This paper investigates the link between the trend in the returns to education and foreign competition in concentrated industries. We argue that the impact of foreign competition on the relative wages of less skilled workers depends on the market structure of the industry penetrated. The empirical evidence indicates that employment changes in a small group of trade-impacted concentrated industries can explain not only part of the aggregate rise in wage inequality in the United States, but also some of the differences in the trends in wage inequality across metropolitan areas.

Decentralized firms, Task allocation, Principle-agent model, Expertise

This paper reports the results of a statistical summary of estimates of the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for reducing particulate matter from hedonic property value models developed between 1967 and 1988. Results using both ordinary least squares and minimum absolute deviation estimators suggest that market conditions and the procedures used to implement the hedonic models were important to the resulting MWTP estimates. The interquartile range for these estimated marginal values (measured as a change in asset prices) lies between zero and $98.52 (in 1982-84 dollars) for a one-unit reduction in total suspended particulates (in micrograms per cubic meter). The mean MWTP is nearly five times the median ($109.90 vs. $22.40), suggesting that outliers are important influences to any summary statistics for these estimates.

We test whether the conversion price (ratio) is viewed by the stock market as a credible signal of the firm's future earnings prospects (Kim (1990)) and, subsequently, whether convertible debt serves as backdoor equity financing (Stein (1992)). Examining the conversion price in relation to current stock prices and a priori growth expectations produces an average expected time of less than 1.5 years for convertible bonds to be at-the-money. Thus, as Stein suggests, convertibles appear to be a method of drawing equity into a firm's capital structure. We also find that the size of the firm's announcement period abnormal returns is positively related to the expected time for the convertible to become at-the-money. Given these relationships, we conclude that convertible debt issue announcements, on average, send an equity-like signal to the market.

[A general prediction from the economic theory of tax reporting is that taxpayers will report more income as the tax rate increases, but the related empirical evidence has been mixed. We conducted an experiment to examine whether taxpayers' responses to a tax-rate change depend on both economic effects and perceptions of horizontal and exchange inequity. Our findings reconcile the previously inconsistent empirical results by identifying conditions under which perceptions of inequity drive taxpayers' reporting decisions. In summary, subjects reported less (more) income as tax rates increased (decreased) when they were inequitably treated relative to others, but not when they were equitably treated relative to others.]

Explores a possible explanation for the observed use of bonus pool arrangements. Model illustrating optimal bonus arrangement; Use of non-contractible information.