N EW estimates of hours and earnings indicate greater declines in hours of work and greater increases in hourly earnings the past half century than the usually used, currently available historical series show. The new estimates presented in this paper are hours of work per week in the manufacturing, railroad, bituminous, and anthracite coal mining industries, as well as hourly earnings and hourly compensation in the latter three industries. The purpose in presenting the new hours and earnings series is threefold. (1) For historical data on hours and earnings, economists generally refer to the series published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.' The conceptual basis underlying the calculation of the Bureau's series is one of total time paid for. For the researcher who is interested in problems relating to long-run changes in the hours of work, the introduction in recent years of such practices as paid vacations, paid holidays, or payment travel time gives an upward bias to an hours-per-week series when measured on a total time paid for basis. Since these practices provide additional earnings, division by the additional hours paid for, according to the total time paid for concept, tends to cancel out these gains and thus leads to understatement of the historical increase in hourly earnings. The new series attempt to correct these biases by deducting the time accounted by these practices from the measured hours both in the calculation of hours of work per week and in the calculation of hourly earnings. (2) The new series provide annual data continuously from 1900 through 1957, thus supplying information time periods since 1900 that are not covered by the Bureau's series (Tables 1 and 2 below). (3) The comprehensive review of the historical evidence on hours of work, which was undertaken in constructing the new series, suggests that the level of the Bureau's oft-used manufacturing series is in error during the 1920's. In 1929, a bench mark year the manufacturing series presented in this paper, the new estimate of hours of work per week is 48.0; the level of the Bureau's series is 44.2 hours. The construction of the hourly compensation series extends to three more industries the compensation concept developed by Rees manufacturing, to take account of the increasing importance to employees of employer contributions to such programs as pension plans and social insurance.2 Total hourly compensation is the sum of these wage supplement payments and the direct wage payments to workers measured by average hourly earnings. The employee coverage of the new series is identical to that of the Bureau's historical series. Except the railroad series, employee coverage is limited to production workers. The employee coverage of the railroad series is somewhat broader, including all wage and salary workers except the upper echelon of management which is classified as officials, and staff 3 Tables 1 (hours) and 2 (earnings and compensation) below present the new series together with, comparative purposes, the currently official historical series of the Bureau of * This paper is adapted from Chapter II and Appendix B of my Ph.D. dissertation, Hours of Work in the United States, 1900-1957 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1961). My thanks are due to both H. Gregg Lewis and Albert Rees their assistance on the dissertation and their helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. 1See, e.g., U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, 1960), 92-3; and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings Statistics the United States, 1909-60, Bull. No. 1312 (Washington, 1961), 14, 31, and 422. 2Albert Rees, New Measures of Wage-Earner Compensation in Manufacturing, 1914-57, National Bureau of Economic Research, Occasional Paper 75 (New York, 1960). 'The new series exclude only the reporting divisions (1) executives, general officers, and assistants and (2) division officers, assistants, and staff assistants. See U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission, Monthly Report of Employees, Service, and Compensation, Forms A and B.

EXCHANGE rate depreciation can be used by a country either to improve its balance of payments or to stimulate domestic employment and output. But there is a conflict between these two objectives. If expansion at home is allowed, the depreciation cannot be expected to result in the trade account improvement obtainable if domestic policies to stabilize output and employment were pursued. This article discusses the extent to which the income movements that are a consequence of devaluation conflict with the goal of improvement in the trade balance. analysis of devaluation was extended to incorporate income movements in the studies by Laursen and Metzler' and by Harberger.2 Subsequent criticisms and extensions have clarified many aspects of the problem,3 especially the money-illusion that was implicit in Harberger's analysis. Emphasis in their work has been placed upon the value that must be exceeded by the of elasticities of import demand in order to insure stability in the foreign exchange market. dominant conclusion that emerged was that this sum exceeds unity if employment and output are allowed to respond to the forces set in motion by depreciation. In this paper I assume that demand elasticities exceed the critical for exchange stability, so that depreciation becomes a feasible technique for improving the trade balance, and examine the nature and extent of the dampening effect of output and employment changes on the balance of payments. This is accomplished by investigating what I call the dampening coefficient associated with output changes. Consider the improvement in the trade account with variable outputs relative to the improvement if stabilization policies are pursued. This fraction subtracted from unity is an index of the extent to which income changes have reduced the improvement in the trade account. higher the value of this dampening coefficient, the greater the cost4 to the devaluing country of output changes. Two types of dampening coefficient must be distinguished. first relates to the comparison between (i) devaluation in which all countries' outputs vary as they will and (ii) devaluation in which all countries stabilize levels of output and employment, and is a measure of the comparative importance of effects5 and income effects. It is examined in the first section of this paper. second dampening coefficient is relevant to trade policy in the devaluing country. It measures the diminution in the gains in the trade account resulting from failure to control output in the depreciating country when some specific assumption is made as to stabilization policies abroad. That is, it is assumed that decisions in the devaluing country concerning stabilization policy do not influence other countries' stabilization policies. For simplicity, I assume, in the second section of this paper, that other countries decide not to permit any fall in employment. expressions for either dampening coefficient depend upon the period of time during which the of devaluation are considered. distinction made in this paper between the short-run and long-run of currency depreciation is based upon studies suggesting dif* This paper had its origin in my doctoral thesis submitted to M.I.T. in 1955-56. It has benefited from comments by Robert Solow and Lionel McKenzie. ' S. Laursen and L. Metzler, Flexible Exchange Rates and the Theory of Employment, this REVIEW, XXXII (November 1950). 'A. Harberger, Currency Depreciation, Income, and the Balance of Trade, Journal of Political Economy, LVm (February 1950). 'For example, cf. Spraos, Consumers' Behavior and the Conditions for Exchange Stability, Economica, xxII (May 1955); Pearce, A Note on Mr. Spraos' Paper, Economica, xxii (May 1955); H. Johnson, The Transfer Problem and Exchange Stability, Journal of Political Economy, Lxrv (June 1956). 4 Cost measured in sacrificed improvement in the trade account. 6 By price effects I mean the change in the trade balance resulting from the change in relative prices, neglecting the impact of changes in aggregate outputs.

This paper examines impacts of childhood health on socioeconomic status (SES) outcomes observed during adulthood: levels and trajectories of education, family income, household wealth, individual earnings, and labor supply. The analysis is conducted using panel data that collect these SES measures using a sample who were originally children and are now well into their adult years. Since all siblings are in the panel, unmeasured family and neighborhood background effects can be controlled for. With the exception of education, poor childhood health has a quantitatively large effect on all of these outcomes. Moreover, these estimated effects are larger when unobserved family effects are controlled.

Statistical analysis is used to evaluate trends in the relative prices of natural resource commodity aggregates and to predict the adequacy of natural resource supplies. The model incorporates the Brown-Durbin custom test and Quandt's log-liklihood ratio. The results indicate that a relative price series is not stable enough to predict a consistent pattern of change and it would be unwise to base materials and extraction policies on this framework. This conclusion is reached, in part, because of the significant changes in the US economy and institutions in recent years. 22 references.

T ESTED with regional data for the United States, the neoclassical growth model has yielded inconsistent results. Borts and Stein (1964, chapter 3) employed a simple growth model relating interregional factor movements to factor price differentials, but found little evidence of responsiveness. In a recent paper Smith (1973) found such a model consistent with the long-run factor mobility experience of states. Since a similar model was employed in both studies, the contrasting results may be ascribed to the use of inappropriate data in the test of the model of Borts and Stein, and/or inadequate model specification. They tested their model on the nonagricultural sector of each state, while Smith's model is tested on aggregate state data. Use of data on the nonagricultural sector of each state embodied the implicit assumption that capital and labor move only between states from one nonagricultural sector to another, and ignored the possibility of intersectoral factor movements. Smith avoided this potential problem by aggregating each state's output to a single sector. Thus, only interstate factor movements were relevant. In this paper, both intersectoral (within states) and interstate factor movements are considered. Factor movements affect the growth rate of a sector's capital-labor ratio, which determines the growth rate of the wage level.

TN their critical analysis of the evidence advanced by Colin Clark for his conclusion that taxation exceeding approximately 25 per cent of national income is inflationary, Messrs. Pechman and Mayer have successfully accomplished a much needed task. The concept of the 25 per cent limit was presented in both the Economic Journal and Harper's in an unqualified manner. It is little wonder that it has been incorporated into popular discussion on tax and budget policy as a new dogma. As is so often true, the assertion of an oversimplified proposition obscures the need for discriminating judgments in the formulation of alternative policies. The purpose of this note is to suggest some of the limitations and distinctions which should be recognized in applying the idea that taxation may be inflationary in policy determination. Three general propositions are stated below; on them there may be fairly general agreement. These are followed by brief comments on the current situation in the United States; on these there will inevitably be considerable disagreement. The latter opinions are expressed in a terse form, without full elaboration or listing of assumptions, to illustrate the extensive coverage, though not the thoroughness, of the analysis appropriate in the formulation of policy.

to a movement of five points in a high-priced stock as to a five point change in one selling at a low figure, more serious error tends to creep into the picture whenever some of the companies whose stocks are used as a basis for calculating the average price level issue rights to subscribe to additional stock or declare stock dividends, either in terms of their own shares or through the distribution of shares in subsidiary companies. Any change in the character of the equities represented, affects the validity of charts based on the average market quotations of a list of stocks. Those whose concern it is to protect investments in common stocks, need some more reliable measure of changes in the value of common stock equities, and it was with the purpose of establishing such a measure that the present studies were undertaken. As a result of