Economic Inquiry articles from July 2008

Economic Inquiry archives from July 2008

Schools, skills, and synapses.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION American society is polarizing. Proportionately more American youth are graduating from college than ever before. At the same time, American-born youth are graduating from high school at lower rates than 40 years ago. ...

The role of the bidding process in price determination: jump bidding in sequential English auctions.(Survey)
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION Standard auction theory predicts that in a private-value English oral auction, the winner will be the bidder with the highest valuation for the object and the selling price will be the second-highest valuation. In those...

Fixed revenue auctions: theory and behavior.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION There are numerous varieties of auction institutions used in practice and studied in the economics literature. The four standard mechanisms for selling a fixed quantity as in a single unit or lot are the English, Dutch,...

Robustness of bidder preferences among auction institutions.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION The answer to the question of how bidders choose to enter one auction versus an alternative competing auction is important to understand in providing a complete picture of the nature of endogenous entry decisions into...

Some evidence on late bidding in eBay auctions.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION Bidding in the last minutes or seconds of an auction is a common strategy pursued in online auctions with fixed end-times. For instance, Roth and Ockenfels (2002, 2006) observed bids in the last minute and last 10 sec in...

Race and charitable church activity.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION Faith-based organizations provide social services for more than 70 million Americans annually (Johnson, Tompkins, and Webb 2002). Of the more than 350,000 congregations in the country, more than 85% support some type of...

Political economy and the social marginal cost of public funds: the case of the Meltzer-Richard economy.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) is defined as the full cost to the private sector of raising an additional dollar of tax revenue, including deadweight loss or excess burden of taxation imposed on taxpayers. Much of...

The influence of social forces: evidence from the behavior of football referees.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION Do social forces affect decisions or actions of individuals? And if so, under what circumstances do social influences determine socioeconomic behaviors? These are important questions for economists to answer. Sociologists...

Strict product liability and safety: evidence from the general aviation market.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION Beginning in the 1960s, the legal system in the United States began a gradual transition to a standard of strict product liability. The proponents of the strict liability standard argued that such a move would enhance both...

Work-related accidents and the level of market competition: an analysis of worker injury rates at U.S. Steel Corporation, 1907-1939.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, manufacturing in the United States experienced substantial changes. There was tremendous growth in large-scale enterprises beginning with business consolidation during the...

Stock ownership and congressional elections: the political economy of the mutual fund revolution.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, political analysts have conjectured that voting has been affected by the rise of an investor class in the United States, where the stock ownership rate has doubled from under 25% in the late 1970s to over...

Debt bailouts and constitutions.
July 1, 2008... I. INTRODUCTION A number of countries have undergone several rounds of bailouts of subnational government debts in the last decade. The Brazilian government, for instance, assumed the debts of the federated states in 1989, 1993, and 1997....