Knowledge that Transforms

Relatively unique data on the costs of public services for local governments in Victoria, Australia, are used to estimate a system of demand equations and to test alternative specifications of the underlying preferences using a translog model. Symmetry conditions are rejected so the data are not consistent with constrained utility maximization. A nonparametric test confirms that result. Conditional on symmetry, tests reject homogeneity and the additivity of preferences and also the separability of personal and property services. Copyright 1988 by MIT Press.

Hideki Yamawaki, David A. Audretsch, Import Share under International Oligopoly with Differentiated Products: Japanese Imports in U.S. Manufacturing, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Nov., 1988), pp. 569-579

of Economics Departments, University of Westem Ontario Centre for Economic Analysis of Property Rights, Working Paper, 1986. Maddala, G. S., Limited-Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). McDowell, John M., and Michael Melvin, The Determinants of Co-Authorship: An Analysis of the Economics Literature, this REVIEW 65 (Feb. 1983), 155-160. McKelvey, R., and W. Zavoina, A Statistical Model for the Analysis of Ordinal Level Dependent Variables, Journal of Mathematical Sociology 4 (1975), 103-120. Schweser, Carl, The Economics of Academic Publishing, Journal of Economic Education 14 (1983), 60-64.

Lonnie Magee, The Behaviour of a Modified Box-Cox Regression Model when Some Values of the Dependent Variable are Close to Zero, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 70, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 362-366

The econometric method in the C. Flinn and J. Heckman (1982) study for estimating a Markovian model of search unem ployment and job tenure is further augmented by introducing a possibi lity that jobs may differ by separation rates or nonwage attributes. A set of reservation wages is obtained as a solution to the value fun ctions. Differences in reservation wages estimate the compensating no nwage utility differentials among jobs. The unemployment spell distri bution is characterized as one of competing risk based on which type of job is finally accepted. The model is implemented using data from the Employment Opportunities Pilot Project. Copyright 1988 by MIT Press.

Child support noncompliance affects both the family and the taxpayer. This papers models the decision to pay based on expected utility maximization. The amount unpaid is determined jointly with the expected enforcement probability. A two-stage estimation technique requiring ordinary least squares and probit is used. The author improves upon previous problems with measurement error and sex-restricted data in deterrence and child support studies, the treatment of endogenous deterrence variables as exogenous, and the use of aggregate data. He finds a joint relationship between the amount unpaid and the enforcement probability. Policies are suggested for increasing compliance and payments to the family. Copyright 1988 by MIT Press.