Knowledge that Transforms

Ahstract-Analyses of voluntary labor mobility suggest that job search facilitates job change while specific training inhibits mobility. Further, given that specific skills cannot be transferred between jobs, and since both search and training are costly, it is reasonable for workers to specialize in search or specific training on a given job. Training or search specialization, however, implies that estimation methods which treat the incidence of a quit as exogenous underestimate mobility effects on wages. The larger wage effects reported here result from simultaneous estimation but also reflect more accurate measurement of wage growth between jobs.

We address the question of how the threat of antitrust enforcement spills over from one industrial submarket to another. We build a formal model describing the technology through which an initial antitrust indictment can reveal evidence of additional infractions in the same industry. Our approach is organized around the belief that the flow of information on antitrust violations is closely linked to commodity flows. As it turns out, our method proves able to explain the differential response of highway construction cartels in various states to recent changes in the severity of antitrust sanctions.

Robert Halvorsen, Tim R. Smith, Substitution Possibilities for Unpriced Natural Resources: Restricted Cost Functions for the Canadian Metal Mining Industry, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Aug., 1986), pp. 398-405

Lamm, R. McFall, Unionism and Prices in the Food Retailing Industry, Journal of Labor Research 3 (Winter 1982), 69-79. Marion, Bruce W., Willard F. Mueller, Ronald W. Cotterill, Frederick E. Geithman, and John R. Schmelzer, Food Retailing Industrv': Market Structure, Profits, and Prices (New York: Praeger, 1979a). ______ The Price and Profit Performance of Leading Food Chains, A merican Journal of A gricultural Economics 61 (Aug. 1979b), 420-433. Salinger, Michael A., Tobin's q, Unionization, and the Concentration-Profits Relationship, Rand Journal of Economics 15 (Summer 1984), 159-170. Voos, Paula B., and Lawrence R. Mishel, Union Impact on Profits: Evidence from the Supermarket Industry, Working Paper No. 88, North Central Project 117, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oct. 1985. The Union Impact on Profits: Evidence from Industry Price-Cost Margin Data, Journal of Labor Economics 4 (Jan. 1986), 105-133.

The focus of this paper i s on the escape clause petitions filed under the Trade Act of 1974 (Section 201). First, the capital marketevent study method is used to analyze the effects of protection decisions. Then, cross-section regressions are performed to examine the influence of key variables on the observed market reaction. The authors conc lude that while protection is beneficial to beleaguered industries, the extent o f such benefits is quite narrowly circumscribed and is conditional on internal v ariables for each firm. Protection is thus not the panacea that its advocates cl aim. Copyright 1986 by MIT Press.

A production function model of industrial plants is developed which incorporates management as a variable. Management is measured by a performance ranking procedure on three commonly used manufacturing criteria. The model also adjusts the capital and labor inputs for quality differences. A nonparametric linear programming test is performed confirming that the data set satisfies consistency, monotonicity, and quasi-concavity conditions of production theory. It is then estimated in three functional forms (translog, CES, and CobbDouglas) for a sample of plants of a multinational, consumer goods manufacturer. Management is shown to be an important input to the production process in these plants regardless of the particular functional form estimated.

The Federal Trade Commission's Line of Business data imply that the effect of an industry's seller concentration on profitability has been misinterpreted because it has not been conditioned on capital intensity. Conclusions that market share rather than seller concentration is the primary structural determinant of profitability, and that mutual dependence recognized among oligopolistic sellers is less important than superiority effects of large-share firms, appear unwarranted. Significant firm effects exist, and explanatory power for a conventional model of structure and performance is found to be small relative to that of the general linear model within which the conventional model is nested.

The typical assumption that intergovernmental grants-in-aid alter a recipient's budget constraint according to the legal provisions of grant programs was first challenged by McGuire (1975, 1978) in a model where local officials are able to convert some fraction of conditional aid into pure fungible resources. This paper develops a model of local government expenditure decisions based on McGuire's original work and applies it to data for large U.S. city governments. The results lend strong support to the fungibility hypothesis. Additionally, and importantly, the results provide very little evidence in support of the so-called flypaper effect of unconditional grants. This is due to a more appropriate specification of the unconditional aid variable.