The Evolution of the Veblenian Dichotomy: Veblen,Hamilton, Ayres,and Foster

One of the most troubling developments in recent years has been widening income inequality in the United States and elsewhere. We argue Post Keynesian Institutionalism (PKI) provides insight into the causes of increasing income inequality and our contribution is threefold. First, we compare PKI to the “financialization” literature, noting key similarities and differences. Second, we examine changes in financial structure and income inequality for a sample of developed nations, showing that financialization has increased in nearly all the countries sampled and that this increase has generally been accompanied by a rise in income inequality. Third, we demonstrate that the development of modern financial structures does not preclude an expansive welfare state and egalitarian public policies. Our finding is congruent with Hyman Minsky's conception of PKI, which stressed both that “economic systems are not natural systems” and that capitalism comes in as many varieties as Heinz has of pickles.     

A spatial taxonomy of broadband regions in the United States

The steady growth of broadband penetration in the United States is indicative of a major shift in advanced data services and last-mile infrastructure in the deregulated telecommunication environment. Although there are concerns with the equitable provision of broadband services in urban, rural and remote areas, the diffusion process has also created a unique landscape of broadband availability that reflects elements of competition, federal policy, local government initiatives, technological limitations and location. This paper explores the dynamic and diverse spatial landscape of broadband availability in the United States at the zip code level, for 2004. In addition, this study provides a multivariate, spatial taxonomy of broadband regions, highlighting their socioeconomic and demographic differences.     

The Institutional Theory of Radhamakal Mukerjee: Lessons for Modern Nonprofit Economics

This paper examines the way the institutional economics of Radhamakal Mukerjee can inform modern nonprofit economics. A brief survey of Mukerjee's work highlights several elements of his theory that yield useful implications understanding the nonprofit sector. First, Mukerjee's theory implies that this sector's role is in helping the economies to better accommodate broader societal values, rather than in addressing market failure. Second, his theory suggests that the nonprofit sector provides an institutional framework for the pursuit of common interests that are not reducible to individual utility maximization. Finally, as he considered the state to be inherently coercive, he believed the nonprofit sector to be the only meaningful outlet for citizenship behavior, thus advancing an original theory of complementary state-nonprofit relationship. The paper concludes with calling for more institutionalist research on the economics of the nonprofit sector.     

The Great Depression in Canada and the United States: A Neoclassical Perspective

Canada suffered a major depression from 1929 to 1939. In terms of output it was similar to the Great Depression in the United States. However, total factor productivity (TFP) in Canada did not recover relative to trend, while in the United States TFP had recovered by 1937. We find that the neoclassical growth model, with TFP treated as exogenous, can account for over half of the decline in output relative to trend in Canada. In contrast, we find that conventional explanations for the Great Depression—monetary shocks, terms of trade shocks, and labor market and competition policies—do not work for Canada. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E30, N12, N42.     

论美国自然生态资源中的公共信托理论

美国宪法修正案第五条之征收条款规定,没有支付合理补偿,私人财产不得征为公用。作为英国普通法的遗产,公共信托理论又赋予了州保护湿地、沿海区域等自然生态资源的绝对权威。在公共信托财产及其毗邻土地之上,美国征收条款与公共信托理论交互其内,如何平衡公共信托的信托利益与私人征收请求权所主张的私人利益间的关系,值得研究。     

美欧煤炭期货市场发展研究

文章以美欧上市煤炭期货前后背景为出发点,分析美国和欧洲上市煤炭期货前后的经济环境、煤炭市场供需情况以及上市后的市场运行情况等,并对美欧煤炭期货市场进行对比分析,引出现代期货市场已经具有为生产者、经营者、消费者甚至投机者在内的一种市场导向功能,特别是生产导向功能方面表现最为明显。     

The stability of long-run money demand in the United States: A new approach

In this paper, we search for cointegration relation and determine the location of the changes in the long-run money demand in the US. We use the same data set as the previous studies and find that there are two regime changes.     

A Band Spectral Analysis of Exports and Economic Growth in the United States

This paper examines the role of exports in aggregate economic growth in the United States using band spectral regression. The findings reveal a predictable relationship between long-run frequency components of real export growth and real GDP growth over the post-Bretton Woods period of flexible exchange rates. The study fails to uncover a significant relationship between long-run frequency components of the terms of trade and real output. Overall, the findings support the export-led growth hypothesis, and dismiss long-run movements in the terms of trade as an important determinant of real output growth.     

湖北不同地区农户油菜供给行为差异分析

湖北是一个油菜种植大省,各地区农户油菜供给行为却存在着差异,他们受到农产品商品率、兼业程度、资产专用性程度、土地利用方式、农产品市场结构等因素的影响。当价格出现波动时,各地区农户的供给反应更不相同。因此,分析了解这些差异有助于我们更有利的促进油菜生产。     

Revisiting Occupational Crowding in the United States: A Preliminary Study

In her study of occupational segregation in the United States using the 1960 Census, Barbara R. Bergmann found black males with low levels of education more concentrated in low-skill service and laborer occupations than white males and virtually excluded from higher status occupations. Utilizing a crowding index which, similar to Bergmann's, controls for the education level of the worker, this paper presents an analysis of the employment patterns of black males and females in fifty-nine occupations in Wayne County (Detroit, Michigan) and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1990. Within blue-collar and service employment, males are under-represented in the craft occupations and concentrated in low-skill operative, laborer, and service occupations. Females are under-represented in both craft and operative occupations and concentrated in low-skill service occupations. Within white-collar employment, both males and females are largely excluded from high-skill private sector managerial occupations. Black representation in public sector managerial and private sector professional occupations is better in Detroit than Pittsburgh. The decline in manufacturing employment in both counties has left black males with fewer occupational options and black females over-represented in low status clerical and service occupations.     

Agri-environmental policies in the EU and United States: A comparison

Agri-environmental policies (AEPs) in the United States and the European Union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production, while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers. We show that despite similar origins, AEPs in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation. For example, AEPs in most member states of the EU-15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development. This objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods, such as attractive landscapes, produced by agriculture. The rationale is market failure, and there is empirical evidence that Europeans are willing to pay for such positive externalities. No comparable provision exists in U.S. policy. By contrast, U.S. AEPs focus almost entirely on reducing agriculture's negative externalities, such as soil erosion. Second, we find that U.S. programs are more targeted than their EU counterparts, and take opportunity cost into account. The EU programs, on the other hand, address a wider range of externalities, and are focused more on the paying for a particular farming process than reducing specific negative externalities. The EU takes a broader view of AEPs than does the United States, both in terms of type of activity that can be funded, and by using less targeting by land characteristics, and so the European program could be more easily used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers. Despite this, we find evidence that many of the amenities targeted by the programs are demanded by the population.     

Competing macro-hypotheses in the United States: A Kalman filtering approach

The empirical validity of alternative views about the short-run determinants of real output growth in the United States is investigated. A nested framework is used to test the macro rational expectations (MRE) hypothesis directly against two competing hypotheses - the neo-Keynesian view that anticipated and unanticpated monetary policy both matter,and Friedman's (1977) proposition that increased inflation uncertainty reduces real output at least temporarily. The unobservable explanatory variables are obtained from time-varying-parameter models of inflation and money growth, which generate forecast errors and their conditional variances consistent with rational expectations under a continuously chaning policy regime. The empirical results strongly support Friedman's view. The MRE hypothesis must be rejected since both anticipated and unanticipated monetary changes matter. The results prove robust across different model specifications and estimation techniques.     

The Universal Capitalism Movement in the United States

Ideas on how to make the fruits of capitalism more braodly enjoyed are not new. A rich body of thought exists advocating a redefinition of socioeconomic mechanisms to this end within the context of private property. This article traces the evolution of this thinking within the United States from before the American Revolution to the present. The culmination of this intellectual tradition is the universal stock ownership plan (USOP). The means of, and prospects for, experimenting with such an initiative are discussed.     

美国的前沿科学进展

本文研究了美国近年来在基础科学领域取得的主要进展、国家科学政策动向以及前沿领域的研究重点,认为在生命科学、物质科学、能源科学、信息科学以及诸多交叉学科领域正孕育着革命性突破,美国政府为确保国家在科学领域的世界级领导地位,加大了联邦政府的资金投入。本文研究将为我国准确把握世界科学技术发展态势、整体部署前沿科学研究提供参考。     

The recent rise of profits in the United States

Profitability in the United States has been rising since the early 1980s, and by 1997 was nearing its postwar peak in the mid-1960s. The profit share has also recovered from its postwar low in the early 1970s. In this paper, I examine the role of the change in the profit share and capital intensity on movements in the rate of profit between 1947 and 1997. Its recent recovery is traced to a rise in the profit share in national income and a decline in the capital-output ratio.     

A fair share: Burden-sharing preferences in the United States and China

Using a sequential discrete choice experiment, we investigate preferences for distributing the economic burden of reducing CO₂ emissions in the two largest CO₂-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO₂ emissions according to their country's relative (1) historical emissions, (2) income level, (3) emissions per capita, and (4) current emissions. We found that respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. In addition, the willingness to pay was much higher in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important for Chinese than for Americans. To some extent the willingness to pay varies with socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes. For example, university-educated respondents in the United States are willing to pay more for the rule that is the least costly for their own country, compared with those with a lower education level. At the same time, the ranking of the two most preferred rules are generally robust across all socioeconomic groups within each country.     

A cointegration analysis of gasoline demand in the United States

Time-series estimation of gasoline demand elasticities often does not take into account the possibility of nonstationarity in the underlying data, which may render the parameter estimates spurious. Studies have shown that the time trending variables used to explain gasoline demand could be difference stationary and therefore, may require cointegration analysis to assess the relationship among the trending variables. In this work we use the cointegration technique to derive long-run and short-run demand elasticities of noncommercial gasoline consumption using time-series data for the USA from 1949 to 2004. We also attempt to incorporate the presence of a structural break in the data generation process of the time trending variables. Our results show that the consumption of gasoline and lifetime income have a long-term stable relationship after the second oil shock of 1978. Prior to the first oil shock of 1973, no such long-run relationship could be established through cointegration.