an assessment of labour s record on income inequality and poverty we document the evolution of average incomes poverty and inequality over the period of labour government from 1997 to 2010 comparing these trends with those seen over other periods in recent history we also relate these changes to labour s stated distributional objectives which we argue were clear in relation to the bottom of the income distribution and absolutely explicit in relation to child poverty but much less clear in relation to inequality more generally it is thus perhaps no surprise that we observe substantial falls in child and pensioner poverty alongside increases in overall income inequality with the latter largely driven by growth in top incomes we also use micro simulation techniques to demonstrate the crucial importance of direct tax and benefit reforms in driving the changes observed over this period copyright 2013 oxford university press

regional earnings differences in great britain evidence from the new earnings survey hemmings p j 1991 regional earnings differences in great britain evidence from the new earnings survey reg studies 25 123 133 previous analysis comparing earnings between regions of great britain has concentrated upon the earnings of male employees using a large micro data base this paper takes a broader approach by examining earnings differences for female and part time employees as well as male employees human capital models are used to explain the variation in earnings in terms of characteristic differences and reward effects a restricted model with no regional element is tested against more general models which allow for regional variation in the constant term only and in both the constant and coefficients of the equations the most general model indicates that equations for the earnings of males display greater regional heterogeneity than those for females whilst the south east of england is the most distinctive region in terms of employee characteristics and in the returns to those e

user cost changes unemployment and home ownership evidence from spain this paper develops a macroeconomic model that permits analysis of the relationship between unemployment and home ownership rates using aggregate data at the provincial level within spain besides other influential variables such as the changes of the relative user costs of owning and renting or household life cycle attributes the model constructed permits the authors to question the evidence of oswald nickell and layard and partially of green and hendershott that home ownership leads to higher unemployment the results point out that taking into account the simultaneity determination issue and reducing the omitted variable bias a higher unemployment discourages home ownership

the impact of the national minimum wage on the pay distribution employment and training britain s first ever national minimum wage nmw came into force in april 1999 covering some 5 of workers between 1999 and 2002 the nmw rose in line with the growth in average earnings but for 2003 6 the nmw will be ratcheted up relative to median pay the evidence shows that between 1998 and 2002 the bottom decile of the pay distribution experienced above average pay rises with no spillover effects further up the distribution there was no overall employment effect but a small negative impact in the care home sector the nmw boosts the probability and intensity of training

smuggling and price disparity abstract this paper proposes a model of smuggling consistent with the coexistence of smuggling legal trade and price disparity defined as a domestic price which exceeds is less than the return from legal export import these phenomena have been found to characterize indonesian smuggling a framework is presented in which legal trade is used to cloak smuggling activity with the implication that the greater the volume of legal trade the less the costs of smuggling this model is then used to explain the observation noted above and to show that smuggling may be welfare increasing vis a vis the non smuggling situation and that even if the suppression of smuggling is costless tax revenue maximization may require a positive level of smuggling in addition the model is applied to coffee and rubber exports from indonesia

rationing by waiting and the value of time results from a natural experiment the authors analyze data from a natural experiment with rationing by waiting in the situation motorists were confronted with a choice between waiting in line for low priced gasoline or purchasing at a higher price without waiting they view this as a revealed preference experiment and use their choices to estimate the value of time spent waiting as a function of individual characteristics in most cases the estimates of the value of time are quite similar to individuals after tax wages 13 references 7 tables

value line rank and firm size this paper studies the relation between value line s successful record in predicting relative stock price movements and the firm size effect the data suggest little direct relation between the two phen omena value line tends not to rank small firm stocks and small firm stocks that are ranked are more likely to receive a low rank than la rge firm stocks within each size sorted quintile of the market the mean payoffs on costless positions constructed according to value lin e s recommendations are positive copyright 1987 by the university of chicago

property taxation and the economy after the barker review this paper analyses the roles of property and land values in the uk economy and considers property tax reform with the objectives of improving macro economic stability resource allocation economic inequality and the environment with uk house prices at all time peaks relative to incomes concerns about affordability and the distributional consequences have increased the barker review for the uk treasury of new housing supply reported in 2004 and recommended extensive reforms of the land use planning system as well as various other reforms including new development taxes this paper argues that these taxes are unwise compared to the property tax reforms proposed here

credit policy inflation and growth in a financially repressed economy this report analyzes credit policy in an open economy macro model incorporating stylized facts about the financial sector of ldc s absence of security markets existence of a curbmarket these facts are incorporated in the financial sector part of a keynes wicksell growth model it focuses on a transmission channel of monetary policy into the supply side of the economy via the cost of working capital it shows that ignoring this effect when analysing restrictive credit policy leads to underestimates of inflation and overestimation of output and current account improvements it is shown that a credit crunch can be stagflationary in the short run a cut in the real stock of credit is shown to lead to a lower steady state capital stock

reconciling the wage curve and the phillips curve the wage curve is the negative relationship that links wage levels to the unemployment rate it fits accurately with modern non competitive labour market models but goes against a phillips curve modelling because the latter ties wage growth to the unemployment rate in this article we present a comprehensive review of these non competitive models highlighting recent contributions that try to eliminate the possible gap that exists between the concepts of the wage curve on the one hand and the phillips curve on the other copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

booms and busts in the uk housing market the often volatile behaviour of uk house prices between 1957 and 1994 is analysed in an annual econometric model theory suggests that financial liberalisation of mortgage markets in the 1980s should have led to notable shifts in house price behaviour the evidence supports the predictions of theory suggesting shifts took place in wealth effects as in the consumption function and that real interest rates and income expectations became more important the presence of transactions costs suggests important nonlinearities in house price dynamics the paper also contains an explicit econometric treatment of expectations demography supply spillovers from the rented sector and of composition biases in the official house price index

informal credit markets in india informal financial markets those which are not regulated or monitored by the banking authorities account for much of business credit in developing countries these unregulated informal credit markets icm are important both in their own right as part of each country s financial system and because of their reciprocal relations with growing enterprises and the regulated financial sector in order to study the operations of some of these markets in detail in urban commercial settings we conducted an extended survey of some of the informal credit markets of india 2 based in some cases on centuries of operation these markets proved to be important in the functioning of the contemporary economy indigenous style bankers belonging to particular ethnic communities and castes formerly provided the full range of banking services to their clients 3 with the rise of modern western style banking the indigenous bankers either have transformed themselves to serve sectors such as wholesale trade not well served by the modern sector or provide services which the modern bankers cannot provide though any estimate is very approximate it seems that informal credit markets account for as much as 20 of commercial credit outstanding in the various markets surveyed we began by surveying the gujeratis some of whom still practice their traditional form of full service banking in their homeland of gujerat and adjoining bombay the shikarpuris or multanis originally full service bankers in sind who now provide commercial credit in various other centers the chettiars in south india the rastogis in uttar pradesh and the marwaris especially in eastern india 4 but our surveys revealed that a wide range of ethnic groups were now involved in informal credit markets and the more meaningful differentiations

the effect of value line investment survey rank changes on common stock prices abstract the information content of value line investment survey rank changes is investigated the results suggest rank changes affect common stock prices but the effect varies by the type of rank change changes from rank 2 to rank 1 have the most dramatic impact on prices a cross sectional analysis finds small firms have a greater reaction to a rank change than larger firms which supports theories on the frequency of report arrival and precision of information a speed of adjustment test concludes the prices of individual securities adjust to the information in a rank change over a multiple day period

using regional variation in wages to measure the effects of the federal minimum wage the imposition of a national minimum wage standard provides a natural experiment in which the treatment effect varies across states depending on the fraction of workers initially earning less than the new minimum the author exploits this fact to evaluate the effect of the april 1990 increase in the federal minimum wage on teenagers wages employment and school enrollment comparisons of grouped and individual state data confirm that the rise in the minimum wage increased teenagers wages there is no evidence of corresponding losses in teenage employment or changes in teenage school enrollment

risk return and equilibrium a revisit this paper reports the results of tests of the major implications of the two parameter capital asset pricing model the findings indicate that the relationship between stock returns and systematic risk contains important nonlinearities during 1935 82 these nonlinearities cannot be ascribed to previously documented anomalies related to firm size or january seasonality moreover the test results appear to be sensitive to the choice of the proxy for the market portfolio

why u s wage and employment behavior differs from that in britain and japan if a poll were to be conducted among american academic economists to select the most mystifying economic phenomenon of our time surely the sticky nominal wage rate would emerge at or near the top of the list the slow and partial response of the nominal wage rate to changes in aggregate nominal spending has been a central postulate of macroeconomic theory for the past 45 years from keynes general theory down to the standard postwar textbook keynesian paradigm to the more modern fixed wage price models of robert barro and herschel grossman i976 and edmond malinvaud i977 unwilling passively to accept nominal wage rigidity as an unexplained assumption many labour market theorists have followed the lead of costas azariadis i975 and martin baily i974 in building models to explain rigid wages and layoff unemployment as the rational outcome of a profit maximising calculus as i pointed out in an early critique of the azariadis baily model i976a their assumptions cannot explain cycles in employment but rather why workers would want fixed incomes i e a fixed wage rate and fixed employment soon thereafter barro i977 went one step further and argued that contract theory is a facade which cannot explain why workers would choose a rigid wage and variable employment in preference to the classical equilibrium quantity of employment that equates the marginal product of labour with the marginal value of time now an examination of the evidence has led me to the realisation that rigid wages cannot provide the underpinnings for a universally valid theory of the business cycle simply because wages are not universally rigid i document below with postwar quarterly data that the share of fluctuations in the manufacturing wage bill taking the form of nominal wage changes as compared to changes in hours worked is five to ten times greater in britain and japan than in

public service employment and the public private wage differential in british regions successive forms of regional policy in the uk have sought to support the maintenance and creation of public sector employment opportunities in relatively disadvantaged regions nationally negotiated public sector pay rates mean that the private public pay gap is likely to be wider in lower demand regions this will be reinforced by the relative absence of private sector employment crowding out in such higher unemployment regions this paper investigates the association between private and public sector service employment using panel data for british regions and estimates regional public private wage differentials using british household panel survey data for 1991 to 1996 across britain private sector employment growth is weakly positively associated with higher public service employment growth but the association is stronger in scotland and the north of england the pattern of regional wage differentials found is consistent with lower crowding out in higher unemployment regions this suggests that reg

an introduction to the wage curve en conomists and policymakers are interested in understanding the forces that determine the level of unemployment and the level of wages this paper describes an empirical discovery made with the help of international microeconometric evidence covering more than a dozen nations about a link between these two variables the connection can be portrayed on a graph with the level of unemployment on the horizontal axis and the level of wages on the vertical axis then the wage curve as shown in figure 1 is a downwardsloping locus this relationship tells us that holding others things constant if a region has a rise in unemployment in a particular year those who live there will have a fall in their wages in that year what does this curve mean how in a field where fully controlled experiments are almost impossible could there be any convincing scientific basis for this wage curve what is the relationship between the wage curve and a phillips curve other than that the curve of figure 1 looks like a phillips curve with the vertical axis mislabeled how does the wage curve fit into existing economic knowledge and is the empirical finding consistent with competitive theory this paper sketches answers to these kinds of questions the discussion draws on our book the wage curve blanchflower and oswald 1994 where the points raised here are investigated more fully it also rests upon work done by other economists whose work is listed in the paper and the bibliography

minimum wage impacts on han minority workers wage distribution and inequality in urban china abstract this paper examines the distributional impacts of the minimum wage on the urban wages of han minority workers and the implications for urban inequality county level minimum wage data is combined with recent proprietary household survey data representative of china s ethnically diverse areas the identification strategy relies on an unconditional quantile regression framework that takes into account policy endogeneity using an instrument variable approach the findings show that minimum wages lead to wage compression along the bottom and middle parts of the urban wage distribution the minimum wage effects are larger for lower skilled workers located in ethnic minority counties or that belong to an ethnic minority group counterfactual analysis further shows that minimum wages help to significantly reduce aggregate urban wage inequality increasing minimum wages from a counterfactual benchmark to their observed levels an average increase of 26 reduces the gini coefficient of wages by 10 12

gender inequalities in regional development perrons d 1995 gender inequalities in regional development reg studies 29 465 476 gender inequality is a universal phenomenon but there are cross national and regional variations in its extent different degrees of gender inequality in employment in the european union are identified and explained in terms of a synthesis of ideas drawn from the literature on welfare regimes and regulation theory the structure and degree of involvement of women in paid employment also varies within and between regions and these regional variations in gender inequality require further explanation a number of approaches drawing on historical explanations gender contracts and forms and degrees of patriarchy are examined although these approaches reject the idea of economic determinism the evolution of the regional economic structures especially in relation to gender inequality in employment seems to play an important role recently there has been a widening of regional inequalities in the uk associated with the dev

comparing the new earnings survey nes and the labour force survey lfs an analysis of the differences between the data sets and their implications for the pattern of geographical pay in the uk ma a roberts e elliott r f bell d and scott a 2006 comparing the new earnings survey nes and the labour force survey lfs an analysis of the differences between the data sets and their implications for the pattern of geographical pay in the uk regional studies 40 645 665 the labour force survey lfs and the new earnings survey nes are the most widely used data sets for analysing pay in britain the paper details the key differences between the two and assesses the impact of their use for studying geographical wage differences the pattern observed is sensitive to the differences in data sets to differences in the sample populations the questions asked about pay and working hours and how hourly pay is measured recommendations are made on which data set should be used for what purposes as well as comments on the expected improvements that will result from the introduction of the annual survey of hours and earnings ashe ma a roberts e elliott r f bell d et scott a 2006

an intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices this paper develops a continuous time general equilibrium model of a simple but complete economy and uses it to examine the behavior of asset prices in this model asset prices and their stochastic properties are determined endogenously one principal result is a partial differential equation which asset prices must satisfy the solution of this equation gives the equilibrium price of any asset in terms of the underlying real variables in the economy in this paper we develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model for use in applied research an important feature of the model is its integration of real and financial markets among other things the model endogenously determines the stochastic process followed by the equilibrium price of any financial asset and shows how this process depends on the underlying real variables the model is fully consistent with rational expectations and maximizing behavior on the part of all agents our framework is general enough to include many of the fundamental forces affecting asset markets yet it is tractable enough to be specialized easily to produce specific testable results furthermore the model can be extended in a number of straightforward ways consequently it is well suited to a wide variety of applications for example in a companion paper cox ingersoll and ross 7 we use the model to develop a theory of the term structure of interest rates many studies have been concerned with various aspects of asset pricing under uncertainty the most relevant to our work are the important papers on intertemporal asset pricing by merton 19 and lucas 16 working in a continuous time framework merton derives a relationship among the equilibrium expected rates of return on assets he shows that when investment opportunities are changing randomly over time this relationship will include effects which have no analogue in a static one period model lucas considers an economy with homogeneous individuals and a single consumption good which is produced by a number of processes the random output of these processes is exogenously determined and perishable assets are defined as claims to all or a part of the output of a process and the equilibrium determines the asset prices our theory draws on some elements of both of these papers like merton we formulate our model in continuous time and make full use of the analytical tractability that this affords the economic structure of our model is somewhat similar to that of lucas however we include both endogenous production and

parallel rice markets policy lessons from northern senegal abstract cereals policy reform in africa is often cast in terms of a choice between public sector and private sector solutions recent evidence from northern senegal including the first empirical data collected on parallel channel rice marketing activities suggests that excessive reliance on either the state or the private sector is likely to result in unsatisfactory performance despite the claims of government authorities to the contrary the performance of parallel channel marketing agents in the senegal river valley compares favourably with that of the state grain marketing organizations however profitmotivated private traders are unlikely to meet all national food policy objectives implying a continuing role for government participation in marketing activities

the value line enigma extended an examination of the performance of option recommendations the authors extend the research on the value line enigma by examining the performance of call recommendations in value line options d galai s hedge decomposition procedure identifies the components of the calls returns abnormal call returns were most pronounced immediately following the purchase which is consistent with studies of value line s stock rankings the largest and most significant abnormal performance was by calls assigned the highest rank written on stocks judged by value line to be correctly priced abnormal call return performance by joint call and stock ranks was consistent with hypothesis that value line identifies underpriced call options copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

unemployment in britain male unemployment in britain has risen from around 2 per cent in the 1950s to around 17 per cent in 1985 see figure 1 the figures are for male unemployment because there is no consistent series for women 1 even more remarkably unemployment has fallen in only three years out of the last twenty 1973 1978 and 1979 to account for this we need a model that explains both changes in the natural or non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment nairu and deviations from it we use a three equation supply side model centred on the labour market this has two main features the first concerns the determination of employment in the short run the labour demand function that we use cuts through the fruitless debate now raging especially in europe as to whether current unemployment is classical or keynesian according to the classical view employment is too high because real wages are too high according to the keynesian view real wages are not binding and unemployment is high because the product market does not clear with prices too high relative to nominal demand the whole debate is set in the framework of perfect competition yet in perfect competition prices are set by impersonal forces and it is not clear what could possibly stop prices clearing the market it is much more reasonable to think of prices as being set by imperfectly competitive firms existing prices being the best they can think of given the demand they face in this context firms demand for labour will depend on both the real product wage and the level of real aggregate demand this is the demand function we estimate and it conforms both to common sense and to the data however this does not imply that employment can be made to grow without limit by pumping up real demand for in the medium term when price surprises are eliminated our model determines three variables employment real wages and real demand on the basis of three equations an employment equation a price equation and a wage equation thus in the medium term there is a natural level of employment and corresponding to this a natural level of real aggregate demand the second key feature of our model concerns the medium term determination of unemployment in the medium term the planned mark up of wages over prices in wage settlements must be consistent with the mark up of prices over wage costs in employers pricing behaviour for if wage setters try to set real product wages higher than is consistent with employers pricing behaviour this generates ever increasing inflation thus the key to understanding unemployment in the medium term is the behaviour of wage setters if events occur that push them towards too high real wages then unemployment has to rise to offset these influences we shall call these influences wage pressure variables or push factors and they are clearly crucial in understanding unemployment the variables here include the social security system employment protection

the informative role of the value line investment survey evidence from stock highlights i examine abnormal stock returns associated with stock highlights published by the value line investment survey at the time of their publication stock highlights elicit strong positive abnormal returns they also have positive abnormal returns at the time of the earnings announcement preceding stock highlight publications post earnings announcement drift is present but is much too small to explain abnormal returns at the time of the publication of stock highlights thus value line stock highlights provide useful information to investors this information is rapidly reflected in stock prices consistent with market efficiency

earnings surprise research synthesis and perspectives an investigation of the relation between earnings surprise and three empirical anomalies the p e effect the size effect and the value line enigma indicates that the standardized unexpected earnings sue effect appears to be separate and distinct from each of the three the relations between the sue phenomenon and firm risk the appropriateness of the earnings expectations model and the role of transaction costs are also investigated the sue phenomenon is not attributable to inappropriate risk adjustment use of the wrong earnings expectations model or ignoring transaction costs the sue effect may be partly explained by analysts behavior and is both predictable and profitable the sue effect has also been observed in japan

overtime pay overtime hours and labor unions this article analyzes the effect of labor unions on overtime compensation and overtime hours estimates from may 1985 current population survey data indicate that unionization increases the prevalence of premium pay for overtime and reduces the incidence and extent of overtime hours along with the finding of previous research that unionized workers are more susceptible to temporary layoffs these results are consistent with a model in which unions use overtime pay to stabilize working hours and expand membership

is infrastructure capital productive a dynamic heterogeneous approach this paper offers an empirical evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure drawing from a large data set on infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960 2000 and using a panel time series approach the paper estimates a long run aggregate production function relating gdp to human capital physical capital and a synthetic measure of infrastructure given by the first principal component of infrastructure endowments in transport power and telecommunications tests of the cointegration rank allowing it to vary across countries reveal a common rank with a single cointegrating vector which is taken to represent the long run production function estimation of its parameters is performed using the pooled mean group estimator which allows for unrestricted short run parameter heterogeneity across countries while imposing the testable restriction of long run parameter homogeneity the long run elasticity of output with respect to the synthetic infrastructure index ranges between 0 07 and 0 10 the estimates are highly significant both statistically and economically and robust to alternative dynamic specifications and infrastructure measures there is little evidence of long run parameter heterogeneity across countries whether heterogeneity is unconditional or conditional on their level of development population size or infrastructure endowments

misspecification of capital asset pricing this study documents empirical anomalies which suggest that either the simple one period capital asset pricing model capm is misspecified or that capital markets are inefficient in particular portfolios based on firm size or earnings price e p ratios experience average returns systematically different from those predicted by the capm furthermore the abnormal returns persist for at least two years this persistence reduces the likelihood that these results are being generated by a market inefficiency rather the evidence seems to indicate that the equilibrium pricing model is misspecified however the data also reveals that an e p effect does not emerge after returns are controlled for the firm size effect the firm size effect largely subsumes the e p effect thus while the e p anomaly and value anomaly exist when each variable is considered separately the two anomalies seem to be related to the same set of missing factors and these factors appear to be more closely associated with firm size than e p ratios

measuring abnormal performance do stocks overreact abstract a highly controversial issue in financial economies is whether stocks overreact in this paper we find an economically important overreaction effect even after adjusting for size and beta in portfolios formed on the basis of prior five year returns extreme prior losers outperform extreme prior winners by 5 10 per year during the subsequent five years although we find a pronounced january seasonal our evidence suggests that the overreaction effect is distinct from tax loss selling effects interestingly the overreaction effect is substantially stronger for smaller firms than for larger firms returns consistent with the overeaction hypothesis are also observed for short windows around quarterly earnings announcements

the econometrics of macroeconomic forecasting when an econometric model coincides with the mechanism generating the data in an unchanging world the theory of economic forecasting is reasonably well developed however less is known about forecasting when model and mechanism differ in a non stationary and changing world the paper addresses the basic concepts the invariance of forecast accuracy measures to isomorphic model representations the roles of causal information parsimony and collinearity a reformulated taxonomy of forecast errors differencing and intercept corrections to robustify forecasts against biases due to shifts in deterministic factors the removal of structural breaks by co breaking and forecasting using leading indicators

a note on testing an aggressive investment strategy using value line ranks one of the better known investment advisory services is the value line investment survey an unresolved debate has been in progress in the literature for a decade as to whether the performance of the value line investment service is inconsistent with the efficient market hypothesis for example black 2 states that the vl system can produce extra returns even when transaction costs are considered but he does not report his exact test procedure or any quantitative results of his study on the other hand kaplan and weil 10 11 do not believe that vl can generate abnormal returns we shall show in the following sections that the vl system represents a borderline case when transaction costs are neglected abnormal returns are obtained when realistic transaction costs are used active trading according to vl recommendations does not yield abnormal returns for a buy and hold policy however vl recommendations do yield abnormal returns even when transaction costs are considered

the wage curve a review in the wage qurve david g blancflower and andrew j oswald argue that there is a fundamental negative relation between wages and the unemployment rate in a worker s local labor market blancflower and oswald use large scale micro data sets to estimate this relation for the united states britain and 10 other countries i review their empirical methods and findings and provide some further evidence on the nature of the wage curve relationship in the united states i conclude that there is a strong statistical correlation between rates of pay and local unemployment although the interpretation of this correlation remains unresolved this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

black and official exchange rates in morocco an analysis of their long run behaviour and short run dynamics 1974 1992 using vector error correction vec model estimation on monthly data from morocco for the period january 1974 to december 1992 this article tests the hypothesis that there is a long run stable relationship between the official and the black market exchange rates for us dollars we also examine the short run dynamics in the relationship between the two markets the econometric results indicate that the two exchange rates are cointegrated furthermore we reject weak exogeneity in the case of the official exchange rate but fail to reject it in the case of the black market rate granger causality tests show that the black market rate causes the official exchange rate the results seem to support the efficiency hypothesis suggesting that participants in the black market are able to anticipate changes in the official exchange rate the findings also suggest that morocco s decision in january 1993 to introduce only current account convertibility and keep controls on capital accounts was wise

what shapes are overtime premium schedules some evidence from japan the uk and the us we provide estimates of the shapes of overtime premium schedules for three contrasting economies based on two digit industries through time at one end of the spectrum the united kingdom has no legislation concerning the minimum premium rate while at the other the united states mandates a high minimum premium of 1 5 times the straight time hourly rate in between these extremes japan sets a minimum premium of 1 25 we concentrate in particular on the question of whether the premium rises in average hours

the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and price the author examines the cyclical behavior of price marginal cost margins for u s manufac turing after 1956 short run marginal cost is markedly procyclical this is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible in most industries output price fails to respond to the cyclical movement in marginal cost so price marginal cost margins are markedly countercyclical the res ults contradict business cycle theories that explain low production i n a recession by a high real cost of producing they support theories that explain low production in a recession by the inability of firms to sell their output copyright 1987 by american economic association

earnings unemployment and the regional employment structure in britain blackaby d h and manning d n 1990 earnings unemployment and the regional employment structure in britain reg studies 24 529 535 this paper investigates the effect of regional unemployment on regional earnings in britain data are obtained from the new earnings survey reports from 1970 to 1986 and the influence of the regional industrial and occupational structure is taken into account in general the results support the hypothesis that increases in regional unemployment relative to the national average are associated with decreases in regional earnings below that expected blackaby d h et manning d n 1990 revenus chomage et distribution regionale de l emploi en grande bretagne reg studies 24 529 535 cet article examine l effet du chomage regional sur les revenus en grande bretagne les donnees proviennent des rapports disponibles sur la periode de 1970 a 1986 concernant les revenus new earnings survey en outre on met en consideration l influence des structures industrialo regi

spikes and spill overs the impact of the national minimum wage on the wage distribution in a low wage sector the uk national minimum wage nmw has had a minimal impact on uk wage inequality because it has been set at a modest level and because aggregate evidence suggests very small spill over effects but the small spill over effects might be because of the small numbers of workers affected and widespread anticipation of the introduction of the nmw might make the impact effect appear very small this paper investigates these issues using data collected from care homes where the nmw affected 40 of workers but we still find no evidence of large spill over effects and very small amounts of anticipation of the nmw

structural adjustment and peasant agriculture in bolivia abstract this article examines how small farmers and their subsistence economy have fared under the policy reforms implemented since 1985 in bolivia the main post reform obstacles to increases in small farmer productivity and income are identified the analysis focuses on the comparison of incen tives and policies before and after the introduction of the new economic policy of 1985

financial deregulation and segmented capital markets the case of korea abstract this paper deals with the relation between the official and the unregulated or curb segments of the capital market in korea the paper focuses on the behavior of officially controlled interest rates paid on time deposits and on freely determined curb market interest rates the effects of financial deregulation on interest rates investment and growth are investigated it is argued that under some plausible circumstances financial deregulation can generate significant crowding out in the curb market reducing the total degree of financial intermediation the empirical results provide some support to the crowding out hypothesis and indicate that changes in the officially controlled time deposit rate have been positively related to changes in the freely determined curb market interest rate an aggregate investment function is also estimated for korea it is found that an increase decrease in the curb rate discourages encourages investment on the other hand increases in the real volume of credit intermediate in the official segment have a positive effect on real aggregate investment

the potential impact of the minimum wage in rural areas this article explores the extent to which the potential impact of the national minimum wage might differ in rural areas using pre 1999 data from the british household panel survey a number of dimensions of the policy s potential impact in rural areas are considered in particular the number of workers affected their typical characteristics and the effects on pay inequality and household income distribution the results show that for the majority of rural areas that are accessible to urban labour markets the impact is likely to be broadly similar in contrast the potential impacts and particularly the distributional effects of the national minimum wage are found to be greatest in remoter rural areas

the cost of overtime hours in british production industries both theoretical and empirical labour market papers that incorporate the workers hours dichotomy often contain assumptions about shapes of the overtime premium schedules faced by industry using cross section data for british production industries in three years of sharply contrasting economic climates 1981 1984 and 1988 this paper investigates empirically the appropriate choice of schedule and therefore the industrial cost consequences of changing the average number of overtime hours per period the analysis tackles problems associated with data disaggregation the proportion of workers working overtime omitted variables heteroscedasticity and intertemporal variation

data feature earnings biases in the united kingdom regional accounts some economic policy and research implications between the late 1970s and late 1980s the uk regional accounts data suggest a much smaller rise in the south east earnings premium and consequently a much smaller increase in the regional dispersion of earnings than do the other sources of data we discuss several possible explanations for this discrepancy and conclude it was probably due to problems at the inland revenue in allocating tax records across the regions the historical unreliability of the regional accounts has implications for economic research on regional consumption and convergence and may have caused the poorest regions to miss out on eu structural funds this paper argues that united kingdom regional accounts data on income from employment and hence personal income and gross domestic product per head for the last 20 years give a misleading picture of the development of regional differentials these data are published in economic trends and regional trends and are widely used they have informed public debates about such topics as scottish and welsh devolution they are an important input for policy towards the english regions and for wales scotland and northern ireland and are used to define the income criteria by which a

capital intensity and the firm s cost of capital recent reports of negative capital intensity coefficients in struct ure performance equations support allegations of gross measurement error in accounting based measures of economic profitability this paper explores whether specification errors rather than measurement errors alone may explain this anomalous empirical result within a simultaneous equations model of capital intensity cost of capital and price cost margins the author employs hausman specification tests to demonstrate a negative bias on capital intensity and a positive bias on concentration when one omits firm specific cost of capital from price cost margin equations the roles of cost of capital and capital intensity are derived from formal structure performance theory copyright 1988 by mit press

equilibrium under price controls with endogenous transactions costs abstract in this paper we present an equilibrium model for an exchange economy with fixed prices and endogenously determined search or transactions costs given the fixed prices endogenously determined equilibrium buying and selling prices which include transactions costs result these costs occur on either the demand or supply side of each market but not both we see an eventual application of this approach to an evaluation of welfare costs of either economy wide wage and price controls or sector specific price controls such as energy in the final section we present some simple numerical examples which illustrate the approach

regional evidence on the effect of the national minimum wage on the gender pay gap robinson h 2005 regional evidence on the effect of the national minimum wage on the gender pay gap regional studies 39 855 872 this paper provides evidence on employment rates and the extent of the change in the gender wage gap across regions around the introduction of the national minimum wage nmw the variation in the proportions of low paid workers across britain provides a quasi natural experiment with which to try and measure the effect of the introduction of the nmw all things being equal if women are over represented amongst the low paid and the proportion of low paid workers varies across regions one might expect to see the introduction of the nmw narrowing the overall gender pay gap by varying degrees across the country using difference in differences type estimation on labour force survey data it is concluded that there is variation in the limited narrowing of the overall gender pay gap across regions consistent with regional differences in the incidence and magnitude of low pay

earnings unemployment and housing in britain this paper models regional earnings and unemployment in the ten regions of great britain between 1972 and 1995 paying particular attention to their interaction and to the important influence of the housing market in contrast to blanchard and katz 1992 1997 for the united states we find less persistence in british regional earnings differentials but greater persistence in regional unemployment rates we find no evidence of a negative effect of the overall unemployment rate on the earnings of men in non manual or women in full time employment however for manual men we find a significant elasticity of around 0 07 comparable with blanchflower and oswald 1994 copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

compensation of regional unemployment in housing markets why are regional unemployment differentials in europe so persistent if as the wage curve literature demonstrates there is no compensation in labour markets we hypothesize that workers in high unemployment regions are compensated in housing markets modelling regional unemployment differentials as a consequence of centralized wage bargaining we show that clearing of land markets may undo the incentive for workers to migrate to low unemployment regions in general equilibrium the compensating differentials hypothesis is tested on city level data for several countries controlling for variation in income and amenities housing is found to be about 3 percent less expensive on average in cities where unemployment is 10 percent up an analysis of housing demand survey data which takes account of housing heterogeneity yields a similar negative relationship the magnitude of the income effect generated by this compensating differential is consistent with a 0 10 wage curve elasticity these findings weaken the case for regional support programs

the labor market impact of state level anti discrimination laws 1940 1960 by the time congress passed the 1964 civil rights act 98 of non southern blacks 40 of all blacks already resided in states with fair employment laws prohibiting labor market discrimination using census data from the integrated public use microdata series the author assesses the impact of fair employment legislation on black workers relative income unemployment labor force participation migration and occupational and industrial distributions in general the fair employment laws adopted in the 1940s appear to have had larger effects than those adopted in the 1950s and the laws had considerably smaller effects on the labor market outcomes of black men than on those of black women

stock price reactions to the wall street journal s securities recommendations this paper examines the impact of the heard on the street hots column of the wall street journal on common stock prices the results of the study indicate that the hots column appears to have an impact on stock prices on the publication day however we also find a smaller but statistically significant impact on two days preceding the pub lication the significant abnormal returns on these days are associated with higher trading volume the reaction of stock prices is symmetric with respect to the buy and sell recom mendations and the impact of single company recommendations is greater than the im pact of the multi company recommendations i introduction the efficient market hypothesis assumes that security prices fully and instantaneously reflect all available information considerable evidence has been accumulated during the past decades in support of the hypothesis the acceptance of the hypothesis has raised questions about the economic value of professional investment advice if the market is efficient then the management of port folios based on these recommendations should not consistently outperform the market why then are investors still willing to pay for this information examples of the advice include low cost financial publications brokerage house rec ommendations and subscription financial newsletters that sell for hundreds of dollars recent studies argue that investment advisors can provide information to investors at a lower cost than the investors cost of information production millon and thakor 1985 develop a model that explains the existence of investment advisory agencies they argue that if the information of investment advisory agencies permits security analysts to share information about common uncertainties that affect the value of firms as a whole such as the return on the market portfolio then investment advisory agencies can produce information more cheaply than individual investors this model is consistent with the study of

devolved government and public sector pay reform considerations of equity and efficiency elliott r f bell d scott a ma a and roberts e 2005 devolved government and public sector pay reform considerations of equity and efficiency regional studies 39 519 539 public sector pay is of critical concern to the governments in westminster and edinburgh it accounts for the major part of these government s current expenditures and is a crucial determinant of the quality and range of the services they provide the paper details the current arrangements for setting public sector pay it is shown that these mechanisms are for the most part uk wide and that they result in national rates of pay that reveal little sensitivity to specific labour market conditions in scotland in consequence in scotland public sector workers toward the lower end of the distribution of pay are now significantly better paid than their private sector counterparts while those at the upper end are now paid about the same the paper uses data from the labour force survey for 1996 2002 to establish these results