international evidence on output inflation tradeoffs a bootstrap analysis abstract a bootstrap analysis of existing data on international output inflation tradeoffs is performed in contrast to some previous empirical work the results of the bootstrap analysis strongly support lucas 1973 rational expectations model of the natural rate hypothesis

an alternative view of pricing in retail food markets the pricing mechanism of intracity retail food markets has received the attention of agricultural economists who are interested in the competitive nature of food price determination attention has focused on the information theory paradigm and potential impact of publically available comparative price reports in this paper a spatial economic model is developed to describe and analyze consumer choice seller behavior and price determination in retail food markets empirical evidence is then used to test hypotheses developed from the spatial model it is concluded that the spatial model offers added explanatory power of observed food market responses to retail price reporting

money anticipated changes and policy effectiveness the lucas sargent wallace l s w proposition states that expected policy changes have no influence on real economic variables even in the short run see robert lucas 1972 and thomas sargent and neil wallace 1975 one form of empirical test of the l s w proposition the neutrality proposition began with robert barro s 1977 1978 seminal articles supporting the neutrality proposition however more recent papers including those by david small 1979 john makin 1982 and frederic mishkin 1982a b have reexamined the relationships between anticipated and unanticipated money vs output unemployment and inflation and have found evidence suggesting that anticipated monetary changes do have real effects all of the above cited studies use expectations procedures which estimate for example a money growth equation over the entire period under consideration however this approach assumes that when expectations are being formed at the beginning of the period economic agents have the relevant information for the entire period in this note i reexamine the impact of expected vs unexpected monetary changes focusing on the informational restrictions actually faced by economic agents when formulating expectations the structure of the model used here is similiar to the models of barro and mishkin a measure of real output is assumed to be a function of a policy variable and a vector of predetermined variables the policy variable can be decomposed into anticipated and unanticipated components algebraically

trends in time allocation a cross country analysis abstract using detailed time use data for seven industrialized countries from the 1970s until today we document general decreases in men s market work coupled with increases in men s unpaid work and child care and increases in women s paid work and child care coupled with decreases in unpaid work we also find almost universal increases in the time devoted to watching television over this period and uncover a widespread increase in leisure inequality in favor of lower educated adults trends in leisure inequality mirror the general increase in income and earnings inequality experienced in most countries over this period especially after the mid 1980s all these findings are consistent with previous results for the us however in contrast to the increases in leisure found for the us we fail to find common trends in leisure time across countries over the period analyzed

integration of spatial markets studies of spatial market integration draw their implications from a theory which assumes that there are no intraregional transport costs an alternative theory is offered based on the assumptions that buyers and sellers are spatially dispersed and intraregional transport costs are significant this implies that the market is a linked oligopoly or oligopsony and that market integration tests are tests of alternative oligopoly price formation processes for example collusive basing point pricing produces results typically assumed to imply efficiently integrated markets while competitive fob pricing does not the theoretical implications are illustrated with an analysis of hog prices in canada

the impact of sunday shopping on employment and hours of work in the retail industry evidence from canada abstract between 1980 and 1998 every canadian province passed legislation that in some way relaxed restrictions on sunday shopping this study exploits the variation in deregulation dates between provinces to identify how retail employers adjust employment and hours of work when deciding to open on sundays a major complication of this analysis is to first determine for which provinces the deregulation dates are useful indicators of increases in sunday store openings this paper uses a unique trading day regression approach to identify these provinces and then uses aggregate data from the selected provinces to estimate a simple dynamic labour demand model that allows employment and hours to be imperfect substitutes in production the results suggest that retailers needs for sunday labour were disproportionately satisfied through increases in employment levels comparison of the estimates at three levels of the retail industry suggests that the employment and hours gains were larger among general merchandise stores than among more specialized retail establishments and relatively modest at the aggregate retail industry level in addition despite evidence of an immediate shortfall in the employment level below the long run optimal level the results suggest that firms were unable to compensate by temporarily increasing the hours of their existing employees

spatial competition with free entry chamberlinian tangencies and social efficiency abstract free entry in loschian spatial competition leads to a tangency between each firm s negatively sloped average revenue and the downsloping portion of average costs as in chamberlin s monopolistic competition it is generally concluded that this equilibrium involves too many inefficiently small firms however this conclusion is incorrect the difference between price and firm marginal production costs in spatial equilibrium is just sufficient to cover the additional marginal cost of output resulting from availability of multiple locations this chamberlinian tangency does not imply inefficiency because it does not include all the social costs and benefits resulting from spatial competition

cointegration tests and spatial price linkages in regional cattle markets this analysis empirically evaluates spatial linkages in regional cattle markets using cointegration tests of regional price series several markets were not cointegrated over the 1980 through 1987 period however significant increases in cointegration of several regional livestock markets are observed through the 1980s the increased cointegration parallels significant structural changes in the livestock industry a formal analysis of market characteristics reveals that distances between markets industry concentration ratios market volumes and market types have significant influences on cointegration relationships between markets

why shops close again an evolutionary perspective on the deregulation of shopping hours this paper introduces a new perspective on the deregulation of shopping hours based on ideas from evolutionary game theory we study a retail economy where shopping hours have been deregulated recently it is argued that first the deregulation leads to a coordination problem between store owners and customers and second the solution to this problem depends on the specific cost structure of stores and the preferences of customers in particular it may happen that even if extended shopping hours are pareto efficient stores and customers do not succeed in coordinating on this equilibrium the analysis explains the observation in germany where shopping hours have been deregulated recently that store owners tend to go back to the former shopping hours again moreover it emphasizes the important role of advertisement campaigns as a signalling device

spatial price equilibrium with product variety chain stores and integer pricing an empirical analysis a spatial model that incorporates store locations and city topographic features is developed for the edmonton alberta video cassette rental market bertrand nash equi librium prices are computed using a grid search algorithm that maximizes goodness of fit against observed prices the fit is improved by taking into account differences between stores in product variety the tendency of chains to set a common price for all member stores and the tendency of chains to set whole dollar prices implications for further empirical research in spatial pricing are drawn

deregulation of shopping hours the impact on independent retailers and chain stores this paper studies shopping hour decisions by retail chains and independent competitors we use a salop type model where retailers compete in prices and shopping hours our results depend significantly on efficiency differences between retail chain and independent retailer if the efficiency difference is small the independent retailer may choose longer shopping hours than the retail chain and may gain from deregulation at the expense of the retail chain the opposite result emerges when the efficiency difference is large then the retail chain may benefit whereas the independent retailer loses from deregulation

shopping hours and price levels in the retailing industry a theoretical and empirical analysis i introduction the debate surrounding shopping laws is very much the same regardless of the country in which it occurs the traditional objectives of regulating store opening hours can be divided into four categories i to guarantee access to essential goods and services ii to promote and protect a certain way of life iii to protect small businesses and iv to assure a day of rest for everyone despite these concerns the recent trend in canadian provinces is to extend store opening hours in the retailing industry for instance in july 1990 the quebec government allowed retail stores to stay open on wednesday nights and on sundays the recent deregulation was prompted by changes in lifestyles and increasing constraints on the time people can devote to shopping activities perhaps the most significant are that the number of one parent families is increasing as is the number of couples in which both spouses work there is evidence that changes in opening hours influence the structure of the retailing industry morrison and newman 1983 show that there is a redistribution of sales from small stores to large stores after deregulation an empirical study by moorehouse 1984 shows that in the united states those states that strictly regulate store opening hours do have a smaller proportion of large stores building on their work we examine the short term impact of extended shopping hours on prices at large stores to determine whether consumers have to pay higher prices for greater shopping flexibility to our knowledge this issue has not been addressed in the literature first we develop an extension of morrison and newman s 1983 theoretical model inspired by becker 1965 and location models pioneered by hotelling 1929 chamberlin 1951 1962 lancaster 1966 and salop 1977 we deem the price of a good to have two components the price itself and the time spent by the consumer to purchase the good thus opening hours and store location play a role in the determination of prices we explore the effect of increased opening hours on the demand faced by stores of different sizes and thus on their price levels among other things our model predicts that after deregulation price levels at large stores will increase because of a demand shift in favor of large stores at the expense of small stores we then test this prediction using pooled time series and cross section data prices of five products for thirty one weeks collected before and after the deregulation of store hours in quebec on july 8 1990 the data were collected at three major food stores in the montreal area we obtain estimates of price equations using the pooling method developed by kmenta 1986 the results support our view that prices have increased at large stores since the deregulation the rest of the paper is organized as follows in section ii we develop our analytical framework section iii presents the data and the estimation strategy since a price increase may signal an increase in costs rather than an increase in demand we deal explicitly with this issue in that section of the paper we discuss the empirical results in section iv and we conclude in section v ii the model the following analysis extends that of morrison and newman 1983 a brief initial overview of their work is needed to develop the necessary notation and to set up the problem in their model morrison and newman make two simplifying yet standard assumptions they assume a single perfectly divisible homogeneous commodity and only two types of stores large and small thus consumers choose to shop at small or large stores to minimize the total cost tc of purchasing the commodity on a given shopping trip the total cost includes the cost of the bundle of goods p sub j b where p sub j is the price per unit at store j and b is the bundle size a consumer intends to buy and his own valuation of the time needed to travel to the store a

a critique of the proposed tests of the natural rate rational expectations hypothesis the failure of the governments of most industrialised countries over the past decade to deal successfully with the problems of rising unemployment and high and often accelerating rates of price and wage inflation has revived interest in the pre keynesian macro economics of sound money and has renewed the controversy of the 1930 s over what governments should or should not do if they wish to achieve full employment with reasonable price stability in democratic societies keynesian economics has come under attack both by those who primarily oppose interventionist policies on ideological grounds and by the so called new classical macro economists who adhere to the natural rate of unemployment hypothesis nrh advanced by phelps i967 and friedman i 968 and the hypothesis of rational formation of expectations reh originally due to muth i96i armed with this joint natural rate rational expectations nr re hypothesis the new classical macro economists have argued that in a world capable of being represented by linear or log linear relations with a unique and stable equilibrium and no information discrepancy between the government and the private sector no government macro economic policy whether monetary or fiscal no matter how ingeniously formulated and how effectively implemented can have any systematic or lasting impact upon the level of output or the rate of unemployment 2 clearly this fundamental policy

timing constraints and the allocation of time the effects of changing shopping hours regulations in the netherlands abstract a 1996 change in shopping hours regulations in the netherlands provides an opportunity to study the effects of timing constraints on total time spent in shopping working and other activities as well as the timing of these activities we develop a simple structural model to make predictions about the effects of imposition and relaxation of a timing constraint on time use patterns and utilize time diary data from 1995 1997 1999 and 2000 to examine time use patterns by demographic group before and after the change in addition to a change in the timing of shopping we find a non negligible increase in the total time spent shopping

asymmetry and rigidity in farm retail price transmission this article demonstrates how retail price transmission asymmetry can arise from intertemporal optimizing behavior among spatially competitive retailers facing concave spatial demand and shows that vigorous competition among retailers may not necessarily result in the larger retail price declines farmers expect during periods of declining farm prices it also shows that when this particular class of retailers incurs repricing costs retail prices can be rigid over a range of upward and downward movements in the farm price this suggests that the rigidity of retail prices during periods of declining farm prices could be due to repricing costs it also suggests that the appropriate econometric model of price transmission is the model of friction where tobit analysis is the proper method of estimation rather than nonreversible functions

expectations and monetary neutrality an empirical reexamination modern monetary business cycle models feature rational expectations and natural rate assumptions which imply that unanticipated changes in nominal aggregates affect real output but anticipated changes do not initial tests conducted by barro 3 and by barro and rush 4 supported the neutrality of anticipated money growth in a particularly influential study mishkin 21 22 rejected the neutrality of anticipated policy mishkin s paper 21 has become one of the most frequently cited studies in empirical macroeconomics the influence of the study probably derives in large part from the unequivocal nature of the results in particular mishkin showed that i the hypothesis that anticipated policy has no effect on output is strongly rejected ii anticipated nominal changes have a greater estimated effect on output than do unanticipated nominal changes iii lags as long as 17 quarters have significant coefficients implying that barro s eight lag model was underspecified iv in some specifications the estimated sign of the effect of nominal innovations is opposite to the prediction of monetary business cycle theory frydman and rappoport 9 used mishkin s empirical model to provide further evidence against the neutrality hypothesis by showing that the data provide no evidence for distinguishing between the output effects of anticipated policy and those of unanticipated policy although several subsequent studies have supported the neutrality hypothesis 7 12 mishkin s careful study and a small number of additional studies suggest that the neutrality hypothesis is not robust the empirical rejection of the neutrality hypothesis contradicts a wide range of modern monetary models including those based on imperfect information 14 18 19 and those based on imperfect competition 8 20 as a consequence the focus of macroeconomists has in recent years shifted to non monetary models in which money responds passively to changes in aggregate output 16 17 this paper explores the robustness of mishkin s results using an updated data set the model yields results that are more consistent with the neutrality hypothesis than those of mishkin in par

identification and estimation of a class of household production models we consider a class of household production models characterized by a dichotomy property in these models the amount of time spent on household production does not depend on the household utility function conditional on household members having a paid job we analyse the non parametric identifiability of the production function and the so called jointness function a function describing which part of household production time is counted as pure leisure it is shown that the models are identified in the two adult case but not in the single adult case we present an empirical application to swedish time allocation data the estimates satisfy regularity conditions that were violated in previous studies and pass various specification tests for this data set we find that male and female home production time are q substitutes copyright c 2003 john wiley sons ltd

shopping hours and price competition abstract this paper develops an argument why retail prices may rise in response to the deregulation of opening hours we make this point in a model of imperfect duopolistic competition in a deregulated market retailers view the choice of opening hours as a means to increase the degree of perceived product differentiation thus relaxing price competition if the consumers preference intensity for time is sufficiently high the equilibrium configuration has asymmetric shopping hours where one retailer stays open for longer than the other both retailers charge higher prices than under regulation and both are strictly better off

the effects on output of money growth and interest rate volatility in the united states in october 1979 the federal reserve began a policy of disinflation and also stopped stabilizing interest rates subsequently interest rates became much more volatile using a methodology advanced by barro this paper estimates what this change in policy did to output in the united states the paper finds that the stagnation of the u s economy since 1979 stemmed almost as much from increased interest rate volatility as from reduced money growth the paper also assesses the extent to which increased volatility of money growth has contributed to stagnation it finds no evidence of any appreciable contribution the paper concludes that stabilizing interest rates is probably sensible monetary policy

why are services cheaper in the poor countries in their important work on international comparisons of national incomes and of comparative price structure kravis heston and summers i982 p 8 have noted that services are much cheaper in the relative price structure of a typical poor country than in that of a rich country this phenonomen has been documented now fairly systematically by the data gathered under their guiding hand of the united nations international comparison icp which covers 34 countries table i reproduced from their work i982 and fig i based on rows 3 and ii 13 indeed show this tendencyfor the relationship between relative service prices and real per capita gdp in this kravis heston summers 34 country 6 group sample the tendency is strongly evident except for the intermediate groups iii and iv

households grocery shopping behavior in the short run theory and evidence this paper extends the study of nonmarket work activities to explain the impact of household characteristics on grocery shopping behavior a constrained utility maximization model is developed and the equilibrium conditions of the model are derived these conditions and the hypotheses implied by them relating to the determinants of time spent in a grocery shopping trip the size of a purchase and the number of such trips within a given period of time were tested using data from a sample which identified the household characteristics of grocery shoppers in these tests using two stage least squares the theoretical implications of our simultaneous equations model are significantly supported

the fourth commandment is it pareto efficient a bill to legalise sunday trading has recently been defeated in the british parliament an argument commonly advanced by traders opposing liberalisation starts by observing that if a few shops were to choose to open on sunday they would attract so much business from retailers trading only on weekdays that soon all shops would be forced to open on sunday some customers might find this convenient but to the extent they were merely induced to change their shopping day no new demand would be created without an increase in weekly turnover the additional costs of sunday opening would bankrupt some shops and the survivors would have to raise prices thus there is no guarantee that on balance consumers will gain a counter argument denies that all shops would be forced to open on sundays insofar as consumers really prefer lower prices to the convenience of sunday opening then a shop which closed on sunday and used a fraction of the cost saving to reduce prices for the rest of the week could maintain its sales and increase its profit giving retailers the option of sunday opening therefore enables them to respond more sensitively to consumers preferences as between the convenience of sunday shopping and lower prices this seems to be the position taken by tullock i975 pp 673 4 my guess is that most economists would feel sympathetic to this argument as i certainly am however matters are not entirely straightforward the retail trade can hardly be regarded as perfectly competitive and starting from a second best equilibrium there is no guarantee that permitting more competition in one dimension of the characteristic space yields a potential pareto gain these considerations suggest that the argument be pursued at a more formal level the following section examines sunday opening in the context of a standard model of imperfect competition the principal results are that the removal of the restrictions may result in a social loss with a loss being less likely the more competitive is the market an informal preview of the argument may be helpful given that travel costs must be incurred to make a purchase customers who live close to a shop cannot easily be enticed away by competitors the real fight is for buyers located approximately equi distant from two neighbouring stores ideally each shop would like to offer price cuts to these distant customers only but this is not feasible however for customers who go out to work the opportunity cost of shopping time may well be lowest on sunday so for at least some customers sunday opening results in a fall in transport costs thereby offering more to

is tullock correct about sunday closing laws the evidence presented in this note suggests that other things equal the imposition of a sunday closing law reduces the number of food stores in a given market this finding directly contradicts tullock s hypothesis about the long run effects of sunday closing laws on investment in food stores by implication the evidence also casts doubt on the appropriateness of using sunday closing laws as an example of a government sanctioned privilege that generates no long run benefits even to those who sought the grant of privilege in the first place but there is little surprise in all this particularly if the real impetus behind blue laws comes not from store keepers seeking higher profit margins but from those of certain religious convictions as the preamble to the arkansas statute says keeping a grocery open on sunday is a temptation to vice p 569 however while tullock s particular illustration may be a poor one his main thesis concerning the transitional gains trap remains a useful insight

a generalized model of horizontal product differentiation a famous result in the literature on horizontal product differentiation is due to c d aspremont j j gabszewicz and j f thisse 1979 they show that in a slightly modified hotelling model profit maximizing firms choose maximum instead of minimum differentiation the aim of this paper is to show that the result of maximum differentiation is not robust the author provides provide an example for a wide class of markets where firms will choose interior solutions if consumers have an outside option for their use of money copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

the effect of child care costs on married women s labor force participation the effect of child care costs on the probability that married women with children will participate in the labor market is examined child care costs are estimated using a generalized tobit specification corrected for selection estimates of a structural probit model of labor force participation provide evidence to support the prediction that increased child care costs lower the probability of participation it is also shown that the lower rate of labor force participation among mothers of preschoolers is entirely the result of the higher child care costs faced by these women and endogeneity of the number of young children in the participation equation copyright 1992 by mit press

child care costs as a barrier to employment for single and married mothers because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care while some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs this paper uses an improved sipp survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers employment behavior with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status empirical technique and equation specification this permits linking this paper to the existing evidence drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers employment behavior significantly with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than marri

hours layoffs and unemployment insurance funding theory and practice in an international perspective the strikingly different behaviour of important economic aggregates in the united states and other industrial countries has received surprisingly little attention from economists among recent exceptions however gordon i 982 has shown that wages and hours of work are much more flexible in the united kingdom and japan than in the united states such relative hours variability is confirmed in a macro analysis by capdevielle and alvarez i98i and at micro level by sengenberger and kohler i982 the latter authors are concerned with labour market adjustment within the u s and west german automobile industries between i 97 i and i 980 estimates of the german workeroutput elasticity are found to be less than half that of the united states while the german hours elasticity is twice the united states figure at the national aggregate level capdevielle and alvarez also reveal much greater employment variability in the united states than in most other oecd countries in the years following the i973 74 opec supply shock much in line with these employment hours observations moy and sorrentino i98i argue that after

why do europeans work so little market work per person is roughly 10 higher in the united states than in sweden however if we include the work carried out in home production the total amount of work only differs by 1 i set up a model and show that differences in policy mainly taxes can account for the discrepancy in both labor supply and home production between sweden and the united states these results are independent of the elasticity of labor supply

after work shopping employment effects of a deregulation of shop opening hours in the german retail sector abstract this study investigates the impact of a deregulation of shop opening laws on employment in the german retail sector exploiting the gradual change in the opening times of shops across states and using data from the german socio economic panel difference in differences estimates indicate an average increase in the employment probability driven by a rise in the likelihood of working marginal part time hours workers in small firms are likely to experience a reduction of their propensity to work for individuals facing high family related supply side constraints the change in shop opening hours has opposing effects on employment positive on lower and negative on upper parts of the hours distribution overall the deregulation is estimated to have raised the likelihood of working fewer hours than desired by the workers

econometric issues in macroeconomic models with generated regressors the paper critically reviews the literature on the econometric issues raised by the use of generated regressors gr in empirical models the economic rationale for the use of gr is considered with examples being drawn from several macroeconomic examples including new classical macroeconomic ncm models which postulate monetary neutrality various estimation methods are discussed for models which include surprise or unexpected terms and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are investigated drawing upon the work of mcaleer and mckenzie 1991 situations where the typically inefficient two step estimation 2se method will be efficient are highlighted problems of model misspecification and measurement errors are also investigated an empirical section highlights some of the dangers of using uncorrected 2se estimation results through a careful consideration of many recent attempts to test the ncm monetary neutrality hypothesis copyright 1993 by blackwell publishers ltd

federal reserve policy interest rate volatility and the u s capital raising mechanism the object of this paper is to examine in detail on the basis of the experience of the u s financial markets under the federal reserve system s new monetary policy procedures announced on october 6 1979 one potentially important effect on the nonfinancial economy due to the resulting increase in interest rate volatility in particular the possibility that increased volatility has impaired the market mechanism for raising long term business capital interest rate volatility has been a controversial issue in central bank policymaking for a long time the ultimate objectives that central banks pursue almost always refer to nonfinancial aspects of economic activity and well being like price stability and economic growth in carrying out policies designed to further these objectives however central banks typically operate exclusively in the financial markets their actions therefore affect interest rates directly and visibly whether to use this influence on interest rates to smooth out short run fluctuations or alternatively to implement actions focused solely on other objectives and hence leave interest rates to vary freely with the pulse of market pressures is the central question in the united states the evolution of the federal reserve system s monetary policy procedures during the last decade including in particular the changes an

on the interaction between vertical and horizontal product differentiation an application to banking the author studies the conditions under which banks offer remote access note there exists interaction between location and taste for remote access offering remote access is an instrument to partially segment depositors according to their taste for that technology the interaction between location and taste for remote access enhances this effect different equilibria emerge as the result of two effects first introducing remote access steals depositors from the opponent as the product specification becomes more appealing second deposit rate competition is affected as remote access determines the substitutability of banks copyright 1996 by blackwell publishing ltd

the money supply process identification stability and estimation questions regarding the structure and stability of money demand and money supply functions lie at the heart of many unresolved issues in macroeconomics in general and monetary theory and policy in particular general recognition of the problem probably accounts in part for what appears to be an insatiable appetite of the major journals for papers on money demand and money supply among the many issues addressed in the recent literature the stability of money demand has perhaps attracted the most attention an unsettling characteristic of all the tests for stability has been an underlying often implicit assumption that the money supply has been exogenously determined by the central bank the presumed exercise of federal reserve control over the money supply so as to make it statistically independent of disturbances is in turn predicated on the twin premises that the money supply function is in itself structurally stable and in addition is independent of fluctuations in money demand 2

an integrated view of tests of rationality market efficiency and the short run neutrality of monetary policy abstract this paper analyzes an important class of models in which expectations play an important role topics included in the analysis are tests of 1 rationality of forecasts in either market or survey data 2 capital market efficiency 3 the short run neutrality of monetary policy and 4 granger causality in macroeconometric models the common elements of these tests are highlighted in particular cross equation tests for rationality or the short run neutrality of money are shown to be equivalent to more common regression tests in the literature these results demonstrate that the exact specification of the relevant information set used in rational forecasts is not necessary for the cross equation tests to have desirable asymptotic properties also discussed are the conditions for identification of coefficients and testability of hypotheses

on the economics of regulated early closing hours some evidence from canada in many countries such as australia canada and britain the hours of daily retail operation are controlled through the political process this paper tests one hypothesis for why regulation is adopted the hypothesis is that early closing hours are a low cost institutional response to net social costs that can arise when time is used competitively to redistribute customers spatially competition produces this result when stores s marginal customers value longer shopping hours more highly than the average customer evidence is presented on the characteristics of 45 ontario cities that had the choice of whether or not to adopt early closing hours and logit analysis is used to test the model s predictions the estimates of the probability of choosing early closing hours are then used to test the model s prediction on store density in general the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that municipal control over shopping hours in ontario is appropriate

on the impact of infrequent trading on the apt systematic risk components evidence from a thin security market abstract the purpose of this note is to analyze the effects of infrequent trading on the apt systematic risk components using finnish data infrequent trading is reported to influence especially the first systematic risk component produced by factor analysis on stock returns

the economic efficiency of sunday trading restrictions restriction of shop opening hours is current but controversial pr actice in britain and much of europe the economic case presented for such restrictions is that given the constraint that individual shop s may not vary their price by time of day competitive pressures woul d induce excessive opening at times when high costs would be incurred such as on sundays the authors show that such inefficient equilib ria are a theoretical possibility empirical evidence on retail costs and demand in the united kingdom shows that this case does not arise in practice and that deregulation of opening hours would lead to low er costs and prices copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

before it gets better the short term employment costs of regulatory reforms the article exploits long time series of industry level data in a group of oecd countries to analyze the short term labor market effects of reforms that lower barriers to entry and dismissal costs estimates show that both policies induce non negligible transitory employment losses the strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and labor market structure and on cyclical conditions the employment cost of deregulation is higher in economic downturns and negligible in good times these findings prove robust to a set of specification and sensitivity checks and are confirmed after standard reverse causality and falsification tests

inflation uncertainty and real economic activity an alternative approach a bstracct increased uncertainty about inflation is shown to encourage inflation hedging which in turn reduces the macroeconomic costs of that uncertainty portfolio theory and empirical evidence support the contention that only the portion of inflation volatility that cannot be hedged has real economic effects additional empinrcal results suggest that i increased inflation volatility in the early seventies was eventually followed by portfolio reallocations that allowed for greatly improved inflation hedging and ii the deletenrous effect of inflation uncertainty on real economic activity shown in previouis studies is significantly smaller after 1975

hours of operation restrictions and competition aming retail firms this study examines the redistributive effects of government regulations concerning the hours in which retail stores may remain open for business throughout canada municipal by laws restrict nighttime shopping hours to a few specified days of the week in analyzing the outcome of these restrictions a model of consumer behaviour is used which emphasizes the consumers s decision concerning the allocation of purchases between small and large retail outlets the empirical results are consistant with the theoretical model indicating that such market intervention redistributes sales from large to small stores

the impact of repealing sunday closing laws on educational attainment adolescents face daily tradeoffs between human capital investment labor and leisure this paper exploits state variation in the repeal of sunday closing laws to examine the impact of a distinct and plausibly exogenous rise in the quantity of competing diversions available to youth on their educational attainment the results suggest that the repeals led to a significant decline in both years of education and the probability of high school completion i explore increased employment and risky behaviors as potential mechanisms further i find a corresponding decline of the repeals on adult wages

does anticipated monetary policy matter an econometric investigation a heated debate has arisen over the policy ineffectiveness proposition associate with the work of lucas sargent and wallace it postulates that anticipated aggregate demand policy will have no effect on business cycle fluctuations so that one deterministic feedback policy rule is as good as any other from the point of view of stabilizing the economy this paper develops a methodology for empirically analyzing rational expectations models displaying this neutrality result and then applies it to the important question of whether anticipated monetary policy matters to the business cycle

a new theory of retailing costs in cross section studies of shops of the same type we find that costs in general and labour in particular depend on the sales size per shop according to a linear function with a positive intercept this paper provides some empirical evidence and a theoretical explanation based on queuing theory

the employment effect of deregulating shopping hours evidence from german food retailing wir untersuchen den effekt der freigabe der ladenoffnungszeiten auf die beschaftigung im deutschen lebensmitteleinzelhandel mit der differenz von differenzen methode unter verwendung von daten uber alle deutschen einzelhandler finden wir dass die ausweitung der gesetzlich erlaubten ladenoffnungszeiten die beschaftigung um durchschnittlich 0 4 arbeitnehmer pro laden erhoht hat was einer zunahme der beschaftigung um 3 bis 4 prozent entspricht getrieben wird dieser effekt von einer zunahme der teilzeitbeschaftigung wohingegen die vollzeitbeschaftigung nicht betroffen war die statistische signifikanz der gefundenen effekte hangt von den annahmen an die stortermkorrelation ab und wir berichten daher ergebnisse bei clustering auf verschiedenen ebenen eine uberschlagsrechnung zeigt eine zunahme der beschaftigung um 0 1 arbeitnehmer pro erhohung der tatsachlichen wochentlichen offnungszeiten um eine stunde

hedonic estimation of quality factors affecting the farm retail margin a model of the farm retail marketing margin is tested using producer and retail prices of a perishable product in which time during season and quality characteristics are variable empirical analysis verifies that the marketing margin of california fresh peaches decreases during the season and increases with improved quality results identify potential producer gains from improving product quality early in the season and from price signals compensating producers for quality characteristics other than weight

non sequential consumer search and the consequences of a deregulation of trading hours abstract this paper analyzes the consequences of a liberalization of shopping hours in a market where consumers collect price information through non sequential search it is first shown that with as well as without restrictions on search time an equilibrium price distribution and possibly a single price equilibrium with the monopoly price exist then it is demonstrated that a liberalization is either ineffective or leads to price reductions increases in consumer welfare and larger market shares of more efficient firms

a model of female labour supply in the presence of hours restrictions abstract we develop a discrete choice model of female labour supply in finland using a data set constructed by merging the 1980 labour force survey and housing and population census this contains observations on the perceived incidence of constraints in the labour market and allows us to identify the effects of such constraints on observed labour supply approximately one in five women appears to be seriously constrained in her choice of hours of work our estimated model implies that the response of labour supply to variation in tax and wage rates is rather small

the impact of the return interval on common factors in stock returns evidence from a thin security market abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of the return interval on common factors estimated in finnish stock returns firstly common factors are identified by factor analysis using daily weekly and monthly return intervals the similarity of these factors is then studied applying transformation analysis it is discovered that the factors produced by alternative return intervals significantly differ from each other an exception is the first factor representing the market index of securities

product line rivalry with brand differentiation competition with product rivalry is examined in a model where products are differentiated by both quality and brand name with no commitment firms produce a full product line when firms can commit to restrict their product offerings firms specialize if the degree of brand specific differentiation is small and they produce a full product line if brand specific differentiation is large relative to intrafirm differentiation firms may crowd a product space when all competitors would be better off with specialization brand proliferation is a credible entry deterring strategy if the degree of brand specific differentiation is not too large copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

unanticipated money growth and unemployment post sample forecasts in the late 1970s robert j barro published what has since become a popular model of business fluctuations barro s 3 findings provide evidence advocating the short run neutrality of money under rational expectations forging an important empirical link to the theoretical studies of lucas 19 20 and sargent and wallace 33 the original barro unemployment model has received additional support from further statistical testing 5 6 15 despite criticisms and modifications some of which are considered in barro s 6 updated model these equations have inspired numerous empirical studies analyzing unanticipated effects of macroeconomic variables this paper examines post sample forecasts of barro s original 3 and revised 6 unemployment equations for the 1974 84 period mayer 23 24 harvey 13 179 80 and lovell 18 among many contend that the ability to successfully forecast outside of the sample period is an important criterion for evaluating model robustness this view is also reflected in a substantial body of studies including 10 25 26 29 39 which investigate the post sample predictive performance of macroeconomic models one year ahead forecasts indicate that the barro 3 6 equations accurately predict unemployment for the 1974 79 period during 1980 84 however the predictive performance of both models sharply deteriorates augmenting the barro models with interest rate volatility in accordance with the findings of evans 11 and tatom 38 considerably improves the overall forecasting ability this modification also rectifies the 1980s structural instability of the barro unemployment equations furthermore the basic conclusions of the seminal barro work are retained with this augmented model the results reveal that increases in interest rate volatility exert significantly adverse effects upon unemployment corroborating with the findings of evans 11 and tatom 38 still interest rate volatility could be overlooked in previous estimations of the barro or other models of business fluctuations due to the variable s relative constancy prior to 1979

anticipated money inflation uncertainity and real economic activity this paper critically examines a number of maintained hypotheses that are necessarily being tested along with the basic notion derived from the rational expectations re formulation of lucas 1972 19 73 that only unanticipated money matters the trend stationary representation of secular real output of lucas and others is replaced by a difference stationary representation found by nelson and plosser 1980 to be consistent with u s historical data the impact of inflation uncertainty on real activity is considered attention is paid to possible mis measurement of agents ex ante anticipated money growth it is found that three alternative measures of anticipated money growth produce a stable impact on growth of output and employment contemporaneous and lagged values of unanticipated money growth have no significant additional explanatory power in the presence of any one of the three measures of anticipated money growth beyond this it is impossible to reject the hypothesis that the initial positive real impact of anticipated money is not temporary inflation uncertainty is found to act as a significant depressant of real economic activity in the presence of all tested combinations of anticipated and unanticipated money growth this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the effects of hours constraints on labor supply estimates almost all labor supply models are estimated under the assumption that workers are free to choose their hours however theory casual empiricism and survey data suggest that many workers are not free to vary the hours within a job consequently labor supply estimates based on actual hours of work may be biased using canadian data on desired hours of work the authors find that using actual hours causes labor supply estimates to be biased upwards copyright 1991 by mit press

female labour supply flexibility of working hours and job mobility traditional labour supply models do not address to what extent working hours are constrained withinjobs and to what extent working hours can be adjusted by means of changing employer this paper measures the flexibility of working hours within and between jobs by relating subjective information on individual preferences to adjustments in working hours empirical analysis based on a sample of employed women in the dutch socio economic panel 1987 9 shows that the flexibility of working hours withinjobs is low the empirical literature on labour supply traditionally assumes that workers can choose their working hours freely and without costs up to a maximum level equal to the time endowment the potential invalidity of this assumption is acknowledged but the assumption is still often made for the tractability of the empirical model in response several models incorporating restrictions on working hours have been developed the first generation of these models extended the traditional censored regression model by allowing for censoring due to over and under employment and involuntary unemployment moffitt 1982 ham 1982 blundell et al 1987 the second generation of models extended the structural labour supply model by introducing job offers concerning hours of work van soest et al 1990 dickens and lundberg 1993 a conclusion stemming from all of these studies is that incorporating restrictions on working hours significantly improves the empirical fit of the model a peculiar component of the models discussed above is that they are static as a result they are not able to distinguish between the ingredients required for the existence of hours restrictions within the labour market first there needs to be restrictions on the possibilities to adjust working hours with the same employer for example within a job this alone does not necessarily imply that individuals are not on their labour supply curve as they might switch to an employer that offers them their preferred working hours a second necessary ingredient for the existence of hours restrictions within the labour market is therefore mobility costs although one cannot doubt the existence of hours restrictions in the labour market an open question is how tight these restrictions actually are altonji and paxson 1986 1992 study adjustments of working hours over time and distinguish between those individuals who stay in their job and those who change job change employer based on the us panel study of income dynamics they conclude that working hours of married women are two to four