”Uneven development“

John Allen and Doreen Massey (eds), 1988: The Economy in Question. London: Sage Publications, £8.95 paper.

Doreen Massey and John Allen (eds), 1988: Uneven Re-Development: Cities and Regions in Transition. A Reader. London: Hodder and Stoughton, £7.50 paper.

Kevin Morgan and Andrew Sayer, 1988: Microcircuits of Capital: “Sunrise” Industry and Uneven Development Oxford: Polity Press. £35.00 cloth.     

Discrimination and the Occupational Progress of Blacks since 1950

A bstract . Previous research found that the relative occupational position of Blacks in the North and South between 1910 and 1950 showed little change. Utilizing an index of occupational position, which was the fixed weighted averages of the proportion of Blacks or Whites in different skill categories, it was found that the occupational position of Blacks relative to Whites showed substantial improvement between 1950 and 1980 in both the North and South and the United States as a whole. Using an index of occupational position based on variable weights as well as an index of occupational standing provided additional support for this finding. The hypothesis that best explained the relative occupational progress of Blacks since 1950 was that it was achieved by public policy. Antidscriminatory measures enacted in the sixties increased the cost of discriminating and concomitantly decreased the desire or ability to discriminate.     

Estimating time-dependent means in dynamic models for cross-sections of time series

This paper considers a dynamic extension of the classical error components model based on the ideas of structural time series models. The study concentrates on the mean square error estimation of time-dependent means by using the Kalman filter, and on the relative efficiency of these estimators as a function of both the number of observations across units and time.     

International Equity and Differentiation in Global Warming Policy

ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries. Long-standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden-sharing. Moreover, individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations. This paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits. A non-linear programming model, which distinguishes between allocation-based and outcome-based rules, is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes. The model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications.     

Pattern Bargaining*

Many unions in the United States have for several years engaged in what is known as pattern bargaining. In this article, we show that pattern bargaining is preferred by a union to both simultaneous industry‐wide negotiations and sequential negotiations without a pattern. Allowing for interfirm productivity differentials within an industry, we show that for small differentials, the union most prefers a pattern in wages, but for a sufficiently wide differential, the union prefers a pattern in labor costs. Finally, we demonstrate that pattern bargaining can be a significant entry deterrent. This provides an explanation for why incumbent firms in an industry may support the use of pattern bargaining in labor negotiations.     

TRAP abortion laws and partisan political party control of state government

Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (or TRAP) laws impose medically unnecessary and burdensome regulations solely on abortion providers in order to make abortion services more expensive and difficult to obtain. Using event history analysis, this article examines the determinants of the enactment of a TRAP law by states over the period 1974–2008. The empirical results find that Republican institutional control of a state's legislative/executive branches is positively associated with a state enacting a TRAP law, while Democratic institutional control is negatively associated with a state enacting a TRAP law. The percentage of a state's population that is Catholic, public anti-abortion attitudes, state political ideology, and the abortion rate in a state are statistically insignificant predictors of a state enacting a TRAP law. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that abortion is a redistributive issue and not a morality issue.