Knowledge that Transforms

This paper investigates the relation between substitution possibilities in manufacturing production between capital and two labor inputs, blue collar and white collar workers. Griliches found in 1969 that unskilled.labor was more easily substituted for by capital than skilled labor. Griliches called this capital-skill complementarity. The capital-skill complementarity hypothesis has implications for the aggregation of labor inputs as well as for employment of labor categories and income distribution between factors. This paper investigates the robustness of the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis on Swedish data by varying model assumptions concerning economies of scale and technological growth. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Elasticities for beer, wine and spirits are estimated for each of the provinces of Canada over the period 1956-83, using unrestricted dynamic regressions modeled after the error-correction mechanism. Alternative long-run estimates are also obtained from cointegrating regressions. Estimates vary markedly across provinces and suggest that increases in price will reduce consumption of all beverages in the short run, but in the long run no evidence is found that spirits use is price-sensitive. Increases in the legal drinking age reduce consumption in the short run but there is little indication of a long-run effect. The estimated income elasticity of beer is small while the estimated income elasticities for spirits and wine are substantially larger, especially in the long run. Coauthors are Ernest H. Oksanen, Michael R. Veall, and Deborah Fretz. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

The authors estimate the effects of market structure on hospital costs using a translog multiproduct cost function. Recognizing the multiplicity of services provided by hospitals, the results show that costs are substantially determined by service configuration, and that there are distinct economies of size and sco pe. The model also distinguishes market concentration measures by servic e type, including obstetrics, radiation therapy, diagnostic imaging, a nd surgery. Estimates show that, after controlling for the other determinants of cost, the degree of competition has only modest cost-increasing effects. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

This paper examines whether experienced players in Major League Baseball are paid more than their contribution to team revenue. The author shows that wages increase with experience independently of productivity gains. The results, therefore, contradict the human capital model of investment. The evidence is in fact consistent with implicit contract models because most older players are relatively overpaid. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Kerry D. Patterson, Bahram Pesaran, The Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution in Consumption in the United States and the United Kingdom, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Nov., 1992), pp. 573-584

Catherine J. Morrison, Unraveling the Productivity Growth Slowdown in the United States, Canada and Japan: The Effects of Subequilibrium, Scale Economies and Markups, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 381-393

Economists have long been concerned with the labor market problems of young men. Recently, research has indicated that one-fourth to one-half of all men are active in crime at some point during their youth. Furthermore, joblessness and criminal activity vary similarly by age and race. The author analyzes two data sets containing arrest and employment information to assess whether criminal activities may underlie persistent joblessness and black/white employment differential among young men. Two different approaches are taken to control for individual heterogeneity. Arrests generate some persistence in non-employment. Moreover, arrests account for nearly two-thirds of the black/white employment differential in a sample of arrestees, and nearly one-third of the difference in a more general sample. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

This paper uses CPS data to analyze gender differences in black-white annual earnings trends over the 1970s and 1980s. We find that in at least two respects black women fared better than men over this period. First, due to decreasing relative annual time inputs for black males, but not black females, black women experienced increases in both annual earnings and estimated wages compared to white women, while black men gained only in terms of wages compared to white men. Second, since the gender earnings gap among whites was narrowing during this time, as black women's wages rose relative to white women's, they also made faster progress relative to white males than did black males. In other important respects, however, the experience of black men and women over the period was similar. First, for both groups, while earnings and wages relative to whites of the same sex rose during the 1970s, they stagnated or declined during the 1980s. Second, in contrast to the 1960s, younger blacks did not fare better than older blacks during the 1970s and 1980s. While in 1971, both unadjusted wage ratios and adjusted earnings ratios were highest within each sex group for labor market entrants, by 1988 these ratios were fairly similar across experience groups.

The egalitarian wage policies of labor unions in the United States have been attributed to low-skilled majorities pursuing their self-interest in a majority rule environment. For this hypothesis to be more than a formalization of stylized facts requires evidence that unions are not egalitarian when the work place is not characterized.by a low-skilled majority. The author considers the impact of high-skilled majorities on (1) voting behavior in certification elections and (2) rent distribution policies in existing unions. Neither analysis supports the belief that union rent distribution policies are driven by skill-group coalitions pursuing their self-interests. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.

Newly available data from the U.K. market for indexed securities are used to test the Fisher hypothesis. For monthly observations of interest rates at 14 maturities, the hypothesis that the after-tax nominal interest rate is a constant plus anticipated inflation proves to be a reasonable approximation of reality. For longer maturities, the coefficients on the expected rate of inflation are approximately equal to one. The Mundell- Tobin effect is in evidence for shorter maturities. The inverted Fisher effect is in evidence for shorter maturities. The inverted Fisher effect is decisively rejected. The evidence suggests that past difficulties encountered in trying to prove the Fisher effect have been due to the lack of a direct measure of inflation expectations and real interest rates. Copyright 1992 by MIT Press.