Knowledge that Transforms

This paper is an analysis of the information content of sealed-bid market prices. Using sealed-bid prices, a simple expression is developed to estimate price lists and market shares in the sealed-bid market. Empirically, the estimates accurately reflect the firms' actual price lists. A means of detecting changes in the price lists is suggested. It is shown that price lists allocate market shares, and the market shares are estimated. In the industry studied, price lists were used to allocate market shares and limit price competition in the sealed-bid portion of the industry.

The effects of an unexpected change in income taxes are studied in a model with full rational expectations. In the short run, aggregate supply is quite price elastic because commitments to pay predetermined wages are made 1 or more years in advance. The model also recognizes the limited response of investment to unexpected developments in the short run. The paper finds that much of the effect of unexpected tax policy operates through inflationary expectations--an economy with rational expectations is more responsive to tax changes than is one with naive expectations.

The relationship between population policy instruments and fertility levels in Hungary is analyzed with a simultaneous equation model. Both birth and abortion relationships are placed in a supply and demand perspective, permitting a distinction between desired and actual levels of births and abortions. Pronatalist and abortion policies are evaluated through the reduced forms of the structural equations. Effects of average earnings, income, value of time spent at home, and speed of adjustment to policy changes are also considered. The analytical method is thought to permit appraisal of the effects of population policy in both developed and developing countries

Changes in the money supply are expected to affect the nominal rate of interest in opposite directions: the liquidity and credit effects tend to depress the rate, while higher inflationary expectations work in the opposite direction. Theoretical studies suggest that, although liquidity and credit effects initially dominate, they are eventually more than offset by the expectations effect. These results are confirmed in countries of mild inflation. The results obtained here for a highly inflationary country--Argentina--indicate that the expectations effect is dominant and that any change in the rate of monetary disequilibrium was fully transmitted to the nominal interest rate.

This paper uses a model of the valuation of bonds bearing call options, together with observed market yields on callable bonds, to infer information about the uncertainty associated with interest rate expectations. A dynamic programming solution of the model simultaneously determines both the bond price and the issuer's optimal refunding strategy, given the relevant data describing the bond and the market's expectations of future interest rates. Application of the valuation model in reverse, for quarterly average data for 1969-76, generates a time series representing the uncertainty which the market associated with its expectations of future interest rates during this interval, given the then-prevailing yields on new issues of utility bonds and industrial bonds callable after 5 years and 10 years, respectively. This uncertainty, parameterized as the standard deviation of a truncated normal distribution, fluctuated between 1/2 percent and 3/4 percent between 1969 and early 1974, then rose to sharply higher levels from mid-1974 through mid-1975, and has fluctuated between 3/4 percent and 1 percent since late 1975.

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the role of real cash balances as a factor input for 11 two-digit SIC code industries over the period 1952-73. Using a four-factor translog cost function for each industry along with duality theory, it was possible to estimate the partial elasticities of substitution and the elasticities of demand for all factors. The substitution elasticities between real cash balances and production labor as well as with capital were found to be significantly different from zero. The interest elasticity of demand for each varies with industry and ranges from -.22 to -.41. The overall findings suggest that the neoclassical model offers considerable promise for modeling the firm's demand for money.