Knowledge that Transforms

This paper defines a concept, a worker's trust fund, which is useful in analyzing optimal age-earnings profiles. The trust fund represents what a worker loses if dismissed from a job for shirking. In considering whether to work or shirk, a worker weighs the potential loss due to forfeiture of the trust fund if caught shirking against the benefits from reduced effort. This concept is used to show that the implicit bonding in upward sloping age-earnings profiles is not a perfect substitute for an explicit up-front performance bond (or employment fee). It is also shown that the second-best optimal earnings profile in the absence of an up-front employment fee pays total compensation in excess of market clearing in a variety of stylized cases.

Journal Article Some Further Remarks on Preference Proximity Get access Nick Baigent Nick Baigent Tulane University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 104, Issue 1, February 1989, Pages 191–193, https://doi.org/10.2307/2937841 Published: 01 February 1989

Intermediation is the activity of buying and selling simultaneously in one market. In this paper intermediation in the market for an arbitrary good is derived from trade restrictions in a general equilibrium exchange model. The trade restrictions are given by a trade feasibility relation defined on the set of households, and they necessitate dropping the one price assumption of standard general equilibrium theory. It is shown that in this setting equilibria need not exist in spite of well-behaved preferences and fully flexible prices. As a special case a simple economy with a linear market structure is analyzed in detail.

This paper considers whether short-period deterministic cycles can exist in a class of stationary overlapping generations models with long- (but finite-) lived agents. It shows that if agents discount the future positively, then as life spans get large, nonmonetary cycles will disappear. Further, neither constant monetary steady states nor stationary monetary cycles can exist. It also shows that if agents discount the future negatively, then there are robust examples in which constant monetary steady states as well as stationary monetary cycles (with undiminished amplitude) can occur no matter how long agents live.

This paper analyzes differences in the investment behavior of firms with unequal access to the capital market. Using empirical evidence from Pakistan, characteristics of formal and informal capital markets are described. Probabilities are estimated for firms being selected in the formal capital market where credit is cheap. Investment behavior is then analyzed using a switching regressions model. It is concluded that “favored” firms use more capital-intensive technologies and realize their investment plans more quickly than “excluded” firms do. Investment determinants related to entrepreneurial features are also identified.

The reaction of money holders to the systematic seasonal changes in the level of transactions represents an interesting "experiment" for learning about the money demand function. An analysis of the seasonal fluctuations of the real quantity of money and several measures of transactions in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada reveals the following. First, Consumption Expenditures in Semidurables, Nondurables, and Services appears to be a good proxy for transactions in a money demand function, and superior to Gross Domestic Product or Consumption Expenditures. Second, the transactions elasticity of the demand for money is substantially lower than one.

Unlike existing models that rely heavily on assumptions regarding unions' distributional preferences, we present a simple model in which union seniority-layoff rules and rising seniority-wage profiles result from optimal price discrimination against the firm. Surprisingly, even when cash transfers among union members are ruled out, unions' optimal seniority-wage profiles are likely to be completely unaffected by their distributional preferences because of a kink in the utility-possibility frontier. This suggests that the simple technology of price discrimination may play a key role, hitherto unappreciated, in explaining union policies that affect the relative well-being of different union members.

Rosa Barbolla, Luis C. Corchón; An Elementary Proof of the Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium in a Special Case*, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, V

Journal Article More on the Preservation of Preference Proximity and Anonymous Social Choice Get access Shmuel Nitzan Shmuel Nitzan Bar Ilan University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 104, Issue 1, February 1989, Pages 187–190, https://doi.org/10.2307/2937840 Published: 01 February 1989

Job market segmentation refers to the idea that there tends to be a correlation among high wages, high productivity, high capital intensity, high value added, few quits relative to layoffs, and low labor turnover. This paper develops a model of wage dispersion and job market segmentation based on the very sparse assumption that the only departure from a strictly orthodox neoclassical world consists of wages being sticky in the short run. Implications of the model are explored and discussed.