IS GOVERNMENT SPENDING STIMULATIVE?

This paper develops and implements a neoclassical model of fiscal policy. The paper's main empirical hypothesis is that government non-military investment spending is more expansionary than is either government consumption or military investment. The paper utilizes annual data to support the hypothesis. It finds that output "multipliers" for government non-military investment significantly exceed unity while multipliers for government consumption and military investment lie below unity. The paper also finds that public sector deficits—both actual and cyclically adjusted—contain minor explanatory power for output when one controls for the effects of non-military investment.     

THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF PAY-AS-YOU-GO RETIREMENT PROGRAMS: THE ROLE OF TAX AND BENEFIT TIMING

It is well known that pay-as-you-go retirement programs reduce steady-state welfare and the capital stock in dynamically efficient overlapping generation (OLG) economies. The common two-period OLG model obscures, however, the relationship between the magnitude of these effects and the ages at which taxes are paid and benefits received. Program changes that shift taxes to older workers or benefits to younger retirees have effects similar to reductions in program size, yielding steady-state welfare gains and increases in capital accumulation while imposing transition costs on current generations. This analysis has policy implications for both tax and benefit timing . ( JEL H55, E62)     

Margins,Concentration and Oligopolistic Interdependence*

In this paper we examine the relationship between margins, elasticities of demand and the Hirschman-Herfindahl index of concentration for Australian manufacturing. Our main aim is to estimate the degree of collusion in various manufacturing sectors in the years 1968-69, 1972-73 and 1977-78. There appear to be marked differences in the apparent degree of collusion between industries. It is argued that once sub-optimization is allowed the Cowling-Waterson model will yield biased estimates of the degree of collusion.     

RESALE PRICE MAINTENANCE AND DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFICIENCY: SOME LESSONS FROM THE PAST

Resale price maintenance (RPM) has had a history similar to that of a religious war, with the legal status shifting as the various sects have had more or less influence over the courts and the political arenas. Both the RPM and anti-RPM missionaries have overstated their cases. In theory, RPM can have both procompetitive and anticompetitive effects. Unfortunately, most of the dispute has been theoretical (theological); both sides have provided minimal empirical support for their theological conclusions. The empirical evidence, though sketchy, shows both procompetitive and anticompetitive instances of RPM. In particular, history warns that strongly organized interest groups tend to use the political process to enforce abuses of a distributional restraint that theoretically might otherwise have primarily procompetitive effects. The theoretical and empirical record does not support either per se legality or illegality for RPM in all instances. In some situations, such as for small firms in unconcentrated wholesale and retail markets and for new entrants, the probability of anticompetitive effects is negligible. In other situations, the evidentiary burden of demonstrating either the likelihood of anticompetitive effects, or of their absence, would be practically insurmountable in a litigation context. Rule-of-reason litigation, then, also seems to be an unwise policy choice. On balance, considering the economic, political, and legal constraints, we recommend continuing the current per se illegal standard, but with exceptions for clearly defined instances in which the probability of anticompetitive effects is minimal.     

USING THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN ACCOUNTING RESEARCH: A HUGE STEP FORWARD OR A NEW CONSTRAINT?

The Internet has been used in academia as a means of sharing information between researchers for many years. The more recent development of the World Wide Web as an Internet tool launched this technology into the business domain and this has led to a significant growth in the availability of business related information resources on the network. This paper discusses the potential of the web for the use in the specific domain of accounting research. It highlights the relevant information a researcher can expect to find on the network, suggests ways of using the web to improve research development and dissemination and discusses a number of concerns that are commonly raised by researchers who wish to use the web in their research.     

The Antinomies of ‘Financial Inclusion’: Debt,Distress and the Workings of Indian Microfinance

The concept of ‘financial inclusion’ has become a central trope that legitimates a wide range of contemporary development practices. By constructing a new object of development – the ‘financially excluded’ – it facilitates the expansion of an increasingly corporatized microfinance technocracy. The present paper problematizes the underlying binaries of inclusion/exclusion and formal/informal finance upon which this narrative is based. Through an examination of the 2010 Andhra Pradesh microfinance crisis, it demonstrates key contradictions within the discourse and practices of commercial microfinance. In so doing, it demonstrates why the narrative of financial inclusion and its correlate notion of ‘consumption smoothing’ are inadequate tools with which to conceptualize the political economy of contemporary agrarian change.