Knowledge that Transforms

It is shown that the interest differential due to political risk, given the prospect of future capital controls, depends essentially on the gross stocks of debt outstanding against different governments and the distribution of world wealth among residents of different political jurisdictions. A simple model of portfolio behavior is used to explain the differential between Euromark rates and interest rates within Germany in the presence of controls on capital flows into Germany between 1970 and 1974. The explanation separates the interest differential into the effective tax imposed by existing controls and a political risk premium associated with prospective controls.

Models of a heterogeneous labor market are presented in which a worker's acceptance wage is an increasing function of his ability, and in which firms have imprecise information concerning the labor endowment of particular workers.Because the expected labor endowment of a hiree is an increasing function of the firm's wage offer, industrial firms may choose not to lower wages when confronted with a queue of job applicants. Rejected job applicants will not be able to increase their probability of employment by lowering their acceptance wages. Firms may choose to simultaneously hire and fire workers.

This article hypothesizes that resources employed in concentrated industries are more specialized and durable and therefore less mobile than resources employed in atomistic industries. The hypothesis is tested by estimating the relationship between changes in the market value of a firm's securities and changes in its earnings levels and comparing this relation under different market structures. The response of market values to earnings changes is found to be greater for concentrated industries than for atomistic industries. This difference is interpreted as evidence that abnormal earnings persist longer in concentrated industries because of the lower degree of resource mobility.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction between the exchange rate and the trade balance within the framework of the portfolio approach to exchange rates and rational expectations. In a simplified linear version, it is shown that the difference between the spot exchange rate and its long-run equilibrium value is proportional to the current level of the trade-balance surplus normalized by the current stock of foreign-asset holdings. Therefore, the analysis provides some evidence in favor of the presumption that surplus country should have an undervalued currency (relative to its long-run level). The basic idea behind the analysis is that, in a world of high capital mobility,current flow payments disequilibria can be accommodated by capital flows without need, in principle, for exchange rate movements. Only if the public expects lasting change in the required rate of capital flows will exchange rates adjust, since in this case the expected time path of net foreign assets will be significantly affected.

The mechanics of variable import levies, as used by the EEC for agricultural products, are analyzed. Attention is paid to their destabilizing effects on world markets and to the way in which they can capture not only economic rent associated with trade restrictions but also the subsidy payments of exporting countries. Statistics are provided showing the importance of variable levies in the EEC, their ad valorem incidence, and variation, and a rough estimate is made of their depressing effect on world prices.

Price controls differ across industries systematically as predicted by the theory regulators maximize political support. This approach views the price controllers as choosing, subject to technology and budget constraints, the appropriate enforcement to balance the support from holding down prices against the opposition from dead-weight loss. Differences in enforcement depend on weights in the official price index, elasticities of supply and demand, and structural characteristics of industries. Data from the 1971-74 regime of price controls are used to test the theory. The empirical evidence clearly shows the predicted differences in price controls for a cross section of industries.

This paper presents a game-theoretic analysis of the competition for procurement contracts under different auction procedures. One procedure is a "discriminatory" auction in which contractors simultaneously submit sealed bids, and the lowest bidder wins. The other procedure is a "competitive" auction in which the bid price is lowered sequentially until only one interested bidder remains. The focus is on the effect of changes in procurement procedures and the number of bidders on expected procurement costs. If bidders in this model are risk averse, then the expected procurement cost is lower in a discrimatory auction than in a competitive auction.