Eliciting Individual Discount Rates

Controlled laboratory conditions using monetary incentives have been utilized in previous studies that examine individual discount rates, and researchers have found several apparently robust anomalies. We conjecture that subject behavior in these experiments may be affected by (uncontrolled) factors other than discount rates. We address some experimental design issues and report a new series of experiments designed to elicit individual discount rates. Our primary treatments include: (i) informing subjects of the annual and effective interest rates associated with alternative payment streams, and (ii) informing subjects of current market interest rates. We also test for the effect of real (vs. hypothetical) payments and for the effect of delaying both payment options (vs. offering an immediate payment option). The statistical analysis uses censored data techniques to account for the interactions between field and lab incentives. Each of the information treatments appears to reduce revealed discount rates. When both types of information are provided, annual rates in the interval of 15%–17.5% are revealed, whereas rates of 20%–25% are revealed in the control session. Each of the treatments also lowers the residual variance of subject responses.     

Antitrust and Liberalization in developing countries

A number of developing countries around the world have recently liberalized once highly protected regimes through privatization programs and by reducing impediments to market trade. Many of these countries have adopted an antitrust policy as an integral component of their market reforms. Recent assessments of trade liberalization programs show disappointing results. Such outcomes contradict long-held beliefs that free trade is sufficient to generate competitive outcomes in small economies. Antitrust advocates view these underwhelming achievements as further justification for extensive antitrust enforcement. We argue instead that the failure of liberalization suggests not the correctness but the inappropriateness of the enactment of antitrust policies. The continuance of market power after liberalization is due primarily to lobbying activities by producer interest groups to establish nontariff barriers rather than to collusive practices among producers. Interest groups find cartelization and rent seeking as substitutes in raising prices above competitive levels. Accordingly, the establishment of antitrust serves to improve the relative attractiveness of seeking nontariff barriers. Antitrust policies are ineffective in challenging the emergence of nontariff barriers and thus may have the unintended consequence of promoting anticompetitive activities.     

What else do unions do?: Race and gender in local 35

Most analyses of the relationship between job segregation and gender wage inequality do not examine the race-specific dimensions of occupational segregation. Using personnel data, we examine the impact of race-gender occupational segregation on occupational grading and wage setting within a service and maintenance union. Our empirical results show that the job grading and wage setting processes significantly favor white men’s jobs and penalize black women’s jobs.     

The German model of employee relations on trial: negotiated and unilaterally imposed change in multi‐national companies

This article investigates the effects of negotiated and unilaterally imposed change on employee relations in the German subsidiaries of a Finnish and a German multi‐national company (MNC). We look at how the strategies affect the sustainability of the current German model of employee relations and highlight some of the disadvantages of this model for global MNCs.     

The family as an economic system: A conceptual model supported by empirical research

Economic functions found in any economic system can be observed in the family as a production and consumption unit of analysis. The development of a resource base and the decisions in performing each function are each influenced by the larger economy and influence the larger economy. Decisions about the use of the resource base determine the ultimate outcomes of satisfaction with goods and services and quality of life. These relationships, as hypothesized in a conceptual flow model presented in this article, can direct the selection of variables in empirical research. Results of several research projects that included selected components of the economic functions document the validity of the family economy model and contribute to theory development of the sources and role of consumption. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.