Tax policy,regulated interest rates,and saving

The paper evaluates tax policy options designed to reduce distortions to savings behavior that occur when administered interest rates are set beneath market equilibrium levels. While the removal of controls on interest rates might be the best option, political, legal or institutional circumstances might well preclude this solution. It suggests that consumption (or sales) taxes can be designed so that, in the short term, the rate of return to saving can be changed to approximate the market-determined interest rate. The main advantage of the measure is that it can provide (a) time to develop appropriate legal and institutional structures for financial deregulation, and (b) an additional policy instrument that allows the burden of adjustment, in a stabilization policy setting, to be distributed over more than one instrument.     

Services, growth poles and advanced economies

In the twenty-first century, nearly 70% of new jobs in the US have been in services, matching worldwide expansion of the services sector. This paper discusses the role of services in advanced economies internationally as a vehicle for ongoing growth and prosperity. The discussion will be frames through pole theory. Contributions of private, profit driven service activity is assessed. Services provide stability while contributing to the growth process, and may constitute growth poles on their own as in money markets and insurance. Services facilitate business and business change, both in domestic and international markets.     

A Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments*

The difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators are growing in popularity. As implemented in popular software, the estimators easily generate instruments that are numerous and, in system GMM, potentially suspect. A large instrument collection overfits endogenous variables even as it weakens the Hansen test of the instruments’ joint validity. This paper reviews the evidence on the effects of instrument proliferation, and describes and simulates simple ways to control it. It illustrates the dangers by replicating Forbes [American Economic Review (2000) Vol. 90, pp. 869–887] on income inequality and Levine et al. [Journal of Monetary Economics] (2000) Vol. 46, pp. 31–77] on financial sector development. Results in both papers appear driven by previously undetected endogeneity.     

Tourism Policy Making:: The Policymakers’ Perspectives

This research explores tourism policy making, from the perspectives of policy makers using grounded theory. It focuses on Leeds, a city in the North of England, which is characterized by its turbulent environment. The paper identifies themes around policy making, including low status, lack of clarity, uncertainty, lack of consensus and congruence and complexity. Its findings indicate policy making is essentially a social process, involving communication and negotiation between people in the context of wider change. It suggests a social conceptualization, and further research to investigate the communications involved in producing policy rather than the focus on the tangible outputs of the process such as a plan or a physical development.     

Homeownership and Child Welfare

Recent studies have concluded that homeownership is beneficial to children. This result is important because it is used to justify large government subsidies that encourage homeownership. We reexamine the results of two of the most prominent of these studies using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Public Use Microsample, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. We extend this research by controlling for residential mobility, wealth, dwelling type and vehicle ownership, as well as by using a "differences in differences" methodology to deal with possible treatment effects bias. We find that the beneficial effects of homeownership previously measured are substantially reduced or eliminated by controlling for these factors. We confirm these results using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.