Summarizes the articles in this issue that were presented at 2005 University of South Australia confirence “What We Teach and How We Teach It: Perspectives on Economics from Around the Globe.”

The importance of increased levels of education in improving the status of women throughout the world is well established. Higher levels of education are associated with lower birth rates, higher incomes, and greater autonomy for women. Yet, women's struggle to have a voice in higher education has been fraught with difficulties in the US and worldwide, particularly in overcoming widely held perceptions that limit their entrance into certain academic fields, tenured positions, and elite universit...

Adjustment costs in a typical (s,S) pricing policy model are respecified so that price stability affects revenues rather than costs. The (s,S) pricing result holds even when menu costs are removed.

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This paper develops a gravity model of immigration. Tests of the model using panel data for 16 OECD countries for 1991–2000 confirm the model's high explanatory power, and examples illustrate its usefulness for testing other hypothesized determinants of immigration.

Teacher education in economics is essential if high school students are to have an opportunity to learn economics. Teachers need to develop a solid understanding of economics through course work because students cannot be expected to learn what teachers do not know. In face, research in economics education at the high school level has found that the number of economics courses taken by teachers has a positive and consistently significant effect on the economic learning of students.

This paper utilizes data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Survey (OES) to estimate relative cost-of-living (COL) indices for each state. Information Technology (IT) activity (as opposed to industry) is defined by employment in computer and math-related occupations (SOC 15). Occupational location quotients were calculated to identify the current distribution of IT. Money wages for these occupations were deflated by estimated state COL’s to obtain real wages. ...

Co-Author: Soper, John C.

Focuses on the economic literacy of United States high school students. Definition and measurement of economic literacy; Percent correct for economics course; Factors that have policy implications for economics.

The employment-real wage relationship is empirically studied using quarterly data of manufacturing sectors in seven industrialized countries. Contrary to conventional belief of a negative relationship between employment and real wages, I do not find any significant relationship, either negative or positive, in this time-series study. It is shown that lack of stability in the short-run labor demand function is the key explanation to the incoclusiveness of previous empirical studies.

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The article is a paper presented at the second meeting, in November 1984, of Project IDEA (Interdisciplinary Dimenstions of Economic Anaylsis) held at Marson des Sciences de l'Home in Paris and jointly sponsered by the International Social Science Council and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

Co-Author: Becker, William E.

Examines the achievement differences on multiple-choice and essay tests used to measure student understanding of economics in college courses. Data from the 1991 College Board's advanced placement (AP) examinations in microeconomics and macroeconomics; Correlations between multiple-choice and constructed-response sections of AP examinations.

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Co-Author: Lamphear, Charles F.
Evaluates an empirical deterministic model of industrial location. Determination of location patterns; Estimation of interregional commodity flows; Formulation of standard regional input-output structural equation.

In a multi-period game, industry excess capacity may act to deter firms from cheating on a non-cooperative oligopoly price. A model is developed that translates the deterrrent influence of excess capacity into predictions about the relationship between excess capacity and oligopoly price-cost margins. The model is tested with time-series data from the U.S. aluminum industry. Results are consistent with those predicted by the model.

Evaluate the efficiency of the financial assurance plan in the license application submitted by the American Ecology Corporation (AEC) to site, design, and build a new technology facility near Boyd County, Nebraska for the disposal of low-level radioactive wastes (LLRW).

Via a content analysis of 1398 advertisements that include both people and pets and that appeared in women's magazines over a period of four decades, this study examines the changing roles played by companion animals and the changes in themes used in these advertisements. Considering both the pictures and text, the study codes advertisements for themes, pet roles, whether or not the pet appears on a leash, and the physical location of the pet. These data show the movement of companion animals fr...

Co-Author: Roy, Atrayee Ghosh

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Co-Author: Rebeck, Ken

This study investigates public knowledge of basic economics and public opinion on economic issues. The primary data sources are five national surveys, administered from 1992 to 1999, which contain a rich set of questions to conduct multiple tests and comparisons of the factors that affect economic knowledge and public opinion. As a whole, the results offer significantly stronger evidence of factors that influence knowledge and opinion than is possible from a study of a...

Co-Author: Rebeck, Ken

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This paper presents an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving-average (ARFIMA) model of nominal exchange rates and compares its forecasting capability with the monetary structural models and the random walk model. Monthly observations are used for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom for the period of April 1973 through December 1998. The estimation method is Sowell's (1992) exact maximum likelihood estimation. The forecasting accuracy of the long-memory model is f...

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This paper provides an overview of the forms of taxation that are applied to casinos by state and local governments, and analyzes those taxes and fees from a policy perspective. First, the paper contains a comprehensive review of the taxes and fees applied to commercial casinos in the 11 states where casinos are legal. The two most common forms of taxation include a tax on the net amount gambled (AGR, adjusted gross receipts, or gross receipts minus prizes paid) and admission taxes charged on ri...

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Warm-glow utiltiy mitigates concerns that public giving crowds-out private giving dollar-for-dollar. Warm glow also means that utility is decreasing in the giving of others, ceteris paribus, and the willingness to pay for altruism is smaller (at the margin) if altruistic households have a posivitive willingness to pay for warm glow. Consequently, a marginal redistribution of income that passes the Pareto test may fail the test if altruistic households receive warm glow. Numerical evaluation show...

This study combines the problem orientation of instrumentalism and the systems analysis of circular and cumulative causation (CCC) through the utilization of a social fabric matrix (SFM) and network digraph. The SFM is utilized to articulate part of the Nebraska State system used to distribute state funds among local K-12 public schools. The empirical content is used to derive conceptual conclusions about CCC and to make comments about a controversy regarding agents, institutions, and new rule d...

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Multivariate cointegration is used to generate the long-run forecast of the dollar/DM exchange rate. It is shown that while the random walk model outperforms the monetary structural models in the short run, the latter, based on the error-correction model, outperform the former in the long run.

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Roy, Atrayee Ghosh Co-Author

The Suites Index is often used in tax policy analysis to measure the degree of progressivity of a tax, or to analyze changes in progressivity under alternative tax regimes. As a point estimator, however, the Index provides researchers with no assistance in assessing whether changes are in fact statistically significant. We present a bootstrap methodology by which researchers can estimate confidence intervals for differences in Suits Indices. We also illustrate the...

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We find an overall process of income convergence across all sub-state labor markets (commuting zones) in the lower 48 U.S. states during the 1969-1999 period. However, this overall process is not expressed in a uniform way across metropolitan/non-metropolitan commuting zones, across time periods, or across Census regions. We find evidence that downward mobility within the distribution is more common than upward mobility during the 1969-1999 period for metropolitan commuting zones, in contrast to...

A perennial topic in industrial economics is collusion. Kwoka and Ravenscraft (1986) developed a model to measure the collusiveness of conjectures across industries as a function of intra-industry rivalry among leading firms. But extensive literature suggests that the degree of collusion may also depend upon underlying market characteristics. We modify the Kwoka and Ravenscraft model to account for this. Our results suggest that underlying market characteristics do matter. Intra-industry rivalry...

The central objective of this paper is to address the viability of a nominal exchange rate as an effective tool to stabilize inflation in an open small economy like Lebanon. I am interested in addressing the stabilization policy in Lebanon and to what extent the reliance on fixed exchange rates stabilizes inflation. I use time series analysis to address short-term relationship between inflation differential and nominal exchange rate and I use cointegration analysis to address the long-term rel...

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Co-Author: Becker, William E.

When estimating regression models of educational achievement with pre- and posttest data, researchers have overlooked a sample selection bias that may occur even where initial assignment to the control and experimental groups is random. The bias arises because students who take the pretest but do not take the posttest are excluded from the regression analysis. Using data from a nationally normed test of high school student knowledge of economics, adjustment for ...

This study examines whether there is a relationship between benefits and private sector unionization in the US. In their regression analysis, the authors use FRINGE in their as an explanatory variable. The dependent variable is UNIZ, the fraction of the private, non-farm labor force that is unionized. The changing nature of compensation has affected union density. In the private sector, as fringe benefits have become a more prominent component of workers' pay, ceteris paribus, union density has ...

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Existing analyses of electricity deregulation have focused on situations where horizontal market power is present. This paper instead evaluates a market where a competitive outcome is more likely. Competitive market supply and demand curves for electricity have been simulated for a twenty-state region. These simulated supply and demand curves are used to predict short-run and long-run prices for electric power. Many consumers will see a drop in the portion of their electric bills accounted for b...

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A persistent question in industrial economics is the underpinning of the link between market concentration and price. How much of the link can be attributed to market power and how much to market efficiency? This paper develops a theoretical model to address that question. Applied to the US portland cement industry, the model indicates that both impacts matter. In relative terms, however, the market power effect is twice as large as the efficiency effect. An implication for merger policy is that...

Co-Author: Lewer, Joshua J.

This study is all empirical test of the hypothesis, suggested by Mazumdar (1996) and Lee (1995), that, ceteris paribus, a country that imports capital goods and exports consumption goods will grow faster than a country that exports capital goods and imports consumption goods. Using unpublished data acquired from the United Nations, a time-series variable is constructed that reflects the import crud export shares of capital goods relative to consumption goods. This...

Co-Author: Millea, Meghan

Economists have long been interested in the seemingly cooperative nature of Japanese industrial relations. It has been hypothesized that information sharing in the wage-setting process has been used to promote efficiency. But have Japanese employers really paid efficiency wages, that is, can productivity gains be linked to pay raises? Efforts to test for efficiency wage setting face the problem of sorting out the extent to which pay influences labor productivity and...

Do tipped servers in states with higher tipped minimum wages earn more, ceteris paribus, than servers elsewhere? Using 1999 data on waitpersons and bartenders, little evidence is found of a premium to servers in states with more generous minimum wages.

The random walk behavior of nominal exchange rates using daily, weekly and monthly data and of real exchange rates using monthly data is investigated for seven major currencies and fails to be confirmed, but fails less frequently for the post-1979 period.

A common theme in the economic development literature has been that the growth in average annual real GDP per capita overstates the improvement in human welfare. The fundamental flaw of that measurement, however, is that it fails to measure the lifetime welfare of individuals--leading it to understate improvements in human welfare.

This study recalculates output for Mexico for the 1961-90 sample period, controlling for transactional activities and nonmarket production. The authors find that GDP misstates Mexico's 'actual' economic growth. In the 1960s, the economy expanded more quickly than GDP suggests. But in the 1970s, growth was less than half that of the 1960s. The economy indeed slumped in the 1980s but not quite as terribly as the official figures indicate. Mexico's economy did not collapse suddenly in the early 198...

There may be a bi-directional relationship between wages and labor productivity. According to conventional theory, employers reward improvements in productivity by raising pay. It also has been argued that wage increases can provide an incentive to improve productivity. This study applies a technique by Geweke to identify the feedback between pay and productivity in U.S. manufacturing. For the 1949–1998 period, measures of directional feedback indicate that both “pay as reward” and “pay as incen...

Regional Science and Urban Economics 2000

Amitabh Chandra and Eric Thompson

We examine the relationship between large infrastructure spending, of the types implied by interstate highway construction, and the level of economic activity. By collecting historical data on interstate highway construction and economic activity in the United States at the county level we find that highways have a differential impact across industries: certain industries grow as a result of reduced transportation ...

Co-Author: Lewer, Joshua J.

This paper is an empirical test of the hypothesis suggested by Mazumdar (1996), namely, that the composition of trade determines the strength of the "engine of growth". Mazumdar suggested that, within the framework of the Solow model, the composition of trade affects the medium-run transition to the steady state. The composition of trade matters because the price of capital is affected by whether a country exports or imports capital goods. Using unpublished SITC d...

The author describes public education through the media and training for government officials and for journalists undertaken as part of economic reform efforts in the Republic of Georgia of the former Soviet Union. The article concludes with a discussion of the necessary conditions for success of these broad-based educational efforts.

The teaching of economics at the high school level is vital for increasing basic economic literacy. This assessment of high school economics in the United States covers seven topics: enrollments in courses; course content; the testing of students; achievement in economics courses; economics instruction in related courses; teacher preparation for economics instruction; and the contributions from organizations and economists. Significant improvements are found in the teaching, content, and testing...

Awarded the Cole Prize by the editors of Journal of Economic History as the best paper published in 1970.

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Through the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. portland cement industry experienced a significant increase in average plant size and market concentration. A simultaneous equation model is developed to examine the effects of plant size and concentration on costs, prices and margins in that industry. The results indicate the presence of significant scale economies, but also show that prices and margins are increasing in concentration. Further analysis shows that almost one third of the cost savings associa...

A dynamic labor market model is used to motivate the inclusion of population characteristics and industrial structure as determinants of regional employment instability. We examine how these factors influence regional employment instability using data from both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan regions in the United States. We find that population characteristics are important determinants of employment volatility and that increased industrial specialization (reduced diversification) increases em...

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Co-Authored by: Snow, Arthur
We develop a perfect foresight, overlapping generations model with intragenerational inequality and endogenous human and physical capital investment, and we calculate welfare costs for marginal reforms of taxation and public spending. Welfare costs are uniformly lower than in the equivalent static model where human and physical capital are fixed. Most of the upward bias in static estimates arises from fixed human capital because welfare cost is predominantly tax leak...

Both state regulators and local operating companies are increasingly likely to have to estimate forward-looking loop costs for telephone service. The task can be difficult however, as few models exist, and those that do are unwieldy. New models can be developed, but this is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. Furthermore, if a company proposes a new model, regulators have few tools available to validate the model. We posit a simple, straight-forward technique that can be used either as ...

As a social institution, religion directly influences economic behavior, including trade. Religious culture also impacts trade indirectly because it is part of a society's overall culture, which in turn influences many other formal and informal institutions that also directly influence economic activity. Finally, religious cultures support trade networks. Applying panel data for 84 countries for the years 1995–2000 to an augmented gravity model that distinguishes between the direct institutional...

Republished by M.E. Sharpe Inc. in books of readings.

While 2-1-1 systems are being planned and implemented across the United Staes, policymakers and other stakeholders must weigh the costs of implementation against the perceived benefits. How do proponents of 2-1-1 systems present the benefits of their systems? This article will address two issues: examining the variety of ways that 2-1-1 systems benefit their communities and suggesting methods to measure those benefits.

Co-Author: Martin, Dolores Tremawan

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Co-Authored by: Ibrahim, Izani Feder formulated the first model with an explicit mechanism connecting international trade and economic growth. We present new econometric estimates of this unique model for 30 developing countries studied by Feder. We replicate Feder's 1964v-v73 cross-section estimates for 1974v-v83 and 1984v-v93 and find that the export variables lose significance and that the model has less explanatory power overall. We also try to improve on time-series estimates by Ram and fin...

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Previous studies interpret the unidirectional Granger causality from wholesale to consumer prices as evidence that final goods prices respond to exogenous cost-push factors in the primary goods sector. This paper presents a simple model that demonstrates this Granger causal pattern is also consistent with perfectly flexible prices and strong demand elements. Using the recursive structure of this model as a maintained hypothesis in estimation, the authors find negligible permanent feedback from w...

This paper generalizes the first differencing test proposed by C. I. Plosser, G. W. Schwert, and H. White to the case of finite one-sided polynomial filters. The authors demonstrate that the filtering test is asymptotically equivalent to a Hausman-Wu test. This provides a computationally simple way of performing the test and analyzing the test's power. The authors show that the choice of lag weights is nontrivial for filters of order greater than one. By examining the optimal choice of filter, t...

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Research has often focused on how foreign direct investment (FDI) transfers technology from developed economies to less developed economies. Most FDI occurs between developed economies, however, and the country receiving the greatest inflow of FDI is the United States. This paper examines whether such FDI inflows have stimulated growth of the U.S. economy. We apply time-series data to a simultaneous-equation model (SEM) that explicitly captures the bi-directional relationship between FDI and U.S...

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Co-Authors: Barron, John M.,and Loewenstein, Mark A.

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Co-Author: Loewenstein, Mark A.

How does government regulation influence the structure of industries? In the coal mining industry, increased safety can be provided with personal protection devices or with engineering controls; but the type of safety standard imposed is important because larger producers have a comparative advantage complying with engineering controls. Time series evidence indicates that controls, drove out smaller, less safe mines, thereby shifting production toward larger m...

The importance of increased levels of education in improving the status of women throughout the world is well established. Higher levels of education are associated with lower birth rates, higher incomes, and greater autonomy for women. In fact, it has been argued that education is a fundamental prerequisite for empowering women in all spheres of society (Lopez-Claros and Zahidi 2005: 5). In the last third of the twentieth century, women have made particularly significant strides in many count...

In recent years Japanese universities have been under pressure to internationalize their curricula and make undergraduate studies more cross-disciplinary. Many "reforms" have involved simple adjustments to existing programs; only a few institutions have gone so far as to develop entirely new programs of study. Senshu University, a leading private university in Tokyo, has undertaken a bold commitment to use economics as a foundation for integrated global studies. Senshu's experience suggests that...

This paper develops a simple model of student choice to explain why some teaching innovations have only a negligible effect on mean student performance. Teaching innovations are defined as small changes in pedagogy that enable students to more quickly convert time to knowledge. In modeling student behavior it is assumed that some students are more interested in their level of performance or in minimizing their effort than in mastering a subject. The model demonstrates that if students set grade ...

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The liquidity effect of money shocks on the short-term interest rate has been an integral part of traditional macroeconomic policies and has witnessed renewed interest in recent years. The paper reports, contrary to some previous work, extensive evidence of the effect in several non-G7 countries using the single-equation distributed-lag GARCH(p, q) estimation and the systems VAR estimation. The liquidity effect is shown to be alive and well in a sample of nine countries and this will shed much l...

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Forensic economists debate whether it is most appropriate to estimate future net discount rates using either historical averages or the current rate. We develop an efficient estimator based on the time series properties of the net discount rate and the horizon over which net discount rates are to be forecasted. The efficient estimator optimally combines the two standard approaches. Benchmark comparisons suggest that our estimator is at least twice as efficient as either the historical average or...

The effect of mortgage interest and local property tax deductions upon single-family housing demand in the U.S. is examined for the 1994-2003 period. A multi-equation model is developed to simulate the impacts from partial and complete elimination of the deductions. The results indicate that the deductions have moderate effects on housing demand. Complete elimination of the deductions could result in as much as a 12 percent decline in the annual number of single-family housing units that are ...

The effect of mortgage interest and local property tax deductions upon single-family housing demand in the U.S. is examined for the 1994-2003 period. A multi-equation model is developed to simulate the impacts from partial and complete elimination of the deductions. The results indicate that the deductions have moderate effects on housing demand. Complete elimination of the deductions could result in as much as a 12 percent decline in the annual number of single-family housing units that are pur...

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Co-Authored by: Lewer, Joshua

The estimated static welfare gains from international trade are very small, on the order of one percent of GDP. The case for free trade is therefore increasingly linked to trade's apparent positive effects on economic growth. But how large are these growth effects? The vast empirical literature has emphasized the statistical significance, not the economic significance, of the trade-growth relationship. This survey's re-examination of the empirical literature foc...

Developed an efficient net discount rate estimator based on optimally combining current and past rates. They also proposed a compromise estimator that equally weights the long term average and random walk estimators. In this paper we extend that analysis by developing analytic and bootstrap confidence intervals for the current, long-term average, optimal and compromise estimators. 50-percent boundaries vary by estimator and by forecast horizon. However, in almost all cases, the boundaries are wi...

Proves that estimates using disaggregated dependent variables have the same degree of simultaneity bias as the estimates using aggregate data. Error in inference which led some economic researchers to use the estimation strategy called identification by disaggregation.

Concerned about shortages of highly skilled workers, especially those with international specialties, Japan adjusted its immigration policy in 1990. The government made it easier for skilled foreign specialists to work in Japan. In the wake of the policy adjustment, this study examines whether there have been changes in inflows of skilled foreigners. Though Japan is still wary of immigration and official policy remains comparatively strict, it is clear that skilled professionals are entering Jap...

The author discusses the following seven issues affecting assessment of undergraduates in universities: decisionmaking and the selection of tests, the use of written and oral assignments to measure learning, the characteristics of grades and portfolios for evaluating students, opportunities for self-assessment and feedback to instructors, retention of learning and the testing for higher-ordered thinking, the psychology of students in the economics classroom, and the development of new tests as p...

Co-Author: Sivaprakasam, Sivakumar

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The primary purpose of this article is to analyze the desirability of privatizing state unemployment insurance (UI) programs to determine if unemployed workers would be better off under a private, competitive system rather than under the present public system. Although several private unemployment insurance programs are now in existence, formidable obstacles must be overcome in order to have a viable, competitive UI system that would replace the present public system. Since it is unlikely that t...

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This paper develops and tests restrictions on the variance of innovations in long-term bond yields implied by the expectations model of the term structure. The authors adapt Kenneth D. West's (1988) stock-price volatility tests to the case of long but finite maturity bonds. Their approximate equality restriction does not require short-term rates to be stationary and, hence, provides a unified framework for volatility testing. When short rates are modeled as stationary, long-rate innovations appe...

We develop a model to estimate simultaneously import shares, export shares, outward foreign direct investment and domestic profits for a large sample of U.S. manufacturing industries. In our model, trade barriers alter the ability of domestic market structure to influence domestic performance. The results indicate that trade flows behave as expected in response to factor intensity. Profits are disciplined by imports and enhanced by exports. Concentration reduces both import and export shares but...

We develop a model to estimate simultaneously import shares, export shares, outward foreign direct investment and domestic profits for a large sample of U.S. manufacturing industries. In our model, trade barriers alter the ability of domestic market structure to influence domestic performance. The results indicate that trade flows behave as expected in response to factor intensity. Profits are disciplined by imports and enhanced by exports. Concentration reduces both import and export shares but...

Co-Author: Tiebout, Charles M.

Focuses on use of California-Washington interregional input-output model to link the two regional economies. Stability of trade coefficients; Generation of an equal amount of state income; Assumption of imported to domestic inputs.

Co-Authored by: Kourilsky, M.

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Do job centers help unemployed people to find and keep jobs? Using the results of a unique survey by the Japanese government, this note examines the employment success of job center clients. Success in finding and keeping jobs varies systematically across distinct subgroups. Moreover, job center clients were not particularly successful in finding work that fit their qualifications. (JEL J60, J68, J40)

This paper presents time-series evidence on the importance of liquidity constraints in aggregate consumption expenditures. In contrast to previous studies, the author finds the proportion of consumption attributable to liquidity constrained behavior to be large and highly statistically significant. The estimation pays careful attention to the problems of stochastic consumption and temporal aggregation, and the estimates are shown to be robust to alternative specifications involving costly adjust...

This paper presents cross-sectional estimates of influences on the shares of individual LDCs in US import markets during years in which US tariffs rose. The tariff increases were specific to country and product and they resulted from the withdrawal of benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences. The paper confirms the hypotheses that the negative impact of a tariff increase is stronger (a) the more elastic is the import demand, (b) the slower is the growth in demand, and (c) the smaller...

Co-Authored by: Arthur Snow

We develop a perfect foresight, overlapping generations model with intragenerational inequality and endogenous human and physical capital investment, and calculate welfare costs for marginal reforms of taxation and public spending. Welfare costs are uniformly lower than in the equivalent static model where human and physical capital are fixed. Most of the upward bias in static estimates arises from fixed human capital since welfare cost is predominantly tax leak...

In this paper, the authors examine the determinants of import share across several independent regional U.S. markets for portland cement. They show that import penetration is indeed influenced by domestic market structure. They study data from twenty markets covering a six-year period. The result s indicate that import penetration rises with increasing domestic-sel ler concentration. Penetration also rises in periods of strong demand when domestic production approaches capacity constraints. Furt...

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Why do immigration shocks tend to have benign effects on native wages? One reason is that immigrants as consumers contribute to the demand for their services. We model an economy where workers spend their wages on a locally produced good, then test it via a reexamination of the 1980

Research on economic base analysis has consistently favored approaches that measure the level of basic employment in all sectors rather than simply assuming that certain sectors (such as manufacturing) are inherently basic. Measurement of economic base in these studies, however, has often used techniques that have a tendency to be imprecise, either underestimating (location quotients) or overestimating (minimum requirements) basic employment. Such techniques are necessary since it is often diff...

Regional Studies 2002

George Hammond and Eric Thompson

We examine mobility and modality trends in US state per capital personal income (and its components) during the 1929-1999 period. We find strong evidence of convergence for states, but that the tendency towards convergence (and the associated mobility within the distribution) varies during the period and especially for the 1980s. Our analysis of convergence by income component suggests that transfer income contributes more to the obser...

This paper employs linear feedback measures to examine the relationship between housing starts and the availability of mortgage credit. Estimates are obtained using monthly data with samples ending with May 1978 and beginning with June 1978. The results indicate that mortgage credit availability contributed significantly to short-run cycles in houses starts in the earlier sample. Such feedback is considerably smaller, however, in the later sample. The results suggest the housing finance sector h...

We empirically examine the effect of multimarket contact on pricing in the U.S. cement industry. A model of price and quantity formation is estimated for a panel of 25 regional cement markets over 16 years. The results indicate that the divergence of price from marginal cost in a particular market is directly related to the extent of multimarket contact among firms in that market.

Some economists employ averages of net discount rates over historical periods as proxies for future net discount rates. This raises the question of the time period, or duration, over which to calculate the average net discount rate. Two testing procedures are used to examine this question. The first uses moving average net discount rates over a number of years. A more refined procedure tests the impacts of duration by disaggregating the moving averages. Although the study does offer some insight...

This paper estimates net marginal Social Security tax rates, by age, for the cohorts of workers covered by Social Security in 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. The paper updates and extends Feldstein and Samwick's (1992) study. In contrast to their study, which found net tax rates much higher for young workers relative to older workers in 1990, this paper finds net tax rates to be relatively uniform across age groups. This paper's inclusion of the Disability Insurance program, the projected decline in ...

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Formulated a theory of self-enforcing collusion assuming a deterministic demand cycle. They predicted that under a self-enforcing non-cooperative pricing scheme, for any level of demand, the price in the rising part of the cycle would always be greater than the price in the falling part of the cycle. They also predicted that the path of collusive profits should reach its peak before market demand. We test their predictions using data from the Portland cement industry. The hypotheses are tested u...

Jonung and Stahlberg speak to the issue of mission women in the economics profession in five industrialized countries-The United States, Austrialia, Great Britian, Canada, and Sweden. As their article indicates, women have made significan strides in the last third of the twentieth century in expanding their represenation as students in higher learning in these and other countries throughout the world. However, what they ask us to consider is the something ticklish question of why we have not see...

The process of privatizing state-owned property assets such as agricultural or manufacturing enterprises is considered in the paper. An optimal timing model is employed to investigate the question of the best time to privatize a state-owned property asset. Beyond the optimal timing question, the author also analyses the simultaneous question of the optimal amount of new fixed investment that should accompany privatization. In both cases, comparative static analysis is employed to determine how f...

Housing Economics (including urban and nonurban housing)

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Conventional theory predicts that productivity gains lead to pay hikes. Pay increases, however, can influence labor productivity. But what about the case of a corporatist economy, in which wage setting is highly coordinated? With corporatist cooperation between unions and management, is pay de-coupled from productivity? Using an innovative technique, this study disentangles the relationship between pay and productivity in Germany. Citing high unemployment and increasingly global competition, cri...

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The purpose is to explain the linkage of (1) economic methodology, (2) corporate networks, and (3) federal court decisions in the licensing of hazardous waste facilities and to recognize the opportunity the three provides for institution economics.

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This paper investigates the issue of price level indeterminacy under a pure interest rate peg in models that depart from standard Ricardian assumptions. Using a monetary version of Blanchard's finite horizons model, I find wealth effects operating on government bonds are not sufficient to determine a unique price level. Next, I consider price determination under a non-Ricardian fiscal authority. I show that, if agents rationally perceive the possibility of fiscal default, the price level is agai...

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Reprinted in Business and Government in America Since 1870, Robert F. Himmelberg editor, Volume 9 (Hamden, CT: Garland Publishing, 1994): 249-59. No Summary Available.

An analysis of pricing by economics journal publishers shows that most publishers initially charge libraries and individual subscribers the same price. Over time, however, almost all eventually engage in price discrimination. The few publishers that never price-discriminate seem to be purchasing an explicit non-profit-maximizing pricing strategy. Once discrimination occurs, library prices rise faster than individual subscriber prices. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions.

In Matsushita v. Zenith the Supreme Court gave a ringing endorsement to the Chicago school's view "that predatory pricing schemes are rarely tried, but even more rarely successful."(1) Consequently the Court clearly indicated that it would exercise great reluctance before finding for a complainant in this area.(2) The Justices noted that scholars like Easterbrook had shown that on theoretical grounds predation was unlikely to occur and further there was scanty empirical evidence documenting pred...

Theory demonstrates that demand variations can have nonmonotonic effects on pricing in supergames with capacity constraints. Furthermore, this nonmonotonic relationship can be a function of capacity utilization rates. Time series data from 25 regional cement markets are used to examine this results empirically. No statistically significant relationship is found between demand variations, pricing and excess capacity.

The simultaneity between profit, entry, and changes in concentration is examined. The sample includes 481 observations on 4-digit industries over the years 1972–1977 and 1977–1982. Results show that profits respond positively to entry barriers and initial concentration. Net entry responds positively to initial profits and responds negatively to entry barriers. Concentration moves toward its steady-state level, but the rate of adjustment is very slow. The competitive process, left on its own, doe...

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The random walk hypothesis is tested, using annual data of the United Kingdom, and quarterly data of eight industrialized countries. While annual series follow a random walk, not all quarterly series do. This sharply contrasts with the results of Ahking (1982).

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Sargent's (1987a) textbook treatment of static equilibrium theory argues that if expected inflation is positive, real balance effects are perverse, and the traditional argument, whereby flexible wages guarantee full employment, is incorrect. This paper argues that Sargent misrepresents traditional static theory by using as a model of consumption an equilibrium condition from the monetary growth literature. perverse real balance effects appear when this equilibrium condition is treated as a behav...

This paper presents a disaggregated analysis and investigates empirically the real wage response during the monetary cycle, using the disaggregated quarterly data for the U.S. manufacturing industry. I find, like Leiderman, a countercyclical real wage response during the monetary cycle. I also find that while both unanticipated and anticipated money changes have significant effects on the real wage in the durable goods sector, anticipated money changes do not affect the real wage in the nondurab...

This paper uses band spectrum regression to isolate the cyclical relationship between real wages and employment in U.S. postwar monthly data. The author finds a small, but statistically significant, countercyclical pattern to real wages when real wages are measured relative to producer prices, but no cyclical pattern when real wages are measured relative to consumer prices. The spectral decomposition shows that the "cyclical" relationships reported in many time domain studies are attributable to...

The recent contributions to this journal by Herbert S. Denenberg and J. David Cummins examines reciprocity, one of the major issues in the ITT-Hartford Fire Insurance merger case. They enumerate the forms of reciprocity, the types of reciprical agreements that are illegal, the adverse economics efforts of reciprocity, the characteristics of insurance conducive to reciprocity, and the reasons why companies such as ITT would practice this business tactic. They conclude that a 1969 District court d...

With recent changes in telecommunications law, states are under pressure to create universal service funds to support high-cost consumers. This paper develops a permanent, long-term, universal service funding mechanism that fulfills a states need.

This article considers the relative efficiency of marginally redistributing income from high- to low-income households. Additional spending on a negative income tax is compared with spending on an earnings or a wage subsidy. One set of reforms imposes the same burden on the nonpoor, and another set redistributes the same net benefit to the working poor. Additional spending on a negative income tax is more efficient than spending a similar amount on an earnings subsidy (the Earned Income Tax Cred...

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Co-Author: Watts, Michael

Twelve papers examine reforms in the content and teaching of economics at universities and elementary and secondary schools in the countries undergoing the transition to a market economy. Most papers were written by teams of U.S. or U.K. economists and educators who traveled and worked extensively in the transition economics, paired with economists who live, work, and were trained in the nations discussed. Papers discuss attitudes toward markets and market reforms i...

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Many believe that some hospitals engage in upcoding, an act in which hospitals classify patients into a diagnosis related group (DRG) that yields higher reimbursement from Medicare than the DRG that is justified by patients’ medical records. For example, hospitals are reimbursed more than twice as much for DRG 79 (respiratory infections

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This article shows how admission and enrollment processes affect the interpretation of simple validation studies of academic performance. In a competitive market for students, optimal behavior of admissions committees and applicants drives the simple correlation between test scores and performance toward zero, regardless of the relationship in the population of prospective students. Data from our university's MBA program support the prediction that applicants exhibit a higher correlation between...

This article shows how admission and enrollment processes affect the interpretation of simple validation studies of academic performance. In a competitive market for students, optimal behavior of admissions committees and applicants drives the simple correlation between test scores and performance toward zero, regardless of the relationship in the population of prospective students. Data from our university's MBA program support the prediction that applicants exhibit a higher correlation between...

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We estimate reduced form equations for immigration to the United States by engineers, natural and social scientists, and physicians from 18 Third World countries. Explanatory variables include income, real GDP growth, graduation in the United States, and study in each country of origin. Additional explanatory variables are foreign student enrollment in the United States, lagged immigration, total immigration from each country, and a dummy variable which accounts for implementation of restriction...

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In the typical (s, S) pricing model, some type of adjustment cost deters firms from frequently adjusting their nominal prices in the face of inflation. In this paper, frequent price changes act to reduce revenues rather than increase costs. The typical (s, S) model is additionally altered by making the inflation processes stochastic. A numerical technique is used to find the optimal pricing strategy for a firm in this situation. Data from the U.S. aluminum industry--an industry where demand cond...

Tax evasion on tips earned by servers is a pervasive problem, one that has received almost no attention in the tax evasion literature. We develop a model of joint server and employer tax compliance to derive predictions for how the customer tipping rate, the server’s sales and tax rate and the expected IRS penalty on employers influences compliance by both parties. We test the model by examining interstate differences in reported hourly pay (wages plus reported tips) during 2001. We use the Occu...

Tax increment financing is a relatively new economic development tool employed by municipalities. This paper looks at what cities adopt tax increment financing plans and whether they experience greater growth in property values. A structural probit model of tax increment financing adoption is estimated accounting for the simultaneous determination of property value growth and tax increment financing adoption. Sample selection issues are discussed and corrections are made in estimation.

Co-Authored by: Hou, Jack W. and Millea, Meghan

Earlier research suggests that there has been one-way causality from government
revenues to expenditures in Taiwan. This study measures linear feedback to (1) decompose the relationship between Taiwan’s government spending and receipts and (2) account for contemporaneous association. Despite substantial fiscal synchronization, we still find one-way causality from government receipts to expenditures.

In this article I expand on Turnbull’s presentation by highlighting two important aspects of regulations and their effects on land use. First, I summarize what we know about the dynamic effects of property taxation and discuss alternative tax regimes and their implications for land use. Second, I analyze the role of development impact fees and consider ways in which this new financing method may be rationalized. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Co-Author: Rebeck, Ken

This study describes a new data set and uses it for an exploratory investigation of whether seminars for teachers conducted by the National Council on Economic Education through its International Education Exchange Program (IEEP) had a beneficial effect on the economic understanding of the high school students of these teachers. The data were collected using a nonequivalent control group design that sorted teachers into two groups based on whether or not they participa...

Instructors fail to exploit the advantage of essay testing method while avoiding the pitfalls, as identified in this article. The author provides examples and suggestions for improving the quality of essay questions.

We analyze the behavior of state revenues since the early 1950s to determine the severity of the revenue declines experienced by states after the 2001 recession. Both total state revenues for the nation and state-level data for each state are studied. We conclude that the states were indeed hit with an unprecedented downturn in revenues unlike anything that had been experienced in the preceding half-century. Further and contrary to general perceptions, revenue increases in the years preceding th...

Mean annual changes in shares of U.S. import markets over 1976-83 are calculated for each of eighteen less-developed countries (LDCs) exporting to the United States. Means for cases in which tariffs rose and fell under the competitive need provisions of the U.S. generalized system of preferences are compared with means for cases in which tariffs remained constant. The asymmetric results: generalized system of preferences tariff increases (decreases) reduce (do not augment) imports. Both more and...

Urban Economics and Public Policy

Predicting the trade effects of tariff reductions has received considerable attention in recent years with the advent of many preferential trade arrangements and the Tokyo Round negotiations. A widely cited article by Baldwin, Murray [1977] and a subsequent UNCTAD study by Ginmanal. ountries (LDCs) as a result of tariff cuts in more developed countries under the generalized system of preferences (GSPs) and under the most-favorednation (MFN) system. In a Brookings Institution study, Cline predic...

The cyclical behaviour of prices and inflation is investigated for G-7 and seven non-G7 countries for the postwar period. The quarterly prices are shown to be clearly countercyclical in the G-7 countries, while they are much less so in the non-G7 countries. Inflation is shown to move procyclically and this is more clearly pronounced in the G-7 than non-G7 countries. This discrepancy in results may result from the demand-management policies that these non-G7 countries have adopted in the past and...

Entry and exit rates are examined across a fairly large sample of 4-digit U.S. manufacturing industries. Market growth significantly increases (reduces) entry (exit) rates. Profits increase entry rates. Advertising clearly acts as an entry barrier. Sunk capital costs seem to deter exit. While entry and exit rates are related in the sample, whether they are simultaneously determined is unclear.

Co-Authored by: Warren, Ronald S.

This paper provides evidence on the determinants of the duration of homelessness. We use newly available data from a large-scale, comprehensive microeconomic survey to estimate a parametric survival model of the length of a spell of homelessness. We find that homeless spells are longer for persons with certain demographic characteristics (such as older men) and behavioral histories (for example, previous incarceration and a history of drug and alcohol abuse)...

We analyze the factors that influence the length of a completed spell of sheltered homelessness, using administrative data on individuals who stayed in a large regional homeless shelter. We develop a model of homelessness which provides the basis for inferences made from our estimated model. Our estimates provide some support for the predictions of the model and reveal a variety of individual-specific characteristics that increase the length of stay in the shelter. These include the presence of ...

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Recent proposals aim to relocate relatively healthy residents from nursing homes to lower-cost assisted care facilities. Such a move would have impacts on nursing home costs for two main reasons. It would decrease utilization rates and increase patient care needs, or acuity. A translog cost model is used to examine the impact that acuity and utilization have on nursing home costs. Results indicate that decreasing utilization will reduce total costs for nursing homes. However, increasing acuity w...

This study provides new evidence on the industrywide impact of strike by investigating how strikes have affected the values of struck and nonstruck airlines. Using stock market data for the years 1963-86, the authors show that most strikes adversely affected the value of struck airlines' stock, but enhanced the stock value of nonstruck carriers. The results also show that strikes before October 1978, which marked the end of strict regulation of the industry and of the employers' mutual aid pact,...

Haltiwanger and Harrington (1991) among others explore a theoretical study on the effects of demand fluctuations on the degree of oligopoly coordination. They specific that demand movements are deterministic as the assumption of independent, identically distributed demand shocks in each period is excluded. This paper empirically examines the hypothesis implied by the Haltiwanger and Harrington in which current prices and margins vary directly with expected future demand. We also explore the time...

In this article, the authors quantify the potential efficiency gains from moving toward an income redistribution system that bases transfers on membership in demographic groups such as race and gender. They compute four measures of the marginal efficiency cost (MEC) of redistribution under a standard linear income tax and under a policy that tags specific demographic groups. The authors find that a tagging system can significantly lower the MEC of redistribution. At the margin, a system of taggi...

Taxable (and broad) income elasticities are estimated using tax return data from 1979 to 2001. Data from the Continuous Work History Survey (CWHS) yield an estimated taxable income elasticity for the 1990s that is about half the corresponding 1980s estimate. Estimates from the full Statistics of Income, which heavily oversamples high-income filers, generally confirm the CWHS results. More sophisticated income control brings the estimates for the two decades closer together-to 0.40 for the 1980s ...

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We analyze the effect of CEO tenure on the relation between firm performance and forced turnover. We find that the performance-forced turnover relation is conditional on CEO tenure. Our results suggest a constant negative relation between firm performance and forced turnover throughout an inside CEO's tenure. Founders are entrenched early in their careers but held accountable for firm performance later in their careers. We find evidence that outside hires experience a probationary period, follow...

The Hispanic population of Lexington, seat of Nebraska's Dawson County, increased nearly ten-fold between 1990 and 2000, from just over 400 to about 4,000, and the city's population grew from 6,600 to over 10,000. Economic trends in the 1990s contrast sharply with the previous decade, when the county's population and overall employment declined rapidly. This episode of immigration provides a unique opportunity to analyze the economic impact of immigration on a local economy. Traditional model...

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The idea of modeling relationships among organizations and between systems and the environment, as required by Forrester-type computer programs, is inconsistent with institutional economics. In institutional economics, the concepts of hierarchy, feedback, and openness are consistent with general systems analysis, the treatment of hierarchy and feedback within system networks, and system dynamics that result from a system being open to the environment. It is thus inappropriate to adopt the defini...

This paper investigates the issue of price level indeterminacy under a pure interest rate peg in models that depart from standard Ricardian assumptions. Using a monetary version of Blanchard's finite horizons model, I find wealth effects operating on government bonds are not sufficient to determine a unique price level. Next, I consider price determination under a non-Ricardian fiscal authority. I show that, if agents rationally perceive the possibility of fiscal default, the price level is agai...

Co-Authored by: Becker, William E.

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There has recently been resurgence of interest in the liquidity effect of money shocks on short-term interest rates. This paper empirically investigates the liquidity effect for some of the G-7 countries, using single equation and vector autoregressive systems estimation methods. Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) is employed to better capture the behaviour of interest rates and money. Our results strongly indicate presence of the liquidity effect in most of the co...

In this article, the author argues that Rand's claim that evidence of capitalism's success is "incontrovertible" cannot be confirmed using familiar annual GDP per capita figures. This article argues that annual GDP per capita cannot logically represent individual welfare because it measures an annual income flow while individuals judge their welfare by their lifetime income. Data are available to measure an economy's capacity to enhance individual lifetime welfare. Not only does this measure com...

The authors present analytic formulas for calculating marginal welfare costs when taxes are levied against the wages of a heterogeneous population of households and marginal tax revenue finances either the supply of a public good or lump-sum transfers. The formulas are applied to explain the wide discrepancy between estimates or marginal welfare costs for redistribution previously obtained through computer simulation procedures. The authors' calculations reveal that these procedures introduced l...

The effect of status on aggregate welfare is ambiguous for marginal reforms that redistribute income. If average consumption falls, the change in relative consumption increases household utility but reinforces the decrease in household labor supply, raising welfare cost. For parameterizations of the model developed here, reforms which lower average consumption increase aggregate welfare. Numerical calculations show that status increases marginal welfare cost and marginal net benefit for a demogr...

We investigate the role of job-match heterogeneity in the CEO labor market. We document a high percentage of CEO turnovers in the early years of tenure as illustrated by the hazard that increases until the fifth year of CEO tenure and then decreases. Evidence suggests that a good match is more likely if the new CEO performs better than the previous CEO. The best matches tend to occur when inside (outside) CEOs follow previous CEOs who quit (are dismissed). Evidence consistent with match theory i...

This paper reports an empirical relationship between conduct of monetary policy and the foreign exchange risk premium, using GARCH(1, 1). The time-variation of the risk premium is shown to depend significantly on the changes in the monetary policy regime.

Entrepreneurship has unexpected effects on philanthropy, society, and education. Entrepreneurs do not start out to become philanthropists but they often assume that role when a business becomes successful (direct effect). Entrepreneurs also enrich their associates and business investors, who also contribute to philanthropic wealth (indirect effect). The wealth of entrepreneurs and their associates is the main source of funding for private foundations, which often fund educational initiatives....

A significant event for the advancement of economic education in the schools is the development of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics. For the first time, national data from a representative sample of students are available to measure the achievement of high school students in economics. The achievement results are reported overall, across three content areas, by cognitive levels, and for different subgroups of students. The results and data set are a valuable re...

The conclusion to draw from this study of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics is that the dataset can be a rich resource for investigating factors that affect student achievement in economics, not only in the general economics course, but also in the other types of courses and within the specific content areas of market, national, and international economics. Further study will require the use of the released dataset and analysis to control for the effects of mul...

This article uses a variant of Geweke's (1982) linear feedback measure to test common characterizations of monetary neutrality implicit in classes of relative price models. The neutrality properties are defined in terms of relative price changes' response to monetary policy shocks in a system including average price changes, an interest rate, and industrial production growth. The magnitude and patterns of monetary feedback found in U.S. relative price data provide no support for any of the struc...

This paper presents new estimates of persistence of shocks to quarterly labor income, monthly Treasury bill yields, and annual real common stock dividends. The authors replace orthogonality conditions involving near unit root instruments with restrictions on innovation variances implied by a generalized version of the permanent income hypothesis, a term structure model, and constant discount rate efficient markets model. Conditional on these theories, they obtain precise estimates of persistence...

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reprinted in Labor Market Segmenation also.

Co-Author: Rebeck, Ken

The authors use National Center for Education statistics data to estimate how many high school graduates complete an economics course and to examine course-taking trends from 1982 to 1994. About 44 percent of high school graduates took an economics course in 1994. Data are reported on the demographics of the economics students. Enrollments in economics are compared to enrollments in other social studies courses.

The development and revision of the Test of Understanding of College Economics (TUCE-4) produced a valid and reliable measure for assessing student achievement in many principles of economics classrooms. The test data collected from administering it in principles classes can be used by instructors and departments to compare with national norms. The TUCE-4 also should be valuable for advancing research in economics education because it provides a standardized test that can be used to assess stu...

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The purpose is to explain five related concerns. First, explain a new method to analyze and measure the network of interlocks among the directors of different corporations. Second, using the method articulated is used to analyze and describe the network that forms the corporate power structures the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Company (CIC) is enmeshed. Third, the emperical base generated for the CIC, select the most dominate corporation. Fourth, provide a literature review tha...

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This article received Gold Key Award from Delta Tau Kappa: The Internation Social Science Honor Society in 1977.

This paper presents new evaluations of the multilateral trade negotiations from the perspectives of (1) the objectives established by GATT signatories in the Tokyo Declaration, and (2) the LDCs' goals for the negotiations. It also attempts to resolve some of the controversy over the gains and losses which MFN tariff reductions would generate for LDC exports, some but not all of which receive preferential access to advanced-country markets. The analysis indicates that even minor improvements in t...

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Evidence is provided on the allocated effects of monetary poicy by estimating the extent of which money growth shocks affected individual relative prices from 1954 to 1979. Builing on Geweke's (1982) feedback measure, the paper presents estimates of monetary feedback decomposed by frequency to allow monetary policy short-run effects to differ from its longer-run effects.
The results suggest that monetary feedback from 1954 to 1970 differs from the latter period in both magnitude and patterns acr...

This paper derives and tests exact restrictions on the sensitivity of changes in consumption to univariate innovations in labor income. Under the maintained hypothesis that labor income is difference stationary, changes in consumption are shown to be far too insensitive to innovations in labor income to be consistent with the Permanent Income Hypothesis. The under-sensitivity result complements recent work on the under-volatility of consumption. Several potential explanations for under-sensitivi...

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Griffing, Marlon F., Co-Author

Use-value assessment is the practice of valuing land for property tax purposes in its current use, rather than at its full market value. This practice is widespread in the U.S. and is intended to reduce the property tax burden on agricultural land near urban areas and slow the pace of land development. We examine the foregone property tax revenue, or tax expenditure, due to use-value assessment. Data sets for two case studies are employed in empirical estimation...

This article explains findings of part of a research project that uses the social fabric matrix (SFM) (Hayden 2006, 73-143) to analyze Nebraska's State education finance system with regard to adequacy and rules. The emphasis is about how to approach such a problem and to demonstrate the use of mathematical expressions to articulate social beliefs as instituted through rules, regulations, and requirements.

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Journal of Cultural Economics 2002

Eric Thompson, Mark Berger, Glenn Blomquist, and Steven Allen

Government funding of the arts has received considerable attention in the United States in recent years. Efforts to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and declining budgets for state arts agencies have raised questions about how much individuals value the arts. This paper applies the contingent valuation method to assess this value, using surveys of random households and of arts...

Anecdotes are often quite suggestive. A graduate student in economics who was serving as a teaching assistant once reported that his major professor came into his office and told him that he was spending too much of his time helping his undergraduate students and not enough time on his research.

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Investigates the knowledge of students on basic economics. Sources of the data used in the investigations of the students knowledge; Discussion on the results of the analysis of the data.

Also Co-Authored by: Bosshart, William H

No Summary-Review of Anne Matthews Paper

The FCC requires that the price of unbundled network elements be equal to the total element long-run incremental cost of production plus a reasonable contribution to common and joint costs. This pricing standard has the potential of making the telecommunications market more competitive. TELRIC prices, however, are set independently of historic costs and therefore may not compensate investors for incurred costs. Hence, incumbent local exchange carriers have been fighting its implementation. In al...

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Policy analysts and scholars are only now beginning the serious task of sifting through the debris of the 1980s to chronicle the impacts of policy changes and to evaluate the policies as well as the policymakers. The 1980s will no doubt be remembered as having produced the worst recession since the Great Depression and perhaps, more generally, as a period of economic retrenchment [Dugger 1992]. While many segments of society were affected by the restructuring inherent in Reaganomics, the impact ...

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