Knowledge that Transforms

To deter entry into new product markets, firms most often use the creation of product loyalty through advertising and the preemption of markets through numerous and broad patents. Filling all product niches, making the results for highly profitable division, and advertising are used most frequently for existing products. For newly developed products, strategic entry deterrents are used more often when markets are concentrated, populated by large firms, and research intensive. Strategic entry deterrents for existing products are used in concentrated, research intensive markets, but firm size has no effect. Firms develop strategies to deter entry less when other barriers exist. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Does a mother's welfare receipt increase the future dependency of her children? Does the welfare system, thus, stimulate the dependency of future generations? Parameter estimates reported here suggest such intergenerational effects. The sample comprises young girls and their mothers. After control for observed and unobserved heterogeneity, a mother's welfare participation is found to increase her daughter's later welfare dependency. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Experimental duopolies are analyzed to answer two questions: Are asymmetric duopolies less likely to collude than symmetric duopolies? Is the time it takes to reach an equilibrium affected by asymmetry? In a repeated game where output is the choice, we have data 19 (respectively, 21) subject pairs where both agents are low-cost (respectively, high-cost) and 25 subject pairs where one agent in high-cost and one is low-cost. Subjects make choices for at least 35 periods. Results indicate that asymmetric markets are less cooperative and take longer to reach equilibrium than symmetric markets.

Although there is a large literature on the effect of AFDC and Food Stamps on labor supply and welfare participation, there has been little work on the effects of Medicaid, despite its importance in the O.S. transfer system. In this paper we use 1986 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine the effect of Medicaid on the labor supply and welfare participation decisions of female heads of family. A key contribution is the development of a family-specific proxy for the valuation of Medicaid benefits which depends upon the health and other characteristics of the family. We find that Medicaid has strong and significant effects on labor supply and welfare participation that are negative and positive in sign, respectively, but which are concentrated in the tail of the distribution with the highest expected medical expenditures. We also find that the availability and level of private health insurance have very large effects opposite in sign to those of Medicaid.

This paper is a cross-section study of the effect of real devaluations on capacity utilization during stabilization programs in LDCs. It finds that such devaluations had a significant negative effect on output as predicted in many recent papers. This was not because devaluation caused a rise in aggregate saving but more because of a sharp contraction in investment. External factors, such as terms of trade and the capacity to import, had a significant positive impact while monetary and fiscal policy played only a minor role. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

This paper characterizes the patterns of intergenerational mobility in the United States using data for matched parent/child pairs from the National Longitudinal Surveys. In general, what is found is far from the extremes of either perfect mobility or perfect immobility. Parents' log income explains only about 9 percent to 11 percent of the variation in children's log incomes. Earnings exhibit more mobility than does total income, and the difference is most striking for daughters. The paper also identifies the influence of family background characteristics on mobility. The addition of these background variables adds another 3 to 5 percent age points to the R2 in the intergenerational earnings and income regressions. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Glenn W. Harrison, H. D. Vinod, The Sensitivity Analysis of Applied General Equilibrium Models: Completely Randomized Factorial Sampling Designs, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 357-362

This paper examines existing methods of estimating the translog production function and provides a general framework that allows for variable returns to scale. The model is based on the inverse input demand function and embeds a nonhomothetic production technology. Previous estimation methods are valid only for homogeneous technologies with fixed scale effects. Estimation results for U.S. manufacturing show that neither homotheticity and homogeneity nor constant returns to scale is a proper characterization of the underlying structure of production, thereby vindicating the empirical relevance of the inverse demand framework that entails a nonhomothetic technology. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

A restricted equilibrium framework is utilized to estimate the contribution of public investment in infrastructure to private sector profitability. A restricted cost function in translog form which treats labor and materials as variable inputs and private capital and public sector capital stock in transportation, communications and electricity as quasi-fixed inputs is specified. A system of non-linear equations comprising variable cost function and derived input demand equations is estimated using data from 1970 to 1987 for twenty-six Mexican three-digit manufacturing industries. The divergence of private and public capital stocks from their static equilibrium levels is estimated. The net rate of return to fixed factors is also calculated. Estimates of allocative efficiency are derived. The study further provides estimates of short-run and long-run scale economies, output elasticity of factors, measures of productivity growth and technical change. Economic significance and policy implications of the findings are also presented. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Mark C. Berger, Dan A. Black, Child Care Subsidies, Quality of Care, and the Labor Supply of Low-Income, Single Mothers, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Nov., 1992), pp. 635-642