Big Bad Banks? The Winners and Losers from Bank Deregulation in the United States

We assess the impact of bank deregulation on the distribution of income in the United States. From the 1970s through the 1990s, most states removed restrictions on intrastate branching, which intensified bank competition and improved bank performance. Exploiting the cross‐state, cross‐time variation in the timing of branch deregulation, we find that deregulation materially tightened the distribution of income by boosting incomes in the lower part of the income distribution while having little impact on incomes above the median. Bank deregulation tightened the distribution of income by increasing the relative wage rates and working hours of unskilled workers.     

Analysis of the 1980 Sydney Survey of Work Patterns of Married Women: Further Results*

Using cross-section data from the 1980 Sydney survey of the work patterns of married women, this paper contributes to the very scarce Australian stock of disaggregate econometric studies of the labour market activities of married women. Labour force participation, hours of work and wage functions (reservation wage as well as market wage) are estimated in a second-generation static labour supply framework. Unique features of the study include the availability of direct data on previous market experience, a formulation of the impact of children on the participation decision which permits testing for the presence of economies of scale in child-minding activities, estimation of the reservation wage function, and a data base which permits a clear distinction between earnings and other forms of income.     

An Australian Housing Model*

A 13-equation model is developed which captures the essential economic features of the housing industry in Australia. The importance of speculative builders and investors is recognized. Empirical results are presented for two key equations. The asset price of existing dwellings (including land) owned by persons is explained by a portfolio choice or generalized asset adjustment model. This asset price then feeds in as a determinant of new private construction, along with construction costs of new dwellings, financial variables and a measure of demand-supply imbalance.     

The Neutrality of the Resource Rent Tax

Although less distorting than conventional royalties and income tax, the resource rent tax is strictly neutral only if the interest rate at which losses are carried forward relates correctly to the discount rate employed by investors in project evaluation. Thus it is possible in principle to design a resource rent tax that is strictly neutral only if parameters are set independently for each minerals investment. Such attempts to tailor parameters to each investment would make great demands on information and would increase business uncertainty. The paper suggests expedients to reduce the costs of non-neutrality when resource rent tax is applied with parameters that are of general application and discusses their use in Australia.     

The Determination of Fair Profits for the Property-Liability Insurance Firm

Single period and dynamic valuation models in continuous time, under certainty and uncertainty, are developed for a property-liability insurance contract to determine the “fair” (competitive) premium and underwriting profit. The intertemporal stochastic model assumes that the claim frequency and the price index of claim settlements are functions of a set of underlying state variables which follow a multivariate Wiener process. The competitive premium is shown to be proportional to the claim frequency and the price index for claim settlements at the time the policy is issued. The factor of proportionality varies directly with the claim settlement rate and the length of coverage, and inversely with the risk-adjusted real interest rate on the dollar-valued claim rate.