the role of price and nonprice factors in predicting australia s trade performance this article investigates the role of price and nonprice factors in predicting australia s trade performance results broadly suggest that australia s trade performance is largely explained by the

discrete equilibrium price dispersion an explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparativestatics predictions about how cost differences among firms search costs of customers and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices another implication of the model is that a firm s demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market

crime rates and local labor market opportunities in the united states 1979 1997 the labor market prospects of young unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s crime rates show a reverse pattern increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s because young unskilled men commit most crime this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime and found inconclusive results in contrast this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime and uses instrumental variables to establish causality we conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades these results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables controls for simultaneity and controlling for individual and family characteristics

the impact of technology and structural change on export performance in nine developing countries summary this paper focuses on nine large developing countries structural decomposition analysis shows that they tend to concentrate innovative activities in industries stagnating at the world level international trends partly offset national improvements in patent shares the same occurs for world export shares although countries display greater adaptation to world demand econometric analysis suggests that technological activity is related to export gains in high technology sectors if a country expands in industries with increasing technological opportunities in medium technology sectors if it moves away from low opportunity sectors in low technology sectors if it is initially specialized in growing sectors in high tech and low tech sectors export performance is also affected by the growth of technical capabilities foreign direct investments productivity and the initial level of technical skills and in medium tech by the growth rates of foreign direct investments

inequality and violent crime abstract we investigate the robustness and causality of the link between income inequality and violent crime across countries first we study the correlation between the gini index and homicide and robbery rates within and between countries second we examine the partial correlation by considering other crime determinants third we control for the endogeneity of inequality by isolating its exogenous impact on these crime rates fourth we control for measurement error in crime rates by modeling it as both unobserved country effects and random noise finally we examine the robustness of this partial correlation to alternative measures of inequality the panel data consist of nonoverlapping 5 year averages for 39 countries during 1965 95 for homicides and 37 countries during 1970 94 for robberies crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and particularly between countries and this correlation reflects causation from inequality to crime rates even after controlling for ot

street crime and street culture a model shows how reputation concerns can support widespread street crime a street culture where the direct incentives for such behavior are weak there are social benefits to street reputations but those benefits are dominated when reputation concerns draw into crime those who obtain no direct gain from it the model matches facts about violent crime that a standard model cannot easily explain including low monetary returns disproportionate victimization of the young and poor and high variance in rates across small distances the model generates novel implications for policy and social science including a negative effect of social capital

urban poverty and juvenile crime evidence from a randomized housing mobility experiment this paper uses data from a randomized housing mobility experiment to study the effects of relocating families from high to low poverty neighborhoods on juvenile crime outcome measures come from juvenile arrest records taken from government administrative data our e ndings seem to suggest that providing families with the opportunity to move to lower poverty neighborhoods reduces violent criminal behavior by teens

crime and erosion of trust evidence for latin america crime has tangible economic costs it also has less understood and likely sizable intangible costs in particular widespread crime has the potential to weaken trust between citizens and institutions undermine government reform efforts and become an obstacle to development yet the impact of crime on trust remains relatively unexplored in the literature this paper analyzes the potential interrelationship between individual victimization and several measures of trust including trust in formal public institutions and trust in informal private networks it is based on a representative sample of individuals in 19 countries in latin america the empirical strategy is intended to mitigate overt biases and assess sensitivity to hidden biases the results show that victimization has a substantial negative effect on trust in the local police but no robust effect on informal institutions governments may henceforth need to redouble efforts to reduce victimization and the resulting erosion of trust in public institutions

the implicit price for fair trade coffee does social capital matter abstract this study aims to ascertain whether the implicit price paid for fair trade coffee in regular supermarkets is influenced by the stock of social capital in the territory where consumers live a hedonic regression set up is adopted based on italian scanner data taken at nuts3 level regressors include attributes described on the label which include separate certifications for fair trade and organic eco label status plus various indicators of social capital and their interactions with the fair trade and organic eco label attributes the implicit consumer price paid for the fair trade attribute is significantly and positively affected by a social capital proxy the ratio of co op members to total employment

separability and the modelling of international economic integration most models of the allocation of imports over suppliers adopt a two stage separable procedure in which a total imports function is estimated prior to the function allocating imports over suppliers this procedure is tested for five countries imports of manufactures and found wanting in four of them a more general model is proposed and estimated it is used to estimate the effects of u k accession to the eec on her exports to these countries exports to the eec countries rose but those elsewhere fell overall accession is shown to have worsened the u k s trade balance and gross output of manufactures

the size distribution of innovating firms in the uk 1945 1983 a survey of 4 378 significant innovations shows that firms with fewer than 1 000 employees commercialized a much larger share than is indicated by their share of r and d expenditures innovations per employee have been consistently above average in firms with more than 10 000 employees and have become so in firms with fewer than 1 000 intersectoral variation in the size distribution of innovating firms can be explained as a function of r and d based technological opportunities and of technological ease of entry by user firms with principal activities outside the sector copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

what accounts for the decline in crime in this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the united states we propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime our main findings can be summarized as follows first the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996 second the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability the stronger economy and the aging of the population third the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible fourth the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime overall our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century

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

measuring the effects of search costs on equilibrium prices and profits abstract this paper assesses the effects of search costs on equilibrium prices and profits using an estimated model of demand and costs in a laundry detergent market i find that some firms profits initially rise and then fall with search costs overall the magnitude and direction of the search costs effects on prices and profits are heterogeneous this is because search costs create conflicting incentives for a firm to reduce prices to attract the attention of searching consumers yet also raise prices to harvest profit from consumers who are unaware of competing products these effects can vary with the relationship between the firms actual prices and the consumers pre search beliefs about prices

racial disparity in unemployment abstract in the united states black workers earn less than their white counterparts and have higher rates of unemployment empirical work indicates that most of this wage gap is accounted for by differences in cognitive skills that emerge at an early age in this paper we demonstrate that the same is not true for black white disparity in unemployment a large unexplained unemployment differential motivates the paper s second contribution a potential theoretical explanation this explanation is built around a model that embeds statistical discrimination into the subjective worker evaluation process that lies at the root of the efficiency wage theory of equilibrium unemployment

retail gasoline price dynamics and local market power using monthly data from the 48 contiguous states except nevada for the 1988 2002 period it is shown that retail gasoline prices respond faster to wholesale price increases than to equivalent wholesale price decreases moreover markets with high average retail wholesale margins experience a slower adjustment and a more asymmetric response since gasoline is the only variable input average margins in a state likely reflect the degree of retail market power this suggests that sticky prices and response asymmetries in the gasoline market are at least partially a consequence of retail market power

organized crime corruption and punishment we analyze an oligopoly model in which differentiated criminal organizations globally compete on criminal activities and engage in local corruption to avoid punishment when bribing costs are low that is badly paid and dishonest law enforcers work in a weak governance environment and the rents from criminal activity are sufficiently high we find that increasing policing and sanctions can generate higher crime rates indeed beyond a threshold further increases in intended expected punishment create incentives for organized crime to extend corruption rings and ensuing impunity results in a fall of actual expected punishment that yields more rather than less crime

the determinants of spanish industrial exports to the european union this paper investigates the determinants of trends in spain s industrial exports to the other european union countries by using a sectoral panel data approach the results show that price elasticities of export demand differ widely among sectors they also provide support to the idea that non price factors have a significant influence on international competitiveness in particular they show that technological and advertising effort have a significant effect not only on the evolution of exports but also on price elasticity

employer search training and vacancy duration we develop a model of optimal employer search strategy when information about match quality is endogenous the model is tested using four data sets two of which have not previously been used as theory predicts we find that when filling positions requiring more training employers search more intensively and extensively employers also search more extensively when hiring workers with more education and with prior experience these findings provide strong evidence of systematic variation in search strategies based on the characteristics of the positions and job applicants factors that influence employer search also affect the duration of a vacancy

costly diagnosis and price dispersion abstract in the standard search model under monopolistic competition when the consumer encounters a seller he knows the price before purchasing the commodity consequently the price cannot exceed the consumer s reservation price in a market with rational and homogeneous agents the price distribution must therefore be degenerate in markets for indivisible professional services the consumer does not necessarily know the price of the service when he encounters the seller this possibility arises when the cost of ascertaining the price the diagnosis cost is high and the consumer decides to enter the market without searching in contrast to the standard model under monopolistic competition price dispersion in equilibrium is possible even when fully rational economic agents on both sides of the market are homogeneous we characterize such equilibria and provide a sufficient condition for their existence we then study the effect of manipulating the search technology typically through a professional code of ethics on the equilibrium in markets for such professional services

price dispersion in an automobile insurance market from automobile insurance data for alberta over the period 1974 81 we find thatpremiums are highly correlated across driver classes in a given year but that premiums for a given driver class are not correlated over a period of more than 5 years firms relative market shares among drivers over age 25 and married males under 25 are inversely related to their deviations from the mean premiums in these driver classes the variance of real premiums decreases with the numberof firms in the market and increases with the real loss cost per car insured and the number of cars insured from these results we conclude that the price dispersion in automobile insurance in alberta is based on costly consumer search

trade and the impact of innovations and standards the case of germany and the uk the effects of patents as indicators for innovations and standards on german trade performance are analysed in general and german british trade in detail the latter analysis goes a step further than the approach of swann et al 1996 and is based on a broader and more detailed database the results show that germany s export performance can primarily be explained by its innovative capacity and only to a small extent by its strength in standards furthermore the results underscore the common view of the trade fostering effect of international standards while idiosyncratic standards have ambiguous effects on exports

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

number of sellers average prices and price dispersion abstract a variety of models provide differing predictions regarding the effect of an increase in the number of competitors in a market seller density on prices and price dispersion we review different approaches to generating equilibrium price dispersion and then empirically estimate the relationship between seller density average product price and price dispersion in the retail gasoline industry using four unique gasoline price data sets controlling for station level characteristics we find that an increase in station density consistently decreases both price levels and price dispersion across four geographical areas

output price markups and producer size abstract this paper examines how output prices and markups vary across the size distribution of producers it uses unique plant level data on physical output revenue and input expenditures for six homogeneous u s manufactured products the results reveal that for five of the six products output prices decline systematically with increases in plant size in the most extreme case corrugated boxes the smallest producers have prices that average 20 percent above the mean price while the largest producers average 10 percent below the mean at the other extreme the price dispersion for gasoline is small and unrelated to plant size plant specific markups of price over marginal cost vary across the size distribution of producers for five of the products in three cases they decline in two cases they increase and one product gasoline shows no systematic variation

thou shalt not covet prohibitions temptation and moral values abstract this paper proposes a theory of the relationship between prohibitions and temptation in the presence of self control problems moral values may increase individual material welfare and utility by serving as a self commitment device the model investigates the relationship between morality and temptation the individual gains from morality the interaction between external sanctions and moral self punishment and the spread and strength of individually optimal moral values the empirical analysis based on survey data for a large set of countries documents a hump shaped pattern of morality in social class which supports the theoretical predictions of the model

does social capital reduce crime abstract we investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behavior thus increasing its opportunity cost associational networks may increase returns to noncriminal activities and raise detection probabilities but they may also work as communication channels for criminals and may offer official cover to criminal activities the empirical assessment of these effects poses serious problems of endogeneity omitted variables measurement error and spatial correlation italy s great variance in social and economic characteristics its homogeneity in policies and institutions and the availability of historical data on social capital in its regions allow us to minimize the first two problems to tackle the last two problems we use report rate adjusted crime rates and estimate a spatial lag model we find that both civic norms and associational networks have a negative and significant effect on property crimes across italia

relationship between spatial agglomeration and hotel prices evidence from business and tourism consumers abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between number of local competitors and both the average and the dispersion of retail prices in urban hotels using a dataset from the metropolitan area of madrid spain by controlling for hotel characteristics and spatial factors we obtained results for each of the days in one week in line with predictions derived from the traditional monopolistic approach empirical results consistently indicate that a greater density of competitors implies a lower average and less dispersion of local prices moreover we found evidence which supports the idea that the effect of local agglomeration on average prices is particularly weaker at weekends this in turn indirectly suggests that within the metropolitan area there is a greater degree of substitution in hotel locations for tourism consumers than for business consumers

the role of technology in market shares dynamics the paper presents the estimation of an empirical model of market share dynamics for five industrialized countries and 18 industries the emphasis is put on the importance of non price factors of competitiveness whereas most traditional explanations rest on the influence of relative prices among the former type of factor the role of variables reflecting technological advantage is privileged in particular the role of innovations has received considerable attention in the literature on international trade as well as the literature on endogenous growth in this spirit the paper introduces patent counts and investment as explanatory variables for the export market share the results show that non price variables have an important impact on the determinations of long run competitiveness

identifying the effect of unemployment on crime abstract in this paper we analyze the relationship between unemployment and crime using u s state data we estimate the effect of unemployment on the rates of seven felony offenses we control extensively for state level demographic and economic factors and estimate specifications that include state specific time trends state effects and year effects in addition we use prime defense contracts and a state specific measure of exposure to oil shocks as instruments for unemployment rates we find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime rates that are stable across model specifications our estimates suggest that a substantial portion of the decline in property crime rates during the 1990s is attributable to the decline in the unemployment rate the evidence for violent crime is considerably weaker however a closer analysis of the violent crime of rape yields some evidence that the employment prospects of males are weakly related to state rape rates

thirlwall s law and balance of payments constrained growth more on the debate the various criticisms that have levelled against thirlwall s law by mcgregor and swales are examined it is shown that their arguments are untenable the relationship between the necolassical law of one price and thirlwall s law is clarified thirlwall s law is not overwhelmingly rejected by the evidence as mcgregor and swales assert their suppression of the influence of the price term on the estimates used in the test proposed by mccombie is inappropriate their regression analyis is also mid specified and a preferable specification provides no support for their conclusions they repeatedly argue that thirlwall s modele cannot account for changes in market shares and the that the estimated income elasticities of demand for exports and imports cannot capture the effects of non price competition this was shown to be erroneous by mccombie and the reasons advanced are further elaborated mcgregor and swales provide another interpretation of the relationship between thirlwll s law and the harrod foreign tr

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

crime in europe and the united states dissecting the reversal of misfortunes contrary to common perceptions today both property and violent crimes with the exception of homicides are more widespread in europe than in the united states while the opposite was true thirty years ago we label this fact as the reversal of misfortunes we investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes incarceration abortion unemployment and immigration on crime for this we use time series data 1970 2008 from seven european countries and the united states we find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in europe our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether such a policy would also be efficient from a cost benefit point of view we leave this to future research paolo buonanno francesco drago roberto galbiati and giulio zanella

social closure surnames and crime this paper studies the effect of social closure on crime and tax evasion rates using disaggregated data for italian municipalities we propose an original and innovative measure of social closure based on the diversity of surname distribution which reflects a community s history of migration and inbreeding we find that all else equal communities with a history of social closure have lower crime rates and higher tax evasion rates than more open communities the effect of social closure is likely to be causal it is relevant in magnitude statistically significant and robust to changes in the set of included controls in the specific measures of dependent and independent variables in the specification of the regression equation and in the possible sample splits our findings are consistent with the idea that social closure strengthens social sanctions and social control thus leading to more cooperative outcomes in local interactions but it reduces cooperation on a larger scale

a structural model of crime and inequality in colombia economic theory suggests that inequality should influence crime positively yet the evidence in favor of that hypothesis is weak pure cross sectional analyses show significant positive effects but cannot control for fixed effects time series and panel data point to a variety of results but few turn out being significant the hypothesis maintained in this paper is that it is a specific part of the distribution rather than the overall distribution as summarized by conventional inequality measures that is most likely to influence the rate of property crime in a given society using a simple theoretical model and panel data in seven colombian cities over a fifteen year period a structural model is proposed that permits identifying the precise segment of the population whose relative income best explains time changes in crime jel k42 d63 o15

crime inequality and unemployment there is much discussion of the relationships between crime inequality and unemployment we construct a model where all three are endogenous we find that introducing crime into otherwise standard models of labor markets has several interesting implications for example it can lead to wage inequality among homogeneous workers also it can generate multiple equilibria in natural but previously unexplored ways hence two identical neighborhoods can end up with different levels of crime inequality and unemployment we discuss the effects of anti crime policies like changing jail sentences as well as more traditional labor market policies like changing unemployment insurance this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

equilibrium price dispersion in retail markets for prescription drugs this study seeks to establish the empirical importance of price dispersion due to costly consumer search by examining retail prices for prescription drugs posted prices in two geographically distinct markets are shown to vary considerably across pharmacies within the same market even after one controls for variation due to pharmacy differences pharmacy heterogeneity accounts for at most one third of the observed price dispersion the empirical analysis hinges on the observation that consumers incentives to price shop depend on characteristics of the drug therapy cross sectional patterns in price distributions across drugs are consistent with the predictions of a search model prices for repeatedly purchased prescriptions for which the expected benefits of search are highest exhibit significant reductions in both dispersion and price cost margins

the role of innovation in bilateral oecd trade performance this paper tests an empirical model of the determinants of bilateral oecd trade with particular emphasis on the role of innovation variation in the relationship across countries and sectors is analysed two innovation proxies and actual data on innovations are used a positive relationship is found between relative innovation and bilateral trade performance at an aggregate level and for a number of manufacturing sectors sectors are also categorized as either net users or producers of innovations differences in innovation appear to have more of an impact on trade performance for the net producers of innovations than the net users of innovations

strong and weak ties in employment and crime this paper analyzes the interplay between social structure and information exchange in two competing activities crime and labor we consider a dynamic model in which individuals belong to mutually exclusive two person groups referred to as dyads there are multiple equilibria if jobs are badly paid and or crime is profitable unemployment benefits have to be low enough to prevent workers for staying too long in the unemployment status because they are vulnerable to crime activities if instead jobs are well paid and or crime is not profitable unemployment benefits have to be high enough to induce workers to stay unemployed rather to commit crime because they are less vulnerable to crime activities also in segregated neighborhoods characterized by high interactions between peers a policy only based on punishment and arrest will not be efficient in reducing crime it has to be accompanied by other types of policies that take into account social interactions

sectoral patterns of production and use of innovations in the uk 1945 1983 abstract based on information on more than 4000 innovations commercialised in the uk between 1945 and 1983 we analyse sectoral patterns and trends in the production and use of innovations a few core sectors chemical mechanical instruments and electronic are of major importance in the production of technology that gets used over a much wider range of sectors including those outside manufacturing similar sectoral patterns of production and use exist in the uk and usa the trend over time in the uk has been toward greater sectoral interdependence in technology and a higher share of uses outside manufacturing reflecting the growth and spread of the electronic based technological cluster any understanding of the nature determinants and dynamics of intersectoral differences in patterns of production and use of technology will require an integration into empirical and theoretical analysis of the characteristics of innovating firms

innovation and trade performance in the united kingdom a popular explanation for the u k s poor trade performance in the postwar period is that insufficient attention was paid to the quality of goods offered to consumers the authors explore the role of both price and quality factors in determining the net trade balances of a number of u k manufacturing and service industries particular attention is paid to the role of innovation used empirically as a proxy for product improvement the findings show considerable support for the view that an advanced industrial country like britain needs to continually upgrade its products to avoid erosion of its domestic and international market shares

can cultural norms reduce conflicts confucianism and peasant rebellions in qing china abstract can culture mitigate conflicts triggered by economic shocks in light of the extraordinary emphasis that confucianism places on subordination and pacifism we examine its role in possibly attenuating peasant rebellion within the historical context of china circa 1651 1910 our analysis finds that while crop failure triggers peasant rebellion its effect is significantly smaller in counties characterized by stronger confucian norms as proxied by confucian temples and chaste women this result remains robust after controlling for a long list of covariates and instrumenting confucian norms using ancient confucian sages 500 b c a d 550 to address concerns of measurement error and reverse causality

the impact of collusion on price behavior empirical results from two recent cases abstract we use extended arch and garch models to examine the differences in the behavior of the first two moments of the price distribution during collusive and competitive phases of two recently discovered conspiracies citric acid and lysine according to our results the conspirators managed to raise prices by 9 and 25 cents per pound in the short run relative to non collusive periods also the variance of prices during the lysine conspiracy was lower and the variance of prices during the citric acid conspiracy was higher than during more competitive periods the proposed methodology may be used for antitrust screening and prosecution purposes

does social capital matter in corporate decisions evidence from corporate tax avoidance we investigate whether the levels of social capital in u s counties as captured by strength of civic norms and density of social networks in the counties are systematically related to tax avoidance activities of corporations with headquarters located in the counties we find strong negative associations between social capital and corporate tax avoidance as captured by effective tax rates and book tax differences these results are incremental to the effects of local religiosity and firm culture toward socially irresponsible activities they are robust to using organ donation as an alternative social capital proxy and fixed effect regressions they extend to aggressive tax avoidance practices additionally we provide corroborating evidence using firms with headquarters relocation that changes the exposure to social capital we conclude that social capital surrounding corporate headquarters provides environmental influences constraining corporate tax avoidance

search costs and equilibrium price dispersion in auction markets abstract a leading explanation for price dispersion in posted price markets is search costs we incorporate this insight into a model of competing second price auctions similar to ebay by doing so we extend the narrow literature on competing auctions to capture price dispersion and grow the already large literature on price dispersion to include auctions we provide evidence on search costs and price dispersion using data collected from ebay identifying search costs by exploiting a discontinuity in the visibility of auctions due to ebay s search tool

market wages and youth crime to study the problem of widespread youth crime i analyze a timeallocation model in which consumers face parametric wages and diminishing marginal returns to crime the theory motivates an econometric model that i estimate using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth my estimates suggest that youth behavior is responsive to price incentives and that falling real wages may have been an important determinant of rising youth crime during the 1970s and 1980s moreover wage differentials explain a substantial component of both the racial differential in criminal participation and the age distribution of crime

research and development human capital and trade performance in technology intensive manufactures a cross country analysis abstract this paper comprises an extensive examination of the relationship between commonly utilized policy indicators of national technological capability and observed trade success in technology intensive manufactures across 52 countries in the 1980s a central focus is the relative performance of policy indicators which directly measure innovative activity such as patent output and expenditure and employed scientists and engineers in r d versus those measuring general efforts at increasing national levels of human capital the study design is guided by the inter country intrasectoral approach outlined by dosi et al 19 it emphasizes differences in trade performance based on the notion of international competitiveness but also compares results for conventional revealed comparative advantage indices the large number of countries included and the nature of the policy objectives adopted have necessitated a highly aggregated approach using nation wide attributes and trade in one broad technologyintensive sector as the measure of demonstrated international competitiveness simple correlation and multiple regression techniques are used to assess the association of four main sets of national attributes indicators of direct innovative activity general human capital development physical capital formation and natural resource endowment with technology intensive trade performance the empirical findings provide further support for the importance of national differences in technological capability as a determinant of structural and international competitiveness within the technology intensive sector of production they suggest that policy indicators measuring actual innovative activity and physical capital formation have a much closer link to technology intensive trade than the general educational effort or output indicators demand side measures which proxy the actual employment and application of resources for r d purposes demonstrate the strength of association required for reliable policy evaluation of real national differences in technological capability the poor performance of the general human capital supply variables highlights the need for a careful consideration of the optimality of the allocation of substantial levels of scarce national resources to broad based educational output a number of other significant results concerning the link between technology indicators technology intensive trade and economic performance are discussed

violent crime does social capital matter this paper examines empirically the effect of some commonly used indicators of social capital such as the prevalence of trust on community members and the participation in voluntary secular and religious organizations on the incidence of violent crimes this is a cross country study whose basic sample consists of 39 developed and developing countries and whose dependent variable is the national intentional homicide rate the paper identifies and deals with three challenges in the empirical estimation of the effect of social capital on the incidence of violent crimes the omittedvariable problem is dealt with by including income inequality and economic growth as additional determinants of a country s violent crime rate the joint endogeneity or reverse causation problem is accounted for by using instrumental variables for social capital in the crime regression the specificity problem that is the potentially opposite effects of group specific and society wide social capital is noted and addressed only indirectly by emphasizing the results applied to the social capital indicators that have application for society as a whole the main result of the paper is that only the component of social capital measured by trust on community members has the effect of reducing the incidence of violent crimes the results regarding measures of other indicators of social capital are rather unclear this may be due to a combination of limited samples inability to fully control for reverse causation and most likely the opposite effects that society wide and group specific social capital may have on violent crime lederman and menendez are economists with the office of the chief economist for latin america and the caribbean of the world bank loayza is a senior economist with the research department of the central bank of chile and he is currently on leave from the development economics research group of the world bank the opinions expressed herein should not be attributed to the world bank the authors are grateful to ed glaeser jeff grogger gale johnson sanjay marwah steve messner nicholas sambanis and an anonymous referee for invaluable comments and suggestions the authors are responsible for any remaining errors

price price dispersion and number of sellers at a low entry cost shopbot abstract shopbots function as market intermediaries by providing unprecedented quantities of information to buyers and sellers this paper explores the role of market structure across shopbot mediated markets using an unbalanced panel of 399 digital camera models it extends prior work by using an ultra low entry cost site additionally allowing controls for life cycle and popularity effects we find a robust negative relationship between seller number and price which persists even as markets become crowded with sellers the results are capable of either an scp or a carlson mcafee heterogeneous cost interpretation but observed entry behaviour here is consistent with the latter

consumer discrimination and self employment self employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race we show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller equilibrium income distributions have two properties mean black incomes are lower than mean white incomes and the returns to ability are lower for black than for white sellers able blacks therefore are less likely to self select into the self employment sector than able whites using the 1980 census data we find that observed racial differences in the self employment income distributions are consistent with the theoretical predictions

product differentiation search costs and competition in the mutual fund industry a case study of s p 500 index funds we investigate the role that non portfolio fund differentiation and information search frictions play in creating two salient features of the mutual fund industry the large number of funds and the sizeable dispersion in fund fees in a case study we find that despite the financial homogeneity of s p 500 index funds this sector exhibits the fund proliferation and fee dispersion observed in the broader industry we show how extra portfolio mechanisms explain these features these mechanisms also suggest an explanation for the puzzling late 1990s shift in sector assets to more expensive and often newly entered funds an influx of highinformation cost novice investors

on the measurement of intra industry trade countries or more specifically newly industrialising countries increased in importance as exporters of manufactures over this period some 6o of the overall expansion of trade in manufactures comprised trade within western europe and north america a phenomenon which appears to have increased in importance as a consequence of the growth of trade between manufacturing nations is intra industry trade i e the simultaneous import and export of commodities classified in the same industry or product group although there are considerable difficulties associated with the computation of a meaningful summary statistic of the importance of intra industry trade relative to total trade a substantial amount of evidence now exists to suggest that intra industry trade has increased in importance to the point where it may account for in excess of 6o of total trade in most developed market economies 2 intra industry trade is important for at least two reasons first accurate measurement of pure intra industry trade can give some indication of the importance of determinants of international exchange other than relative factor proportions recent work has for example emphasised the role of preference diversity and decreasing costs despite attempts to generalise the heckscherohlin model neither of these factors can be comfortably accommodated consequently the heckscher ohlin postulate that countries specialise in and export commodities which use their abundant factor intensively is of little value in explaining intra industry exchange secondly there is a possibility that adjustment to trade expansion may be easier when the expansion takes the form of an increase in intra as opposed to inter industry exchange 3 in order to explore either of these issues empirically or to test any of the models of intraindustry exchange which have emerged in recent years 4 intra industry trade has to be measured as accurately as possible the principal complication with measurement is the unknown influence of categorical aggregation this paper discusses alternative approaches to assessing the influence of categorical aggre

buyer search and price dispersion a laboratory study we study markets with costly buyer search in which sellers simultaneously post prices buyers costlessly observe one or with probability 1 q two of the posted prices and can accept one or pay to search again the experiment varies q the search cost and the number of buyers equilibrium theory predicts a unified very low high price for q 0 q 1 and predicts specific distributions of dispersed prices for q 1 3 and 2 3 actual prices conform closely to the predictions in some treatments buyers reservation prices are biased away from the extremes however and sellers prices have positive autocorrelation and cross sectional correlation

the effects of regulating benchmarks abstract in financial markets dealers may take advantage of information asymmetries and extract a rent from buy side traders we show that an increase in the precision of a benchmark reduces noise in market prices and increases participation by overcoming traders and regulators inability to penalize dealers sufficiently

sectoral patterns of technological activity and export market share dynamics this paper focuses on a selected number of oecd countries and manufacturing sectors and shows the importance of sectoral diversity in the innovative process and in the relation between technology and world market share dynamics the econometric exercise confirms the importance of technological variables in the relation with world market shares in two ways first they are in general statistically significant second the taxonomy of technological classes in terms of r d intensity seems to be meaningful in disentangling the role played by sectoral diversity in the relation between embodied and disembodied investment and competitiveness sectoral diversity emerges in the statistical significance of the coefficients and in the time lag structure moreover the values of estimated r d parameters are correlated with the sectoral r d intensity

neighborhood effects on crime for female and male youth evidence from a randomized housing voucher experiment the moving to opportunity mto demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities we use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by mto to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency the offer to relocate to lower poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for violent and property crimes relative to a control group for males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime at least in the short run but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests the gender difference in treatment effects seems to reflect differences in how male and female youths from disadvantaged backgrounds adapt and respond to similar new neighborhood environments

long lasting differences in civic capital evidence from a unique immigration event in italy a range of evidence exists demonstrating that social capital is associated with a number of important economic outcomes such as economic growth trade and crime a recent literature goes further to illustrate how historical events and variation can lead to the development of differing and consequential social norms this paper examines the related questions of how persistent initial variations in social capital are and the extent to which immigrant groups do or do not converge to the cultural and social norms of their recipient country by examining a unique and geographically concentrated immigration event in 16th century italy we demonstrate that despite the substantial time since migration these communities still display different behavior consistent with higher civic capital than other comparable italian communities moreover we demonstrate that this difference does not appear to have changed over the last 70 years for instance differences in voter turnout apparent in the late 1940s remain in the 21st century this latter finding has implications for our view of the likelihood of assimilation of immigrant groups to local norms particularly in cases of large scale migration

intellectual property technological advantage and trade performance of uk manufacturing industries the technological advantage of advanced countries is often cited as a potential source of comparative advantage in world trade although with internatonal mobility of capital this may not be sufficient to retain domestic production net trad volumes for a panel of uk manufacturing industries are investigated using two measures of industry specific technological advantage one absolute innovations and one relative patents it is demonstrated that the determining factors of uk manufacturing trade performance do include technological advantage an all manufacturing estimate of trade determination is derived which could be of use in forecasting by pooling industry level data however it is shown that using a single data panel makes it difficult to produce a statistically acceptable equation because the underlying industry parameters vary considerably across the panel separate technology sub group estimates of the impact of innovation on net trade volumes are also derived which are more statistically acc

price distributions and competition considerable evidence demonstrates that significant dispersion exists in the prices charged for seemingly homogeneous goods this paper adopts a simple flexible equilibrium model of search to investigate the way the market structure influences price dispersion using the noisy search approach the paper demonstrates the effects of having a single large price leading firm with multiple outlets and a competitive fringe of small firms with one retail outlet each

entry and price dynamics in a perfect foresight model abstract this paper studies firms entry and price dynamics in a model that combines the assumptions of free entry and perfect foresight with the hypothesis of consumer s loyalty postulated by phelps and winter the analysis of the transition to long run equilibrium reveals that in such a model the entry of firms is related to the difference between current prices and costs in relation to the growth of the firms output it is shown that the model is consistent with gibrat s law finally it is shown that the size distribution of firms approaches asymptotically a pareto distribution

firm size distribution testing the independent submarkets model in the italian motor insurance industry this paper tests the presence of multiple independent submarkets in the italian motor insurance industry independence is motivated by administrative boundaries among provinces and by further locational reasons we find that the independence effects are sufficient to induce a minimum degree of inequality in the size distribution of firms once submarkets are aggregated these results are fully consistent with the predictions of sutton 1998 we also show that the degree of skewness in the firms size distribution is related to characteristics such as the population living in an area its density and the riskiness of a submarket