Knowledge that Transforms

Optimal designs for estimating model parameters and other characteristics such as mean and median willingness-to-pay are discussed.when a logistic or a probit regression model is used for analyzing a contingent valuation study with discrete questions. A numerical example, related to a study of the value of preserving some virgin forests in Sweden, illustrates the efficiencies of different designs and how a sequential procedure can be applied.

Using Canadian data (1965-86), the author confirms and extends Thomas M. Stoker's (1986) results on the rule of distributional effects in demand systems. The confirmation consists of evidence from the linear expenditure system model showing that distributional effects are statistically significant and can displace AR(1) dynamics in the disturbances. The extension is made to the quadratic expenditure system model and an argument is advanced that standard habit formation dynamics may reflect omitted distributional effects. The evidence supports this conjecture. This suggests that the author may have been drawing the wrong conclusions from expenditure studies. Rather than inferring dynamic behavior, he should have been concluding that these models are misspecified.

Previous models of public spending fail to explain why high inflation rates are distributed non-randomly across countries. In the switching-regime specification proposed here, governments tend to resort to inflationary debt monetarization when the spending level chosen by voters exceeds actual revenue capacity. The voter-choice and fiscal-capacity models of earlier studies are special cases of this framework. Using cross country data for 1970, 1975 and 1980, the authors find that the voter-choice specification applies to most industrialized countries, whereas fiscal capacity appears to constrain government spending in most developing countries. High inflation appears to result from shocks that alter a country's fiscal capacity relative to voters' expectations.

Professional forecasts of aggregate U.S. consumption series strongly reject Robert E. Hall's (1978) random walk hypothesis. Band spectrum regressions show that low-frequency variations in growth ra tes of expenditures on nondurables and services, defined as cycles takin g more than two years to complete, primarily account for the rejection. Consumption growth and professional forecasts of GNP growth are also closely related at the low but not at the high frequencies. Liquidi ty constraints or durable characteristics of consumption goods may both explain the reported findings.

Robert A. Pollak, Terence J. Wales, Price-Augmenting Returns to Scale: An Application to Nonseparable Two-Stage Technologies, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 213-220

A procedure is proposed to test for the existence of a fully causal relationship between two variables. The method involves contrasting the probabilistic forecasting performance of a univariate and bivariate specification for the same variable Y. If there exists some theory or belief that X causes Y, and the addition of a variable X to the information set of a prequential forecasting system for a variable Y reduces miscalibration and/or the level of forecast uncertainty with respect Y's distribution for the next period, then a fully causal effect running from X to Y may be inferred. Vector autoregression allows testing for feedback. The method is to be applied to the issue of causality between the live cattle futures market and a major slaughter cattle cash market.

Evidence on costs and factor substitution is presented for a sample of local fire departments in New York State. The results suggest that fire service production does not fit either Leontief, Cobb-Douglas, or CES technology. In addition, exogenous socioeconomic variables are found to significantly affect public-sector costs and the estimates of factor price elasticities. The findings of relatively low factor demand and substitution elasticities suggest that local governments may have limited flexibility in adjusting their production of fire services to minimize the impact of rising factor prices.

This paper extends the standard static model of labor supply and taxation to the case where people are able to legally avoid taxes through the use of itemized deductions. Tax deductible expenditures are treated as a Hicksian composite good with a price (for those who decide to itemize) proportional to one minus the marginal tax rate. Estimation of the commonly used linear labor supply model (extended to incorporate the additional composite good) on a cross-section of prime aged married men suggests that tax deductible consumption is an uncompensated substitute for leisure (and complement with labor). The impact of taxes through the relative price of deductible expenditures appears to be much stronger than through the net wage.

Berger, Allen N., and Timothy H. Hannon, The Price-Concentration Relationship in Banking, this REVIEW 71 (May 1989), 291-299. Demsetz, Harold, Industry Structure, Rivalry, and Public Policy, Journal of Law and Economics 16 (Apr. 1973), 1-9. Jackson, William E. III, Market Structure and Price Adjustments: Evidence from the Banking Industry, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, June 1989. Peltzman, Samuel, The Gains and Losses from Industrial Concentration, Journal of Law and Economics 20 (Oct. 1977), 229-263. Salinger, Michael, The Concentration-Margins Relationship Reconsidered, in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Microeconomics, Martin N. Bailey and Clifford Winston, (eds.), Brookings (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990). 5 No formal statistical tests of the differences in the estimated coefficients of CONC across subsamples were conducted. This analysis was concerned more with the sign and significance level of each subsample estimated CONC coefficient.

This paper derives elasticity estimates for the electricity demand of a cross section of residential customers in Medellin, Colombia, where prices follow a rising block scheme. It contrasts methods following Jerry Hausman (1979, 1985) with those based on Harvey Rosen (1976). To resolve the difference between the results produced by the two methods, it uses a generalized selectivity bias corrections method due to Frank Vella (1990).