commodity prices policy target or information variable note the relationship between growth of the monetary aggregates and growth of nominal gnp has become less dependable in the 1980s deposit deregulation and large fluctuations in interest rates have produced sharp changes in the income velocity of money these velocity shifts have at times caused the federal reserve to miss or modify its money growth ranges because of the undependable relationship between money growth and economic activity some policymakers and economic analysts have argued that the federal reserve should pay more attention to commodity price fluctuations this paper examines the proper role for commodity prices in the formation of monetary policy

economies of scale in multi product firms an empirical analysis this paper presents new evidence on scale economies in multiproduct firms previous studies are limited in view of r ecent advances in the theory of the multiproduct firm the water util ity is chosen here as a multiproduct firm providing multiple services to various classes of customers with spatial variation a translog m ultiproduct cost function is estimated based on duality between tran sformation and cost functions the paper analyzes overall as well as product specific scale economies it also discusses ray average cos t curves and derives the m locus which provides useful information on scope economies and the cost minimizing number of firms copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

who targets inflation explicitly abstract several countries have recently adopted explicit inflation targeting eit this paper applies probit analysis on data for 22 countries to show that the degree of central bank independence is positively correlated with the probability that inflation targeting is adopted there is also evidence depending on whether iceland and norway are included in the sample that the probability that eit is introduced is influenced by membership in the european union the commodity concentration and composition of exports which are correlated with measures of the importance of supply and external shocks and the degree of openness

financial contagion through capital connections a model of the origin and spread of bank panics financial contagion is modeled as an equilibrium phenomenon in a dynamic setting with incomplete information and multiple banks the equilibrium probability of bank failure is uniquely determined we explore how the cross holding of deposits motivated by imperfectly correlated regional liquidity shocks can lead to contagious eects conditional on the failure of a financial institution we show that contagion is possible in the unique equilibrium of the economy and characterize exactly when it may exist at the same time we identify a direction of flow for contagious eects which provides a rationale for localized financial panics simulations identify the optimal level of interbank deposit holdings in the presence of contagion risk our results suggest that when the probability of bank failure is low maximal levels of interbank holdings are optimal when cross holding of deposits is complete we demonstrate that the intensity of contagion is increasing in the size of regionally aggregate liquidity shocks

privately operated water utilities municipal price negotiation and estimation of residential water demand the case of france this paper addresses the issue of price negotiation between a municipality and a private water utility operator and its implications for residential water demand estimation we use appropriate econometric procedures to estimate a water demand equation on a panel of french municipalities we find evidence that negotiated water price depends on municipality s characteristics causing endogeneity of price in the demand equation the impact of average household income housing and system features such as metering is investigated both on municipal consumption and price estimated price and income elasticities are significant and close to previous household level studies

the role of commodity prices in formulating monetary policy commodity prices often provide signals about the future direction of the economy especially inflation it has been argued therefore that the information in commodity prices should be used in formulating monetary policy this paper investigates whether a systematic monetary policy response to contemporaneous commodity price shocks would have helped stabilize the postwar u s economy the authors findings suggest that responding to unexpected commodity price movements would have lowered the average rate of inflation and reduced its variability while the path of real growth would be relatively unchanged copyright 1991 by mit press

public information and coordination evidence from a credit registry expansion this paper provides evidence that lenders to a firm close to distress have incentives to coordinate lower financing by one lender reduces firm creditworthiness and causes other lenders to reduce financing to isolate the coordination channel from lenders joint reaction to new information we exploit a natural experiment that forced lenders to share negative private assessments about their borrowers we show that lenders while learning nothing new about the firm reduce credit in anticipation of other lenders reaction to the negative news about the firm the results show that public information exacerbates lender coordination and increases the incidence of firm financial distress

unique equilibrium in a model of self fulfilling currency attacks even though self fulfilling currency attacks lead to multiple equilibria when fundamentals are common knowledge we demonstrate the uniqueness of equilibrium when speculators face a small amount of noise in their signals about the fundamentals this unique equilibrium depends not only on the fundamentals but also on financial variables such as the quantity of hot money in circulation and the costs of speculative trading in contrast to multiple equilibrium models our model allows analysis of policy proposals directed at curtailing currency attacks

regulation of public utilities under asymmetric information we consider the relationship between a localcommunity and a private operator in charge ofthe water utility an important feature of themodel is the possibility of water networklosses that are costly to the operator wecompute the first best and asymmetricinformation solutions to the optimal contract with private information on the operator stechnology based on an econometric estimationof production cost and water demand for a panelof french local communities we simulate theoptimal contract solutions and show thatasymmetric information has importantconsequences for the regulation of water publicutilities

credit rating inflation and firms investments we analyze credit rating effects on firm investments in a rational bond financing game that features a feedback loop the credit rating agency cra inflates the rating providing a biased but informative signal to creditors creditors response to the rating affects the firm s investment decision and thus its credit quality which is reflected in the rating the cra might reduce ex ante economic efficiency which results solely from its strategic effect the cra assigns more firms high ratings and allows them to gamble for resurrection we derive empirical predictions on the determinants of rating standards and inflation and discuss policy implications

inflation and employment is there a third way high post war inflation precipitated a counter reformation in theory from keynesianism and established the conventional wisdom that a level of unemployment existed at which prices stabilised the policy application of this notion failed to improve economic performance and although inflation fell mass unemployment and poverty returned the explanation for this from within the new orthodoxy was that demand and supply conditions in the labour market had changed and unemployability explained joblessness a study of the trend in import prices suggests however that the fall in inflation can be more readily explained by falls in import prices and other changes which redistributed resources from the periphery to the core this suggests that monetary control works indirectly on inflation by lowering economic activity and by reducing the bargaining power of the relatively weak the enormous economic and social costs of this suggest that institutional ways of controlling prices offer major benefits copyright 2000 by oxford university press

announcements inflation targeting and central bank incentives this paper studies the incentives a central bank faces in announcing inflation targets when the central bank has private information about the economy and the public is uncertain about the central bank s preferences targeting rules in the absence of announcements reduce the inflationary bias of discretionary policy but they distort the central bank s response to private information about the economy this distortion is eliminated when the central bank is allowed to announce the inflation target announcements also affect credibility although the way they do so depends on the exact definition of credibility that is employed in standard models of monetary policy in which dynamic inconsistency plays a prominent role announcements from the central bank about its policy inten tions are not believable the central bank has an incentive to lie yet central banks often do make announcements and they are legally required to do so in some cases the bank of england for example must issue periodic inflation reports the chairman of the federal reserve is required by the humphrey hawkins act to testify before congress twice each year to explain the fed s policy actions and to detail the fed s outlook for future economic develop ments similarly the reserve bank of new zealand is required under the reserve bank act of 1989 to publish policy statements that spell out its plans the january 1994 legislation governing the banque de france requires its gov ernor to appear before parliament and the european central bank must under the maastricht treaty report at least annually to the european parlia ment if public statements about policy intentions are not credible the question naturally arises as to why central banks are frequently required to make them the answer of course is that announcements do provide the public with some information given the growing interest in policy transparency particu larly among those central banks that have adopted some form of inflation targeting it is perhaps surprising that there has been relatively little explicit analysis of how inflation targeting requirements might combine with reporting requirements to influence the informational content of announcements the conduct of stabilization policies and the central bank s credibility the purpose of this paper is to analyse the way inflation targeting affects the incentives the central bank faces in announcing targets when the central bank has private information about the economy and the public is uncertain about the central bank s preferences inflation targeting has seen increased popularity in recent years but a fixed target for inflation is generally suboptimal in the face of supply shocks while state contingent targets are viewed as not feasible an important result of this paper is that allowing the central bank to announce its own inflation target

inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule the purpose of the paper is to survey and discuss in ation targeting in the context of monetary policy rules the paper provides a general conceptual discussion of monetary policy rules attempts to clarify the essential characteristics of in ation targeting compares in ation targeting to other monetary policy rules and draws some conclusions for the monetary policy of the european system of central banks jel classi cation e42 e52

persuasion by cheap talk we consider the credibility persuasiveness and informativ eness of multidimensional cheap talk by an expert to a decision maker we find that an expert with state independent preferences can always make credible comparative statements that trade off the expert s incentive to exaggerate on each dimension such communication benefits the expert cheap talk is persuasive if her preferences are quasiconvex communication benefits a decision maker by allowing for a more informed decision but strategic interactions between multiple decision makers can reverse this gain we apply these results to topics including product recommendations voting auction disclosure and advertising jel d44 d72 d82 d83 m37

predicting u s recessions financial variables as leading indicators this paper examines the out of sample performance of various financial variables as predictors of u s recessions series such as interest rates and spreads stock prices and monetary aggregates are evaluated individually and in comparison with other financial and nonfinancial indicators the analysis focuses on out of sample performance from one to eight quarters ahead results show that stock prices are useful with one to three quarter horizons as are some well known macroeconomic indicators beyond one quarter however the slope of the yield curve emerges as the clear individual choice and typically performs better by itself out of sample than in conjunction with other variables

runs versus lemons information disclosure and fiscal capacity we study the optimal use of disclosure and fiscal backstops during financial crises providing information can reduce adverse selection in credit markets but negative disclosures can also trigger inefficient bank runs in our model governments are thus forced to choose between runs and lemons a fiscal backstop mitigates the cost of runs and allows a government to pursue a high disclosure strategy our model explains why governments with strong fiscal positions are more likely to run informative stress tests and paradoxically how they can end up spending less than governments that are more fiscally constrained

payoff complementarities and financial fragility evidence from mutual fund outflows the paper provides empirical evidence that strategic complementarities among investors generate fragility in financial markets analyzing mutual fund data we find that consistent with a theoretical model funds with illiquid assets where complementarities are stronger exhibit stronger sensitivity of outflows to bad past performance than funds with liquid assets we also find that this pattern disappears in funds where the shareholder base is composed mostly of large investors we present further evidence that these results are not attributable to alternative explanations based on the informativeness of past performance or on clientele effects we analyze the implications for funds performance and policies

inflation targeting some extensions previous analyses of the implementation of inflation targeting are extended to monetary policy responses to different shocks consequences of model uncertainty and effects of interest rate smoothing and stabilization model uncertainty output stabilization and interest rate stabilization or smoothing all call for a more gradual adjustment of the conditional inflation forecast toward the inflation target the conditional inflation forecast is the natural intermediate target during inflation targeting the optimal way of reacting to shocks is hence to check how they affect the inflation forecast and then take the appropriate action jel classification e42 e52 e58

the health and earnings of rejected disability insurance applicants applicants for social security disability benefits who fail to pass the medical screening form a natural control group for beneficiaries data drawn from the 1972 and 1978 surveys of the disabled done for the social security administration show that fewer than 50 percent of rejected male applicants work typical earnings of those that do are less than 59 percent of median earnings for other men their age these data cast doubt on recent econometric work that suggests that the disincentive effects of the social security disability program have been substantial copyright 1989 by american economic association

the role of demandable debt in structuring optimal banking arrangements demandable debt finance by banks warrants explanation because it entails costs of bank suspension liquidation and idle reserve holdings an explanation is developed in which demandable debt provides incentive compatible intermediation where the banker has comparative advantage in allocating investment funds but may act against the interests of uninformed depositors demandable debt attracts funds by giving depositors an option to force liquidation its usefulness in transacting follows from information sharing between monitors and nonmonitors copyright 1991 by american economic association

evaluating the welfare effects of reforming municipal water prices abstract despite the strong criticisms by economists of water utility pricing practices and the presence of well articulated theoretical models of efficient pricing alternatives few empirical studies have documented the magnitude of the efficiency gains from altering water prices the structures of water supply costs and water demands are estimated using data from vancouver canada a simulation program uses these estimated relationships to compute the impact upon a representative water utility s output and deficit and upon aggregate consumer surplus of a move from its current practice to efficient prices simulation results show that a move to seasonally differentiated pricing with an annual charge calculated to recoup the resulting deficit raises aggregate surplus by approximately 4 this result contrasts with recent water pricing studies that found welfare improvements of approximately 1

estimating the structure of industrial water demands the case of canadian manufacturing this study considers water use by canadian manufacturing firms the estimation of water demands is based on a detailed cross sectional survey of establishment level observations on water prices quantities and expenditures industrial water use is modeled as having four components intake treatment prior to use recirculation and discharge average values for the estimated own price elasticity for water intake range from 0 1534 to 0 5885 water recirculation is found to be a substitute for both water intake and water discharge this confirms that expanding the use of economic incentives e g effluent fees may be effective in encouraging firms to reduce their water use while increasing in plant recirculation

inflation targeting a new framework for monetary policy he world s central bankers and their staffs meet regularly in venues from basle to washington to share ideas and discuss common problems perhaps these frequent meetings help explain why changes in the tactics and strategy of monetary policymaking such as the adoption of money growth targets in the 1970s the intensification of efforts to reduce inflation in the 1980s and the recent push for increased institutional independence for central banks tend to occur in many countries more or less simultaneously whatever their source major changes in the theory and practice of central banking are of great importance for both individual countries and the international economy in this article we discuss a new strategy for monetary policy known as inflation targeting which has sparked much interest and debate among central bankers and monetary economists in recent years this approach is characterized as the name suggests by the announcement of official target ranges for the inflation rate at one or more horizons and by explicit acknowledgment that low and stable inflation is the overriding goal of monetary policy other important features of inflation targeting include increased communication with the public about the plans and objectives of the monetary policymakers and in many cases increased accountability of the central bank

illiquidity component of credit risk we describe and contrast three dierent measures of an institu tion s credit risk insolvency risk is the conditional probability of default due to deterioration of asset quality if there is no run by short term creditors total credit risk is the unconditional probability of default either because of a short term creditor run or long run asset insolvency illiquidity risk is the dierence between the two i e the probability of a default due to a run when the institution would otherwise have been solvent we discuss how the three kinds of risk vary with balance sheet composition we provide a formula for illiquidity risk and show that it is i decreasing in the liquidity ratio the ratio of realizable cash on the balance sheet to short term liabilities ii increasing in the outside option ratio a measure of the opportunity cost of the funds used to roll over short term liabil ities and iii increasing in the fundamental risk ratio a measure of ex post variance of the asset portfolio

heterogeneous fragility systematic panic and optimal transparency abstract in this study we provide a model of systematic panic among financial institutions with heterogeneous fragility during a systematic panic institutions characterized by a higher degree of fragility are more aggressive to withdrawals and such aggressiveness increases linearly with their fragility we derive an analytical solution for this linear relationship using a global game framework and demonstrate that transparency does not always endanger the regime when the outside option is large transparency increases the strength of the regime

monetary policy as financial stability regulation this paper develops a model that speaks to the goals and methods of financialstability policies there are three main points first from a normative perspective the model defines the fundamental market failure to be addressed namely that unregulated private money creation can lead to an externality in which intermediaries issue too much short term debt and leave the system excessively vulnerable to costly financial crises second it shows how in a simple economy where commercial banks are the only lenders conventional monetary policy tools such as open market operations can be used to regulate this externality while in more advanced economies it may be helpful to supplement monetary policy with other measures third from a positive perspective the model provides an account of how monetary policy can influence bank lending and real activity even in a world where prices adjust frictionlessly and there are other transactions media besides bank created money that are outside the control of the central bank

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

signaling in a global game coordination and policy traps this paper introduces signaling in a global game so as to examine the informational role of policy in coordination environments such as currency crises and bank runs while exogenous asymmetric information has been shown to select a unique equilibrium we show that the endogenous information generated by policy interventions leads to multiple equilibria the policy maker is thus trapped into a position in which self fulfilling expectations dictate not only the coordination outcome but also the optimal policy this result does not rely on the freedom to choose out of equilibrium beliefs nor on the policy being a public signal it may obtain even if the policy is observed with idiosyncratic noise

international experiences with different monetary policy regimes any views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and not those of columbia university or the national bureau of economic research abstract this paper examines the international experiences with four basic types of monetary policy regimes 1 exchange rate targeting 2 monetary targeting 3 inflation targeting and 4 monetary policy with an implicit but not an explicit nominal anchor the basic theme that emerges from this analysis is that transparency and accountability are crucial to constraining discretionary monetary policy so that it produces desirable long run outcomes because the devil is in the details in achieving transparency and accountability what strategy will work best in a country depends on its political cultural and economic institutions as well as on its past history

efficient use of information and social value of information this paper analyzes equilibrium and welfare for a tractable class of economies games that have externalities strategic complementarity or substitutability and heterogeneous information first we characterize the equilibrium use of information complementarity heightens the sensitivity of equilibrium actions to public information raising aggregate volatility whereas substitutability heightens the sensitivity to private information raising cross sectional dispersion next we define and characterize an efficiency benchmark designed to address whether the equilibrium use of information is optimal from a social perspective the efficient use of information reflects the social value of aligning choices across agents finally we examine the comparative statics of equilibrium welfare with respect to the information structure the social value of information is best understood by classifying economies according to the inefficiency if any in the equilibrium use of information we conclude with a few applications including production externalities beauty contests business cycles and large cournot and bertrand games

leading economic indicators new approaches and forecasting records preface 1 editors introduction part i new concepts and methods 2 toward a theory of leading indicators frank de leeuw 3 a time series framework for the study of leading indicators salih n neftci 4 a probability model of the coincident economic indicators james h stock and mark w watson 5 an international application of neftci s probability approach for signalling growth recessions and recoveries using turning point indicators michael p niemira 6 on predicting the stage of the business cycle roy h webb 7 bayesian methods for forecasting turning points in economic time series sensitivity of forecasts to asymmetry of loss structures arnold zellner and chansik hong 8 new developments in leading economic indicators geoffrey h moore part ii forecasting records and methods of evaluation 9 forecasting cyclical turning points the record in the past three recessions stephen k mcnees 10 turning point predictions errors and forecasting procedures hermon o stekler 11 forecasting peaks and troughs in the business cycle on the choice and use of appropriate leading indicator series stephen j silver 12 using a consensus of leading economic indicators to find right ball park for real gnp forecasts edward f renshaw 13 some australian experience with leading economic indicators allan p layton 14 turning point prediction with the composite leading index an exante analysis francis x diebold and glenn d rudebusch 15 forecasting recessions under the gramm rudman hollings law victor zarnowitz and geoffrey h moore 16 leading indicators of inflation howard l roth part iii new economic indicators 17 commodity prices as a leading indicator of inflation james m boughton and william h branson 18 a leading indicator of inflation based on interest rates susmita dasgupta and kajal lahiri 19 using composite leading indicators of consumption to forecast sales and to signal turning points in stock market michael p niemira 20 economic indicators for australia s service sector ernst a boehm 21 purchasing management survey data their value as leading indicator philip a klein and geoffrey h moore 22 an agenda for inventories input to leading composite index feliks tamm index

coordination failures and the lender of last resort was bagehot right after all the classical doctrine of the lender of last resort lolr elaborated by bagehot 1873 asserts that the central bank should lend to illiquid but solvent banks under certain conditions several authors have argued that this view is now obsolete in modern interbank markets a solvent bank cannot be illiquid this paper provides a possible theoretical foundation for rescuing bagehot s view our theory does not rely on the multiplicity of equilibria that arises in classical models of bank runs we built a model of banks liquidity crises that possesses a unique bayesian equilibrium in this equilibrium there is a positive probability that a solvent bank cannot find liquidity assistance in the market we derive policy implications about banking regulation solvency and liquidity ratios and interventions of the lender of last resort furthermore we find that public bailout and private bail in involvement are complementary in implementing the incentive efficient solution and that bagehot s lender of last resort facility must work together with institutions providing prompt corrective action and orderly failure resolution finally we derive similar implications for an international lender of last resort ilolr jel g21 g28

alternative indicators for predicting the probability of declining inflation evidence from the us the performance of inflation indicators for predicting the probability of inflation falling inside constant and moving targets is considered with a probit model using us data given the federal reserve system s emphasis on achieving price stability particular attention is given to the target that future inflation will be below recent inflation in contrast with earlier years the unemployment and capacity utilisation rates do not perform well in forecasting the direction of inflation in the mid and late 1990s we suggest that extending the keynesian phillips curve analysis to consider changes in labour market conditions technological advance and worker skills and openness will increase understanding of these issues

market based corrective actions many economic agents take corrective actions based on information inferred from market prices of firms securities examples include directors and activists intervening in the management of firms and bank supervisors taking actions to improve the health of financial institutions we provide an equilibrium analysis of such situations in light of a key problem if agents use market prices when deciding on corrective actions prices adjust to reflect this use and potentially become less revealing we show that market information and agents information are complementary and discuss measures that can increase agents ability to learn from market prices the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

coordination risk and the price of debt abstract creditors of a distressed borrower face a coordination problem even if the fundamentals are sound fear of premature foreclosure by others may lead to pre emptive action undermining the project recognition of this problem lies behind corporate bankruptcy provisions across the world and it has been identified as a culprit in international financial crises but has received scant attention from the literature on debt pricing without common knowledge of fundamentals the incidence of failure is uniquely determined provided that private information is precise enough this affords a way to price the coordination failure comparative statics on the unique equilibrium provides several insights on the role of information and the incidence of inefficient liquidation

regulating pollution under asymmetric information the case of industrial wastewater treatment abstract we present in this paper an empirical evaluation of a contract based environmental regulation under asymmetric information an imperfect pollution tax results in the necessity of regulating industrials by a contract based policy in order to promote a higher level of pollution removal the local regulatory agency has imperfect information on costs of abatement and must design a feasible mechanism providing incentives for industrials to extend their wastewater treatment plant capacity the optimal policy consists in regulating only the most efficient industrials in the abatement activity empirical evidence reveals that the pollution tax should be more than twice its present level to attain the fully internalizing pigouvian tax level

rollover risk and market freezes the debt capacity of an asset is the maximum amount that can be borrowed using the asset as collateral we model a sudden collapse in the debt capacity of good collateral we assume short term debt that must be frequently rolled over a small transaction cost of selling collateral in the event of default and a small probability of meeting a buy to hold investor we then show that a small change in the asset s fundamental value can be associated with a catastrophic drop in the debt capacity the kind of market freeze observed during the crisis of 2007 to 2008 one of the many striking features of the crisis of 2007 to 2008 was the sudden freeze in the market for the rollover of short term debt from an in stitutional perspective the inability to borrow overnight against high quality but long term assets was a market failure that effectively led to the demise of a substantial part of investment banking in the united states more broadly it led to the collapse in the united states the united kingdom and other countries of banks and other financial institutions that had relied on signifi cant maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities and in particular on the rollover of short term wholesale debt in the asset backed commercial paper abcp and overnight sale and repurchase repo markets in this paper we are interested in developing a model of a sudden collapse in the ability to borrow short term against long lived assets in the absence of obvious problems of asymmetric information or fears about the value of col lateral we refer to this phenomenon as a market freeze more precisely a market freeze occurs when the debt capacity the maximum amount of collat eralized borrowing that can be supported by an asset is a small fraction of the fundamental value the economic value measured by the net present value npv of the stream of future returns an extreme form of a market freeze occurs when the fundamental value is close to the maximum possible value of the asset whereas the debt capacity is close to the minimum possible value of the asset

transparency in the financial system rollover risk and crises we present a theory of optimal transparency when banks are exposed to rollover risk disclosing bank specific information enhances the stability of the financial system during crises but has a destabilizing effect in normal economic times thus the regulator optimally increases transparency during crises under this policy however information disclosure signals a deterioration of economic fundamentals which gives the regulator ex post incentives to withhold information this commitment problem precludes a disclosure policy that provides ex ante optimal insurance against aggregate shocks and can result in excess opacity that increases the likelihood of a systemic crisis

human capital investment inequality and economic growth we treat rising inequality as an equilibrium outcome in which human capital investment fails to keep pace with rising demand for skills investment affects skill supply and prices on three margins the type of human capital in which to invest how much to acquire and the intensity of use the latter two represent the intensive margins of human capital acquisition and utilization these choices are substitutes for the creation of new skilled workers yet they are complementary with each other magnifying inequality when skill biased technical change drives economic growth greater inequality reduces growth

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

labor force participation rates and the informational value of unemployment rates evidence from disaggregated us data the informational value of the aggregate us unemployment rate has recently been questioned because of a unit root in the labor force participation rate the lack of mean reversion implies that long