Knowledge that Transforms

This paper devises an empirical methodology for discriminating between the median voter model and the oligarchy choice model when applied to the collective provision of a public good. In particular, an empirical methodology is engineered so that a nested test procedure can evaluate competing models. The authors apply this methodology to examine the demand for military activities of ten members of the NATO alliance. A two-stage least squares procedure, corrected for autocorrelation, is used to estimate the demand equations. Test results vary: some allies abide by the median voter model, others by the oligarchy model, and still others by neither. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

This note provides a generalization of the standard adjustment cost-rational expectations model due to Sargent (1978), which, in addition to the cost of changing the level of the decision variable, also allows for the cost of altering the "speed" with which decisions are changed. It establishes the existence of a unique stable solution for this more general model, derives an explicit solution for the underlying decision problem, and provides a necessary order condition for identification of the structural parameters. The note also contains an application of the model to the determination of employment in the U.K. coal industry over the 1956-83 period. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

In this paper, the authors present evidence that neither large differences in inflation nor long time periods are necessary for a finding favorable to purchasing power parity. Evidence from cointegrating regressions and tests of the real exchange rate indicate that purchasing power parity held as a long-run constraint between the United States and Canada for the period 1950:10 to 1961:5. The authors also find that government intervention can distort purchasing power parity over a finite period. Once the data were extended beyond the period of the free float, the evidence is no longer favorable to purchasing power parity. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

Long-duration employment opportunities are a necessary condition for workers to hold lifetime jobs. This paper uses longitudinal data on individual U.S. manufacturing plants from 1963-1982 to estimate the age and completed spell distributions for employment positions. The results indicate that, of the employment opportunities in progress in the U.S. manufacturing sector in 1982, 30.0% were at least 19 years old and 59.6% would have a completed length of at least 20 years. High rates of turnover in employment positions coexist with a large number of long-duration employment opportunities because the turnover tends to be concentrated within a subset of the producers. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

This paper examines the role of the exchange rate in U.S. external adjustments. The results show that the exchange rate is an important transmission channel of influence on prices, and with longer lags, on income and the trade balance. The effects of the exchange rate and relative prices on the trade balance are not symmetric even in the long run. Exchange rate feedback is insignificant and makes little difference in trade balance adjustment. There are also indications that the response of relative prices to the exchange rate shifted in recent years. Such changes seem to help explain the persistence of the U.S. trade deficit in recent years for multilateral trade, but not bilateral trade, with Japan or Germany. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

This paper characterizes the statistical distribution of the response of the U.S. trade account to a dollar depreciation. To accomplish this task, the paper builds and estimates an econometric model of U.S. bilateral trade. Given an exchange-rate shock, this distribution is generated empirically by stochastically simulating this model using random drawings for both innovations and trade elasticities. The paper finds that the distribution of trade-account responses is not stationary, that its variance is directly related to the size of the exchange-rate shock, that the dominant source of uncertainty lies with imports' price elasticities, and that the dispersion of these responses is more pronounced in the short run than in the long run. Based on these properties, the analysis applies Chebychev's inequality to the sample of trade-account responses and finds that hysteresis in price elasticities has a low probability of accounting for the persistence of the U.S. trade deficit. ; These findings have two practical implications. First, forecasts of trade-account responses to exchange-rate shocks should include the associated confidence intervals. Uncertainty in these responses is potentially large and omitting the corresponding confidence intervals is analogous to omitting standard errors of regression estimates. Second, deriving confidence intervals needs to recognize that parameter estimates are random variables and that they contribute, quite significantly in this application, to the width of these intervals.

Elizabeth S. Cooperman, Winson B. Lee, James. P. Lesage, Geographical Integration and the Retail CD-Pricing Decisions of Large Depository Institutions, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 546-552

This analysis tests the free-rider hypothesis as it applies to the Sealy mattress licensing system, one of the oldest and most prominent examples of vertical and horizontal distribution restraints. The results reported here focus on the period following the elimination of Sealy's territorial restraints in 1980. Using alternative samples, units of measurement, and estimating techniques, the analyses yield consistent results supporting the market power hypothesis: the Sealy territorial restraints on distribution decreased output and increased prices. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

Using industry data, this paper investigates the determinants of the response of real output to aggregate demand shocks across industries of the U.S. economy. The purpose of this investigation is to verify the empirical validity of two competing explanations for this response: a new classical explanation and a new Keynesian explanation. The author finds that the impact of aggregate demand shocks on industrial real output is negatively related to the mean inflation of industrial output price and positively related to the variability of the demand for this output. In addition, some industry-specific factors are important in differentiating the cyclical behavior of real output across industries. This evidence does not provide a clear support for any of the competing explanations considered in this paper. The evidence, however, sheds some light on important factors that differentiate the response of real output to aggregate demand shocks across industries of the economy. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

Tim R. Sass, J. Paul Leigh, The Market for Safety Regulation and the Effect of Regulation on Fatalities: The Case of Motorcycle Helmet Laws, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 167-172