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Articles 271 - 300 of 386

Full-Text Articles in Economics

Purchasing Power Parity And Interest Parity In The Laboratory, Eric O'N. Fisher Nov 2001

Purchasing Power Parity And Interest Parity In The Laboratory, Eric O'N. Fisher

Economics

This paper analyses purchasing power parity and uncovered interest parity in the laboratory. It finds strong evidence that purchasing power parity, covered interest parity, and uncovered interest parity hold. Subjects are endowed with an intrinsically useless (green) currency that can be used to purchase another useless (red) currency. Green goods can be bought only with green currency, and red goods can be bought only with red currency. The foreign exchange markets are organized as call markets. In the treatment analysing purchasing power parity, the price of the red good varies. In a second treatment, the interest rate on red currency …


Do Crime-Related Expenditures Crowd Out Higher Education Expenditures?, Michael L. Marlow, Alden F. Shiers Sep 2001

Do Crime-Related Expenditures Crowd Out Higher Education Expenditures?, Michael L. Marlow, Alden F. Shiers

Economics

Fears about insufficient public education spending are often expressed in the area of higher education, whereby it is often argued that increases in expenditures on crime-related programs crowd out expenditures on higher education. This view suggests that higher education and crime-related programs directly compete for government expenditures so that what one program gains the other must lose as in a zero-sum game. A competing hypothesis is that higher crime-related spending leads to higher taxes or public debt issuance or to lower spending on programs other than higher education. We estimate a three-equation model of spending on crime-related programs, spending on …


Bureaucracy And Student Performance In Us Public Schools, Michael L. Marlow Aug 2001

Bureaucracy And Student Performance In Us Public Schools, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

This paper tests the hypothesis that monopoly power of school districts allows bureaucratic expansion and fosters poor academic performance in the public school system in California. Evidence indicates that monopoly power is positively associated with employment of administrators and teachers, and therefore supports the bureaucratic expansion hypothesis. While numbers of teachers do not influence performance measures, numbers of administrators are shown to positively affect performance - results that suggest that too many teachers, but too few administrators, are employed. While bureaucracy theory may explain the resource misallocation, other reasons might include rising public pressures on hiring teachers over administrators, spending …


Dollarization And The Mexican Labor Market, George J. Borjas, Eric O'N. Fisher May 2001

Dollarization And The Mexican Labor Market, George J. Borjas, Eric O'N. Fisher

Economics

This paper examines how dollarization affects the internal wage structure in the Mexican labor market, and alters the incentives of Mexican nationals to emigrate to the United States. A simple model shows that by adopting a fixed rate regime tied directly to the U.S. dollar, Mexican policy makers are in effect giving up “a degree of freedom” in their toolkit of policy remedies. If there are imperfections in the Mexican economy, such as downward wage rigidity, an adverse economic shock would generate more unemployment in a dollarized economy, further increasing the propensity of Mexican workers to migrate to the United …


An Analysis Of Second Time Around Bankruptcies Using A Split-Population Duration Model, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, Sanjiv Jaggia May 2001

An Analysis Of Second Time Around Bankruptcies Using A Split-Population Duration Model, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, Sanjiv Jaggia

Economics

A significant proportion of firms that reorganize under Chapter 11 file for a second Chapter 11 protection or liquidate. We use a "split-population" duration model that provides useful information regarding factors that could lead to a second bankruptcy. We find that the probability (hazard) of a firm re-entering bankruptcy is lower for firms that take a long time to reorganize, reduce their debt-to-assets ratio, do not divest, belong to an industry that has low capacity utilization and low demand growth. We also find that the probability of an average firm re-entering bankruptcy increases for about 4 years before declining.


Social Norms And The Time Allocation Of Women's Labor In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick Feb 2001

Social Norms And The Time Allocation Of Women's Labor In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick

Economics

This paper proposes that major determinants of allocation of women's time are social norms that regulate the economic activities of women. Our emphasis on norms contrasts with approaches that view time allocation as determined by household-level economic variables. Using data from Burkina Faso, we show that social norms significantly explain differences in patterns of time allocation between two ethnic groups: Mossi and Bwa. Econometric results show women from the two groups exhibiting different responses to changes in farm capital. Implications are that policies that foster changes in social norms may have more permanent effects on altering women's behavior.


Authority, Social Theories Of, Eduardo Zambrano Jan 2001

Authority, Social Theories Of, Eduardo Zambrano

Economics

Authority is a relation that exists between individuals, in which one does as indicated by another what he or she would not do in the absence of such indication. With this as background, the article presents the ‘premodern’ notions of authority developed by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Weber; and then the perspective given by Arendt, according to which these notions are grounded in an ontological tradition whose time has passed. This leads to the point of view of Lukes, according to which it is unavoidable that multiple perspectives exist in the understanding of authority. These perspectives are associated with the …


The Regulatory History Of A New Technology: The Electromagnetic Telegraph, Alexander J. Field Jan 2001

The Regulatory History Of A New Technology: The Electromagnetic Telegraph, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Attitudes toward economic regulation in the United States have, since colonial times, been influenced by an almost schizophrenic oscillation between dirigiste and laissez-faire ideology. The laissez-faire tradition maintains that within a legal system providing elementary guarantees against force and fraud, business enterprise should be allowed the maximum possible freedom. The dirigiste tradition, on the other hand, recommends government intervention in a variety of situations, including those where the social return may exceed the private rate of return to research and development spending, in cases of natural monopoly, or where a firm has erected barriers to entry that give it effective …


Microenterprise Lending To Female Entrepreneurs: Sacrificing Economic Growth For Poverty Alleviation?, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick Jan 2001

Microenterprise Lending To Female Entrepreneurs: Sacrificing Economic Growth For Poverty Alleviation?, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick

Economics

This research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in Guatemala. Previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for more substantial increases in household welfare, but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit. In this paper, we develop a model that seeks to clarify why we might expect gender differences in economic responses to credit access. In general, our empirical results reveal that gender differences in economic responses to credit access are surprisingly small. However, we find that female entrepreneurs in …


Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 2001

Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Popular and official representations of the environment in Burkina Faso present soils as fragile and potentially subject to catastrophic collapse in fertility. In the cotton growing zone of southwestern Burkina Faso, researchers and policy makers attribute changes in land cover and land quality to population growth. This paper presents evidence questioning the dominant "population-degradation narrative" as applied to Burkina. We find that farmers are intensifying their production systems. While population has led to land scarcity, farmers are responding to both the resulting uncertainty in land rights and reductions in soil quality by intensifying the production process. Investments are used both …


Experimental Foreign Exchange Markets, Eric O'N. Fisher, Frank S. Kelly Oct 2000

Experimental Foreign Exchange Markets, Eric O'N. Fisher, Frank S. Kelly

Economics

The paper analyzes experimental markets where subjects buy and sell two different assets. The assets' properties vary across treatments, and their relative price is the exchange rate. Although both assets uniformly exhibit bubbles, the exchange rate satisfies cross‐currency arbitrage. There is no evidence of a positive risk premium in these markets, and almost all subjects' forecasts of the exchange rate are rational.


Smoking Laws And Their Differential Effects On Restaurants, Bars, And Taverns, John Dunham, Michael L. Marlow Jul 2000

Smoking Laws And Their Differential Effects On Restaurants, Bars, And Taverns, John Dunham, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

This article examines the effect of restrictive smoking laws on restaurants, bars, and taverns. Supporters of these laws often argue that they do not harm firms and may even raise profits. Opponents argue that owners cater to customer smoking preferences, and laws mandating specific policies will negatively impact profits. This article provides a framework for examining the distribution of effects that smoking laws exert on businesses, and demonstrates that changes in total sales or tax revenues do not provide a meaningful understanding of the economic implications because smoking laws exert different effects on different firms. The distribution of these effects …


A Simple Test Of The Law Of Demand For The United States, Eduardo Zambrano, Timothy J. Vogelsang Jul 2000

A Simple Test Of The Law Of Demand For The United States, Eduardo Zambrano, Timothy J. Vogelsang

Economics

No abstract provided.


Product Liability, Entry Incentives And Market Structure, Stephen F. Hamilton, David L. Sunding Jun 2000

Product Liability, Entry Incentives And Market Structure, Stephen F. Hamilton, David L. Sunding

Economics

The article characterizes the entry incentives provided by increases in product liability under various forms of competition. It is demonstrated that the entry of small, high-cost firms is likely to occur in imperfectly competitive markets when the average damage increases with industry output. Special cases are considered, including Cournot–Nash oligopoly and dominant firm-competitive fringe.


Vertical Coordination, Antitrust Law, And International Trade, Stephen F. Hamilton, Kyle Stiegert Apr 2000

Vertical Coordination, Antitrust Law, And International Trade, Stephen F. Hamilton, Kyle Stiegert

Economics

This paper demonstrates that vertically aligned private or public organizations are capable of generating strategic trade advantage similar to that acquired through direct government export subsidization. The model considers two forms of vertical coordination that lead to advantageous trade positions in international markets: upstream vertical restraint and downstream equity sharing. Such practices are commonly employed both by state trading agencies and by private firms in nations with lenient antitrust laws. The finding has important implications under new World Trade Organization (WTO) rules intended to reduce government intervention in international transactions. Recent reforms in the WTO favor nations that sanction highly …


Review Of The Handbook Of International Economics: Volume 3, Eric O'N. Fisher Feb 2000

Review Of The Handbook Of International Economics: Volume 3, Eric O'N. Fisher

Economics

No abstract provided.


Does Market Timing Contribute To The Cattle Cycle?, Stephen F. Hamilton, Terry L. Kastens Feb 2000

Does Market Timing Contribute To The Cattle Cycle?, Stephen F. Hamilton, Terry L. Kastens

Economics

Recent evidence suggests that cyclical cattle inventories are driven by exogenous shocks. This article examines a second possible contributing factor to the cattle cycle: a market timing effect that arises from individual attempts to maintain countercyclical inventories. The model uncovers an important conceptual point: to the extent that cycles are driven by exogenous shocks, a representative producer should outperform one who maintains a constant inventory; whereas, for cycles induced by market timing, a representative producer should underperform one with a constant inventory. Simulated net returns over 1974–98 reveal that a constant-inventory manager significantly outperformed the representative U.S. producer, which indicates …


Spending, School Structure, And Public Education Quality. Evidence From California, Michael L. Marlow Feb 2000

Spending, School Structure, And Public Education Quality. Evidence From California, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

This paper examines school structure, spending, and performance relationships in California and finds considerable support for the public exchange model that predicts that greater competition improves student performance. The evidence indicates that, despite claims to the contrary by many advocates of public education, higher education spending does not raise student achievement. Education spending is also shown to be highest in those counties exhibiting highest monopoly power as measured by the Herfindahl index. Strong support is also shown for the public exchange view that higher market power leads to lower student achievement in the fourth and eighth grades, but little support …


The Effects Of Smoking Laws On Seating Allocations Of Restaurants, Bars, And Taverns, John Dunham, Michael L. Marlow Jan 2000

The Effects Of Smoking Laws On Seating Allocations Of Restaurants, Bars, And Taverns, John Dunham, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

Supporters of smoking laws often argue that they do not harm restaurants, bars, and taverns and may even raise their profits. Opponents argue that owners cater to customer preferences regarding smoking and that laws mandating specific smoking policies will therefore negatively impact profits of some firms. This article tests hypotheses regarding how smoking laws affect seating allocations, using data from a nationwide survey of restaurant and bar owners. The empirical evidence indicates that smoking laws exert no significant effect on seating allocations. Firms are shown to allocate greater shares of seating to nonsmoking use when customers exhibit stronger preferences for …


Risk Aversion And The Investment Horizon: A New Perspective On The Time Diversification Debate, Sanjiv Jaggia, Satish Thosar Jan 2000

Risk Aversion And The Investment Horizon: A New Perspective On The Time Diversification Debate, Sanjiv Jaggia, Satish Thosar

Economics

Investment managers generally subscribe to the principle of time diversification. This implies that a larger portion of the portfolio should be devoted to risky assets as the investment horizon increases. In contrast, academics have shown that for investors with utility functions characterized by constant relative risk aversion, the optimal asset-allocation strategy is independent of the investment horizon. The relative risk avers ion in these studies is assumed to be constant both with respect to wealth as well as investment horizon. We suggest a utility function that explicitly captures the notion that individuals are more risk tolerant when the investment horizon …


The Comparative Efficiency Of Ad Valorem And Specific Taxes Under Monopoly And Monopsony, Stephen F. Hamilton May 1999

The Comparative Efficiency Of Ad Valorem And Specific Taxes Under Monopoly And Monopsony, Stephen F. Hamilton

Economics

It is well known that ad valorem taxes welfare-dominate specific taxes under monopoly. This paper demonstrates that the comparative welfare ranking of the two instruments reverses under monopsony. The relative performance of alternative tax forms is thus highly sensitive to whether the buyer or seller has market power.


Formal Models Of Authority: Introduction And Political Economy Applications, Eduardo Zambrano May 1999

Formal Models Of Authority: Introduction And Political Economy Applications, Eduardo Zambrano

Economics

Talcot Parsons suggested in 1963 that there are basically three kinds of authority: utilitarian authority, coercive authority, and persuasive authority. In this paper, I show that the models developed by Gibbons and Rutten (1997), Hirshleifer (1991), Skaperdas (1992), Akerlof (1976) and Basu (1986) can be viewed as models where issues such as authority, power, influence and ideology, in the sense of Parsons, can be formally discussed. I also show the existence of an interesting difficulty in providing a contractarian interpretation of the State under the Parsonian view of governmental authority discussed in this paper.


An Analysis Of The Factors That Influence Student Performance: A Fresh Approach To An Old Debate, Sanjiv Jaggia, Alison Kelly-Hawke Apr 1999

An Analysis Of The Factors That Influence Student Performance: A Fresh Approach To An Old Debate, Sanjiv Jaggia, Alison Kelly-Hawke

Economics

There is a general consensus that student performance at all levels has been deteriorating. Despite numerous attempts by researchers to link school expenditures with student performance, a clear relationship does not exist. Since a number of difficulties plague earlier studies, this paper attempts to remedy these problems by offering a better data design and a sounder methodology. This study uses the 1992 Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test scores from 4th, 8th, and 12th grade students to measure student performance. Since each students grade falls into one of five possible categories, the application of an ordered log it model incorporates …


On Exchange Rates And Economic Growth, Eric O'N. Fisher Apr 1999

On Exchange Rates And Economic Growth, Eric O'N. Fisher

Economics

Extending Ireland's (1994) model, this paper analyzes an international economy where cash or credit can be used for payment. Foreign trade credit is more costly than its domestic analog. A depreciation of the real exchange rate is associated with an external surplus and a reduced share of imports purchased with credit. Economic growth slows when foreign trade credit becomes the predominant means of payment for international transactions. A country with high inflation exports its Tobin effect and thus temporarily increases world growth.


Do Law Enforcement Expenditures Crowd-Out Public Education Expenditures?, Michael L. Marlow, Alden F. Shiers Feb 1999

Do Law Enforcement Expenditures Crowd-Out Public Education Expenditures?, Michael L. Marlow, Alden F. Shiers

Economics

As state and local governments have devoted a rising share of their resources to crime-related programmes, concerns have arisen that spending on other programmes such as education will fall. Coupled with growing public concerns over performance of the public education system, and expectations that prison populations will rise as states pass and enforce more stringent sentencing laws, it is not surprising that some view the expansion of crime-related programmes as troublesome. One hypothesis is that education and crime-related programmes directly compete for government expenditures so that what one programme gains the other must lose as in a fixed-pie situation. A …


Tax Incidence Under Oligopoly: A Comparison Of Policy Approaches, Stephen F. Hamilton Feb 1999

Tax Incidence Under Oligopoly: A Comparison Of Policy Approaches, Stephen F. Hamilton

Economics

This paper presents a methodological approach for the analysis of tax incidence that encompasses familiar forms of taxation in a general and analytically convenient model. In oligopolistic industries, the performance of a tax depends on the sensitivity of the unit tax rate to changes in industry output. Output-elastic tax schedules are less likely to be over-shifted and have superior welfare properties relative to regulatory instruments that are less responsive to the equilibrium market quantity. For revenue neutral tax reforms, the finding of Delipalla and Keen (1992) that ad valorem taxes welfare-dominate specific taxes under oligopoly is derived as a special …


Demand Shifts And Market Structure In Free-Entry Oligopoly Equilibria, Stephen F. Hamilton Feb 1999

Demand Shifts And Market Structure In Free-Entry Oligopoly Equilibria, Stephen F. Hamilton

Economics

This papers examines the structural implications of demand shifts in free-entry oligopoly equilibria. The model generalizes the conjectural variations framework to consider asymmetric firm conjectures, allows for the possibility of cost differences across firms, and endogenizes conditions of entry and exit in the industry. In non-competitive environments, changes in incumbent output and industry profitability are inversely-related to changes in the equilibrium price following a demand shift. In response to rotations of demand through the equilibrium point, changes in profitability are positively-related to changes in industry concentration and, when marginal costs are non-decreasing, inversely-related to changes in market power.


Titanium Hoes? Farmers, Wealth And Higher Yields In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane Jan 1999

Titanium Hoes? Farmers, Wealth And Higher Yields In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane

Economics

Village-level data from western Sudan cast doubt on the universal applicability of an inverse relationship between farm wealth and production per hectare, and the attendant explanation of imperfect labor markets. Wealthy farmers have higher levels of output per hectare; they use more labor per hectare. Insecurity in renting land, financing constraints and the absence of insurance are the vital elements in explanations of the observed pattern of variation in yields. Examination of the performance of land rental, credit and insurance markets in western Sudan suggest that insurance and financing constraints are the crucial market failures.


A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 1999

A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Gendered social norms and institutions are important determinants of agricultural activities in southwestern Burkina Faso. This paper argues that gendered land tenure, in particular, has effects on equity and efficiency. The usual view of women as holders of secondary, or indirect, rights to land must be supplemented by a more nuanced understanding of tenure. Women's rights are in fact considerably more complex than the simple right to fields from their husbands. First, women's rights to property obtained from men may be coupled with other rights and obligations. In many ethnic groups, women have share rights to the harvest of their …


Returns To Public Investments In Agriculture With Imperfect Downstream Competition, Stephen F. Hamilton, David L. Sunding Nov 1998

Returns To Public Investments In Agriculture With Imperfect Downstream Competition, Stephen F. Hamilton, David L. Sunding

Economics

A multiple-market framework is developed to measure the size and distribution of research benefits. The model considers an upstream raw product market and a downstream finished product market and allows for imperfect competition in the intermediary food-processing sector. A central conceptual result is derived: an increase in raw product output is a sufficient condition for cost- reducing innovations in the farm sector to increase social welfare. A special case of linear farm supply and isoelastic processing production functions reveals that necessary conditions for welfare to decrease are a convergent farm supply shift, an oligopsonistic upstream market configuration, and increasing returns-to-scale …