Economics Commons^™

Better Revenue Forecasting: Is Fiscal Stress A Stimulant? A Look At Nevada Local Governments, Richard A. Derrick

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Revenue forecasting is one of the most critical and often difficult tasks in governmental budgeting. It is critical because it determines the parameters upon which the budget is based. It is difficult because many outside influences can impact revenue results and cause variances with the forecast. If revenue is under projected, valuable services may not be provided during the fiscal year and an unexpected surplus may be created at year-end. By the time it becomes apparent that surpluses are developing, the damage to on-going programs and services, which may require consistency and budget stability for efficient delivery, may be done. …

Instrumental Variable Estimates Of The Labor Market Spillover Effects Of Welfare Reform, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

By increasing the labor supply of welfare recipients, welfare reform may reduce wages and increase unemployment among other less-educated groups. These "spillover effects" are difficult to estimate because welfare caseloads decrease in response to improvements in the economy, which leads caseload reductions to be associated with improvements in labor market outcomes. This paper corrects for the endogeneity of caseloads by using instruments that reflect policy. The estimates suggest that welfare reform has significant spillover effects: welfare reform reduces employment of male high school dropouts, and reduces wages of single mothers and male high school dropouts.

A New Coincident Index Of Business Cycles Based On Monthly And Quarterly Series, Roberto S. Mariano, Yasutomo Murasawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

Popular monthly coincident indices of business cycles, e.g. the composite index and the Stock-Watson coincident index, have two shortcomings. First, they ignore information contained in quarterly indicator such as real GPD. Second, they lack economic interpretation; hence the heights of peaks and the depths of troughs depend on the choice of an index. This paper extends the Stock-Watson coincident index by applying maximum likelihood factor analysis to a mixed-frequency series of quarterly real GDP and monthly coincident business cycle indicators. The resulting index is related to latent monthly real GDP.

A Class Of Nonlinear Stochastic Volatility Models, Jun Yu, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a class of nonlinear stochastic volatility models based on the Box-Cox transformation which offers an alternative to the one introduced in Andersen (1994). The proposed class encompasses many parametric stochastic volatility models that have appeared in the literature, including the well known lognormal stochastic volatility model, and has an advantage in the ease with which different specifications on stochastic volatility can be tested. In addition, the functional form of transformation which induces marginal normality of volatility is obtained as a byproduct of this general way of modeling stochastic volatility. The efficient method of moments approach is used …

New Mexico Labor Market Review 03-31-2002, New Mexico Department Of Labor

Historic Publications

The New Mexico Labor Market Review is a monthly publication presenting statistical data and analysis on labor market conditions throughout New Mexico. Issues examine statewide and regional trends in employment, unemployment, labor force estimates, industry activity, wages, occupational demand, and related economic conditions, often accompanied by feature articles on topics affecting the state’s economy. This issue covers February 2002.

The Elementary Economics Of Bijuralism: A First Cut, James W. Bowers

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Ua12/2/1 Take Control, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Special job fair edition of the College Heights Herald. Articles:

• Directory of Organizations & Opportunities
• Shinall, Dave. Economists Say Recession Over; Students Still Worried
• Nations, Amber. Internships, Co-ops Provide Experience
• Schoenbaechler, Danny. Resumes, Interview First Steps to Job
• Sewell, Beth. Job Availability Depends on Major
• Corcoran, Kate. Local Entrepreneurs Pass on Words of Wisdom
• Youngman, Sam. Columnist Encourages Students to Stay in School as Long as Possible
• Ford, Sam. Freshman Balances Job, Homework, Married Life
• Sigman, Amber. Many Students Choose Jobs in Bowling Green
• Shinall, Dave. Military Recruitment Sees Increase
• Roberts, Amy. Students Find Pros of Working On & Off …

A Look At Federal Spending In South Dakota, Evert Vaner Der Sluis, Sam Cordes

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

Research Joint Ventures, Product Differentiation, And Price Collusion, Luca Lambertini, Sougata Poddar, Dan Sasaki

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate the interplay between firms’ decisions in product development, either joint or independent, and their ensuing repeated pricing, either collusive or Bertrand–Nash. A joint venture develops a single product, whereas independent ventures develop their respective products which can be differentiated. We prove that joint product development and the resulting lack of horizontal product differentiation may destabilise collusion, whilst firms’ R&D decisions have no bearings on collusive sustainability if differentiation is vertical. We also discover the non-monotone dependence of firms’ venture decisions at the development stage upon their time preferences, as well as upon consumers’ willingness to pay.

Design, Implementation, And Evaluation Of The Work First Profiling Pilot Project, Randall W. Eberts

External Papers and Reports

This report describes a new assessment and referral system that was designed to assist local welfare-to-work program staff in targeting employment services more effectively in order to help welfare recipients find jobs. The motivation for the development of this system was the potential effects of targeting services to meet the specific needs of customers. The system is based on statistical methods and uses administrative data typically collected by welfare-to-work agencies. The Kalamazoo-St. Joseph Workforce Development Board piloted the new system by integrating it within the existing Work First program that it administers for the local workforce development area. The pilot …

Arkansas Research And Technology Park: A Strategic Analysis, Jeffery T. Collins

Publications and Presentations

This study is a detailed strategic plan and economic impact analysis for development of a university related research and technology park to be located in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Arkansas Research and Technology Park (ARTP) is an essential component of the state’s overall strategy for equipping Arkansans to compete in the new economy.

It is critical to the economic vitality of the state that new and different types of employment be created. The ARTP is an effort to jumpstart formation of the knowledge-based economy in Arkansas by creating the clusters of expertise necessary to achieve critical mass in knowledge-based industry. This …

The Lingnan Commentary - March 2002 (No. 5), Hong Kong Institute Of Business Studies, Lingnan University

The Lingnan Commentary 嶺南評論 : A Quarterly Review of Economic, Business and Social Issues by Lingnan University

No abstract provided.

Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions And Their Misuse In The Debate Over Regulatory Reform, Lisa Heinzerling

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The author argues that John D. Graham, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, holds strong anti-environmental biases and has perpetuated and encouraged a misrepresentation of his own research, which has largely influenced health, safety, and environmental regulation.

A Fourth Cellular Operator?, B Radhika, B G Shivakumar

IIMB Management Review

The cellular industry in India is expected to mature in a few years. Being a third world market, the penetration levels of cell phones cannot be expected to exceed 10-15%. To achieve this penetration rate, services have to be made affordable to the masses and this can be achieved only through increased competition. As a measure of increasing the competition, the regulatory framework has permitted the entry of four players in a circle. Given that some of the existing players have not yet broken even, the question of the viability of four players comes up.

Review Of One Third Of A Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports On The Great Depression. Richard Lowitt And Maurine Beasley (Eds.). Review By John M. Herrick, John M. Herrick

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of Richard Lowitt and Maurine Beasley (Eds.), One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. $21.95 papercover.

Macroeconomic Strategy In Wartime, James Tobin

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

In 2001-02 the United States has been hit by two quite different shocks, terrorism and recession. As usual in time of war, national defense is the highest priority for use of the country’s resources. Although the opportunities for international warfare are limited, the challenges to the homeland are virtually unlimited. The president’s fiscal year 2003 budget includes $48 billion additional for the military and $38 billion additional for homeland defense. Given the gravity of the threat, it is hard to understand why new expenditures are not undertaken as soon as and as large as possible. This would also be timely …

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Why Relative Economic Position Does Not Matter, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi

Economics - All Scholarship

The current debate over cost-benefit concerns in agencies' evaluations of government regulations is not so much whether to consider costs and benefits at all but rather what belongs in the estimated costs and benefits themselves. Overlaid is the long-standing concern that the distribution of costs and benefits needs some consideration in policy evaluations. In a recent article in the University of Chicago Law Review, Robert Frank and Cass Sunstein proposed a relatively simple method for adding distributional concerns to policy evaluation that enlarges the typically constructed estimates of the individual's willingness to pay for safer jobs or safer products. One …

Economic Crisis In South East Asia : A Study Of Implications For Global Economy By Surendra S Yadav And P K Jain, Hindustan Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 2000., Pradeep Banerjee

IIMB Management Review

No abstract provided.

Community-Based Targeting Mechanisms For Social Safety Nets: A Critical Review, Jonathan H. Conning, Michael Kevane

Economics

This paper interprets case studies and theory on community involvement in beneficiary selection and benefit delivery for social safety nets. Several considerations should be carefully balanced in assessing the advantages of using community groups as targeting agents. First, gains from utilizing local information and social capital may be eroded by costly rent-seeking. Second, the potential improvement in targeting criteria from incorporating local notions of deprivation must be tempered by the possibility of program capture by local elites, and by the possibility that local preferences are not pro-poor. Third, intended outcomes may be undermined by unforeseen strategic targeting by local communities …

Thinking About Local Living Wage Requirements, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper reviews what we currently know about the benefits and costs of different varieties of a "living wage": a local government requirement, now adopted by over 50 local governments, for wages above the federal minimum imposed on employers with some financial link to the local government. The review includes economic theory, empirical research on local labor markets, and empirical research on the living wage. The paper concludes that moderate living wage requirements applied to the local government's own employees, and contractors' and grantees' employees who are funded by the local government, may do more good than harm. Excessive living …

Real Money Balances And Production Efficiency: A Panel-Data Stochastic Production Frontier Study, Farrokh Nourzad

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper examines the effect of four alternative measures of real money balances on production efficiency using annual panels of 10 developed and 10 developing countries. Using maximum likelihood, separate stochastic production frontiers are estimated, along with the parameters of an equation relating technical inefficiency to real money balances. The results for the sample of developed economies indicate that increases in real simple-sum M1, simple-sum M2, Divisia M1, and Divisia M2 enhance efficiency in the production sector. On the other hand, in the sample of developing nations, there is no evidence that real money balances reduce technical inefficiency.

How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm, variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural …

Less Developed Country Business Cycles, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Less developed countries (LDCs) have experienced considerable business cycles in recent decades. This coincides with significant increases in their external debt to GDP ratios. Recent theoretical credit cycles literature suggests that indebtedness, and the resulting liquidity constraints, could explain LDC business cycles. This paper builds a macroeconomic model to trace the LDC income paths. In this model indebtedness and liquidity constraints reduce aggregate investment. We use the World Data (1995) to calibrate for the convergence parameter. It is found that LDC cycles are convergent and non-oscillatory, and indebtedness delays the return to long-term steady state income.

Networked Growth, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper searches for a new growth engine in the new Info-Tech economy. IT-network effects are incorporated into Romer’s (1990) framework. Network effects support long-term steady state growth in per capita variables even without innovation, and growth rate increases with network externalities. Networked growth is sub-optimal, so should we break up an IT monopoly? To answer this we compare monopoly, Cournot and Bertrand set-ups. Cournot always ranks last socially, but Bertrand can be superior to monopoly if network effects are strong. When network interacts with Romer’s endogenous innovation, growth rate increases, probably by up to a percentage point per year.

Has Training Helped Employ Xiagang In China? A Tale From Two Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Christopher J. O'Leary

Reports

This study evaluates the effectiveness of training programs for workers retrenched from Chinese state-owned enterprises in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan. A variety of impact estimators were applied, however ordinary least squares (OLS) controlling for observable characteristic s was robust. We find that training dampens reemployment prospects in Shenyang but improves them in Wuhan. Training impact estimates computed by propensity score and log odds ratio matching imposing various support condition rules, yielded estimates very similar to those from the OLS. The estimates suggest that participation in training reduces the probability of being employed one year after participation by about …

Endogenous Growth And The Manufacturing Revolution, Hing-Man Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Manufacturing is undergoing a revolution. Teamwork, job-rotation, multitasking are superseding the Taylorist mode of organization. The skilled workforce, armed with automated machines, is gradually substituting and replacing the unskilled. At the same time the U.S. economy is experiencing record breaking growth. Is faster growth a consequence of this manufacturing revolution? We study this by inserting dynamic career choice into endogenous growth by human capital accumulation. The answer is affirmative: The gradual substitution of the unskilled by the skilled boosts the long-term growth trend. The model also explains worsening wage inequality between as well as within the skilled groups.

New Mexico Labor Market Review 02-28-2002, New Mexico Department Of Labor

Historic Publications

The New Mexico Labor Market Review is a monthly publication presenting statistical data and analysis on labor market conditions throughout New Mexico. Issues examine statewide and regional trends in employment, unemployment, labor force estimates, industry activity, wages, occupational demand, and related economic conditions, often accompanied by feature articles on topics affecting the state’s economy. This issue covers January 2002.

An Update On Prices Of Organic Crops In Comparison To Conventional Crops, Sherry K. Bertramsen, Thomas L. Dobbs

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

How To Auction An Essential Facility When Underhand Integration Is Possible, Eduardo Engel, Ronald Fischer, Alexander Galetovic

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Regulating seaports is difficult in general, even more so for the weak regulatory institutions common in developing countries. For this reason some countries have awarded these facilities via Demsetz auctions, to the port operator that bids the lowest cargo-handling fee. A major concern with Demsetz auctions in this context, is that the winning operator may integrate with a shipper and monopolize the shipping market, by worsening the service quality for competing shippers. The standard policy recommendation against service quality discrimination is to ban the seaport from operating in the shipping market. The effectiveness of such prohibitions is suspect, however, because …

The Health Of Nations: The Contribution Of Improved Health To Living Standards, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Nations generally measure their economic performance using the yardstick of national output and income. It is not widely recognized, however, that conventional measures of national income and output exclude the value of improvements in the health status of the population. The present study develops a methodology and presents preliminary estimates of how standard economic measures would change if they adequately reflected improvements in health status. The study first discusses the theory of the measurement of national income, examines some of the shortcomings of traditional concepts, and proposes a new concept called ‘health income’ that can be used to incorporate improvements …