BILATERALISM IN THE INTERWAR WORLD ECONOMY*

Discriminatory protectionist policies in the 1930s are assumed to have led to a collapse of multilateral trading patterns. This paper examines the trends in bilateralism during the interwar period for a sample of ten countries. The findings show that, with the exception of Germany between 1934 and 1938, the level of bilateralism fluctuated but did not see a significant trend increase in the period of increased protectionism during the 1930s.     

NEW GNP ESTIMATES FOR THE BELGIAN ECONOMY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD

New GNP estimates in current and constant prices for the Belgian economy in the interwar period are presented. The series are conceptually and methodologically consistent with the post-World War Ii data and cover both the income and expenditure approaches. The new estimates differ considerably from the data that have been published before, casting new light on our present understanding of Belgian economic growth in the 1920s and 1930s.     

THE AGGREGATE DEMAND FOR LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA: A META-ANALYSIS*

In this paper, meta-analysis techniques are applied to 34 studies of the aggregate demand for Australian labour. Inverse associations between the real wage and employment and demand and unemployment are established, and positive associations between demand and employment and the real wage and unemployment are established. The associations are stronger with respect to the real wage. The results suggest that at least two-thirds of the variation in estimates across studies is artifactual and is due to specification differences. It is argued in this paper that the available studies are of limited value to policy formulation. No single empirical study can provide definitive measures of a particular parameter. This guarantees that substantial numbers of empirical studies of the more important parameters describing labor demand will have been produced. (Hamermesh, 1993, p. 61)     

THE DUTCH ECONOMY 1921–39: REVISED MACROECONOMIC DATA FOR THE INTERWAR PERIOD

A set of revised macroeconomic time series for the Netherlands 1921–39 is presented. The series cover the "Consolidated Accounts for the Nation" of the SNA in current prices as well as the national product account and some additional series in prices for the previous year. The new interwar series differ considerably from the data that has been published before. They are also more comprehensive, more detailed, and conceptually consistent with the modern national accounts.     

NEW MICROFOUNDATIONS FOR THE AGGREGATE MATCHING FUNCTION*

Empirical studies of the aggregate labor market matching function have favored a Cobb–Douglas functional form, for which there are no microfoundations in the existing literature. I present a new model for the matching process, based on a “telephone‐line” Poisson queuing process, which, unlike other microeconomic approaches, can be integrated directly into standard theoretical search models. This implies a CES matching function, approximately Cobb–Douglas when search costs are approximately linear. The model allows empirical estimates of matching function parameters to be interpreted in terms of the costs and benefits of search.     

微观生产函数与总量生产函数的矛盾——技术再转换

根据“替代原理”和利润最大化的假定,新古典学派得出命题:利润率与人均资本量之间存在着反向单调关系。该命题在单一产品或同比例要素模型中无疑是正确的,然而一进入异质品模型就会面临“技术再转换”的悖论。一个重要的原因在于异质品模型中,在统一利润率的假设下,收入分配会影响相对价格,从而技术不能按人均资本量排序。“技术再转换”的悖论使新古典的总量生产函数受到质疑。     

RACIAL PROFILING OR RACIST POLICING? BOUNDS TESTS IN AGGREGATE DATA*

State‐wide reports on police traffic stops and searches summarize very large populations, making them potentially powerful tools for identifying racial bias, particularly when statistics on search outcomes are included. But when the reported statistics conflate searches involving different levels of police discretion, standard tests for racial bias are not applicable. This article develops a model of police search decisions that allows for nondiscretionary searches and derives tests for racial bias in data that mix different search types. Our tests reject unbiased policing as an explanation of the disparate impact of motor‐vehicle searches on minorities in Missouri.     

THE SIZE OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS AND ESTIMATES FOR THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY IN THE PERIOD 1964 TO 19801

Household production as well as other informal economic activities have received scant attention in economic science. In the last decade the view has been taken that there has been a big shift from formal to informal production. In order to examine this trend this article presents estimates for the size of household production for the Federal Republic of Germany which are based on time-budget data collected from 1964 to 1980. To show the sensitivity of the results two different estimating methods the Opportunity Cost Method and the Market Cost Method, are used. Since productivity growth took place not only in the formal economy but also in household production, estimates will be presented which take productivity growth explicitly into account. The article concludes with a comparison of estimates for other countries.     

ON THE SOURCES OF AGGREGATE FLUCTUATIONS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES

Recent research on macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging economies has advocated introducing a stochastic productivity trend or allowing for interest rate shocks and financial frictions. We estimate a model that encompasses these two approaches, shedding light on their relative merits and on how financial frictions affect the transmission of shocks. The model accounts for aggregate fluctuations by assigning a dominant role to financial frictions in amplifying conventional (temporary) productivity shocks, whereas trend shocks play a minor role. A link between spreads and expected future productivity emerges as essential for a reasonable approximation to the data.