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

constrained pareto optimal taxation of labour and capital incomes abstract with the pareto principle as the sole normative criterion necessary conditions for optimal tax rates on labour and capital incomes are established in an overlapping generations model the individuals in the economy have differing earning abilities and their labour supply is endogenous the analysis focuses on intragenerational aspects and is restricted to linear taxation in steady state

capital accumulation and the characteristics of private intergenerational transfers many recent studies of the process of family accumulation in general and household response to social security in particular have revealed growing dissatisfaction with the life cycle theory of saving see for example barro 1978 kotlikoff 1979 darby 1979 kotlikoff and summers 1981 kurz 1981 blinder gordon and wise 1981 david and menchik 1982 leimer and lesnoy 1982 an alternative to the life cycle hypothesis is expressed by defining the preference of each family over its own consumption as well as the welfare of the generations that follow thus each family consists of an infinite chain of generations who have interdependent preferences and for this reason we shall call it the inter generational hypothesis it was recently used by barro 1974 1978 to attack the conclusions of the life cycle hypothesis our purpose in this paper is to start the long road of studying the structure of the private inter generational transfer system with the aim of providing additional tests of the two competing hypotheses

deficits and intergenerational welfare in open economies this paper deals with public debt in open economies extending diamond s overlapping generations model to a small open economy as well as an international equilibrium of two large economies it focuses on the intergenerational welfare redistributions caused by an increase in public debt triggered by a temporary government budget deficit and shows how these redistributions differ in open and closed economies the interplay between the deficits in the government budget and the current account is also analyzed it is shown how a single period with a government deficit can be followed by a sequence of periods with a deficit in the current account

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

dynamic tax incidence and intergenerationally neutral reform the paper proposes a basic definition of intergenerational neutrality in the overlapping generations model when agents have a pure life cycle motive of savings the derivation of intergenerationally neutral tax effects provides a redistribution free benchmark case that isolates the relative price effects of taxes and the deadweight losses associated with them the paper clarifies the intergenerational incidence which has to be determined simultaneously with the substitution effects of taxes on savings a tax reform example demonstrates how taxes with diverging intergenerational incidence may be combined to achieve intergenerational neutrality finally the paper extends the analysis of generational tax incidence to the case of a small open economy

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

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

tax effects versus budget effects on labor supply this paper analyzes the effects on labor supply of parallel changes in taxes and public spending of various types a number of important recent developments in the labor supply behavior of households are highlighted by such a study of various types of budget effects rather than isolated tax effects this comes out in particular when considering cross substitution effects on labor supply of changes in public spending on goods and services or of the subsidization of goods and services provided by private markets moreover the income effects of tax changes are often mitigated or possibly even removed by the income effects of the accompanying expenditure changes

resource distributions and market partitioning dutch daily newspapers 1968 to 1994 resource partitioning theory explains how in heavily concentrated populations specialist organizations arise and proliferate the theory also addresses the process of market concentration itself although far less attention has been devoted to the theoretical claims in this area in this analysis the theory is used to explain generalist concentration through the distribution of environmental market resources it is argued that the higher the homogeneity and concentration of relevant environmental resources the higher the concentration of large generalist organizations competing on the basis of scale using data on the dutch daily newspaper industry from 1968 to 1994 statistical analyses show that concentration among generalist national newspapers occurs more fully in province level markets where the readership base consists of relatively homogeneous sets of individuals in terms of age religion politics and education at the same time these concentrated markets prove to be fertile areas for the operation of specialist papers at least when resources are not fully homogenized the analysis thus provides a more complete model of the resource partitioning process among organizations in a population

an upper bound on optimal income taxes abstract the message of this paper is very simple a certain range of tax rates determined by supply and demand functions only can be disregarded in linear optimal taxation approaches before any interpersonal utility comparisons are made in particular no marginal tax rate above a certain level can be optimal with respect to pareto inclusive social orderings it is shown that is in general not larger than and sometimes strictly less than the minimal tax rate at which tax revenues are maximal conditions under which is the least upper bound are given and a comparison is made with tax rates obtained by the rawlsian maximin principle

welfare effects of alternative forms of public spending the paper analyzes welfare effects in a second best world of public spending of three different types transfer payments public consumption and public investment it is shown how these effects d

intergenerational aspects of public transfers borrowing and debt the paper analyzes intergeneration distributional effects of taxes transfer payments public borrowing and debt a two period life cucle model with overlapping generations is constructed the model has two specific features private wealth in both periods enter as arguments in the preference function and the individuals inelastically supply labor in both periods it turns out that some fiscal policy actions favor both of the currently lliving generations possibly at the expense of future generations while other actions generate conflicts between the currently living generations the analysis also shows that it makes considerable difference whether the burden of public spending debt and borrowing is defined in terms of wealth consumption and utility the different implications of foreign vs domestic debt are examined

output effects of government purchases the theoretical analysis focuses on the distinction between temporary and permanent movements in government purchases under plausible conditions the temporary case involves an output response that is positive less than one to one with the change in government purchases and larger than that generated by an equal sized but permanent shift in purchase the equilibrium real rate of return rise in the temporary case but changes little in the permanent one defense purchases are divided empirically into permanent and temporary components by considering the role of temporary wars no temporary shifts in nondefense purchases were isolated empirical results verify an expansionary output effect for temporary purchases that exceeds that of permanent purchases the results for some other expectational hypotheses are found to be generally supportive of the theory

a directional theory of issue voting from stokes s 1963 early critique on it has been clear to empirical researchers that the traditional spatial theory of elections is seriously flawed yet fully a quarter century later that theory remains the dominant paradigm for understanding mass elite linkage in politics we present an alternative spatial theory of elections that we argue has greater empirical verisimilitude based on the ideas of symbolic politics the directional theory assumes that most people have a diffuse preference for a certain direction of policy making and that people vary in the intensity with which they hold those preferences we test the two competing theories at the individual level with national election study data and find the directional theory more strongly supported than the traditional spatial theory we then develop the implications of the directional theory for candidate behavior and assess the predictions in light of evidence from the u s congress

economists and the welfare state abstract this paper constrasts the views of the welfare state of economists in the 1940s and 1950s with those of the current generation it is argued that economists as a profession in particular in the scandinavian countries have changed from being strong spokesmen for the welfare state to becoming much more critical the reasons for this are sought both in the expansion of the public sector in recent decades and in the development of economic theory in the areas of public finance insurance and incentives and public choice an attempt is made to evaluate the importance of the empirical and theoretical developments for the changing views of the welfare state

remaining puzzles and neglected issues in macroeconomics this paper analyses the chain of transmission mechanisms of economic policy actions to financial markets output and employment and finally unemployment in an attempt to identify remaining puzzles and neglected issues in macroeconomics the paper emphasizes the consequences of fiscal and monetary policy actions on real variables including real interest rates and real exchange rates an attempt is made to explain why product demand shocks often tend to have faster effects on output and employment than on prices the paper also discusses why demand induced increases in output and employment are not systematically connected with a reduction in the product wage rate the paper ends with a discussion of various supply side considerations in macroeconomics

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

on reforming the welfare system abstract using a simulation model for a small open economy quebec 1986 various negative income tax nit and workfare schemes are compared from the point of view of efficiency and equity the main finding is that there exist workfare schemes that are superior both to the quebec regime of 1986 and to a nit characterized by a 100 percent implicit tax rate however these workfare schemes are dominated by some nit programs this suggests that it may be necessary to have work requirements that vary across socio demographic classes for a workfare plan to be superior to any nit combining workfare with an nit could also be the prescription

labour supply tax evasion and the marginal cost of public funds an empirical investigation abstract in this paper we extend the concept of marginal cost of public funds itmcf to incorporate tax evasion in the labour market mcf values are also computed from various tax reforms applied to the province of quebec canada 1985 for this purpose a utility based labour supply model that allows for both regular and irregular work activities is used at the benchmark situation the mcf associated with an increase in marginal income tax rates ranges between 1 39 and 1 53 depending upon whether we consider rationing or not moreover the presence of the irregular sector accounts for between 0 02 and 0 05 of this mcf although small in magnitude the impact of the irregular sector increases rapidly with the level of marginal tax rates

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

progressive income taxes test of efficiency upper bounds on efficient tax rates in a progressive labor income tax schedule are derived within the standard framework of optimal taxation a tax rate is efficient if it is not pareto dominated by any other tax rate the formulas derived are applied to the swedish 1982 tax schedule inefficiency is revealed for the middle income groups copyright 1990 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

uncertainty and optimal social security systems this paper examines the annuity aspect of social security within the framework of an overlapping generations model the duration of life is assumed to be uncertain under a fully funded system demand for social security is determined by each generation so as to maximize expected lifetime utility taking into account the welfare of future generations under a pay as you go system with intergenerational transfers demand for retirement benefits by the working population takes into account taxes paid by descendants it is shown that the two modes of finance are equivalent in terms of all real aggregates effects of changes in expected lifetime and in the birth rate are analyzed starting at the optimal level a compulsory balanced increase in social security taxes and benefits is shown to increase short run savings

growth welfare and the size of government i introduction given the current state of political debate within the u s it would appear that making the claim a smaller government is a better government is just a mere statement of a simple fact president clinton the head of the political party which has traditionally supported a larger government has now proclaimed that the era of big government is over and has proposed fiscal programs to cut both taxes and the growth of government spending in a very real sense it has been economists who have been consensus makers on this issue numerous studies have been conducted recently estimating the growth and welfare costs of distortionary taxation 1 these studies have generally found that income and capital taxation have large welfare effects and also significant effects on growth however the potential benefits of the government purchases financed with distortionary taxes are very limited in these supply side models most often being simply ignored in these aforementioned studies government purchases do not directly provide utility to households and do not affect the productivity of firms as a result the optimal size of government in these models is zero which is a troubling property of any model being used to evaluate the effects of changes in fiscal policy in terms of cost benefit analysis by ignoring these effects previous studies have only considered the costs of a larger government but not the benefits 2 this paper develops an endogenous growth model of the u s economy in which government purchases directly affect both the utility of individuals through the provision of public consumption goods and services and the productivity of firms through the provision of public capital in a manner which is consistent with existing empirical work by aschauer 1985 1989 and munnell 1990a b among others by incorporating the full benefits of government purchases into our model the growth and welfare effects of a smaller government can be more realistically evaluated this paper proceeds as follows in section ii the endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation used in this study is described the competitive equilibrium of the model is described and calculated in section iii and the calibration of the parameters in the model is discussed in section iv in section v various fiscal policy experiments are conducted investigating the growth and welfare effects of government downsizing although this is a macroeconomic model and as such is too general to investigate the effects of specific government spending and taxation programs the results presented here do provide some broad fiscal policy guidelines 1 the effects of a smaller government depend as much on the mix of spending cuts as on the mix of tax cuts and government downsizing is not necessarily growth and welfare enhancing 2 while tax reductions by themselves can significantly increase growth and welfare simultaneous reductions in government spending and taxation are not likely to lead to large positive or negative changes in growth or welfare regardless of the exact form of the spending and tax cuts 3 reducing the size of government is less likely to increase growth and welfare if the reductions in public investment are large especially reductions in public investment which directly affect the accumulation of human capital 4 government downsizing is most likely to increase growth and welfare if the proceeds from spending cuts are used to finance reductions in capital tax rates 5 across the board spending cuts fail to maximize the potential growth and welfare benefits of government downsizing although downsizing is more likely to increase growth and welfare if the cuts pertain to all forms of government spending including transfer payments and not just government purchases ii description of the model the model developed here is similar to the well known two sector endogenous growth model used by rebelo 1991 and king and rebelo 1990 with endogenous labor supply

the population ecology of gucci gulch or the natural regulation of interest group numbers in the american states theory the theory of population ecology in contrast to economic theories of groups is used to predict the number of interest groups in the united states hypotheses interest group density is a function of potential constituents potential government goods and services the stability of the political system government age and government size methods regression analysis of u s state data for interest groups in construction agriculture manufacturing welfare the environment and local governments results interest group density conforms to the predictions based on population ecology constituents government goods and services and political stability but not those based on economic theories of group mobilization

policy positions issue importance and party competition in new democracies this article examines the dynamics of vote redistribution after new party entry in the context of east european democracies contrary to the dominant institutional and sociological approaches the author focuses on the strategic policy choices of the new contestants the author argues that a new party s choice about where to place itself in relation to existing parties and which issues to emphasize can determine its electoral success or failure aggregate and individual level analyses confirm this argument the findings underline the importance of policy based party competition in the region as a broader theoretical contribution the study underscores the relevance of issue importance and not just party issue positions in political competition

predicting the number of parties a quantitative model of duverger s mechanical effect iby means of a quantitative model the model predicts the range within which the effective number of parties in a district should fall for a given magnitude number of seats of the district at the national level a related model predicts the effective number of parties based on the effective magnitude and the number of seats in the national assembly the institutional variables considered magnitude and assembly size define a great portion of the structural constraints within which a given country s politics must take place the model developed provides a good fit to data in spite of its having been developed from outrageously simple starting assumptions tf one had to give a single number to characterize the politics of any country that employs competitive elections it would be the number of parties active in its national assembly this number would not tell the whole story by any means but it tells us more than any other single number or term could the number of parties directly or indirectly affects other important aspects of how a political system functions including how long its cabinets last if the system is parliamentary lijphart 1984 and how elections translate into citizen control of policymakers powell 1989 the number of parties is a most important feature in a country s politics and therefore in comparative studies also we shall discuss the ways of defining this number operationally further on what determines the number of parties history present issues and institutions all intervene but if one had to give a single major factor it would have to be the district magnitude m that is the number of seats allocated in an electoral district rae 1967 the well known duverger rule says that one seat districts tend to lead to two party systems while multiseat districts tend to go with multiparty systems duverger 1951 1954 see also riker 1982 one can be more precise since even within the multiseat category a larger m tends to go with a larger number of parties but before we can attempt to define a relationship between district magnitude and the number of parties we need to establish a means to measure the number of parties

dynamic hours of work functions for husbands wives and single females hours of work equations are derived from the constrained maximization of a utility function that is not separable over time and that varies with a household s demographic structure these equations are fitted to observations on wage rates nonlabor income and other variables for husbands wives and unmarried women the dependence of each household s current work and consumption behavior upon its work and consumption behavior in the past is examined closely and different interpretations of the relationship are confronted with the data

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

lifetime and annual marginal costs of redistribution in england sweden and the united states both the annual and lifetime marginal costs of redistribution in england sweden and the united states are calculated the annual marginal cost of redistribution is 2 90 in the united states 3 53 in england and 6 77 in sweden the lifetime marginal cost of redistribution is 4 46 in the united states and 7 96 in england the lifetime marginal cost of redistribution in sweden indicates that additional redistribution reduces the incomes of both the poor and nonpoor this study also shows that when there is greater income equality the marginal tax rate at which the incomes of the poor and nonpoor begin to be reduced will be at lower and lower levels copyright 1993 by mit press

optimal dynamic carbon taxes in a climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy how should carbon be taxed as a part of fiscal policy the literature on optimal carbon pricing often abstracts from other taxes however when governments raise revenues with distortionary taxes carbon levies have fiscal impacts while they raise revenues directly they may shrink the bases of other taxes e g by decreasing employment this article theoretically characterizes and then quantifies optimal carbon taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy first this article establishes a novel theoretical relationship between the optimal taxation of carbon and of capital income this link arises because carbon emissions destroy natural capital they accumulate in the atmosphere and decrease future output consequently this article shows how the standard logic against capital income taxes extends to distortions on environmental capital investments second this article characterizes optimal climate policy in sub optimal fiscal settings where income taxes are constrained to remain at their observed levels third this article presents a detailed calibration that builds on the seminal dice approach but adds features essential for a setting with distortionary taxes such as a differentiation between climate change production impacts e g on agriculture and direct utility impacts e g on biodiversity existence value the central quantitative finding is that optimal carbon tax schedules are 8 24 lower when there are distortionary taxes compared to the setting with lump sum taxes considered in the literature

steady state solutions of optimal tax mixes in an overlapping generations model abstract this paper analyzes steady state solutions of optimal tax mixes in an overlapping generations model of heterogeneous individuals with a utilitarian social welfare function a test with cobb douglas utility functions shows that an uneven distribution of the innate abilities leads to high rates of consumption and wage income taxes and a high level of a lump sum transfer the more the labor force works the higher the optimal tax on wage income significant differences in individual preferences lead to low rates of consumption and wage income taxes and to a high rate of interest income tax with identical preferences the rate of interest income tax is zero

centripetal and centrifugal incentives in electoral systems this paper investigates how electoral laws affect the position taking incentives of parties and candidates it seeks to extend the finding presented in the classical median voter theorem to a wide class of electoral systems or to show the limits of such extension the factors examined are the district magnitude the electoral formula the number of votes each voter is allowed to cast whether voters can cumulate their votes and whether voters can partially abstain i suggest a crude division of electoral systems into those producing predominantly centripetal incentives and those producing predominantly centrifugal incentives among the factors found to produce centripetal incentives at least in noncumulative systems are the following increases in the number of votes per voter outlawry of partial abstention and decreases in the district magnitude in systems allowing the cumulation of votes matters are a bit different

tax revenue and the marginal cost of public funds in sweden abstract we assess the welfare cost of raising a marginal unit of tax revenue in a balanced budget general equilibrium framework the calculated social cost of an increment of public funds is sensitive to both the specific type of tax increase and the type of public spending used on the margin best guess assumptions on labor supply elasticities yield marginal costs of public funds for different fiscal mixes of between 0 67 and 4 51 at prevailing tax rates in sweden alternative labor supply assumptions well within the range of current estimates substantially affect the results and can imply infinite marginal welfare costs marginal welfare costs are also sensitive to assumptions about both the income and substitution effects of labor supply

stability and coordination in duverger s law a formal model of preelection polls and strategic voting this paper investigates the dynamics of the wasted vote phenomenon and duverger s law i construct a theoretical model in order to consider how preelection polls serve to inform the electorate about the relative chances of the candidates and how that information acts over time to decrease the support of the trailing candidate the results shed light on how public opinion polls can aggregate information in the electorate and coordinate voters on the viable candidates in the election specifically i show that in a bayesian game model of strategic voting there exist non duvergerian equilibria in which all three candidates receive votes in the limit these equilibria require extreme coordination however and any variation in beliefs leads voters away from them to one of the duvergerian equilibria thus non duvergerian equilibria are unstable while two party equilibria are not in addition i describe how preelection polls provide information to voters about the viability of candidates and can thus be used by voters to coordinate on a duvergerian outcome

the welfare cost of capital income taxation in a growing economy the welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed in a general equilibrium framework where the private sector is represented by a competitive household endowed with perfect foresight and an infinite life the value of the welfare cost depends essentially on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the production function numerical estimates are presented for different values of the parameters of the model the welfare gain obtained by the abolition of the capital income tax is smaller when the private sector is not endowed with perfect foresight it is reduced by about 40 percent when expectations are myopic the allocation efficiency cost of the corporate tax dwarfs the intertemporal welfare cost

unpacking logm toward a more general theory of party system density the standard model of political party system density combines two traditions to explain why some countries have more political parties than others one tradition that emphasizes social cleavages and another that emphasizes electoral institutions especially district magnitude despite its considerable success there are several reasons to be less than fully satisfied with the standard model we examine two of these problems associated with the scope of strategic voting and the functional form of the specification used to test the model in doing so we contrast the standard interpretation with an organizational ecology model that accounts for what the standard model did so well but also accounts for important anomalies it ignores we reexamine some of the key analyses that have been used to test the standard model to assess the severity of its limitations and the utility of the rival organizational ecology account

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

reducing co2 emissions under fiscal retrenchment a multi cohort cge model for austria the stabilization of budget deficit and budget debt ratios by fiscal retrenchment in order to fulfill the maastricht criteria for the emu is of central focus in most eu countries at the same time the national policy dimension of acute environmental problems such as global warming has receded in the public eye the environmental dimension nonetheless remains urgent and a re evaluation of the prospects of co2 policy is needed against the background of fiscal retrenchment required by supranational obligations we shall do this for the small open austrian economy by constructing a dynamic multi cohort cge model enabling us to assess quantitatively the lifetime welfare impacts on the cohorts affected by three different options for using co2 permit revenues the distribution of welfare costs of toronto co2 policy across cohorts significantly differs with use this is explained by income inheritance and price effects

current account effects of a temporary change in government expenditure a perfect foresight model of intertemporal utility maximization is used to analyze the current account effects of a temporary increase in government spending the relationship between the marginal utility of private consumption and the supply of public goods in the economy is shown to play a crucial role in determining the qualitative nature of the optimal current account response the link between the timing of the policy change and the magnitude of the current account effect is also examined

strategic politicians and unresponsive voters t0 resolve the paradoxical finding that economic conditions and presidential popularity powerfully relate to quadrennial movement in the house vote but explain little individual voting variation jacobson and kernell have advanced their strategic politicians model of midterm elections purportedly the early year political environment helps determine how many of a party s strong potential contenders risk challenging incumbents voters in turn respond to the quality of candidates before them in november and thus indirectly reward the party favored by this early year environment despite its current prominence however the theory does not stand up to empirical investigation a time series equation of midterm outcomes regressed on early year national conditions does not fare particularly well when contrasted with comparable equations assuming direct effects voting furthermore challenger quality has only a weak influence on individual voters subordinate in fact to the effects of economic attitudes and presidential evaluations

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