competitive storage rational expectations and short run food price determination this paper demonstrates that lags between retail and wholesale food prices can be explained by inventory behavior of retailers theoretical considerations indicate that the markup model should be modified to include a jorgenson type user cost variable which depends on expected future wholesale price the rational expectations hypothesis is used to derive price expectations the retail price specification therefore depends on the stochastic process generating expected wholesale price the econometric methodology employing both causality testing and nonlinear estimation is illustrated by estimating monthly price relationships for beef the results are consistent with the theory and indicate rejection of the markup model

likely effects on obesity from proposed changes to the us food stamp program abstract some have suggested that the us food stamp program fsp should be revised with a view to combating obesity among the poor in this paper we assess the likely impacts of allowing fsp participants to purchase only healthy foods when using food stamps our results indicate that fsp participants would probably increase their consumption of healthy food but the implications for their purchases of unhealthy food are not clear market wide consequences are even less clear because changing what may be purchased using food stamps would lead to higher prices for healthy foods and lower prices for unhealthy foods and these price effects would feed back into consumer decisions with adverse effects on consumption patterns of both participants and non participants in the fsp in addition more restrictive rules on the use of food stamps would discourage participation in the fsp we conclude that while reforming the fsp may indeed to lead to better diets among participants it is likely to be an ineffective and inefficient instrument for bringing about desired nutritional outcomes unless accompanied by additional policy instruments

effects of family background on earnings and returns to schooling evidence from brazil we investigate whether omitted family background variables are responsible for high returns to schooling estimated in brazil returns to schooling fall by about one third when parental schooling is added to wage equations surprisingly the schooling of fathers in law has larger effects on wages than the schooling of fathers on the basis of a model of assortative mating we interpret this as evidence that parental characteristics represent unobservable worker attributes rather than nepotism in the labor market we conclude that the family background bias in returns to schooling is modest and need not imply returns to family connections

inflation and indexation an empirical approach previous studies have examined various aspects of indexation we can distinguish two major points of interest wage determination and the effects of indexation on macroeconomic fluctuations some scholars have attempted to determine empirically and theoretically the causes of cost of living adjustment cola clauses in wage contracts 3 7 11 the focus in this research is often on major union contracts with wage change a function of both real factors e g the unemployment rate and monetary factors e g past inflation typical results are that past inflation will increase the adoption of indexation while industry specific shocks may cause resistance to indexation in addition kaufman and woglom 7 have shown that current labor market conditions have a significant impact on long term contracts research has also been concerned with the effect of wage indexation on the macroeconomy 1 2 5 6 how can wage indexation schemes be designed so as to alleviate the substantial income redistribution due to inflation and the use of contracts in nominal

a life course trajectory framework for understanding the intracohort pattern of wage inequality much research has been devoted to cross sectional and intercohort patterns of wage inequality but relatively little is known about the mechanisms for the intracohort pattern of wage inequality to fill this intellectual gap this article establishes a life course trajectory lct framework for understanding the intracohort pattern of wage inequality first the author proposes and conceptualizes three essential properties of the lct framework random variability trajectory heterogeneity and cumulative advantage that are used to establish a mathematical formalization of the lct framework both the conceptualization and the formalization imply that intracohort wage inequality will increase over the life course due to random variability trajectory heterogeneity and cumulative advantage finally the author combines the lct framework with the multilevel growth curve model then applies the model to data from the nlsy79 and finds support for the significance of random variability trajectory heterogenei

bargaining and strikes strikes are generally regarded as an important economic phenomenon and yet good theoretical explanations of them are hard to come by the difficulty is to understand why rational parties should resort to a wasteful mechanism as a way of distributing the gains from trade why could not both parties be made better off by moving to the final distribution of surplus immediately or if it is uncertain to its certainty equivalent and sharing the benefits from increased production

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

the asymmetric impact of oil prices interest rates and oil price uncertainty on unemployment in the us abstract in this study we investigate the presence of asymmetric interactions between oil prices oil price uncertainty interest rates and unemployment in a cointegration framework utilizing the nonlinear auto regressive distributed lag nardl approach we show the asymmetric responses of unemployment to changes in oil prices oil price uncertainty and interest rates in the long run more specifically the results of our analyses suggest that an increase in oil price results in increased unemployment while there is no significant impact of reduced oil prices on the one hand reduced oil price uncertainty leads to a decrease in unemployment whereas an increase in oil price uncertainty does not have an impact we also observe increased unemployment in response to a decrease in interest rates as the impact of increased interest rates is not significant last but not least we find that option implied oil price volatility as a measure of oil price uncertainty outperforms the conditional volatility of crude oil prices in predicting unemployment this study provides valuable implications for policymakers to design sound economic policies

normal costs and demand effects in price setting a study of retailing the study aims at contributing to the debate whether there are demand effects in models that seek to explain prices as mark ups on costs for costs it considers actual costs normal costs and an intermediate model with a partial adjustment to the deviation of actual from normal costs for demand effects it considers an effect on the price level of a change of demand with an allowance for asymmetry between demand growth and demand decline tests and estimates are conducted on the basis of data from retailing

restructuring agricultural economics extension to meet changing needs the evidence is increasing that cooperative extension if not the agriculture component of the land grant university system itself may be unraveling the director of the office of management and budget has recommended that federal funding for extension be eliminated three fellows of the aaea suggest that if the land grant system were reformulated today there would be no extension component a past president of the aaea argues that the whole land grant university system has lost its sense of mission schuh to many these positions defy logic ignore the contribution that extension has made to

union contracts and money wage changes in u s manufacturing industries this paper analyzes the relationship between wage changes negotiated in selected large collective bargaining agreements and industry wide changes in average hourly earnings multiple regressions are used to examine the relationship in two digit manufacturing industries for the period 1958ii to 1978il negotiated wage changes are found to have a major impact on overall movements in hourly earnings the estimated equations have potential applications for short run wage forecasting and for policy analyses

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

firm size effects on transaction costs associated with effects of scale scope experience and learning there are effects of firm size on transaction costs in the stages of contact contract and control these effects are due to threshold costs in setting up contacts contracts and governance schemes and to differences with respect to the factors that cause transaction costs bounded rationality opportunism uncertainty and transaction specificity of assets implications are considered for firm strategy and public policy

labor market dynamics in the u s food sector a simultaneous equation model is estimated to explain labor market phenomena including wages employment and labor productivity and food prices at manufacturing and retail levels of the u s food industry dynamic simulation results show that endogenizing input costs in a fully specified markup pricing model leads to a complex long run pattern of food price determination wage determination is found to play a central role linking general price levels to food sector prices and labor market behavior energy price changes are shown to significantly affect food prices food sector labor productivity is found to decline in response to exogenous commodity price shocks

the effects of interrupted schooling on wages data from the national longitudinal survey of youth reveal that 35 percent of white men who leave school between 1979 and 1988 return to school by 1989 this paper examines the wage effects of these nontraditional enrollment patterns i estimate a wage model which allows individuals to follow a different wage path before and after their reenrollment and an alternative model which does not account for school and work discontinuities i find that young men who delay their schooling receive wage boosts that are smaller than those received by their continuously schooled counterparts wage models that fail to account for delayed schooling tend to understate the returns to schooling received prior to the start of the career

the impact of demand and price expectations on the behavior of prices the effects of demand and price expectations on price behavior are analyzed using data from the manufacturing sector and a model formulated to pinpoint the demand oriented factors affecting prices and to incorporate price expectations as a direct influence on price behavior the expected normal demand is seen to have a strong and systemic influence on price behavior the expected normal level of new orders is found to be an adequate measure with sector data in general although some industries require more specification the effects of inventories and unfilled orders on prices are sporadic and across sectors and industries demand oriented forces are concluded to perform as well statistically as cost push determinants expectations concerning the current normal industry price level have a significant and consistent impact on price behavior this supports the idea that firms setting prices take into account their estimates of competitor s prices future price expectations appear to have little effect on current price information 15 references

cumulative advantage and inequality in science the hypothesis of cumulative advantage is widely accepted in the sociology of science but empirical tests have been few and equivocal one approach originated by allison and stewart 1974 is to see whether inequality of productivity and recognition increases as a cohort of scientists ages this paper extends their work by examining true cohorts of biochemists and chemists rather than synthetic cohorts increasing inequality is observed for counts of publications but not for counts of citations to all previous publications it is also shown that a mathematical model of cumulative advantage does not imply increasing inequality when the model is modified to allow for heterogeneity in the rate of cumulative advantage however increasing inequality is implied

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

crude oil and the macroeconomy tests of some popular notions a note perhaps no other economic events in the post world war ii era have generated as much attention as the series of crude oil price shocks that have jolted the world economy since the opec boycott of 1973 a tremendous amount of space in the popular and professional literature has been devoted to analyzing the impacts of these shocks on the developed economies and the adjustments these shocks have induced one residual of this literature has been a general impression that since 1973 the functional relationship between crude oil prices and the developed macroeconomies has been dramatically and fundamentally altered yet to our knowledge no one has formally tested this impression recent evidence of hamilton 1983 suggests that crude oil prices had a strong impact on the u s business cycle well before 1973 further while textbook treatments of oil price shocks tend to highlight cost push inflationary effects the research of berndt and wood 1975 1979 and wilcox 1983 indicates the net complementarity between energy and capital in the u s economy is quite strong both before and after 1973 thus oil price shocks may have stronger real effects than generally believed in this paper we formally test three popular notions associated with the so called

agricultural economics beyond the farm gate the industrialization of american agriculture during the past three decades has diminished farm numbers and the farm population while total agricultural production has increased the input finance service processing transportation and distribution industries surrounding production agriculture have now become the dominant economic components of the food and agriculture system the transformation of production agriculture from a major economic sector of the u s economy to minor status has been in progress since the founding days of the republic but has received impetus in the post world war ii era via the technological revolution involving mechanical chemical biological and managerial innovations on the farm what has emerged from this process is a highly interdependent subsystem of the u s economy for providing food and fiber for consumers at home and abroad agricultural scientists including agricultural economists have tended to place undue emphasis upon the technological economic and social aspects of production agriculture as the food and fiber system changed over time while public investments in research and education for the production side of agriculture are admittedly inadequate the lack of attention to the technological and economic problems of the balance of the food and fiber system is deplorable in terms of value added employment or other measures of economic importance the food and fiber system beyond the farm gate is roughly twice that of production agriculture more significantly productivity and inflation problems beyond the farm gate have affected national economic performance more persistently than gyrations in the farm economy per se the overall purpose of this paper is to challenge agricultural economists and policy makers to think about some important issues facing our contemporary economic system this emphasis does not mean that farm production economics is unimportant or unnecessary it is argued however that changes are needed within the agricultural economics profession to deal with a large number of significant economic problems and concerns beyond the farm gate

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

efficiency and productivity of french ski resorts abstract this paper analyses french ski resorts productivity with the luenberger productivity indicator lpi based on the directional distance function it permits the calculation of a productivity indicator that is decomposed into technical efficiency change and technological change the conclusions are that productivity decreased for the majority of french ski resorts which is almost always explained by technological change finally the mixed results do not establish a clear relationship between the ski resorts size and productivity therefore the kruskal wallis test is used to statistically verify this relationship managerial implications are derived from this study

a model of pricing behavior an econometric case study empirical pricing studies are scarce in the modern literature in spite of their obvious importance for understanding competition the present study employs a structural model to identify deviations of individual pricing routines from the commonly assumed single period profit maximization it is applied to individual wholesale firms because wholesale pricing has a decisive influence on the price formation in the entire economic system and because hardly any research exists in this area the results show that wholesale firms operate in imperfectly competitive world markets providing a highly differentiated service package traders apply pricing rules consistent with cost mark up pricing the mark up varies among traders with the extent to which a firm s pricing strategy deviates from full profit maximization this divergent behavior is associated with firm size the type of buyers served and other aspects of the wholesale service package

snow tourism and economic sustainability the financial situation of ski resorts in spain the aim of this article is to analyse the profitability of ski resorts in spain and identify its associated determining factors in order to verify whether these are economically sustainable taking

willingness to pay for snowmobile recreation travel cost method models with and without post season resurvey of trip count annual willingness to pay wtp for snowmobile recreation in idaho is estimated using the travel cost method tcm on site snow conditions are important and erratic thus we collect two measures o

a monetary analysis of food price determination erratic food price movements during the 1970s have received much attention in recent literature salathe and boehm found that movements in retail food prices since 1970 have been substantially more volatile than in earlier periods and that the food component of the consumer price index cpi has often displayed an annual rate of change different from that of the total cpi such changes in agricultural prices reflect low price elasticities for food products and the difficulty of predicting weather patterns and their effects on farm output research interest stems from relatively larger recent price changes caused by persistent general inflation and unexpected supply disruptions several recent studies of retail food prices are based on cost push theories these models posit that as input costs faced by food manufacturers rise the increases are passed through to consumers in the form of higher product prices to model cost push behavior changes in components of the marketing bill such as processing packaging and transportation costs are measured and related to subsequent changes in retail product prices examples of such empirical studies are those by lamm heien and lamm and westcott however these models represent only one perspective of the pricing process this paper suggests the use of a family of alternative models in particular by making a clear distinction between changes in nominal and real values a different set of variables is selected to measure each component of overall price change it is argued that not all models can explain behavior of both real and nominal price changes

job training in u s organizations we draw hypotheses about the factors related to company provision offormal job training programs from diverse theoretical perspectives and research findings using data from the 1991 national organizations survey we analyze a sample of 688 establishments to estimate multivariate models the relationships between employer provided job training and organizational size unionization and workforce composition are reduced or eliminated in most multivariate equations employer provided training is most extensive in establishments with elaborate internal structures that operate in complex market environments the job training practices of u s employers affect employees from the executive suite to the loading dock enhancing skills from basic literacy to interpersonal sensitivity a new training ideology is rapidly eclipsing the traditional segmented pattern a pattern in which universities educate the professionals and technicians companies prime the executives unions apprentice workers in the skilled trades and government prepares the disadvantaged facing competitive world economic pressures that have eroded america s market positions employers are now using job training as one means of coping with changes fostered by technological innovation market competition organizational restructuring and demographic shifts although training is an integral part of the employer employee relationship direct evidence about company training practices based on representative samples of diverse employing organizations is almost nonexistent most previous research has drawn on either self reported labor force surveys or highly restricted samples of organizations typically skewed to very large firms we examine hypotheses about employer provided job training practices in the early 1990s using a national survey of u s work organizations

on the heterogeneous welfare gains and losses from trade how are the gains and losses from trade distributed across individuals within a country first we document that tradable goods constitute a larger fraction of expenditures for poor households second we build a trade model with nonhomothetic preferences to generate the documented relationship between tradable expenditure shares income and wealth and uninsurable earnings risk to generate heterogeneity in income and wealth third we use the calibrated model to quantify the differential welfare gains and losses from trade along the income and wealth distribution in a numerical exercise we permanently reduce trade costs so as to generate a rise in import share of gdp commensurate with that seen in the data from 2001 to 2014 we find that households in the lowest wealth decile experience welfare gains over the transition measured by permanent consumption equivalents that are 67 percent larger than those in the highest wealth decile

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

oil price shocks and the dispersion hypothesis recent research by david lilien shows that a significant fraction of aggregate unemployment can be explained by the dispersion of employment growth across industries this paper presents two new results in this area first it is shown that a significant fraction of the variation in lilien s dispersion index is due to the differential impact of oil shocks across industries second and more important it is shown that once the dispersion in employment growth due to oil shocks is accounted for the residual dispersion has no explanatory power for unemployment

employment motherhood and school continuation decisions of young white black and hispanic women we examine the empirical relationship between early employment activity and school continuation decisions for young american women using a dynamic sequential discrete choice framework that estimates schooling labor supply and birth decisions jointly controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of these life cycle decisions that the rate of school withdrawal increases as work intensity rises helps explain the higher departure rates of hispanic girls from secondary school and the premature departure of young black women from college the disturbing implication is that youth employment induces long run wage stagnation for early school leavers and potentially increases race and ethnic inequities

economic welfare analysis of policy induced structural change in the indonesian poultry industry abstract the performance of the poultry industry in indonesia is analyzed in terms of changes in producer and consumer welfare as a result of public policy intended to limit the size of production units in order to distribute growth opportunities to smaller farms elasticities of supply and demand are estimated using the seemingly unrelated system of equations the hypothesis of a policy induced structural change estimated through a dummy variable accounting for a shift in supply associated with implementation of the policy shows a negative impact on the output supplied and the welfare of producers and consumers to the tune of about rp 94 billion or roughly about 0 1 of national income as of 1983 the study suggests an important trade off between more equitable income distribution and economic efficiency

funding for agricultural economics needs and strategies for the 1980s public funding for work in agricultural economics teaching research and extension appears to be declining in real terms at the start of the 1980s following two decades of real increases there is a call for reductions in spending by government at all levels a call for less taxes and for public accountability at the same time there are more students in the courses that agricultural economists teach there is a renewed interest in agricultural business curricula graduate study in agricultural economics is attracting new students from the biological and social sciences as well as agriculture the demand for competent applied economists particularly agricultural economists with advanced degrees appears to be growing the anomaly of apparent increases in demand coupled with declining public funding presents a challenge to the profession it should be one for which economists are prepared after all we regularly teach students about economic decision rules for allocating scarce resources among competing ends the political environment requires that we take our classroom lessons seriously and put them in practice in our own operations this paper explores several approaches and strategies for funding work in agricultural economics and more effective use of current resources we begin with an overview of changes in funding during the decade of the 1970s drawing upon secondary data and results of a mail questionnaire sent to agricultural economics department chairmen and administrators in the spring of 1981 we turn then to discussion of the demand current and prospective for services of agricultural economists and the capacity of current institutions to service that demand we conclude with discussion of funding strategies and recommendations on actions which might be pursued by the aaea

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

once in the door gender tryouts and the initial salaries of managers although women pursue managerial credentials at nearly the same rate as men gender disparities in wages exist because of the shortfall in wages women sustain relative to men at the onset of their careers this article develops a tryout approach to test for the presence of demand side contributions to initial wage inequality while also developing and testing theory on why it may be lessened through internships using detailed data on graduates from an elite management program from 2009 2010 our analyses reveal that internships are associated with the gap in men s and women s initial salaries for men there is no difference in salary offers from employers where an internship occurs versus one where an internship does not occur however women receive higher salaries from employers where an internship first takes place this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations

price of oil and world inflation and recession new evidence shows that the commonly held assumption that the 1973 74 oil price increase directly affected us and world inflation and subsequent recession is consistent with the empirical data an extended lucas varro real income equation applied to the us united kingdom canada france germany italy japan and the netherlands gives mixed results partly because of price control and decontrol programs simulation experiments on the price control variable using us data finds strong effects further studies can be made when consistent international data is available for the 1979 80 period 18 references 4 figures 3 tables dck

a neoclassical model of unemployment and the business cycle this paper investigates a general equilibrium model of unemployment and the business cycle in which specialization of labor plays a key role a rational expectations equilibrium with fully flexible wages and prices can exhibit unemployment in which the marginal product of employed workers exceeds the reservation wage of those who are without jobs workers are unemployed either because they are in the process of relocating for a better job or because they are waiting for conditions in the depressed sector to improve moreover seemingly small disruptions in the supplies of primary commodities such as energy could be the source of fluctuations in aggregate employment and can exert surprisingly large effects on real output

life cycle schooling and dynamic selection bias models and evidence for five cohorts of american males this paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education we examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive behavioral interpretation often used to rationalize it we show that the implicit economic model assumes myopia the intuitive interpretive model is identified only by imposing arbitrary distributional assumptions onto the data we produce an alternative choice theoretic model with fewer parameters that rationalizes the same data and is not based on arbitrary distributional assumptions

the race is to the swift socioeconomic origins adult education and wage attainment the winners in today s winner take all labor markets are differentiated by advanced levels of educational attainment especially higher degrees this article applies a sociological model of cumulative dis advantage to the baby boom cohort to examine whether life course timing differences in educational attainment help explain wage differentials by midlife it finds that advantaged social origins lead to early postsecondary completion of degrees which in turn yield higher wages a pathway of cumulative disadvantage is also evident where those least advantaged exit schooling early in life do not return as adults and earn low wages in a middle path advantaged social origins promote adult school attainment primarily for those without degrees but generally without the wage boosts associated with attainment earlier in life

productivity growth in the grocery trade this paper presents a model of the growth of the average efficiency of labour per type of shop as a function of the wage rate use of part time labour labour supply and demand and economies of scale shop size the model is estimated on the basis of data for the grocery trade prior to 1975 this yields a forecast beyond 1975 which is compared with more recent observations are estimate of the model on the basis of data for the grocery trade in the period 1975 78 is found to be in agreement with the original estimate some implications of the model are indicated

changing crude oil price effects on us agricultural employment the effect of changes in the price of crude oil on agricultural employment in the usa between 1947 and 1995 is investigated after reviewing previous assessments of the issue the existence of an empirical relationship between agricultural employment and crude oil price changes is established using granger causality subsequently the nature of the relationship is estimated with the results suggesting that at least three full years are required before the measurable effects of a percentage change in the real price of crude oil on the change in agricultural employment are exhausted finally the structural stability of the functional relationship between the change in agricultural employment and changes in the price of crude oil the percentage changes in expected net farm income realized technological innovation and the wage rate is studied

decomposition of structural and exogenous changes 1989 decomposition of structural and exogenous changes applied economics vol 21 no 1 pp 125 137

the effects of changing input costs on food prices the relationships between changes in food sector input costs and retail food prices are examined results indicate that increases in factor prices pass quickly to consumers within two quarters for most foods in addition rising farm level prices and substantial increases in nonfarm resource prices appear to explain why food prices rose more rapidly than nonfood prices in the 1970s the analysis is based on a twenty equation econometric model of the food price determination process specified following popkin s stage of processing approach causality and validation test statistics for the model are presented

a new econometric model of union threat effects the union threat effect is the propensity of non union employers to resist union organization by raising wages this study introduces an empirical model of the non union employer s optimal wage in the presence of threat effects estimates of an equation of a firm s unionization probability provide key variables unlike previous models this specification dervies directly from a theoritical model separstes threat effects from the influence of other union non union spillovers and efficiency wages and includes many factors affecting the probability of unionization wage equation estimates reveal that the predicted threat of unionization did not significantly raise non union wages in the united states in 1980

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

oil price shocks stock market economic activity and employment in greece abstract using a multivariate vector autoregression var approach this paper attempts to shed light into the dynamic relationship among oil prices real stock prices interest rates real economic activity and employment for greece the empirical evidence suggests that oil price changes affect real economic activity and employment oil prices are important in explaining stock price movements stock returns do not lead to changes in real activity and employment

the importance of lifetime jobs in the u s economy though the u s labor market is justly notorious for high turnover and consequent high unemployment it also provides stable near lifetime employment to an important fraction of the labor force this paper investigates patterns of job duration by age race and sex with the following major conclusions 1 the typical worker today is holding a job which has lasted or will last about eight years over a quarter of all workers are holding jobs which will last twenty years or more sixty percent hold jobs which will last five years or more 2 the jobs held by middle aged workers with more than ten years of tenure are extremely stable over the span of a decade only twenty to thirty percent come to an end 3 among workers aged thirty and above about forty percent are currently working in jobs which eventually will last twenty years or more three quarters are in jobs which will last five years or more 4 the duration of employment among blacks is just as long as among whites even though the jobs held by blacks are worse in almost every other dimension they are no more unstable than those held by whites 5 women s jobs are substantially shorter than men s on the average only about a quarter of all women over the age of thirty are employed in jobs which will last over twenty years whereas over half of men over thirty are holding these near lifetime jobs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

small business economics a perspective from the netherlands textabstractin the analysis of economic phenomena either within or across industries there is room for integrating the role of small business this contribution can be made by aggregation or generalization of the findings at the meso level which again are partly based upon analyses at the micro level the netherlands has a long history in macro model building a recent discussion among dutch macro economists considered the future of econometric model building at the macro level and considered how best to improve this model building the explicit integration of scale effects however was not mentioned i am convinced that improvements in this respect are possible in particular i have in mind the role which small businesses play in certain areas such as wage structure employment or investments the dissection of macro prognoses into a small business component and a remaining component is a traditional practice in the netherlands 1 finally there is much concern in the netherlands for the calculation of regulatory effects decomposed into effects for small and large businesses if anywhere in the world there is a solid foundation for studying scale effects in both macro and sectoral models it most certainly has been in the netherlands there is a strong tradition of macro econometric model building groups of econometricians specialized in small business research exist dutch policymakers show concern and the required research apparatus is available

limits on price analysis in a recent book sir peter medawar distinguishes between those questions that scientific research can and cannot answer my paper has a more modest goal price analysts have never pretended to answer deep philosophical questions but rather have tried to understand agricultural markets the general objective of price analyses is to make forecasts and simulations that assist private and public decision makers progress has been made toward this general goal but limitations clearly exist to obtaining precise forecasts and useful simulations this paper is about the progress that has been made and the limitations that exist examples from the supply demand and marketing margin literature are used to illustrate the progress and limitations in particular i contrast the progress that has been made in supply analysis with the progress in demand analysis i then suggest ways in which some of the problems might be addressed space constraints however do not permit an exhaustive discussion of these topics

effects of family instability income and income instability on the risk of a premarital birth in this study i contrast hypotheses about the effects of family structure on premarital birth risks with three income hypotheses 1 a low income hypothesis that the risk of a premarital birth is higher for women from disadvantaged economic backgrounds because they possess fewer or less attractive economic opportunities 2 a permanent income and transitory income hypothesis that uncertainties generated by unexpected fluctuations in family income increase premarital birth risks net of absolute income levels and 3 an income level and income change hypothesis that downward trends in family income reflect worsening socioeconomic opportunities that increase premarital birth risks net of absolute income levels i use prospective income and retrospective parental histories in the u s national longitudinal survey of youth to determine if the effect of family instability is an artifact of low unstable or declining income in the family of origin excerpt

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

entry spending and firm size in a stochastic r d race a model is developed to explain participation and spending on rd a flow cost of expenditure for the duration of the race which affects both the profitability of winning and the speed of development the poisson parameter both with diminishing returns allowance for an effect of firm size on the effectiveness profit cost of development the operational decision concerning the level and intensity of commitment in case of participation is modelled in a traditional fashion as the maximization of expected returns the strategic decision whether or not to participate at an optimal level and intensity is modelled as a stochastic process of deliberation between different makers and influencers of decisions in the firm the latter is to be seen as an introduction of the political and resource dependence views of organisations the resulting model of r d participation as a function of firm size is tested empirically on data from an r d survey in the netherlands

the role of human capital in earnings differences between black and white men d uring the past 50 years the earnings of black men have increased substantially both in absolute terms and relative to those of white men as shown in figure 1 in 1940 the black white weekly earnings ratio among men ages 25 34 was 49 percent by 1980 it had increased to 79 percent during the 1980s however the overall black white earnings gap did not narrow and at younger ages the gap actually widened although the 1980s is not the first decade since 1940 in which black men made little or no gains in relative earnings the 1950s was another the lack of progress in the 1980s is nevertheless puzzling and a source of concern this article examines the factors underlying the differential in earnings between black men and white men with a focus on the role of human capital since 1940 successive generations of black men entering the labor force have been increasingly more educated relative to white men both in terms of years of school completed and in the quality of schooling obtained as the education and income levels of black parents increased racial differences in the transmission of human capital in the home were also likely to have narrowed this convergence in educational differences combined with the migration of blacks out of the south contributed to the narrowing in the racial gap in earnings over the 1940 80 period particularly in the first half of the period but human capital factors education and migration were not the only source of convergence in black white differences in earnings the patterns of change in the earnings gap support the contention that declining labor market discrimination against blacks has also contributed to the rise in the black white earnings ratio moreover the acquisition of human capital itself has been strongly affected by societal and governmental discrimination since blacks were long provided with greatly inferior schooling resources

macroeconomic determinants of wage adjustments in white collar occupations t here is no professional consensus about the process of aggregate wage inflation a spectrum of opinion exists between the following extreme poles 1 that wages are determined instantaneously in markets where participants have rational expectations and can anticipate in their behavior the long run consequences of any consistent pattern of macro policy making and 2 that wages are determined largely by institutional forces including considerations of equity normal historical wage patterns union strength and current bargaining conditions 2 adherents of these polar positions have little respect for wage adjustment equations of the phillips 1958 or phelps 1967 friedman 1968 variety in which wages are related structurally to aggregate unemployment rates these adjustment equations occupy a middle ground in the spectrum and are currently used in large scale econometric models to explain how the effects of a change in demand are distributed into real and price components between the poles are several alternative justifications of wage unemployment relationships among these are the following views that wages are determined as in 1 above except for the existence of long run contracts 3 that the determination of expectations about future prices can be fairly approximated by a distributed lag on past prices 4 that it is past prices rather than expectations of future prices that are important 5 and that economic conditions are but one of a set of factors to be included in the current bargaining conditions that determine wages 6 which of these views best describes the process of wage determination is an empirical question but the question is quite complicated and does not appear to be capable of resolution through a single conclusive test many issues are involved simultaneously and no one has been able to find a set of workable assumptions that can be agreed upon by all as being a sensible way to proceed the question of wage determination continues to divide macroeconomic opinion more than any other single issue this paper reports results of empirical work on wage equations in which a strategy of disaggregation has been followed it is part of a larger project to estimate the dependence of the natural rate of unemployment on the distributions of the supply and demand for labor according to location and occupation as an estimation strategy disaggregation can avoid problems of identification and could in principle provide a way to distinguish among the many competing hypotheses in this area in practice the disagreements are so fundamental and the possible tests so limited that the results can be offered as no more than an extension of the wage equation literature rather than as a resolution of the issue of whether wage equations should be treated as structural relations or of even greater ambition what those relations might be the extension provided follows the direction of baily and tobin 1977 1978 who hypothesized that the rate of wage change in a single labor force group should depend on the unemployment rate of that group and its wage relative to the wages of other groups the results are interesting for several reasons first the wage data that are used in these tests come from a survey not previously used in the estimation of aggregate wage equations the data are from the national survey of professional administrative technical and clerical pay patc 7 this survey is conducted annually by the bureau received for publication september 18 1981 revision accepted for publication may 4 1982 the university of wisconsin the author wishes to thank gregory krohn and bruce chapman for their excellent research assistance helpful comments were received from paul gertler and the participants at a seminar at the national commission for employment policy this research was supported by grant number 99 0 2289 50 11 from the national commission for employment policy and contract number 20 06 08 11 from the employment and training administration u s department of labor see for example lucas 1973 and sargent and wallace 1975 2see dunlop 1977 3see phelps and taylor 1977 and fischer 1977 4mcnees 1979 provides a way to distinguish this position from the one in the subsequent phrase 5 see okun 1978 for a summary of studies of this kind 6see hicks 1955 and 1974 pp 59 85 bureau of labor statistics 1980

labour productivity and profitability in the dutch flower trade this paper makes an attempt to illustrate the use of econometric models as frame of reference for diagnosing small firm performance for this purpose two models are developed explaining differences in labour productivity and profitability among dutch flower exporters in addition we show how these models can be used for inter firm performance comparisons

sheepskin effects in the returns to education an examination of women and minorities recent confirmation of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for prime age white males has been taken as evidence of screening or signaling in the labor market the authors report evidence of sheepskin effects among women and minority males and demonstrate that they are somewhat smaller for lower diploma years but larger for higher diploma years than those of white males these are among the first broad based results confirming the frequent contention derived from signaling models that minorities have smaller returns to low productivity signals but larger returns to high productivity signals copyright 1991 by mit press

modelling choice and switching behaviour between scottish ski centres the paper identifies the need to model the skier s choice of centre and the basic ideas underlying discrete choice models and their estimation it then identifies data requirements and sources the final choice of specification and the estimated parameters of the resultant nested multinomial logit model the results indicate two quite distinct markets for day trippers snow cover cost and to a lesser extent the journey length were the critical factors for those staying overnight the key determinant in this market seems to be accommodation interestingly centres which for the day tripper are competitors become for the overnight customer complementary

economies of scale and inefficiency in county extension councils a case for consolidation current funding mission and organizational difficulties question the long run survival of extension and the land grant system consolidation of county extension offices is seen as a possible remedy for extension s problems this paper estimates scale economies and inefficiencies in county extension offices in kansas using parametric and nonparametric techniques large economies of scale and inefficiencies are found based on the empirical results several simulations are performed to measure the short run cost savings associated with consolidation the results reveal that while all counties would experience significant savings from consolidating rural and less populated counties would experience the greatest per unit savings copyright 2001 oxford university press