labor market segmentation a cluster analysis of job groupings and barriers to entry real expenditures on public assistance programs have increased substantially in the past two decades as has real per capita income investments in a variety of education programs have risen and a number of jobs programs have been tried although there have been some gains for example a decline in the percentage of the population in poverty 31 474 a number of disparities persist unemployment remains at record levels and the prospect for sizable reductions in the unemployment rate seems quite small there are persistent differences between the mean household incomes of blacks and whites that have not narrowed at all during the past two decades 15 there is also a widespread perception that a disadvantaged segment of the u s population has no effective access to good jobs and if such persons get them they do not stay employed for long this means that many such adults are caught in a cycle of unemployment welfare dependency bad jobs and intermittent employment whereas there is nearly universal agreement that the persistent disparities in well being are undesirable there is considerable disagreement on what to do about this in part the disagreement stems from ignorance about the facts for example rigorous operational definitions of good and bad jobs have not been developed the notion that some persons do not have access to the good jobs is primarily based on anecdotes fortunately longitudinal data bases are now available that permit more rigorous empirical analysis of such issues

currency competition a partial vindication of hayek abstract this paper establishes the existence of equilibria for environments in which outside money is issued competitively such equilibria are typically believed not to exist because of a classic overissue problem if money is valued in equilibrium an issuer produces money until its value is driven to zero by backward induction money cannot have value in the first place this paper shows that overissuance is not a problem if agents believe that if an issuer produces more than some threshold number of notes then only those notes issued up to the threshold will be valued additional notes will be worthless this result is very general applying to any monetary economy in which equilibria with and without valued money exist if the money supply is finite the paper also compares the allocation achieved by a monopolist to that achieved with competitive issuance in both a search and an overlapping generations environment the results depend on the environment considered but two general conclusions arise first it is ambiguous whether competitive issuers can achieve a more desirable allocation than a monopolist second with competitive issuance a licensing agency can always improve on pure laissez faire and achieve the efficient allocation in the long run

lp modeling for asset liability management a survey of choices and simplifications dynamic linear programming lp models for asset liability management alm are quite powerful and flexible but face two challenges 1 many modeling choices not all consistent with one another or with finance theory and 2 solution difficulties due to the large number of scenarios obtained from standard interest rate models we first survey these modeling choices with a view to help researchers make self consistent choices next we review how the dynamic lp model for alm and the representation of uncertainty therein have been simplified in the past to motivate new or hybrid models emphasizing tractability to this end we review existing static lp models as extreme modeling simplifications and aggregation as a simplification of uncertainty

private fiat money with many suppliers a dynamic rational expectations model of money is used to investigate whether a nash equilibrium of many firms each supplying its own brand name currency will optimally deflate their currencies in friedman s 1969 sense the optimal deflation does arise under an open loop dynamic structure but the equilibrium breaks down under a more realistic feedback control structure

can currency competition work abstract can competition among privately issued fiat currencies work only sometimes and partially to show this we build a model of competition among privately issued fiat currencies a purely private arrangement fails to implement an efficient allocation even though it can deliver price stability under certain technological conditions although currency competition creates problems for monetary policy it is possible to design a policy rule that uniquely implements an efficient allocation

analyzing legal regulations in the norwegian life insurance business using a multistage asset liability management model the legal regulations for the life insurance business in norway have recently been and still are under revision the government s intention is to secure the interests of the customers in life insurance companies however there has been debate as to whether the regulations really are in the customers best interest we apply an asset liability management alm model to analyze the implications of the regulations the model is multistage stochastic and integrates assets and liabilities we employ a four stage model to analyze the legal regulations and conclude that the current legal framework is not in the insurance holders best interests

wage determination for career and non career workers in the uk is there labour market segmentation this study proposes that the earnings of career employees are influenced by a different set of parameters from the earnings of non career employees the above proposition is tested by using a matched employer employee sample within the econometric framework of a bivariate sample selection model where the career status is modelled as endogenous and is subject to choice decisions

a leviathan central bank modeling seigniorage in a money search model this paper studies the nature of optimal monetary policy under a utility maximizing monetary authority in a micro founded model of money based on lagos and wright 2005 such a monetary authority represents a monopoly private money supplier or situations where fiscal policy drives monetary policy and hence the name leviathan under no commitment i characterize an equilibrium with reputation concerns the centralized market interaction is modeled as an infinitely repeated game between the leviathan monetary authority a large player and the economic agents small players where the size of the players refers to the ability to influence aggregate outcomes this large small player dynamics pins down the equilibrium set of payoffs under the assumption that agents do not refuse to use money purely for coordination reasons the one shot game has a unique nash equilibrium with maximum inflation tax the set of equilibria is considerably enlarged in the infinite repetition of the game and equilibria with a lower inflation tax can also be supported by providing appropriate incentives to the money supplier

a search theoretic approach to monetary economics the essential function of money is its role as a medium of exchange the authors formalize this idea using a search theoretic equilibrium model of the exchange process that captures the double coincidence of wants problem with pure barter one advantage of the framework described here is that it is very tractable the authors also show that the model can be used to addre ss some substantive issues in monetary economics including the potenti al welfare enhancing role of money the interaction between specializat ion and monetary exchange and the possibility of equilibria with multip le fiat currencies copyright 1993 by american economic association

social polarisation the labour market and economic restructuring in europe an urban perspective it is frequently argued that changes in the occupational structure and labour markets of european cities have the potential to undermine social cohesion the term social polarisation has been wid

segmentation in the brazilian labor market abstractthis article measures the degree of segmentation in the brazilian labor market controlling for observable and unobservable characteristics workers earn more in the formal sector which supports the segmentation hypothesis we break down the degree of segmentation by socioeconomic attributes to identify the groups where this phenomenon is more prevalent we also investigate the robustness of our findings to the inclusion of self employed individuals

a divisible search model of fiat money this paper extends the kiyotaki wright search model of fiat money to allow for divisible money and goods the extension allows me to examine the standard issues in monetary economics such as the neutrality and superneutrality of money by severing the artificial link in the kiyotaki wright model between the money supply and the number of money holders it is shown that money is neutral but not superneutral money growth generates a trading opportunity effect it changes the fraction of different agents in the economy and hence changes the probability with which agents have a successful match in addition money growth has a negative effect on the real money balance that is familiar in walrasian monetary models the balance of the two effects can imply a positive optimal money growth rate

inside and outside money as alternative media of exchange we study a random matching model of money in which a subset of people called bankers have known histories and the rest called nonbankers have unknown histories earlier we showed that if there are no outside assets then an optimal arrangement has bankers issuing objects banknotes that are used in trades involving nonbankers here the same model is used to compare such exclusive use of inside money to the exclusive use of outside money we show that the set of implementable outcomes using outside money is a strict subset of the set using inside money

search inflation and capital accumulation abstract this paper constructs a model to integrate the search monetary theory into a neoclassical growth model with divisible goods and money the model is used to examine the relationship between money growth and capital accumulation the framework uncovers a distinct extensive effect that an increase in the money growth rate increases the frequency of successful trades by increasing the number of agents in the market this positive extensive effect on the number of trades can dominate the conventional negative intensive effects of money growth on individuals labor input and real money balance in which case increasing the money growth rate increases aggregate capital and output

concepts technical issues and uses of the russell yasuda kasai financial planning model this paper discusses technical aspects of the russell yasuda kasai financial planning model these include the models for the discrete distribution scenario generation processes for the uncertain parameters of the model the mathematical approach used to develop the infinite horizon end effects part of the model a comparison of algorithms used in the model s solution and a comparison of the multistage stochastic linear programming model with the previous technology static mean variance analysis experience and benefits of the model in yasuda kasai s financial planning process is also discussed

the informal sector wage gap new evidence using quantile estimations on panel data abstractwe estimate the informal formal sector pay gap throughout the conditional wage distribution using panel data from brazil mexico and south africa we control for time invariant unobservables and identification stems from intersector movers we control for observables in a nonlinear way using propensity score reweighting and carefully check for potential measurement errors using similar definitions of informality we obtain consistent results for all three countries informally employed workers earn much less than formal workers primarily because of lower observable and unobservable skills estimates of the conditional wage gap show that they are also underpaid compared to their formal sector counterparts in all three countries the informal wage penalty is larger in the lower part of the conditional distribution and tends to disappear at the top i e the informal sector increases wage dispersion the magnitudes of these effects vary across countries with the largest penalties in lower cond

segmented labour markets and the estimation of wage functions this paper uses a stratified random sample of private sector employees to estimate wage equations for both the male labour market as a whole and six segments of the labour market segement which are defined with respect to the industry and size characteristics of the employing establishmen highly conventional results are obtained when wage equations are estimated for the male labour market as a whole or within two segements comprising almost half the survey population however one can reject conclusively the hypothesis that the same estimating equation is appropriate for modelling wage determination in all segments and if a human capital hk model is within segements tested against more appropriate alternative hypotheses for wage determination using the davidson and mackinnon 1981 methodology for the testing of non nested hypotheses the conclusion is that one should reject the hk specification and not reject the alternative it is therefore argued that the disaggregation of labour market dat

the efficiency of self regulated payments systems learning from the suffolk system this paper analyzes the operation of the suffolk system an interbank note clearing network operating throughout new england from the 1820s through the 1850s banks made markets in each other s notes at par which allowed new england to avoid discounting of bank notes in trade privately enforced regu lations prevented free riding in the form of excessive risk taking observers of the suffolk system have been divided some emphasized the stability and effi these arrangements others argued that the arrangements were motivated by rent seeking on the part of boston banks and were primarily coervice and exploitative in the neighboring mid atlantic states regulations limited the potential for developing a regional clearing system centered in new york city on the model of the suffolk system this difference makes it possible to compare the performance of banks across regulatory regimes to judge the relative merits of the sanguine and jaundiced views of the suffolk system evidence supports the sanguine view new england s banks were able to issue more notes and these notes traded at uniform and low discount rates compared to those of other banks an examination of the balance sheets and stock returns of boston and new york city banks indicates that the stock market perceived that bank lending produced less risk for bank debt holders in boston than in new york the benefits of the system extended outside of boston peripheral new england banks displayed high propensities to issue notes and wer able to maintain low specie reserves boston banks did not show high profit rates or high ratios of market to book values of equity thus there is no evidence that boston banks extracted rents from their control of the payments system this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

labour market segmentation a local labour market analysis using alternative approaches earlier studies have generally attempted to establish the presence or otherwise of labour market segmentation using a single technique using data drawn form the british social and economic life initiative sceli for six local labour markets this paper tests for segmentation using four different methods of analysis a simple career non career model cluster analysis and switching regressions the results in general suggest that explanatory power is not improved by analysing the labour market in different segments but this simple career model points to higher rewards for given characteristics in the career sector and the results of the switching regression model are consistent with duality in one of the six markets

whither monetary economics i argue that monetary economics should be pursued by applying implementation theory to models which contain explicit frictions that make money essential the argument has two parts first i argue that models in which real balances are assumed to be productive models with money in utility or production functions or with cash in advance constraints contain hidden inconsistencies second i argue that the approach advocated is capable of providing new insights about some of the main issues in monetary economics the effects of monetary shocks the welfare cost of inflation and the roles of inside and outside money

formulation of the russell yasuda kasai financial planning model this paper describes the formulation of the russell yasuda kasai financial planning model including the motivation for the model the presentation complements the discussion of the technical details of the financial modeling process and the managerial impact of its use to help allocate the firm s assets over time discussed in carin o et al 1994 1998 respectively the multistage stochastic linear program incorporates yasuda kasai s asset and liability mix over a five year horizon followed by an infinite horizon steady state end effects period the objective is to maximize expected long run profits less expected penalty costs from constraint violations over the infinite horizon scenarios are used to represent the uncertain parameter distributions the constraints represent the institutional cash flow legal tax and other limitations on the asset and liability mix over time

central banking as a political principal agent problem i introduction conventional wisdom holds that during election periods political leaders have incentives to misuse policy instruments to enhance their chances of reelection rogoff and sibert 1988 construct a rational political economy model of monetary policy based on this theme 1 the results of their model can be interpreted in the following way 2 society elects a leader every other period whose competence affects the level of output in the economy and private agents will tend to vote for the incumbent if the level of output is expected to be higher than that which can be provided by an unknown challenger voters have imperfect information regarding the politician s true impact on output and exogenous shocks to output and consequently cannot disentangle the effects of one from the other in an election period this asymmetry of information gives the incumbent an incentive to expand output through the use of inflationary monetary policy in order to appear more competent than he really is however rational voters are aware of this incentive to inflate and adjust their expectations such that in equilibrium no gain in output occurs and the economy suffers from excessive inflation an implication of the rogoff sibert model is that unless a society does away with elections as a way to choose policymakers excessive inflation and a political inflation cycle will be an unavoidable cost of democracy however societies can try and have tried to avoid these ill effects by taking the power of money creation away from the elected officials and giving it to an appointed independent central banker who will presumably pursue the public good but can this approach actually work the problem with this proposal is that the central bankers well being in many respects reappointment post central bank employment opportunities avoidance of public criticism etc often hinges on pleasing their political benefactors giving the central bankers incentives to act in the interest of elected officials 3 as a result the central banker could pursue objectives different from society s and may actually function as a veil for the elected policymaker in the real world this veil is not complete but partial and hence we can characterize the relationship between the monetary authority and society as a principal agent problem the advantage of delegating power to an appointed central banker and then erecting appropriate institutions is that the inflation problems may be resolved without abandoning the electoral process in this paper we develop a rational political business cycle model that starts from the foundations laid down by rogoff and sibert we depart from their model by having monetary policy delegated to a central banker who is appointed by the elected leaden the concern about reappointment is what motivates the agency problem the central banker would like to be reappointed and this desire leads her to partially accommodate the wishes of the current administration which in turn may not coincide with the desires of the electorate we then analyze the problem faced by a central banker who is concerned about her own selfinterest as well as social well being it is this feature that turns the setting of monetary policy into a political principal agent problem the contributions of our approach to modelling the agency problem of central banking are 1 it explicitly incorporates reappointment concerns into the decision process of the central banker which heretofore has not been done in the literature and 2 we explicitly model the source of the agency problem unlike previous research that simply assumes an agency problem exists our key results are as follows in equilibrium the pursuit of her own self interest leads the central banker to create a socially inefficient inflation bias while rogoff and sibert also obtain this result our explicit functionalform model allows us to analyze this bias in more detail and tie it directly to the strength of the relationship between the central banker and the current administration

on the efficiency of monetary exchange how divisibility of money matters abstract we use alternative assumptions about the divisibility of goods and money and the ability of agents to use lotteries on money to investigate to what extent the indivisibility of money is the cause for the typically inefficient production and consumption decisions in search theoretic models of money our framework potentially generates three types of inefficiencies the no trade inefficiency where no trade takes place even though it would be socially efficient to trade and the too much trade and too little trade inefficiencies where the quantities produced and exchanged are either larger or smaller than what the solution to a social planner s problem would mandate it is shown that while the no trade and the too much trade inefficiencies are caused by the indivisibility of money the too little trade inefficiency remains even when money is divisible unless it is sufficiently valued

endogenous supply of fiat money abstract we consider whether reputation concerns can discipline the behavior of a long lived self interested agent who has a monopoly over the provision of fiat money we obtain that when this agent can commit to a choice of money supply there is a monetary equilibrium where it never overissues we show however that monetary equilibria with no overissue do not exist when there is no commitment this happens because the incentives this agent has to maintain a reputation for providing valuable currency disappear once its reputation is high enough more generally we prove that in the absence of commitment overissue happens infinitely often in any monetary equilibrium we conclude by showing that imperfect memory can restore the positive result obtained with commitment

on the essentiality of banks we compare allocations sustained by credit with allocations sustained by bank notes inside money in a search model with decentralized trade and limited monitoring we demonstrate that there exists a credit arrangement that is superior to inside money however in contrast with inside money this arrangement is not robust to an expansion of trade that is not accompanied by an adequate increase in the degree of monitoring therefore banks are essential when trade is intense and monitoring is limited as a historical application we argue that our model helps explain the origins of banking in medieval and early modern europe

panel estimates of the canadian rural urban women s wage gap this article analyzes the female rural urban wage gap in canada using longitudinal data from the survey of labour and income dynamics 1993 96 we estimate a two step wage equation accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and sample selection the results indicate that a statistically and economically significant rural urban wage gap remains after controlling for observed and unobserved characteristics further the results suggest this rural urban wage difference is not simply induced by immobility between rural and urban markets rather consistent with the effect of thinner rural labor markets the evidence indicates that rural urban differences in the impact of a number of explanatory variables are significant

segmented labour markets theory and evidence this paper examines the possibility of accepting the labour market segmentation approach as a valid alternative to the classical and neo classical analysis of labour markets it consists of three main parts the urst part contains a historical analysis of both the distant and recent origins of the labour market segmentation hypothesis part two outlines the central ideas of both segmentationalists and radical theorists who attempted to explain the fragmented nature of labour markets and the importance of institutional and social inuuences upon pay employment and mobility of individual workers between different labour market sectors the third part examines the case for labour market segmentation using four alternative techniques and discusses the issue of mobility among different labour market segments it is thereby concluded that the lack of agreement among the segmented labour market theorists on both theoretical and methodological issues has prevented them from developing a consistent and convincing argument based on veriuable empirical evidence to validate their thesis

a bank asset and liability management model in managing its assets and liabilities in light of uncertainties in cash flows cost of funds and return on investments a bank must determine its optimal trade off between risk return and liquidity in this paper we develop a multiperiod stochastic linear programming model alm that includes the essential institutional legal financial and bank related policy considerations and their uncertainties yet is computationally tractable for realistically sized problems a version of the model was developed for the vancouver city savings credit union for a 5 year planning period the results indicate that alm is theoretically and operationally superior to a corresponding deterministic linear programming model and that the effort required for the implementation of alm and its computational requirements are comparable to those of the deterministic model moreover the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the solutions are sensitive to the model s stochastic elements such as the asymmetry of cash flow distributions we also compare alm with the stochastic decision tree sdt model developed by s p bradley and d b crane alm is computationally more tractable on realistically sized problems than sdt and simulation results indicate that alm generates superior policies

job mobility wage determination and market segmentation in the presence of sample selection bias this paper tests the hypothesis that mobility between jobs is an important determinant of individual wages and that econometric estimates of wage determination should correct for sample selectivity bias in job mobility we also test the hypothesis that different patterns of job mobility produce different appropriate corrections for sample selectivity bias in different segments of the labour market we conclude that labour market segments do differ and in particular that one can identify a marginal or low wage sector with mobility patterns and pay packages which differ from the pattern one can discern in the labour market as a whole mobilite entre emplois determination des salaires et segmentation du marche quand il y a biais de selection dans l ehantillonnage ce memoire verifie l hypothese que la mobilite entre emplois est un element determinant des salaires des individus et la proposition que les calibrations econometriques du processus de determination des salaires doivent etre corrigees pour tenir compte d un biais de selection dans l echantillonnage de mouvements entre emplois les auteurs verifient aussi l hypothese que differents patterns de mobilite entre emplois commandent des corrections appropriees differentes dans differents segments du marche du travail les auteurs en arrivent a la conclusion que les divers segments du marche du travail sont differents et qu en particulier on peut reperer un secteur marginal ou de bas salaires ofu les patterns de mobilite entre emplois et les remunerations different remarquablement de ce qui se passe dans le marche du travail dans son ensemble

stochastic network programming for financial planning problems several financial planning problems are posed as dynamic generalized network models with stochastic parameters examples include asset allocation for portfolio selection international cash management and programmed trading arbitrage despite the large size of the resulting stochastic programs the network structure can be exploited within the solution strategy giving rise to efficient implementations empirical results are presented indicating the benefits of the stochastic network approach for the asset allocation case

an empirical test of the segmented labour market theory for the netherlands in this paper an orthodox segmented labour market theory slm theory is tested by means of the data provided by the research project quality of labour 1977 zanders et al 1977 the segmented labour market theory is restricted to the dual labour market approach although a major extension is taken into account a primary segment consisting of two tiers the segments are created by making use of an objectivemethod nine quality characteristics of jobs are taken into account a number of logit estimations are carried out to test the competing theories of human capital and the segmented labour market the conclusion is that although discrimination in the labour market appears to exist the slm theory has to be rejected

modeling financial reinsurance in the casualty insurance business via stochastic programming abstract in this paper we examine the rationale for financial reinsurance in the casualty insurance business as opposed to regular reinsurance financial reinsurance refers to an investment strategy that uses the financial markets to hedge insurance risk the casualty insurer takes positions in derivatives on underlying assets whose prices are highly positively or negatively correlated with specific insurance risks we formulate the asset liability management problem for a mutually owned casualty insurer in the context of a dynamic stochastic portfolio selection model using numerical studies of the resulting large scale non linear program we compare properties of optimal portfolios with and without the possibility of financial reinsurance we let an alleged representative policyholder endowed with a linear plus negative exponential utility function evaluate the various optimal portfolios when policyholders utility functions exhibit reasonable levels of risk aversion we find that portfolios reflecting financial reinsurance dominate portfolios that are not financially reinsured

a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis search theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential however tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis we propose a new framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be studied the framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable we calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation we find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption much higher than previous estimates

comparison of alternative utility functions in portfolio selection problems this paper examines the effect of alternative utility functions and parameter values on the optimal composition of a risky investment portfolio normally distributed assets are the setting for the theoretical and empirical analyses the results agree well with the available theory and imply utility functions and parameter values that are appropriate for investors with particular risk bearing attitudes the results give strong empirical support to the proposition that utility functions having different functional forms and parameter values but similar absolute risk aversion indices have similar optimal portfolios these results suggest that over horizons up to one year one can safely substitute convenient surrogate utility functions for other utility functions for reasons of tractability or otherwise the results also provide guidance regarding the significance of the magnitude and change of particular numerical values of the risk aversion index moreover theoretical exact results are obtained using rubinstein s measure of global risk aversion

a contribution to the pure theory of money abstract this article analyzes a general equilibrium model with search frictions and differentiated commodities because of the many differentiated commodities barter is difficult in that it requires a double coincidence of wants and this provides a medium of exchange role for fiat currency we prove the existence of equilibrium with valued fiat money and show it is robust to certain changes in the environment rate of return dominance liquidity and the welfare implications of fiat money are discussed

incomplete record keeping and optimal payment arrangements abstract we study a random matching absence of double coincidence environment in which people cannot precommit and in which there are two imperfect ways to keep track of what other people have done in the past money and a public record of all past actions that is updated with an average lag we study how the magnitude of that lag affects the allocations that are optimal from among allocations that are stationary and feasible and that satisfy incentive constraints which arise from the absence of commitment and the imperfect ways of keeping track of what others have done in the past journal of economic literature classification numbers e40 c73 d82

an investigation of the labor market earnings of panamanian males evaluating sources of inequality this paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of labor market earnings and inequality for males in panama using newly available microdata we estimate earnings equations based on the measurement framework of mincer 1974 and compare them with those for other countries at various stages of economic development we present evidence on two aspects of inequality in less developed economies labor market segmentation and social stratification we present tests of the segmentation hypothesis including several of the dual labor market hypotheses and discuss their inherent ambiguity we also present evidence on the importance of family background for earnings determination and educational attainment

on the welfare properties of fractional reserve banking monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the benefits of fractional reserve banking such as the ability to undertake more profitable long term investment opportunities and the difficulties associated with it such as the risk of insolvency for each bank and the associated losses to bank liability holders i show that a specific banking arrangement a joint liability scheme provides an effective mechanism for ensuring the ex post transfer of reserves from liquid banks to illiquid banks so it is possible to select a socially efficient reserve ratio in the banking system that preserves the safety of bank liabilities as a store of value and maximizes the rate of return paid to bank liability holders

on the private provision of fiat currency this paper considers whether fiat money can be provided by a revenue maximizing monopolist in an environment where money is essential two questions arise concerning the private supply of money is it feasible and is it optimal concerning the feasibility question i show that the revenue maximizing policy is time consistent if the trading history of the issuer is public information and if money demanders respond to the revelation of defection by playing autarky concerning the optimality question the model suggests that any private organization of the market for fiat currency is suboptimal

the transition from barter to fiat money how did it become possible to exchange apparently valueless pieces of paper for goods this paper provides an equilibrium account of the transition between barter and fiat money regimes the explanation relies on the intervention of a self interested government that must be able to promise credibly to limit the issue of money to achieve credibility the government must offset the benefits of seigniorage by internalizing some of the macroeconomic externalities generated by the issue of fiat money the government s patience and the extent of its involvement in the economy are key determinants of whether the transition can be accomplished copyright 1995 by american economic association

money is memory abstract this paper examines the sets of feasible allocations in a large class of economic environments in which commitment is impossible following myerson 8 the standard definition of feasibility is adapted to take account of the lack of commitment the environments feature either memory or money memory is defined as knowledge on the part of an agent of the full histories of all agents with whom he has had direct or indirect contact in the past money is defined as an object that does not enter utility or production functions and is available in fixed supply the main proposition is that any allocation that is feasible in an environment with money is also feasible in the same environment with memory depending on the environment the converse may or may not be true hence from a technological point of view money is equivalent to a primitive form of memory journal of economic literature classification numbers e40 c73 d82

family labour supply and labour market segmentation this paper examines the differences in individuals labour supply decisions in different segments of the labour market it tests one of the main hypotheses of the dual labour market theory that the labour market can be divided into at least two segments and also whether the family labour supply decisions of individuals differ in the two segments the possibility of individuals wage rates depending on the number of hours worked is recognized and a model is developed in which both the wage rates and hours of work of individuals are jointly determined with the personal income tax system as an intervening variable since hours of labour supply depend on the post tax wage rate whereas if the marginal product of labour is a positive function of hours worked this affects the pre tax wage rates other alternative wage functions are specified and a simultaneous equations labour supply model using three stage least squares 3sls procedure is estimated the results indicate that there was sample selectivity bias

testing the dual labor market hypothesis evidence from the israel labor mobility survey little research seems to have addressed the testing of the dual labor market model for nondeveloping economies outside the u s and the u k this paper examines the hypothesis for israel utilizing individual data drawn from the israel labor mobility survey and assigning workers to primary and secondary sectors on the basis of occupational prestige scores earnings functions are estimated and compared for the two sectors the results are very closely in line with predictions of the dual labor market model thus strongly suggesting that the dual labor market hypothesis may be relevant for israel

segmented labour markets in australia the concept and measurement of segmented labour markets has received little attention in australia here a method for establishing a taxonomy of occupaions according to characteristics associated with the segmented labour market hypothesis is presented using this taxonomy the distribution of workers in australia according to gender migrant status and trade union membershipis examined