Knowledge that Transforms

Quotas are the predominant means of protection in developed countries, with quota rents commonly shared between exporter and importer. This paper derives shadow prices appropriate to evaluating trade reform under these circumstances and provides a number of useful sufficient conditions for welfare-improving "piecemeal" reform. In doing so, the authors apply the distorted (quantity-constrained) expenditure function and use implicit separability to derive more powerful results than have previously been available.

This paper proposes a new test statistic to deter the presence of heteroskedasticity. The proposed test does not require a parametric specification of the mean regression function in the first stage regression. The regression function is estimated nonparametrically by the kernel estimation method. The nonparametric residual is estimated and used as a proxy for the random disturbance term. This nonparametric residual is robust to regression function misspecification. Asymptotic normality is established using extensions of classical U-statistic theorems. The test statistic is computed using the nonparametric quantities, but the resulting inference has a standard chi-square distribution. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

Although their goal is to separate a decision maker's underlying beliefs (their subjective probabilities of events) from their preferences (their attitudes toward risk), classic choice-theoretic derivations of subjective probability all rely upon some form of the Marschak-Samuelson "Independence Axiom" or the Savage "Sure-Thing Principle, " which is equivalent to requiring that the decision maker's preferences over lotteries conform to the expected utility hypothesis. This paper presents a choice-theoretic derivation of subjective probability which satisfies the axioms of classical probability theory, but which neither assumes nor implies that the decision maker's preferences over lotteries necessarily conform to the expected utility hypothesis.

Robert E. Cumby, John Huizinga, Testing the Autocorrelation Structure of Disturbances in Ordinary Least Squares and Instrumental Variables Regressions, Econometrica, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 185-195

This paper considers estimation of truncated.and censored regression models with fixed effects. Up until now, no estimator has been shown to be consistent as the cross-section dimension increases with the time dimension fixed. Trimmed least absolute deviations and trimmed least squares estimators are proposed for the case where the panel is of length two, and it is proven that they are consistent and asymptotically normal. It is not necessary to maintain parametric assumptions on the error terms to obtain this result. A small scale Monte Carlo study demonstrates that these estimators can perform well in small samples. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

A principal has private information that directly affects her agent's payoff (i.e., "common values" obtains). The authors analyze their relationship as a three-stage game: (1) the principal proposes a contract; (2) the agent accepts or rejects; and (3) the contract is executed. They show that the equilibrium outcomes are the allocations that weakly Pareto dominate the allocation maximizing the payoff of each "type" of the principal within the class of incentive-compatible allocations ensuring the agent his reservation utility irrespective of his beliefs about the principal's type. The authors also characterize the equilibria that are immune to renegotiation. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

This paper develops a model based on Schumpeter's process of creative destruction. It departs from existing models of endogenous growth in emphasizing obsolescence of old technologies induced by the accumulation of knowledge and the resulting process or industrial innovations. This has both positive and normative implications for growth. In positive terms, the prospect of a high level of research in the future can deter research today by threatening the fruits of that research with rapid obsolescence. In normative terms, obsolescence creates a negative externality from innovations, and hence a tendency for laissez-faire economies to generate too many innovations, i.e too much growth. This business-stealing effect is partly compensated by the fact that innovations tend to be too small under laissez-faire. The model possesses a unique balanced growth equilibrium in which the log of GNP follows a random walk with drift. The size of the drift is the average growth rate of the economy and it is endogenous to the model ; in particular it depends on the size and likelihood of innovations resulting from research and also on the degree of market power available to an innovator.

The author considers fair division when monetary compensations are feasible and utilities are quasi-linear. Four axioms are discussed: individual rationality, resource monotonicity, population solidarity, and the stand alone test. The latter views the utility from consuming all the goods as an upper bound on every coalition's actual (joint) utility. Under efficiency, the four axioms show little compatibility. However, when the goods have enough substitutability in everyone's preferences, the Shapley value of the surplus sharing game satisfies all four axioms. An example is the optimal assignment of indivisible goods when every agent consumes only one good. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

This paper presents a new approach to organizing universal health insurance. First, the government divides the entire population into many large groups. Then, the government creates a federal health insurance system (HealthFed), modeled on the Federal Reserve System, to fill the role now played by the benefits office of a large firm. The HealthFed would create a short menu of alternatives, solicit bids for insuring the entire group, and price alternatives. There would be redistribution between groups and pricing of alternatives to reflect optimal social insurance principles. There would be no connection between health insurance and employment. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.