Canadian Public-Private Sector Earnings Differentials, 1970–1980

This paper examines changes in the public-private sector wage gap in Canada between 1970 and 1980. The results show that the gross earnings advantage of both male and female government employees rose over the decade. For men, the increase was largely attributable to improved wage-determining characteristics, especially education, experience, and occupational distribution. For women, the increase occurred mainly because of a rise in economic rents in the form of a constant wage premium.     

R&D SPILLOVERS TO AGRICULTURE: MEASUREMENT AND APPLICATION

This paper documents research and development (R7amp;D) spillovers between nations and between industries, discussing some theoretical and measurement issues. A new technique makes patent data more practical for economic uses, allowing analysis of the industries of manufacture and sectors of use for inventions. New technology introduced for use in the agricultural and food processing sectors in 14 less developed and newly industrialized nations is traced, comparing the regional and industrial sources of these inventions across time. An application shows that both international and interindustrial spillovers add to agricultural total factor productivity, and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of spillovers from public and private, domestic and foreign sources. ( JEL C67, 031, 047, Q16)     

Legal Traditions and Initial Endowments in Shaping the Path of Financial Development

This paper finds remarkable heterogeneity in the relationship between legal traditions and finance in former colonies. The effect of the British common law on financial development is conditioned by the level of initial endowments. In former colonies with low precolonial population density, the common law has promoted high financial development, but where endowments were abundant, this legal tradition has not worked well. In contrast, the effect of the French civil law on finance is invariant to endowments. British common law countries do not exhibit greater financial development levels than French civil law countries when endowments are sufficiently high.     

Okun's Law: Fit at 50?

This paper asks how well Okun's Law fits short‐run unemployment movements in the United States since 1948 and in 20 advanced economies since 1980. We find that Okun's Law is a strong relationship in most countries, and one that is fairly stable over time. Accounts of breakdowns in the Law, such as the emergence of “jobless recoveries,” are flawed or exaggerated. We also find that the coefficient in the relationship—the effect of a 1% change in output on the unemployment rate—varies substantially across countries. This variation is partly explained by idiosyncratic features of national labor markets, but it is not related to differences in employment protection legislation.     

CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: PROPERTY CLAIMS IN A DYNAMIC WORLD

Constitutional political economy concerns the legal foundations of the market. One central component of that legal infrastructure relates to property rights over objects and circumstances. The idea of "takings" causes one to focus on the conditions under which regulatory actions call for compensation to those who imagine that their property rights have been taken. A dynamic economy is alleged here to be one in which legal processes must carry the burden of discovering when particular parties have an interest that can be said to constitute a property right requiring compensation. That is, objects and circumstances are not protected because they are "property." Rather, those objects and circumstances that are protected become, by virtue of that protection, "property." The task for the economist is to understand the perverse incentives to flow from a compensation requirement on all instances of institutional change concerning landed property. A further task is to incorporate a dynamic concept of property rights into general equilibrium models of economic systems.