经济学科在美国

本文将介绍经济学科在美国的情况.由于美国代表了目前全世界现代经济学教学和研究的前沿,了解经济学科在美国的情况,对于如何参与国际经济学界的学术活动是很有必要的.我介绍以下四个方面的情况:第一,美国大学中经济学科的设置;第二,美国大学的经济学教育;第三,美国的经济学博士教育模式在欧洲;第四,中国学生申请留学美国攻读经济学学位时应注意的事项.     

Location and happiness in the United States

The effect of living in a less urban area on the probability of being happy is estimated. It is shown that less urban areas are associated with higher levels of happiness. Further, it is shown that respondents in the north region are less happy. Data from the National Opinion Research Center’s “General Social Survey” are used.     

Farm Labor in the United States

The mainstream blames the global savings glut for causing the 2008 global financial crisis and proposes currency realignment to restore balance. However, this view fails to provide solid theoretical and empirical support to the claim that net inflows of foreign savings reduced U.S. long-term real interest rates and inflated asset prices. It also ignores the role of the global financial system in shaping the development strategy and macroeconomic imbalances in emerging Asian economies. Furthermore, forcing currency revaluation in China and other surplus countries may risk reducing global demand instead of shifting demand from the United States to surplus countries. The paper argues that an overhaul of the defunct global financial system lies at the root of global rebalancing; whereas in the short run, the United States should actively pursue demand-enhancing policies to strengthen global economic recovery.     

Ranking the optimum tariff and the maximum revenue tariff in vertically related markets

This paper firstly shows that in a vertically related industry with either domestic upstream monopolist or foreign upstream monopolist, when the upstream firm adopts uniform input pricing, the optimum-welfare tariff is higher than the maximum-revenue tariff, if the number of foreign competitors is sufficiently large. Secondly, when domestic upstream monopolist adopts discriminatory input pricing, the maximum-revenue tariff is higher than the optimum-welfare tariff. Thirdly, when foreign upstream monopolist adopts discriminatory input pricing, the optimum-welfare tariff will exceed the maximum-revenue tariff if the sizes of domestic and foreign firms become more unequally distributed.     

Income inequality and crime in the United States

This paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and crime. Results show that there is a strong and robust effect of relative income inequality on burglary. Effect on robbery is also strong and robust in most cases.     

Openness and Poverty in the Postwar United States

Recent trade theory suggests that freer trade can be the primary cause of the observed rise of poverty in the United States. The short-run dynamic relationships between openness and poverty are examined using the concept of Granger causality. That the ultimate source of rising poverty since 1973 is trade liberalization of the US economy cannot be rejected. The result is convincing when two subsamples (pre- and post-1973) are reestimated. These findings are at odds with the conventional model in which freer trade raises productivity and hence reduces the poverty rate, but appear consistent with some models in which openness raises poverty.     

Incentive regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States: Some lessons

Summary and Conclusions This paper has reviewed the approach to incentive regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States. The United Kingdom approach has typically relied on pure PCR, incorporating much sharper incentives for efficiency and lower transactions costs, but it makes the company more of a hostage to the regulator. The United States approach, which is grounded or even mired in the legal system, gives up efficiency incentives in an attempt to avoid making the companies the hostages of regulatory reneging.²⁷ The papers in this Issue illustrate the broad scope of incentive regulation, from the purer forms of PCR to a number of variations and mixtures of PCR with other forms of regulation. The interesting theoretic results and the importance of achieving practical solutions in incentive regulation underscore the importance of the problems and approaches raised in this Issue.     

Graduate Economics Programs in the United States

Sterrett and Barr comment on the results of a survey of graduate programs in economics in the United States and on the marked increase in the number of masters degrees granted by the responding institutions.     

Consumer confidence and rational expectations in the United States compared with the United Kingdom

This paper examines the relationship between consumer confidence and the Rational Expectations Permanent Income Hypothesis in the USA and compares the results with those obtained for the UK. The study expands previous analysis by defining consumption as motor vehicles, goods excluding motor vehicles, and services. The results suggest that predictive ability of the USA's consumer confidence is less than that of the UK, but that contrary to the UK study, confidence does not predict future consumption growth of services and is therefore consistent with Rational Expectations Permanent Income Hypothesis.     

Whistleblower laws and exposed corruption in the United States

This research creates a unique internet-based measure of awareness about state-level whistleblower laws and provisions to examine their effects on observed corruption in the United States. Are whistleblower laws complementary or substitutes for other, more direct, corruption control measures? Placing the analysis within the corruption literature, the findings show that greater whistleblower awareness results in more observed corruption and this finding holds across specifications. Internet awareness about whistleblower laws seems relatively more effective at exposing corruption than the quantity and quality of state whistleblower laws themselves.     

Minimum Wage Policy and Poverty in the United States

Recent studies have found that increasing the minimum wage is a useful antipoverty tool. In this analysis, we examine the influence of minimum wages and other important variables on US family poverty rates using state data over the years 1984-98 by estimating both a fixed effect and random coefficients regression model. Taking into account labor market influences, demographic factors, and differences in poverty rates across states, we find that expanding the minimum wage coverage and increasing labor force participation both have larger effects on poverty rates as compared to equivalent changes in the level of the minimum wage. It is further implied from the empirical results that the most effective means of lifting families out of poverty are policies that are directed toward increasing minimum wage coverage, encouraging increased labor force participation, raising the minimum wage, and subsidizing higher education, respectively.     

Resource abundance and economic growth in the United States

It is a common assumption that regions within the same country converge to approximately the same steady-state income levels. The so-called absolute convergence hypothesis focuses on initial income levels to account for the variability in income growth among regions. Empirical data seem to support the absolute convergence hypothesis for US states, but the data also show that natural resource abundance is a significant negative determinant of growth. We find that natural resource abundance decreases investment, schooling, openness, and R&D expenditure and increases corruption, and we show that these effects can fully explain the negative effect of natural resource abundance on growth.     

Energy consumption and economic growth in the United States

We study the relationship between energy consumption and real GDP in the USA using a multivariate time-varying model [1973Q1–2014Q1]. We show that the combination of disaggregation into specific fuels and time variation gives more nuanced results than the alternatives for the USA. Specifically, we find that the Granger causal relationship between total energy and real US GDP is bi-directional through much of the 1990s, but unidirectional running from real US GDP to energy consumption in the 2000s. As for each fuel, similar patterns of change were observed in the causal relationship between coal consumption and real US GDP. Oil consumption largely shows a bi-directional relationship between consumption and US GDP, especially after 2009. And natural gas consumption shows a brief period in the early-to-mid 2000s where US GDP predicts energy consumption, but primarily shows that natural gas consumption and economic growth are independent.     

Unemployment and labor force participation in the United States

This paper uses historical data from the United States to investigate the relationship between unemployment and labor force participation. Cointegration analysis supports a long-run relationship between these two variables, which leads us to question the empirical relevance of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for the United States.     

Productivity growth and agricultural out-migration in the United States

In the 20th century U.S., the average annual decline in the relative farm share of employment was 3.6%. Despite this rapid reallocation of labor, a large wage gap persisted between the farm and non-farm sectors that declined only slowly over time. We develop a model of farm out-migration with three driving forces: (i) absolute farm productivity growth in conjunction with subsistence food consumption, (ii) relative farm productivity growth in conjunction with a low elasticity of substitution between farm and non-farm goods, and (iii) endogenously declining wage gaps. Quantitative features of the model accord well with the U.S. experience during this period.