unionization and labor market institutions in advanced capitalism 1950 1985 this article examines the depedence of unionization on labor market institutions and long run trends in inflation unemployment and the sectoral composition of the labor force in 18 oecd countries the large number of contending explanations highlights the difficulty in comparative sociology of drawing confident conclusions when there are few cases to compare this problem is addressed through diverse evidence a review of the comparative historical record and a time series analysis to form a bayesian prior distribution which is combined with a cross sectional data set to sharpen conventional estimates of economic and institutional effects this analysis indicates working class organization in trade unions expanded in the postwar period where labor acquired an institutional influence over capitalist labor markets

factor price distortions resource allocation and growth a computable general equilibrium analysis the present paper estimates the welfare cost of both labor and capital market distortions in south korea using a computable general equilibrium model and expands on earlier studies by distinguishing autonomous differentials from distortions in accounting for differences in sectoral wages and returns to capital the results of this paper cast doubt on the generality of the proposition on the sensitivity of economic efficiency to market distortions our results show that removing labor market distortions would increase output by less than 1 of the base year gdp even when capital market distortions are also removed the gdp increases only by 3 2 and welfare by 5 6 the study also examines a consequence of capital market distortions which suggests that distortions may lead to more rapid capital formation and higher concentration of capital stock given the industrial policy configuration in korea we find that financial incentives had more distorting effects than fiscal incentives copyright 1995 by mit press

capital utilization economies of scale and technical change in the growth of total factor productivity an explanation of south korean manufacturing growth abstract this paper presents a method of interpreting the growth of total factor productivity directly linking the productivity growth to key parameters of a specific cost function it shows that the productivity index can be decomposed into effects due to a technical change b non constant returns to scale and c change in capital utilization the decomposition framework was applied to data on south korean manufacturing during the 1961 1980 period in south korean manufacturing the total factor productivity was found to have grown at 3 per annum scale economies contributed about 38 of the growth of tfp the technical change 45 and the change in the capital utilization rate 17 the results of this study support of the view that for growing less developed economies the growth in capital utilization rate is a source of growth in total productivity that is too significant to be ignored

lobbying by capital and labor over trade and labor market policies abstract this paper uses the common agency approach to analyze the joint determination of product and labor market distortions in a small open economy capital owners and union members lobby the government on both tariffs and minimum wages while other factors of production are not organized the paper shows that product and labor market distortions always move in the same direction and that their level is not modified by social pacts between capital and labor it also shows that labor market distortions are second best hence conditionality by foreign organizations should target distortions in product markets but not in labor markets

economic growth and productivity a case study of south korea the economic performance that south korea has achieved over the past quarter century is often likened to a miracle recently much interest has been expressed in the driving forces behind the korean economic transformation using the valueadded measure of output christiansen and cummings have shown that technology measured by tfp accounts for about 43 of korean economic growth between 1960 and 1973 this figure is considerably high compared with recent major studies on japanese and singaporean economic growth we found that the value added framework is not appropriate for the description of the structure of the korean economy and re examined the sources of korean economic growth using the gross output framework surprisingly it has been discovered that only 7 of real output growth in the manufacturing sector during the 1962 1981 period is attributable to technological progress these findings parallel those for the japanese and singapore economies

a critical assessment of measures of central bank independence the methodology of measuring central bank independence suggested by bade and parkin three decades ago and inverse correlations between the measures and inflation have been widely accepted the measurement literature has made important contributions identifying elements of institutional design that establish the relationship between the central bank and the government and the measurements from an ordinal perspective provide some useful insights about the major institutional redesigns of central banks during the past several decades at the same time the measurement literature is problematic first a dummy variable bifurcating central banks into groups of independent and less independent central banks can duplicate the standard correlations suggesting the information content of the specific measures is limited second the correlations between inflation and measures of independence are not as stable as claimed and most important the measurements are subject to classification problems that have not been fully appreciated review of the institutional design and history of the bank of korea bank of japan and the federal reserve provide evidence the classification problems are important the measures of independence are more appropriately regarded as ordinal rankings of central bank independence rather than considered cardinal measures suitable for econometric modeling jel e50 e58 e65

the supply and demand for exports in israel abstract using annual data for israel over the period 1960 1989 we estimate an econometric model for the supply and demand for exports a novel feature is that domestic absorption crowds out export supply exports are imperfect substitutes in world markets for tradeables produced abroad the price elasticity of demand is about 1 3 while the price elasticity of supply is about 1 5 the model is simulated to calculate the effects of policy instruments and other exogenous variables on exports and export prices

the political economy of inflation bargaining structure or central bank independence the causes of inflation are commonly analyzed as the function of either the organization of wage bargaining or the independence of the central bank although these explanations are widely treated as competing recent evidence suggests that there may be merit to both arguments this paper presents a game theoretic model of wage bargaining and monetary policy making that shows why the two institutional causes are not only complementary but elements of a more encompassing logic the empirical superiority of this synthesizing model is demonstrated by reanalyzing data used in al marhubi and willett 1995 and by presenting new evidence

inflation and social consensus in the seventies it is widely believed that the two oil price shocks of the i 970s played a major role in the increase in inflation in industrial countries while this hypothesis is consistent with the timing of changes in inflation at the global level it seems to break down when applied to individual countries cross sectionally for example over the period i973 9 switzerland had an average inflation rate of 4 7 while in neighbouring italy inflation averaged i5 6 over the same period furthermore inflation in the pre opec period i97i 2 was actually higher in switzerland than in italy it seems that a supply shock explanation of inflation in the seventies also requires an explanation of why different countries responded so differently to a similar set of shocks at the world level the purpose of this paper is to offer such an explanation and to test the hypothesis with a cross sectional equation accounting for differences in average inflation rates over the period i973 9 in eighteen oecd countries this time period includes the year of the first opec shock i 973 and the following six years up to the time of the second opec shock the hypothesis to be tested is set in the framework of a model similar to that of brunner et al i 980 the key features of the brunner model are that the adjustment of real wage expectations is subject to lags and that labour supply is positively related to the difference between the perceived real wage and the expected or target real wage given these two assumptions a negative supply shock gives rise to a period of stagflation whose intensity will be greater the slower is the speed of adjustment of real wage expectations the model of this paper extends the brunner model in three ways first across countries the speed of adjustment of real wage expectations or targets is assumed to depend positively on the degree of social consensus as proxied negatively by an indicator of average long run strike activity second the model allows for the possibility of inflation inertia or systematically incorrect inflation expectations as well as a sluggish adjustment of real wage expectations third the model incorporates the hypothesis that money supply growth will vary across countries according to variations in inflationary pressures as perceived by governments the first section of the paper provides a discussion of the rationale for the key proposition regarding strikes and social consensus as well as a brief discussion of the role of wage bargaining institutions section ii develops a theoretical model which yields a reduced form cross sectional equation relating the average i 973 9

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

non parametric approach to dynamic efficiency a non parametric application of cointegration to production frontiers estimation of dynamic production and cost frontiers raises some basic econometric problems when the input output data are nan stationary over time methods of cointegration can be applied in such situations to identify and estimate the efficient production and cost functions the method of cointegration is here extended to the case of one sided errors and then empirically applied to the production data of the manufacturing sector for south korea in recent times

central bank independence disinflations and the sacrifice ratio it is widely believed that independent central banks produce costless low inflation yet a few recent studies indicate that more independent central banks are associated with higher output costs during disinflations this carries the implication that there are indeed costs associated with autonomy the author develops and extends those analyses in two important ways first he shows that central bank independence cbi affects both the output and the unemployment costs of disinflation because central banks control only monetary policy they should not exert a differential effect on the two ratios and there should be a positive relationship between independence and both the unemployment and the output costs of disinflations second by including a range of potentially significant political and institutional controls the author demonstrates both the importance of political and institutional determinants of the costs of disinflation and that cbi is a robust predictor of those costs

the economics of worldwide stagflation the last fifteen years have witnessed dramatic changes in economics not only in the manner in which the economics profession views economics but also in the manner in which the general public views economics and economists by the late 1960 s there had emerged more or less a consensus macroeconomic framework that is an agreed upon structure to be used to study economic problems at the aggregate level robert solow stated as quoted in leijonhufvud 1968

the anti inflationary influence of corporatist structures and central bank independence the importance of the hump shaped hypothesis many studies have found strong negative correlations between central bank independence and inflation but the casual significance of this relationship is often challenged we find that the negative relationship remains even when a number of other explanatory variables are considered special attention is given to the role of corporatism following calmfors and driffell it is argued that both high and low levels of centralization should be associated with lower inflation we present empirical support for his hump shaped hypothesis and find that the inclusion of corporatism does not diminish the significance of central bank independence

the political economy of government domestic expenditure in the affluent democracies 1960 80 despite the large number of studies of the determination of government expenditure in the affluent democracies most students of the subject admit that we know relatively little about the complex dynamics of spending change using multiple regression analyses of changes in nonmilitary outlays over the years 1960 to 1973 and 1973 to 1980 this study attempts to remedy some of the problems in the literature by providing new tests of several old hypotheses by introducing and testing several relatively new hypotheses and by evaluating such propositions in the context of an integrated theoretical framework and of analyses that span two distinct political economic eras results suggest that the dynamics of domestic expenditure change are partially conditioned by macroeconomic and political environments of particular eras overall the self interests and ideological preferences of policymakers the institutional and extrainstitutional political action of policy relevant groups and needs for state assistance emerge as principal sources of changes in domestic expenditure

comparative productivity of korean manufacturing 1967 1987 this paper compares productivity levels in south korean manufacturing with those in the usa for 13 manufacturing branches the comparison is based on specific industry of origin purchasing power parities value added per hour worked in korean manufacturing rose from only 4 5 percent of the us level in 1967 to more than 18 percent in 1987 total factor productivity rose from only 9 percent in 1967 to 26 percent of the us level in 1987 at a more detailed level especially the leather metals and machinery industries have reached high productivity levels some of which approach levels in european manufacturing the considerable labour productivity gap between korea and the united states can partly be explained by capital intensity structural effects size effects and levels of education

what caused the rise of conservatism a french view conservatism daniel cohen existing theories of political cycles fail to provide an adequate explanation for the widespread shift to conservative economic policies on one view political parties merely court the median voter but this theory is incomplete because it fails to explain why the median voter has become conservative other theories differentiate parties by their ideologies but they wholly fail to explain where changes of ideology come from this author proposes an explanation that does not need to rely on changes in the underlying preferences of voters or parties but in which changing economic conditions lead to different policy choices thus while ends remain unchanged the means to achieve these ends may vary over time the distinction between right and left is still portrayed by the classical trade off between economic efficiency and equity in order to promote equity the government can always redistribute wealth but in order to preserve economic efficiency wealth redistribution should not be expected to be repeated systematically hence the median voter will prefer a laissez faire to an interventionist government when the economy is understood to be affected by a persistent disturbance and the converse when disturbances are temporary thus the shift to conservatism is seen as the result of the sometimes belated realization by the electorate that the shocks of the 1970s were long lasting current forecasts that unemployment in europe is unlikely to fall suggest the continuation of conservative policies irrespective of whether they are implemented by the right or the left

the structure of production in south korea s manufacturing sector abstract this paper estimates a model of producer behavior for south korean manufacturing that simultaneously identifies substitution elasticities and scale economies a non homothetic translog function is employed which takes on various other functional forms i e cobb douglas homothetic homogeneous as special or limiting cases four significant conclusions are a there is potential scale economies in each subsector of south korean manufacturing b the substitutabilities between factor inputs are relatively low c factor demands are price elastic d the scale economies are correlated with the factor intensity

dynamic r d with spillovers competition vs cooperation abstract we investigate dynamic r d for process innovation in a cournot duopoly where firms may either undertake independent ventures or form a cartel for cost reducing r d investments by comparing the profit and welfare performances of the two settings in steady state we show that private and social incentives towards r d cooperation coincide for all admissible levels of the technological spillovers characterising innovative activity we also evaluate the whole history of the dynamic system along the transition to the steady state showing that the conflict between private and social incentives does not necessarily emerge

avoiding market dominance product compatibility in markets with network effects as is well recognized market dominance is a typical outcome in markets with network effects a firm with a larger installed base offers a more attractive product which induces more consumers to buy its product which produces a yet bigger installed base advantage such a setting is investigated here but with the main difference that firms have the option of making their products compatible when firms have similar installed bases they make their products compatible in order to expand the market nevertheless random forces could result in one firm having a bigger installed base in which case the larger firm may make its product incompatible we find that strategic pricing tends to prevent the installed base differential from expanding to the point that incompatibility occurs this pricing dynamic is able to neutralize increasing returns and avoid the emergence of market dominance

structural distortions and decentralized fiscal policies in emu the combination of discretionary monetary policy labor market distortions and nominal wage rigidity yields excessive inflation as monetary policy tries to exploit nominal wage contracts to address labor market distortions an inflation target reduces inflation but creates a conflict between monetary policy and discretionary fiscal policy if fiscal policy is set at a higher frequency than nominal wages are preventing the associated excessive accumulation of public debt calls for debt ceilings if countries differ substantially in terms of structural distortions uniform debt ceilings must be complemented by country specific debt targets in order to prevent decentralized fiscal authorities from employing debt policy strategically

determinants of inflationary performance corporatist structures vs central bank autonomy studies by economists have shown that countries with autonomous central banks experience lower inflation than others banian laney and willett 1983 and bade and parkin 1987 one reason for this may be that countries with autonomous central banks are less likely to monetize their deficits burdekin and wahar 1990 studies by political scientists have used measures of the strength of corporatist structures to explain macroeconomic outcomes cameron 1984 however neither economics nor political science research has employed measures of both central bank autonomy and the strength of corporatist structures to explain comparative inflation rates the present paper tests whether measures of corporatist structures and central bank autonomy explain the comparative inflation performance of eighteen industrialized countries this issue is of great importance for students of piecemeal monetary reform in countries where the central banking structure is susceptible to reorganization the results of this paper should inform parties who are active in the reformation and reorganization of central banks in lesser developed and nascent market economics throughout the world

corporatism in decline an empirical analysis of the impact of corporatism on macroeconomic performance and industrial disputes in 18 industrialized democracies during the 1970s and early 1980s most studies on corporatism indicated that corporatist policies led to lower unemployment and inflation and higher economic growth rates in the mid and late 1980s however voices claiming that corporatism is in decline became more and more frequent although hardly any empirical examinations were undertaken the purpose of this study is to estimate empirically the influence of corporatist arrangements on macroeconomic performance and industrial disputes in the 1980s as compared with the 1970s and 1960s this pooled time series cross sectional analysis provides evidence that corporatist policies have not lost their capacity to achieve the desired macroeconomic goals in the 1980s in addition corporatism significantly reduces the number of working days lost however no evidence was found that corporatism leads to increased economic growth there is evidence that economic growth is adversely affected by government outlays

export performance and productivity growth the case of taiwan the hypothesis that rapid growth of exports accelerates economic growth has been widely discussed and tested the empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis includes studies by m michaely b balassa p heller and r porter w tyler g feder r kavoussi and r ram using macrodata and m nishimizu and s robinson using two digit industry level data feder found that exports contribute to economic growth because the export sector is not only more productive than the nonexport sector but also generates some external effects that enhance the productivity of the nonexport sector as exports expand both the resource reallocation effect and externality effect lead to an economy wide productivity increase nishimizu and robinson also found the existence of a significant correlation between productivity growth and export expansion on a theoretical level there are at least two interpretations of the correlation between productivity growth and export expansion one stresses scale economies the other stresses competitive forces the scale economies argument emphasizes the benefits that can be derived by means of expanding the scale of operations in the case of countries whose domestic markets are small in size exporting becomes an essential part of achieving scale economies j bhagwati considered scale economies to be a plausible explanation for the superiority of the export promotion trade strategy as opposed to the import substitution trade strategy but warned against the lack of convincing evidence 2 the study by j kwon on the korean manufacturing industry also found that scale economies are a main factor contributing to total fac

the role of shocks and institutions in the rise of european unemployment the aggregate evidence two key facts about european unemployment must be explained the rise in unemployment since the 1960s and the heterogeneity of individual country experiences while adverse shocks can potentially explain much of the rise in unemployment there is insufficient heterogeneity in these shocks to explain cross country differences alternatively while explanations focusing on labour market institutions explain current heterogeneity well many of these institutions pre date the rise in unemployment based on a panel of institutions and shocks for 20 oecd nations since 1960 we find that the interaction between shocks and institutions is crucial to explaining both stylised facts

the cross sectional inter industry structure of capital utilization in a developing economy the case of s korean manufacturing t he literature on capital utilization has experienced a remarkable growth of late in particular implications of a model of optimal capital utilization put forth by kim and winston 1974 have been shown to be consistent with empirical findings 1 on inter country crosssectional sectoral rates of capital utilization kim 1969 mason and sakong 1971 and winston 1971b and 2 on intra country timetrend rates of capital utilization kim and kwon 1977 as a sequel to such recent developments this paper proposes to show an implication of the kim winston model in the context of an intra country cross sectional inter industry structure of capital utilization and then to test this implication against cross sectional data from s korean manufacturing industries

selected works of michael wallerstein centralized bargaining and wage restraint the literature on corporatism has presented much evidence associating highly centralized systems of collective bargaining with wage restraint and relatively successful macroeconomic performance in addition centralized bargaining is associated with relatively small wage differentials this paper presents a model of the impact of centralized wage setting on both real wages and relative wages the central assumption is that the centralization of wage setting at the national level unites unions who are complements in production since a wage increase for one group of workers negatively affects the welfare of other workers who are complements in production centralized wage setters choose wages below the equilibrium of decentralized wage setting it is also shown that if the union confederation maximizes a utilitarian welfare function with equal weights centralized wage setting decreases wage dispersion while low paid workers clearly gain from centralized bargaining high paid workers may prefer that bargaining be decentralized

learning by doing organizational forgetting and industry dynamics learning by doing and organizational forgetting have been shown to be important in a variety of industrial settings this paper provides a general model of dynamic competition that accounts for these economic fundamentals and shows how they shape industry structure and dynamics previously obtained results regarding the dominance properties of flrms pricing behavior no longer hold in this more general setting we show that forgetting does not simply negate learning rather learning and forgetting are distinct economic forces in particular a model with learning and forgetting can give rise to aggressive pricing behavior market dominance and multiple equilibria whereas a model with learning alone cannot

input measurement and productivity growth in japanese and u s manufacturing in their article in this review j r norsworthy and david h malmquist 1983 have presented interesting comparisons of productivity growth in the japanese and u s manufacturing sectors their paper starts with the discussion of whether the conventional value added or gnp measurement of output is an appropriate framework for productivity analysis some confusion frequently arises as to whether a production function should be structured on the basis of gross output or value added output separability is a pivotal concept in the analysis of production structures especially in relation to the existence of a real value added aggregate it is well known that there are two types of separability which pertain to the existence of a real value added function weak local separability and strong partial separability the practical advantage of distinguishing these two different forms of separability is that the double deflation method in conventional gnp accounting is justified only when strong partial separability holds using the approximate separability tests of michael denny and melvyn fuss 1977 norsworthy and malmquist have shown that a value added aggregate does not exist in either u s or japanese manufacturing and they conclude that the appropriate output measure for joint investigation of both countries for purposes of productivity analysis is gross output p 953 the purpose of this comment is to indicate some deficiencies in norsworthy and malmquist s analysis in particular it will be demonstrated that the conditions for weak local and strong partial separability in norsworthy and malmquist s paper are incorrectly formulated and as a consequence their findings may not be used as conclusive evidence that a gross output measure is an appropriate basis for the analysis of capital labor substitutability and productivity growth in japan and the united states

consensus versus majoritarian democracy political institutions and their impact on macroeconomic performance and industrial disputes this article argues that consensual political institutions as operationalized by lijphart and crepaz 1991 have significantly favorable effects on unemployment inflation and the number of working days lost whereas economic growth remains unaffected although this finding is consistent with olson s theoretical concept of encompassing organizations this study shows that olson s empirical operationalization is flawed strong two party westminster systems based on single member district electoral rules and single party bare majority cabinets do not perform as well as weak multiparty coalition governments with proportional representation as an electoral rule an empirical measure of encompassing organizations is introduced termed popular cabinet support a cross sectional time series panel study of 162 elections 18 countries and 9 elections per country n 162 provides strong evidence that governments with consensual inclusive and accommodative constitutional structures and wider popu

government special interest groups and economic growth in descending order of robustness and strength the four major conclusions are i the experience of industrial countries in the postwar period indicates that a large welfare state has been associated with a high rate of economic growth ii the olson thesis that powerful special interest groups impede growth receives empirical support iii the relation between growth and the welfare state is non linear with increases in the size of the welfare state beyond some critical level one sixth of gdp according to our estimates resulting in reductions rather than increases in the growth rates and iv the strength of the growth promoting properties of the welfare state is positively related to the strength of special interest groups as proxied by the proportion of the work force unionized one possible interpretation of these results runs as follows a large welfare state may retard economic growth by reducing the incentives to work to save to move and to change on the other hand in a situation where special interest groups have aquired significant power to block change if they so desire the welfare state which offers assistance to those who are the victims of change may play a growth enhancing role in reducing the incentive to block change the fourth conclusion just stated supports this view the welfare state may also foster economic growth through favourable effects on social consensus political stability and labour management relations the results suggest that the growth promoting forces predominate as long as the welfare state is not too large but beyond a certain point which corresponds more or less to the median situation among developed countries today the growth retarding elements come to the fore

monetary policy and the informational implications of the phillips curve in this paper i examine optimal monetary policy and the informational implications of the phillips curve in a stochastic macroeconomic model it is assumed that wages are not only indexed to the price level but respond to the state of the labor market as well if information about current disturbances is conveyed only through market prices it turns out that wages have independent informational content over and above the informational content of other aggregate prices the optimal policy in this model implies reactions to changes in both wages and the aggregate price level as unlike the commonly used model of gray and fischer wages and prices are only partially correlated signals about the unobserved disturbances the paper also discusses an extension to an open economy and the relation between exchange rate policy and wages copyright 1990 by the london school of economics and political science

factor substitution approach to testing the time variations in production the case of taiwan s manufacturing this paper is devoted to studying the time variations in the series of elasticities of factor substitution which in a sense manifests changes in production technology and structure a lkm translog cost function model is used to estimate the allen uzawa elasticities of substitution for taiwan s manufacturing sector in 1965 91 the variations are analysed using a regression model which incorporates the linear spline setting and income variable empirical results indicate that obvious structural breaks in the elasticity series conform to major exogenous disturbances such as worldwide energy crises and developmental policy changes

the return of lockouts down under in comparative perspective globalization the state and employer militancy virtually unheard of since the great depression lockouts have reemerged strongly in australia and new zealand just as they have all but disappeared in germany the decline of lockouts in germany is convincingly attributed to the enhanced vulnerability of firms to stoppages in certain circumstances amid globalization but the small open economies of australia and new zealand are equally subject to these pressures using macro and micro level data this article illustrates that neoliberal legislative reforms and institutional change have reconfigured the risks costs and payoffs associated with lockouts amid globalization in doing so some flaws in the varieties of capitalism dual convergence literature are highlighted in particular the post hoc classification of the antipodes as liberal market economies bypasses the role of legislative reform in reconstituting employer interests and the differences in electoral party and state structures that impeded facilitated the rise of neoliberal reformers in

rapid economic growth with increasing returns to scale and little or no productivity growth total factor productivities for 28 korean manufacturing sectors were estimated jointly with markups scale economies and the capacity utilization rate using the short run generalized leontief cost function concavity conditions necessary for the cost function to be well behaved and consistent with a firm s optimizing behavior were imposed on the estimation by way of bayesian inference the study finds 1 the superiority of the short run equilibrium model over the long run model and of the short run generalized leontief cost function over the translog cost function 2 market imperfection 3 the existence of scale economies and 4 biases in the traditional tfp measures the study also suggests that a rapid growth of output is possible with negative tfp growth copyright 1995 by mit press

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

unions and interindustry wage differentials abstract we investigate the importance of trade unions in collective bargaining in the context of a developing country manufacturing labor market the methodology we adopt to estimate wage differentials follows the method proposed by haisken denew j p and schmidt c m 1997 review of economics and statistics 79 516 521 since it improves on the standard procedure popularized by krueger a b and summers l h 1988 econometrica 56 193 259 our findings indicate that wage dispersion is far greater in the unionized sector of brazilian manufacturing in contrast to evidence from other countries

inflation and central bank independence a meta regression analysis using 59 studies we perform a meta regression analysis of studies examining the relationship between inflation and central bank independence cbi the studies considered are very different with respect to the cbi indicator used the sample of countries and time periods covered model specification estimators used and publication outlet we conclude that there is a significant publication bias however we also find a significant genuine effect of cbi on inflation differences between studies are not caused by differences in cbi indicators used

conversation with secrets we analyze the sustainability of a conversation when one agent might be endowed with a piece of private information that affects the payoff distribution to its benefit such a secret can compromise the sustainability of conversation even without an obligation the secret holder will disclose its secret if it prevents preemptive termination of the conversation the nonsecret holder lacks this possibility and stops the conversation competition and limited effectiveness of the conversation amplify this result of early disclosure and render the conversation process less sustainable we discuss policy and managerial implications for industry standard development and joint ventures

comment on measuring the independence of central banks and its effect on policy outcomes by cukierman webb and neyapti cukierman webb and neyapti 1992 significantly broadened and deepened the empirical study of the link between central bank independence and inflation per formance they considered evidence for a group of countries much bigger than any examined previously most of the additions being developing countries and they constructed a range of new indicators of independence based on central bank law the results of a questionnaire and the turnover rate of central bank gover nors in interpreting their findings however they appeared to add a further new dimension to this subject but without examining the dimension s wider implica tions almost as an afterthought cukierman webb and neyapti suggested that a country s choice of exchange rate regime might have some bearing on their results here i extend the analysis to show that a systematic examination of exchange rate fixing arrangements can play a role in both accounting for the pattern of inflation rates across their sample of developing countries and sharpening the as sociation between central bank independence and inflation performance

partially independent central banks politically responsive governments and inflation theories of central bank independence have more exact implications regarding inflation in different political economic environments than generally understood or empirically examined they imply that inflation in any given country time will be a weighted average of what it would be if the central bank completely controlled monetary policy and what it would be if the government completely controlled it with the degree of central bank independence weighting the former an equation embodying this theoretical expectation is estimated by constrained least squares from a time series cross section of inflation rates in developed democracies since the bretton woods era the results confirm that the antiinflationary benefit of central bank independence is not constant but rather depends on every variable in the broader politicaleconomic environment to which wholly autonomous central banks and governments would respond differently conversely the inflationary impacts of all such political economic variables depend on the degree of central bank independence

fiscal policy profits and investment this paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of oecd countries we find a sizeable negative effect of public spending and in particular of its wage component on profits and on business investment this result is consistent with different theoretical models in which government employment creates wage pressure for the private sector various types of taxes also have negative effects on profits but interestingly the effects of government spending on investment are larger than those of taxes our results can explain the so called non keynesian i e expansionary effects of fiscal adjustments jel e22 e62

trade and the variety of democratic institutions students of comparative politics have long acknowledged the importance of such institutional factors as electoral systems parliamentary versus presidential rule and the strength of parties but they have either regarded the institutions as given or have explained them entirely in domestic terms associating proportional representation for example with the intensity of social cleavages in economically advanced democracies however these institutional aspects can be plausibly linked to dependence on trade proportional representation the parliamentary system strong parties and large electoral districts have survival value for developed democracies exposed to trade that the recently revived agitation for proportional representation in the united kingdom has been cast explicitly in terms of economic necessity and dependence on trade adds force to this argument and suggests the need for further historical research on other cases of institutional adaptation and change

relative wages under decentralized and corporatist bargaining systems in studying the relationship between wage inequality and centralization in collective bargaining we distinguish central from local systems of wage determination by assuming that a central union takes the employment effects of negotiated wages into account whereas unions disregard these effects in decentralized systems two different sources of wage differentials are studied separately i heterogeneous workers with different skills and ii heterogeneous firms with varying levels of economic rent per employee with respect to skill levels the impact of centralization is ambiguous whereas inter firm wage differentials are likely to be lower in corporatist systems

monetary policy and policy credibility theories and evidence within the past decade there has been a significant shift in attitude by many western industrialized countries toward the objectives and conduct of national economic policy the events of the 1970s accelerating inflation and stagnant economic growth motivated the view that inflation had created its own stubborn self sustaining momentum that either was not amendable to the influences of conventional macroeconomic policy or else would yield to such influences only at unacceptable costs this led to the development of a program aimed at reestablishing control over prices while minimizing any adverse consequences of anti inflationary policies on output and employment seen as a new monetary experiment the essential ingredients included prudent financial management abstinence from discretionary intervention commitment to intermediate targets and above all prior announcement of these policies evidence of this program and its effects can be found oni the continents of europe north america and latin america and provide further important lessons in anti inflationary management this paper is a survey of recent theoretical developments in monetary policy which among other issues attempt to explain one rationale for this program and the likely consequences thereof to the extent that the new program of monetary and fiscal reform was deliberately made public and impressed upon citizens as an overriding commitment of governments in advance of its execution reflects a prevailing opinion that economic policies are more effective if they are credible to private economic agents this view emphasized forcefully by william fellner 1976 1979 may be seen as being mainly due to the assimilation of the rational expectations hypothesis

the rise in unemployment a multi country study one of the most remarkable features of recent economic history has been the remorseless rise in unemployment throughout the industrialized countries however while the trend to higher unemployment is universal the experience of individual countries also differs widely the increase is especially marked within the european community where unemployment rates rival those reached in the interwar years by contrast in the scandinavian countries and japan unemployment is lower and has risen very much less experience in the united states lies somewhere between these extremes and in the last few years unemployment there has fallen sharply

long run market configurations in a dynamic quality ladder model with externalities abstract we study the impact of standard setting by introducing an externality that increases product compatibility in the presence of asymmetric returns to investment in a dynamic quality ladder type model we classify the long run multi modal probability distributions over different market structures that arise from this model in some cases the lagging firm may remain in the market in the long run depending on the strength of the externality in the case where only the laggard invests in compatibility it is possible that the laggard becomes a monopolist if the leader has a relatively low r d capability and the two firms are almost symmetric in this same regard this variety of multi modal long run distributions may have important consequences for the estimation and the simulation of this class of dynamic models

dynamics in research joint ventures and r d collaborations abstract we investigate the short and long term effects of different types of r d collaborations on firms consumers and the industry to that end we consider a differentiated product market in which firms compete a la bertrand and invest in process innovation in order to lower the production cost over time investments are stochastic and there can be cartelization or competition strategies among firms at the moment of making the decision on the amount to invest in r d our results show that in equilibrium the long run welfare is larger under a research joint venture than under other environments discounted present value profits increase with the level of the spillover but there are asymmetries that depend on the firms asymmetry on marginal costs

how strong is the macroeconomic case for downward real wage rigidity we explore the existence of downward real wage rigidity drwr at the industry level based on data from 19 oecd countries for the period 1973 1999 the results show that drwr compresses the distributions of industry wage changes overall as well as for specific geographical regions and time periods but there are not many real wage cuts that are prevented more important however drwr attenuates larger real wage cuts thus leading to higher real wages there is stronger evidence for downward nominal wage rigidity than for drwr real wage cuts are less prevalent in countries with strict employment protection legislation and high union density

long run determinant of korean economic growth empirical evidence from manufacturing this paper challenges the recent contrarian view that the phenomenal growth of east asian nics is fuelled mainly by the accumulation of production inputs not by tfp growth to appraise this view we investigated and re evaluated south korean manufacturing growth 1973 q1 1993 q4 using johansen s cointegrating analysis our results show that south korean manufacturing appears to have increasing returns to scale in production technology the learning by doing effect defined by lucas 1988 is empirically supported this effect appears to be observed as a long run determinant of south korean manufacturing growth consequently south korean manufacturing growth can be described by an endogenous economic growth model such as the lucas 1988 model contradicting the contrarian view

the east asia challenge to neoclassical orthodoxy abstract this article reviews the east asian miracle economic growth and public policy which concludes that east asian economic success has little to do with government using criteria similar to that used in the world bank report this study shows that contrary to world bank contention industrial policies used in east asian economies have been effective non neoclassical tools for economic development with government complementing market factors by creating an environment conducive to economic growth given that japan and korea are the most representative examples of industrial policies and that the report seems to acknowledge the success of the japanese industrial policies the present study confines itself largely to a discussion of korean evidence

information revelation and strategic delay in a model of investment we model investment as an n player game with a pure informational externality each player s payoff depends only on his own action and the state of nature however because a player s action reveals his private information players wait to see what other players will do equilibrium is inefficient because delay is costly and information is imperfectly revealed we characterize the unique symmetric perfect bayesian equilibrium and study the robustness of delay which turns out to be sensitive to the reaction speed and the number of players we establish the following results i when the period length is very short the game ends very quickly and there is a form of herding or informational cascade which results in a collapse of investment ii as the period length increases the possibility of herding disappears iii as the number of players increases the rate of investment and the information flow are eventually independent of the number of players adding more players simply increases the number who delay iv in the limit the time profile of investment is extreme a period of low investment followed either by an investment surge or a collapse

does amd spur intel to innovate more we estimate an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with durable goods and endogenous innovation to examine the effect of competition on innovation in the personal computer microprocessor industry firms make dynamic pricing and investment decisions while consumers make dynamic upgrade decisions anticipating product improvements and price declines consistent with schumpeter we find that the rate of innovation in product quality would be 4 2 percent higher without amd present though higher prices would reduce consumer surplus by 12 billion per year comparative statics illustrate the role of product durability and provide implications of the model for other industries

politics and business cycles in industrial democracies politics alberto alesina influences from political competition on macroeconomic policy are often thought to be a source of economic fluctuations politicians are described as being driven by two not mutually exclusive main motivations they want to be reelected and they harbour political or ideological biases when such theories are confronted with actual cycles in a number of industrial countries the pattern of inflation unemployment output and budget deficits indicates that partisan policy making is a fairly widespread phenomenon with more limited evidence that electoral preoccupations result in major fluctuations the combination of partisanship and electoral cycles may easily result in socially undesirable outcomes in particular the degree of politico institutional stability and the independence of the central bank have a bearing on macroeconomic outcomes these observations raise a number of important questions about the design of political institutions

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

interpretation and measurement of capacity utilization the case of korean manufacturing this paper focuses attention on the conceptual difference between optimal ex ante and actual ex post capacity untilization cu the dynamic version of the efficient output approach to capacity untilization which this paper presents is theoretically superior to other alternative approaches our concept of optimal cu has been applied to estimate cu measures for korean manufacturing we fing that our measure of cu explains the trends and cycles in korean economy rather convincingly and that korean manufacturing has adjusted much more flexibly to market demand shocks than it has to exogenous changes in factor prices from the examination of the determinants of cu we find that while wages and material prices have positive effects on cu energy prices and capital stock have nagative effects the study also implies that overambitious government incentive policies to stimulate investment may have an adverse effect on capacity utilization

aggregation and imperfect competition on the existence of equilibrium we present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products the central result provides general conditions under which there exists a pure strategy price equilibrium for any number of firms producing any set of products this includes products with multi dimen sional attributes in addition to the proof of existence we provide conditions for uniqueness our analysis covers location models the characteristics approach and probabilistic choice together in a unified framework to prove existence we employ aggregation theorems due to prekopa 1971 and borell 1975 our companion paper caplin and nalebuff 1991 introduces these theorems and develops the application to super majority voting rules we present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products the central result is that there exists a pure strategy price equilibrium for any number of firms producing any set of products in addition to the proof of existence we provide conditions for uniqueness our model both unites diverse strands of the earlier literature and opens up uncharted areas for future analysis in particular we expand the traditional one dimensional framework to allow for multi dimen sional product differentiation our approach involves twin restrictions on consumer preferences one on individuals preferences the other on the distribution of preferences across society these are generalizations of the restrictions supporting 64 majority rule presented in caplin and nalebuff 1988 to prove existence we apply a new technique of aggregation this technique is valuable in a variety of other problems in the companion paper we use the aggregation result to generalize our earlier work on 64 majority rule and to characterize the relationship between the distribution of human capital and the distribution of income caplin and nalebuff 1991 there are additional applications in statistics and in search theory we begin with a brief review of the early literature on imperfect competition describing in more detail the existence problem and previous solutions section 3 presents our twin assumptions and shows that they cover many standard cases in section 4 we introduce the aggregation theorem and use it in the analysis of demand functions the proof of existence of equilibrium is in section

the implications of institutional design for macroeconomic performance reassessing the claims of consensus democracy the choice between a proportional representation pr or plurality based electoral system is commonly assumed to involve a trade off the former is assumed to provide fairer representation but at a

convergence of south korean productivity on west german levels 1966 1978 abstract south korean labor productivity in manufacturing converged rapidly on the productivity level in west german manufacturing during the period 1966 1978 achieving two thirds of the german level by 1978 this convergence was more rapid at the industry level than for all manufacturing the capital labor ratio and total factor productivity in south korean manufacturing also converged on west german levels during this period with the former accounting for two thirds and the latter one third of the labor productivity convergence the source of labor productivity convergence however differed greatly across industries with capital deepening the dominant source in heavy industries and total factor productivity tfp convergence the main source in light industries

capacity dynamics and endogenous asymmetries in firm size empirical evidence suggests that there are substantial and persistent differences in the sizes of firms in most industries we propose a dynamic model of capacity accumulation that is consistent with the observed facts the model highlights the mode of product market competition and the extent of investment reversibility as key determinants of the size distribution of firms in an industry in particular if firms compete in prices and the rate of depreciation is large then the industry moves toward an outcome with one dominant firm and one small firm industry dynamics in this case resemble a preemption race contrary to the usual intuition this preemption race becomes more brutal as investment becomes more reversible

factor shares and inequality in the uk trends in factor shares in both national and household income are estimated from the national accounts and compared to those derived from the fes household survey in order to obtain more reliable measures of the contribution of changes in factor shares to the contemporary growth in income inequality the national accounts indicate that upward trends in the shares of investment related and self employment incomes have contributed directly to the rise in inequality during the past 20 years though to a generally secondary extent until 1986 at least the paper outlines the importance and the difficulty of including appropriate measures of capital gains and private benefit income in estimates of household investment related income whether the national accounts or household surveys are used for evidence indicating the continuing value of national income shares as a guide to the longer run implications of factor shares for inequality copyright 1996 by oxford university press

central bank independence and inflation corporatism partisanship and alternative indices of central bank independence a well developed theoretical literature suggests that central bank independence causes low inflation empirical work supporting this hypothesis is unsatisfactory however for two reasons statistical analysis has only recently begun to include control variables and important political variables that are related to inflation have not yet been included analysis has not yet undertaken a systematic comparison of alternative indices of central bank independence this paper addresses both weaknesses by testing the explanatory power of eight indices of central bank independence in a political economic model of inflation the results suggest that while support for the central bank independence hypothesis survives a relatively inclusive set of control variables support for the hypothesis is not independent of the particular index upon which analysis relies