THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE: A REVIEW OF RECENT EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES

In this essay I summarise recent evidence demonstrating that marriage is an institution of great social significance, one that offers economic and health benefits to married adults and similar benefits to their children. Many of these benefits can plausibly be ascribed to the changes in behaviour that ensue when men and women commit to one another in marriage.     

THE DYNAMICS OF UK NATIONAL AND REGIONAL HOUSE PRICES

In this paper, the Johansen cointegration technique is applied to modeling the dynamics of national and regional house prices. It is concluded that household income, real mortgage rate and housing completions are significant factors influencing house price changes at the national level. The underlying structure of the national market is investigated, showing that while price trends in some regions of the UK are strongly related by causal processes, others are relatively independent     

POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES TO PROVIDE HOUSING ASSISTANCE TO LOW‐INCOME HOUSEHOLDS1

From the 1930s onwards America's housing assistance policies have largely been shaped by the federal government's response to catastrophe, whether of an external nature (the Great Depression, the urban riots of the 1960s) or an internal nature (mismanagement, excessive costs). Consequently, today's collection of federal housing policies resemble more the results of an archaeological dig through 70 years of activity than a coherent approach to a longstanding problem. Nonetheless, one key theme that emerges is the shift from wholly government solutions to a hybrid public–private partnership approach in the early 1970s.     

THE ORGANIZATION OF INNOVATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN: NEOCLASSICAL AND RELATIONAL CONTRACTING*

This article discusses the role of intermediate governance structures between vertically related industries in the specific context of technological innovation. In the United States, relations between firms in vertically related industries correspond closely to the neoclassical contracting model, characterized by arms-length, spot contracting on the open market. In Japan, inter-firm relations are more likely to involve relational contracting, characterized by stable bonding mechanisms and a dense historical network of economic ties between the parties to the exchange. We focus upon the kinyu keiretsu type of relational contracting between firms of unequal size and power in vertically related industries, which is a special case of the more generally studied kigyo shudan, or inter-market financial group. For illustrative purposes, we compare the contractual arrangements used to manage the development of new technology by 46 US and 27 Japanese semiconductor equipment firms. We conclude by speculating that the organization of innovation in the Japanese semiconductor equipment industry has accelerated their development of new technology and led to their extraordinarily rapid worldwide market penetration.     

STATE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS AND INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES*

Because of the growth of new technology based economic development policies at the state level in recent years, this research project provides an assessment of the experiences of users of one such program: the technology research center in microelectronics. A survey of a large number of companies gave us results that should be of interest to decision makers in universities, private industry as well as the public sector. Access to students as future employees was seen as a major reason why companies get involved with universities, more so than research enhancement per se. A univerisity's inability to protect what companies see as confidential research is seen as a major disincentive to further university-industry relationships, while most companies did not see federal or state tax incentives as encouraging collaboration. Among companies who had direct experience with state-funded technology center programs, most reacted positively to their experiences. Such collaboration was seen to stimulate related research within many participating companies, while also leading to improvements in the quality of products and production methods. While the majority of companies thought that states should continue to fund technology development programs, particularly at universities, neither universities nor government were seen as important sources of technical knowledge by many companies. A lack of information about state programs was seen among many companies that responded to the survey.     

ETHNICITY AND THE IMMIGRATION OF HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS TO THE UNITED STATES

This paper examines ethnicity among highly skilled immigrants to the United States. The paper focuses on five classic components of ethnicity - country of birth, race, skin color, language, and religion - among persons admitted to legal permanent residence in the United States in 2003 in the three main employment categories (EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3), using data collected in the U.S. New Immigrant Survey. Initial findings include: (1) The visa categories have distinctive ethnic configurations. India dominates EB-2 and European countries EB-1. (2) The ethnicity portfolio contains more languages than religions. (3) Language is shed before religion, and religion may not be shed at all, except among the ultra highly skilled of EB-1. (4) Highly skilled immigrants are mostly male; they are not immune from lapsing into illegality; they have a shorter visa process than their cohortmates; smaller proportions than in the cohort overall intend to remain in the United States. (5) Larger proportions in EB-2 and EB-3 sent remittances than in the cohort overall. (6) A little measure of assimilation - using dollars to describe earnings in the country of last residence, even when requested to use the country's currency - suggests that highly skilled immigrants are more likely to "think in dollars" than their cohortmates. Further work is taking a deeper look at these patterns in a multivariate context, attentive to selectivity processes and the Globalista impulse.     

THE IMPACT OF ETHNIC HETEROGENEITY ON EDUCATION SPENDING: A SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF UNITED STATES SCHOOL DISTRICTS

In the public finance literature it is well understood that a community's spending can be affected by neighboring communities’ spending. It is relatively straightforward to see why these spillovers exist. For example, if a school district increases its spending on public education, this could affect the spending level of neighboring school districts. This paper uses spatial analysis to test the hypothesis that a school district's ethnic heterogeneity affects support for public education. Using a Spatial Lag Model and a national panel of U.S. school districts, I find that spatial dependence does exist in the data and that ethnic heterogeneity is negatively related to school district spending.     

A PATCHWORK SAFETY NET: A SURVEY OF CLIOMETRIC STUDIES OF INCOME MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract Social welfare programs in the USA are designed to serve as safety nets for people in hard times, in contrast with the universal approach found in many other developed western nations. In a survey of cliometric studies of social welfare programs in the USA, we examine the variation in the safety net in the USA across states in the 20th century, the determinants of the variation and its impact on socioeconomic outcomes. The USA has always displayed substantial variation in the extent of the safety net because the features of most public social welfare programs have been and currently are determined by local and state governments, even after the federal government became involved in the 1930s. Differences across states persist strongly for typically a decade, although the persistence weakens with time, and there are some periods when federal intervention led to a re‐ordering. The rankings of state benefits differ from program to program, and economic and political factors have different weights in determining benefit levels in panel data estimation of their effects. Variation in benefits across programs during the early 1900s had significant impact on labour markets, economic activity, family formation, death rates and crime.     

A SURVEY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ON PRICES

Abstract.  It is well established in the literature that minimum wage increases compress the wage distribution. Firms respond to these higher labour costs by reducing employment, reducing profits, or raising prices. While there are hundreds of studies on the employment effect of the minimum wage, there are merely a handful of studies on its profit effects, and only a couple of dozen studies on its price effects. Furthermore, a comprehensive survey on minimum wage price effects is not available in the literature. Given the policy relevance of this neglected issue, in this paper we summarize and critically compare the available evidence on the effects of minimum wages on prices.     

DATA REVISION AND MARKET RESPONSE: THE CASE OF UNITED STATES TRADE BALANCE ANNOUNCEMENTS†

ABSTRACT In this paper we study economic news, as reflected in the announcements of the United States trade balance by the Commerce department, to illustrate the importance of revised data versus preliminary data to economic agents. A new methodology has been developed here to study how agents in the exchange market respond to these monthly trade balance announcements and consequently, move the dollar's exchange rate. In contrast to previous studies where agent reactions to only preliminary trade figures were analyzed, this method is applied to examine market reactions to the preliminary and revised trade balance figures.