The Triumph of American Capitalism: An Assyrian Perspective

The collapse of communism, the success of the US economy and the rise of the internet have led many to argue that the rest of the world should adopt American capitalism. This article uses evidence from the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East to argue that the most successful form of capitalism in each area (and era) depends on the context of the time, the culture of the people and the history of the region.     

Saving neighborhoods by saving farms: Metropolitan congregations united for St. Louis challenges urban sprawl

Critics usually decry urban sprawl's impact on the natural geograph— polluted air and water, vanishing farmlands, forests and open spaces. However, urban sprawl's effect onhuman geography has been even greater, as exemplified by metro St. Louis. With the region's urbanized land growing at seven times the rate of urbanized population, sprawl accelerated the decline of the central city and older, built-out suburbs (St. Louis lost over half its population since mid-century), increased economic segregation and stagnation (10 percent in 20 years by one measure) even as racial barriers were slowly lowered, and widened fiscal disparities among local governments (St. Louis City's property evaluation shrank by over 70 percent in 35 years). Inner-city and older-suburb coalitions, like Metropolitan Congregations United for St. Louis, are now joining environmental advocates to lobby for new state growth management laws. “We cannot win the ‘inside game’ without winning the ‘outside game,’” church leader explained. David Rusk is an urban policy consultant and author of Cities without Suburbs (1993),Baltimore Unbound (1995), andInside Game/Outside Game (1999). He is a former mayor of Albuquerque and New Mexico legislator.     

POPULATION POLICY THROUGH TRADABLE PROCREATION ENTITLEMENTS*

One of the first tradable rights proposal is Boulding's (The Meaning of the Twentieth Century, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1964 ), dealing with overpopulation. We discuss both tradable procreation allowances and exemptions domestically and globally, to address underpopulation as well. We focus on three effects. Notably, the rights' tradability entails that whereas exemptions or expensive enough allowances benefit the poor, cheap allowances benefit the rich. A natalist policy also worsens the average education level of the next generation, whereas population control enhances it. Also, if procreation rights are grandfathered to countries, the scheme redistributes further. Our analysis suggests that procreation entitlements may be efficient in controlling population, without being necessarily anti‐redistributive.     

Corporate and public responsibility, stakeholder theory and the developing world

It is often argued that multinational companies and other foreign developers have a responsibility to improve the material conditions of the people in whose territories they operate. As a matter of distributive justice it is thought that these companies should be sharing the acquired wealth with these people through the creation of 'collective goods' (like schools and aid posts), infrastructure development and compensation disbursements aimed at their benefit. Recently "stakeholder theory" and even legislative changes in the first world (especially in the US) have sought to impress on the corporate world the necessity to share the profits with affected "non-shareholder" groups. Many see these developments as possible advancements for indigenous peoples, indigenous rights and the cause of distributive justice for aboriginal groups. However, it can be shown that the attribution of such 'imperfect' duties to corporations results in the generation of excessive costs and of unrealistic expectations on the part of stakeholders. Distributive justice is more efficiently achieved by public sector involvement at the level of policy and project management.     

Time-Varying Response of Monetary Policy to Macroeconomic Conditions

We reject the hypothesis that the Federal Reserve's response to the macroeconomy over the period of 1953-1994 can be accurately represented with a fixed-parameter discrete choice model. Thus, we model the Fed's time-varying response with a nonlinear Kalman filter. The estimated time paths of the reaction function coefficients suggest that the Fed has responded countercyclically to movements in the price level except for the middle 1970s when it accommodated inflation. The Fed has generally responded countercyclically to unemployment and output during recessions. However, it has not maintained a countercyclical policy during nonrecessionary times until the 1980s.     

The Welfare Economics of a Biofuel Tax Credit and the Interaction Effects with Price Contingent Farm Subsidies

A framework is developed to analyze the effects of a biofuel consumer tax exemption and the interaction effects with a price contingent farm subsidy. Ethanol prices rise above the gasoline price by the amount of the tax credit. Corn farmers gain directly while gasoline consumers only gain from any reduction in world oil prices due to the extra ethanol production. Domestic oil producers lose. Historically, the intercept of the ethanol supply curve is above the gasoline price. Hence, part of the tax credit is redundant and represents "rectangular" deadweight costs that dwarf triangular deadweight cost measures of traditional farm subsidies.     

Asymmetric Responses of the Underground Economy to Tax Changes: Evidence From New Zealand Data

This paper considers the relationship between taxes and the size of the New Zealand underground economy. Previous studies indicate that a positive relationship exists in this and certain other countries. This paper addresses the question: 'Is the response of the underground economy to an increase in taxes the same as its response to a decrease in taxes?' We find that although the effect on the underground economy of an upward movement in the effective tax rate is numerically greater than that of a downward tax movement, this difference is not statistically significant.     

Bidding for the Surplus : A Non-cooperative Approach to the Shapley Value

We propose a simple mechanism to determine how the surplus generated by cooperation is to be shared in zero-monotonic environments with transferable utility. The mechanism consists of a bidding stage followed by a proposal stage. We show that the subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes of this mechanism coincide with the vector of the Shapley value payoffs. We extend our results to implement the weighted Shapley values. Finally, we generalize our mechanism to handle arbitrary transferable utility environments. The modified mechanism generates an efficient coalition structure, and implements the Shapley values of the super-additive cover of the environment. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C71, C72.