Empirical study of broadband adoption using data from the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey

Using 2009 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a study of factors that influence broadband adoption is conducted. The data set includes previously studied demographic factors, as well as records associated with the household’s use of computers, television, pay television services, and broadband. Analysis of the data indicate that, when controlling for a number of demographic factors, the purchase of television services is positively correlated with broadband adoption, with consumers who purchase either cable or satellite television service adopting broadband at a higher rate than those who utilize over-the-air television services. The results suggest that consumers who prefer over-the-air television services may face a more substantial hurdle in broadband adoption, one that might be lowered through the availability of affordable stand-alone broadband services.     

Topics in Applied Economics: Tools,Issues and Institutions a Festschrift Volume for Professor U. Sankar

Journal of Quantitative Economics -     

Earning Curves and Wage Curves

Using British county data for full-time male manual workers we extend earlier work to investigate wage and earning curves. We distinguish between total earnings and hourly wages for standard hours, uncontaminated by overtime premium. Using data from 1980–1995 we find that earnings behaviour is dominated by volatile hours in the short run, while wage growth is highly sensitive to the level of unemployment as in the classical Phillips curve with macro data. Macro evidence for sticky wages is thus confirmed at the local level, and the wage curve of rapid adjustment is rejected for normal hourly wages.     

Do Immigrants Affect Firm‐Specific Wages?*

We propose and test a novel effect of immigration on wages. Existing studies have focused on the wage effects that result from changes in the aggregate labour supply in a competitive labour market. We argue that if labour markets are not fully competitive, immigrants might also affect wage formation at the most disaggregate level – the workplace. Using linked employer?employee data, we find that an increased use of low‐skilled immigrant workers has a significantly negative effect on the wages of native workers at the workplace – also when controlling for potential endogeneity of the immigrant share using both fixed effects and instrumental variables.     

Are auction revenues affected by rising art buyers’ premia? The case of early American art

The steady rise in the premiums charged to art buyers at auction (above hammer price) has been underway since 1992. This article, using a stable and bounded sample of repeat purchase of American works created before 1950, reveals that this tact has reduced hammer prices for that art. However, renewed and hyper-competitive efforts to bring more and higher quality art to market by the two main houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have resulted in general profitability. Nevertheless, we calculate that a rise in buyers’ premia at Sotheby’s, a publically traded company, has reduced revenues and profits below their potential in the absence of such increases.     

Contemporary Economic thought. The Contribution of Neo-Institutional Economics

This article examines the historical developments of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise since the early 1900s in order to demonstrate its distinctive characteristics that are often overlooked or belittled by some institutional-evolutionary economists and most mainstream economists. I argue that the institutionalist theory is an evolving and emergent theory, which bears a reciprocal, evolutionary, and cumulative relationship between the business enterprise and society. The institutionalist theory is, therefore, suitable for the understanding of the real-world business enterprise as it can be modified and refined along with the evolution of capitalism. The article begins with a discussion of the present state of the institutionalist theory. The following section is devoted to the major contributions to the institutionalist theory situated in the evolution of U.S. capitalism. The penultimate section provides a critical discussion of new institutional and evolutionary approaches to the firm. The article concludes with a brief discussion as to what should be done for the further development of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise.     

On the Formation ＆ Growth of Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Strip

According to the essential features of urban economic strips, this paper is intended to point out that Chengdu-Chongqing strip has so far been an urban area in geographic or spatial sense, but not an urban economic strip in economic sense. On further basis of analyzing several problems existing in the developrnent of Chengdu-Chongqing economic strip, some countermeasures are correspondingly put forward hereafter.