The purpose of this note is to propose a decomposition of the Gini index of inequality into within and between subpopulations using the Lerman-Yitzhaki covariance method. The present method suggests that once the population is arranged in ascending order of income and assigned ranks, the same ranks will be used to calculate total as well as between inequality. In this way, it differs from the one suggested by Jacques Silber (1989) in the measurement of between inequality and, thereby, in the interaction term.

The objective of this paper is to examine empirically the determinants of the joint decision whether or not to adopt a new input and invest in technical knowledge. A log-linear probability model of the joint occurrence or nonoccurrence of adoption and information acquisition is estimated. The results suggest that information acquisition and adoption decisions are made jointly and that the influences of the determinants of adoption and information acquisition differ with the timing of adoption and the channels of information dissemination.

This paper models the selection of environmental policies under authoritarian and democratic regimes, and tests the hypothesis that political institutions systematically affect the enactment of environmental regulations. The results support the contention that political institutional arrangements, rather than resource endowments, largely determine policies concerning environmental regulation.

In addition to generating housing services, owner-occupied housing units constitute a lumpy, risky asset in household portfolios. Analysis of these dual consumption/investment roles suggests the permanent wealth budget constraint in housing demand models should be decomposed into permanent returns from human capital and current net worth. For young owners, current net worth is hypothesized to be the dominant wealth component determining the quantity of housing demanded. Using a Canadian microdata base, evidence is found that net worth does provide both greater explanatory power and higher elasticities than labor earnings.

This article introduces the concept of forecast efficiency, in which the forecast contains all information available at the time of the forecast. Empirical tests investigate weak efficiency, where the information set is all past forecasts and where all forecast revisions and errors should be uncorrelated with past forecast revisions. Tests of macroeconomic, energy-consumption, and oil-price forecasts find a significant autocorrelation of forecast revisions, with fifty of fifty-one tests showing positive correlation of forecast revisions, as opposed to zero correlation consistent with forecast efficiency.

A bstract-The standard disequilibrium model is supplemented with outside information on the extent of market excess demand. Estimation of this supplemented model is considerably less involved than that of the standard model, and certain desirable structural features, such as improved dynamics, are obtained. In addition, a simple nested test of the hypothesis of market equilibrium is available. The model is estimated with aggregate U.S. post-war labor market data, and the econometric test rejects the hypothesis of labor market equilibrium.

A hstract-This paper develops a model of the decision to adopt interrelated innovations emphasizing the role of innovative ability and a measure of the economic incentive to be informed about innovations. Education, experience, and the availability of information are hypothesized to be measurable dimensions of innovative ability. The results from fitting univariate, conditional, and joint logistic models suggest that innovative ability contributes significantly to explaining the adoption of new technology but does not explain its diffusion. The results also indicate that the diffusion of previously available innovations depends on the introduction and adoption of interrelated current innovations.

T HIS paper attempts to show that there is merit in the long-standing but much abused distinction between 'informative' and other types of advertising, and that this difference is revealed in a differential effect on economic performance. After a brief literature survey, section II develops a theoretical distinction between informative and goodwill advertising. Section III outlines a test of the hypothesis that the different kinds of advertising will have opposite effects on market performance. Section IV presents the results of this test. Section V summarizes and relates the results to other recent work on the economics of advertising.

Using the same sample of 100 countries for 1966 as Sommers and Suits,3 we obtained the following equation 4 GCF/GNP 26.87 (1.04) 4676.54 / (GNP/N + 300). (629.25) R2= .4 (4) Comparing this result with the estimation of the quadratic equation (1) of Sommers and Suits,5 we see that both equations have similar statistical properties. Using (4) as the basis for simulations of the growth path, however, we obtain completely different results from those of Sommers and Suits. Now per capita income does not attain a stationary level, but grows exponentially. The growth rate of per capita income, however, as can be seen from figure 2, attains a stationary level at 4.41 per cent per year. FIGURE 2. SIMULATED GROWTH RATE OF GNP PER CAPITA