Economic Policy Commons^™

Antitrust And Nonexcluding Ties, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding hundreds of court decisions, tying arrangements remain enigmatic. Conclusions that go to either extreme, per se legality or per se illegality, invariably make simplifying assumptions that frequently do not obtain. For example, by ignoring double marginalization or tying product price cuts it becomes very easy to prove that a wide range of ties are anticompetitive. At the other extreme, by ignoring foreclosure possibilities one can readily conclude that ties are invariably benign.

Ties have historically been thought to produce two kinds of competitive harm: “leverage,” or extraction; and foreclosure, or exclusion. The two theories are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, …

Comparative Antitrust Federalism: Review Of Cengiz, Antitrust Federalism In The Eu And The Us, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay reviews Firat Cengiz’s book Antitrust Federalism in the EU and the US (2012), which compares the role of federalism in the competition law of the European Union and the United States. Both of these systems are “federal,” of course, because both have individual nation-states (Europe) or states (US) with their own individual competition provisions, but also an overarching competition law that applies to the entire group. This requires a certain amount of cooperation with respect to both territorial reach and substantive coverage.

Cengiz distinguishes among “markets,” “hierarchies,” and “networks” as forms of federalism. Markets are the least …

A Tale Of Two Superpowers: Nigeria And China Relations, Faouziatou Aboudou Kabassi

Master's Theses

The study discusses the historical development of the Sino-Nigerian bilateral relations. The paper provides a detailed view of china's FDI in Nigeria and the diverse challenges faced by the oil rich country to develop its own economy through NEEDS as a result of china's economic power. China’s partnership with Nigeria is ideally for economic growth but practically poisonous to Nigeria’s development goals as China is solely pursuing its own interest and diverting its partner from working toward its NEEDS goal. A deep investigation of the relations should be reviewed for both countries. This will be needed to produce vital economic …

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Christian Weller

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it. This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income in …

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it.

This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income in …

Sustainable Municipal Operations: Albany, Oregon, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Ed Gallagher, Dave Rouse, Dennis Kurtz, Tanya Johnston

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Portland State University, Hatfield School of Government (PSU), and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), has formed a partnership to develop Sustainable Municipal Operations Plans that documents sustainability and energy management best practices. The goal of this partnership is to determine how a City/municipality can actively manage energy as a controllable expense by following a predetermined operation protocol. The PSU team developed a framework of best practices for sustainable municipal operations in different categories including facilities, fleet, purchasing, operations and the work environment. After identifying pilot jurisdictions, the team applied these best practices to the current operations of local governments in …

Sustainable County Operations: Yamhill County, Oregon, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Ed Gallagher, Dave Rouse, Dennis Kurtz, Tanya Johnston

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Portland State University, Hatfield School of Government (PSU), and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), has formed a partnership to develop Sustainable Municipal Operations Plans that documents sustainability and energy management best practices. The goal of this partnership is to determine how a county/municipality can actively manage energy as a controllable expense by following a predetermined operation protocol. The PSU team developed a framework of best practices for sustainable municipal operations in different categories including facilities, fleet, purchasing, operations and the work environment. After identifying pilot jurisdictions, the team applied these best practices to the current operations of local governments in …

Sustainable Municipal Operations: Independence, Oregon, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Ed Gallagher, Dave Rouse, Dennis Kurtz, Tanya Johnston

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Portland State University, Hatfield School of Government (PSU), and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), has formed a partnership to develop Sustainable Municipal Operations Plans that documents sustainability and energy management best practices. The goal of this partnership is to determine how a City/municipality can actively manage energy as a controllable expense by following a predetermined operation protocol. The PSU team developed a framework of best practices for sustainable municipal operations in different categories including facilities, fleet, purchasing, operations and the work environment. After identifying pilot jurisdictions, the team applied these best practices to the current operations of local governments in …

Mountain Monitor-3rd Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The major metropolitan areas of the Intermountain West finally put the housing bust behind them in the third quarter of 2012 and in most places made solid progress. House prices rose in all 10 major metropolitan markets in the months from June to September for the first time since the recession began. Likewise, output growth accelerated and the unemployment rate continued to fall. Unfortunately none of this prevented the region’s already feeble jobs recovery from slowing.

Neoclassical Labor Economics: Its Implications For Labor And Employment Law, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

Whereas law and economics appears throughout business law, it never caught on in legal commentary about labor and employment law. A major reason is that the goals of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the country’s foundational labor law, are at war with basic principles of economics. The lack of integration is unfortunate if understandable. Notwithstanding the NLRA’s normative goal to keep wages out of competition, economic analysis applies as centrally to labor markets as to any other market.

One of the NLRA’s primary goals is to equalize bargaining power. Its drafters envisioned achieving this goal through procedural and substantive …

Still Unknown: The Impact Of School Capital On Student Performance, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Community Improvement Districts In Georgia: Administrators' Views On Their Effectiveness, Performance, And Accountability, Andrew Ewoh, Kristin Rome

Andrew I.E. Ewoh

Since the early 1990s, Georgia has been a leading participant in public-private partnerships, as exemplified by its many community improvement districts (CIDs). The goals and uses of CIDs vary, but commonly include fundraising, maintaining aesthetically pleasing business environments, controlling traffic flow, and infrastructural improvements. A survey research method was used to examine the effectiveness, performance, and accountability of CIDs in Georgia as perceived by their leaders. Lack of citizen participation was found to be a major problem of CID governance; this has serious public policy implications that can only be remedied by demands for inclusion by residents.

Fai La Macroeconomia Giusta. Le Molte Ragioni Del Libro Di Paul Krugman Fuori Da Questa Crisi, Adesso!, Mario Pianta

Mario Pianta

Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …

Crafting A Class: The Trade-Off Between Merit Scholarships And Enrolling Lower-Income Students, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Liang Zhang, Jared M. Levin

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] It is well known that test scores are correlated with students’ socio-economic backgrounds. Hence, to the extent that colleges are successful in “buying” higher test-score students, one should expect that their enrollment of students from families in the lower tails of the family income distribution should decline. However, somewhat surprisingly, there have been no efforts to test if this is occurring. Our paper presents such a test. While institutional-level data on the dollar amounts of merit scholarships offered by colleges and universities are not available, data are available on the number of National Merit Scholarship (NMS) winners attending an …

The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

We describe how one can use multivariate regression models and data collected by the National Research Council as part of its recent ranking of doctoral programs (Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change) to analyze how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influence subjective ratings of doctoral programs in 35 academic fields. Using data for one of the fields, economics, we illustrate how university administrators can use the models to compute the impact of changing the number of faculty positions they allocate to the field on …

The Impact Of U.S. News & World Report College Rankings On Admissions Outcomes And Pricing Policies At Selective Private Institutions, James Monks, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Despite the widespread popularity of the U.S. News & World Report College rankings there has been no empirical analysis of the impact of these rankings on applications, admissions, and enrollment decisions, as well as on institutions' pricing policies. Our analyses indicate that a less favorable rank leads an institution to accept a greater percentage of its applicants, a smaller percentage of its admitted applicants matriculate, and the resulting entering class is of lower quality, as measured by its average SAT scores. While tuition levels are not responsive to less favorable rankings, institutions offer less visible price discounts in the form …

Faculty Turnover At American Colleges And Universities: Analyses Of Aaup Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Hirschel Kasper, Daniel Rees

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper uses institutional level data collected by the American Association of University Professors as part of their annual survey of faculty members' compensation to analyze faculty turnover. Analyses of aggregate data over almost a twenty-year period highlight how remarkably stable faculty retention rates have been nationwide and how little they vary across broad categories of institutions. Analyses of variations in faculty retention rates across individual institutions stress the role that faculty compensation levels play. Higher levels of compensation appear to increase retention rates for assistant and associate professors (but not for full professors) and the magnitude of this effect …

Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …

Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …

Paying Our Presidents: What Do Trustees Value?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, John J. Cheslock, Julia Epifantseva

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our study makes use of data from a panel of over 400 private colleges and universities on their presidents’ salaries and benefits. These data, reported annually to the Internal Revenue Service on Form 990, have been collected by and reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education for academic years 1992–1993 through 1997–1998. We merge these data with those from other sources including the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, Who’s Who in America, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the Council on Aid to Education, and the National Science Foundation’s CASPAR system. This …

A Missed Opportunity In California, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Problematique, David A. Westbrook

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clean Energy: The Economics Of Why And How, Adele C. Morris

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

One rationale for large public investments in clean energy technology points to concerns that have not been addressed by other policies, most notably greenhouse gas emissions and energy security. Another inspiration for clean energy policy suggests that strategic government investments would increase domestic firms' market share of a growing industry and thus help domestic firms and workers. This lecture examines the economic case for clean energy policy in the United States and addresses the issues state and local governments confront in building a clean energy industry.

Applications Barriers To Entry And Exclusive Vertical Contracts In Platform Markets, James Prieger, Wei-Min Hu

James E. Prieger

Our study extends the empirical literature on whether vertical restraints are anticompetitive. We focus on exclusive contracting in platform markets, which feature indirect network effects and thus are susceptible to applications barriers to entry. Exclusive contracts in vertical relationships between the platform provider and software supplier can heighten entry barriers. We test these theories in the home video game market. We find that indirect network effects from software on hardware demand are present, and that exclusivity takes market share from rivals, but only when most games are non-exclusive. The marginal exclusive game contributes virtually nothing to console demand. Thus, allowing …

Verifiable And Non-Verifiable Anonymous Mechanisms For Regulating A Polluting Monopolist, James Prieger, Nicholas Sanders

James E. Prieger

Optimal regulation of a polluting natural monopolist must correct for both external damages and market power to achieve a social optimum. Existing non-Bayesian regulatory methods require knowledge of the demand function, while Bayesian schemes require knowledge of the underlying cost distribution. We introduce mechanisms adapted to use less information. Our Price-based Subsidy (PS) mechanisms give the firm a transfer that matches or approximates the incremental surplus generated each period. The regulator need not observe the abatement activity or know the demand, cost, or damage functions of the firm. All of the mechanisms induce the firm to price at marginal social …

The Empirics Of The Digital Divide: Can Duration Analysis Help?, James Prieger, Wei-Min Hu

James E. Prieger

Accurate measurement of digital divides is important for policy purposes. Empirical studies on broadband subscription gaps have largely used cross-sectional data, which cannot speak to the timing of technological adoption. Yet, the dynamics of a digital divide are important and deserve study. With the goal of improving our understanding of appropriate techniques for analyzing digital divides, we review competing econometric methodology and propose the use of duration analysis. We compare the performance of alternative estimation methods using a large dataset on DSL subscription in the U.S., paying particular attention to whether women, blacks, and Hispanics catch up to others in …

The Rules Of The Road Or Roadblocks On The Information Highway? Regulation And Innovation In Telecommunications, James Prieger, Daniel Heil

James E. Prieger

Regulatory policy in telecommunications must balance short-term efficiency (low prices) against the firms’ incentives to innovate, which have longer reaching impacts on economic welfare. Historically, policy tended to sacrifice dynamic efficiency for the sake of competitive prices and static efficiency. In the last few decades, economists and other researchers have begun to document the large welfare costs of ignoring dynamic efficiency. We analyze the impact regulation has on innovation in a simple theoretical framework. We then turn to the empirical evidence that regulation dampens firms’ incentive to innovate in the telecommunications industry in general and the market for broadband Internet …

The Microeconomic Impacts Of E-Business On The Economy, James Prieger, Daniel Heil

James E. Prieger

The adoption of e-business at the microeconomic level of retail, wholesale, and labor market transactions has an enormous impact on the performance of firms and the economic welfare of consumers and workers. This article reviews, in broad outlines, the economics of e-business, focusing on empirical research. The fundamental notion that e-business and adoption of ICT lowers the cost of transferring, storing, and processing in-formation is used to organize the examination. E-business spheres of impact covered include B2C and B2B e-commerce, the labor market, and the productivity of firms. This article covers both the predicted impacts of e-business on the economy …

The Macroeconomic Impacts Of E-Business On The Economy, James Prieger, Daniel Heil

James E. Prieger

The growing use of information and communications technology (ICT) by business—e-business—profoundly affects the economy. This article covers some of the macroeconomic impacts of e-business. Evidence from empirical studies examining the impact that greater use of ICT by business has on productivity and national economic growth is presented, along with discussion of how e-business changes the volatility and complicates measurement of growth. E-business can bring down inflation, but also exacerbates some monetary and fiscal policy challenges, and raises new ones. While e-payments and e-money can complicate monetary policy and may alter its goals, little effect has been seen to date. Sales …