy would be for the university

the rocky road to reform trade industrial financial and agricultural strategies abstract this paper reviews recent issues of economic reform in developing countries based on studies undertaken for the world institute for development economics research wider emphasis is placed on a novel 3 gap adjustment model for savings investment trade and fiscal limitations at the macro level and a distinction between allocative and productive efficiency microeconomically issues of stabilization and adjustment and trade industrial policy financial reform privatization market deregulation and the agrarian question are discussed

commercial policy growth and the distribution of income in a dynamic trade model abstract this paper analyzes the effects of commercial policy in a dynamic three factor three sector model that allows for endogenous capital accumulation nontraded goods and both consumption and capital good imports simple well defined conditions are derived under which different trade strategies raise or lower the real wage and are effective in promoting capital accumulation

the politics of race in higher education governing boards and constituents recent theoretical and empirical contributions suggest that patterns of employment discrimination in the public sector can be interpreted as a consequence of political and structural factors in viewing the government as a vote maximizing entity according to the analysis presented in this paper extensions of the discrimating vote maximizing hypothesis to the higher education industry are also useful in explaining interstate differences in the relative ability of blacks to capture a more equitable share of publicly produced education the basic empirical finding is that blacks relative access to and success in public higher education as measured by relative black enrollments and conferred degrees is significantly improved by increased black political participation and representation in elected offices furthermore the analysis implies that the organizational structure of higher education also matters governing boards enjoying longer terms of office appear to have a negative effect on black equality in public higher education although the evidence on this point was weak further tests would be required before it could be completely dismissed finally the empirical results indicate that the recent structural trend toward fewer governing boards and greater concentration of board power have the likely effect of decreasing blacks access to and success in higher education overall these findings lend additional support to the present extensions of the vote maximizing hypothesis in explaining patterns of discrimination in the public sector

estimating the effect of financial aid offers on college enrollment a regression discontinuity approach an important problem faced by colleges and universities that of evaluating the effect of their financial aid offers on student enrollment decisions is complicated by the likely endogeneity of the aid offer variable in a student enrollment equation this article shows how discontinuities in an east coast college s aid assignment rule can be exploited to obtain credible estimates of the aid effect without having to rely on arbitrary exclusion restrictions and functional form assumptions semiparametric estimates based on a regression discontinuity rd approach affirm the importance of financial aid as an effective instrument in competing with other colleges for students

job tenure and job mobility in britain using work history data from the british household panel survey the authors examine job mobility and job tenure over the period 1915 90 british men and women held an average of five jobs over the course of their work lives and half of all lifetime job changes occurred in the first ten years separation hazards were higher for more recent cohorts implying an increase in job instability as jobs accumulated average tenure lengthened but the proportion of involuntary separations increased for both men and women the rise in job instability was particularly marked in the lowest occupational classification in general job insecurity was greater for men than women

sex differentials in unemployment rates a case for no concern this paper reevaluates the concept of unemployment in the context of differing labor market and nonmarket opportunities for men and women discussing common fallacies in female to male unemployment rate comparisons and their use as an indicator of labor market equality suggestive empirical evidence is presented for an alternative unemployment rate concept for women for interpreting the procyclical variation in female to male unemployment rate differentials and for decomposing unemployment differences into differences in labor market characteristics and in behavioral coefficients for the two sexes the paper concludes that a large part of the observed unemployment rate differential may be attributed to the definition and methodology used in deriving unemployment statistics rather than to discrimination in productive opportunities

public expenditures on higher education and their impact on enrolment patterns the purpose of this paper is to estimate the declines in enrolment that can be expected if government provided scholarship aid is reduced and basic student charges are increased a model of the scholarship aid process is interacted with a traditional human capital approach to enrolment behaviour these models are then estimated using a large microdata set of young persons and the fitted values utilized to simulate enrolment probabilities for white and nonwhite males and females given alternative fiscal scenarios