中间品进口多样化、企业创新与工资水平

基于2000-2006年中国制造业企业数据库以及进出口海关数据库的匹配数据引入企业创新机制效应检验中间品进口多样化的工资溢出效应。研究表明中间品进口多样化、企业创新均能显著提高企业的工资水平。进一步考察企业的出口状态、所有制结构及企业所属地区差异后发现中间品进口多样化对出口企业、外资企业以及东部地区企业的工资影响更为显著。分位数回归结果进一步显示中间品进口多样化及企业创新对工资分布高分位企业的工资影响更为显著。基于中介效应模型的传导机制检验，认为中间品进口多样化通过节约成本、提升生产率及企业创新影响中国制造业企业工资水平的利润共享机制存在。在控制成本效应及生产率效应两种机制之后，企业创新成为中间品进口多样化作用于企业工资的新机制。     

Heights and human welfare: Recent developments and new directions

Since 1995 approximately 325 publications on stature have appeared in the social sciences, which is more than a four-fold increase in the rate of production relative to the period 1977-1994. The expansion occurred in several areas, but especially within economics, indicating that heights are now widely accepted as useful measure of human welfare. Much of this new work extends beyond the traditional bailiwick of anthropometric history, including biological welfare during economic and political crises; anthropometric determinants of wages; the welfare of women relative to men in the contemporary world; the fetal origins hypothesis; and inequality in the developing world. The approach has also expanded within economic history to consider the consequences of empire for colonials; the health of populations lacking traditional measures of social performance; the consequences of smallpox; and very long-term trends in health. Much has also been learned about socioeconomic aspects of inequality, the welfare implications of industrialization, and socioeconomic determinants of stature. The last is a work in progress and one may doubt whether sufficient longitudinal evidence will become available for a complete understanding of the variety and strength of pathways that affect human physical growth.     

A new method to assess the degree of information rigidity using fixed-event forecasts

We propose a new method to explore the information content of fixed-event forecasts and estimate structural parameters that are keys to sticky and noisy information models. Estimation follows a regression-based framework in which estimated coefficients map one-to-one with parameters that measure the degree of information rigidity. The statistical characterization of regression errors explores the laws that govern expectation formation under sticky and noisy information, that is, they are coherent with the theory. This strategy is still unexplored in the literature and potentially enhances the reliability of inference results. The method also allows linking estimation results to the signal-to-noise ratio, an important parameter of noisy information models. This task cannot be accomplished if one adopts an “agnostic” characterization of regression errors. With regard to empirical results, they show a substantial degree of information rigidity in the countries studied. They also suggest that the theoretical characterization of regression errors yields a more conservative picture of the uncertainty surrounding parameter estimates.     

Mussa redux and conditional PPP

The extreme persistence of real exchange rates found commonly in post-Bretton Woods data does not hold in the preceding fixed exchange rate period, when the half-life was roughly half as large in our sample. This finding supports sticky price models as an explanation for real exchange rate behavior, extending the classic argument of Mussa (1986) from a focus on short-run volatility to long-run dynamics. Two thirds of the rise in real exchange rate variance observed across exchange rate regimes is attributable to greater persistence of responses to shocks, including greater price stickiness, rather than to greater variance of shocks themselves.     

The doughboy premium: an empirical assessment of the relative wages of American veterans of World War I

This article examines 1940 US census data to assess the relative wages of World War I (WWI) veteran and nonveteran men. Our empirical analysis indicates a 3.6% wage premium for veterans, after controlling earnings-related characteristics. Although lower than comparable estimates for WWII veterans, our results suggest that American veterans of the Great War earned a higher wage premium than those of the Vietnam or Korean conflicts.     

Government debt and optimal monetary and fiscal policy

How do different levels of government debt affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policies? And what do these optimal policies imply for the evolution of government debt over time? To provide an answer, this paper studies a standard monetary policy model with nominal rigidities and monopolistic competition and adds to it a fiscal authority that issues nominal non-state contingent debt, levies distortionary labor income taxes and determines the level of public goods provision. Higher government debt levels make it optimal to reduce public spending, so as to dampen the adverse incentive effects of distortionary taxes, but also strongly influence the optimal stabilization response following technology shocks. In particular, higher debt levels give rise to larger risks to the fiscal budget and to tax rates. This makes it optimal to reduce government debt over time. The optimal speed of debt reduction is missed when using first-order approximations to optimal policies, but is shown to be quantitatively significant in a second-order approximation, especially when technology movements are largely unpredictable in nature.     

New Keynesian perspectives on labor market dynamics

We find that demand shocks play an important role for business-cycle fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies. The reason is that those shocks give a strong incentive to demand-constrained firms to adjust production and thereby labor input. Furthermore we argue that whether real wage rigidity à la Hall [2005. Employment fluctuations with equilibrium wage stickiness. American Economic Review 95, 50–65] helps explain the remaining part of the unemployment volatility puzzle depends critically on assumptions regarding the form of the wage bargain between firms and workers. Real wage rigidity tends to generate volatility in employment only in the case in which hours are chosen efficiently. If, on the other hand, the real wage is allowed to affect firms's choices of hours directly, the feature of real wage rigidity loses its ability to increase employment volatility.     

Preference heterogeneity, wage inequality, and trade

We consider individuals who value product variety, and who can be skilled or unskilled as workers. Skilled people prefer to consume skill-intensive goods. We show that under plausible conditions an increase in the relative size of the skilled population increases the relative wage of skilled workers, thereby increasing wage inequality. In our two-country model of trade, an increase in the relative supply of skilled labor in either country increases the relative wage of skilled workers, and hence increases inequality in both countries.     

Retail price concentration, transaction costs, and price flexibility circa 1900

This paper studies a unique 1901 data set containing prices of three products obtained from grocery stores in over 1400 cities nationwide. A striking characteristic is a high concentration of retail prices at relatively few “even” numbers. I propose a novel transactions cost explanation for this phenomenon on which existing theory is silent. In particular, grocers selected prices that simplified the task of toting up customer bills by hand and reduced related costs. As stores independently adopted this strategy across the country, prices converged to a few even numbers. Several empirical regularities for all three products are consistent with this explanation. An important implication is that preferences for computationally convenient prices would have made prices “sticky.” An independent study of price flexibility circa 1890 supports this hypothesis. The underlying data show price concentration patterns similar to the 1901 data, suggesting that the phenomenon covered a wide range of products.     

Organization and incentives in the age of sail

The British Navy in the age of sail was the most successful bureaucracy of its time. Its organization and incentive structures differed importantly from contemporaneous private sailing ventures, but closely resembled those of today’s large corporations. To induce efficient effort, the navy used a hierarchical tournament, in which sailors competed for higher pay that came with promotions based on relative performance. Promotion probabilities, the option value of future promotions, and the higher effort required of men in higher ranks and on larger vessels, combined to yield a highly skewed pay structure.