Anomalous Behavior in a Traveler's Dilemma? by C. Monica Capra, Jacob K. Goeree, Rosario Gomez and Charles A. Holt. Published in volume 89, issue 3, pages 678-690 of American Economic Review, June 1999
The frequency of job loss among workers in late career has risen disproportionately in recent years. The effects of job loss on these workers are potentially severe: their earnings capacity, savings, and retirement expectations are likely to be dramatically affected and they may take substantially longer to be re-employed. However, despite these reasons for heightened concern, relatively little is known about the economic consequences of late career job loss among recent cohorts of workers. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project using the Health and Retirement Study that focuses on the economic impacts of late career job loss on employment and retirement patterns, as well as on earnings and assets.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
The World Trade Organization (WTO) lacks the power to directly enforce agreements. It is therefore important to understand what role the WTO can play to facilitate international cooperation, and whether a multilateral institution can offer distinct advantages over a web of bilateral agreements. This paper examines two potential benefits of a multilateral trade institution: first, verifying violations of the agreements and informing third parties, thus facilitating multilateral reputation mechanisms; second, promoting multilateral trade negotiations rather than a web of bilateral negotiations. The model suggests that a multilateral approach is particularly important when there are strong imbalances in bilateral trading relationships.
Fifty Years of U.S. Income Data from the Current Population Survey: Alternatives, Trends, and Quality by Daniel H. Weinberg, Charles T. Nelson, Marc I. Roemer and Edward J. Welniak. Published in volume 89, issue 2, pages 18-22 of American Economic Review, May 1999
In the wake of the Mexican and Asian currency turmoil, the subject of financial crises has come to the forefront of academic and policy discussions. This paper analyzes the links between banking and currency crises. We find that: problems in the banking sector typically precede a currency crisis—the currency crisis deepens the banking crisis, activating a vicious spiral; financial liberalization often precedes banking crises. The anatomy of these episodes suggests that crises occur as the economy enters a recession, following a prolonged boom in economic activity that was fueled by credit, capital inflows, and accompanied by an overvalued currency.
If college seniors who have taken an economics course were asked questions that test their knowledge of basic economics, what would the results show? Would seniors give correct answers to most questions, or would they show significant deficiencies? Students are exposed to many ideas during their undergraduate education, so one would not expect them to retain all of the economic content they were taught, but one would hope that they would retain at least a knowledge of basic economics. This study investigates whether that is the case. Two data sources were used for the study. The first was from a Gallup survey of a national random sample of 300 college seniors (Walstad and Max Larsen, 1992). The survey includes 15 multiple-choice questions testing economic knowledge. The responses from that survey can be separated according to whether students took economics. The second data set came from the economics scores for 12,854 students who took the Major Field Test in Business II (MFTB) sponsored by Higher Education Assessment of the Educational Testing Service (ETS, 1998). The MFTB covers content typically taught in an undergraduate program in business and contains about 20 multiple-choice questions on basic economics. Although there are differences between the two data sets, we viewed this as an advantage for our study. Our hypothesis is that most college seniors would show relatively limited knowledge of basic economics, no matter what questions were asked or how the data were collected. We expected students responding to the Gallup questions to score higher than students taking the MFTB because the Gallup questions were simpler and designed for telephone interviews. The MFTB, by contrast, is a standardized achievement test with definitions and analytical questions of the type that would be used in course exams for Principles of Economics. With both sets of test data, however, we expected to find significant gaps in the economic knowledge of college seniors.
Unbiased Value Estimates for Environmental Goods: A Cheap Talk Design for the Contingent Valuation Method by Ronald G. Cummings and Laura O. Taylor. Published in volume 89, issue 3, pages 649-665 of American Economic Review, June 1999
Are Risk Regulators Rational? Evidence from Hazardous Waste Cleanup Decisions by W. Kip Viscusi and James T. Hamilton. Published in volume 89, issue 4, pages 1010-1027 of American Economic Review, September 1999
The property that ideas are nonrivalrous leads to a tight link between idea-based growth models and increasing returns to scale. In particular, changes in the size of an economy’s population generally affect either the long-run growth rate or the long-run level of income in such models. This paper provides a partial review of the expanding literature on idea-based models and scale effects. It presents simple versions of various recent idea-based growth models and analyzes their implications for the relationship between scale and growth.