Knowledge that Transforms

In earlier studies, economic historians found that political goals, rather than social or humanitarian objectives, motivated much of New Deal spending. Using new information on annual, state level employment for the 1930s, this paper shows that, while politics are still important, responding to the needs of the unemployed was an important determinant of New Deal spending.

Kenneth E. Train, Daniel L. McFadden, Andrew A. Goett, Consumer Attitudes and Voluntary Rate Schedules for Public Utilities, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 383-391

Stanley J. Feldman, David McClain, Karen Palmer, Sources of Structural Change in the United States, 1963-78: An Input-Output Perspective, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 503-510

There has been considerable controversy about the role of financial factors as determinants of savings in developing countries. This paper explores the importance of two such factors, namely, real interest rate and financial intermediation. Using pooled time- series, cross-section data, a model of savings is estimated for Asia, Latin America, and for the total sample. Particular attention is paid to the error structure in estimation. The results suggest that pooling is not justified. Further, there is no unequivocal support for the effect of either of the two factors; some qualified support is found for Asia but none for Latin America.

Solomon W. Polachek, Bong Joon Yoon, A Two-Tiered Earnings Frontier Estimation of Employer and Employee Information in the Labor Market, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 69, No. 2 (May, 1987), pp. 296-302

Bidding theory predicts low er selling winning bids (higher buying winning bids) as numbers of bidders incre ase. Alternative versions predict that winning bids fall (rise) with the second order statistic, the maximum order statistic, or 1/N. The authors test these pre dictions using data on underwriters' spreads on tax exempt bonds, offshore oil t racts, and National Forest timber. They estimate winning bids using general vari ables for the product and dummies for 1, 2, . . .11 bidders. In all cases mor e bidders meansignificantly lower (selling) winning bids. The expected maximum order statistic fits better than either the second order statistic or1/N, in te n out of twelve cases.

Findings do not indicate poorly-managed firms are more likely to be acquired than well-managed firms. The analysis uses a sample of 1, 046Texas banks that existed in 1970, out of which 201 were acqui red during the period 1970-82. A multinomial logit procedure is used to estimate the relationship between the likelihood of acquisition and the characteristics of the target firm and its market. Additional results suggest that firms with la rge market shares, low capital/asset ratios, and operations in urban areas are r elatively likely to be acquired but not firms with low profits or low growth.

Cr oss-sectional variation in corporate liquidity within a sample of large U.S. corporations suggests that there are material effects from product market competiti on. The empirical evidence is consistent with an oligopolistic model wherein liquid assets are employed both to signal commitment to retaliate against market en croachment and to enable firms to rapidly preempt new opportunities. As predicted, firms with high valuation and spending on intangibles, in certain strategic positions, hold large stocks of liquid assets.

Some of the most fundamental assumptions of economics are utility maximization and weak separability of the arguments in the represen tative consumer's utility function. This paper contains results from nonparametric tests of these assumptions about consumer behavior. The authors find that quarterly per capita data on consumption goods, le isure, and monetary assets are consistent with utility maximization. Further, consumption goods and leisure meet necessary and sufficient conditions for weak separability. Additionally, one grouping of relat ively liquid monetary assets meets the necessary conditions for weak separability. They also test and find no evidence of homothetic prefe rences.