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Working Paper No. 49
April 07, 1991
The Role of Banks Where Service Replication Has Eroded Institutional Franchises
AbstractOver the past decade forces of competition and adverse economic conditions—combined with regulatory forbearance and the moral hazards generated thereby—have contributed to severe erosion of bank profitability and a mounting number of insolvencies. At least three implications of this erosion may be identified. First, in response to pressures on capital and profits bank business strategies […]
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Working Paper No. 48
April 06, 1991
The Economic Significance of Equity Capital
AbstractI was motivated to address this subject by the rich irony of last year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. The end of the LBO era was crowned by the recognition of work which purported to demonstrate that the value of an enterprise is independent of the volume of its debt. In response, this paper is an […]
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Working Paper No. 47
April 05, 1991
Financial Disturbances and Depressions
AbstractEvents of the past quarter century have renewed the interest of economic historians in major financial disturbances. The study of financial crises was common before World War II, but for the next quarter century little fresh work was done in the area. The chief exception was J. K. Galbraith’s The Great Crash. 1929 (1954). Then […]
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Working Paper No. 46
April 04, 1991
Redistribution through Taxation
AbstractIncome tax progressivity is studied using Generalized Entropy measures of inequality. Luxembourg Income Study data sets for ten countries are used for international comparative purposes and analysis. Progressivity indices are generated using the Generalized Entropy family as well as Atkinson measures. This is to test the robustness of our observation of tax progressivity in each […]
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Working Paper No. 45
March 01, 1991
Female-headed Families
AbstractOver the last few decades in the United States, the poverty rate for female-headed families (with no husband present) has been about three times the poverty rate for male-headed families (with no wife present) and about six times the poverty rate for married-couple families. This paper addresses the question of why, in general, female-headed families […]
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Working Paper No. 44
February 01, 1991
Accounting for the Decline in Private Sector Unionization
AbstractDuring the 1980s several qualitative changes occurred in the union decline. First, net gains from certification (less decertification) elections fell to insignificant levels, tending to accelerate the union decline. On the other hand, union losses from the relative growth of nonunion services (structural change) also declined sharply as unionization rates became more homogeneous across sectors. […]
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Working Paper No. 43
December 10, 1990
International Comparison of Household Inequalities
AbstractThis paper demonstrates the usefulness of the decomposability property of the Generalized Entropy (GE) family of measures in comparing inequality among countries. A family of Generalized Entropy measures are decomposed by family size and by the household head’s age, gender, education, and ethnicity. This is done in order to learn about components which are due […]
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Working Paper No. 42
December 09, 1990
Poverty and Choice of Marital Status
AbstractOver the last few decades in the United States, the poverty rate for female-headed families has been about five times the poverty rate for other family types. This paper addresses the question of why, in general, female-headed families are so much poorer than other families. Recognizing that individuals choose their own marital status, a self-selection […]
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Working Paper No. 41
December 09, 1990
Generalized Entropy Measures of Long-run Inequality and Stability among Male Headed Households
AbstractShort and long-run inequalities and income stability among households with male heads are measured and analyzed using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 1969–81. The results suggest short-run inequalities are increasing over the period with fluctuations. These fluctuations contain transitory components which can be eliminated by smoothing of the data. Long-run measures are less […]
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Working Paper No. 40
November 10, 1990
A Kernel Regression of Phillips’ Data
AbstractEconomists have assumed that the Phillips curve, which shows a positive (negative) relation between inflation and the output ratio (unemployment rate), may be mapped off the aggregate demand -aggregate supply apparatus. The paper shows that the Phillips curve requires that unlikely restrictions be put on the form of the aggregate supply and aggregate demand curves. […]
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Working Paper No. 39
November 09, 1990
Poverty and Household Composition
AbstractThis paper has investigated the relationship between poverty and family type, as reflected in the marital status and gender of the head of the family number of factors have been identified as important determinants of poverty for all family types: education and work experience of family members, race, disability, and unemployment of the family head, […]
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Working Paper No. 38
July 10, 1990
The Mathematics of Economic Growth
AbstractTraditionally, economists have considered that mathematics acts as a universal language that lends clarity to theoretical statements. This paper proposes that mathematics does not function as a mere language. Rather, the advocacy of particular theoretical views and the choice of mathematical formalisms go hand-in-hand. The paper explores this issue by investigating the role of mathematics […]
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Working Paper No. 37
May 10, 1990
What Happened to the Corporate Profit Tax?
AbstractThe radical reorientation of the federal budget during the 1980s provided generously for military expansion at the expense of pressing social needs. In the wake of such dramatic upheavals, the federal government will eventually be compelled to seek out new sources of revenue in order to compensate for the decade of neglect. But where will […]
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Working Paper No. 36
April 10, 1990
The Microeconomics of Monopoly Power
AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to outline a consistent microeconomic theory of the firm based on the concept of monopoly power. It builds on the heritage of Post Keynesian authors, Robinson, Kaldor, and Kalecki, but literally extends the theory in several directions. First, monopoly power is defined formally in terms of substitution. In this […]
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Working Paper No. 35
January 10, 1990
Industrial De-diversification and Its Consequences for Productivity
AbstractDue in large part to intense takeover activity during the 1980s, the extent of American firms’ industrial diversification declined significantly during the second half of the decade. The mean number of industries in which firms operated declined 14 percent, and the fraction of single-industry firms increased 54 percent. Firms that were "born" during the period […]
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Working Paper No. 34
January 01, 1990
The Determinants of US Foreign Production
AbstractBased on an analysis of industry by region data the author finds little evidence that U.S. unions have been a significant factor in the decision of U.S. firms to produce abroad. Additional evidence suggests that U.S. foreign production may have had a negligible effect on the domestic unionization rate. Corresponding with previous research, the results […]
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Working Paper No. 33
December 10, 1989
What Remains of the Growth Controversy?
AbstractThis essay contrasts the production function approach to Kaldor’s model of increasing returns which are demand-determined. In particular, the essay analyzes Kaldor’s three major empirical "laws", which were adopted by later economists, and the criticisms of these three "laws" by economists who used the Cobb-Douglas production function as a basis of analysis. In conclusion, the […]
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Working Paper No. 32
November 10, 1989
The Effects of Mergers on Prices, Costs, and Capacity Utilization in the US Air Transportation Industry, 1970–84
AbstractWe analyze the effect of mergers on various aspects of airline performance during the period 1970-84, using a panel data set constructed by Caves et al. Estimates derived from a simple "matched pairs" statistical model indicate that these mergers were associated with reductions in unit cost. The average annual rate of unit cost growth of […]
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Working Paper No. 31
September 01, 1989
The Changing Role of Debt in Bankruptcy
AbstractThe changing economic environment of the late 1980s has been dominated by the financial I innovations brought about by the growing demand for credit by U.S. corporations. When looking at this phenomena from a very long perspective of 50 to 60 years as some researchers have done [Taggart, 1985; Ciccolo and Baum, 1985], he rise […]
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Working Paper No. 30
August 10, 1989
Growth Cycles in a Discrete, Nonlinear Model
AbstractThis paper develops a discrete, nonlinear growth cycle model for a macroeconomy. The nonlinearities, which correspond to empirical relationships between profitability and capacity utilization in the postwar U.S. economy, can produce stable, periodic and chaotic behavior. These behaviors are established analytically, and further investigated through simulation. Data from the simulations are used to show that […]
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Working Paper No. 29
August 01, 1989
Unionization and the Incidence of Performance-based Compensation in Canada
AbstractNo further information available.
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Working Paper No. 28
July 10, 1989
The Covariance Transformation and the Instrumental Variables Estimator of the Fixed Effects Model
AbstractThe covariance transformation is a useful and often necessary procedure to estimate the fixed effects model. When some explanatory variables are contemporaneously correlated with the disturbance term, the covariance transformation can be used in conjunction with an instrumental variables procedure to obtain a consistent estimator. This paper describes how to correctly compute the IV estimator […]
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Working Paper No. 27
June 10, 1989
Money and Equilibrium
AbstractEconomic theory has undergone a very deep transformation during the last forty years. Its method and its tools of analysis have evolved dramatically. The standards by which theoretical statements are now appreciated are far more demanding, especially from a formal point of view, than was the case before World War II. Precision and logical validity […]
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Working Paper No. 26
June 09, 1989
Marx’s Value, Exchange, and Surplus Value Theory
AbstractThe concept of commodity society based on a specific division of labour (opposition between private and social labor) and that of surplus-value are the most prominent achievements of Marx’s intellectual efforts in dealing with the economy of capitalism. This paper attempts to evaluate the consistency of the theoretical propositions inherent in these concepts. The main […]
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