bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ramsey-Friedman Optimality with Banking Time
Authors: Gillman Max K , Yerokhin Oleg
Published: December 2005

This paper conducts a Ramsey analysis within an endogenous growth cash-in-advance economy with policy commitment. Credit and money are alternative payment mechanisms that act as inputs into the household production of exchange. The credit is produced with a diminishing returns technology with Inada conditions that implies along the balanced-growth path a degree one homogeneity of effective banking time. This tightens the restrictions found within shopping time economies while providing a production basis for the Ramsey-Friedman optimum that suggests a special case of Diamond and Mirrlees (1971).
Firm Entry with an Imperfect Labor Market
Authors: Johnson Justin P.
Published: December 2005

An economy is considered in which new firms require time to learn whether they will grow in size and profitability in the long run. The labor market is imperfectly competitive. I show that inefficient levels of firm entry will generally exist. Whether under or over entry occurs is tightly related to the bargaining power of labor, but the logic behind my result differs dramatically from other work which has identified a similar link. The theory may shed some light on the continuing debate over the contribution of small firms to economic growth, and suggests that, in some cases, subsidizing small firms may be socially beneficial.
Monetary Policy and the Information Content of the Yield Spread
Authors: Feroli Michael
Published: December 2005

This paper investigates the determinants of the ability of the yield spread to predict output fluctuations conditional on the short rate. In the model of the paper, this predictive power is contingent on the monetary authority's reaction function. In particular, expectations of monetary policy actions are crucial for the spread to predict output. Furthermore, numerical experiments suggest that the post-1979 decrease in the yield spread's predictive power is due to a shift in the monetary policy reaction function at that time.
Output Composition of the Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism in Japan
Authors: Fujiwara Ippei
Published: December 2005

In this paper, we investigate the output composition of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Japan. The predominant channel through which monetary policy affects output in Japan is usually thought to be the investment channel, namely the process whereby a change in the interest rate alters the cost of capital and therefore investment. In the United States, however, the consumption channel, which works through intertemporal substitution, is commonly considered the more significant of the two. The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) based on analysis using VAR models to understand which of the two channels, the consumption channel or the investment channel, plays the more important role in the transmission of the Japanese monetary policy; and 2) to contribute to the research on what Angeloni, Kashyap, Mojon and Terlizzese (2003) term the "Output Composition Puzzle," referring to the fact that whereas in the United States the predominant driver of output changes is the consumption channel, in the Euro area it is the investment channel. Results obtained from the Japanese models imply that the investment channel is more important.
Exchange Rate Regimes and Financial Dollarization: Does Flexibility Reduce Currency Mismatches in Bank Intermediation?
Authors: Arteta Carlos O.
Published: December 2005

The dollarization of bank deposits and credit is widespread in developing countries, resulting in varying degrees of currency mismatches in domestic financial intermediation. It is argued that flexible exchange rate regimes generally encourage banks to match dollar-denominated liabilities with a corresponding amount of dollar-denominated assets. Does this argument apply to the behavior of dollar deposits and credits in financially dollarized economies? A new database on deposit and credit dollarization in developing and transition countries is assembled and used to address this question. Empirical results suggest that, if anything, floating regimes are positively associated with deposit dollarization more strongly than they are associated with credit dollarization. As a consequence, currency mismatches in domestic financial intermediation seem to be greater under floating regimes.
An Active Public Investment Rule and the Downsizing Experience in the US: 1960-2000
Authors: Marrero Gustavo A.
Published: December 2005

We use a simple growth model with public capital to examine the evolution of the US macroeconomy and to discuss the implications of the public infrastructure decline for the productivity slowdown over the last four decades. The main difference of the model to other papers in the related literature is that public investment is actively managed as a non-linear function of the state of the economy, and is not a constant fraction of output in every period. The active management policy delivers transition dynamics that reproduce the public capital downsizing episode, but that accounts for only a minor fraction of the observed productivity slowdown. However, taking into consideration higher rates of returns to public capital or the reallocation of public resources from productive to unproductive expenditures, which is consistent with the US experience in the 70s and 80s, the model simulation accounts for most of the observed productivity slowdown.
Policy Effects in the Post Boom U.S. Economy
Authors: Fair Ray C
Published: December 2005

The paper analyzes the question why the U.S. economy in the 2000:4--2004:3 period was sluggish in light of the large expansionary fiscal and monetary policies that took place. The answer does not appear to be that there were large structural changes in the economy or systematic bad shocks. This paper tests for such changes and shocks, and the results are generally negative. Instead, the main culprits seem to be large negative effects from declines in the stock market and exports. Although not tested in this paper, some of the decline in exports may be the result of the stock market decline, in which case most of the explanation is simply the stock market decline itself.
Human Capital and Growth: An Alternative Accounting
Authors: Rangazas Peter C
Published: December 2005

This paper re-examines the importance of human capital in explaining economic growth. Previous studies are extended by including schooling investments of both time and goods within the school year, a human capital externality, and imperfect substitution between white collar and manual tasks. The model of worker productivity used to conduct the growth accounting is consistent with (1) rates of return to time and goods investment in education, (2) white collar wage premia, and (3) trendless worker productivity growth rates in the United States over the 20th century. The analysis suggests that about one third of United States growth over this period was related to human capital accumulation, accounting for an average annual growth rate of 0.6 to 0.7 percent. The model also implies that neoclassical inputs can account for 5.5 to 8.5-fold differences in worker productivity across rich and poor countries.
Growing Old Together: Firm Survival and Employee Turnover
Authors: Quintin Erwan , Stevens John J.
Published: December 2005

Labor market outcomes such as turnover and earnings are correlated with employer characteristics, even after controlling for observable differences in worker characteristics. We argue that this systematic relationship constitutes strong evidence in favor of models where workers choose how much to invest in future productivity. Because employer characteristics are correlated with firm survival, returns to these investments vary across firm types. We describe a dynamic general equilibrium model where workers employed in firms more likely to survive choose to devote more time to productivity-enhancing activities, and therefore have a steeper earnings-tenure profile. Our model also predicts that quit rates should be lower in firms more likely to survive, and should tend to fall during slow times, while job destruction rates should rise. These predictions, we argue, are borne out by the existing empirical evidence.
Growth Implosions and Debt Explosions: Do Growth Slowdowns Cause Public Debt Crises?
Authors: Easterly William R.
Published: December 2005

The worldwide growth slowdown after 1975 was a major negative fiscal shock; lower growth lowers the present value of tax revenues and primary surpluses and thus makes a given level of debt more burdensome. Most countries failed to adjust to the negative fiscal consequences of the growth implosion and so public debt to GDP ratios exploded. The growth slowdown therefore played an important role in the debt crisis of the middle income countries in the 1980s, the crisis of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) in the 1980s and 1990s, and the increased public debt burden of industrial countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Econometric tests and fiscal solvency accounting confirm the important role of growth in debt crises. In addition, the HIPCs’ debt problems were worse because they grew more slowly after 1975 than other low income countries due to worse policies.
Fiscal Policy and Human Capital Accumulation in a Home Production Economy
Authors: Einarsson Tor , Marquis Milton Harrison
Published: December 2005

The decision to invest in human capital is introduced into a home production economy with fiscal policy distortions where balanced growth is achieved through Harrod-neutral, labor-augmenting technology spillovers into home production. In comparison with home production economies that abstract from human capital accumulation, the welfare losses from distortionary taxes are quite large due to their adverse effect on growth. However, the transition costs associated with a move to a less distortionary tax system are proportionately much lower. This owes to the fact that growth enhances the adjustment process such that less radical and more empirically plausible swings in employment, investment, and output are required to reach the new balanced growth path.
Capital-Skill Complementarity and Rigid Relative Wages: Inference from the Business Cycle
Authors: Skaksen Jan R , Sorensen Anders
Published: December 2005

The relative demand for skills has increased considerably in many OECD countries during recent decades. This development is potentially explained by capital-skill complementarity and high growth rates of capital equipment. When production functions are characterized by capital-skill complementarity, relative wages and employment of skilled labor are countercyclical because capital equipment is a quasi-fixed factor in the short run. The exact behavior of the two variables depends on relative wage flexibility. Relative wages are rigid in Denmark, implying that the employment share of skills should be countercyclical. The labor market is competitive in the United States and therefore relative wages of skilled labor are expected to be countercyclical. We find that the business cycle development of the two economies is consistent with capital-skill complementarity.
Schumpeterian Growth, North-South Trade and Wage Rigidity
Authors: Grieben Wolf-Heimo
Published: December 2005

This paper presents a two-country non-scale Schumpeterian endogenous growth model with interindustry North-South trade and wage rigidity in the North. Its purpose is to analyze the effects of a compression of the wage structure and an increase in unemployment benefits on Northern unskilled unemployment and growth. Both innovation and skill acquisition rates are endogenously determined. We show how the two labor market policies differ with respect to education incentives in a general equilibrium with balanced trade. We further highlight the relevance of North-South trade and incomplete Northern specialization for the labor market effects that we obtain in our model. We demonstrate that the growth effects of a compression of the Northern wage structure depend decisively on the specific formulation of rising R&D difficulty.
Multiple Equilibria in Heterogeneous Expectations Models
Authors: Branch William , McGough Bruce
Published: December 2005

This paper fills an important gap in the literature on determinacy and existence of sunspot equilibria in stochastic linear self-referential models. The results in this paper demonstrate that heterogeneity in expectations may alter a model's regions of determinacy. We show how to associate with a heterogeneous expectations model (HE-model) a rational expectations model (ARE-model), the solutions to which are the equilibria of the HE-model. This association recasts the analysis of determinacy in the HE-model to analysis of determinacy in the ARE-model. We proceed to study a forward looking model and find that the stability properties of rational expectations models may not be robust. In particular, we present new results showing that in some models even a very small fraction of non-rational agents may preclude rational agents from coordinating on sunspots. Also, we present parameterizations of the model in which sunspots exist in the heterogeneous model when they do not exist in the rational expectations version of the model.
How Well Does the New Keynesian Sticky-Price Model Fit the Data?
Authors: Roberts John M.
Published: December 2005

A number of hypotheses have been proposed to account for the role of lagged inflation in the New Keynesian price-adjustment model: (1) In the aftermath of abrupt structural change, rational learning may appear adaptive. (2) The model may have a serially correlated error term. (3) Estimating the model conditional on labor costs may remove or reduce the need for lagged inflation. I address the empirical support for these hypotheses and find that none eliminates the need for lagged inflation. In particular, lagged inflation enters with a coefficient in the range of 0.4 to 0.5, regardless of whether labor's share or detrended output is the measure of real marginal cost, or whether a serially correlated error term is allowed. Also, eliminating the period 1980-83 from the sample does not reduce the coefficient on lagged inflation.
Indeterminacy and the Stability Puzzle in Non-Convex Economies
Authors: Evans George W , McGough Bruce
Published: December 2005

We examine stability under learning of sunspot equilibria in Real Business Cycle type models with indeterminacies. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of examining alternative representations of sunspot solutions. A general bivariate reduced form contains parameter regions in which sunspots are stable under learning. However, for parameters restricted to those generated by standard models of indeterminacy, we find, under one information assumption, that no stable sunspots exist, and under another information assumption, that they exist only for a very small part of the indeterminacy region. This leads to the following puzzle: why does indeterminacy almost always imply instability in RBC-type models?
A Closed Form Ramsey Saddle Path
Authors: Mehlum Halvor
Published: December 2005

I show that in a Ramsey growth model, where the production function is of fixed proportions type and the utility function is CRRA, the saddle path is a closed form expression. The closed form expression greatly simplifies the analysis of how the labor productivity growth, the intertemporal rate of substitution, and the discount factor affect investments and growth.
The Underestimated Virtues of the Two-sector AK Model
Authors: Felbermayr Gabriel J , Licandro Omar
Published: December 2005

This paper analyzes some unnoticed predictions of the two-sector AK model in line with the recent literature on embodied technical change. Firstly, by confining constant returns to capital to the investment sector, the AK model generates endogenously the secular downward trend of the relative price of equipment investment and the rising real investment rate observed in US NIPA data. Secondly, Jones' (1995) claim that the AK model fails to reconcile the empirical facts of trending real investment rates and stationary output growth vanishes in the two-sector version. Thirdly, consistent with the evidence from cross-country studies, the model predicts a negative relation between GDP per capita and the relative price of equipment. Hence, in spite of its overly simplistic structure, the two-sector AK model provides important intuition on the implications of a trending relative price of equipment investment in endogenous growth environments.
Another Example in which Lump-sum Money Creation is Beneficial
Authors: Deviatov Alexei , Wallace Neil
Published: December 2005

A probabilistic version of lump-sum money creation is studied in a random matching model with indivisible money and individual holdings bounded at 2 units. Sufficient conditions are obtained for an ex ante optimum from among implementable steady states to involve lump-sum creation of money. The role of that creation is to change the distribution of money holdings to permit more trade to occur. Beneficial money creation is impossible in a version with a 1 unit upper bound on individual holdings, but can almost certainly happen for all higher bounds.
Matching, Search, and Heterogeneity
Authors: Shimer Robert , Smith Lones
Published: December 2005

This paper explores the efficiency of decentralized search behavior and matching patterns in a model with ex ante heterogeneity and a constant returns to scale search technology. We show that a linear tax or subsidy on search intensity decentralizes the social optimum. In the absence of the tax, high productivity agents are too willing to match, yet they search too little. Low productivity agents have the opposite behavior. As a result, the equilibrium is always inefficient in the absence of taxes, in contrast to known results on the efficiency of decentralized search models with homogeneous agents. We relate the inefficiencies to thick-market and congestion externalities.
Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero
Authors: Coenen Günter , Orphanides Athanasios , Wieland Volker
Published: December 2005

This paper employs stochastic simulations of a small structural rational expectations model to investigate the consequences of the zero bound on nominal interest rates. We find that if the economy is subject to stochastic shocks similar in magnitude to those experienced in the United States over the 1980s and 1990s, the consequences of the zero bound are negligible for target inflation rates as low as 2 percent. However, the effects of the constraint are non-linear with respect to the inflation target and produce a quantitatively significant deterioration of the performance of the economy with targets between 0 and 1 percent. The variability of output increases significantly and that of inflation also rises somewhat. Also, we show that the asymmetry of the policy ineffectiveness induced by the zero bound generates a non-vertical long-run Phillips curve. Average output falls increasingly short of potential with lower inflation targets.
Western Institution Building: The War, Hayek's Cosmos and the WTO
Authors: Killion M. Ulric
Published: December 2005

Despite the shortcomings of Hayeks spontaneous order, there is a positive side, perhaps even a positive feedback. Hayek left us with a what if question and returns us to that initial opening of Pandoras Box, or perhaps the initial onset of neo-realism, neo-liberalism, developmentalism, globalism, transnationalism and other concepts, precepts and adjectives justifying institution building by bargaining and military force. In terms of new world order, institution building by necessity requires fundamental changes in governmental structures in non-Western cultures and nation-states such as China, Afghanistan and Iraq. Such changes are being prompted by means of political, economic and military powers of the U.S. and other developed nation-states, and international intergovernmental organizations dominated by developed nation-states such as the World Trade Organization. However arguably well intended there remains the question of what will eventually result from the introduction of Western institutions into non-Western cultures and developing countries. This article explores F. A. Hayeks discourse concerning taxis and cosmos (Kosmos), in terms of institution building. This article addresses why China presents an instance of institution building by bargaining, while countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan offer instances of institution building by military force, then directs emphasis toward institutional and constitutional reform, and an evolution of Western law in non-Western cultures and developing nation-states such as China, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Although Hayek may have had contrary intentions, his discourse on taxis and cosmos (Kosmos), and spontaneous order, nonetheless, challenges a modern Western world to rethink its priorities and policies, and perhaps even foundational ideologies, especially in the realm of rebuilding non-Western cultures and developing countries.
Explaining Incomplete Contracts as the Result of Contract-Reading Costs
Authors: Rasmusen Eric Bennett
Published: December 2005

Much real-world contracting involves finding new clauses to add to a basic agreement, clauses which may or may not increase the welfare of both parties. The parties must decide which complications to propose, how closely to examine the other side's proposals, and whether to accept them. This suggests a reason why contracts are incomplete in the sense of lacking Pareto-improving clauses: contract-reading costs matter as much as contract-writing costs. Fine print that is cheap to write can be expensive to read carefully enough to understand the value to the reader, and especially to verify the absence of clauses artfully written to benefit the writer at the reader's expense. As a result, complicated clauses may be rejected outright even if they really do benefit both parties, and this will deter proposing such clauses in the first place.
Subsidized Housing, Emergency Shelters, and Homelessness: An Empirical Investigation Using Data from the 1990 Census
Authors: Early Dirk W. , Olsen Edgar O.
Published: December 2005

This paper uses data on the only systematic count of the homeless throughout the United States to estimate the effect on the rate of homelessness of a wide variety of potentially important determinants, including several major policy responses to homelessness that have not been included in previous studies. It improves upon estimates of the effect of previously studied determinants by using measures that correspond more closely to underlying theoretical constructs, especially by accounting for geographical price differences. It also conducts numerous sensitivity analyses and analyzes the consequences of the undercount of the homeless for point estimates and hypothesis tests. The paper's most important finding from a policy perspective is that targeting the current budget authority for housing assistance on the poorest eligible households will essentially eliminate homelessness among those who apply for assistance. Achieving this goal promptly without concentrating the poorest households in housing projects and without spending more money requires vouchering out project-based assistance. The primary methodological finding of the paper is that the 1990 Decennial Census did not produce sufficiently accurate counts, especially of the street homeless, to permit very precise estimates of the effects of many factors which surely affect the rate of homelessness. The main exception is the price of housing. Other things equal, higher housing prices lead to more homelessness.
Merger Simulation with Brand-Level Margin Data: Extending PCAIDS with Nests
Authors: Epstein Roy J. , Rubinfeld Daniel L.
Published: December 2005

We present a method to calibrate empirically the demand parameters in a merger simulation model by using brand-level profit margin data. While the approach can be generalized, we develop these ideas within a particular framework - the PCAIDS (proportionality-calibrated AIDS) model. We show that the brand-level margins effectively define product "nests" (products that are especially close substitutes) and substantially increase the flexibility of PCAIDS for modeling critical own- and cross-price elasticities. The model is particularly valuable for transactions at the wholesale level (where scanner data do not exist) and for geographic markets that span national borders (where comparable data may not be available), since other methods to derive elasticities, particularly those based on econometric estimation, may not be possible or may not be reliable.
Spillovers from Local Market Human Capital and the Spatial Distribution of Productivity in Malaysia
Authors: Conley Timothy G. , Flyer Fredrick , Tsiang Grace R
Published: December 2005

This paper examines whether spillovers from local market human capital are important in explaining the distribution of productivity across Malaysia. We develop an empirical method for describing local human capital distributions based on the idea that spillovers are limited in scope by costs of interaction or economic distance between agents. We use estimates of the economic distance between agents to construct measures of local market human capital based on schooling rates of the population within a given radius. These measures are then used in estimating equations obtained from a simple local public goods model. Our regressions are estimated using spatial GMM, allowing for general spatial correlation across observations as a function of economic distance. We find positive wage and rent differentials associated with local human capital, evidence consistent with productive human capital spillovers. Our results for rent differentials obtain with two distinct human capital measures; however, those for wage differentials depend on the human capital measure used.
Adverse Selection, Short-Term Contracting, and the Underprovision of On-the-Job Training
Authors: Hermalin Benjamin E.
Published: December 2005

This article argues that the existence of adverse selection (worker heterogeneity) can explain the underprovision of general training by employers. High-ability workers value the option to entertain outside wage offers once their abilty becomes known to the market. Offering short-term contracts is, therefore, a way to screen high-ability types from low-ability types. A firm is not willing to train workers under short-term contracts. Hence, despite the positive returns to training, training may be underprovided in equilibrium. More generally, this article contributes to the literature that seeks to explain the puzzling phenomenon of short-term contracts governing long-term buyer-seller relationships.
Testing the Economic Model of Crime:The National Hockey League's Two-Referee Experiment
Authors: Levitt Steven D.
Published: December 2005

During the 1998-99 season, the National Hockey League randomly varied the number of referees used across games, seemingly providing a rare opportunity to test directly the deterrence model. Combining experimental parameter estimates with an economic model, there is little evidence that the rate of offending changed substantially with the addition of a second referee. The reason, however, appears to be that the second referee had little impact on the probability of punishment. As a consequence, the experiment ultimately turns out to be of limited use for testing deterrence.
Road Warrior Booty: Prize Structures in Motorcycle Racing
Authors: Maloney Michael T. , Terkun Kristina
Published: December 2005

This research reports the results of an analysis of prize structures among competing firms paying tournament wages. In motorcycle racing, sponsors compete in an auction for riders using tournament prizes as bids. Since racers can only ride one bike and wear one helmet, they are forced to choose among sponsors of similar products. We find that in the face of competition, sponsors are forced to lower the incentive intensity of their prize differentials as rival sponsors post larger purses. Our test offers new corroboration of the Lazear-Rosen tournament model. Other researchers have found that workers respond to bigger prize differentials by working harder. We find that firms recognize this and also recognize that in the competitive labor-market equilibrium this extra work must be compensated by offering higher expected wages through bigger purses. Our results complete the theoretical circle: workers respond to the incentive effects of tournament wages and firms anticipate this behavior when making tournament wage offers.
Optimal Environmental Regulation in the Presence of Other Taxes: The Role of Non-separable Preferences and Technology
Authors: Kim Seung-Rae
Published: December 2005

Recent studies find that environmental taxes typically exacerbate pre-existing tax distortions and, therefore, the optimal pollution tax should lie below the Pigouvian level (social marginal damages). This paper analyzes a general equilibrium model with non-separable preferences and technology, relatively rare assumptions in this literature, and finds that the second-best optimal pollution tax can be above or below the first-best Pigouvian level. Surprisingly, the ordering of the two does not depend on the degree of pre-existing tax distortion. Moreover, it depends not just on the difference between the two goods' cross-price elasticities with leisure, but on that difference compared to the elasticity of demand for the polluting intermediate input. Finally, the paper shows that under plausible parameter conditions, a greater pre-existing tax distortion can increase the optimal level of environmental regulation.
Patent Theory versus Patent Law
Authors: Tabarrok Alexander
Published: December 2005

According to the economic theory of patents, patents are needed so that pioneer firm have time to recoup their sunk costs of research and development. The key element in the economic theory is that pioneer firms have large, hard to recoup, sunk costs. Yet patents are not awarded on the basis of a firm's sunk costs. Patent law, in fact, ignores costs. The disconnect between patent law and patent theory suggests either that modifying patent law so that it better fits with patent theory would reduce the costs and inefficiencies associated with current patent practice or that the standard economic theory of patents is wrong.
War or Peace
Authors: Cai Hongbin
Published: December 2005

This paper studies a simple two-stage model of conflict in which two players allocate resources between arms and domestic production in the first stage and subsequently engage in peace negotiations trying to avoid war. War is costly and war damages depend on arms buildup. Peace also comes with costs (e.g., disarmament, monitoring and enforcement). We show that when the cost of peace is in the medium range and resources are more effective in causing damages to one's enemy when invested in arms than in being productive in domestic production, the game has two kinds of equilibria: those involving peace and those involving war. The two players will build more arms in any peace equilibrium than in the (unique) war equilibrium. When the cost of peace is unknown to the players while making investment choices, arms levels in equilibrium are positively correlated with the probability of peace.
Price Discrimination via Proprietary Aftermarkets
Authors: Emch Eric R.
Published: December 2005

Price markups over marginal cost are often higher on aftermarket parts and services for durable goods than they are on the goods themselves. A popular explanation is that the aftermarket good is used as a metering device. This paper explores what happens in the metering model as foremarket competition increases, and examines the implications of adding an optional enhancement to the model along with the aftermarket input. It finds that as foremarket competition increases, markups in the aftermarket drop to zero before markups in the foremarket. It also finds that an optional enhancement may expropriate the metering role of an aftermarket input.
An Assessment of the Proposals of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security
Authors: Diamond Peter , Orszag Peter R.
Published: December 2005

The President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security proposed three plans for reforming Social Security. All of them would create individual accounts financed by diverting funds from the Social Security Trust Fund. One of the three Commission proposals (Model 1) would not restore long-term balance to Social Security. This paper focuses on the other two proposals - Models 2 and 3 - which would restore long-term balance. Models 2 and 3 contain a number of elements and are quite complicated. To understand the plans, we describe their proposed changes to Social Security benefits (which we refer to as "traditional benefits"), the individual accounts that the plans would establish, the combined effect on retirement income from the changes in traditional Social Security benefits and the individual accounts, and the impact on Social Security financing and the rest of the budget.
Selective Information Provision and Special Interest Influence: The Case of Trade Policy
Authors: Belfrage Carl-Johan
Published: December 2005

A tool used by special interests to influence policies in their favor but rarely treated in the economic literature is examined. Through contributions to the pool of available information, a bias in public perceptions of policy consequences may be created and policymaking accordingly affected. The results in terms of equilibrium protection levels add to but do not overthrow those of traditional analyses involving contributions to campaign funds.The analysis also shows that as long as some influence over perceived policy consequences can be generated by special interest groups, the political power they can wield by means of campaign contributions is much stronger (and more likely to be extensively used) than that predicted by analyses focused exclusively on campaign contributions. Restrictions on one means of special interest influence can therefore yield significant reductions in both protection and the use of resources for political influence purposes.
Contestable Licensing
Authors: Neeman Zvika , Orosel Gerhard Oskar
Published: December 2005

We analyze a model of repeated franchise bidding for natural monopoly with contestable licensing -- a franchisee holds an (exclusive) license to operate a franchise until another firm offers to pay more for it. In a world where quality is observable but not verifiable, the simple regulatory scheme we describe combines market-like incentives with regulatory oversight to generate efficient outcomes.
Poverty Measurement Under Risk Aversion Using Panel Data
Authors: Cruces Guillermo , Makdissi Paul , Wodon Quentin T.
Published: December 2005

This paper shows how to take into account risk aversion when measuring poverty under income variability. An application to British panel data suggests that income and poverty comparisons between the self-employed and other groups of households are sensitive to assumptions on the degree of risk aversion. The results point to the importance of panel data in order to account for risk aversion and income variability in the measurement of poverty.
A Model of Welfare-Reducing Settlement
Authors: Wickelgren Abraham L.
Published: December 2005

While it is typically taken for granted that settlement of lawsuits increases social welfare, this paper shows that settlement can lower welfare. If the defendant has private information about the harm from his action both at the time of the action and the time of settlement bargaining, then defendants who cause different levels of harm can pay the same settlement amount in a partial pooling equilibrium. Settlement acts as a damage cap, preventing the defendant's liability from increasing with the harm over the full range of possible harms, leading to under-deterrence. This result holds even though the social planner can choose the socially optimal damage rule.
Law Serials Pricing and Mergers: A Portfolio Approach
Authors: McCabe Mark J
Published: December 2005

Using data from more than 400 legal serials, I estimate the impact of six publisher mergers on law serial prices during the period, 1990-2000. The results suggest that merger-related price increases were substantial during this period, even after accounting for secular price trends. Furthermore, these merger effects occurred across a broadly-defined portfolio of serial titles consisting of legal encyclopedias and treatises. For other types of serials, such as newsletters and looseleaf services, these effects were not observed. Based on the portfolio demand behavior of buyers, I offer an explanation for this result based on the degree of product differentiation at the level of the individual title. Of particular interest is the purchase of West Publishing Company by Thomson Financial & Professional Publishing Group in 1996. Despite a government-mandated divestiture of more than 50 titles, the results indicate that titles published by West-Thomson experienced a significant post-merger price increase.
Pollution Abatement Expenditure by U.S. Manufacturing Plants: Do Community Characteristics Matter?
Authors: Becker Randy A
Published: December 2005

This paper examines whether community characteristics impact the air pollution abatement (APA) activity at nearby manufacturing plants, using establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureaus Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) survey. Controlling for facility characteristics and various forms of formal environmental regulation, certain community characteristics are found to have additional effects on local APA expenditures. In particular, for the most pollution-intensive industries, larger per capita income is found to increase plant-level APA activity, as is a higher degree of homeownership, a greater concentration of Democratic voters, and being located in a metropolitan area. Meanwhile, a greater presence of manufacturing employees is found to decrease APA expenditures, suggesting a constituency that is more resistant to additional regulation. If local populations can indeed affect pollution abatement activity, they can impact the spatial distribution of pollution, thereby creating pollution haven effects.
Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment: Dirty Secret or Popular Myth?
Authors: Javorcik Beata Smarzynska , Wei Shang-Jin
Published: December 2005

The pollution haven hypothesis refers to the possibility that multinational firms, particularly those engaged in highly polluting activities, relocate to countries with weaker environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, the existing literature has found only limited evidence to support it. To enhance our ability to detect the possible dirty secret, this study makes improvements in four areas. First, we focus on investment flows from multiple countries to 25 economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Transition countries are a suitable region for studying this question, as they offer a large variation in terms of environmental standards. Second, we take into explicit account the effect of host country corruption. Third, we include information on both the polluting-intensity of the potential investor and the environmental stringency in the potential host country, which allows us to test whether dirty industries are relatively more attracted to locations with weak standards. And fourth, we rely on firm-level rather than industry-level data. Despite these improvements, we find no support for the pollution haven hypothesis. If anything, firms in less polluting industries are more likely to invest in the region. We find no systematic evidence that FDI from dirtier industries is more likely to go to countries with weak environmental regulations.
Race and the Digital Divide
Authors: Fairlie Robert W
Published: December 2005

In recent years, a plethora of public and private programs in the United States have been created to close the "Digital Divide." Interestingly, however, we know very little about the underlying causes of racial differences in rates of computer and Internet access. In this paper, I use data from the Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the August 2000 Current Population Survey (CPS) to explore this question. Estimates from the CPS indicate that Mexican-Americans are roughly one-half as likely to own a computer and one-third as likely to have Internet access at home as whites. The black home computer rate is 59 percent of the white rate and the black home Internet access rate is 51 percent of the white rate. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions, I find that racial differences in education, income and occupation contribute substantially to the black/white and Mexican-American/white gaps in home computer and Internet access rates. The digital divide between races, however, is not simply an "income divide" as income differences explain only 10 to 30 percent of the gaps in access to technology. I do not find evidence that price or school differences are responsible for the remaining gaps. I find some evidence, however, that language barriers may be important in explaining low rates of computer and Internet access among Mexican-Americans.
Pollution Havens and the Regulation of Multinationals with Asymmetric Information
Authors: Wu Xiaodong
Published: December 2005

This paper develops a common agency model to analyze the strategic interaction between governments in regulating polluting multinationals. We show that when a firm has private information about its production technology relating output to pollution that is difficult to monitor, the information rent extraction behavior of non-cooperative governments will work against the "pollution haven" hypothesis in a Nash equilibrium with or without pooling. The "pollution haven" result is more likely to be reversed in a separating equilibrium than in a pooling equilibrium as a firm's output is further away from the most efficient outcome. This result provides an explanation for why many empirical studies do not support the "pollution haven" hypothesis even after controlling for private non-environmental cost differentials.
Environmental Regulation and International Trade: Empirical Results for Germany, the Netherlands and the US, 1977-1992
Authors: Mulatu Abay , Florax Raymond J.G.M. , Withagen Cees
Published: December 2005

We empirically investigate the responsiveness of international trade to the stringency of environmental regulation. Stringent environmental regulation may impair the export competitiveness of dirty domestic industries, and as a result, pollution havens emerge in countries where environmental regulation is relatively less stringent. We examine the impact of pollution abatement and control costs on net exports in order to grasp this phenomenon. Theoretically, our analysis is related to a general equilibrium model of trade and pollution nesting the pollution haven motive for trade with the factor endowment motive. We analyze data on two-digit ISIC manufacturing industries during the period 19771992 in Germany, the Netherlands and the US, and show that trade patterns in dirty commodities are jointly determined by relative factor endowments and environmental stringency differentials.
Anti-trade Bias in Trade Policy and General Equilibrium
Authors: Limao Nuno , Panagariya Arvind
Published: December 2005

An important question that has continued to elude trade economists is why trade interventions are biased in favor of import-competing rather than exportable sectors. Indeed, as Philip Levy (1999) points out, under a set of neutrality assumptions, the dominant political-economy model, Grossman and Helpman (1994), predicts a pro-trade bias. We demonstrate that if we replace the almost partial equilibrium model with a general equilibrium model in the Grossman-Helpman political economy model, anti-trade bias may emerge even if we assume symmetric technologies, endowments and preferences across sectors provided that the elasticity of substitution in production exceeds unity. In addition, we show that ceteris paribus, in general equilibrium, increases in the imports-to-GDP ratio lower the endogenously chosen tariff and the production share of the import sector in GDP has an ambiguous effect.
Environmental Policy, Population Dynamics and Agglomeration
Authors: Elbers Chris , Withagen Cees
Published: December 2005

We present and discuss a simple model of international trade in agricultural and manufactured commodities. Production of the latter takes places under monopolistic competition, and causes pollution. We incorporate mobility of skilled labor, the input in the manufacturing sector. One of the main findings is that pollution and environmental policy tend to countervail clustering that would occur in their absence.
Access Charges in the Presence of Call Externalities
Authors: Berger Ulrich
Published: December 2005

We introduce call externalities in the standard model of network competition with termination-based price discrimination under a CPP regime, and employ a simple graphical analysis to study the outcome of competition. In contrast to recent results in the literature we find that even under linear pricing, access charges below marginal cost may be used as a collusion device, while off-net calls are priced above on-net calls in equilibrium. Moreover, it turns out that "bill and keep" arrangements may be welfare improving compared with cost based access pricing.
A Theory of Health Disparities and Medical Technology
Authors: Goldman Dana P , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: December 2005

Better-educated people are healthier, although the sources of this relationship remain unclear. Starting with basic principles of consumer theory, we develop a model of how health disparities are determined that does not depend on the precise causal mechanism. Improvements in the productivity of health care disproportionately benefit the heaviest health care users. Since richer patients tend to use the most health care, this suggests that new technologiesby making more diseases treatable, reducing the price of health care, or improving health care productivitycould widen socioeconomic disparities in health. An exception to this rule, however, is a simplifying technology, which can contract health disparities, since richer patients are more likely to invest effort in adhering to complex treatment regimens. We present a few empirical case studies to help illustrate the theoretical results. First, we show that a complicated treatment regimen (antiretroviral therapy for HIV) benefited well-educated patients disproportionately. In contrast, simplifying drugs for hypertension coincided with a contraction in cardiovascular disparities not seen in other diseases. Finally, nationally representative data suggest that there are wider disparities by education among the chronically ill populationsprecisely the population one would expect to be the heaviest health care users.
Entry-Level Products with Consumer Learning
Authors: Johnson Justin P
Published: December 2005

Dynamic motivations for the use of product line extensions in the form of entry-level products are considered. When consumers are uncertain of their valuations for products, and their purchasing power evolves over time, firms competing in a lucrative luxury market may try to influence the future buying decisions of young consumers. Offering entry-level products allows young consumers to experiment and thereby make better future decisions. Despite this efficiency, so providing information to consumers need not benefit a firm. The dynamic motivations for offensive product introductions differ discretely from defensive introductions.