Good News and Bad News: Search from Unknown Wage Offer Distributions

The largest market in national economies is the labor market. Labor market contracting is characterized by job search, often from unknown wage offer distributions. This paper reports experimental tests of finite horizon models of job search in which the wage offer distribution is unknown. Theoretically-optimal search from an unknown wage offer distribution can have the seemingly paradoxical property that some offers will be accepted that are lower than other offers that will be rejected in the same period of the search horizon. Thus the reservation wage property (or lowest acceptable wage path) may not exist. This can occur because an offer that is a priori relatively high (good news) can imply that it is highly probable that search is from a favorable distribution, and such an offer can look unattractive when it is an a posteriori relatively low offer from a favorable distribution (bad news). This paper reports results from experimental treatments for search from unknown distributions in which the reservation wage property does exist and treatments in which it does not exist. We find that the consistency of search behavior with search theory reported in earlier papers is robust to the presence or absence of the reservation wage property and to whether the draws come from known or unknown distributions.     

Estimating exchange rate dynamics with diffusion processes: an application to Greek EMU data

Recently various exchange rate models capturing the dynamics during the transition from an exchange rate arrangement of floating rates into a currency union have been derived. Technically, these stochastic equilibrium models are diffusion processes which have to be estimated by discretely sampled observations. Using daily exchange rate data prior to the Greek EMU-entrance on 1 January 2001, we develop a rigorous estimation procedure. Our estimates point to an increasing interventionist economic policy in the run-up to the Greek EMU entrance. A comparison of this econometric indication with policy information provided (ex-post) by the Bank of Greece (BoG) in its Annual Report 2000 reveals that the BoG indeed pursued such an active policy stance (so-called institutional frontloading strategies).      

Joint outputs and real wage rates

The magnification effect in standard international trade theory asserts that if the relative price of the labor-intensive commodity increases, the real wage will also increase, as will the wage/rental ratio. This result depends upon the assumption that both activities are nonjoint—each combining labor and capital to produce a single output, so that if activities are joint instead, the results are in jeopardy. It is shown that if the difference between the share of commodity one produced in the first activity and in the second activity exceeds the difference between the labor distributive shares in the first activity and the second, an increase in commodity 1's relative price raises the wage/rental ratio. The real wage unambiguously rises in this case if and only if the ratio of the commodity output shares in the two activities exceeds the ratio of labor shares.     

Can intertemporal choice experiments elicit time preferences for consumption?

The paper considers what can be inferred about experimental subjects’ time preferences for consumption from responses to laboratory tasks involving tradeoffs between sums of money at different dates, if subjects can reschedule consumption spending relative to income in external capital markets. It distinguishes three approaches identifiable in the literature: the straightforward view; the separation view; and the censored data view. It shows that none of these is fully satisfactory and discusses the resulting implications for intertemporal decision-making experiments. JEL Classification C90, C91, D90, D91, D11, D12     

人力资本需求与工资差距:技术、贸易和收入的影响

人力资本水平的提高和技术贸易的发展都会促进人力资本密集型技术的进步,增加高等人力资本水平劳动力的需求,从而扩大了工资差距.在商品贸易中,制成品出口比例的增加会改变我国的产品需求结构,使高等人力资本密集型产品的生产增加.同时,居民收入水平的提高带来了消费升级,也促进了高等人力资本密集型产品的生产.高等人力资本密集型产品的生产引起了高等人力资本水平劳动力需求的增加,扩大了工资差距.     

农民工工资收入偏低分析——现实、宏观效应与原因

农民工工资收入长期处于一个较低的水平,然而,农民工对我国GDP及其增长做出了巨大的贡献。农民工对GDP增长的高贡献与其较低的工资收入水平导致了我国社会有效需求不足。农民工工资收入偏低的核心机制是古典产权制度下的工资市场定位。因此,要解决这个问题,必须进行相应的经济体制改革,构建和谐社会。     

Valuing ecosystem goods and services: a new approach using a surrogate market and the combination of a multiple criteria analysis and a Delphi panel to assign weights to the attributes

A new approach to valuing ecosystem goods and services (EGS) is described which incorporates components of the economic theory of value, the theory of valuation (USappraisal), a multi-model multiple criteria analysis (MCA) of ecosystem attributes, and a Delphi panel of experts to assign weights to the attributes. The total value of ecosystem goods and services in the various tenure categories in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA) in Australia was found to be in the range AUD$188 to $211 million year⁻¹, or AUD$210 to 236 ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ across tenures, as at 30 June 2002. Application of the weightings assigned by the Delphi panelists and assessment of the ecological integrity of the various tenure categories resulted in values being derived for individual ecosystem services in the World Heritage Area. Biodiversity and refugia were the two attributes ranked most highly at AUD$18.6 to $20.9 million year⁻¹ and AUD$16.6 to $18.2 million year⁻¹, respectively.     

Keynes, uncertainty and interest rates

Uncertainty plays an important role in The General Theory, particularlyin the theory of interest rates. Keynes did not provide a theoryof uncertainty, but he did make some enlightening remarks aboutthe direction he thought such a theory should take. I arguethat some modern innovations in the theory of probability allowus to build a theory which captures these Keynesian insights.If this is the right theory, however, uncertainty cannot carryits weight in Keynes's arguments. This does not mean that theconclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken; intheir best formulation they may succeed with merely an appealto risk.     

Strategic Environmental Standards, Wage Incomes and the Location of Polluting Firms

The purpose of this paper is tostudy how the choice of environmental standardsby governments is affected by the existence ofwage incomes when firms locations areendogenous. In developed countries labor isunionized, which allows positive wage incomesto arise. Thus, each government has incentivesto persuade firms to locate in its countrysince social welfare depends on suchincomes. But, as pollution damages theenvironment, each government will only try toattract polluting firms to thecountry, to obtain the wage incomes, whenthe valuation of environmental damage showsthat it is low.     

从性别角度探究福建茶叶产业的工资收入问题

本文在国内外文献研究的基础上，运用经济学及社会学的方法，从性别分析的角度对福建茶叶产业工人的工资收入问题做定量分析。分析结果显示教育与培训对工资收入影响不大，性别因素间接影响工资收入，地区因素直接影响福建茶叶产业工资收入，分析结果具有一定的政策含义。