H. Gregg Lewis' estimates of the relative wage effect of unionism between 1920 and 1958 are routinely cited though they have rarely been subject to scrutiny. This paper extends Lewis' data to 1980 and, in particular, we construct a series on union membership that links up with the data available in the 1970's from the Current Population Surveys. We proceed to reexamine the effects of trade unions both on relative wages and on relative manhours worked.

In our model, financial firms’ leverage choices and asset sales impose negative externalities on other financial firms. This means that individual firms cannot determine their optimal capitalizations in isolation, but have to take the aggregate financial sector characteristics into account. In particular, they become more aggressive when their peers are more conservative. Furthermore, financial firms over-consume liquidity in equilibrium. For some parameter regions, small parameter changes can induce large differences in the equilibrium allocation of risk. Historical experience is not necessarily a good guide as to whether the prevailing equilibrium is fragile or not.

The idea of the Squam Lake Report was to bring together some fifteen leading U.S. financial economists to see what regulatory changes they could jointly agree and thereby influence policy discussions. Seeking to find a consensus, however, meant that many issues were not mentioned in the Report, e.g., structural limitations, Pigovian taxes, procyclicality, and boundary problems between banks and nonbanks. But what is presented is generally, though not invariably, admirable, and the book is beautifully written in good, easily accessible English.

This paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees' decisions to enroll in a Tax Deferred Account (TDA) retirement plan within a large university. The experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benefits information fair organized by the university, by promising a monetary reward for attendance. The experiment multiplied by more than five the attendance rate of these treated individuals (relative to controls), and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated. TDA enrollment five and eleven months after the fair was significantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated. However, the effect on TDA enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did. We provide three interpretations—differential treatment effects, social network effects, and motivational reward effects—to account for these results.

This paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates. A simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income distribution. In the general non-linear income tax problem, this method using elasticities shows precisely how the different economic effects come into play and which are the key relevant parameters in the optimal income tax formulas of Mirrlees. The optimal non-linear tax rate formulas are expressed in terms of elasticities and the shape of the income distribution. These formulas are implemented numerically using empirical earning distributions and a range of realistic elasticity parameters.

Journal Article Collective Rationality, Unanimity and Liberal Ethics Get access Edi Karni Edi Karni Tel-Aviv University and University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 45, Issue 3, October 1978, Pages 571–574, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297258 Published: 01 October 1978 Article history Received: 01 January 1976 Accepted: 01 October 1977 Published: 01 October 1978

Journal Article A Theorem on Utilitarianism Get access Eric Maskin Eric Maskin Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 45, Issue 1, February 1978, Pages 93–96, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297086 Published: 01 February 1978

Journal Article Prices for Individual Consumption, Quantity Indicators for Collective Consumption Get access E. Malinvaud E. Malinvaud Direction de la Prévision, Paris Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 39, Issue 4, September 1972, Pages 385–405, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296508 Published: 01 September 1972

Journal Article Uzawa's Preference Axioms Get access E. Gordon E. Gordon Claremont Graduate School Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 38, Issue 3, July 1971, Pages 319–329, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296385 Published: 01 July 1971

Journal Article Monopoly and Uncertainty Get access E. Zabel E. Zabel University of Rochester Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2, April 1970, Pages 205–219, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296413 Published: 01 April 1970 Article history Received: 01 April 1968 Accepted: 01 April 1969 Published: 01 April 1970