Knowledge that Transforms

A high proportion of skilled workers in the labor force implies a large market size for skill-complementary technologies, and encourages faster upgrading of the productivity of skilled workers. As a result, an increase in the supply of skills reduces the skill premium in the short run, but then it induces skill-biased technical change and increases the skill premium, possibly even above its initial value. This theory suggests that the rapid increase in the proportion of college graduates in the United States labor force in the 1970s may have been a causal factor in both the decline in the college premium during the 1970s and the large increase in inequality during the 1980s.

From the viewpoint of a company's controlling shareholder, the optimal ownership structure generally involves some measure of dispersion, to avoid excessive monitoring by other shareholders. The optimal dispersion of share ownership can be achieved by going public, but this choice also entails some costs (the cost of listing and the loss of control over the shareholder register). If the controlling shareholder sells shares privately instead, he avoids the costs of going public but must tolerate large external shareholders who may monitor him too closely. Thus, the owner faces a trade-off between the cost of providing a liquid market and overmonitoring. The incentive to go public is stronger, the larger the amount of external funding required. The listing decision is also affected by the strictness of disclosure rules for public relative to private firms, and the legal limits on bribes aimed at dissuading monitoring by shareholders.

How do governments react to the accumulation of debt? Do they take corrective measures, or do they let the debt grow? Whereas standard time series tests cannot reject a unit root in the U. S. debt-GDP ratio, this paper provides evidence of corrective action: the U. S. primary surplus is an increasing function of the debt-GDP ratio. The debt-GDP ratio displays mean-reversion if one controls for war-time spending and for cyclical fluctuations. The positive response of the primary surplus to changes in debt also shows that U. S. fiscal policy is satisfying an intertemporal budget constraint.

Using segment information from Compustat, we find that the investment by a segment of a diversified firm depends on the cash flow of the firm's other segments, but significantly less than it depends on its own cash flow. The investment by segments of highly diversified firms is less sensitive to their cash flow than the investment of comparable single-segment firms. The sensitivity of a segment's investment to the cash flow of other segments does not depend on whether its investment opportunities are better than those of the firm's other segments.

This paper offers a theory of training whereby workers do not pay for the general training they receive. The superior information of the current employer regarding its employees' abilities relative to other firms creates ex post monopsony power, and encourages this employer to provide and pay for training, even if these skills are general. The model can lead to multiple equlibria. In one equilibrium quits are endogenously high, and as a result employers have limited monopsony power and provide little training, while in another equilibrium quits are low and training is high. Using microdata on German apprentices, we show that the predictions of our model receive some support from the data.

This paper examines the role of skilled labor in the growth of total factor productivity. We use panel data from manufacturing industries to assess the extent to which productivity growth in yearly cross sections is tied to industry shares of skilled labor inputs. We find robust evidence that productivity growth was increasingly concentrated in high-skill industries during a unique ten-year period beginning in the early 1970s. We do not find any positive association of productivity growth with new capital investment.

Is there too much or too little research and development (R&D)? In this paper we bridge the gap between the recent growth literature and the empirical productivity literature. We derive in a growth model the relationship between the social rate of return to R&D and the coefficient estimates of the empirical literature and show that these estimates represent a lower bound. Furthermore, our analytic framework provides a direct mapping from the rate of return to the degree of underinvestment in research. Conservative estimates suggest that optimal R&D investment is at least two to four times actual investment.

Using data on the prices of capital goods, this paper shows that much of the benefit of investment tax incentives does not go to investing firms but rather to capital suppliers through higher prices. A 10 percent investment tax credit increases equipment prices 3.5–7.0 percent. This lasts several years and is largest for assets with large order backlogs or low import competition. Capital goods workers' wages rise, too. Instrumental variables estimates of the short-run supply elasticity are around 1 and can explain the traditionally small estimates of investment demand elasticities. In absolute value, the demand elasticity implied here exceeds 1.

We use data on health plan choices by employees of Harvard University to compare the benefits of insurance competition with the costs of adverse selection. Moving to a voucher-type system induced significant adverse selection, with a welfare loss of 2 to 4 percent of baseline spending. But increased competition reduced Harvard’s premiums by 5 to 8 percent. The premium reductions came from insurer profits, so while Harvard was better off, the net effect for society was only the adverse selection loss. Adverse selection can be minimized by adjusting voucher amounts for individual risk. We discuss how such a system would work. Governments are increasingly turning to market forces as a way to limit the cost of social insurance. Traditionally, social insurance programs were operated as nonmarket goods; govern-ments mandated participation in a central program, collected revenues to finance the program, and ran the insurance system. There was no role for competition among suppliers in providing the basic benefit.