Does Labor Market Status Influence Self-Assessed Health?

This study examines whether individuals’ self-assessed health is related to their previous standing in the labor market and their self-assessed health at that time. We find that, once self-assessed health in the past is controlled for, none of the specified reasons behind individuals’ labor market status at that time, including the inability to find work, have a statistically significant adverse impact on current assessment of physical or mental health. We do find, however, that women obtaining a job in the past period will currently perceive that their physical health is improved, and that previously unemployed men with a job to return to in the current period also experienced perceptions of better health in the current period. We present evidence that these perceptions share a common factor with other health indicators such as sick days and quasi-objective measures of physical and mental health.     

On induced economic change in precapitalist societies

This essay explores a number of properties of a general growth model of induced economic change in precapitalist societies which incorporates both the insights of Ester Boserup and Thomas Malthus. Responses to diminishing returns include changes in work intensity and population growth. Some important variants of the model are also examined which focus on the transfer of production to non-producers and on alternative processes by which change is induced. The results are used to generate some parameters influencing the political stability of non-working elites; to criticize some previous, less general, growth models; and to suggest some fruitful lines fot future empirical research on economic development in the long run.     

The evolution of competition in U.S. manufacturing

Although four-digit concentration ratios remained roughly constant in the quarter century between 1958 and 1982, they declined significantly when adjusted for imports. The empirical analysis in this paper shows that changes in both types of four-digit concentration ratios were related to the initial level of industrial concentration, barriers to entry, market growth, and to a set of adjustment variables reflecting an interaction of imports and particular structural aspects of the industry. Speculations about the future of competition in the United States are based on the regression equations explaining changes in concentration.I would like to thank John Caskey, Ellen Magenheim, Lee Perlman, Zora Pryor, F. M. Scherer, and participants of the Swarthmore Economics Department's Summer Brown Bag Lunch for comments on an earlier draft. I am also grateful to Chang-Tai Hsieh, who served as a research assistant in the initial stages of research, to the Swarthmore College Faculty Research Fund for financing, to the Brookings Institution where this essay was completed, and to Richard Caves and Lawrence Katz for supplying data classified by four-digit industries to me. Of course, only I am responsible for my conclusions and errors.     

The 'New Class': Analysis of the Concept, the Hypothesis and the Idea as a Research Tool

A bstract . The concept of the 'New Class' often is invoked to explain not only why the capitalist countries of the West are drifting leftwards into socialism but also why socialist nations of East Europe have totalitarian governments, tolerate gross economic inefficiencies, and exploit their workers. Certain critical issues underlying such an approach that are relevant to political economists , especially those interested in the changing boundary between the public and private sectors of the economy , are examined. The concept is found to rely on hypotheses which are not (easily) testable and the argument for its existence to be based on premises that are dubious. Special attention is given to hypotheses in public finance employing the concept in an attempt to explain increasing public expenditures ; these are found wanting.     

Culture and Economic Systems

A bstract .   Applying a cluster analysis to the results of the World Value Study, this article shows that the OECD nations have five distinct patterns of cultural characteristics. Moreover, these five cultural systems are almost the same as a classification of economic systems that have been derived from a cluster analysis of their economic institutions. A comparison of the cultural characteristics of East and West Germany suggests that the economic system has relatively little influence on the cultural systems. Instead, in a democracy, where the economic system is not imposed by force, the cultural characteristics are more likely to determine the economic system, rather than the reverse.     

The census of Canada: current situation and future developments

Recent developments concerning censuses in Canada are described. Efforts to improve data quality in the 1981 census are first discussed. The authors explain how the 1986 census was approved, then cancelled, and finally reinstated. Consideration is given to data processing, costs, census products, and international cooperation on census problems