Growth and decline of the paper industry: an econometric analysis of US regions

An explanation was sought of the different growth of the paper and paperboard industries in regions of the United States. To that end, a theory of regional demand and supply was formulated. Elasticities of regional production with respect to important supply and demand factors were then calculated by econometric methods, with data for the period 1950–78. These elasticities were used, together with the observed average annual percentage changes of the corresponding variables, to determine the contribution each had on the growth of production. The results indicated that demand was the major factor causing the differences in growth rates. The rapid growth of paper and paperboard production in the regions of the South and West was spurred mostly by high economic and demographic growth in their market area. Supply (cost) factors, and the price of paper substitutes, were found to have played a minor role in comparison.     

The behaviour of expected short-term real interest rates in the UK

The existence of persistent technical inefficiency offers the opportunity for a ‘free lunch’ not typically implied by the neoclassical theory of the firm. When external effects are related to the use of particular inputs, reduction of persistent technically inefficient levels of input use represents a means of reducing external impacts. An important example is found in agriculture where substantial environmental impacts are generated by particular inputs. Within this context, this paper considers the usefulness of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for estimation of potential input reductions and assessment of potential reductions of environmental impacts of agricultural inputs. An application for French cereal production provides estimates that indicate that substantial potential exists for reduction of input use and environmental impacts.     

Stochastic trend,weather and US corn yield variability

Regional corn yield models incorporating stochastic trends, prices and weather variables are estimated. Hypothesis tests suggest yield variability has increased because of an increase in error variance and an increase in weather-related effects. Decomposition of the error variance shows much of its increase is due to an increased correlaion between regional yields.     

Compensating wage differentials for job stress

Recent medical studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between mental stress and cardiac events such as myocardial infarction and stroke. In the workplace, stress once accounted for less than 5% of all occupational disease claims, but it now accounts for over 15%. Although research on the effects of mental stress is increasing, few studies offer an economic perspective. In this paper, we examine the effects of job stress on weekly wages and explore the possibility that stress commands a compensating wage differential. Our findings suggest that, ceteris paribus, a wage differential does exist between workers experiencing mental stress and their ‘non-stressed’ cohorts. After controlling for other demographic and occupational factors, we found a statistically significant wage premium ranging from 3 to 10% attributable to mental stress. In addition, the magnitude of the differential varies by gender.     

How well are women doing? Female non-employment across UK regions

Discussions of the UK's recent labour market performance commonly mention the contrasting trends in the unemployment rate (down), the employment rate (up) and the inactivity rate (flat). These same commentaries also notice that the ‘flatness’ of the overall inactivity rate masks contrasting trends by sex, with male rates (slowly rising) and female rates (slowly falling) and then proceed to discuss male inactivity in some detail before concluding. Bypassing the composition of female inactivity, these commentaries fail to notice that the male and the female proportions of the population not working by reason of sickness or disability are quite similar. Equally they have rarely noticed that male and female non-employment rates display a very similar regional hierarchy with female rates in the ‘North’ as much as 50% higher than those in the ‘South’, and that there is an even steeper North–South gradient in some of the components of non-employment. For example, sickness and disability rates for females in the North are up to 10% of the working age population, while in the South rates are typically less than half that size.     

Effective Monetary Policy Conservatism: A Comparison of 13 OECD Countries

Empirical studies of the influence of central bank independence and inflation have yet delivered quite inconclusive results. We argue this to be due to the failure to focus an actual central bank independence and to take the degree of conservatism of the government and the central bank into account. In this paper, we propose a new methodology of measuring the joint degree of central bank independence and conservatism from observed central bank behaviour. After applying the method to 13 OECD countries, we find our indicator to be negatively correlated with a legal index of central bank independence, but positively correlated with the turnover rate. As the latter exclusively focuses on factual central bank independence, the remaining difference might be attributed to conservatism.     

Bureaucracy and student performance in US public schools

This paper tests the hypothesis that monopoly power of school districts allows bureaucratic expansion and fosters poor academic performance in the public school system in California. Evidence indicates that monopoly power is positively associated with employment of administrators and teachers, and therefore supports the bureaucratic expansion hypothesis. While numbers of teachers do not influence performance measures, numbers of administrators are shown to positively affect performance - results that suggest that too many teachers, but too few administrators, are employed. While bureaucracy theory may explain the resource misallocation, other reasons might include rising public pressures on hiring teachers over administrators, spending equalization policies, and the weak California economy in the period under investigation.     

Estimating global returns to scale with a cone-homogeneous production function: some cross-section results

This paper employs a cone-homogeneous production function to approximate, as closely as desired, a ray-homogeneous production function. Points in input space are projected by an output scaling function on to a fixed ray and a Cobb-Douglas cone function is used to obtain an estimate of global returns to scale. The empirical results indicate that we get a good approximation to a ray-homogeneous production function from the estimated cone-homogeneous function.     

Convergence in the gender wage gap in Australia over the 1980s: identifying the role of counteracting forces via the Juhn,Murphy and Pierce Decomposition

The paper utilises the Juhn Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition to shed light on the pattern of slow male-female wage convergance in Australia over the 1980s. The analysis allows one to distinguish between the role of wage structure and genderspecific effects. The central question addressed is whether rising wage inequality counteracted the forces of increased female investment in labour market skills, i.e. education and experience. The conclusion is that in contrast to the US and the UK, Australian women do not appear to have been swimming against a tide of adverse wage structure changes.