The payment of child allowances to laborers with large families was widespread in early nineteenth-century England. This paper tests Thomas Malthus's hypothesis that child allowances caused the birth rate to increase. A cross-sectional regression model is estimated to explain variations in birth rates across parishes in 1826-30. Birth rates are found to be related to child allowances, income, and the availability of housing, as Malthus contended. The paper concludes by examining the role played by the adoption of child allowances after 1795 in the fertility increase of the early nineteenth century.

The payment of child allowances to laborers with large families was widespread in early nineteenth-century England. This paper tests Thomas Malthus's hypothesis that child allowances caused the birth rate to increase. A cross-sectional regression model is estimated to explain variations in birth rates across parishes in 1826-30. Birth rates are found to be related to child allowances, income, and the availability of housing, as Malthus contended. The paper concludes by examining the role played by the adoption of child allowances after 1795 in the fertility increase of the early nineteenth century.

Trade in services has become topical, but little theory has been developed. This paper assumes that one commodity and the services of capital are tradable and examines the traditional trade results. Service trade can produce the same equilibrium as commodity trade, but substantial differences exist depending on whether the tradable commodity is capital or labor intensive. Tariffs on either commodity have the same commodity price effects and will always increase the welfare of the immobile factor labor. Factor income taxes can also affect trade patterns. When both goods and capital services are tradable, there is an indeterminacy in trade patterns, and tariffs, while reducing commodity trade, may not reduce welfare.

Measuring the labor-force response of a woman to changes in her husband's earnings is the goal of this dynamic model. Allowing for uncertainty, the model modifies the constant shadow price of initial assests framework so that the shadow price varies over time. It is shown that the change in a woman's labor supply is related to the deviation of the husband's actual work hours from the expected amount. The estimation indicates that the largest response to the loss of husband's income occurs with a divorce or separation; smaller effects are noted for widowhood, and husband's unexpected unemployment or health change.

This paper examines the seasonal behavior of proportional dealer spreads for OTC NASDAQ common stocks. Results indicate there is seasonality in dealer spreads. Spreads tend to be larger in the second half of the calendar year, peaking in December. At the turn-ofthe-year, spreads tend to peak in mid- to late December and then recede during January. The last trading day in December produces the largest daily decline in spreads during the turn-of-the-year period.

[The degree to which earnings changes are thought to be permanent may determine the magnitude of the security price response to a given earnings announcement [Brown et al., 1985; Kormendi and Lipe, 1987; and Easton and Zmijewski, 1987]. This study extends this literature by examining the impact on stock prices of quarter ahead and year ahead forecast revisions, as well as forecast errors. Results indicate that analysts' forecast revisions provide significant incremental explanatory power in a pooled time-series, cross-sectional regression of abnormal returns on forecast errors and analyst forecast revisions. In addition, the fourth quarter announcement appears to provide more information to analysts and investors than interim announcements.]

In this paper, we analyze the problem of designing incentive compatible mechanisms in pure exchange economic environments when agents have incomplete information. The equilibrium concept employed is Bayesian Nash equilibrium and the notion of implemantation is full implementation, which is stronger than the more commonly employed notion of truthful implementation. An allocation rule is truthfully implementable if there exists a direct mechanism to which truth telling is an equilibrium and which yields the allocation rule as its truthful equilibrium outcome. An allocation rule is fully implementable if there exists mechanism which yields the allocation rule as its unique equilibrium outcome. More generally, a set of allocation rules, or a social choice set, is fully implementable if there exist a mechanism whose equilibrium outcomes coincide with the set. This stronger notion of implemention avoids the well known problems of multiple equilibria which arise in direct revelation games. We develop a condition, termed Bayesian monotonicity, which we show is necessary for full implementation. An incentive compatibility condition is also necessary. We prove that Bayesian monotonicity and a slightly stronger incentive compatibility condition are sufficient for full implementation when there are at least three agents. We present several examples of allocation rules which do and do not satisfy our condition. One example is that of an allocation rule which is fully inplementable by an indirect mechanism, but for which every equivalent direct mechanism has multiple equilibrium outcomes.