Economic Inquiry articles from January 2003

Economic Inquiry archives from January 2003

Growing by leaps and inches: creative destruction, real cost reduction, and inching up.
January 1, 2003... Drunk: Can you help me find my keys? Passerby: Sure, where exactly did you drop them? Drunk: Way over there by the trash can. Passerby: Then why are you searching over here? Drunk: The light's much better under the lamppost....

On the nature of fair behavior.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION There is by now considerable evidence that fairness considerations affect economic behavior in many important areas. In bilateral bargaining situations, anonymously interacting agents frequently agree on rather egalitarian...

Ex ante versus ex post optimal promotion rules: the case of internal promotion.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION The literature on promotion practices within the firm identifies two distinct roles for a firm's promotion policies. Promotions serve both as a way for the firm to efficiently assign workers to tasks and as a way for the...

A production theory approach to the imports and wage inequality nexus.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION One of the most policy-relevant academic inquiries in the area of international economics concerns the contribution of imports to the growing wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in the United States that has...

Examining equality between public-and private-sector wage distributions.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION Institutional, political, and economic factors all contribute to the determination of public-sector wages. For example, the public sector is almost the only place in many advanced economies where unions continue to have a...

Nontariff barriers and trade liberalization.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION It is common to recognize that tariffs have gradually been replaced by nontariff barriers (NTBs). Some authors go even further and argue there is a "Law of Constant Protection" (an expression used by Bhagwati [1988] mainly...

Price and enforcement effects on cocaine and marijuana demand.
January 1, 2003... This article estimates equations for past year cocaine and marijuana use among adult and juvenile respondents of the 1990-97 National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse. Unlike most previous studies, we control for the monetary price of marijuana,...

Are consumption and government expenditures sustitutes or complements? Morishima elasticity estimates from the fourier flexible form.
January 1, 2003... 1. INTRODUCTION Macroeconomists paid relatively little attention to the economic effects of government expenditures and to alternative methods of financing those expenditures until Barro (1974, 1979, 1981) challenged conventional views on...

Changes in income concentration: taxes or macroeconomic conditions?
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION The effects of tax policy at various points in the income distribution have received increased attention from politicians and researchers in recent years. Both major presidential candidates in the 2000 election proposed tax...

Until death do you part: the effects of unilateral divorce on spousal homicides.
January 1, 2003... I. INTRODUCTION Policy makers throughout the United States have expressed an increased interest in placing stronger legal restrictions on the ability of spouses to dissolve marriages. In three states (Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas),...