Knowledge that Transforms

The wages and employment of typographers are examined to see whether they can be usefully characterized as the outcome of a process by which the union maximizes an objective function containing wages and employment and is constrained by a trade-off between these two variables as represented by the employer's labor demand function. Our functional form assumptions permit investigation of some familiar special cases of union behavior. The parameter implications of both the wage bill maximization hypothesis and the rent maximization hypothesis provide inferior explanations of the movement of wages and employment of these workers compared with our more general formulation.

Some standard topics in the theory of international trade are reconsidered in this paper by distinguishing between national and aggregate income when fixed supplies of foreign inputs are present within the home country. Under conditions that would ensure a national welfare gain if foreign ownership were absent, international transfer, economic growth, or tariff policy might cause a national welfare loss in the presence of foreign ownership. The techniques developed could be applied to other domestic distinctions (such as those based on race, sex, age, or ethnicity) and to the theory of customs unions in a three-country world.

A simple scheme is proposed to measure monopoly pricing behavior. The coefficient of the tax rate term in a price equation identifies the ratio of price to marginal cost. No direct measurement of costs is required, so a major problem for other empirical studies of monopoly is avoided. Empirical results for cross-section time-series data support rejection of atomistic competition but also provide evidence against the operation of an effective cartel in the cigarette industry. The model represents an alternative interpretation of related results in a recent paper by Barzel. Application of the methodology to other markets is feasible.

The paper develops a model of exchange-rate and current-account determination for a small economy peopled by infinitely lived, utility-maximizing households. In this setting, a central-bank purchase of foreign exchange has no real effects when central-bank foreign reserves earn interest at the world rate and proceeds are returned to the public. In contrast, an increase in the monetary growth rate does have real effects, even in the long run. The model developed here implies that an increase in government spending may lead to a surplus on current account. The external adjustment process predicted by the model is one in which consumption, real balances, and external assets all rise or fall simultaneously.

Three exchange-rate regimes--a float, a one-sided peg, and a cooperative peg--are evaluated and compared in terms of efficiency and welfare levels. The framework of analysis embodies country-specific monies, with the money of each country being used to transact in its commodity markets and its currency-denominated bonds. Welfare levels depend only on consumption levels. In the presence of perfect foresight all equilibrium allocations are Pareto efficient. In a floating exchange-rate regime the perfect foresight equilibrium allocation coincides with an equilibrium of a costless barter economy. The same result holds in a one-sided peg if the pegging country's exchange-rate stabilizing authority breaks even over time. In a cooperative peg regime there is a different equilibrium allocation for each combination of exchange-rate levels and monetary policies. Problems of policy coordination and conflicts in desired monetary policies are discussed.

Effective marginal tax rates on labor income for the "representative" Swede have increased from roughly 50 percent in 1959 to 80 percent today. The effects of this increase in the level of taxation are examined using a two-sector model parameterized to correspond to the Swedish economy. The model contains a single household which allocates labor to either taxed (essentially market) or untaxed (largely household) uses. The estimated long-run effects are sufficient to explain up to 75 percent of the recent decline in the measured growth rate of the Swedish GNP. Calculations of total tax revenues are also derived from the model. These peak when the tax rate is approximately 70 percent, indicating that Sweden is presently on the downward-sloping portion of its "Laffer Curve."

Dixit has recently presented a model in which established firms select capacity to discourage entry but cannot employ threats they would not rationally execute after entry. Entry deterrence in a slight modification of this model involves the classical limit-price output. Under linear or concave demand, however, the capital cost of a firm of minimum efficient scale is an upper bound on the present value of the monopoly profit stream that can be shielded from entry. It is argued that this suggests the general unimportance of entry barriers erected by scale economies.

The welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed in a general equilibrium framework, where the private sector is represented by a competitive household endowed with perfect foresight and an infinite life. The value of the welfare cost depends essentially on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the production function. Numerical estimates are presented for different values of the parameters of the model. The welfare gain obtained by the abolition of the capital income tax is smaller when the private sector is not endowed with perfect foresight (it is reduced by about 40 percent when expectations are myopic). The allocation efficiency cost of the corporate tax dwarfs the intertemporal welfare cost.

This paper explores some of the implications for econometric practice of the principle that people's observed behavior will change when their constraints change. In dynamic contexts, a proper definition of people's constraints includes among them laws of motion that describe the evolution of the taxes they must pay and the prices of the goods that they buy and sell. Changes in agents' perceptions of these laws of motion (or constraints) will in general produce changes in the schedules that describe the choices they make as a function of the information that they possess. Until very recently, received dynamic econometric practice ignored this principle. The practice of dynamic econometrics should be changed so that it is consistent with the principle that people's rules of choice are influenced by their constraints. This is a substantial undertaking and involves major adjustments in the ways that we formulate, estimate, and simulate econometric models.