Economic Theory Commons^™

A Primer On Profit Maximization, Robert Carbaugh, Tyler Prante

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

Although textbooks in intermediate microeconomics and managerial economics discuss the first-order condition for profit maximization (marginal revenue equals marginal cost) for pure competition and monopoly, they tend to ignore the second-order condition (marginal cost cuts marginal revenue from below). Mathematical economics textbooks also tend to provide only tangential treatment of the necessary and sufficient conditions for profit maximization. This paper fills the void in the textbook literature by combining mathematical and graphical analysis to more fully explain the profit maximizing hypothesis under a variety of market structures and cost conditions. It is intended to be a useful primer for all …

Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The damage wrecked by the bursting of asset bubbles can have a devastating impact on investors' fortunes. In the Internet bubble, some US$8 trillion of shareholder wealth was destroyed. What is even more pertinent, however, is how the popping of a bubble can create a financial crisis, impacting nations and their economies. As a result, understanding how to identify bubbles is an important first step in combating these speculative bubbles, with interested parties ranging from the academic and investment community to central bankers and policy makers.

A Forensic Analysis Of Global Imbalances, Menzie David Chinn, Barry Eichengreen, Hiro Ito

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine whether the behavior of current account balances changed in the years preceding the global crisis of 2008-09, and assess the prospects for global imbalances in the post-crisis period. Changes in the budget balance are an important factor affecting current account balances for deficit countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. The effect of the “saving glut variables” on current account balances has been relatively stable for emerging market countries, suggesting that those factors cannot explain the bulk of their recent current account movements. We also find the 2006-08 period to constitute a structural break for emerging market …

Are Benevolent Dictators Altruistic In Groups? A Within-Subject Design, Lucy F. Ackert, Ann B. Gillette, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Mark Rider

Faculty Articles

We use a within-subject experimental design to investigate whether systematic relationships exist across distinct features of individual preferences: altruism in a two-person context, risk aversion in monetary outcomes, and social preferences in a group context. We find that altruism is related to demographic variables, including years of education, gender, and age. Perhaps most importantly, self allocation in a two-person dictator game is related to social preferences in a group context. Participants who are more generous in a dictator game are more likely to vote against their self-interest in a group tax redistribution game which we interpret to be an expression …

Evidence For A Peak Shift In A Humoral Response To Helminths: Age Profiles Of Ige In The Shuar Of Ecuador, The Tsimane Of Bolivia, And The U.S. Nhanes, Aaron D. Blackwell, Michael D. Gurven, Lawrence S. Sugiyama, Felicia C. Madimenos, Melissa A. Liebert, Melanie A. Martin, Hillard Kaplan, J. Josh Snodgrass

ESI Publications

Background: The peak shift model predicts that the age-profile of a pathogen’s prevalence depends upon its transmission rate, peaking earlier in populations with higher transmission and declining as partial immunity is acquired. Helminth infections are associated with increased immunoglobulin E (IgE), which may convey partial immunity and influence the peak shift. Although studies have noted peak shifts in helminths, corresponding peak shifts in total IgE have not been investigated, nor has the age-patterning been carefully examined across populations. We test for differences in the agepatterning of IgE between two South American forager-horticulturalist populations and the United States: the Tsimane …

Value, Cooperatives, And Class Justice, David Kristjanson-Gural

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article I argue that elimination of exploitation at the firm level is necessary to eliminate exploitation, but is not sufficient, in and of itself, to support class justice. I distinguish exploitation as one of several aspects in the more inclusive category of class justice developed by George DeMartino. I then demonstrate that when the formation and distribution of value at the more complex level of Marx’s analysis in volume 3 of Capital is considered, workers may collectively appropriate surplus value but nonetheless be subject to an unfair redistribution of labor time. I use the example of the Mondrago …

A Viking Age Political Economy From Soil Core Tephrochronology, Kathryn Anne Catlin

Graduate Masters Theses

Saga accounts describe Viking Age Iceland as an egalitarian society of independent household farms. By the medieval period, the stateless, agriculturally marginal society had become highly stratified in exploitative landlord-tenant relationships. Classical economists place the origin of differential wealth in unequal access to resources that are unevenly distributed across the landscape. This irregularity is manifested archaeologically as spatial variations in buried soil horizons, which are addressed through thousands of soil cores recorded across Langholt in support of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey. Soil accumulation rates, a proxy for land quality, are derived from tephrochronology and correlated with archaeological and historical …

Inflammatory Gene Variants In The Tsimane, An Indigenous Bolivian Population With A High Infectious Load, Sarinnapha Vasunilashorn, Caleb E. Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins, Suvi A. Vikman, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Hooman Allayee

ESI Publications

The Tsimane of lowland Bolivia are an indigenous forager-farmer population living under conditions resembling pre-industrial European populations, with high infectious morbidity, high infection and inflammation, and shortened life expectancy. Analysis of 917 persons ages 5 to 60+ showed that allele frequencies of 9 SNPs examined in the apolipoprotein E (apoE), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) genes differed from some European, African, and north Asian-derived populations. The apoE2 allele was absent, whereas four SNPs related to CRP and IL-6 were monomorphic: CRP (rs1800947, rs3093061, and rs3093062) and IL-6 (rs1800795). No significant differences in apoE, CRP, and IL-6 variants across age …

Echoes From Geneva: Finding John Calvin’S Socio-Economic Interests In The Modern World, Brenda K. Savage

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Through an examination of John Calvin’s intentions in ending the prohibition on usury and the practical application of his teachings in sixteenth-century Geneva, and a consideration of the elements of poverty, social outcasts, and exploitation common to both Geneva and the modern world, it can be argued that the Reformer has much to offer of continued relevancy for those seeking to engage their contemporary world by finding alternatives that can help the financially disenfranchised. Calvin is often referred to as the “Father of Modern Interest,” and as such many people have directly blamed him for the exploitation associated with capitalism. …

The Effects Of Walmart On Healthcare And Unionization: Is America Really Saving Money And Living Better?, Leyla Ziad

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

As the largest private sector employer in the United States, corporate retail giant Walmart continues to make waves in United States culture and the economy since launching its first store in 1962. As Walmart seeks to expand, the validity of its consumer guarantee to “save money, live better” has been increasingly scrutinized, given Walmart’s use of controversial business practices, most notably its employee benefit policies and anti-unionization efforts. With over 1.4 million employees in the United States, there is much talk surrounding the potential costs of Walmart’s low prices. This study analyzes selected healthcare and unionization impacts of Walmart in …

Economic Outcomes And Economic Impacts Of Immigrants To Canada, Charles Beach

Western Migration Conference Series

Bio:

Charles Beach is a Professor of Economics at Queen's University where he has taught since 1972. He was an Editor of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques (1995-02) and Director of the John Deutsch Institute (2001-09). He was a co-founder of the Canadian Econometric Study Group, Canadian Employment Research Forum, and Chair of the Data Liberation Initiative at Statistics Canada. He has published 15 books and a large number of research and policy papers. His current research interests are on Canadian immigration policy and experience, and on labour market and retirement policy.

Systems Views Of The Economics Of Sustainable Development, Joshua Hughes

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

The mainstream economics of the 20th century (and now 21st century) has often failed to predict what will happen--or explain what has happened--in the real world, even with (or because of?) an ever-increasing reliance on quantitative and computational methods. Since the mid-20th century a number of people part of, or closely associated with, the systems community--economists among them--have provided insights about what is wrong with "traditional" economics. Systems science offers a number of alternative methods for understanding economic systems that take heed of these criticisms, especially in the context of sustainable development. Yet, while promising, few of these alternatives …

Opening The System: (Re)Writing Value Theory Discursively, David Kristjanson-Gural

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article I argue that modern and postmodern critics of value theory share the premise that Marx’s theory of value disables the project of emancipatory social change. The modern critics claim the theory is logically flawed and must be either resituated in a consistent logical framework or replaced by a Sraffian alternative. The postmodern critics claim that the theory is necessarily reductionist and excludes or renders secondary important axes of social struggle. I argue that by using a poststructural logic, Marx’s theory of value can be interpreted in a way that both overcomes the perceived consistencies of the modern …

Target Industry Study: An Empirical Analysis Of Intertemporal Trends In Regional Industrial Base Composition, David M. Smith

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This paper follows existing literature on local industrial conditions and agglomeration economies in an adapted shift-share framework. The purpose of this study is to develop a cost-efficient empirical model that meets the needs of local government in analyzing changes in industrial composition. The data for this model is obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) with nondisclosed data provided by the Virginia Employment Commission which is sorted by North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) 2-digit industrial sectors. The model developed in this paper identifies certain industrial sectors which exert significant influence on the …

Economic Freedom And Fiscal Performance: A Regression Analysis Of Indices Of Economic Freedom On Per Capita Gdp, Jason R. Ockey

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper explores whether different forms of economic freedom drive fiscal performance. We also seek to determine which specific measurements of economic freedom have the most statistically significant impacts. Though the results of our analysis show that economic freedom does impact levels of per capita GDP, the interpretation of these results is more complicated. Because some indices of economic freedom have negative effects on per capita GDP or are statistically insignificant, it is important to note that simply generally increasing a country’s overall level of economic freedom will not necessarily spur economic growth or increase fiscal performance. This paper does …

Father Death And Adult Success Among The Tsimane: Implications For Marriage And Divorce, Jeffrey Winking, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Human fathers are heavily involved in the rearing of children around the world. While there is great cross-cultural variation, the father is a recognizable role in all populations. This deviates from the standard mammalian pattern of little paternal investment. A logical explanation offered early by evolutionary theorists is that human fathers evolved the capacity for paternal concern because human children are remarkably needy and impose a great encumbrance on the mother (Lancaster & Lancaster, 1983; Lovejoy, 1981). Thus, fathers have greater opportunity to enhance the wellbeing of child and mother, as there is a deeper well of need to fill. …

Tops-Only Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we consider the standard voting model with a finite set of alternativesA and n voters and address the following question: what are the characteristics ofdomains D that induce the property that every strategy-proof social choice functionf : Dn → A satisfying unanimity, has the tops-only property? We first impose aminimal richness condition which ensures that for every alternative a, there exists anadmissible ordering where a is maximal. We identify conditions on D that are sufficientfor strategy-proofness and unanimity to imply tops onlyness in the general case of nvoters and in the special case, n = 2. We …

Corrigendum To "A Gaussian Approach For Continuous Time Models Of The Short Term Interest Rate", Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

An error is corrected in Yu and Phillips (2001) (Econometrics Journal, 4, 210-224) where a time transformation was used to induce Gaussian disturbances in the discrete time equivalent model. It is shown that the error process in this model is not a martingale and the Dambis, Dubins-Schwarz (DDS) theorem is not directly applicable. However, a detrended error process is a martingale, the DDS theorem is applicable, and the corresponding stopping time correctly induces Gaussianity. We show that the two stopping time sequences differ by O(a2), where a is the pre-specified normalized timing constant.

Tops-Only Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Arunava Sen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we consider the standard voting model with a finite set of alternatives A and n voters and address the following question: what are the characteristics of domains D" role="presentation">D that induce the property that every strategy-proof social choice function f:Dn→A" role="presentation">f:Dn→A satisfying unanimity, has the tops-only property? We first impose a minimal richness condition which ensures that for every alternative a, there exists an admissible ordering where a is maximal. We identify conditions on D" role="presentation">D that are sufficient for strategy-proofness and unanimity to imply tops onlyness in the general case of n …

Friedrich Von Hayek: The Socialist-Calculation Debate, Knowledge Arguments, And Modern Economic Development, Cara A. Elliott

Gettysburg Economic Review

At the close of the nineteenth and the commencement of the twentieth century, socialism began to gain momentum as a large-scale movement in Europe and the United States. This popularity was supported by an increased influence of the working class in society, which put pressure for representation upon European parliaments and began to secure concrete improvements in labor protection laws. Moreover, socialist proponents looked hopefully towards the living example of the Soviet Union, which began its socialist experiment in 1917 following the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Socialism, which found its economic grounding in the legacies of such men as …