Knowledge that Transforms

The paper extends Dornbusch's analysis of exchange rate dynamics to include the case where changes in government policy are anticipated before they occur. It is demonstrated that simply the announcement of an expansionary policy will cause the exchange rate to jump, which induces an expansionary impact on the economy even before the policy is implemented.

I consider markets with asymmetric information. As suggested by Akerlof, quality deterioration in such markets may take place. I show that this is a general phenomenon. Minimum quality constraints (or "licensing requirements") are examined as a possible solution to the problem. Although not generally a first-best solution, such constraints will increase welfare in a number of cases. The types of markets that are likely to benefit from minimum quality standards are identified. It is then shown that, if quality standards are set by the profession (or industry) itself, it is likely that the standards will be too high.

Both DC (developed country) tariffs and LDC (developing country) export taxes are "escalated" to protect local processors of primary commodities. The paper develops an analytical model of north-south commodity trade which is used to estimate the effects of reciprocal elimination of these trade barriers for eight commodities. It is estimated that processing would increase by 9 percent in the LDCs and decline by less than 1 percent in the DCs. The LDC export revenue for the eight-commodity sample would increase by 11 percent, or just over $1 billion (based on 1973 trade flows), which is considerably more than the estimated effect of the Generalized System of Preferences.

This paper investigates the extent and patterns of compliance with the federal minimum wage. Using a profit-maximizing model of compliance, predictions about compliance with weak or random government enforcement are made. Such enforcement is not random, however, and our measures of compliance suggest that government enforcement, while not inducing anything near complete compliance, does have an impact. Overall compliance in 1973 is estimated to be about 65 percent, while it is about 10 percentage points lower after the new minimum was established in 1975. Compliance appears highest among regional/racial/sex (but not age) groups where market incentives for violation are strongest.

This paper develops and estimates a model of output-inflation tradeoffs (or reverse Phillips curves) for a fixed-exchange-rate economy. The main focus of the analysis is on the role of information and economic agents' expectations in the generation of aggregate economic fluctuations. The model embodies the hypothesis of rational expectations, as well as different versions of the natural-rate hypothesis. These hypotheses, central to the current macroeconomic literature, are formulated and tested. The model is estimated by the full- information-maximum-likelihood method on quarterly data for Italy covering the 1955-70 period.

This is a model of permanent job separations when there are endogenous firm-specific human capital and intensity of on-the-job search. The result is a combination of human-capital theory with the theory of search turnover and search unemployment. An interesting technical twist is that the worker's decision problem under uncertainty is solved by means of the deterministic maximum principle.

A public debt theory is constructed in which the Ricardian invariance theorem is valid as a first-order proposition but where the dependence excess burden on the timing of taxation implies an optimal time path of debt issue. A central proposition is that deficits are varied in order to maintain expected constancy in tax rates. This behavior implies a positive effect on debt issue of temporary increases in government spending (as in wartime), a countercyclical response of debt to temporary income movements, and a one-to-one effect of expected inflation on nominal debt growth. Debt issue would be invariant with the outstanding debt-income ratio and, except for a mirror effect, with the level of government spending. Hypotheses are tested on U.S. data since World War I. Results are basically in accord with the theory. It also turns out that a small set of explanatory variables can account for the principal movements in interest-bearing federal debt since the 1920s.

[We construct a theory of competitive equilibrium under uncertainty using an entrepreneurial model with historical roots in the work of Knight in the 1920s. Individuals possess labor which they can supply as workers to a competitive labor market or use as entrepreneurs in running a firm. All entrepreneurs have access to the same risky technology and receive all profits from their firms. In the equilibrium, more risk averse individuals become workers while the less risk averse become entrepreneurs. Less risk averse entrepreneurs run larger firms and economy-wide increases in risk aversion reduce the equilibrium wage. A dynamic process of firm entry and exit is stable. The equilibrium is efficient only if all entrepreneurs are risk neutral. Inefficiencies in the number of firms and in the allocation of labor to firms are traced to inefficiencies in the risk allocation caused by institutional constraints on risk trading. In a second best sense which accounts for these constraints, the equilibrium is efficient.]

The hypothesis that only the unanticipated part of the policy instruments and their lagged values affect unemployment, while the anticipated part affects the inflation rate, is tested for the U.S. postwar period. Nominal GNP is used as a proxy for the policy instruments. The hypothesis receives strong support from some empirical tests. The results explain the breakdown of nominal income changes into prices and output and bring out the "trickery" aspect of nominal demand management.

[At a minimum, this paper should serve as a warning against too easy an acceptance of the view that the costs of sustained inflation are small relative to the costs of unemployment. If a temporary reduction in unemployment causes a permanent increase in inflation, the present value of the resulting future welfare costs may well exceed the temporary short-run gain. Previous analyses have underestimated the cost of a permanent increase in the inflation rate because they have ignored the growth of the economy and therefore the growth of the future instantaneous welfare costs. In the important case in which the growth of aggregate income exceeds the social discount rate, no reduction in unemployment can justify any permanent increase in the rate of inflation. Quite the contrary, if the inflation rate is above its optimal level, the economy should then be deflated to reduce the inflation rate regardless of the temporary consequences for unemployment.]