Economic Inquiry articles from October 2002

Economic Inquiry archives from October 2002

Aggregate price shocks and financial instability: a historical analysis.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION The notion that central banks should act as lenders of last resort is not controversial. How best to carry out that responsibility is, however, not widely agreed on. One view holds that the financial system is inherently...

Tools or toys? the impact of high technology on scholarly productivity.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION In the past several decades, investment that makes communication easier has increased rapidly in the United States and other developed economies. Since the mid-1980s a combination of technical change and...

Learning to forecast price.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION In recent years economists have begun to investigate how people might learn equilibrium behavior. Microeconomists following Binmore (1987) and Fudenberg and Kreps (1988) consider learning models with roots in Cournot (1838)...

Similarity judgments and anomalies in intertemporal choice.(analysis of Discounted Utility model)
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Evidence accumulated over many years reveals the inadequacies of the Expected Utility Hypothesis as a descriptive model of choice under uncertainty. Over a much shorter period of time, evidence has accumulated revealing...

Reputational comparative advantage and multinational enterprise.
October 1, 2002... 1. INTRODUCTION When cultivating a new export market or attempting to expand its share of an existing market, an exporter is likely to find that it has been preceded by its reputation. Minus a readily identifiable brand name, quality...

Industrial response to electricity real-time prices: short run and long run.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION With the emergence of competition in the electric industry, wholesale prices are proving highly volatile. During the summers of 1998 and 1999, prices in the Midwest soared to $7000 or more per megawatt-hour compared to a...

Bidding behavior and decision costs in field experiments.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Positive opportunity costs of mental effort may invalidate the predictions of traditional models of rational (or hyperrational) agents. Conlisk (1996) uses deliberation costs as a recurring theme when discussing four...

Using baseball card prices to measure star quality and monopsony.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Measuring productivity presents problems in many areas of economics. This is especially true in sports economics, where appropriate indicators of individual productivity (apart from team productivity) have been the subject...

Reputation in an Internet auction market.(Investigation of how assessments of reputation affect Internet auction dealings)
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Without transmission of credible information, asymmetries may lead to underproduction of goods or even market failure. Reputation mitigates inefficiencies associated with information asymmetries by providing an informative...

Do civil and political repression really boost foreign direct investments?
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION The globalization of the economy is an issue that continues to attract a great deal of attention in the political arena. The exchange of opinion unfortunately often does not follow civilized patterns but is articulated in...

Do natural disasters promote long-run growth?
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Risks to life and property exist, in varying degrees, in every country of the world. Numerous studies on the relationship between risk and expected losses and economic decisions are available and generally widely known, (1)...

Corruption: top down or bottom up?(Study of how corruption affects the economy in a hierarchical government)
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION Corruption takes many forms and can arise at many levels, as pointed out by the classic study of Wade (1985). A large literature has grown up since then, modeling various aspects of corruption; see the surveys by Bardhan...

An economic analysis of a hybrid liability rule.
October 1, 2002... I. INTRODUCTION In an economic model of torts, of primary concern is the efficiency of liability rules with respect to the care levels of (potential) injurers and victims. A liability rule is said to be efficient with respect to care when...

Editor's report.
October 1, 2002... The 2001 volume of Economic Inquiry consisted of 52 papers in a wide variety of fields. These articles include theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies in fields that range from labor and industrial organization to macro/money/growth,...