Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Do All The Resource Problems In The West Begin In The East?, Jason Shogren

Jason Shogren

Economics can make good policy better and bad policy go away - a message often constrained by the political realities surrounding federal resource policy toward the West. This essay responds to these challenges to economic reasoning based on the lessons learned after a stay at the Council of Economic Advisers. My goal is to help make apolitical economists more effective advocates of efficiency.

Notes From The Electronic Classroom, Peter Navarro

PETER NAVARRO

No abstract provided.

An Experimental Analysis Of Subgame Perfect Play: The Entry Deterrence Game, Charles F. Mason, Clifford Nowell

Charles F Mason

No abstract provided.

A Model Of The Impact Of Reimbursement Schemes On Health Plan Choice, Emmett Keeler, Grace Carter, Joseph Newhouse

Emmett Keeler

Flat capitation (uniform prospective payments) makes enrolling healthy enrollees profitable to health plans. Plans with relatively generous benefits may attract the sick and fail through a premium spiral. We simulate a model of idealized managed competition to explore the effect on market performance of alternatives to flat capitation such as severity-adjusted capitation and reduced supply-side cost-sharing. In our model flat capitation causes severe market problems. Severity adjustment and to a lesser extent reduced supply-side cost-sharing improve market performance, but outcomes are efficient only in cases in which people bear the marginal costs of their choices.

Those Ever Changing And Unexplainable Mexican Exports To The United States, Robert C. Shelburne

Robert C. Shelburne

This paper provides an updated overview of U.S. imports from Mexico with an emphasis on determining how these imports have changed since the implementation of NAFTA. The changes that have occured in the sectoral distribution of U.S. imports from Mexico are explored with an emphasis on the role of the NAFTA tariff changes, the historical sectoral growth trend, the share of Mexican imports of total imports, and growth trends in U.S. imports from the world.

Can We Believe In Cold Showers?, Neil Campbell

Neil Campbell

This paper considers the case of a firm which faces the decision as to whether to invest in a cost-reducing technology with an uncertain return. Under certain conditions the removal of protection can facilitate this investment (a 'cold shower'). It is shown, in the case of Cournot competition, that a cold shower is more likely if a quota rather than a tariff is the protective instrument. It is also shown that a cold shower is more likely if the domestic firm is a Stackelberg leader rather than a Cournot competitior. A Cournot market structure is used to consider a reduction …

State Corporate Taxation And Business Power: A Pooled Analysis, Andrew Ewoh, Euel Elliott

Andrew I.E. Ewoh

This article investigates whether businesses in concentrated or regulated industries are more likely to exert influence in the area of tax policy. Simultaneous equation models are developed that describe the behavior of firms in their effort to achieve policy outcomes beneficial to their common interests. These models are estimated using pooled time series cross-sectional data. The results show that firms in concentrated industries are likely to seek political influence if they are affected by direct or exclusive government regulation. The study also reveals that industrial concentration leads to greater corporate income. Examination of the political partisanship thesis provides support for …

Spatial Boundaries And Choice Set Definition In A Random Utility Model Of Recreation Demand, George R. Parsons, A Brett Hauber

George Parsons

Four Entries, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

Four entries: "American Institutional Economics and the Legal System" (I: 61-66); "John Rogers Commons" (I: 324-327); Richard Theodore Ely" (II: 28-29); and "Plea Bargaining: A Comparative Approach"

Testing For Vertical Economies Of Scope: An Example From Us Pig Production, Azzeddine Azzam

Azzeddine Azzam

A firm operating in two or more stages of production is said to have vertical economies of scope if the costs of jointly producing two or more vertically adjacent products is less than the costs of producing the products independently. As important as those economies are in theory, they have so far received no empirical treatment compared to scope economies in multi-output production, especially in agriculture. This paper tests for vertical economies of scope in US pig production, using 1990 firm-level cost data. Based on the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test, no evidence of vertical economies was found, meaning that it …

Captive Supplies, Market Conduct, And The Open-Market Price, Azzeddine Azzam

Azzeddine Azzam

In this paper, the author examines the anatomy of the price captive-supplies relationship to ascertain if some of the interpretations offered in the empirical literature are defensible. B. L. Gardner's one-product, two-input model is extended to consider a partially integrated oligopsonistic industry. The main result is that, although the empirical relationship between captive supplies and the price received by independent producers is negative, it may or may not be attributed to noncompetitive conduct. Hence, for an econometric model to detect what type of conduct the relationship reflects, more structural detail is needed than what so far has been provided in …

Competition In The Us Meatpacking Industry: Is It History?, Azzeddine Azzam

Azzeddine Azzam

The U.S. meatpacking industry has become concentrated to a degree not experienced since the days of the 'Beef trust' a century ago. A number of mainstream studies have investigated if such concentration has been detrimental to competition. Just as earlier studies may have helped shape competition policy towards meatpacking a century ago, contemporary studies have made their way into current discussions and may shape competition policy at the turn of this century. This paper asks whether or not contemporary studies are useful in informing competition policy. After comparing how competition looks from the econometric vantage point with how it looks …

Saying Farewell To The Mythology Of Welfare Reform, Laura Stivers

Laura Stivers

Does Increasing The Beer Tax Reduce Marijuana Consumption, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Youth Characteristics And Experiences On Transitions Out Of Poverty, Michael C. Seeborg, Mark Israel

Michael Seeborg

Although the causes of intergenerational transitions from poverty have attracted the attention of economists and sociologists in recent years, there have been few attempts to integrate ideas from both disciplines. Using a sample of young adults who were impoverished as youth, this study explores the effects of a number of background characteristics such as early welfare dependency, substance abuse, teen parenthood and parent's educational attainment on the family income levels of young adults. It finds that many of these background variables have significant indirect influences on family income through intervening variables, especially the respondent's own educational attainment, welfare dependency, and …

Environmental Taxes And The Double-Dividend Hypothesis: Did You Really Expect Something For Nothing?, Don Fullerton, Gilbert Metcalf

Don Fullerton

The "double-dividend hypothesis" suggests that increased taxes on polluting activities can provide two kinds of benefits. The first dividend is an improvement in the environment, and the second dividend is an improvement in economic efficiency from the use of environmental tax revenues to reduce other taxes such as income taxes that distort labor supply and saving decisions. In this paper, we make four main points. First, the validity of the double-dividend hypothesis cannot logically be settled as a general matter. Second, the focus on revenue in this literature is misplaced. We demonstrate that three policies have equivalent impacts on the …

Policies For Green Design, Don Fullerton, Wenbo Wu

Don Fullerton

A simple general equilibrium model is used to analyze disposal-content fees, subsidies for recyclable designs, unit-pricing of household disposal, deposit-refund systems, and manufacturer “take-back” requirements. Firms use primary and recycled inputs to produce output that has two “attributes”: packaging per unit output, and recyclability. If households pay the social cost of disposal, then they send the right signals to producers to reduce packaging and to design products that can more easily be recycled. If garbage is collected for free, then socially optimum attributes can still be achieved by a tax on producers’ use of packaging and subsidy to recyclable designs.

Critique Of The Critique: Analysis Of Hodgson On Marx On Evolution, Howard J. Sherman

HOWARD J SHERMAN

Hodgson claims that Marxism is incompatible with Darwinian biological evolution. That was true of earlier Socialist and Communist theories of economic determinism, but it is not true of the contemporary generation of critical Marxists.

Review Of Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences Of Preference Falsification, Eric Bennett Rasmusen

Eric Bennett Rasmusen

A review of a book on what happens when people's statement of their information depends on what other people are saying.

Recent Initiatives In Antitrust Enforcement, Aaron S. Edlin

Aaron Edlin

No abstract provided.

People Adrift: Migration And Development (In Dutch), Free University, Amsterdam, Henk Lm Kox, Ko Heins

Henk LM Kox

People adrift is an edited volume that offers a rich perspective on migration and development. The introductory chapter by both editors provides an analytic survey of the major issues and their relations. The ten next chapters deal with migration motives, economic mechanisms, environmental issues, social and economic impacts on regions, relation with refugee flows and immigration barriers.

International Openness, Technology And Productivity: An Empirical Investigation For Italy, Roberta De Santis

Roberta De Santis

Is international openness associated with faster economic growth? This paper tries to establish the effect of technology and market opening on labour productivity in Italy. The simple model developed in this paper shows that more open economies have higher rate of technical progress, higher productivity and higher GDP. The model assumes that there are two sources of technical progress growth: a domestic source, associated with innovation (i.e. R&D) and an international one, related to the rate at which the country is able to imitate technological progress originated in the leading innovating nations. According to this model in Italy the internationalisation …

Taxing Personhood: Estate Taxes And The Compelled Commodification Of Identity, Ray D. Madoff

Ray D. Madoff

In this Article, Professor Madoff explores the ways in which the blunt tools of the wealth tax, and in particular the estate tax, uses a one-size-fits-all system to impose a tax on all property interests owned at the time of one’s death. Professor Madoff illustrates the ways in which these blunt tools can produce problematic results by examining their application to the right of publicity, a newly recognized property interest. Professor Madoff suggests that the imposition of the estate tax can force the commodification of an individual’s identity, regardless of one’s desire to refrain from marketing their identity, and explores …

"Public Use" And The Independent Judiciary: Condemnation In An Interest-Group Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article reexamines the doctrine of public use under the Takings Clause and its ability to impede takings for private use through an application of public choice theory. It argues that the judicial validation of interest-group capture of the condemnation power through a relaxed public use standard in Takings Clause review can be explained by interest group politics and public choice theory and by institutional tendencies inherent in the independent judiciary. Legislators can sell the eminent domain power to special interests for almost any use, promising durability in the deal given the low probability that the judiciary will invalidate it …