Knowledge that Transforms

We argue that the relevant monetary decision for the majority of U.S. households is not the fraction of assets to be held in interest‐bearing form, but whether to hold any such assets at all (we call this “the decision to adopt” the financial technology). We show that the key variable governing the adoption decision is the product of the interest rate times the total amount of assets. This implies that the interest elasticity of household money demand at low interest rates can be estimated from the variation in asset holdings in a cross section of households rather than historical interest rate variations. We do so with the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances. We find that (a) the elasticity of money demand is very small when the interest rate is small, (b) the probability that a household holds any amount of interest‐bearing assets is positively related to the level of financial assets, and (c) the cost of adopting financial technologies is negatively related to participation in a pension program. At interest rates of 5 percent, roughly one‐half of the elasticity can be attributed to the Allais‐Baumol‐Tobin or intensive margin and half to the new adopters or extensive margin. The intensive margin is less important at lower interest rates and more important at higher interest rates. Finally, we argue that ignoring extensive margins may lead to an empirically important overestimation of the cost of inflation at low interest rates.

Using a calibrated general equilibrium overlapping generations model, which explicity accounts for differences between immigrants and natives, this paper investigates whether a reform of immigration policies alone could resolve the fiscal problems associated with the aging of the baby boom generation. Such policies are found to exist and are characterized by an increased inflow of working‐age high‐and medium‐skilled immigrants. One particular feasible policy involves admitting 1.6 million 40–44‐year‐old high‐skilled immigrants annually. These findings are illustrated by computing the discounted government gain of admitting additional immigrants, conditional on their age and skills.

This paper shows that a minimal degree of consideration for other people's well‐being enables society to agree that one social policy is the best. I offer axioms that imply that this best policy maximizes a weighted sum of individual utilities. The weight of each individual is the inverse of his or her maximal possible utility from social endowments. The suggested policy is not sensitive to the choice of the von Neumann‐Morgenstern utilities. The key axiom is that individuals agree that giving all the endowments always to one person is as bad as giving them to any other person.

Despite expanding at an annual rate of nearly 9 percent, China's economy has exhibited a marked cyclical pattern: Periods of rapid growth, accompanied by accelerating inflation, are followed by contractions during which both growth and inflation fall. A widening gap also emerged between the output contribution of the state sector and its share of investment and employment. In this paper, we offer a consistent explanation for this behavior that reflects several key institutional features of China's economic reform: (i) economic decentralization, (ii) the government's commitment to the state sector, and (iii) the credit plan and credit control.

I review the uses of economic theory in the initial design and later improvement of the ‘‘simultaneous ascending auction,’ ’ which was developed initially for the sale of radio spectrum licenses in the United States. I analyze some capabilities and limitations of the auction, the roles of various detailed rules, the possibilities for introducing combinatorial bidding, and some considerations in adapting the auction for sales in which revenue, rather than efficiency, is the primary goal. I.

We show that (Marshallian) income elasticities are proportional to (Frisch) own price elasticities if all goods are additively separable. This implies that luxuries are likely to be easier to postpone. It also implies that preferences over “consumption” are unlikely to display a constant elasticity of substitution.

This paper examines unintended effects of air quality regulation, using plant data for 1963–92. A key regulatory tool since 1978 is the annual designation of county air quality attainment status. Nonattainment status triggers specific equipment requirements, with the severity and enforcement of regulations rising with plant size. The differential in regulation favors attainment areas, reducing births for polluting industries in nonattainment areas by 26–45 percent. Industries and sectors with bigger plants are affected the most, shifting industrial structure toward less regulated single‐plant firms. Large preregulation plants do benefit from grand‐fathering provisions, but both grandfathering and shifts to small‐scale new plants contribute to environmental degradation.

Much of the literature on consumption smoothing and on risk sharing has focused on the ability of the household as a unit to protect its consumption. Little is known about the ability of individual members of the household to keep consumption smooth over time or relative to other members of the household. We use data on adult nutrition in Ethiopia to investigate whether individuals are able to smooth their consumption over time and within the household. We find that poorer households are not able to do so. Furthermore, poor southern households do not engage in complete risk sharing; women in these households bear the brunt of adverse shocks. This result implies that the collective model of household organization, which imposes Pareto efficiency on allocations, is rejected for these households. Finally, we obtain estimates of the relative Pareto weights in household allocation. We find that a wife’s relative position is better if customary laws on settlements at divorce are favorable or if she comes from a relatively wealthy background and that poor southern women have lower Pareto weights in allocation.

This paper proposes a model of financial markets and corporate finance, with asymmetric information and no taxes, where equity issues, bank debt, and bond financing coexist in equilibrium. The relationship banking aspect of financial intermediation is emphasized: firms turn to banks as a source of investment mainly because banks are good at helping them through times of financial distress. This financial flexibility is costly since banks face costs of capital themselves (which they attempt to minimize through securitization). To avoid this intermediation cost, firms may turn to bond or equity financing, but bonds imply an inefficient liquidation cost and equity an informational dilution cost. We show that in equilib‐rium the riskier firms prefer bank loans, the safer ones tap the bond markets, and the ones in between prefer to issue both equity and bonds. This segmentation is broadly consistent with stylized facts.