Knowledge that Transforms

As a consequence of aggregation over markets, the observed quantity may be less than the quantity demanded and less than the quantity supplied. To deal with such situations, a new technique is proposed for estimating demand and supply curves and the extent of shortage and slack. The technique is applied to the consumption goods markets of Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. It is found that shortage, even corrected for a discouraged consumer effect, is seldom as great as slack.

There is an extensive empirical literature on political business cycles, but its theoretical foundations are grounded in pre-rational expectations macroeconomic theory. Here we show that electoral cycles in taxes, government spending and money growth can be modeled as an equilibrium signaling process. The cycle is driven by temporary information asymmetries which can arise if, for example, the government has more current information on its performance in providing for national defence. Incumbents cheat least when their private information is either extremely favourable or extremely unfavourable. An exogeneous increase in the incumbent party's popularity does not necessarily imply a damped policy cycle.