Knowledge that Transforms

This article empirically examines married women's labor supply and child care expenditures. The article uses winter 1984-85 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate a fully structural econometric model of labor supply and paid care utilization. Estimation results indicate that the cost of paid care has small negative effects on labor supply but stronger negative effects on paid care utilization. Consequently, subsidy programs such as the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit appear to have few effects on married mothers' employment.

Using data from two longitudinal surveys of American high school seniors, we show that basic cognitive skills had a larger impact on wages for 24-year-old men and women in 1986 than in 1978. For women, the increase in the return to cognitive skills between 1978 and 1986 accounts for all of the increase in the wage premium associated with post-secondary education. We also show that high school seniors' mastery of basic cognitive skills had a much smaller impact on wages two years after graduation than on wages six years after graduation.

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In many advertising-intensive industries one observes market share persistence, i.e., firms maintaining lead market shares over long periods of time. I hypothesize that firms that have the largest stock of well-established brands, a stock that I term brand capital, are most likely to introduce new products in response to new market information about consumer preferences. Firms with less brand capital delay their introductions until the uncertainty concerning the market size is reduced. I present empirical support in a study of new product introductions in the U.S. beverage industry.

This paper considers a new approach to the analysis of stable relationships between nonstationary seasonal time series. The basis of this approach is an error correction model in which both long-run effects and adjustment parameters are allowed to vary per season. First, we discuss theoretical arguments for such a periodic error correction model. We define periodic cointegration and compare this to the concept of seasonal cointegration. Next, we analyze statistical inference in the periodic error correction model A sequential procedure is proposed, consisting of a test for periodic cointegration, an estimator of the cointegration parameters and adjustment coefficients, and a class of tests for the hypothesis that some of the parameters are constant over the seasons. The finite sample behavior of the proposed test statistics is analyzed in a limited Monte Carlo exercise. We conclude the paper with an application to a model of aggregate Swedish consumption.

Persistent unemployment, like that plaguing Europe since the early 1980's, has been a persistent problem for economic theory. Competitive equilibrium theory assumes that all markets clear, including the labor market. All theories of unemployment thus must reflect significant departures from that paradigm. The last 20 years have generated a plethora of such theories. The challenge is to construct models that generate unemployment and are broadly consistent with a host of other labor and macroeconomic phenomena, including patterns of real wages and hours. The traditional approach is to focus on a simple static equilibrium in which wages are kept above their market-clearing level for a variety of reasons: in the older versions of this story minimum wages, union power and normative traditions; in its more recent incarnations, efficiency-wage considerations. Within the United States, the older variants of these models have received decreasing credence, as union power has eroded, the real value of the minimum wage has declined and empirical evidence has buttressed a broader set of theoretical arguments based on imperfect competition within the labor market and efficiency-wage considerations suggesting at most negligible effects from these government interventions.

Recent estimates of the potential growth effects of tax reform vary wildly, ranging from zero to eight percentage points. Using an endogenous growth model, the authors assess which model features and parameter values are important for determining the quantitative impact of tax reform. The quantitative estimates in several recent papers are compared with each other and with some of the evidence from U.S. experience. The authors find that Robert Lucas's conclusion, that tax reform would have little or no impact on the U.S. growth rate, is theoretically robust and consistent with the evidence.

We develop an analytically tractable two-country model that marries a full account of global macroeconomic dynamics to a supply framework based on monopolistic competition and sticky nominal prices. The model offers simple and intuitive predictions about exchange rates and current accounts that sometimes differ sharply from those of either modern flexible-price intertemporal models or traditional sticky-price Keynesian models. Our analysis leads to a novel perspective on the international welfare spillovers due to monetary and fiscal policies.

This paper develops a model of small business failure and sale that is motivated by recent evidence concerning how the failure and sale of small businesses vary with the age of the business and the tenure of the manager. This evidence motivates two key features of the model: a match between the manager and the business, and characteristics of businesses that survive beyond the current match. The parameters of the model are estimated, and the properties of this parametric model are studied. This analysis results in a simple characterization of the workings of the small business sector.

A market in which the owner of a durable good, X, contracts with an expert for diagnostic and treatment services is studied. Good X may be in one of three states: "health," "disease," or "failure." Only experts can determine whether X is healthy or diseased and perform treatment. The owner cannot tell whether recommended treatment is really needed. This creates an information-based demand for health insurance by risk-neutral consumers. Imperfections in the market for spot insurance may give rise to free diagnostic checks, strategic procrastination, and long-term health maintenance agreements.