Knowledge that Transforms

Adam Smith and the Prisoners' Dilemma Get access Gordon Tullock Gordon Tullock George Mason University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 100, Issue Supplement, 1985, Pages 1073–1081, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/100.Supplement.1073 Published: 01 January 1985

The permanent income hypothesis with durability of commodities is tested on a panel of about 2, 000 Japanese households for several commodity groups. Under static expectations about real interest rates and for some class of utility functions, consumption, which is a distributed lag function of current and past expenditure, follows a martingale. Main empirical results are (i) the durability of commodities usually classified as services is substantial, (ii) the hypothesis applies to about 85 percent of the population consisting of wage earners, and (iii) income changes explain only a small fraction of the movements in expenditure.

Journal Article The Free Rider Problem and a Social Custom Model of Trade Union Membership Get access Alison L. Booth Alison L. Booth The City University, London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 100, Issue 1, February 1985, Pages 253–261, https://doi.org/10.2307/1885744 Published: 01 February 1985

This paper examines the implications of the absence of complete annuity markets on the distribution of wealth and welfare of agents whose saving decisions are obtained under uncertainty regarding the length of their life. The absence of annuities is shown to yield a unique nondegenerate intragenerational distribution of wealth, which is fully characterized. This characterization is then used to evaluate the Pareto desirability of an annuity system. Alternative welfare criteria that can be used when the proposed change has differential impacts on the initial state of subsequent generations are considered.

Z. M. Berrebi, Jacques Silber; Income Inequality Indices and Deprivation: A Generalization*, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 100, Issue 3, 1 Aug

Linear models involving expectations of future endogenous variables generally have multiple rational expectations equilibria. This paper investigates the stability of solutions in the disequilibrium sense of whether, given a small deviation of expectations functions from some rational expectations equilibrium, the system returns to that solution under a natural revision rule. Weak and strong local stability are distinguished. Stability conditions are calculated for a simple general linear model and applied to two macroeconomic examples. In some cases there is a unique stable equilibrium. In other cases a continuum of equilibria forms a weakly but not strongly stable class.

A model is developed to illustrate Hyman Minsky's financial crisis theories. A key assumption is that the level of wealth in the economy is determined mac-roeconomically, with the value of firms' assets responding to the state of confidence as reflected by discounted quasi rents on capital. The second assumption is that there is high substitutability between liabilities of firms and money in the public's portfolio. A downward shift in anticipated profits leads wealth to contract and the public to shift portfolio preferences toward money. Interest rates rise, leading to further dampening of expected profits, and a debt-deflation crisis can occur.

This paper investigates the extent to which equilibrium and disequilibrium explanations can account for unemployment rate differentials between cities. It shows that shocks that disturb the steady-state relationship among the unemployment rates of metropolitan areas tend to be eliminated by mobility within a single year. It also shows that high unemployment areas tend to be those with attractive climates and amenities, high wages, and high unemployment insurance. It argues that the main effect of government programs that create jobs in high unemployment areas will be to lure additional job seekers to those areas.

An overlapping generations model incorporating returns to specific experience is used to demonstrate how three salient phenomena in land-scarce developing countries—the predominance of intergenerational family extension, cost advantages of family relative to hired labor, and the scarcity of land sales—may be manifestations of an optimal implicit contract between generations that maximizes the gains from farm-specific, experientially obtained knowledge. A method for estimating the contribution to agricultural profits of the farm experience embodies in elderly kin based on a three-year panel of household data from India is proposed and implemented. Implications of the theory for market transactions in land and for family extension are also tested using individual farm data and time-series information on rainfall. Why is the aged husbandman more skillful in his calling than the younger beginner, but because there is a certain uniformity in the operation of the sun, rain, and earth, towards the production of vegetables; and experience teaches the old practitioner the rules, by which this operation is governed and directed? David Hume [1758, p. 106]

This paper examines the effect of liquidity constraints on consumption expenditures using a single-year cross-section data set. A reduced-form equation for consumption is estimated on high-saving households by the Tobit procedure to account for the selectivity bias. Since high-saving households are not likely to be liquidity constrained, the estimated equation is an appropriate description of how desired consumption that would be forthcoming without liquidity constraints is related to the variables available in the cross-section data. When the reduced-form equation is used to predict desired consumption, the gap between desired consumption and measured consumption is most evident for young households.