Incentive schemes and racial wage discrimination

We use a major micro data set to investigate the influence of incentive schemes on wage discrimination against blacks. Incentive schemes which directly link earnings and productivity appear to generally raise earnings, but they increase wages of blacks proportionately more than those of whites. This reduces the residual attributable to discrimination and suggests it is easier to discriminate when earnings are based on perceptions of input (evaluations of effort) rather than on measures of output.     

Trade preferences and exports of manufactures: A case study of Bolivia and Brazil

Trade Preferences and Exports of Manufactures: A Case Study of Bolivia and Brazil. — This paper analyzes the impact of the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) on the exports of Bolivia and Brazil, whose levels of economic development differ substantially. While Brazil’s exports under GSP were larger than Bolivia’s, the preferences had a significant impact only on Bolivian exports. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that certain low-income countries have benefitted from trade preferences. Since the GSP is not costly to the U.S. economy, continuation of the program with some modifications to benefit the least developed countries is recommended.     

A Cost Function Analysis of the Australian Transportation Equipment Industry

This article investigates the existence of economies of scale and input cross and direct price elasticities of demand in the Australian motor vehicle industry. Our estimated cost elasticities were less than one (consistent with economies of scale), but not significantly less than one at the 10 per cent level for two versions of the model. However, the estimated cost elasticity was significantly less than one at approximately the 2.5 per cent level for a third. Thus, these results give some credibility to the infant industry argument for continued assistance to the Australian transportation equipment industry. A four-input model separating domestic and foreign intermediate goods inputs suggests that while restrictions on imported components may have given some short-run relief to the domestic components industry and increased the demand for labour domestically, they decreased the demand for domestic capital. Although the infant industry argument could support short-run protectionist policies for the industry, it appears that such policies regarding the Australian motor vehicle industry must be designed carefully with a specified phase-out period if long-term adverse results are to be avoided.