Using data on the prices of capital goods, this paper shows that much of the benefit of investment tax incentives does not go to investing firms but rather to capital suppliers through higher prices. A 10 percent investment tax credit increases equipment prices 3.5–7.0 percent. This lasts several years and is largest for assets with large order backlogs or low import competition. Capital goods workers' wages rise, too. Instrumental variables estimates of the short-run supply elasticity are around 1 and can explain the traditionally small estimates of investment demand elasticities. In absolute value, the demand elasticity implied here exceeds 1.

The paper develops an efficiency-wage model in which input prices affect the equilibrium rate of unemployment. We show that a simple framework based on only two prices (the real price of oil and the real rate of interest) is able to explain the main postwar movements in the rate of U.S. joblessness. The equations do well in forecasting unemployment many years out of sample, and provide evidence that the oil-price spike associated with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait appears to be a component of the “mystery” recession that followed.

Arkadev Chatterjea, Robert A. Jarrow, Market Manipulation, Price Bubbles, and a Model of the U.S. Treasury Securities Auction Market, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 255-289

Eastern Airlines' bankruptcy illustrates the devastating effect on firm value of court-sponsored asset stripping, i.e., the use of creditors' collateral to invest in high-variance negative net present value projects. During its bankruptcy, Eastern's value dropped over 50%. A substantial portion of this value decline occurred because an overprotective court insulated Eastern from market forces and allowed value-destroying operations to continue long after it was clear that Eastern should have been shut down. The failure of Eastern's Chapter 11 demonstrates the importance of having a bankruptcy process that protects a distressed firm's assets, not simply from a run by creditors, but also from overly optimistic managers and misguided judges.

Using the Mirrlees optimal income tax model with quasi-linear preferences, the paper examines conditions for marginal tax rates to be rising at high income levels and declining in an interval containing the modal skill. It examines conditions for the marginal tax rate to be higher at a low skill level than at the high skill level with the same density--an argument only holding for skill levels above a cutoff where resources of a worker are marginally of the same value as resources of the government. Data on earnings rates are presented.

Everyone recognizes substantial discrepancies between the public's rankings of hazards and those of the experts. For example, experts at the Environmental Protection Agency think that hazardous-waste sites pose mediumto-low risks to the public, while indoor air pollution poses a high risk; yet public perceptions have driven policy to focus on hazardous-waste sites rather than on indoor air quality (Stephen Breyer, 1993 pp. 19-20). beliefs should determine government policy when the public's beliefs differ from those of the experts? The problem evaporates if the public, perhaps recognizing its inability to deal with complex technical issues, entrusts risk assessment to the government and its experts. But what if the public, perhaps distrusting government and experts, is unwilling to leave risk assessment to the experts?' Paul Portney (1992 p. 131) posed a version of this Whose beliefs? question succinctly in his fable, Trouble in Happyville: