From the New Deal to the New Federalism: Presidential Ideology in the U.S. from 1932 to 1982

A bstract . The essence of the Reagan mandate is neither taxation nor balanced budgets , rather the reduction of federal government controls and a corresponding growth in state and local controls. This concern is neither Right nor Left, but a response to a growing realization of ineptitudes and inefficiencies seen in all the highly developed industrialized nations. Hence, whether inspired by the "free-enterprise" doctrines of Reagan in the U.S. or the "socialist" approach of Mitterrand in France, the policy goal of advanced nations is clear: a shift in fiscal priorities and political controls to strike a more realistic balance. The emphasis is upon the social movement aspects of Reagan's New Federalism: the coalition of middle sectors and elite working classes, rather than the "big business" label usually assigned to this administration. Federalism, essentially a social policy, can succeed to the degree that there is an equitable sharing in economic hardships no less than economic gains. But fiscal favoritism, racial inequalities, class dislocations, and similar difficulties can produce its defeat.     

Pollution,public disclosure,and firm behavior

This paper looks at whether a government regulator should publicly announce the amounts of pollution emitted by individual firms and plants. Disclosure may be important if there is incomplete information about firm costs, since pollution levels may be used by the regulated firm as a signal of costs to rival firms. We compare the signaling games under public disclosure and no disclosure. Welfare is likely reduced by disclosure, but if the regulator can adjust the stringency of the relevant pollution regulations, then the loss in welfare can be smaller. The implications of these results for pollution permits markets are discussed.     

ASYMPTOTIC NORMALITY OF A NONPARAMETRIC INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES ESTIMATOR*

This article gives conditions under which the nonparametric instrumental variables estimator of Hall and Horowitz (Annals of Statistics 33 (December 2005), 2904–2929) is asymptotically normally distributed. With sufficiently large samples, the asymptotic normality result can be used to form confidence intervals for the unknown function that is estimated by the Hall–Horowitz procedure. The article reports the results of a Monte Carlo investigation of the finite‐sample coverage probabilities of the confidence intervals.     

The Income–Temperature Relationship in a Cross-Section of Countries and its Implications for Predicting the Effects of Global Warming

Hotter countries are poorer on average. This paper attempts to separate the historical and contemporaneous components of this income–temperature relationship. Following ideas by Acemoglu et al. (Am Econ Rev 91(5):1369–1401, 2001), we use colonial mortality data to account for the historical role of temperature since colonial mortality was highly correlated with countries’ average temperatures. The remaining income–temperature gradient, after colonial mortality is accounted for, is most likely contemporaneous. This contemporaneous effect can be used to estimate the consequences of global warming. We predict that a 1°C temperature increase across all countries will cause a decrease of 3.8% in world GDP. This prediction is robust across functional forms and an alternative method for separating historical effects.     

Attachment Styles and Ethical Behavior: Their Relationship and Significance in the Marketplace

This paper compares the ethical standards reported by consumers and managers with different attachment styles (secure, preoccupied, fearful, or dismissing). We conducted two studies of consumer ethical beliefs and a third managerial survey. In Study 1, we used a questionnaire that we constructed, and in Study 2, we used the Muncy–Vitell Consumer Ethics Scale. The results in both the studies were consistent and showed that men reported a greater indifference to ethical transgressions than women. Based on the two studies, the results indicate that␣among male consumers, the dismissing participants reported the greatest overall indifference to ethical transgressions and the secure participants expressed the most ethical beliefs. The two intermediate groups did not differ significantly from each other. In Study 1, none of the women consumers reported a dismissing attachment style. Women with a secure style reported more ethical beliefs than those in the other two groups. However, the sample in Study 2 included dismissing women. The dismissing women reported the greatest overall indifference to ethical transgressions and the secure women expressed the most ethical beliefs. The illegal profit subscale described the most severe ethical transgressions, and for both men and women, the secure participants were less apt than the other participants to report a willingness to transgress. In Study 3, the Newstrom and Ruch (1975, MSU Business Topics, Winter, 31) Questionnaire was administered to 227 managers. All four attachment patterns were represented among the participants of both genders. In all cases, the participants with a dismissing attachment style showed the greatest readiness to transgress.     

Variable selection and estimation in high‐dimensional models

Models with high‐dimensional covariates arise frequently in economics and other fields. Often, only a few covariates have important effects on the dependent variable. When this happens, the model is said to be sparse. In applications, however, it is not known which covariates are important and which are not. This paper reviews methods for discriminating between important and unimportant covariates with particular attention given to methods that discriminate correctly with probability approaching 1 as the sample size increases. Methods are available for a wide variety of linear, nonlinear, semiparametric and nonparametric models. The performance of some of these methods in finite samples is illustrated through Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical example.     

Thanks for the memories: baseball veterans' end-of-career salaries

It is well-established that a baseball player's salary is based on his performance, experience, star status, bargaining power, mobility and his team's ability to pay. This paper focuses on veteran players who are on the brink of retirement and on the determinants of their salaries. It is found that a veteran's end-of-career peak salary depends upon how his career performance, that his most recent performance is irrelevant unless he has spent his entire career with one team, and that the average veteran's salary peaks after 9 years in the Majors. A corollary inference is that general managers recognize and reward player performance over the long haul in comparison with others who have played at that player's principal position, and with a nod to how history will evaluate that player. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality choice: Does it matter which workers own and manage the cooperative firm?

The information age and the spread of information technology has implications for organizational structure. Accordingly, the age-old issues of product and service quality are put into a new perspective. It is this new perspective that compels analysis and contrast of the joint quality and output choices of a labor-managed (LM) firm with those of its entrepreneurial (PM) twin. It is shown that the LM firm's behavior regarding quality and quantity depends on which workers own and manage the firm and on the way that marginal profit with respect to output is influenced by quality. Similarly, the effects of increases in either fixed costs or demand depend on who owns and manages the LM firm and on the relationship between marginal profit and quality. Thus, whether a cooperative will outperform or underperform its PM counterpart depends on the particulars of the situation. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at seminars at Academia Sinica in Taipei and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The authors are grateful to the participants in those seminars and most especially to Professors C. C. Mai, Eden Yu, and Dr. Li Tianyou, as well as to an anonymous referee for their comments and helpful suggestions. The authors are responsible for the final version.