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Full-Text Articles in Economics

Axiomatic Marxian Exploitation Theory: A Survey Of The Recent Literature, Rylan Chinnock, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara Jan 2024

Axiomatic Marxian Exploitation Theory: A Survey Of The Recent Literature, Rylan Chinnock, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In this paper we review recent developments in axiomatic studies of Marxian exploitation theory. First, given the acute controversy over the formal definition of exploitation during the 1970-1990s, we review the study of the axiomatic frame- work, which identifies some fundamental properties – technically, domain conditions – that any definition of exploitation should satisfy. Moreover, we provide a survey on the axiomatic studies about the proper measures of exploitation which coherently preserve the basic Marxian perceptions represented by two axioms, Profit- Exploitation Correspondence Principle and Class-Exploitation Correspondence Principle. Finally, we examine the relevance of the labour theory of value in …


How Likely Is It That Omitted Variable Bias Will Overturn Your Results?, Deepankar Basu Jan 2024

How Likely Is It That Omitted Variable Bias Will Overturn Your Results?, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Building on a recently developed methodology for sensitivity analysis that parametrizes omitted variable bias in terms of partial R-Squared measures, I propose a simple statistic to capture the severity of omitted variable bias in any observational study: the probability of omitted variable bias overturning the reported result. The central element of my proposal is formal covariate benchmarking, whereby researchers choose an observed regressor (or a group of observed regressors) to benchmark the relative strength of association of the omitted regressor with the outcome variable and with the treatment variable. These relative strengths of association function as the two sensitivity parameters …


Intersectoral Conáict And Delays In Macroeconomic Stabilization, Arslan Razmi Jan 2024

Intersectoral Conáict And Delays In Macroeconomic Stabilization, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

An important body of literature explores the political economy reasons
underlying delays in macroeconomic stabilization. This paper develops
a framework to analyze conflict between two groups of economic actors,
one that has an endowment of internationally tradable goods and another
that is endowed with non-tradable goods. The focus is on the exchange
rate policy in a developing country set-up where the government employs
seigniorage revenue to finance spending pre-stabilization, and faces fiscal
and balance of payments problems that necessitate stabilization with a step
devaluation. The presence of exchange rate and endowment uncertainty,
the role of forward-looking expectations, and the possibility …


Can Price Controls Be Optimal? The Economics Of The Energy Shock In Germany, Tom Krebs, Isabella M. Weber Jan 2024

Can Price Controls Be Optimal? The Economics Of The Energy Shock In Germany, Tom Krebs, Isabella M. Weber

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In the wake of the global energy crisis, many European countries used energy price controls to fight inflation and to stabilize the economy. Despite its wide adoption, many economists remained skepti- cal. In this paper, we argue that price controls should be part of the policy toolbox to respond to shocks to systemically important sectors because not using them can have large economic and polit- ical costs. We put forward our arguments in two steps. In a first step, we analyze the impact on the German economy and society of the global energy crisis that followed Russia’s attack on Ukraine …


Essays On International Trade And Economic Growth, Mateo Hoyos Nov 2023

Essays On International Trade And Economic Growth, Mateo Hoyos

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I study the relationship between trade and economic growth, with a focus on developing economies. I specifically provide a critical review of the consensus view in trade and growth, according to which a liberal trade regime is generally the best policy stance to promote growth. In the first essay of this dissertation, I provide evidence that the relationship between trade policy and growth may depend on economic structure: tariff reductions are followed by higher levels of GDP per capita for manufacturer countries, but lower levels for nonmanufacturers. Testing for mechanisms, I find the heterogeneity seems to be …


Essays On Market Inefficiencies Arising From Information Asymmetry And Market Power, Ming Ge Nov 2023

Essays On Market Inefficiencies Arising From Information Asymmetry And Market Power, Ming Ge

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that empirically investigate various kinds of market inefficiencies arising from seller misbehaviors. The first two chapters focus on physicians' overtreatment in healthcare markets. A standard reputation system falls short of effectively curbing overtreatment due to the credence-good nature of such a market: patients cannot tell whether a high-cost treatment recommendation (versus a less costly and complex treatment) is necessary even after the service is completed. In the first chapter, I propose a novel solution to reinstate the function of reputation by combining a reputation mechanism with patient search for second opinions. I conduct a laboratory …


Three Essays On Macroeconomics And Development, Guilherme Klein Martins Apr 2023

Three Essays On Macroeconomics And Development, Guilherme Klein Martins

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of essays that relate, in different forms, macroeconomic policies to economic development. Essay 1 provides evidence that austerity shocks have longrun negative effects on GDP. Besides addressing the important gap in the growing fiscal research regarding the short time horizon of the estimations, the paper analyzes two other important assumptions made in the literature regarding the (i) symmetry of episodes of fiscal expansion and contraction and (ii) uniformity of fiscal multipliers for different sizes of shocks. We use narrative fiscal shocks and propensity score reweighting in a local projections setup to account for the potential …


The Economics Of Information And Communication Technologies In Our Society, Augusto Espin Apr 2023

The Economics Of Information And Communication Technologies In Our Society, Augusto Espin

Doctoral Dissertations

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a fundamental role in today's society. As ICTs they become more mature and widely adopted, societies become more dependent on their use to operationalize daily activities. However, there are multiple societal impacts of ICTs that are not yet well understood. In this dissertation, I explore three different aspects of ICTs that have been widely discussed by media and industry during recent years. I analyze these topics from an economic perspective, contributing to the debate with rigorous modeling and the ensuing discussion of its implications. First, I study the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had …


Enabling An Equitable Energy Transition Through Inclusive Research, Michael Ash, Erin Baker, Mark Tuominen, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Matthew Burke, S. Castellanos, M. Cha, Gabe Chan, D. Djokic, J.C. Ford, Anna P. Goldstein, David Hsu, Matt Lacker, C. Miller, D. Nock, A.P. Ravikumar, Allison Bates, Anna Stefanopoulou, E Grubert, D.M Kammen, M. Pastor, S.Z, Attari, S. Carley, D.L Clark, D. Dean-Ryan, U. Kosar, Kerry Bowie, Tina Johnson Jan 2023

Enabling An Equitable Energy Transition Through Inclusive Research, Michael Ash, Erin Baker, Mark Tuominen, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Matthew Burke, S. Castellanos, M. Cha, Gabe Chan, D. Djokic, J.C. Ford, Anna P. Goldstein, David Hsu, Matt Lacker, C. Miller, D. Nock, A.P. Ravikumar, Allison Bates, Anna Stefanopoulou, E Grubert, D.M Kammen, M. Pastor, S.Z, Attari, S. Carley, D.L Clark, D. Dean-Ryan, U. Kosar, Kerry Bowie, Tina Johnson

ETI Publications

Comprehensive and meaningful inclusion of marginalized communities within the research enterprise will be critical to ensuring an equitable, technology-informed, clean energy transition. We provide five key action items for government agencies and philanthropic institutions to operationalize the commitment to an equitable energy transition.


Environmental Justice And Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?, James K. Boyce, Michael Ash, Brent Ranalli Jan 2023

Environmental Justice And Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?, James K. Boyce, Michael Ash, Brent Ranalli

ETI Publications

Carbon pricing has been criticized by environmental justice advocates on the grounds that it fails to reduce emissions significantly, fails to reduce the disproportionate impacts of hazardous co-pollutants on people of color and low-income communities, hits low-income households harder than wealthier households, and commodifies nature. Designing carbon pricing policy to address these concerns can yield outcomes that are both more effective and more equitable.


Unequal Gradients: Sex, Skin Tone, And Intergenerational Economic Mobility, Luis Monroy-Gómez-Franco, Roberto Vélez-Grajales, Gastón Yalonetzky Jan 2023

Unequal Gradients: Sex, Skin Tone, And Intergenerational Economic Mobility, Luis Monroy-Gómez-Franco, Roberto Vélez-Grajales, Gastón Yalonetzky

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We study how the intersection between skin tone and sex shapes intergenerational mobility of economic resources in Mexico. Using two recent social mobility surveys, we estimate the rank persistence and transition matrices by sex combined with skin tone groups. First, we find no differences in intergenerational mobility patterns between light-skin men and women. Second, the colorist mobility pattern observed in previous literature affects men and women differently. Namely, while women of intermediate and dark-skin tonalities have a lower expected rank than their light-skin peers, only men of the darkest tonalities suffer from the same penalization. Thirdly, women of intermediate and …


Formal Covariate Benchmarking To Bound Omitted Variable Bias, Deepankar Basu Jan 2023

Formal Covariate Benchmarking To Bound Omitted Variable Bias, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Covariate benchmarking is an important part of sensitivity analysis about omitted variable bias and can be used to bound the strength of the unobserved confounder using information and judgments about observed covariates. It is common to carry out formal covariate benchmarking after residualizing the unobserved confounder on the set of observed covariates. In this paper, I explain the rationale and details of this procedure. I clarify some important details of the process of formal covariate benchmarking and highlight some of the difficulties of interpretation that researchers face in reasoning about the residualized part of unobserved confounders. I explain all the …


Sellers’ Inflation, Profits And Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices In An Emergency?, Isabella M. Weber, Evan Wasner Jan 2023

Sellers’ Inflation, Profits And Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices In An Emergency?, Isabella M. Weber, Evan Wasner

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The dominant view of inflation holds that it is macroeconomic in origin and must always be tackled with macroeconomic tightening. In contrast, we argue that the US COVID-19 inflation is predominantly a sellers’ inflation that derives from microeconomic origins, namely the ability of firms with market power to hike prices. Such firms are price makers, but they only engage in price hikes if they expect their competitors to do the same. This requires an implicit agreement which can be coordinated by sector-wide cost shocks and supply bottlenecks. We review the long-standing literature on price-setting in concentrated markets and survey earnings …


The Yule-Frisch-Waugh-Lovell Theorem For Linear Instrumental Variables Estimation, Deepankar Basu Jan 2023

The Yule-Frisch-Waugh-Lovell Theorem For Linear Instrumental Variables Estimation, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In this paper, I discuss three aspects of the Frisch-Waugh-Lovell theorem. First, I show that the theorem holds for linear instrumental variables estimation of a multiple regression model that is either exactly or overidentified. I show that with linear instrumental variables estimation: (a) coefficients on endogenous variables are identical in full and partial (or residualized) regressions; (b) residual vectors are identical for full and partial regressions; and (c) estimated covariance matrices of the coefficient vectors from full and partial regressions are equal (up to a degree of freedom correction) if the estimator of the error vector is a function only …


Skill Differences And Wage-Effort Relationship: Who Are More Exploited, High-Skilled Or Low-Skilled Workers?, Hyun Woong Park, Dong–Min Rieu Jan 2023

Skill Differences And Wage-Effort Relationship: Who Are More Exploited, High-Skilled Or Low-Skilled Workers?, Hyun Woong Park, Dong–Min Rieu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Who are more exploited, high-skilled or low-skilled workers? We address this question using the efficiency wage model with skill differentials incorporated. We perform simulations to find the Nash equilibrium numerically, and our central results are the following. First, higher-skilled workers are offered higher wages but exert less effort, and in particular the skill-wage relationship matches the observed data on wage inequality of the U.S. Second, we employ two measures of the degree of exploitation. On the one hand, the ratio between effort and wage the higher-skilled workers experience is lower than that of lower-skilled workers. This is due to their …


Alternative Approaches To Labor Values And Prices Of Production: Theory And Evidence, Deepankar Basu, Athanasios Moraitis Jan 2023

Alternative Approaches To Labor Values And Prices Of Production: Theory And Evidence, Deepankar Basu, Athanasios Moraitis

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In this paper, we discuss three approaches to estimating classical prices of production(long run equilibrium prices) in both a circulating capital model and a model that includes capital stock: the Standard Interpretation of Marx’s value theory, the New Interpretation of Marx’s value theory, and the Sraffian approach to prices of production. We add two refinements to both models: (a) allowing for differential wages rates across industries; and(b) taking account of unproductive industries in labor value calculations. We implement(a) the circulating capital models using harmonized input-output data from the World Input Output Database for 37 countries for the period 2000–2014, and …


Conflict Fuels Inflation But The Tinder Lies Elsewhere: Eclectic Structuralist Thoughts In A Developing Economy Context, Arslan Razmi Jan 2023

Conflict Fuels Inflation But The Tinder Lies Elsewhere: Eclectic Structuralist Thoughts In A Developing Economy Context, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Developing country inflation is in the headlines again. Mainstream macroeconomics typically ignores the role of conflict while non-mainstream work tends to ignore macroeconomic constraints. This paper revisits the issue employing a dependent economy framework with eclectic characteristics. Specifically, I explore the mechanisms that propagate both real and monetary sources of inflation in the presence of real wage resistance and distributional conflict. The analysis shows that the inability to pay for subsidies with taxes or bond issuance in a stylized developing economy could create a situation where a relatively small shock leads to sustained and accelerating inflation and a wage-price spiral, …


Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott Jan 2023

Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper examines the dynamics of Keynesian models that incorporate feedback effects from the labor market to income distribution, in- vestment, aggregate demand and output. A baseline version of the model can generate endogenous growth cycles, but cumulative divergence and economic collapse also become possible for plausible parameter values. Extensions of the model that include monetary and Öscal policy show greater robustness: the local instability of the stationary point leads to limit cycles (rather than complete collapse), even when large, destabilizing changes are made to parameters describing the private sector. The robustness of the general approach is reinforced by the …


Covariate Benchmarking For Sensitivity Analysis When The Confounder Is Correlated With Observed Covariates, Deepankar Basu Jan 2023

Covariate Benchmarking For Sensitivity Analysis When The Confounder Is Correlated With Observed Covariates, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Covariate benchmarking is an important part of sensitivity analysis about omitted variable bias and can be used to bound the strength of the unobserved confounder using information and judgments about observed covariates. It is common to carry out formal covariate benchmarking under the assumption that the unobserved confounder is orthogonal to the observed covariates. This assumption is restrictive and will be difficult to defended in most empirical analyses. In this paper I show that relaxing the orthogo- nality assumption leads to a breakdown of a recently proposed innovative formal covariate benchmarking methodology.


Three Essays On The Political Economy Of Cultural Production And Creative Labor, Luke Pretz Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of Cultural Production And Creative Labor, Luke Pretz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationships between capital, cultural production, and creative labor. Essay one theorizes the basis for the intensification of pop music stardom following the introduction of on-demand streaming technology. Prior to the emergence of on-demand streaming, record labels and broadcasters had a mutualistic relationship, wherein the near cost-free music provided by record labels formed the basis for radio broadcasts, which in turn formed the basis for the consumption of that music. Following the emergence of on-demand streaming the mutualistic relationship was ruptured. Broadcasters, in the form of streaming platforms, transitioned to the cost-efficient cultivation of masses of highly …


Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …


Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Essays On Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement And Sex-Based Discrimination In U.S. Labor Markets, Carly Mccann Oct 2022

Essays On Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement And Sex-Based Discrimination In U.S. Labor Markets, Carly Mccann

Doctoral Dissertations

This project focuses on gender and anti-discrimination legislation enforcement in U.S. labor markets. In this dissertation, I examine the efficacy of existing legal and political institutions in place to redress employer sex discrimination. This work provides new understandings of sex discrimination by focusing on the experiences of pregnant workers, an understudied population that continues to lack adequate workplace protections. My research utilizes new administrative data containing formal charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to provide new insights into the workplace experiences of pregnant workers as well as employer responses to anti-discrimination enforcement. Chapter 1 analyzes …


Four Essays On Peace Consolidation And Ethnic Reconciliation In Postwar Sri Lanka, Narayani Sritharan Oct 2022

Four Essays On Peace Consolidation And Ethnic Reconciliation In Postwar Sri Lanka, Narayani Sritharan

Doctoral Dissertations

In four essays, this dissertation explores the process of peace consolidation and economic recovery from the devastating conflict of 1983-2009 in Sri Lanka. This dissertation addresses a timely and important topic. The findings make an important contribution to the literature on economic development and peacebuilding, specifically on the role of foreign aid in alleviating the risks of conflict and helping countries rebuild their economies after conflict. The dissertation highlights important political economy dimensions that help illustrate social and political dynamics that lead to conflict, such as regional and ethnic inequalities, which also influence post-conflict reconstruction. In addition to a historical …


Essays On Advertising, Sodium Intake, And Soda Taxes, Ezgi Cengiz Oct 2022

Essays On Advertising, Sodium Intake, And Soda Taxes, Ezgi Cengiz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation empirically explores the economics of advertising, sodium intake, and sweetened beverage taxes in food and beverages industries in the United States. I use recent advances in econometrics and statistics and provide causally interpretable results to deepen our understanding of how individuals respond to changes in advertising and public health policies in consumer packaged good industries. In the first chapter, titled “Is traditional advertising effective? New evidence from mass-produced lager beer in the United States,” I present new evidence regarding the effectiveness of traditional advertising on product demand for mass-produced lager beer in the United States using …


Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier Oct 2022

Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier

Doctoral Dissertations

In several countries, wages have stagnated and union membership declined, even as productivity has increased. The established view of employers helpless to the labor market's invisible hand has increasingly come under question. Attention has turned towards the power of employers to set wages; yet only recently have the data required to investigate this – observing workers at their employers – become available, and then mostly in richer countries. My first chapter, “Monopsony in Movers” (co-authored with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu), proposes a new credible estimation strategy to measure employer monopsony power. We build on the idea that employers with …


Work, Workers, And Reproducing Social Control: Racial Post-Fordism And Alternative Systems, Hannah Rebecca Archambault Oct 2022

Work, Workers, And Reproducing Social Control: Racial Post-Fordism And Alternative Systems, Hannah Rebecca Archambault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the composition of workers, work, and class, as processes in contemporary capitalism and in other existing or future systems. The first section develops a theoretical framework to understand work and workers which draws on Autonomist Marxist, Black radical, and Marxist feminist literatures. This includes considering new forms and organizations of work that arise from current capitalist economic relations, racialized work, and reproductive work. With this framework I build a theory of racial post-Fordism as the current system of economic relations. In the next section, I apply this theory of racial post-Fordism to work and workers in the …


An Economy Of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch And Feminist Care Ethics, Madison V. Newman Jun 2022

An Economy Of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch And Feminist Care Ethics, Madison V. Newman

Masters Theses

This thesis assesses the centrality of care relationships in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and, by doing so, seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of individual and collective morality. Using the ethics of care as a methodological framework to acknowledge the importance of care acts and successful care relations – especially those complicated by the presence of dichotomized socioeconomic hierarchies – will allow readers to engage more fully with this text, its author, her relations, her characters, and the community of readers; reading Eliot’s work from this lens will allow us to validate every interaction, every thread of connectedness, and every act …


The Political Economy Of Consumer Credit Expansion And Real Exchange Rate Policy In Dual Economies, Esra Nur Ugurlu Jun 2022

The Political Economy Of Consumer Credit Expansion And Real Exchange Rate Policy In Dual Economies, Esra Nur Ugurlu

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents three essays on the political economy of consumer credit expansion and real exchange rate policy in dual economies. The first essay analyzes the structural change implications of consumer credit expansions using a dual-sector growth model. In the model, policy-induced increases in banks’ willingness and ability to lend result in new consumer lending, boosting aggregate demand and average wages in the nontradable sector. Under fixed relative wages and mark-up pricing in the tradable sector, wage pressures translate into inflationary pressures. The inflation-targeting central bank raises the policy rate to contain inflationary pressures. This intervention causes a real exchange …


Three Essays On Social Justice Issues: Health, Gender, And Policing, Travis B. Campbell Jun 2022

Three Essays On Social Justice Issues: Health, Gender, And Policing, Travis B. Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation empirically examines three pressing social justice issues in the United States. In the first chapter, titled "Black Lives Matter's Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-force," I explore the influence of Black Lives Matter protests on police lethal use-of-force. A difference-in-differences design finds census places with protests experienced a 15% to 20% decrease in police homicides from 2014 through 2019, around 300 fewer deaths. This decrease was prominent when protests were large or frequent. Potential mechanisms behind the reduction include police agencies obtaining body-worn cameras to curtail force and depolicing following a so-called `Ferguson Effect.' Fewer property crimes, but more …