South Korean Labor Market Discrimination Against Women: Estimating Its Cost

A bstract . South Korean chaebols (large family owned firms) have extensive government ties which provide them with favorable treatment. In turn, the government obtains support from the chaebols. The chaebols have gained economic or excess profits through exploiting monopolistic power in the domestic South Korean product market and through exploiting monopsonistic power in the domestic factor market.
How a monopsonistic firm obtains excess profits is illustrated and related to the behavior of the chaebols as a whole. Major focus is on the labor market. The chaebols have discretionary power over how to exploit their monopsonistic position. The status of women in the South Korean work force in light of this discretionary power is considered. An estimate of the income loss involved is made.     

Una nuova caratterizzatione dell'ammissibilità nella teoria delle decisioni

In questo lavoro viene fornita una nuova caratterizzazione dell'ammissibilità attraverso un adeguato uso della nozione di ammissibilità parziale. Questa caratterizzazione consente di affrontare le questioni riguardanti la completezza della classe delle decisioni ammissibiliti sotto condizioni «maneggevoli». Fornisce inoltre un approccio unificante al problema della completezza che consente di derivare, come casi particolari, alcuni risultati già noti nella letteratura sull'argomento.

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In this paper a new characterization of admissibility is given for general decision problems. It is based on an adequate use of the notion of partial admissibility.A general decision problem is usually synthetized by a triplet (, , ) where is the states (or parameters) space, the set of available decisions and is a family of real valued functions defined on and expressing numerically the consequences of choosing when the state is . The set is regarded as a subset of the space of all real valued functions on endowed with the topology of pointwise convergence.As for as admissibility is concerned all the pertinent information about decisions are contained in the corresponding functionsW .This allows to introduce a notion of partial admissibility through the neigh-bourhoods of this topology. Admissibile decisions are then shown to be limits of monotone non increasing sequences of partially admissible decisions.Moreover this topological characterization allows to prove the completeness of classes of admissible decisions under acceptable systems of conditions which contain as special cases, known results in literature.

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Lavoro svolto nell'ambito del Gruppo Nazionale per l'Analisi Funzionale e le sue Applicazioni del C.N.R.     

Veblen's Theory of Institutional Change: An Explanation of the Deregulation of Japanese Financial Markets

A bstract In his 1915 essay "The Opportunity of Japan," Thorstein Veblen theorized that traditionai Japanese institutions would undergo evolutionary change as Japan exploited borrowed industrial technology and became integrated into the global business enterprise system. This article explains the recent liberalization of Japanese financial markets which followed Japan's rise to economic prominence within the context of Veblen's theory of institutional development of the enterprise system. The Japanese process of financial deregulation is reviewed, Veblen's predictions Japan are presented and an explanation provided for the liberalization of Japanese financial markets .     

Listen and learn

After making a solicitation, a lot can be gained by listening to a donor's questions. Do not simply answer the question. Consider why they asked it in the first place.     

Productivity differences in multiple output industries: An empirical application to electricity distribution

Given that electricity distribution is undertaken via a network, it is expected that costs of production are affected both by the nature of the network and the volume of physical output distributed via the network. This two-dimensional concept of firm size, that is involving network size (number of customers) and the level of physical output (kWh), also corresponds to the distinction between productivity measures of returns to density and returns to scale.This approach has been used to specify a restricted multioutput cost function and to estimate this function for the Norwegian electricity distribution industry through the use of a flexible functional form (translog). The results indicate that no economies of scale are present in the industry even for small plants when measured correctly, but that economics of density are present.     

A model of public sector wage determination

The paper presents an empirical model of wage determination in the public sector that leads to the specification of a system of interrelated wage equations for municipal employees, which allows for occupational and geographic interdependence of wages. The model also considers the influence of public employee unions, municipal government form, and monopsony power of local governments on the wages of municipal employees. Several variants of the derived system of equations are estimated based upon 1967 cross-section data for 478 cities, and the policy implications of the results are discussed.     

Estimation of a non-invertible moving average process: The case of overdifferencing

The effect of differencing all of the variables in a properly specified regression equation is examined. Excessive use of the difference transformation induces a non-invertible moving average (MA) process in the disturbances of the transformed regression. Monte Carlo techniques are used to examine the effects of overdifferencing on the efficiency of regression parameter estimates, inferences based on these estimates, and tests for overdifferenccing based on the estimator of the MA parameter for the disturbances of the differences regression. Overall, the problem of overdifferencing is not serious if careful attention is paid to the properties of the disturbances of regression equations.     

Effect of outliers on the estimation of parameters

Summary The estimation of parameter in the type of distributionf(x)=b x ^{–1 /b} exp (–x ^b (/b),x>0, is considered, when several outliers of the type , ,r=1,2, ...,k, are present in the data. The estimates of as well as of 's are put in the closed form. Special cases, Weibull, Gamma and Exponential are considered for the case of single outlier. Actual estimates are calculated from the generated samples of size 2 and 3 for the Weibull and Exponential.     

Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study

The links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness are studied using recent data on a sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Higher income does not buy more sex or more sexual partners. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. The happiness‐maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1. Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness.