[This paper uses agency theory to examine the phenomenon of "real" income smoothing. The analysis suggests that incentive problems caused by the unobservability of a manager's actions can lead to the manager selecting actions at the end of a period to smooth the period's income toward its ex ante expected value. An important feature of the analysis is that both the principal and the manager are modeled as rational parties. In particular, the principal can predict what actions the manager will choose in response to any compensation scheme, and he takes this into consideration in deciding what compensation plan to offer. The analysis shows that the optimal compensation scheme offered by the principal causes the manager to smooth the firm's income. Income smoothing can therefore arise as optimal equilibrium behavior.]

This paper presents a model of job matching the generalizes the existing literature by allowing for different jobs types, or occupations. Such differences affect the value of job-specific experience, inducing a career profile where certain types are sampled before others. More specifically, the analysis shows that it is optimal for the young and inexperienced to gravitate toward jobs exhibiting a certain kind of risk. Then, after deriving the equilibrium job turnover rate for an economy in which people do not switch occupations, panel data are used to estimate its underlying parameters. The hypothesis that people do not switch occupations is rejected against the alternative that they do, thus providing empirical support for the theoretical extension undertaken here.

This paper presents a model of job matching the generalizes the existing literature by allowing for different jobs types, or occupations. Such differences affect the value of job-specific experience, inducing a career profile where certain types are sampled before others. More specifically, the analysis shows that it is optimal for the young and inexperienced to gravitate toward jobs exhibiting a certain kind of risk. Then, after deriving the equilibrium job turnover rate for an economy in which people do not switch occupations, panel data are used to estimate its underlying parameters. The hypothesis that people do not switch occupations is rejected against the alternative that they do, thus providing empirical support for the theoretical extension undertaken here.

Evidence is presented that the gold standard system was inefficient in two ways. (1) Gold point violations sometimes persisted for long periods indicating that profit opportunities were not always eliminated quickly. (2) Following gold point violations, gold occasionally flowed in unprofitable directions. It is argued that government interference in the workings of the system was a source of these inefficiencies. This suggests that the gold standard did not completely restrict the discretionary power of monetary authorities. If present-day gold standard advocates seek to eliminate discretionary monetary policy, revival of the traditional gold standard is probably insufficient to attain their goal.

Evidence is presented that the gold standard system was inefficient in two ways. (1) Gold point violations sometimes persisted for long periods indicating that profit opportunities were not always eliminated quickly. (2) Following gold point violations, gold occasionally flowed in unprofitable directions. It is argued that government interference in the workings of the system was a source of these inefficiencies. This suggests that the gold standard did not completely restrict the discretionary power of monetary authorities. If present-day gold standard advocates seek to eliminate discretionary monetary policy, revival of the traditional gold standard is probably insufficient to attain their goal.

Robert A. Eisenbeis, Consequences of Deregulation for Commercial Banking: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 39, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings, Forty-Second Annual Meeting, American Finance Association, San Francisco, CA, December 28-30, 1983 (Jul., 1984), pp. 803-805

Barnett's Divisia monetary aggregates were derived to be elements of Diewert's class of superlative quantity index numbers. Relative to aggregation theory, Barnett's resulting monetary aggregates are strictly preferable to the official sum monetary aggregates, since the component monetary assets are not perfect substitutes. Formal empirical tests based on the relevant aggregation-theoretic criteria have likewise uniformly favored the Divisia monetary aggregates. The current article compares the Divisia with the sum monetary aggregates relative to numerous conventional policy-relevant criteria. The Divisia monetary aggregates, especially at high levels of aggregation, usually perform best in these tests.