Economic Inquiry articles from July 2002

Economic Inquiry archives from July 2002

Do minimum wages fight poverty?
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION One of the most compelling rationales for a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor or near-poor families with members in the workforce. This general point, however, is often missed in the debates over...

Income mobility and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION According to the Committee on Ways and Means (1993, 1052) the original purposes of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) were to target tax relief to low-income families with children, offset Social Security taxes to these...

Provider selection, bargaining, and utilization management in managed care.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION The managed care industry is extraordinarily dynamic. One of the earliest examples of managed care is the Kaiser prepaid group health plan, which contracted exclusively with the Permanente group to supply health care to a...

Optimal deterrence with legal defense expenditure.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION In this article we consider a justice system which makes both type I errors (sometimes convicting the innocent) and type II errors (sometimes acquitting the guilty) and in which legal defense expenditure on behalf of the...

Revenue-sharing in movie exhibition and the arrival of sound.(share contract analysis)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION At least since Adam Smith, economists have been intrigued by share contracts. There has been a proliferation of models, most of which tend to explain the share contract as resulting from some mix of optimal risk-bearing and...

Gifts, cash, and stigma.(gift valuation research and analysis)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Each year individuals in the United States transfer between $50 and $72 billion in resources to friends and family members in the form of noncash holiday gifts, despite the fact that holiday gift recipients apparently value...

The Confederate Constitution, tariffs, and the Laffer relationship.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Documenting who understood the Laffer relationship between tax rates and tax revenues has been a cottage industry for economists for a number of years. (1) This article offers a historical antecedent of a higher order. We...

Government organization and power.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Economists have systematically examined the economics of government finance and long ago established that the means of financing government creates inefficiencies in the market. For instance, see Baumol and Bradford (1970)...

A disinflation trade-off: speed versus final destination.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Whether or not expectations of inflation are rational is an open question. Rational forecasts require knowledge and information that some agents may not find worthwhile acquiring. Instead, because past inflation is a cheap...

Explaining U.S. federal deficits: 1889-1998.
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Seater (1993) attempted to provide a common basis for assessing empirical studies of the effects of deficit spending. He concluded that evidence of the existence of appreciable effects of U.S. deficits on macroeconomic...

Safety and soundness and the CRA: is there a conflict?(Community Reinvestment Act )
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Financial problems often pose a dilemma regarding the appropriate nature and timing of any regulatory response. Banks and the financial intermediation services they perform generally are viewed as crucial to economic...

Buying a dream: alternative models of demand for lotto.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Lotteries are pervasive phenomena worldwide. Lotto, the most popular and widespread state lottery game, is a very simple numbers game where individuals select a set of numbers in a given range and win prizes according to...

International charity: for the poor?
July 1, 2002... I INTRODUCTION Charities transfer billions of dollars annually to help people in other countries survive famines and other hardships due to natural and man-made disasters such as droughts and civil wars. In this article we address the...

Institutional constraints and deforestation: an application to Mexico.
July 1, 2002... 1. INTRODUCTION In many tropical regions a key factor influencing deforestation is thought to be the lack of effective property rights and other institutional structures controlling access to and use of forests. (1) Where such institutions...