Knowledge that Transforms

This paper investigates whether the forty-eight contiguous U.S. states converge and, if so, whether convergence is absolute. Economies are shown to converge if, and only if, technology is stationary around a common trend. If convergence does occur, it is unlikely to be absolute unless the economy fixed effects in technology, capital's share, and the rental rate vanish. Examining data on the level of technology, capital's share, and the rental rate provides strong evidence that the continuous U.S. states converge rapidly to levels that are far apart. The rapidity of convergence suggests that factors and technology are highly mobile across the contiguous U.S. states. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

This paper seeks to develop a structural model that lets data on asset returns and trading volume speak to whether volatility autocorrelation comes from the fundamental that the trading process is pricing or, is caused by the trading process itself. Returns and volume data argue, in the context of our model, that persistent volatility is caused by traders experimenting with different beliefs based upon past profit experience and their estimates of future profit experience. A major theme of our paper is to introduce adaptive agents in the spirit of Sargent (1993) but have them adapt their strategies on a time scale that is slower than the time scale on which the trading process takes place. This will lead to positive autocorrelation in volatility and volume on the time scale of the trading process which generates returns and volume data. Positive autocorrelation of volatility and volume is caused by persistence of strategy patterns that are associated with high volatility and high volume. Thee following features seen in the data: (i) The autocorrelation function of a measure of volatility such as squared returns or absolute value of returns is positive with a slowly decaying tail. (ii) The autocorrelation function of a measure of trading activity such as volume or turnover is positive with a slowly decaying tail. (iii) The cross correlation function of a measure of volatility such as squared returns is about zero for squared returns with past and future volumes and is positive for squared returns with current volumes. (iv) Abrupt changes in prices and returns occur which are hard to attach to 'news.' The last feature is obtained by a version of the model where the Law of Large Numbers fails in the large economy limit.

In this paper, we use micro panel data to examine the effects of oil price changes on employment and real wages, at the aggregate and industry levels.We also measure differences in the employment and wage responses for workers differentiated on the basis of skill level.We find that oil price increases result in a substantial decline in real wages for all workers, but raise the relative wage of skilled workers.The use of panel data econometric techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity is essential to uncover this result, which is completely hidden in OLS estimates.We find that changes in oil prices induce changes in employment shares and relative wages across industries.However, we find little evidence that oil price changes cause labor to consistently flow into those sectors with relative wage increases.

In this paper, the authors examine the role of parental education in the human capital production function by estimating the effects of parental education on the education profile of wages. The analysis uses sibling pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience of Young Men and Young Women. The authors obtained mixed evidence on whether parental education raises the return to education. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

James Heckman, Anne Layne-Farrar, Petra Todd, Human Capital Pricing Equations with an Application to Estimating the Effect of Schooling Quality on Earnings, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Nov., 1996), pp. 562-610

The intraindustry trade literature emphasizes nonhomothetic preferences and incomes as important determinants of aggregate demand and trade patterns. The authors provide evidence for such preferences, particularly that the structure of income-driven demand shifts is related to indices of Linder-type product characteristics, and that income distribution is a significant factor in determining aggregate expenditures. These results imply that, as general income levels rise, the relative volume of trade in manufactured consumer goods should rise, and the total volume of trade should rise, independent of changes in the intercountry difference between income levels. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

Robert J. Shiller, Fumiko Kon-Ya, Yoshiro Tsutsui, Why Did the Nikkei Crash? Expanding the Scope of Expectations Data Collection, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 156-164

This paper investigates whether consumer durables are important for the generation and propagation of business cycles. The author constructs a two-sector model that succeeds in generating business cycles that mimic empirical patterns of cross-sector volatility and comovement. She finds that half the relatively higher volatility associated with the durable-goods sector is due to higher volatility of shocks hitting this sector, with the other half due to endogenous responses, notably the investment accelerator. Nevertheless, this model does not have stronger internal propagation than the one-sector model. Further, incorporating durable consumer goods has little effect on the behavior of other macroeconomic variables. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

This paper undertakes a cross-country analysis of the determinants of VAT compliance, using data from a sample of 17 OECD countries for 1987. An index of compliance is constructed and regressed against variables which represent characteristics of the countries and their VAT rates. It is found that (a) a higher VAT rate is associated with lower compliance, and this tradeoff limits the revenue-maximizing VAT rate to under 25%; (b) compliance is substantially lower with multiple VAT rates; and (c) an extra dollar spent on administration raises revenue by $12, and longer experience with administering a VAT also raises compliance. Several OECD countries are ranged along a frontier, collecting about 8% of GDP through a VAT, but with rates of 14% to 22% on bases between 60% and 40% of GDP. For these, the base could only be broadened if the tax rate were lowered. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

This paper constructs a theoretical model of foreign direct investment and examines the extent to which the model can explain the level of outward direct investment by U.S. companies over the last two decades. The authors find that market size and factor costs, both labor and capital, are important factors in the investment decision. Instrumental variable estimation is used to demonstrate that the expectation of short-run fluctuations in the dollar also influences the timing of investment. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.