The Econometrics and Economics of the Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Getting from Known Unknowns to Known Knowns

I discuss the econometrics and the economics of past research on the effects of minimum wages on employment in the United States. My intent is to try to identify key questions raised in the recent literature, and some from the earlier literature, which I think hold the most promise for understanding the conflicting evidence and arriving at a more definitive answer about the employment effects of minimum wages. My secondary goal is to discuss how we can narrow the range of uncertainty about the likely effects of the large minimum wage increases becoming more prevalent in the United States. I discuss some insights from both theory and past evidence that may be informative about the effects of high minimum wages, and try to emphasize what research can be done now and in the near future to provide useful evidence to policy‐makers on the results of the coming high minimum wage experiment, whether in the United States or in other countries.     

Relative Guarantees

Many real-world financial contracts have some sort of minimum rate of return guarantee included. One class of these guarantees is so-called relative guarantees, i.e., guarantees where the minimum guaranteed rate of return is given as a function of the stochastic return on a reference portfolio. These guarantees are the topic of this paper. We analyse a wide range of different functional specifications for the minimum guaranteed rate of return, hereunder both so-called maturity and multi-period guarantees. Several closed form solutions are presented.     

90年代以来劳动力价值问题研究述评

文章概述了90年代以来理论界在劳动力价值的构成范围、劳动力价值的实现与按劳分配、智力劳动力工资的理论解释问题上提出的许多新的观点并作出了简要的评论。随着社会主义市场经济的发展，还有许多问题，如：劳动力价格背离价值的理论问题，劳动力价格高于价值的现实问题，劳动力的特殊性对劳动力价值的影响等值得深入探讨，以使劳动价值论更好地指导社会主义市场经济实践。     

Use of minimum risk approach in the estimation of regression models with missing observations

This article considers a linear regression model with some missing observations on the response variable and presents two estimators of regression coefficients employing the approach of minimum risk estimation. Small disturbance asymptotic properties of these estimators along with the traditional unbiased estimator are analyzed and conditions, that are easy to check in practice, for the superiority of one estimator over the other are derived. Received May 2001     

Locally minimum variance unbiased estimator in a discontinuous density function

The exact forms of the locally minimum variance unbiased estimators and their variances are given in the case of a discontinuous density function.     

Sample Design and Allocation for Random Digit Dialling

Sample design and sample allocation methods are developed for random digit dialling in household telephone surveys. The proposed method is based on a two-way stratification of telephone numbers. A weighted probability proportional to size sample allocation technique is used, with auxiliary variables about the telephone coverage rates, within local telephone exchanges of each substrata. This makes the sampling design nearly “self-weighting” in residential numbers when the prior information is well assigned. A computer program generates random numbers for the local areas within the existing phone capacities. A simulation study has shown greater sample allocation gain by the weighted probabilities proportional to size measures over other sample allocation methods. The amount of dialling required to obtain the sample is less than for proportional allocation. A decrease is also observed on the gain in sample allocation for some methods through the increasing sample sizes.     

A monetary business cycle model with unemployment

To reproduce key features of the post-war U.S. data, most monetary business cycle models must assume there are high price markups and that agents have high labour supply elasticities despite the existence of contradictory microeconomic evidence. This paper eliminates the need for these assumptions by introducing imperfectly observed effort into a limited participation model. The estimated model is better able to capture the sluggish price response to a monetary policy shock than the standard model, and is consistent with evidence regarding the qualitative responses of the U.S. economy to technology shocks, fiscal policy shocks and monetary policy shocks.     

应科学运用马克思的工资和利息理论——兼与关柏春等有关观点的商榷

社会主义公有制经济中的工资实行按劳分配的劳动报酬形式,是劳动者在必要劳动时间内创造价值的货币表现;在私营和外资企业中,工资依然是劳动力价值或价格的转化形式而非劳动的价值或价格;利息收入是非劳动收入,但是非劳收入并不等同于剥削收入.     

实行农村义务教育经费最低财政拨款标准研究

论文以重庆市铜梁、永川、垫江、石柱、丰都五县为例,对重庆市县级农村义务教育经费最低财政拨款标准进行了定性和定量分析,从财政支出结构角度分析其可行性.认为,建立并实行"最低标准"是构建重庆和谐社会的需要.