individual taxpayer response to tax cuts 1982 1984 with implications for the revenue maximizing tax rate abstract this paper measures the response of taxpayers to the u s personal rate reductions from 1982 to 1984 a baseline income distribution is created to describe what level and distribution could be expected in the absence of tax changes comparison of this baseline with actual tax return data shows that at least one sixth and probably one quarter of the revenue ascribable to the rate reductions was recouped by changes in taxpayer behavior the data also show that federal income tax revenue would have been maximized at a tax rate of about 35 percent and total income tax revenue maximized at a total tax rate of about 40 percent

the demand for money in developing countries assessing the role of financial innovation traditional specifications of money demand have commonly been plagued by persistent overprediction implausible parameter estimates and highly autocorrelated errors the authors argue that some of these problems stem from the failure to account for the impact of financial innovation they estimate money demand for ten developing countries using various proxies for financial innovations they also assess the relative importance of this variable finding financial innovation can be better modeled as a stochastic random walk trend rather than a deterministic time trend financial innovation plays an important role in determining fluctuations of the demand for money the importance of this role increases with the rate of inflation

effects of financial innovations on the money demand function a canadian evidence a money demand function for the candian economy has been estimated to explore if recent financial innovations have caused any significant change in the structural relationship between the demand for money and its determinants two sets of estimation results have been analysed the first set is obtained by estimating a standard money demand function for several overlapping sample periods and the other set is obtained by estimating a modified version which included a dummy or a ratchet variable to capture the effects of innovations the estimated equations have been used to generate ex post simulations and forecasts the results suggest that innovations have displaced the money demand function in the early 1980s it also appears that the incorporation of approriate innovation variables improves the predictive performance of the money demand function

money still makes the world go round the zonal view many leading monetary economists have come to regard the monetary aggregates as obsolete measures of the monetary policy stance this critique has led some to view money as having lost its central role in the conduct of monetary policy we say to those advocating excising money from monetary policy not so fast to better understand the potential role for money we develop a zonal view of monetary policy which reflects the historical regularity for the relative informativeness of the quantitative measures of monetary policy such as the monetary aggregates and real interest rates to depend on the inflation zone in which a central bank finds itself the zones range from high inflation zone 1 to deep deflation zone 5 with intermediate zones of moderate inflation zone 2 low inflation zone 3 and low deflation zone 4 we find considerable support for this view in the historical data which stretches back to the 19 th century seen from this perspective the past experience of central banks casts doubt on the singular importance often attributed to the short term real interest rate as an indicator of the stance of monetary policy this applies especially in the current low inflation environment in which many central banks find themselves the zonal view has far reaching implications for monetary policy frameworks for the analytical efforts to understand the monetary policy transmission mechanism and for central bank communication strategies this paper was prepared for the 21 st congress of the european economic association held in vienna on august 27 2006 the views expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors

the political economy of gender explaining cross national variation in the gender division of labor and the gender voting gap mainstream political economy has tended to treat the family as a unit when examining the distributional consequences of labor market institutions and of public policy in a world with high divorce rates we argue that this simplification is more likely to obscure than to instruct we find that labor market opportunities for women which vary systematically with the position of countries in the international division of labor and with the structure of the welfare state affect women s bargaining power within the family and as a result can explain much of the cross country variation in the gender division of labor as well as the gender gap in political preferences

women s schooling home teaching and economic growth the hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data describing green revolution india estimates are obtained that indicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship between maternal literacy and child schooling in the indian setting reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the existence of this effect combined with the increase in returns to schooling for men importantly underlies the expansion of female literary following the onset of the green revolution

bounds on elasticities with optimization frictions a synthesis of micro and macro evidence on labor supply how can price elasticities be identified when agents face optimization frictions such as adjustment costs or inattention i derive bounds on structural price elasticities that are a function of the observed effect of a price change on demand the size of the price change and the degree of frictions the degree of frictions is measured by the utility losses agents tolerate to deviate from the frictionless optimum the bounds imply that frictions affect intensive margin elasticities much more than extensive margin elasticities i apply these bounds to the literature on labor supply the utility costs of ignoring the tax changes used to identify intensive margin labor supply elasticities are typically less than 1 of earnings as a result small frictions can explain the differences between micro and macro elasticities extensive and intensive margin elasticities and other disparate findings pooling estimates from existing studies i estimate a hicksian labor supply elasticity of 0 33 on the intensive margin and 0 25 on the extensive margin after accounting for frictions

political agency government responsiveness and the role of the media abstract the role of mass media in making governments responsive to the needs of citizens is a relatively neglected area in economics we sketch a theoretical example with a role for media in enhancing government responsiveness based on asymmetric information between citizens and government we then use data for the period 1958 1992 on the extent to which indian state governments responded to food shortages via the public distribution of food correlating these with proxies of media political and economic development we find that states that are more responsive tend to also be those with high levels of newspaper circulation electoral turnout and literacy in contrast richer states do not tend to be more responsive than poorer states

iceland s natural experiment in supply side economics the move to a pay as you earn income tax system in iceland in 1987 1988 made income earned in 1987 tax free using a sample of 9 274 individuals for the years 1986 1987 and 1988 we calculate the labour supply response of this change and find that total labour supply rose by 6 7 in 1987 over the average of 1986 and 1988 when we correct for entry in 1988 this consists of an 8 6 increase in weeks supplied by those already in the labour market in 1986 and a 1 9 decline due to entry exit the elasticity of weeks worked to the rise in after tax wages was 0 41 for men and 0 11 for women while the participation rate of women increased somewhat in our sample participation by men fell this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

on the possibility of an inverse relationship between tax rates and government revenues abstract when arthur laffer and other supply side advocates plot total tax revenue as a function of a particular tax rate they draw an upward sloping segment called the normal range followed by a downward sloping segment called the prohibitive range a brief literature review indicates that tax rates on the prohibitive range in theoretical and empirical models have been the result of particularly high tax rates high elasticity parameters or both the labor tax rate which maximizes total revenue for example will depend on the assumed labor supply elasticity this paper introduces a new curve which summarizes the tax rate and elasticity combinations that result in maximum revenues separating the normal area from the prohibitive area a general purpose empirical u s general equilibrium model is used to plot the laffer curve for several elasticities and to plot the newly introduced curve using the labor tax example results indicate that the u s could conceivably be operating in the prohibitive area but that the tax wedge or labor supply elasticity would have to be much higher than most estimates would suggest

are micro and macro labor supply elasticities consistent a review of evidence on the intensive and extensive margins we evaluate whether state of the art macro models featuring indivisible labor are consistent with modern quasi experimental micro evidence by synthesizing evidence on both the intensive and extensive margins we find that micro estimates are consistent with macro estimates of the steady state hicksian elasticities relevant for cross country comparisons on both the extensive and intensive margins however micro estimates of intertemporal substitution frisch elasticities are an order of magnitude smaller than the values needed to explain business cycle fluctuations in aggregate hours by preferences the key puzzle to be resolved is why micro and macro estimates of the frisch extensive margin elasticity are so different

religion and female educational attainment the paper reviews the literature on the education gender and religion nexuses and identifies plausible hypotheses that religion adversely affects female education the link between major religions and female educational attainment is examined using the barro lee data set for a sample of 97 countries the estimates include control variables for colonial heritage urbanization labor force participation and young adult mortality the estimates show powerful negative links between female educational attainment and the proportion of ethnoreligions hindu and muslim adherents in a country with similar results for the gender gap the paper offers some interpretative thoughts and research agendas

towards a micro founded theory of aggregate labour supply we build a heterogeneous agents life cycle model that captures a large number of salient features of individual male labour supply over the life cycle by education both along the intensive and extensive margins the model provides an aggregation theory of individual labour supply firmly grounded on individual level micro evidence and is used to study the aggregate labour supply responses to changes in the economic environment we find that the aggregate labour supply elasticity to a transitory wage shock is 1 75 with the extensive margin accounting for 62 of the response furthermore we find that the aggregate labour supply elasticity to a permanent compensated wage change is 0 44

a note on the temporal variability of canadian financial services stock returns abstract we show that financial services stock returns in canada are covariance nonstationary with respect to any benchmark variable and vary negatively with interest rate levels we find that the conditional correlation between financial services stock returns and the market returns varies directly and monotonically with market volatility this result is robust to monetary regime shifts and other sources of high volatility these findings combined with those of kane and unal 1988 for the u s cast considerable doubt on the constant coefficient two index model and its variants to provide reliable estimates of usual risk measures

financial innovation and the demand for liquid assets note introduction recent innovations in the banking and finance sector have caused great difficulties for the conduct of monetary policy shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by interest rate behavior when there are financial innovations make it difficult for the monetary authorities either to use an asset demand function in the conduct of monetary policy or to distill information from the behavior of monetary aggregates while the monetary authorities may know the specific innovations they generally do not know how these innovations will affect particular aggregates clearly such knowledge is important and essential since then the monetary authorities can more accurately interpret growth rates of the monetary aggregates and reduce policy mistakes especially when the growth rates of various aggregates differ substantially and the authorities must determine which aggregate is more reflective of general monetary conditions hester 1981 freedman 1983 and pierce 1984 among others have documented and discussed many of the specific financial innovations for the united states and canada as outlined by pierce these innovations generally can be divided into three types i those innovations which have lowered transactions costs for asset purchases and sales ii the emergence of previously unavailable assets and iii those innovations which allow institutions to avoid reserve requirements hester has theoretically analyzed the last of these this paper focuses on the other types of innovations primarily the first transactions or transfer costs are an important aspect of asset demands since most near money assets possess approximately equivalent risk characteristics the two most important features of competing assets are return and liquidity liquidity can be defined as the cost of transfer to an acceptable means of payment over the last decade both relative and absolute transfer costs and thus liquidity have varied dramatically and have generally been reduced this has caused substitutions between assets and thus shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by macroeconomic variables such as income and interest rates it is such unexplained shifts over the last decade which have caused concern over the appropriate definitions of monetary aggregates

lessons of the recession the recession of 1981 82 was the worst since the 1930s the cyclical decline was sharper and deeper in canada than in the united states this paper presents an appraisal of the roles of business cycles abroad and macro economic policies in canada during the recession and the subsequent recovery based on simulations with a macro econometric model the operation of the automatic fiscal stabilizers over this cycle is also examined the extent to which monetary policy and changes in the tax structure can mitigate the effects of deficit reduction measures over the medium term is considered levons de la recession la recession de 1981 82 a e la pire depuis les annees 1930 le cycle s est creuse plus fortement et plus profondement au canada qu aux etats unis ce m6moire evalue a partir de simulations a l aide d un modele macro econometrique les r6les respectifs des cycles economiques dans le reste du monde et des politiques macro economiques au canada dans la conformation de la recession et de la relance qui a suivi on examine le fonctionnement des stabilisateurs fiscaux automatiques tout au long du cycle l auteur examine jusqu a quel point la politique monetaire et les changements dans la structure de la fiscalite peuvent attenuer a moyen terme les effets des mesures adoptees pour reduire le deficit

portfolio redistribution impacts within the narrow monetary aggregate a number of important monetary and financial changes occurred in the 1980s a rising question among monetary economists is whether the character of m1 has changed substantially as a result in particular a frequent contention is that interest bearing checkable deposits behave as a savings type asset thus subjecting m1 to portfolio redistribution effects in the modern era this research examines the elasticities of substitution for a variety of financial assets pre and post 1980 results indicate that m1 subcomponents do show significant substitution with savings type assets however the portfolio redistribution impacts are not confined to the interest bearing checkable deposits further results indicate that this behavior is not unique to the 1980s copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

making inferences from controlled income maintenance experiments nationally this paper addresses a question whose answer is essential for interpreting the results of such experiments if an experiment of limited duration is conducted under ideal conditions what can be inferred from the experimental results about behavior in a world where nit is adopted permanently by ideal conditions we mean that a individuals or households 2 in the experiment are conventional utility maximizers given the structure of the experiment and b the experiment is sufficiently well designed to permit the differential responses of individuals to be identified 3 the

the redistributive effects of inflation and the shape of money demand abstract i quantify the distributional effects of expected inflation in a sample of oecd countries using a microfounded model of money where agents differ in their consumption risk against which they can insure using money and government bonds the model is calibrated using harmonized wealth microdata from the luxembourg wealth study i find that the inflation tax is progressive for low inflation levels but it becomes regressive as inflation increases cut off points vary across countries and depend on discount factors and heterogeneity in consumption risk across agents moreover i find that the magnitude of inflation s distributional impact depends not only on wealth distribution but also and importantly on the curvature and height of the money demand curve indeed a higher and less elastic money demand leads to more regressive effects of inflation thus implying such effects are not necessarily stronger in a country with a more unequal wealth distribution

financial innovations and the interest elasticity of money demand in canada abstract using canadian data for the period 1934 86 the paper empirically tests the gurley shaw hypothesis that innovations in the financial markets raise the interest elasticity of money demand the results provide sufficient evidence to reject the gurley shaw hypothesis in canada

derivative securities and cash market stability this study investigates the effect of introducing interest rate futures and options on the price variances in related financial cash markets standard research approaches to this issue relate cash price stability before the introduction of futures and options trading to cash price stability after trading in the derivative security begins however controlling for the additional factors that may also effect cash markets is difficult the approach employed here to deal with this obstacle is motivated by recent theoretical research relating cash and futures markets but hitherto not operationalized to empirically test for a relationship between the markets varying parameter models of 1 the demand for short term treasury securities 2 the demand for large time deposits and 3 the supply of large time deposits are specified such that changes in the parameters imply changes in the volatility of the cash price these parameters are modelled as functions of the trading volume of interest rate futures and o

media and political persuasion evidence from russia this paper compares electoral outcomes of 1999 parliamentary elections in russia among geographical areas with differential access to the only national tv channel independent from the government it was available to three quarters of russia s population and its signal availability was idiosyncratic conditional on observables independent tv decreased aggregate vote for the government party by 8 9 percentage points increased the combined vote for major opposition parties by 6 3 percentage points and decreased turnout by 3 8 percentage points the probability of voting for opposition parties increased for individuals who watched independent tv even controlling for voting intentions measured one month before elections jel d72 l82 p26

the political economy of government responsiveness theory and evidence from india the determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive this suggests that there is a role both for democratic institutions and the mass media in ensuring that the preferences of citizens are reflected in policy the ideas behind the model are tested on panel data from india we show that public food distribution and calamity relief expenditure are greater controlling for shocks where governments face greater electoral accountability and where newspaper circulation is highest

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

learning to forecast the exchange rate two competing approaches this paper compares two competing approaches to model foreign exchange market participants behavior statistical learning and fitness learning these learning mechanisms are applied to a set of predictors chartist and fundamentalist rules we examine which of the learning approaches is best in terms of replicating the exchange rate dynamics within the framework of a standard asset pricing model we find that both learning methods reveal the fundamental value of the exchange rate in the equilibrium but only fitness learning creates the disconnection phenomenon and only statistical learning replicates volatility clustering none of the mechanisms is able to produce a unit root process but both of them generate non normally distributed returns

supply side economics old truths and new claims this paper prepared for the annual meetings of the american economic association examines the claims that were made at the beginning of the decade by the new supply siders and contrasts their views with the traditional supply side economics that has been a prominent part of economics since adam smith the analysis gives particular attention to the pace of recovery and growth and to the revenue effects of the 1981 tax cut this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

financial innovations and the interest elasticity of money demand some historical evidence note 1 lntroduction a number of investigations into the difficulties of estimating short run money demand functions recently have suggested that the trouble is linked to changes in the financial market e g see garcia and pak 1979 goldfeld 1976 and simpson and porter 1980 it is argued that these financial innovations have led to a deterioration in the marginal relationship between real money balances and interest rates arguments that financial innovations affect the link between interest rates and money demand are not new indeed this contention is the cornerstone of the much debated theories of gurley and shaw 1960 where a proliferation of money substitutes is hypothesized to increase the interest elasticity of money demand the consequence is a lessening of the fed s ability to affect economic conditions through open market operations since the most dramatic changes in the payments mechanism have occurred during the past twenty years the interest elasticities estimated from recent data should be larger relative to earlier sample period estimates l this finding would support the gurley shaw hypothesis and buttress recent claims that financial innovations have produced a much more interest elastic money demand function unfortunately little empirical work has been done to specifically examine the temporal nature of money demand s interest elasticity the purpose of this paper therefore is to provide empirical evidence on this question 2 we compare the shortand longrun interest elasticities from a money demand equation estimated across the l915 i 1979 iv period 3 our results indicate that the interest elasticity of money

status caste and the time allocation of women in rural india abstractwe argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of india because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women we set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste based status concerns on the time allocation of women we then use the all india national sample survey data for the year 2004 5 and the time use survey for six states of india for the year 1998 99 to empirically test these hypotheses after controlling for a host of correlates we find that the ratio of women s market work to men s declines as we move up the caste hierarchy this ratio falls as family wealth rises and the decline is steeper for the higher castes finally the effect on women s market work of higher education is weaker for the higher castes these findings lend support to our theory and to the view that through its emphasis on family status caste plays a pivotal role in undermining the autonomy of wome

unstable money demand and the monetary model of the exchange rate in this paper the authors investigate the importance for the monetary model of exchange rate determination of j frankel 1979 of allowing unrestricted dynamics and of accounting for shifts in the demand for money due to financial innovation based on estimation and simulation results for the canada u s bilateral exchange rate over the 1970 85 period the aut hors find strong evidence in favor of a generalized approach to dynamic specification but find that the shif t adjustment of official money supply data has only minor implications for the empirical results moreover neither modification is sufficient to generate a monetary model that is well supported by the data

the demand for money in brazil what happened in the 1980s abstract some of cardoso s 1983 money demand specifications are used here the estimates are based on quarterly data for the period 1966 1985 it is shown that due to financial innovation the money demand function shifted downwards in the 1980 s also a comparison is made between the actual demand for money and that predicted by the model during the period in which the economic reforms of the cruzado plan were in force

the supply side effects of economic policy on october 24 and 25 1980 the center for the study of american business at washington university and the federal reserve bank of st louis cosponsored their fifth annual conference the supply side effects of economic policy this volume contains the papers and comments delivered at that conference proponents of supply side economics have challenged the policy recommendations that emerge from keynesian macroeconometric models these models focus on the effects of economic policy on the demand for output supply side economics in contrast emphasizes the response of output to changes in the supply of inputs decisions affecting the capital stock and employment in particular saving and investment decisions and labor force participation and hours decisions are the focus of the supply siders attention the 1980 conference examined most of the major themes associated with supply side economics the papers in part i of this volume develop the theory underlying various supply side propositions and present empirical evidence in support of some of these propositions in part ii the effect of taxes on capital formation and the effect of increased capital formation on output growth and inflation are examined the effect of tax and transfer programs on labor supply employment and unemployment are examined in part iii the final section contains the special luncheon and dinner presentations

inequality does cause underdevelopment insights from a new instrument consistent with the provocative hypothesis of engerman and sokoloff 1997 2000 this paper confirms with cross country data that agricultural endowments predict inequality and inequality predicts development the use of agricultural endowments specifically the abundance of land suitable for growing wheat relative to that suitable for growing sugarcane as an instrument for inequality is this paper s approach to problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality the paper finds inequality also affects other development outcomes institutions and schooling which the literature has emphasized as mechanisms by which higher inequality lowers per capita income it tests the inequality hypothesis for development institutional quality and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature while finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to prosperity good quality institutions and high schooling

income velocity of money in agricultural developing economies t he response of income velocity of money to economic growth has implications for monetary planning in a developing economy velocity is the ratio of nominal income to money stock and decreases only if money stock rises at a faster rate than nominal income a well known hypothesis in this context is that of friedman 1959 which states that in countries experiencing a secular rise in real income per capita the stock of money generally rises over long periods at a decidedly higher rate than does money income i e velocity declines ezekiel and adekunle 1969 and melitz and correa 1970 in their international crosscountry comparisons have found evidence largely in favour of the friedman hypothesis this in its turn has strengthened the hope for active growthoriented monetary planning the extent of resources that can be transferred for investment purposes through non inflationary monetary expansion increases as development proceeds cross section studies involving developed and developing economies do not provide satisfactory indications of what happens to velocity over time in any individual developing economy firstly velocities have not behaved uniformly in all the developing economies secondly international cross country comparisons do not adequately explain why velocity changes in any individual economy is it because money is a luxury good i e income elasticity of demand for money is greater than unity to the agents in the economy is it because economic development brings about structural changes in the economy which lead to the observed behaviour of velocity is it because monetary habits change in a systematic way it is important to have time series analyses of developing economies to provide answers to such questions for example in a study of malaysia and singapore short 1973 found that though velocity did move inversely to per capita income this negative impact was overpowered by the change in monetary habits which the increase in bank offices caused the aim of this paper is to analyse the temporal behaviour of income velocity of money in agricultural developing economies in the literature on velocity and demand for money in developing economies attention is focussed mainly on three issues i the incomeelasticity of demand for money and in particular whether money is a luxury good or not ii the growth of monetisation and changes in monetary habits and iii the effect of the cost of holding money one important factor which has suffered total neglect is the role of sectoral differences in money demand behaviour and the structural shifts in the sectoral composition of income that accompany development money demand behaviour may vary across sectors this is true not only in developing economies but also in developed economies for example goldfeld 1976 has found that the business sector and the household sector in the united states have different money demand functions an implicit specification error is committed in the aggregative money demand or velocity equation whenever the sectoral income composition factor is omitted on a priori grounds this factor should have special significance in developing economies where sectoral shares in national income change over time in the absence of flow offunds accounts and adequate data on sectoral money holdings for most of the developing economies direct estimation of sectoral demand functions is not possible thus an aggregative specification which incorporates the sectoral income composition factor is necessary to analyse the behaviour of velocity

incentives predestination and free will i introduction max weber s 1930 the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism argues that the protestant reformation set the stage for post medieval economic growth using an occupational study of germans from 1895 weber shows that protestants dominate the mercantile or capitalist occupations in that country at that time period weber also argues that between 1600 and 1900 protestant countries advanced faster than their catholic neighbors and that this was the result of calvin s urging acceptance of material success and the dogma of predestination 1 an ocean of work beginning with rachfahl 1909 and sombart 1913 has since attacked weber s theological generalizations see giddens 1992 for a review tawney 1926 and robertson 1933 argue weber s causal interpretation is wrong and that economic growth laid the framework for protestantism not protestantism for economic growth samuelsson 1961 disputes the very correlation between protestantism and economic success which is the basis of the weberian hypothesis the correlation between protestantism and economic success is certainly weaker than weber suggests even in the german data that weber himself uses furthermore more modem data tends to find only a modest link between protestantism and economic success as in winter 1974 and tomes 1994 2 however for centuries there were gaps in economic success between protestant and catholic nations and new findings on early modem data tend to confirm differences between protestants and catholics at least within the u s as weber s arch critic samuelsson himself writes there is some truth in the contention that the protestant countries and especially those adhering to the reformed church were particularly vigorous economically given that there was some correlation between protestantism and economic success before the mid to late 20th century the question then becomes why this correlation existed some elements of protestant theology clearly encourage capitalism usury doctrines became less rigid under calvinism nelson 1972 avarice was de emphasized as a sin weber claims that luther s concept of a calling includes worldly success and that this is a prominent difference with catholic doctrine although this theological claim has been subject to much debate e g sombart 1915 there still appears to be some basic truth to this point one of the largest theological gaps between the denominations is that calvinism accepts the dogma of predestination while catholicism argues for a dogma of free will 3 for the purposes of this paper we will follow weber and accept broad brush definitions of doctrine rather than getting mired in the more subtle features of the two doctrines under predestination a spiritual elite is preordained before the beginning of time and will receive eternal life 4 under free will it is only through a lifetime of good actions that individuals are accepted into heaven 5 weber argues that predestination creates a more lasting basis for economic growth than the dogma of free will in this paper we present a model that formally treats weber s claim under particular circumstances and show how predestination could create the correlation between protestantism and growth that existed in the pre modern era our model also suggests conditions under which a more successful society would favor the doctrine of predestination which can be seen as a formalization of tawney s and robertson s view that economic growth created the reformation in this essay both free will and predestination create incentives which spur good behavior 6 under the doctrine of free will good behavior is motivated by an increased probability of getting into heaven under the doctrine of predestination this incentive is irrelevant because individual actions do not determine spiritual outcomes instead an individual s actions are motivated by a desire to receive positive behavior from others by convincing them that he is part of the spiritual elite

media freedom and gender equality a cross national instrumental variable quantile analysis we investigate the impact of media freedom on gender equality in education for a sample of 63 countries taken over the period 1995 2004 our analysis is motivated by the idea that the impact of media freedom on gender equality may differ over the conditional distribution of the response variable using instrumental variable quantile regression to control for endogeneity in per capita income we find that greater freedom of the media improves gender equality only in the 0 25 and 0 50 quantiles of the conditional distribution countries with the greatest disparities in gender outcomes experience no significant impact of media freedom

the market for news we investigate the market for news under two assumptions that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs we show that on the topics where readers share common beliefs one should not expect accuracy even from competitive media competition results in lower prices but common slanting toward reader biases on topics where reader beliefs diverge such as politically divisive issues however newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions yet in the aggregate a reader with access to all news sources could get an unbiased perspective generally speaking reader heterogeneity is more important for accuracy in media than competition per se

differences in education and earnings across racial and ethnic groups tastes discrimination and investments in child quality viewing the united states as comprising many racial and ethnic groups it is shown that group differences in earnings schooling and rates of return from schooling are striking and that the groups with higher levels of schooling also have higher rates of return these data are shown to be consistent with a child quality investment model but they are not consistent with the hypotheses that the primary determinants of schooling level are discrimination minority group status differences in time preference discount rates or tastes for schooling group differences in fertility and female labor supply are examined as partial determinants of investment in child quality policy implications are discussed this paper was originally presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the population association of america see population index vol 53 no 3 fall 1987 p 443 excerpt

determinants of democracy a panel study of over 100 countries from 1960 to 1995 finds that improvements in the standard of living predict increase in democracy as measured by a subjective indicator of electoral rights the propensity for democracy rises with per capita gdp primary schooling and a smaller gap between male and female primary attainment for a given standard of living democaracy tends to fall with urbnization and with a greater reliance on natrual resources democracy has little relation to country size but rises with the middle class share of income the apparently strong relation of democracy to colonial heritage mostly disappears when the economic variables are held constant similarly the allowance for these economic variables weakens the interplay between democracy and religious affiliation however negative effects from muslim and non religious affiliations remain intact

energy consumption and growth in south america evidence from a panel error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of nine south american countries over the period 1980 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship pedroni s heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

media freedom political knowledge and participation this paper examines the relationship between media freedom from government control and citizens political knowledge political participation and voter turnout to explore these connections i first examine media freedom and citizens political knowledge in thirteen central and eastern european countries with data from freedom house s freedom of the press report and the european commission s candidate countries eurobarometer survey next i consider media freedom and citizens political participation in 60 countries using data from the world values survey finally i investigate media freedom and voter turnout in these same 60 or so countries with data from the international institute for democracy and electoral assistance i find that where government owns a larger share of media outlets and infrastructure regulates the media industry more and does more to control the content of news citizens are more politically ignorant and apathetic where the media is less regulated and there is greater private ownership in the media industry citizens are more politically knowledgeable and active these results are robust to sample specification and alternative measures of media freedom

colonial legacies and economic growth much of the work on colonialism has been theoretical or anecdotal in this paper i close the gap between the literature on development and new growth theory by testing the effect of colonization on subsequent growth and development in a sample of 63 ex colonial states from 1961 1990 i find that colonies that were held for longer periods of time than other countries tend to perform better on average after independence finally i show that the level of education at the time of independence can help to explain much of the development gap between the former british and french colonies in africa

mass media competition political competition and public policy if better informed voters receive favourable policies then mass media will affect policy because mass media provide most of the information people use in voting this paper models the incentives of the media to deliver news to different groups the increasing returns to scale technology and advertising financing of media firms induce them to provide more news to large groups such as taxpayers and dispersed consumer interests and groups that are valuable to advertisers this news bias alters the tradeoff in political competition and therefore introduces a bias in public policy the paper also discusses the effects of broadcast media replacing newspapers as the main information source about politics the model predicts that this change should raise spending on government programmes used by poor and rural voters

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

factor proportions and relative wages the supply side determinants of wage inequality supply side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality first certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality women s increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates both allegedly reduce the wages of less skilled men however immigration s impact on wage inequality has been minor and the effects of women s participation is inconclusive second in evaluating the likelihood that human capital investment will mitigate future inequality evidence suggests that rising returns to education have increased the proportion of young people attending college limiting the growth of inequality among high wage workers

the power of tv cable television and women s status in india cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world the availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world which may affect individual attitudes and behaviors this paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural india using a three year individual level panel dataset we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in womens status we find significant increases in reported autonomy decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference we also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility primarily via increased birth spacing the effects are large equivalent in some cases to about five years of education in the cross section and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas we argue that the results are not driven by pre existing differential trends these results have important policy implications as india and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women authors

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded