All politics is local: The effect of fiscal and monetary constitutions on economic policy

The rules of behavior for the monetary authorities changed in 1933 and 1947 and the Fed temporarily changed its operating procedures in 1979, but these changes did not alter the fact that the monetary authorities serve as the agent of the fiscal authorities. On the fiscal side, a shift from a centralized process to one where Congress was composed of a set of individual entrepreneurs altered the fiscal focus from the national economy to one of localized interests. This change led to a more autoregressive and deficit-prone federal budget and changed the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. It also elevated the status of monetary policy to the extent where financial markets react to every utterance from the monetary authorities.     

An experimental study of strategic information transmission

Summary We examine strategic information transmission in an experiment. Senders are privately informed about a state. They send messages to Receivers, who choose actions resulting in payoffs to Senders and Receivers. The payoffs depend on the action and the state. We vary the degree to which the Receivers' and the Senders' preferences diverge. We examine the relationship between the Senders' messages and the true state as well as that between actions and the true state and contrast the ability of different equilibrium message sets to explain the data.When preferences are closely aligned Senders disclose more. We assess two comparative statics: (i) as preferences diverge, state and action are less frequently matched, and (ii) messages tend to become less informative as preferences diverge. The first result is weakly confirmed for adjacent treatments but is considerably stronger when non-adjacent treatments are compared. We find that as preferences diverge messages become less informative. While the ex-ante Pareto-optimal Bayesian Nash Equilibrium does not explain our conditions, the equilibrium message sets supported by the data are similar to the ex-ante Pareto Optimal message sets.We would like to thank seminar participants at the Economic Science Association meetings, the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory meetings for their comments. We would like to thank Beth Allen, Joyce Berg, Robert Forsythe, Yong-Gwan Kim, Antonio Merlo, Leonard Mirman, In-Uck Park, Charles Plott, Jennifer Reinganum and an anonymous referee for their suggestions. Financial support from the Accounting Research Center at the University of Minnesota is also acknowledge.     

Unmanaged care?

Changes in the health care marketplace have outpaced many of the laws and regulations that were intended to protect patients. Consumer advocates want new safeguards, but employers and the managed care industry warn that could raise the cost of coverage.     

Immigration: then,now, and in the future

The author examines recent changes in immigration flows to the United States. Consideration is given to the increase in Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim immigration, which he attributes to today's lower costs of air travel. The negative impact of the ability to return home easily and cheaply on migrants' desire to fully acculturate into U.S. society is noted. Mention is made of the need for new international migration policies to meet the needs of guest workers and consultants.     

The maintenance, funding and modification of retiree medical benefits

Retiree medical benefits are an ever-growing concern as costs escalate and the date for implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 106 approaches. These authors summarize case law relevant to employers' right to modify or terminate benefits and discuss methods of funding theses liabilities.     

Unemployment insurance and union bargaining — an insider-outsider approach

A trade union is required to tax its own members to fund unemployment benefit paid to its unemployed members in an insider-outsider model of union bargaining over wages and employment. An increase in unemployment benefit imposed by the government increases employment overall but not necessarily the employment of insiders if the tax rate is exogenously fixed by the government.This paper has benefited from comments of Mick Common, Dipak Ghosh, Bob Hart, and Robin Ruffell. The comments of two anonymous referees and the advice of the Editor have greatly improved the presentation of the paper. Any remaining errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.     

The rank and model specification of demand systems: an empirical analysis using United States microdata

A rank-three demand system is estimated with United States Consumer Expenditure Survey microdata. A unique price data set is also used, which permits the analysis of effects of systematic errors in price variables. It is found that errors in price variables bias test results for the rank-three hypothesis, in particular towards rejection. Other test results are affected to a lesser extent. Estimating smaller systems of demand equations, even when conditioning on excluded goods, yields significantly different results. Another important conclusion is that model specification is statistically significantly different for households of varying family sizes and housing tenure statuses. JEL Classifications: C31, D12.
Le rang et la spécification du modèle des systèmes de demande: une analyse empirique utilisant des microdonnées américaines. On calibre un système de demande de rang trois à l'aide de microdonnées américaines tirées de la United States Consumer Expenditures Survey. Un ensemble unique de prix est utilisé afin de permettre l'analyse des effets d'erreurs systématiques dans les variables de prix. Il appert que les erreurs dans les variables de prix distorsionnent les résultats du test de l'hypothèse de rang trois en faveur d'un rejet. D'autres résultats de tests sont affectés à un moindre degré. Si l'on calibre de plus petits systèmes d'équations de demande, même en posant des conditions sur des biens exclus, des résultats qui diffèrent de manière significative s'ensuivent. Une autre conclusion importante est que la spécification du modèle est différente de manière statistiquement significative pour les ménages selon la taille de la famille et le statut domiciliaire.