Economic Inquiry articles from January 2009

Economic Inquiry archives from January 2009

Corporate productivity growth: champions, leaders, and laggards.(industrial productivity)(Statistical data)
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION Economists and policymakers consider productivity growth to be "the principal source of improvements in living standards." (1) Not surprisingly then, tracking and explaining productivity growth at the national or industry...

Outsourcing types, relative wages, and the demand for skilled workers: new evidence from U.S. manufacturing.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION The pivotal roles of international outsourcing and skill-biased technology in explaining the dramatic increase in relative wages of skilled workers in industrialized economies have been extensively documented and analyzed...

Fiscal readjustments in the United States: a nonlinear time-series analysis.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION The recent deterioration in U.S. budget deficit has raised serious concerns about the long-run sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy. In addressing this issue, many studies have examined whether U.S. fiscal policy respects...

Inequality and growth in the United States: evidence from a new state-level panel of income inequality measures.(Statistical data)
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION Rising income inequality in the United States over the past quarter century is well documented (see, e.g., Gottschalk 1997; Krueger 2003; Levy and Murnane 1992; Piketty and Saez 2003). Whether and by how much this change in...

The health effects of military service: evidence from the Vietnam draft.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION The impact of military service on long-term health is reemerging as a vital policy question as the United States conducts major military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Health professionals have raised concerns that...

Data revisions and out-of-sample stock return predictability.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION Lettau and Ludvigson (2001;LL, thereafter) show that the consumption-wealth ratio (cay)--the error term from the cointegration relation among consumption, net worth, and labor income--is a strong predictor of stock market...

Black unemployment and infotainment.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION Why has the black unemployment rate in the United States been more than twice that of whites over the past three decades? From 1972 to 2002, the average black unemployment rate was 12.4%, while the average unemployment rate...

Perfect competition, urbanization, and tax incidence in the retail gasoline market.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION In applied tax incidence studies, it is typically assumed that prices respond one-for-one to changes in sales and excise taxes (Chernick and Reschovsky 1997; Pechman 1985; Shepard 1976; State of Wisconsin Department of...

Productivity changes of Asian economies by taking into account software piracy.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION Ethics may create economic advantages for countries (Donaldson 2001). One common claim for the impact of good ethics on economic performance is tied to the social promotion of economic incentives. The protection of...

Experimental analysis of risk and uncertainty in provisioning private and public goods.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION This paper investigates how individuals perceive risks and uncertainties when making decisions about private and public goods. Using the framework of public goods games and laboratory experiments, we study whether--in...

Secret Santa reveals the secret side of giving.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION At Christmas, large families and groups of friends often organize secret Santa gift exchanges in which each participant gives and receives one gift rather than giving and receiving gifts from everyone. Participants...

Central bank independence and inflation: a note.
January 1, 2009... I. INTRODUCTION A remarkable achievement among industrialized nations during the past two decades is the dramatic decline in annual inflation rates. A long line of research dating to Kydland and Prescott (1977) and Barro and Gordon (1983a,...