Economic Inquiry articles from October 1998

Economic Inquiry archives from October 1998

The transaction costs paradigm.
October 1, 1998... 1998 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS WESTERN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Though the idea can be traced to David Hume and Adam Smith, the path-breaking first economic analysis of transaction costs did not occur until 1937, when Ronald Coase published "The Nature...

Financial market variables do not predict real activity.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION The past decade has seen an extensive empirical reassessment of the information content of financial market variables believed to be sensitive to monetary policy. Particularly provocative are papers suggesting that some...

Stock price effects of permanent and transitory shocks.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION It is now accepted by most financial economists that stock price and dividend series follow a more general nonstationary process than a simple random walk, implying that they may be affected by more than one type of...

Elastic capital supply and the effects of fiscal policy.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION Perfectly elastic or perfectly inelastic supply or demand curves have much to recommend them. Equilibrium analysis which would otherwise be fraught with ambiguity yields forth sharp predictions when one assumes either demand or...

Consumption spending and the paper-bill spread: theory and evidence.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION One of the more interesting recent findings in empirical macroeconomics is that the paper-bill spread, the difference between the yields on six month prime commercial paper and six month T-bills (henceforth, the "spread") helps...

Primary and secondary reform. (rent-seeking and lobbying by import competing companies)
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION The export-led growth performance of the East Asian newly industrialized countries has increased interest in liberalization among developing countries in general. Such reforms are felt to benefit the economy, not only because...

Institutions, investment, and growth: new cross-country and panel data evidence.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of research on the macroeconomic determinants of growth. Concurrently, many countries of the world have promoted freedom as a means of fostering long-run economic success. Freedom -...

Are women more risk averse? (attitude toward financial risk)
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether women exhibit greater financial risk aversion than men. When asked, women indicate greater risk aversion than men. For example, in the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF89)...

Gender, earnings, and the English skill acquisition of Hispanic workers in the United States.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION Recently, the number of English deficient residents has escalated in the United States. According to the 1980 and 1990 decennial censuses, individuals aged five years and older whose reported English verbal skills are "not...

Economic man as a moral individual.
October 1, 1998... First, there is the broadly ethical question 'How should one live?' To emphasize this connection is not the same as asserting that people will always act in ways they will themselves morally defend, but only to recognize that ethical...

Explaining industry labor productivity movements.
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION The 1970s marked a significant turning point in the postwar productivity performance for industrialized economies: robust productivity growth disappeared and several decades of low growth followed. This phenomenon was perhaps...

Leviathan at bay: constitutional versus political controls on government.
October 1, 1998... A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. - James Madison, Federalist No. 51 I. INTRODUCTION Citizens possess two main methods of...

The effect of the designated hitter rule on hit batsmen: pitcher's moral hazard or the team's cost-benefit calculation? A comment. (response to Brian L. Goff et al., Economic Inquiry, p. 555, July 1997)
October 1, 1998... Since the Designated Hitter (DH) rule was introduced to the American League (AL) in 1973, American League pitchers have hit opposing batsmen more frequently than have National League (NL) pitchers. Golf, Shughart and Tollison [1997], hereafter...

The hazards of moral hazard: comment on Goff, Shughart, and Tollison. (response to Brian L. Goff et al., Economic Inquiry, p. 555, July 1997)
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION In a recent study, Golf, Shughart, and Tollison [1997] demonstrate that the adoption of the designated hitter rule in the American League is associated with a sharp increase in the number of hit batsmen. These authors suggest...

Moral hazard and the effects of the designated hitter rule revisited. (response to Gregory A. Trandel et al. in this issue, p. 679 and Steven D. Levitt in this issue, p. 685)
October 1, 1998... I. INTRODUCTION In a recent paper in this journal, we [Goff, Shughart, and Tollison 1997] hypothesized that the introduction of the Designated Hitter (DH) rule in the American League but not the National League of Major League Baseball in 1973...