ON THE EQUIVALENCE OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF THE ELASTICITY OF SUBSTITUTION

This paper provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the equivalence of three alternative measures of the elasticity of factor substitution: the Allen-Uzawa partial elasticity, the shadow elasticity and the general two-factor two-price elasticity.     

A COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF ECONOMIC WELL-BEING FOR GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES

This paper, using six waves of data (1984-89) from the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), compares economic well-being using single year income, multi-year income, and wealth as measures. We find inequality to be greater in the United States than in Germany regardless of the measure used. However, the relative degree of inequality varies across measures. When we disaggregate our data by age and gender categories, in general we find greater inequality in the United States, but wealth inequality among older Germans is greater than it is among older Americans.     

搜寻理论、失业救济金与中国城镇人口失业持续时间

通过对享受失业救济金者和不享受者失业救济金者的再就业概率的分析,我们可以发现,与享受失业救济金者相比,人力资本特征、家庭特征和宏观经济环境对不享受失业救济金者的再就业概率有显著正向影响,转换模型也得出了失业救济金会降低再就业概率、延长失业持续时间的结论。     

REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT DISPARITIES: AN EVALUATION OF POLICY MEASURES*

This paper analyses the efficacy of regional and federal government policies in reducing inter‐regional unemployment disparities. We use as our framework a two‐region general equilibrium model with a given freely‐mobile supply of labour. We assume inter‐regional migration to occur in response to inter‐regional utility differentials. Each region has households, firms and a regional government. In addition to regional governments, there is a federal government. The firms in a region use a single factor, labour, to produce a single good which we assume to be different to that produced in the other region. It is supplied to households and to the regional government in the form of payroll taxes. Households consume some, trade some with households in the other region and give some up to the federal government as income tax. Firms and households bargain over wages and firms then choose employment to maximise profits. The resulting equilibrium will generally not be a full‐employment one. We simulate a linearised numerical version of the model. We examine seven alternative policies, six carried out by a regional government and one by the federal government. In the first group there are traditional tax/expenditure polices as well as policies which might be seen as attacking the natural rate of unemployment: changes in unemployment benefits, changes in union power, changes in the labour force and changes in labour productivity. The federal government policy is a regionally‐differentiated fiscal policy. Contrary to expectations, many policies which have traditionally been recommended to alleviate unemployment are found, in fact, to exacerbate the unemployment problem.     

THE BEHAVIOR OF CASINO GAMING REVENUE OVER THE BUSINESS CYCLE CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF “INCOME”

Reasons exist for believing that casino gaming revenue does not respond equally to all sources of income over the business cycle. We examine the growth and variability of casino revenue resulting from the growth and variability in different sources of income. We find that casino revenue behaves quite differently in response to short‐run and long‐run variation in each income source, thus revealing that the common use of personal income masks underlying drivers of each state's business cycle. Our results have implications for revenue forecasting models, research on the growth and variability of tax bases in general, and public policy. (JEL H72, H79, L83)     

UNEMPLOYMENT PERSISTENCE AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF EXCHANGE RATE PEGS

It is commonly thought that an open economy can accommodate output shocks through either exchange rate or real sector adjustments. We formalize this notion by incorporating unemployment persistence into a two‐sided escape clause model of currency crises. We show that unemployment persistence makes a currency peg more fragile and undermines the credibility of the monetary authority in a dynamic setting. The fragility is captured by a devaluation premium in expectations that increases the average inflation rate when the currency peg is more vulnerable to ‘busts’ than ‘booms’. This interaction between macroeconomic and microeconomic rigidities suggests that a policy reform can only be consistent if it renders either exchange rates or the economy more flexible.     

THE EVOLUTION OF INFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT: EXPLAINING THE ROARING NINETIES

This paper analyses the relation between US inflation and unemployment from the perspective of ‘frictional growth,’ a phenomenon arising from the interplay between growth and frictions. In particular, we focus on the interaction between money growth and nominal frictions. In this context we show that monetary policy has not only persistent, but permanent real effects, giving rise to a long‐run inflation‐unemployment tradeoff. We evaluate this tradeoff empirically and assess the impact of productivity, money growth, budget deficit, and trade deficit on the US unemployment and inflation trajectories during the nineties.     

OPTIMAL UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE,WITH HUMAN CAPITAL DEPRECIATION,AND DURATION DEPENDENCE*

This article introduces the possibility of a deterioration in job opportunities during unemployment into the standard optimal unemployment insurance (UI) design framework and characterizes the efficient UI scheme. The optimal program may display two novel features, which cannot be present in stationary models. First, UI transfers are bounded below by a minimal assistance level that arises endogenously in the efficient contract. Second, the optimal scheme implies a wage subsidy for long‐term unemployed workers. Numerical simulations based on the Spanish and U.S. economies suggest that both assistance transfers and wage subsidies should be part of the UI scheme in these countries.     

EVIDENCE ON RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF CONCENTRATION: A TOOL FOR ANALYSIS OF LDC INEQUALITY

The evidence on economic inequality in nearly all developing countries is both seriously incomplete and of moderate to poor quality. In addition, information often corresponds to distributions which appear to be less revealing and useful than other ones; thus it can be argued that the frequently available distribution of income among households ranked by household income is less helpful than the seldom found distribution of consumption among persons ranked by per capita household consumption. Whether one's objective is to assess inequality in some absolute sense or (especially) to make comparisons across countries or evaluate trends over time, it is useful to know whether systematic relationships exist among various measures of inequality, in particular between those most commonly available and those conceptually most interesting. Illustrative comparisons of a variety of inequality indicators are presented. They suggest that in developing countries the concentration of income among persons (assuming equal distribution within the family) does not differ much from the concentration among households. They also suggest that the concentration of consumption is somewhat less unequal than that of income, the ratio of the respective Gini coefficients tending to cluster around 0.85 to 0.90.