competition and the number of firms in a market are duopolies more competitive than atomistic markets this paper uses a variant of the standard search model to examine market equilibrium and the consequences for market equilibrium of an increase in the number of firms if marginal search costs increase with the number of searches then the demand curve facing any firm will be kinked with the elasticity of demand with respect to price decreases being less than with respect to price increases prices may not change in response to changes in marginal costs as the number of firms increases the maximum price that is consistent with equilibrium increases to the monopoly price but the minimum price decreases on the other hand if marginal search costs decrease with the number of searches equilibrium if it exists is characterized by a

the earnings and human capital of american jews this paper analyzes the earnings and returns from human capital investments of second generation american jews compared with non jews jewish men have 16 percent higher earnings other things the same a 20 percent higher rate of return from schooling and a steeper experience earnings profile these patterns persist even after controlling for occupation self employment status and geographic concentration in the new york area there are no systematic differences among jews by parents country of birth the findings suggest that american jews are more productive in creating and using human capital and that this has encouraged greater investments in human capital

information competition and markets one of the dominant characteristics of modern capitalist economies is the important role played by competition not the peculiar static form of pure price competition embodied in the arrow debreu model but rather a dynamic competition more akin to the kind of competition represented by sports contests and other races including patent races in recent years there have been several attempts to explain why firms often base the pay of their workers and managers on relative performance see for example edward lazear and sherwin rosen 1981 such compensation schemes become desirable when three conditions are satisfied a the input effort of workers managers must not be directly observable at least without cost thus firms must either expend resources to monitor inputs or devise reward structures in which compensation is a function of variables such as output or profits which are themselves functions of inputs but are less costly to observe b the relationship between input and output must be stochastic so that by observing output one cannot perfectly infer what the input was c finally the stochastic disturbances which affect the relationship between input and output of different firms must be correlated by looking at the performance of one worker relative to that of others one can make better inferences about his effort than one can make without using this information not only can competition provide a basis of comparison which enables the design of reward structures that can simultaneously provide a high level of incentives with relatively low level risk but compensation schemes based on relative performance have the further advantage of automatically adjusting incentives to changes in the economic environment we refer to this as built in flexibility in a first best world with perfect information concerning the nature of the technology but where it is still costly to monitor individuals activities the compensation scheme would vary from time to time as the environment changed such changes in the compensation scheme are costly to implement and the information required to do so is seldom available when a task is easier the individual s rewards for performing the task should be reduced if pay is based on relative performance although all individuals perform better when they exert the same level of effort their compensation is automatically adjusted thus teachers frequently grade on the curve and a significant fraction of the pay of successful salesmen often consists of bonuses based on relative performance

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

the wage effect of the occupational segregation of women in britain married females earn around 60 percent of the male rate of pay part of this wage difference der ives from inequality of pay within occupations and part derives from the different occupational distributions of the male and female workf orces this paper merges models of occupational attainment and gender wage distributions it shows that the gender wage difference derives largely from wage differences within occupations the effect of fema le nonparticipation in the paid workforce is found to be an important aspect of occupational attainment as well as of pay differences with in occupations copyright 1987 by royal economic society

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

a system approach to the demand for salmon in the european union this study addresses the demand for salmon in the european union a system of demand equations are specified with an almost ideal demand system aids to analyse the demand structure for fresh frozen and smoked salmon using quarterly data for the period 1984 92 the time series porperties of the data series are explored and the data series are found to be non stationary but cointegrated to avoid the invalild inference and spurious regression problems that may be created by non stationary data series the fully modified least squares fmls estimatior is utilized

adoption of organic farming in germany and austria an integrative dynamic investment perspective farm level adaptation to changing economic environments is often slower than expected technological innovations for instance are frequently adopted at a later date than the net present value of investment suggests this can be explained by a model of investment under uncertainty which consistently accounts for uncertainty sunk costs and the flexibility of investment timing its essential conclusion is that due to temporal opportunity costs critical incremental cash flows that trigger investments might be higher than those needed for simple cost recovery this accounts for an ostensible reluctance to invest economic hysteresis in this article we demonstrate how slow conversion to organic farming in general and the different rates of conversion in germany and austria in particular can be explained by the new investment theory

on insider privatization privatization is proceeding slowly in many eastern european countries this is largely because the insiders who currently have control but not property rights to the firms oppose outsider privatization privatization would proceed faster if governments decided to go the insider privatization route there would seem to be two strong efficiency arguments for doing so first insider privatization aligns control and property rights this gives the right incentives to insiders second if for some reason insiders cannot do the job themselves they will have the right incentives to sell the firms to those outsiders who can our paper focuses on this second argument we conclude that it is not as obvious as it seems there is a wedge between the value of the firm to insiders and the value of the firm to outsiders depending on the details of insider privatization and on the details of the resale process this wedge may prevent resale and thus prevent desirable restructuring

a framework to analyze the performance of thinly traded agricultural commodity markets thinly traded agricultural commodity markets are a concern for farmers and policy markers due to the belief that prices in these settings will be highly volatile subject to manipulation and incapable of efficiently allocating resources analysis of thin agricultural markets has to date been impeded by lack of an appropriate analytical framework from which to study their behavior in this paper we propose the modern agricultural markets mam framework as an appropriate paradigm through which to view and evaluate thin markets we argue that thinly traded markets that meet key conditions required for a mam will generate maximum economic surplus and enable farmers to earn at least a competitive return on their investments in the absence of these conditions however the concerns known as the thin market problem have validity we set forth the mam framework interpret it in a thin market context and conduct several brief case studies of thin markets to illustrate use of the approach and draw some key inferences about these markets behavior the analysis indicates that appropriate government policies directed to thin markets are those that facilitate their convergence to mam status but in reality key policies under recent consideration would have the opposite effect

taking stock a critical assessment of recent research on inventories empirical and theoretical aspects of inventory behavior became hot topics in the 1950s and early 1960s no one seemed to notice the tension that was developing between the emerging macroeconomic and microeconomic views of inventories macroeconomists routinely thought of inventories as a destabilizing factor yet the prevailing micro theory viewed inventories as a stabilizing factor it was a fascinating question that was barely explored instead somewhat inexplicably interest in inventories dried up as if inventories were of minor economic significance and little intrinsic interest by the early 1980s then economists once again knew something they had known in the 1950s that inventory investment is of first order importance in business cycles but they were also beginning to realize that the standard production smoothing buffer stock model of inventories was in deep trouble this paper focuses on developments since that realization

the price relationship between organic and non organic vegetables in the u s evidence from nielsen scanner data this study investigates price relationships between organic and conventional carrots tomatoes and lettuce in the u s utilizing nielsen scanner data from 2006 2015 we employ a threshold vector e

occupational segregation and selectivity bias in occupational wage equations an empirical analysis using irish data the gender wage effects of occupational segregation are assessed within the framework of occupational attachment and wage equations this paper exploits the modified index number approach suggested by brown et al 1980 and used recently by miller 1987 however neither of these papers allowed for the potential effects of selectivity bias in occupational wage equations in this study selectivity bias is corrected for using the method outlined in lee 1983 this allows for the effects of occupational selectivity buas on the gender wage gap to be assessed the findings for this sample of young lrish workers suggest that the greater part of the female wage disadvantage lies in intraoccupational wage differences furthermore selectivity bias is found to be important for a number of occupational categories

price relationships between qualitatively differentiated agricultural products organic and conventional wheat in germany organic agriculture which produces commodities that can be qualitatively differentiated from conventional food products has grown into an important market in many countries the dynamics of commodity prices in both sectors are partly interdependent but are also shaped by independent determinants and have rarely been studied we analyze organic food markets and their interdependencies with conventional markets in the context of wheat markets in germany which have been subject to a number of fundamental changes during the last two decades based on institutional market characteristics we suggest a flexible markov switching asymmetric time series model we find a pronounced temporal sequence of market phases that differ in their asymmetric dynamics and the extent to which the organic price is influenced by the conventional price organic wheat prices tend to be increasingly connected to prices of conventional wheat

supply and demand factors for organic produce although the organic produce industry is growing dramatically little is known about market structure we estimate a system of reduced form equations to evaluate supply and demand factors that influence equilibrium farm price and quantity in wholesale markets for organic broccoli carrots and lettuce in the long run demand factors dominate supply factors reduced wholesaling costs increased margins by which organic wholesale price exceeds nonorganic price and higher consumer income stimulate both farm price and output increasing the nonorganic farm price decreases equilibrium quantity of organics market expansion strategies should target consumers and wholesalers

the extent pattern and degree of market integration a multivariate approach for the brazilian rice market the extent pattern and degree of integration are analyzed in a multivariate system with cointegrating restrictions the extent of the market is found by identifying locations that are linked by trade and where prices share identicall ong run information permanent component the pattern of integration characterizes interdependence and is analyzed by estimating a vector error correction model the degree of integration is calculated with persistence profiles of the long run relations we demonstrate that bivariate models are inadequate for capturing the spatial dynamics of price adjustment the methodology is applied to the brazilian rice market and policy implications are

wage discrimination across ethnic groups evidence from israel i introduction wage differentials and occupational segregation have been intensively studied and well documented in the economic literature empirical analyses have demonstrated differences by gender and ethnicity and theoretical studies have attempted to explain the results polachek 1975 1993 leads the group that emphasizes human capital differences in explaining wage differences and segregation while bergmann 1974 1986 is in the forefront of a second group of scholars who claim that discrimination is the major source of inequality of wages and occupations in the united states race differentials in earnings and racial segregation decreased dramatically during the 1960s and the 1970s but sex differentials did not in 1980 the duncans 1955 segregation index calculated by fuchs 1989 across 503 occupations was about 30 for blacks versus whites and about 60 for men versus women 1 fuchs 1989 also showed that by 1980 the wage differential between white and black men 15 percent was less than half the difference between white men and white women 40 percent polachek and siebert 1993 137 39 present data showing that in 1990 the pay of u s women averaged 65 to 90 percent of that of men depending on the occupational category the gap has been relatively constant but there is some evidence that it has been narrowing in recent years they also find that earning ratios by occupation in the u k are very similar to parallel ratios in the u s chiswick 1983a 1983b and carlson and swartz 1988 among others examine earnings of ethnic minorities they find that most ethnic groups fare quite poorly compared to the white population but a few minorities jews chinese and japanese do as well or even better than the white majority the earnings gap for most groups declined over the 1960s and the 1970s and the portion of that gap that might be assignable to discrimination also declined in this study we examine ethnic wage differentials discrimination and segregation in the israeli labor market israel provides a tailor made setting for ethnic studies since its jewish population 4 335 million in 1993 consists of people with a large diversity in their countries of origin the first wave of jewish immigrants following the establishment of the state of israel in 1948 were holocaust survivors from europe or refugees from the predominantly moslem countries of north africa the middle east and yemen others came from north and south america western europe south africa and australia to live a more meaningful jewish life in the homeland israel encouraged and assisted these immigrants as part of an active pro immigration ideology and policy the main wave of immigration arrived in the late 1940s and early 1950s as friedlander 1975 shows between 1948 and 1952 the jewish population in israel increased from about 630 000 to nearly one and a half million an annual average growth rate of over 24 percent later there were three significant waves of immigration the first occurred at the beginning of the 1960s with annual immigration reaching an average of 57 000 per year an increase of 2 percent per year in population the second occurred in 1972 73 when 55 000 immigrants arrived annually an annual population increase of 1 7 percent the third large wave began in august 1989 with a massive influx of immigrants from the former u s s r generating about a 10 percent increase in the population in the years 1990 93 the absolute figures are 199 516 immigrants in 1990 176 100 in 1991 77 057 in 1992 and 66 145 in 1993 israel central bureau of statistics 1994 in 1991 about 15 000 ethiopian jews also arrived in israel the major ethnic division in israel is based on the country of origin although jews of various origins speak a number of different languages and perceive themselves as having some distinctive ethnic characteristics the main distinction is between jews originating from asia and africa excluding south africa easterners and those from america europe south africa and australia westerners

searching for price parity in the european whitefish market the purpose of this paper is to test for price parity across different species of whitefish in the european union price parity is defined by a system of cointegrated prices and would be evidence of a single european market for whitefish whitefish are of interest because eu fishers receive the largest share of their income from these fish species notwithstanding the single market policy of the eu by establishing national and regional associations to stabilize or increase the local price of fish fishers operate as if the european market is made up of separate submarkets with price being determined largely within each submarket if whitefish markets were price cointegrated such associations would be largely ineffective in that case what are required are regulations that encompass the european market

international fish trade and exchange rates an application to the trade with salmon and fishmeal international fish trade is growing and fish exports represent an important source of foreign currency for many countries for a few countries the exports are also an essential part of the economy we revisit the seminal paper of richardson 1978 that addresses the issue of exchange rate pass through in commodity markets but in a multivariate cointegration framework the multivariate cointegration framework allows us to test common assumptions like exchange rate pass through leading price central markets and exogeneity of exchange rates this approach is particularly suited when studying markets for primary products we provide empirical examples using salmon imports to japan and fish meal exports from peru to germany

competitive niche in milk pricing analyzing price dynamics of gmo free organic and conventional milk in germany during 2009 2010 abstract since may 2008 german law has permitted placing a gmo free label on food products within the framework of gmo regulations ec 1829 2003 it is found in the market along with organic food labels that similarly require the absence of gm products and with labels that designate regional qualities this paper analyzes the retail price dynamics of organic gmo free and conventional milk after the introduction of gmo free labeling in germany using weekly data of the gfk consumer home scan data from german milk sales in the early period of its introduction in 2009 and 2010 were analyzed in a vector error correction model the results indicated that cointegrating relations exist among prices of conventional organic and gmo free milk long term adjustment parameters indicated that deviations from equilibrium are corrected according to the results german dairy companies may successfully defend their price differentials due to adjustments existing between the prices of gmo free and organic milk

moral hazard and nonmarket institutions dysfunctional crowding out or peer monitoring the authors examine a situation in which insurance is characterized by moral hazard when market insurance is provided supplementary mutual assistance between family and friends unobservable to market insurers will occur when nonmarket insurers have no better information than market insurers the mutual assistance not only crowds out market insurance but is also harmful and therefore dysfunctional alternatively when nonmarket insurers can observe each other s effort perfectly mutual assistance is beneficial these results point to the potential importance of peer monitoring mechanisms in mitigating moral hazard copyright 1991 by american economic association

international capital mobility shadow prices and the cost of protection this paper studies the welfare losses from tariff protection in a small open economy when some factors are internationally mobile our principal result is that international fictor mobility must raise the cost of protection more specifically the welfare loss resulting from a uniform increase in tariffs in a competitive small open economy is greater when tariff induced international factor movements take place than when factors are internationally immobile by contrast an exogen1ous inflow of factors in the presence of tariffs may increase or reduce the welfare loss associated with protection depending on whether or not the protected commodities use the foreign owned factors intensively relative to domestically owned factors these results are proven for a very general specification of the economy s technology in particular no restrictions are placed on the degree of vertical integration in production on the sectors into which factors are internationally mobile or on the number of goods and factors our main result holds whether or not an increase in tariff rates leads the economy to specialise in addition we show how our results relate to earlier work on immiserising capital inflows and on negative shadow prices for factors of production thus synthesizing a number of recent results within a common framework the paper is organised as follows in section 2 we explain our framework and derive expressions for the welfare effects of tariffs when all factors are domestically owned and when some factors are foreign owned but not internationally

asymmetry in farm retail price transmission for major dairy products an econometric model is used to estimate the net relationship between changes in the farm level price of milk and changes in the retail prices of four major dairy products fluid milk butter cheese and ice cream results indicate that the farm retail price transmission process in the dairy sector is asymmetric retail dairy product prices adjust more rapidly and more fully to increases in the farm price of milk than to decreases the role in pricing asymmetry of retail demand versus farm supply shifts is tested via a chow type test asymmetry is tested using the houck procedure for estimating nonreversible functions

organic or conventional optimal dairy farming technology under the eu milk quota system and organic subsidies this paper assesses the competitiveness of organic and conventional dairy farms under different milk market and organic farming policy scenarios we use a dea based model to estimate for each policy scenario the sample farms profit potential in both technologies the model enables identification of a farm s optimal technology based on its input output observations the empirical analysis is based on the annual accounts of 1300 bavarian dairy farms results indicate that approximately 69 78 of the organic conventional farms have chosen their optimal farming system the remaining organic conventional farmers could increase their profit on average by roughly 6 10 by switching to the other technology abolishment of the eu milk quota results in a considerable decline in the number of sample farms for which organic farming is the optimal technology suggesting that ceteris paribus organic dairy farms may lose competitive advantage with the deregulation of the eu s milk market regime in 2015 organic maintenance payments more than double the number of farms with a higher earning potential in organic farming but their effectiveness could decline when the milk quota is abolished c 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the second theorem of the second best abstract this paper interprets many results from the literature on incentive compatibility and cost benefit analysis as illustrations of a second theorem of the second best the theorem states that if there exists any restriction on transactions required for first best efficiency then there is no presumption that a social welfare maximum entails equal marginal social utilities of income across individuals one reason is that incentive constraints shift with redistributions of wealth so that redistributions have an instrumental role in relaxing constraints that make the economy second best two examples relate such wealth effects to countervailing incentives and hostage taking

the contributions of the economics of information to twentieth century economics in the e eld of economics perhaps the most important break with the past one that leaves open huge areas for future work lies in the economics of information it is now recognized that information is imperfect obtaining information can be costly there are important asymmetries of information and the extent of information asymmetries is affected by actions of e rms and individuals this recognition deeply affects the understanding of wisdom inherited from the past such as the fundamental welfare theorem and some of the basic characterization of a market economy and provides explanations of economic and social phenomena that otherwise would be hard to understand i introduction the century coming to a close has seen vast changes in economics in both ideas and methodology upon ree ection it is remarkable however how many of the seeds of advances in this century were sowed in the previous i would argue that perhaps the most important break with the past one that leaves open huge areas for future work lies in the economics of information the recognition that information is imperfect that obtaining information can be costly that there are important asymmetries of information and that the extent of information asymmetries is affected by actions of e rms and individuals has had profound implications for the wisdom inherited from the past and has provided explanations of economic and social phenomena that otherwise would be hard to understand in this essay i wish to argue that information economics has had directly and indirectly a profound effect on how we think about economics today eighteenth and nineteenth century antecedents to be sure marshall and other nineteenth century economists talked about problems of imperfect information but with one exception discussions of information were obiter dicta caveats at the end of the analysis they were never at the center

stated and revealed preferences for organic and cloned milk combining choice experiment and scanner data the u s food and drug administration s recent announcement that milk from cloned cows is as safe to drink as that from conventionally bred cows prompted interest among farmers food retailers and regulators in the market impacts of the introduction of milk from clones because milk from cloned animals is not currently labeled in the market we utilized a stated preference experiment to determine consumer preferences for the attribute but also sought to determine whether the survey based choices were consistent with people s revealed preferences given by scanner data our analysis indicates that a pooled model combining stated and revealed preference data exhibits overall better out of sample prediction performance than either data set used alone results from the pooled model indicate that consumers are willing to pay large premiums to avoid milk from cloned cows an amount that is over three times that for organic or rbst free milk the results are used to calculate the value of a mandatory labeling program

possibility or impossibility of paradoxes in the small country harris todaro framework a unifying analysis abstract in this paper we argue that the harris todaro ht framework sometimes satisfies an envelope property which makes it work like a full employment heckscher ohlin samuelson hos model then the ht structure produces very similar results as one gets in the standard hos framework differences arise because the envelope condition may break down we show how several celebrated results in the ht structure can have this reinterpretation

a near rational model of the business cycle with wage and price inertia this paper presents a model in which insignificantly suboptimal behavior causes aggregate demand shocks to have significant real effects the individual loss to agents with inertial price wage behavior is second order in terms of the parameter describing the shock while the effect on real economic variables is first order thus significant changes in business activity can be generated by anticipated money supply changes provided that some agents are willing to engage in nonmaximizing behavior which results in small losses

credit programmes for the poor and seasonality in rural bangladesh this article examines the effect of group based credit used to finance self employment by landless households in bangladesh on the seasonal pattern of household consumption and male and female labour supply this credit can help smooth seasonal consumption by financing new productive activities whose income flows and time demands do not seasonally covary with the income generated by existing agricultural activities the results based upon 1991 92 survey data strongly suggest that an important motivation for credit programme participation is the need to smooth the seasonal pattern of consumption and male labour supply it is only the extent of lean season consumption poverty that selects household into these programmes in addition the largest female and male effects of credit on household consumption are during the lean season

urban unemployment and the gains from trade a welfare ranking of alternative commercial policies is constructed for the mobile capital harris todaro economy it is sh own that despite the presence of unemployment most noninterventioni st policies suggested by the competitive model of gains from trade ca rry over to the mobile capital harris todaro economy yet in contradi ction to the competitive model it is shown that all forms of trade i ntervention are not detrimental to welfare only those that reduce th e volume of trade are the export promotion policies so copiously fol lowed by developing countries are vindicated but their import substi tution policies are shown to be without justification copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

price transmission and asymmetric adjustment in the u s beef sector the u s livestock sector has experienced numerous structural changes in recent years for example the meatpacking industry has experienced many mergers and acquisitions leading to significant increases in industry concentration in particular the four firm concentration ratio for steer and heifer slaughter a frequently cited statistic and an important indicator of industry concentration increased from 35 7 in 1980 to 79 8 in 1997 usda there have also been significant regional shifts in livestock production and changes in marketing practices with decreased use of public markets in many areas for some products traditional auction markets have been largely replaced by contract production and sales cattle inventories have also trended downward over the last two decades this has been accompanied by decreases in the number of producers and in some cases with significant increases in the scale of operations the vertical transmission of shocks among various levels of the market is an important characteristic describing the overall operation of the market of course price is the primary mechanism by which various levels of the market are linked the extent of adjustment and speed with which shocks are transmitted among producer wholesale and retail market prices is an important factor reflecting the actions of market participants at alternative market levels the nature speed and extent of adjustments to market shocks may also have important implications for marketing margins spreads and mark up pricing practices an extensive literature has examined mar

segmented or competitive labour markets a normal roy model with four sectors is developed it allows to derive tests of several assumptions on the working of the labor market strongly or weakly competitive or segmented it shows that more important a feature of labor markets than segmentation is the presence of comparative advantages for individuals between the various economic sectors the model is applied to data on women s labor force participation in the main towns of colombia in 1980 it uses multivariate probit and tobit techniques copyright 1991 by the econometric society

a dominant firm model of price determination in the us fresh salmon market 1985 88 in this paper a dominant firm pricing model is used to examine price determination in the us imported farmed salmon market for the period 1985 88 in the 1980s us imports of fresh and frozen salmon increased rapidly with norway supplying nearly 80 of farmed salmon the model assumes that norwegian suppliers recognize their dominant position in the market and set the level of supply to the us to achieve a price that will maximize profits the model does well in explaining variations in the price of farmed salmon over the period of study and is used to study recent allegations that norwegian salmon have been dumped in the us market

labor market adjustments and the persistence of unemployment persistent unemployment like that plaguing europe since the early 1980 s has been a persistent problem for economic theory competitive equilibrium theory assumes that all markets clear including the labor market all theories of unemployment thus must reflect significant departures from that paradigm the last 20 years have generated a plethora of such theories the challenge is to construct models that generate unemployment and are broadly consistent with a host of other labor and macroeconomic phenomena including patterns of real wages and hours the traditional approach is to focus on a simple static equilibrium in which wages are kept above their market clearing level for a variety of reasons in the older versions of this story minimum wages union power and normative traditions in its more recent incarnations efficiency wage considerations within the united states the older variants of these models have received decreasing credence as union power has eroded the real value of the minimum wage has declined and empirical evidence has buttressed a broader set of theoretical arguments based on imperfect competition within the labor market and efficiency wage considerations suggesting at most negligible effects from these government interventions efficiency wage variants are more broadly consistent with observed labormarket behavior and help explain both natural rates of unemployment and certain cyclical phenomena e g the use of layoffs rather than job sharing see carl shapiro and stiglitz 1984 lawrence summers 1990 moreover to the extent that unemployment compensation and protection against separations for cause have improved recently in europe these models can explain the secular rise in european unemployment see edmund phelps 1994 2 on the other hand as conventionally formulated they leave many aspects of the labor market unexplained 3 more recent theories analyze unemployment as the result of imbalances between flows into and out of the job market 4 in these models in steady state on average the flow supply into unemployment must balance the flow out the equilibrium level of unemployment is thus determined through relations between these flows and the level of unemployment most noted within this genre are the labor turnover theories in which labor costs are affected by wages and the unemployment rate and the job search models in which unemployment arises from the need for job matches which by assumption can only occur among the

discouraging rivals managerial rent seeking and economic inefficiencies we argue here for a broader view of the biases in managers decisions in general managerial rent seeking affects not only the level of investment but also the form our basic hypothesis is simple given the now well established scope for managerial discretion managers have an incentive to exercise that discretion to enhance their income any managerial contract is subject to renegotiation and a manager s pay is the outcome of an often bewildering bargaining process between management the board of directors and rival management teams or takeover artists this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

bi ethnic labor markets mono ethnic labor markets and socioeconomic inequality the research examines the role of local opportunity structure in the determination of social and economic outcomes by focusing on the impact of local labor market segregation on socioeconomic inequality between jews and arabs in israel analysis of the 1983 israeli census reveals that the rules by which minority members achieve socioeconomic status vary considerably across bi ethnic and mono ethnic labor markets arabs working in jewish communities bi ethnic labor markets suffer the detrimental consequences of both occupational and income discrimination more than any other group by contrast arabs working in arab communities mono ethnic labor markets are occupationally advantaged with the absence of competition they produce incumbents for positions usually held by jews the findings suggest that the magnitude of disadvantages that superordinate groups force on minority groups is highly dependent on the degree of group competition in the local labor market

product aggregation market integration and relationships between prices an application to world salmon markets relationships between prices of goods offer motives of interest in at least two areas market integration and product aggregation there is a close relationship between market integration and aggregation which may increase the usefulness of market integration studies in this article these relationships are developed and illustrated by an application to the world salmon market it is shown that the law of one price holds for an international market with five salmon species this result has significant implications for the world salmon market regarding both product aggregation in demand analyses and international trade policy

tariffs foreign capital and immiserizing growth with urban unemployment and specific factors of production abstract in this note we show that a recent observation of brecher alejandro as regards tariff induced capital inflows essentially extends to a setting with urban unemployment three factors of production and a variety of labor market conditions in the urban sector

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

international factor mobility minimum wage rates and factor price equalization a synthesis this paper examines the behavior of a small open economy facing perfectly elastic supply curves for some of its productive factors in particular the paper derives some comparative statics properties of such economies compares them with the properties of otherwise identical economies in which all factor prices are determined endogenously and investigates the relationship between factor price rigidities factor price equalization and the pattern of specialization among the new results which are proved it is shown that as more and more factor price rigidities are imposed on an economy it comes closer to a state of factor price equalization

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

local impacts of a global crisis food price transmission consumer welfare and poverty in ghana abstract this paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in ghana it also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups taking the 2007 2008 global food crisis as an example we show that prices for domestic grain products are highly correlated with world market prices this is true both for products for which ghana is highly import dependent e g rice and the products for which ghana is self sufficient e g maize the econometric results also show that price transmission is high between regional producer markets and markets located in the country s largest cities and the distance between producer and consumer markets and the size of consumer markets matter in explaining the price transmission the welfare analysis for households as consumers shows that the effect of world food prices appears relatively modest for the country as a whole due to relatively diverse consumption patterns within country however the national average hides important regional differences both between regions and within different income groups we find that the poorest of the poor particularly those living in the urban areas are hardest hit by high food prices the negative effect of the food crisis is particularly strong in northern ghana the main explanations for this regional variation in the price effect is the different consumption patterns and much lower per capita income levels in the north of ghana compared to other regions in the country

price transmission and market integration vertical and horizontal price linkages for salmon relationships between prices are of interest when testing for market integration as well as analyses of supply chains a feature that has received little attention is that if two supply chains are linked by market integration at some stage then the whole supply chain will be linked furthermore the leading price in such a system can be in one supply chain and will not be revealed in market integration studies or analysis of a single supply chain an empirical analysis is provided for the supply chains for salmon which originates in norway and the united kingdom and is then sold at retail level in france as smoked salmon we find a high degree of price transmission in both supply chains as well as integrated markets

using threshold cointegration to estimate asymmetric price transmission in the swiss pork market this paper employs threshold cointegration tests that allow for asymmetric adjustment towards a long run equilibrium relationship to examine the relationship between producer and retail pork prices in switzerland the short run adjustments are also examined with asymmetric error correction models that are compared to the conventional symmetric error correction models the results indicate that price transmission between the producer and retail levels is asymmetric in the sense that increases in producer prices that lead to declines in marketing margins are passed on more quickly to retail prices than decreases in producer prices that result in increases in the marketing margins

on the harris todaro model with intersectoral capital mobility n b professor neary was based at trinity college dublin when this article was first published the full text of the article is not available in ora at this time citation neary j p 1981 on the harris todaro model with intersectoral capital mobility economica 48 191 219 234

demand for farm output in a complete system of demand functions demand interrelationships for farm outputs that are theoretically consistent with consumer demand and marketing group behavior provide important linkages between retail and farm prices a conceptual model based on reduced form specifications for retail and farm prices is formulated and applied empirically to a set of eight disaggregated food commodities this approach circumvents the need for retail quantities which are frequently unavailable for disaggregated food commodities the results are consistent with theory and generally indicate significant substitution between farm and marketing inputs except for poultry derived demand elasticities are at least 40 larger compared to those derived assuming fixed proportions

does the law of one price really hold for commodity prices in spite of the empirical failure of the law of one price it is usually assumed that commodity prices are perfectly arbitraged at least in the long run this paper argues that this assumption is counterfactual and that much of the empirical evidence provided to support it is flawed and affected by econometric shortcomings spurious regressions nonstationarity in the data inappropriate use of first differences an alternative methodology co integration by which a long run relationship between nonstationary series can be tested is proposed tests of nonstationarity and co integration for a group of commodities show quite uniformly that the law of one price as a long run relationship fails and that deviations from the pattern are permanent

market integration between developing countries and urban unemployment the perspective of the real minimum wage this article examines the effect of market integration through free trade and factor mobility on the urban unemployment rate of a developing country whose economy is large enough to influence the terms of trade from the perspective of the real minimum wage it is shown that free trade would result in a rise or a decline in the country s urban unemployment rate depending on its trade pattern while the effect of labour mobility on a country s urban unemployment rate is determined by the difference between the ratio of would be farmers to incoming workers and that of farm leavers to outgoing workers the result of capital mobility will depend on a comparison of the initial urban unemployment rates of two countries

information and consumer perception of the organic attribute in fresh fruits and vegetables using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3 200 danish households monthly observations for 2002 2007 we study the effects of health related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables we find that negative information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market positive information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process our dataset includes information about consumers media habits which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption

testing the dual labor market hypothesis evidence from the israel labor mobility survey little research seems to have addressed the testing of the dual labor market model for nondeveloping economies outside the u s and the u k this paper examines the hypothesis for israel utilizing individual data drawn from the israel labor mobility survey and assigning workers to primary and secondary sectors on the basis of occupational prestige scores earnings functions are estimated and compared for the two sectors the results are very closely in line with predictions of the dual labor market model thus strongly suggesting that the dual labor market hypothesis may be relevant for israel

testing market integration a model of spatial price differentials for a tradable good is proposed which avoids the inferential dangers of received methods using static price correlations the proposed method also extracts more information on the causes of price differentials from the same data the method is illustrated using monthly rice price data for postindependence bangladesh including the very substantial regional price shocks during the 1974 famine impediments to market integration are indicated

pareto inefficiency of market economies search and efficiency wage models this paper shows that market economies with search and in which wages are affected by efficiency wage considerations are not constrained pareto efficient wages are not set at pareto efficient levels nor is the level of employment unemployment pareto efficient we identify the nature of the biases and the welfare improving government interventions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

urban unemployment international capital mobility and development policy abstract we introduce international capital mobility into the harris todaro model and examine the effectiveness of some policy tools the main message is such that a wage subsidy in manufacturing and a tariff are no longer effective to improve welfare while a wage subsidy in agriculture remains valid under the assumption of international capital mobility this is in sharp contrast to the result obtained for the original harris todaro model

some further evidence on the law of one price the law of one price still holds international trade models often postulate the existence of a representative price i e the price which prevails at all markets this is known as the law of one price in this paper the law of one price is tested for seven commodities among four countries by explicitly considering transaction costs the empirical evidence suggests that in most cases the law of one price cannot be rejected asa maintained hypothesis furthermore for the remaining cases transaction costs seem to cause the failure

price transmission asymmetric adjustment and threshold effects in the cotton supply chain a case study for vidarbha india this study examines price transmission asymmetries in vidarbha s india cotton supply chain from 2002 to 2012 the analysis takes account of thresholds in price adjustments toward their long run equilibrium the first stage considers the price dynamics between international and indian domestic cotton prices the second stage considers price transmission from domestic to farm gate cotton prices in vidarbha results from the first stage indicate that indian and international cotton markets are well integrated in contrast the second stage reveals significant threshold type nonlinearities as well as asymmetries in price transmission between domestic and farm gate prices the short run dynamics suggest that the pass through from domestic to farm gate prices is larger when domestic prices decrease than when they increase moreover back of the envelope calculations suggest that the loss in revenue for a typical farmer from a decrease in domestic price is larger than the gains from an increase in domestic price of the same magnitude the implication is that traders benefit from price fluctuations at the expense of farmers evidence from fieldwork in vidarbha suggest that asymmetries revealed in this analysis may be linked to trader s market power and inadequate market information among farmers

the development of and prospects for organic farming in the uk abstract the organic sector in the uk is booming with the largest ever wave of farm conversions underway consumer demand is currently growing faster than supply the evidence regarding the factors that have been critical now and in the past in causing producers to establish organic systems is reviewed this review draws on the authors own work as well as that of other researchers in europe and the usa in the second part of the paper we report on a recent study of the factors that prompt organic producers to abandon registered organic production this analysis is based on a survey of producers formerly registered with the soil association who have left the scheme since 1990 finally the paper considers the current policy regime with respect to organic farming the scope for the continued growth of the sector and the debate regarding the design of future policy