pushing the boundaries of climate economics critical issues to consider in climate policy analysis abstract climate policy choices are influenced by the economics literature which analyses the costs and benefits of alternative strategies for climate action this literature in turn rests on a series of choices about the values and assumptions underlying the economic analysis the methodologies for treating dynamics technological change risk and uncertainty and the assumed interactions between economic systems society and the environment including institutional constraints on climate policy we identify and discuss such critical issues pushing at the boundaries of current climate economics research new thinking in this area is gathering pace in response to the limitations of traditional economic approaches and their assumptions on economic behaviour ecological properties and socio technical responses we place a particular emphasis on the role of induced technological change and institutional setups in shaping cost effective climate action that also promotes economic development and the alleviation of poverty

the impact of usury ceilings on consumer credit usury regulation is a topic with a long history of discussion nevertheless the debate over the merits of usury regulation continues to the present day in the early part of the 1980s the rapid rise in nominal interest rates swung the debate in favor of the opponents of usury ceilings during this period a quarter of the states enacted legislation which largely eliminated their usury ceilings on consumer credit however with the return of lower interest rates in the middle part of the decade the argument for low usury ceilings gained increasing support and as a result several states lowered their usury ceilings on some types of credit the first formal economic model of the impact of usury ceilings was outlined by blitz and long 8 their insightful analysis has led researchers to focus on two hypotheses concerning the impact of usury ceilings on consumer credit hypothesis 1 usury ceilings reduce the quantity of credit obtained by high risk borrowers

balanced budget rules and aggregate instability the role of endogenous capital utilization schmitt grohe and uribe 1997 demonstrate that a balanced budget fiscal policy can induce aggregate instability unrelated to economic fundamentals the empirical relevance of this result has been challenged by subsequent studies in this paper we show both analytically and numerically that such extrinsic instability is an empirically robust plausibility associated with a balanced budget rule once endogenous capital utilization is taken into consideration this suggests that the design or operation of a balanced budget fiscal policy must recognize that it may constitute a practical source of self fulfilling prophecies and belief driven fluctuations

the impossibility of a perfectly competitive labour market using the institutional theory of transaction costs i demonstrate that the assumptions of the competitive labour market model are internally contradictory and lead to the conclusion that on purely theoretical grounds a perfectly competitive labour market is a logical impossibility by extension the familiar diagram of wage determination by supply and demand is also a logical impossibility and the neoclassical labour demand curve is not a well defined construct the reason is that the perfectly competitive market model presumes zero transaction costs and with zero transaction costs all labour is hired as independent contractors implying that multi person firms the employment relationship and labour market disappear with positive transaction costs on the other hand employment contracts are incomplete and the labour supply curve to the firm is upward sloping again causing the labour demand curve to be ill defined as a result theory suggests that wage rates are always and everywhere an amalgam of an administered and bargained price

an aggregate model of the credit union industry prior to 1971 credit unions cus were almost exclusively short term lenders with their deposit base consisting primarily of passbook share accounts radical institutional changes during the 1970 s have reshaped the industry and increased the competition between cus and other financial institutions the introduction of federal share insurance in 1971 coupled with the highest deposit ceiling allowed by regulators allowed cus to attract funds from other intermediaries while cus have a yield advantage they have been much slower to introduce day of deposit to day of withdrawal interest accumulation so that many cu deposits may be regarded more as short term certificate accounts rather than open passbooks thus as the federal reserve system and the federal home loan bank board have liberalized cu yields maturities and minimum denominations it has affected cus ability to attract share deposits substantial competition exists in loan markets as well banks finance companies and the credit acceptance subsidies of many manufacturing corporations also extend consumer credit while cus have entered mortgage markets in this study a six equation simultaneous model is developed to estimate three different aggregate flows within the industry new loan extensions net share flows and net change in financial investments two price variables the average cu loan rate and average dividend rate and the median maturity on newly extended loans to account for endogenous changes in non price terms which may affect both the supply and demand for loans this study is important to both researchers and policymakers despite the movement to make credit unions more like and more competitive with other financial institutions there remains a general perception that cus are different that they cannot be analyzed by applying well known economic theories and methods and that they remain insulated from both general economic conditions and competition the evidence from this study suggests that those perceptions are in error even though the industry remains small relative to other providers of consumer financial services because cus are no longer insulated it is important to know the impact of changing economic conditions on the industry department of economics john carroll university funding by the national credit union administration ncua is gratefully acknowledged participants in a seminar at ncua provided the author with seveal suggestions which were incorporated in the research special thanks are due to john wolken who spent countless hours in discussion with the author and catherine melfi and george kosicki who provided research assistance any remaining errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the author

accounting window dressing and template regulation a case study of the australian credit union industry this article documents the response of cooperative institutions that were required to adhere to new capital adequacy regulations traditionally geared for profit maximising organisations using data from the australian credit union industry we demonstrate that the cooperative philosophy and internal corporate governance structure of cooperatives will lead management to increase capital adequacy ratios through the application of accounting window dressing techniques this is opposite to the intended purpose of template regulation aimed at efficiently increasing operating margins and lowering risk our results raise several debatable issues regarding the ethics of accounting management and the imposition of one shoe fits all external regulation

indeterminacy and stabilization policy abstract it has been shown that a one sector real business cycle model with sufficient increasing returns in production may possess an indeterminate steady state that can be exploited to generate business cycles driven by animal spirits of agents this paper shows how an income tax schedule that exhibits a progressivity feature can ensure saddle path stability in such a framework and thereby stabilize the economy against sunspot fluctuations conversely an economy with a flat or regressive tax schedule is more susceptible to indeterminacy journal of economic literature classification numbers e32 e62

indeterminacy in a dynamic small open economy abstract we show that even under socially constant returns to scale indeterminacy i e continuum of dynamic general equilibrium paths converging to a common steady state can arise in a dynamic small open economy with production externalities and endogenous time preferences in which production is incompletely specialized

dynamic effects of government expenditure in a finance constrained economy abstract this paper introduces constant government expenditure in woodford s finance constrained model j econ theory 1986 with capital labor substitution as presented in grandmont pintus and de vilder j econ theory 1998 and investigates how government expenditure influences local dynamics near multiple steady states depending upon the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in production

post keynesian economics towards coherence this paper provides a comprehensive survey of post keynesian economics it argues that post keynesian economics has passed through the important initial stage of mounting a concerted critique of mainstream economics the focus however is on the stage reflected in current post keynesian research which the paper argues is concerned with elaborating a distinctive coherent approach that takes precedence over critique several traditions upon which post keynesian economics relies are identified institutionalism is proposed as an additional contributing tradition a novel aspect of the paper it is recognized however that more research is necessary to complete the post keynesian approach c 1996 academic press limited copyright 1996 by oxford university press

on the ineffectiveness of tax policy in altering long run growth harberger s superneutrality conjecture abstract in 1964 harberger conjectured that although theory predicts that changes in tax rates affect investment and growth in the long run in practice tax policy is an ineffective instrument to influence growth this paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence in favor of this view the growth effects of tax policy in the class of endogenous growth models driven by human capital accumulation are examined and numerical simulations of these models confirm the results harberger predicted cross country panel regressions estimated using a new method for measuring effective tax rates produce significant investment effects from taxes that are consistent with negligible growth effects these results are robust to the introduction of other growth determinants

the development of the neoclassical tradition in labor economics this essay on labor economics examines neoclassical theory s rise to ascendancy following the second world war with a secondary focus on the relative decline but continued influence of institutionalist economic theory the authors describe the evolution of institutional and neoclassical theory from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries examine some early intellectual debates between the two camps briefly describe the work of neoclassical labor economics pioneers and look at major developments over the past 30 years they argue that neoclassical economists increasing intellectual breadth and influence in public policy have led them to pay closer attention to issues that have long been of concern to institutionalists and neoinstitutionalists

balanced budget rules and macroeconomic in stability abstract it has been shown that under perfect competition and constant returns to scale a one sector real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspots when income tax rates are determined by a balanced budget rule with a pre set level of government expenditures this paper shows that indeterminacy disappears if the government finances endogenous public spending and transfers with fixed income tax rates under this type of balanced budget formulation the economy exhibits saddle path stability and equilibrium uniqueness regardless of the source of government revenue and or the existence of lump sum transfers

market imperfections and the instability of open economies in the presence of small market imperfections the transitional dynamics of an open economy can become indeterminate in that there exist an infinite number of equilibrium paths converging to a unique steady state in contrast to closed economy models in the open economy such indeterminacy can arise independently of the curvature of the utility function in consumption the results suggest that with market imperfections open economies can be subject to fluctuations caused by randomness unrelated to the economy s fundamentals

a theoretic framework for the analysis of credit union decision making this paper presents a formal theoretic framework to analyze credit union interest rates on loans and savings deposits the unique motivational and institutional features of a credit union in particular its structure as a financial service cooperative are used to develop the objective function this is based on a comparison of the credit union s rates to alternatively available market rates and includes parameters to recognize the possibility of borrower saver conflict the principal result is that the optimal rates and reactions to exogenous changes depend critically on the preference of the organization toward financial gain to the borrowing and saving members

understanding self fulfilling rational expectations equilibria in real business cycle models abstract necessary conditions for indeterminacy in standard rbc models have been extensively studied but intuitive understanding of the economic mechanism that generates indeterminacy has yet to be fully explored following the permanent income theory this paper provides an alternative framework for understanding and deriving the technical conditions of indeterminacy in rbc models a virtue of this approach is that in deriving the conditions of indeterminacy one can see clearly not only how indeterminacy arises but also how robust the indeterminacy is to structural perturbations in preferences technologies and market structures

balanced budget rules distortionary taxes and aggregate instability a traditional argument against a balanced budget fiscal policy rule is that it amplifies business cycles by stimulating aggregate demand during booms via tax cuts and higher public expenditures and by reducing demand during recessions through a corresponding fiscal contraction this paper suggests an additional source of instability that may arise from this type of fiscal policy rule it shows that within the standard neoclassical growth model a balanced budget rule can make expectations of higher tax rates self fulfilling if the fiscal authority relies heavily on changes in labor income taxes to eliminate short run fiscal imbalances calibrated versions of the model show that indeterminacy occurs for income tax rates that are empirically plausible for the u s economy and other group of seven countries

paired difference analysis of size economies in uk credit unions this study utilizes a paired difference approach to investigate for the existence of scale economies in uk credit unions the analysis is conducted for both credit unions in aggregate as well as a number of sub groups with the latter defined in terms of the trade organization to which credit unions are affiliated this decomposition was viewed as particularly important in that the respective umbrella organizations have different growth strategies the analysis revealed that significant efficiency gains are available through credit unions adopting a policy of asset growth this finding held good irrespective of the umbrella organization to which credit unions belong although the analysis also revealed that the opportunity for efficiency gains was not so pronounced for the members of one of the trade organizations the national federation of credit unions this finding was due to the nfcu s much more overt emphasis on self help and community development particularly in areas of economic disadvantage

the theoretical foundation of industrial relations and its implications for labor economics and human resource management the author identifies the core principle that forms the theoretical and policy foundation for the field of industrial relations labor is embodied in human beings and is not a commodity and argues that the field s two central dependent variables are labor problems and the employment relationship next he uses this core principle along with complementary ideas from institutional economics to develop a theoretical framework that not only explains the nature of the employment relationship and labor problems but also reveals shortcomings in related theories from labor economics and human resource management finally this framework is used to derive the fundamental theorem of industrial relations demonstrate that optimal economic performance occurs in a mixed economy of imperfect labor markets and organizations and show that a certain amount of labor protectionism promotes economic efficiency and human welfare

an analysis of the impact of interest rate ceilings the first aim of this study is to estimate the interest rates paid for motor vehicle loans the second aim is to identify those potential borrowers most likely to be rationed out of the market by the imposition of rate ceilings rate ceilings constrain the rates paid by successful loan applicants to be no greater than the applicable ceiling level these constraints are dealt with by treating the interest rate paid as a variable truncated at the ceiling level assuming the dependent variable is truncated normal consistent estimates are obtained by employing the maximum likelihood method of hausman and wise

a test of competitive labor market theory the wage structure among care assistants in the south of england this paper examines the structure of wages in a very specific labor market care assistants in residential homes for the elderly on england s sunshine coast this sector corresponds closely to economists notion of what should be a competitive labor market both because it has a large number of small firms undertaking a very homogeneous activity in a concentrated geographical area and because the workers are neither unionized nor covered by any minimum wage legislation so that there are effectively no external constraints on the wage setting process the authors find that the wage structure deviates in important respects from what would be expected in a competitive labor market in particular wage dispersion is small within firms but large between firms and the wage dispersion that is present does not seem to be closely related to workers productivity related characteristics a test rejects the hypothesis that unobserved labor quality can explain these findings

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

preferences endogenous discount rate and indeterminacy in a small open economy model abstract this paper characterizes indeterminacy conditions for a small open economy business cycle model the preferences are the utility function commonly used in closed economy models in the literature coupled with an endogenously determined discount rate it shows that indeterminacy can occur under arbitrarily small external effects independently of the intertemporal elasticities in consumption and labor supply

unemployment insurance and short time compensation the effects on layoffs hours per worker and wages we analyze two unemployment insurance systems in one unemployed workers receive benefits while those on reduced hours do not as in north america at least until recently in the other short time compensation is paid to workers on reduced hours as in europe the first system causes inefficient temporary layoffs for some parameters the latter does not but implies inefficient hours per worker some evidence is presented regarding these effects despite policymakers recent enthusiasm for short time compensation the clear implication of this project is that changes should come on the tax not benefit side of the system

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

the economic impact of the federal credit union usury ceiling this study measures the impact of the federal credit union usury ceiling on consumer credit availability and loan rates when binding the ceiling keeps loan rates low but it reduces credit union lending there is also evidence that a binding loan rate ceiling affects the competitiveness of credit unions in the market for deposits although the federal credit union act specifically mandates federally chartered credit unions to be a source of low cost consumer credit and to promote thriftiness it is not at all clear that the intent of the act is served by a binding usury ceiling

emotional arousal as a source of bounded rationality abstract this paper proposes an alternative psychological explanation for bounded rationality according to herbert simon bounded rationality arises from human cognitive limitations following the suggestion of institutional economist john r commons i argue that extremes in emotional arousal also contribute to bounded rationality this idea is formalized and developed using the yerkes dodson law from psychology examples from the popular press and the academic literatures of law management and economics are presented to illustrate the impact of this type of bounded rationality on human behavior

balanced budget income taxes and aggregate stability in a small open economy abstract in a closed economy a balanced budget fiscal policy rule with endogenous income tax rates can generate aggregate instability due to self fulfilling expectations e g schmitt grohe and uribe 1997 this paper shows both analytically and numerically that beliefs driven aggregate instability associated with such a balanced budget rule is less of a problem in a small open economy integrated in the world asset and goods markets this is because cross border capital flows and endogenous international price adjustments produce income effects that reduce the likelihood of sunspot equilibria from a policy perspective our results relieve possible concerns that balanced budget rules and reliance on income taxes to achieve budget objective could have destabilizing effects on the economy

impatience and equilibrium indeterminacy abstract this paper extends the neoclassical one sector optimal growth model by postulating that individual agents time preference impatience depends on the economy wide average consumption and average income which are social factors taken as external by individual agents the paper shows that with the socially determined individual time preference local equilibrium indeterminacy can arise moreover local indeterminacy can also be associated with global indeterminacy in many cases the results hold in models with bounded and unbounded growth

economists as public policy advisers as a member of the joint economic committee for over 15 years i have had ample occasion to observe economists testifying when i was chairman of the committee in the last congress for example we held over 100 hearings and heard from at least that many different economists from this experience i have developed some views about how economists can be effective witnesses and more generally how they can make a useful contribution to economic policy for me the most important quality for economists to have when they are testifying or advising policymakers is the ability to express their ideas on important policy issues clearly and simply without jargon there is an art to telling policymakers what they need to know but don t want to hear an economist who wants to contribute to the policy making process needs to be a good salesman but not a snake oil salesman i encourage more economists to take an active interest in public policy and to contribute to the debate on the economic issues

aggregate instability under balanced budget consumption taxes a re examination we re examine the destabilizing role of balanced budget fiscal policy rules based on consumption taxation using a one sector model with infinitely lived households we consider a specification of preferences derived from jaimovich 2008 14 and jaimovich and rebelo 2009 15 which is flexible enough to encompass varying degrees of income effect when the income effect is not too large we show that there exists a laffer curve which explains the multiplicity of steady states and that non linear consumption taxation may destabilize the economy promoting expectation driven fluctuations if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is sufficiently larger than one and the tax rate is counter cyclical with respect to consumption numerical illustrations also show that consumption taxation may be a source of instability for most oecd countries for a wide range of structural parameters configurations we finally prove the robustness of our conclusions if we consider a discrete time setup

efficiency wage models of unemployment keynesian economists hold it to be self evident that business cycles are characterized by involuntary unemployment but construction of a model of the cycle with involuntary unemployment faces the obvious difficulty of explaining why the labor market does not clear involuntarily unemployed people by definition want to work at less than the going wage rate why don t firms cut wages thereby increasing profits

the contractual nature of the firm for their helpful comments i am grateful to armen a alchian yoram barzel keith leffler john s mcgee and dean worcester 1 ronald h coase the nature of the firm 4 economica 386 1937 the paper however was written several years earlier see note 3 infra 2 the social sciences citation index provides the following information breaking down the period of 1966 80 into three five year periods the total citations of coase s firm paper for each subperiod are 1966 70 17 citations 1971 75 47 citations and 1976 80 105 citations

trade structure and belief driven fluctuations in a global economy abstract this paper constructs a dynamic two country model with country specific production externalities and inspects the presence of equilibrium indeterminacy under alternative trade structures it is shown that the presence of belief driven economic fluctuations caused by equilibrium indeterminacy is closely related to the specified trade structure if investment goods are not internationally traded and international lending and borrowing are allowed then indeterminacy arises in a wider set of parameter space than in the corresponding closed economy by contrast either if both consumption and investment goods are traded in the absence of international lending and borrowing or if only investment goods are traded with financial transactions then the indeterminacy conditions are the same as those for the closed economy counterpart

the approach of institutional economics this paper assesses the old institutional economics it emphasizes the importance of key old institutionalist themes concerning the necessity of habits and rules and the role of institutions a problem in the alternative theoretical program of the new institutionalism is the untenability of its assumption of an original institution free market or state of nature even optimizing behavior requires the prior existence of habits and rules although it still lacks a complete and systematic theory the evolutionary approach of the old institutionalists tackles the problem of the interactive relationship of actor to structure without analytical reduction to one or the other

strikes and wages a test of an asymmetric information model this paper describes a simple model of labor disputes based on the hypothesis that unions use strikes to infer the profitability of the firm the model posits the existence of a negatively sloped resistance curve between wages and strike duration in addition it offer a series of predictions relating wage and strike outcomes to changes in the expected profitability of the firm and changes in the alternative opportunities of striking workers these implications are tested using data on wage outcomes strike probabilities and strike durations for a large sample of collective bargaining agreements

trade and indeterminacy in a dynamic general equilibrium model this study investigates the dynamic behavior of multiple countries economic activities in a two good two factor model in which factors are internationally immobile and countries technologies are subject to sector specific external effects

institutional economics and the minimum wage broadening the theoretical and policy debate debate among labor economists on the pros and cons of a minimum wage law has come to focus on whether labor markets are competitive or monopsonistic using principles and concepts of institutional economics the author argues that this perspective on minimum wages is too narrow in particular he uses institutional theory to develop four theoretical rationales for minimum wage legislation setting a floor on wages to offset imperfect competition and inequality of bargaining power promote macroeconomic stabilization and full employment contribute to long term efficiency and growth and incorporate labor market externalities and social costs of labor one revisionist implication is that a minimum wage under plausible conditions may increase economic efficiency even in a purely competitive labor market

depository institution competition in the deregulated environment the case of the large credit union the purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of deregulation and enhanced competition on the costs and performance of large credit unions using a sample of large credit unions over the period 1979 through to 1985 we find no evidence that credit unions average costs have risen nor do we find evidence that credit unions have suffered adverse changes in operating margins large credit unions not only compete with other depository institutions but appear to have responded well in the newly competitive environment

indeterminacy in a small open economy ramsey growth model abstract this paper presents a small open economy version of the j benhabib and r e a farmer 1996 j monet econ 37 421 443 two sector optimal growth model with production externalities it is shown that indeterminacy is considerably easier to obtain under a regime of perfect world capital markets than in the closed economy variant furthermore the result is not dependent on a high labor supply elasticity since that input is fixed the paper also examines a variant which takes into account external borrowing constraints and it is shown that the qualitative results on indeterminacy remain basically unaffected by this extension journal of economic literature classification numbers e32 f12

balanced budget rules and aggregate instability the role of consumption taxes it is known that in a real business cycle model with constant returns to scale and a balanced budget fiscal policy rule steady state indeterminacy may arise due to endogenous labour income tax rates this article shows that when the government finances its expenditures via an endogenous consumption tax instead a steady state is always saddle path stable consequently combining income taxes with consumption taxes makes the ranges of indeterminacy shrink thus reducing the possibility of aggregate instability from a policy perspective the results provide an additional argument in favour of consumption taxes in place of capital taxes

ronald coase and methodology ronald coase wrote two great theoretical articles that earned him the nobel prize the nature of the firm in 1937 and the problem of social cost in 1960 he also wrote many articles dealing with the methodology of economics often in the setting of a discussion of a particular economist such as adam smith or alfred marshall the methodological articles will be my particular focus here

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women

alternative government financing and aggregate fluctuations driven by self fulfilling expectations abstract using woodford s finance constrained model woodford m 1986 stationary sunspot equilibria in a finance constrained economy journal of economic theory 40 128 137 with external effects in production as in barinci and cheron 2001 sunspots and business cycle in a finance constrained economy journal of economic theory 97 30 49 this paper investigates the effects of alternative government financing methods on the range of values of increasing returns leading to an indeterminate steady state it will be shown that indeterminacy may easily arise at a wide range of values of increasing returns if constant government expenditure is financed through labor income taxes and with difficulty if constant government expenditure is financed by taxes on capital in addition we explore how the consequences of endogenous income taxes are changed if tax rates on labor and capital income are kept constant and government expenditure is endogenously adjusted to satisfy the budget constraint