Quarterly Journal of Economics articles from August 1999

Quarterly Journal of Economics archives from August 1999

Democracies pay higher wages.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION In 1996 average labor productivity in Mexico, measured by output per worker and converted to U.S. dollars at market exchange rates, stood roughly at $9600. The corresponding level in the United States was $58,000, six times...

Zipf's law for cities: an explanation.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION Zipf's law for cities is one of the most conspicuous empirical facts in economics, or in the social sciences generally. The importance of this law is that, given very strong empirical support, it constitutes a minimum...

Incentives for procrastinators.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION While the standard economics model assumes that any desire to delay an unpleasant task must be time-consistent, many people have a time-inconsistent preference for procrastination. Today we feel we should write a referee...

A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION Almost all economic models assume that all people are exclusively pursuing their material self-interest and do not care about "social" goals per se. This may be true for some (maybe many) people, but it is certainly not...

Coordinating regime switches.
August 1, 1999... INTRODUCTION Payoff externalities between individual actions arise in structural models of search [Diamond 1982], and of investment with imperfect competition [Kiyotaki 1988; Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1989]. These externalities generate...

The impact of outsourcing and high-technology capital on wages: estimates for the United States, 1979-1990.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION The recent economic performance of less-skilled workers in industrial countries is an important policy topic and the subject of intense academic attention. During the 1980s and 1990s the wages of low-skilled workers have...

The induced innovation hypothesis and energy-saving technological change.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION There is currently much interest in the potential for public policies to reduce energy consumption because of concerns about global climate change linked with the combustion of fossil fuels. Basic economic theory suggests...

Wage inequality in the United States during the 1980s: rising dispersion or falling minimum wage?
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION A striking feature of the United States labor market experience during the past twenty years has been the dramatic rise in earnings and wage inequality that occurred during the 1980s.1 Past research has documented the...

Evidence on growth, increasing returns, and the extent of the market.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION Following Allyn Young [1928], much of the recent theoretical work on economic growth builds on increasing returns to scale (e.g., Romer [1986], Lucas [1988], Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny [1989], and Rebelo [1991]). In...

School inputs and educational outcomes in South Africa.
August 1, 1999... I. INTRODUCTION That educational inputs should be important determinants of educational outcomes is a proposition that appeals to common sense, but is nevertheless controversial in the literature both for developed and less-developed...