Inflation and Relative Price Variability: New Evidence for the United States

This article provides new evidence on the empirical relationship between inflation and relative prices in the United States. In line with the predictions of recent monetary search models, we find that the impact of expected inflation on relative price variability (RPV) has disappeared during the recent period when inflation expectations have been stabilized on a low level. Endogenous break‐point tests are applied to identify the timing and to confirm the significance of the changing role of inflation for RPV. The empirical findings are robust with respect to different price indices, disaggregation levels, and measurement concepts.     

The effects of immigrants,women, and teenagers on the relative earnings of black males

There is currently a debate taking place on the impact of immigration on the employment of native-born Americans. Several recent studies have attempted to empirically examine the effect on nativeborn workers but few have investigated the impact on the economic status of black workers. This article attempts to address this question by examining the effects of competition from recent immigrants on the relative earnings of black males. The effects of potential competition from female and teenage workers is also investigated. The results suggest that the relative earnings of centralcity black makes are, in fact, sensitive to the degree of labor force penetration of recent immigrants and female workers.     

COMMODITY PRICE SHOCKS AND THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY SINCE FEDERATION*

Australia has experienced frequent and large commodity export price shocks similar to commodity exporters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but this price volatility has had much more modest impact on economic performance. Why? This paper explores Australian terms of trade volatility since 1901. It identifies two major price shock episodes before the recent mining‐led boom and bust. It assesses their relative magnitude, their impact on de‐industrialisation and distribution during the booms, and the labour market and policy responses to the shocks. Australia has indeed responded differently to volatile commodity prices than have other commodity exporters.     

中国mall发展现状及前景展望

近几年来,我国大型购物中心--mall发展十分迅速,形成一股投资热,文章指出了mall建设中存在的概念模糊性、投资盲目性、盈利急迫性问题,在对我国为mall生存发展所提供的条件进行分析的基础上,指出应着重发展社区购物中心,并对已经建成的mall如何发展提出了一些设想.     

When Will the Gender Gap in Retirement Income Narrow?

Among recent retirees, women receive substantially less retirement income from Social Security and private pensions than men. Increases in women's labor market attachment and earnings relative to men over the past 50 years provide some optimism for an improvement in female retirement income, particularly for married women. This study shows that women's income from Social Security and private pensions has improved only slightly relative to men over the past 25 years. Using data on people approaching retirement age over the next 20 years, prospects for future improvement are investigated. One of the main conclusions is that pension income among women (particularly married women) will rise sharply relative to men's over the next few decades, but a substantial gap could remain even if women close the gap in experience and salaries.     

A comparison of poverty in South Africa's nine provinces

Poverty in South Africa varies greatly across the nine provinces. An accurate estimation of relative poverty shares is important because they serve as key indices for targeting social expenditure. In this article we test the robustness of provincial poverty rankings against changes in measurement methodology. In recent years, a large body of international literature has developed concerning the choice of an appropriate poverty line and the construction of more appropriate poverty measures. This article uses two of these recent developments ‐ the concept of a poverty critical range in place of a single poverty line and distribution‐sensitive decomposable poverty measures — to re‐examine provincial poverty. Results are checked across two recent national data sets.     

Price oscillation, oligopolistic behaviour and inflation: The Argentine case

This paper argues that the degree of relative price oscillation is one of the essential characteristics of any inflationary process. Inflations which are similar in terms of their overall inflationary rates may be differentiated by the degree of price oscillations. The paper also contends that price oscillations are very much the consequence of an underlying struggle between oligopolistic groups for a share of the income, and that this behaviour has become more generalized than before and has become one of the major causes, and one of the most dangerous effects, of inflation. Much of this interpretation is based on the recent experience of Argentina.     

Labor force competition and the black-white wage gap

Have the increasing numbers of women and immigrants in the U.S. labor force adversely affected the relative earnings of black men? A recent article in this journal argued that they have, based on empirical analysis of 1970 census data. The present study begins with a critique of both the theoretical assumptions and the empirical methods of this earlier article. A regression analysis of 1980 census data is then undertaken, which indicates that recent immigration has not had a negative impact on the relative wages of central-city black men. The findings also suggest that while higher rates of female labor force participation are statistically associated with lower black-white wage ratios, this effect is limited to teenagers.     

Intellectual Property Rights in the Asian-Pacific Region: problems, patterns, and policy

This paper explores recent theory and evidence regarding increased protection of intellectual property rights (ZPRs) in Asia. Knowledge has significant public good aspects making optimal provision a problem of trading off universal access against adequate incentives for R&D. Given the ease of evasion of IPR relative to tariffs, attempts to push low and middleincome countries to higher levels of protection may be against their national interests. The Uruguay Round may encounter less than enthusiastic enforcement. Further efforts to refine IPR protection might usefully be focused on flexibility instead of harmonisation.     

THE SWEDISH WAGE–RENTAL RATIO AND ITS DETERMINANTS, 1877–1926

Trends in wage–rental ratios figure prominently in the recent literature on factor price convergence and globalisation in the late nineteenth century. Sweden has been described as a free-trade country whose wage–rental ratio exhibited a distinctive upward trend before World War I. This article presents a new land price series that indicates an increase in land rentals and an evolution of the wage–rental ratio more in line with other European protectionist countries. We explore the determinants of the Swedish wage–rental ratio and assess the relative importance of protectionism and changes in Swedish farming's product mix from crop to animal products.     

The Philippines: Economic Developments and Prospects

The recent acceleration of economic growth in the Philippines is remarkable, especially in the context of the dramatic slide in its economic position relative to neighbouring East Asian economies since the early 1960s. It has stimulated discussion–both locally and overseas–of the contributing influences and of the economy's ability to sustain the growth momentum. This paper reviews the relevant literature, focusing on the following factors: political stability, macroeconomic balance, microeconomic efficiency, and equity. Past experience with boom-bust cycles warrants a cautious view of the longer-term prospects of the Philippine economy. Among other major obstacles, the poor state of public finance and low domestic saving rate stand in the way of a stable and self-sustained growth. In some respects, however, the recent performance holds promise as only the first step in the path being taken towards more rapid economic growth that is sustainable and equitable.     

Real effective exchange rates and purchasing-power-parity convergence: Empirical evidence for Denmark, 1875–2002

Abstract

Official nominal and real effective krone-rate indices compiled by the Danmarks Nationalbank are available only for the most recent decades. This article makes an attempt to overcome this data shortage by constructing long historical time-series indices of nominal and real effective krone rates for the period 1875–2002. Furthermore, the article presents a first exploratory examination of the empirical evidence regarding long-run relative purchasing-power-parity (PPP) convergence based on univariate unit-root testing of the two new long time-series indices for the real effective krone rate, with respectively consumer prices and wholesale prices as deflators. The fastest mean reversion towards relative PPP seems to have occurred in those periods where Denmark has pursued a fixed-exchange-rate policy vis-à-vis the majority of its trading partners and thus in those periods with the lowest volatility in the nominal effective krone rate.     

Exchange rate sensitivity of Japan’s bilateral trade flows

The traditional way of assessing the impact of currency depreciation on the trade balance has been to estimate the elasticity of trade volume to relative prices. To this end, most previous studies used aggregate trade data. To shy away from problems associated with using aggregate data, recent studies have relied on bilateral trade data. Since import and export price data is not available on bilateral level, this study proposes an alternative way of assessing the impact of currency depreciation on bilateral trade flows. The models are applied between Japan and her nine largest trading partners using recent advances in time-series modeling.     

Monetary and Nonmonetary Returns to Education in Indonesia

Some important aspects of returns to education in Indonesia have been neglected. This paper draws on the Indonesia Family Life Survey, a longitudinal survey, to shed some light on these aspects. This paper finds in a Mincerian specification that a more recent rate of return is in line with the rates found in previous research. A quantile regression is applied to show that the rate varies little in the conditional distribution of earnings, which stands in stark contrast to findings from some developed countries. In addition, the rate of return in self‐employment is estimated to be lower than that in paid employment for person‐ and sector‐specific reasons. In addition to monetary returns to education, happiness returns to education are considered. This paper advances evidence that education has important and robust implications for happiness above and beyond absolute and relative levels of income.     

浅谈中国的西方节日热

近几年随着对外开放和对外交流的加深,人们不断追求时尚和潮流,出现了在中国西方节日热的现象。同时,中国传统节日相对降温。这种现象给中国造成了很大的影响。对此,中国政府首先应该制定法律,采取措施保护和复兴我们的传统节日和传统文化,有利于避免中国新生代西化;老百姓也不要一味地存有崇洋心理,应该充分了解西方文化,正确对待西方文化,热爱祖国的文化,并使之发扬光大。     

Long‐Run Trends in Australian Executive Remuneration: BHP, 1887–2012

Outside the United States, little is known of long‐run trends in executive compensation. We fill this gap by studying BHP Billiton, a resources giant that has long been one of the largest companies on the Australian stock market. From 1887 to 2012, trends in CEO and director remuneration (relative to average earnings) follow a U‐shape. This matches the pattern for US executive compensation, Australian top incomes, and (for the past two decades) average trends in executive compensation in top Australian firms. Like the United States, Australia experienced a post‐war ‘great compression’ prior to the recent ‘great divergence’.     

German trade unions after unification — Third degree wage discriminating monopolists?

German Trade Unions After Unification — Third Degree Wage Discriminating Monopolists? — After unification, real wages in eastern Germany rose rapidly relative to labor productivity and despite high and rising levels of unemployment. This substantial and rapid increase in wages relative to western Germany is difficult to explain without recourse to models of union behavior and collective bargaining. This paper applies and extends such models and evaluates plausible explanations for recent wage developments in the ex-GDR.     

国外顾客终生价值研究

文章通过顾客终生价值的引入,识别了顾客终生价值的研究焦点,并且评介了国外相关领域的研究模型。     

The assessment: knowledge, skills, and competitiveness

The autumn 1988 issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policyconsidered the UK's deficiencies in vocational education andtraining (VET). It was there that Finegold and Soskice firstpopularized the notion of the 'low skills/low quality' equilibrium.This Assessment introduces a range of articles which discussdevelopments in the decade that has passed since then. It arguesthat, despite massive policy initiatives, there has been onlylimited improvement in the UK's relative VET performance. Considerableprogress has been made in analysis of market failures affectingthe supply of skills, and in analysis of the possible causesand consequences of low employer demand for skills (systemsfailure). The recent Competitiveness White Paper reflects thisimproved understanding. However, there is still an imperfectappreciation of the nature of skills and of their contributionto the development of a more competitive, higher value-addedeconomy. The article ends by suggesting how progress might bemade on this front.     

NEA Presidential Address: The role of race-conscious policies in addressing past and present discrimination

The impact of the current recession on the labor market situation of African-Americans highlights their longer-run plight. While there have been signs of improvement, especially during the 1960s, black per capita earnings have fallen despite improvements in their relative wages and occupational standing. Public debate over the recent Civil Rights Bill, the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the Supreme Court’s Croson decision, has raised again the issue of using race-conscious policies to address past and present discrimination. This article reports on a study of Birmingham, Alabama as a case study. It suggests that a combination of race-neutral and race-conscious approaches may be needed to address the problems blacks continue to face in the United States economy. This article was adapted from the Presidential Address to the National Economic Association, Allied Social Sciences Associations Meetings, January 3, 1992, New Orleans, LA.