Knowledge that Transforms

This paper tests, using U.S. data, the dynamics implied by the NAIRU view of the relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate. The results are somewhat sensitive to the measure of inflation used, but they generally reject the dynamics. An alternative way of thinking about the relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate is suggested.

Using microdata from 1985 to 1994 for fifteen OECD countries, I find that greater union coverage and membership lead to higher relative pay and lower relative employment for less-skilled men, with similar pay effects but only weak evidence of negative employment effects for less-skilled women. Greater economy-wide union coverage or membership leads to lower employment and higher relative wages for young men (with similar but weaker effects for young women), and a greater propensity to attend school for both genders. With few jobs for young people, education may have a low opportunity cost and may enhance one's employability.

Declining fertility, mortality, and productivity rates in developed countries and the popularity of the social security privatization in Chile as a pathway to financial development have sparked a global interest in social security reform. This paper analyzes the effect of social security on saving using a panel of countries over 25 years. Variation in the characteristics of social security systems is used to determine whether less reliance on a pay-as-you-go, unfunded system is associated with higher national saving. There is little evidence that countries that implement defined-contribution reforms have higher trends in saving rates after the reform. Cross-sectionally, countries with pay-as-you-go systems tend to have lower saving rates, and this effect increases with the coverage rate on the system.

The Kuhn-Tucker model of Wales and Woodland (1983) provides a utility theoretic framework for estimating preferences over commodities for which individuals choose not to consume one or more of the goods. Due to the complexity of the model, however, there have been few applications in the literature and little attention has been paid to the problems of welfare analysis within the Kuhn-Tucker framework. This paper provides an application of the model to the problem of recreation demand. In addition, we develop and apply a methodology for estimating compensating variation, relying on Monte Carlo integration to derive expected welfare changes.

Despite widespread popular accounts that link crack cocaine to inner-city decay, little systematic research has analyzed how the emergence of crack affected urban crime. We study this question using FBI crime rates for 27 metropolitan areas and two sources of information on when crack first appeared in those cities. Using methods designed to control for unobserved differences among metropolitan areas, we find that the introduction of crack had substantial effects on crime. In the absence of crack cocaine, the 1991 peak in urban crime rates would have been approximately 10% lower, remaining below the previous peak levels of the early 1980s.

This paper examines the impact of changes in labor market conditions on participation in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program in California. Transitions off welfare and transitions back onto welfare are estimated using discrete duration models that control for local labor market conditions, demographic and neighborhood characteristics, duration effects, county-fixed effects, time effects, and county- specific time trends. The results show that higher unemployment rates, lower employment growth, lower employment-to-population ratios, and lower wage growth are associated with longer welfare spells and higher recidivism rates. Hispanics, blacks, and two-parent families are the groups that are most sensitive to changes in local labor market conditions.

In this study, we consider the impacts of dramatic regulatory reform during the 1980s on the efficiency of farms in New Zealand, using unbalanced panel data. A translog distance function representing the multiple output and input technology and incorporating nonneutral regulatory impacts is used for the analysis. Determinants of technical inefficiency, including a regulatory variable, a time term, and a debt/equity ratio, are also incorporated in a one-step model estimated by maximum-likelihood, stochastic production frontier methods. We find evidence of regulatory-induced changes in output composition—toward beef and deer, and away from wool, and especially lamb—but little associated technical inefficiency. These patterns motivated investment in complementary capital, land, and beef/deer livestock inputs. Firms that were more flexible in their adaptation toward these new mixes adjusted to regulatory changes with less upheaval, so any existing inefficiency appears linked to debt/equity levels.

Using a nonparametric bounding method and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examine the effect that growing up in a household that receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) has on welfare participation as a young adult. In light of the ambiguities created by the selection problem, a number of alternative assumptions and estimates are presented. While the data alone cannot be conclusive, the results generally strengthen the evidence that being exposed to AFDC as a child increases both the probability and the expected duration of future welfare participation.

The lifecycle theory of saving and consumption predicts that changes in an economy's rate of economic growth will affect its aggregate saving rate by changing the lifetime resources of younger people relative to older people. However, studies that track the saving behavior of cohorts of household heads over time as they age have yielded estimates of age-saving profiles that are too flat for growth to have much effect on the aggregate saving rate. One problem with the cohort approach is that multigenerational households are common in many counties, and the age-saving profiles of households may be quite different from the age-saving profiles of individuals that make up households. In this paper, we propose a method for estimating individual age-saving profiles using household data. This method is applied to data from Taiwan and Thailand. We find that the individual method yields results that are more favorable to the lifecycle model. These results imply that changes in the rate of economic growth may in some circumstances have large effects on the aggregate saving rate. However, the size and sign of these effects depends on the rate of economic growth and the rate of population growth, and in many cases the effect of growth on saving is small. I.

We test for a unit root in postwar unemployment rates for sixteen OECD countries. When a one-time structural break is incorporated, the unit root hypothesis can be rejected for most of the countries and the measured persistence of unemployment falls dramatically. We then test for multiple structural changes and find evidence of one or two breaks for those countries for which the unit root hypothesis could be rejected. Almost all of the breaks are positive, reflecting the sustained rise in European unemployment. The major exception is the United States, where long-term unemployment rose in the 1970s and fell in the 1980s.