Economic Inquiry articles from October 2006

Economic Inquiry archives from October 2006

When are women more generous than men?(gender role)
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION Gender's impact on behavior and decision making continues to be a topic of much debate and scrutiny. As evidence one need look no further than the firestorm stemming from comments by Lawrence Summers, the president of...

Communication and incentive mechanisms based on group performance: an experimental study of nonpoint pollution control.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION The problem of moral hazard in groups, wherein the hidden actions of individuals create an inherent divergence between individually and collectively optimal behaviors, has engendered an expanding theoretical literature on...

Group size and social ties in microfinance institutions.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION In recent years microfinance institutions (MFIs) have become one of the most important instruments in development policy. The idea of microfinance arose in the mid-1970s when Mohammad Yunus started a pilot scheme lending...

Unemployment and other measures of labor market inefficiency: a comparison of U.K. and U.S. labor markets 1931-96.
October 1, 2006... Unemployment is probably the most widely feared phenomenon of our times... (It) represents an enormous waste of human resources, reflects an important degree of inefficiency in economic systems, and causes a disturbing degree of social...

Subsidy and tuition policies in public higher education.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION The much discussed and widely debated recent conditions in public higher education include expanding enrollments, flat if not declining public appropriations per resident student, and rapid increases in tuition rates. (1)...

Differences in average prices on the internet: evidence from the online market for air travel.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION Airlines adopt sophisticated flight-specific pricing strategies, charging dozens of different fares for tickets within the same class (see Borenstein 1989; Borenstein and Rose 1994). While advances in Internet technology...

Has production management improved since 1984?
October 1, 2006... Kim and Nelson (1999) and others have recently presented evidence of a dramatic decline in the volatility of real gross domestic product (GDP). When the data are plotted, the break date is easily identified as 1984. Kim and Nelson conclude that...

Offsetting behavior and the benefits of safety regulations.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION Many regulatory, safety, and health policies are adopted to reduce harm to potential victims from accidents and other harmful events. Economists now widely recognize attenuation and even reversal of the direct policy effect...

Financial sector weakness and the M2 velocity puzzle.(money market, money demand)
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION There has been a long-running debate over the usefulness of monetary aggregates as intermediate targets or information variables in the conduct of monetary policy. In the mid1970s the "missing money" episode associated with...

Velocity futures markets: does the fed need a structural model?(federal, central banks monetary policy )
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION During the 1990s, the concept of inflation targeting caught on among both monetary theorists and monetary policy makers. This interest took several forms. Some advocated a backward-looking approach (as exemplified by the...

Cigarette taxes and the master settlement agreement.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION In 1998, 46 states and the four major tobacco companies entered into the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), which settled litigation brought on behalf of the states to recover medical expenses paid by government insurance...

One lump or two: unitary versus bifurcated measures of injury at the USITC.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION Firms that face competition frequently have a number of legal avenues to limit such competition. When such competition comes from overseas competitors, they might avail themselves of laws to limit imports. In the major...

Workers should want to pay more for Social Security.
October 1, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION Although economic theory cannot resolve all the controversies concerning Social Security, simple supply and demand analysis can helpfully change the terms of the debate concerned with how the Social Security tax is divided...