Race and employment dislocation in California’s aerospace industry

This article finds that African American and Latino workers have borne a disproportionate share of employment costs associated with defense cuts in California’s aerospace industry. The data for this analysis come from administrative files, which contain demographic and employment-related information for everyone who collects unemployment-insurance benefits. The analysis shows that African Americans suffered higher displacement rates, longer unemployment spells, and poorer outcomes in new jobs than whites. Latinos were disadvantaged in several ways, but not consistently in all categories. Asian Americans, on the other hand, generally fared better than whites. These results show that economic dislocation, in the form of defense cuts, reinforces racial inequality in the labor market.     

Liquidity Pools, Risk Sharing, and Financial Contagion

This paper reevaluates the Allen–Gale (2000) analysis of interbank deposits to explain financial contagion. This paper modifies the pecking order of asset liquidation developed in Allen–Gale, which is essential in fragility analysis. Furthermore, we also provide a claim structure called liquidity pool that can both achieve risk sharing and prevent financial contagion across regions when asymmetric information about bank assets is absent. This model can partly explain why bank panics reduced substantially after the founding of the Fed and the role of IMF in regional financial crises.     

Lysine and Price Fixing: How Long? How Severe?

In October 1996 the Archer Daniels Midland Company(ADM) pleaded guilty to criminal price fixing withrespect to sales of lysine and agreed to pay a $70million fine. Earlier, in August 1996 two Japaneseproducers and a Korean producer of lysine had agreedto plead guilty to criminal price fixing charges. Andearlier still, in July 1996 ADM and the two Japanesecompanies settled the civil suits filed by some harmedbuyers by agreeing to pay a sum of $45 million.It is this last event that serves as the focus forthis paper. The adequacy of the settlement amount wasa major area of dispute. Connor (1996, 1997, 1998)has claimed that the trebled damages to lysinepurchasers were an order of magnitude larger. Crucialto Connor's conclusions are his assumptions as to thetime period during which the conspiracy had an effecton prices and the but for price that otherwise wouldhave prevailed in the absence of the conspiracy. Thispaper will argue that Connor substantiallyover-estimated the period of the conspiracy andunder-estimated the but-for price.     

Internal Versus External Capital Markets in the Insurance Industry: The Role of Reinsurance

This study compares internal and external sources of capital in the insurance industry by analyzing reinsurance activity between affiliated and unaffiliated insurers. Tests are performed using data from a large sample of property-liability insurers that are affiliated with at least one other property-liability insurer. Results indicate that while demands for internal and external reinsurance have some factors in common, there are cost-based differences in internal and external capital, as well as structural differences in the use of internal and external reinsurance. Results are consistent with previous theories related to internal versus external capital markets.