Knowledge that Transforms

[The paper analyzes the role of current income in providing new information about future income and thus signalling changes in permanent income. Using time-series analysis to quantify the revision in permanent income induced by an innovation in the current income process, a structural econometric model of consumption is developed. The rejection of the joint rational expectations-permanent income hypothesis is both statistically and quantitatively significant. The paper also shows that the test of the rational expectations-permanent income hypothesis proposed by Hall is based on the reduced form of this structural model and reconciles Sargent's consumption paper with Hall's.]

This paper examines the market for human capital created by the institution of indentured servitude in colonial America. The indenture system allowed English emigrants to obtain passage to the colonies by selling claims on their future labor. With the size of the debt approximately equal for all emigrants, the length of the term for which a servant was bound is predicted to have varied inversely with expected productivity in the colonies. Analysis of two collections of contracts made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries supports the prediction. Age, skill, and literacy were negatively related to length of indenture. Women received shorter terms than men at young ages, while servants bound for the West Indies and those bound in periods of high colonial demand for labor also received reductions.

The case for positive time preference is absolutely compelling, unless there is an infinite time horizon with the expectation of unending technological advance combined with what we call "drastically diminishing marginal utility." This finding holds both in the positive and normative senses. A corollary is that savings are interest elastic.

The demand for capital is not systematically related to either the level or the rate of change of "effective" income tax rates on corporate capital assets. Rising inflation during the last 10 years has raised the user cost of capital for durable assets relative to that for short-lived assets even though this inflation has raised effective tax rates for more durable capital less than for short-lived assets. Even with replacement-cost depreciation allowances, the level and pattern of investment incentives probably will continue to vary with the inflation rate.

The theoretical analysis focuses on the distinction between temporary and permanent movements in government purchases. Under plausible conditions, the temporary case involves an output response that is positive, less than one-to-one with the change in government purchases, and larger than that generated by an equal-sized, but permanent, shift in purchase. The equilibrium real rate of return rise in the temporary case, but changes little in the permanent one. Defense purchases are divided empirically into "permanent" and "temporary" components by considering the role of (temporary) wars. No temporary shifts in nondefense purchases were isolated. Empirical results verify an expansionary output effect for temporary purchases that exceeds that of permanent purchases. The results for some other expectational hypotheses are found to be generally supportive of the theory.

Some standard topics in the theory of international trade are reconsidered in this paper by distinguishing between national and aggregate income when fixed supplies of foreign inputs are present within the home country. Under conditions that would ensure a national welfare gain if foreign ownership were absent, international transfer, economic growth, or tariff policy might cause a national welfare loss in the presence of foreign ownership. The techniques developed could be applied to other domestic distinctions (such as those based on race, sex, age, or ethnicity) and to the theory of customs unions in a three-country world.

This paper examines the controversy concerning the relative desirability of fixed versus flexible exchange rates by examining whether a country can achieve a smaller variance of domestic output around its full employment path operating under an exchange rate rule or under a money supply rule. The paper finds that neither policy will always dominate the other. However, it does find that if shocks in one market of the economy are large relative to shocks to other markets, then one type of rule can be shown to dominate the other.

The paper provides a theoretical description of hedging in futures markets that account for the behavior of a broad class of agents. Specific optimal decision rules are derived for agents concerned with the mean and variance of profit. These rules are used to evaluate how optimal cash and futures positions are related to price expectations, the production possibilities, and the number of futures markets available.