Infinitesimal Firms and Increasing Cost Industries

This article presents a rigorous version of the basic model of an increasing-cost competitive industry found in many textbooks. In the model, firms are infinitesimal, which justifies price-taking behavior and a continuous industry supply curve. The industry supply curve slopes upward because of dispersion in the efficiency of firms. In this framework, the authors emphasize the role of the marginal firm. This role is not clearly emphasized in many textbook presentations of the increasing cost industry.     

A Framework for Reconsidering the Lake Wobegon Effect

The Lake Wobegon Effect (LWE) describes the potential measurement-error bias introduced into survey-based analyses of education issues. Although this effect potentially applies to any student-report variable, the systematic overreporting of academic achievements such as grade point average is often of preeminent concern. This concern can be easily circumvented if official records data are available; however, many researchers can only access student-reported data. In this article, the authors examine whether using student-survey data in place of official records data meaningfully biases regression estimates. They motivate their contribution by noting a useful statistical feature of overreporting on bounded variables such as grade point average. Specifically, the misreports will be negatively correlated with the true grade point average, yielding a form of nonclassical measurement error that actually counteracts the bias. The authors connect this observation to reliability ratios used in labor economics, which are simple ways to adjust for attenuation bias, when needed. In two applications, we find that it is unnecessary to correct for the LWE bias because it is so small.     

Monetary transmission in Spain: a structural cointegrated VAR approach

This paper analyses the monetary policy channels in Spain using a cointegrated structural VAR approach which explicitly accounts for endogenous policy reactions in a small open economy. Evidence is found of one cointegrating relation which is identified as a long-run money demand function. In addition, stability tests are applied to this relationship to assess whether there has been a change of monetary regime. The impulse-responses for the non-monetary shocks as well as the absence of the puzzles traditionally found in the empirical literature, suggest that the model specification identifies the monetary policy shocks correctly. Thus, according to our results, a monetary contraction causes a weak downward response in the price level, as well as an increase in both short and long-run nominal interest rates, a decrease in aggregate output and an exchange rate appreciation.     

Financial integration and the ASEAN-5 equity markets

The existence of long-run relationships among the ASEAN-5 equity markets is empirically investigated. This study utilized weekly data spanning January 1988 to August 1999. The results of Granger noncausality test due to Toda and Yamamoto (Journal of Econometrics,66, 225–50, 1995) reveal that the Singapore equity market was not affected by other markets except by the Philippines in the long run. This result shows that there exist opportunities for beneficial international portfolio diversification within the context of the Asean-5 equity markets.     

Dynamic almost ideal demand systems: an empirical analysis of alcohol expenditure in Ireland

This paper presents a dynamic form of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). Three versions of the static AIDS model are employed to determine the preferred long-run equilibrium model and represents the short-run dynamics by an error correction mechanism. This estimation procedure is then applied to alcohol expenditure in Ireland. The estimated point elasticities are consistent with previous studies and a priori expectations. Beer and spirits are found to be price inelastic in both the short and long run. While wine is price inelastic in the short run and price elastic in the long run.     

Book Reviews

Much research has shown that mortgage rates exert a negative influence on housing prices. This study analyses the long- and short-run relationships between housing prices and mortgage rates using advanced nonstructural estimation methods. As expected, a bivariate specification and a four-variable housing demand specification both show that these variables have a long-run relationship, and that there is a rather inelastic response of housing prices to changes in mortgage rates. However, contrary to previous research, the results from Granger non-causality tests, impulse response functions and variance decompositions reveal that there is virtually no short-run influence from mortgage rates to housing prices.     

Central city crime and suburban economic growth

This paper explores the relationship between inner-city crime patterns and suburban income growth, analysing data on 318 US counties for selected metropolitan statistical areas of 32 states within the United States from 1982 to 1997. The findings suggest that violent crime does seem to have a negative impact on close-in suburbs, with a less negative impact farther away from the central city (becoming positive at some point). While results are not as robust as we had hoped they are consistent with flight to further-out suburbs rather than migration to different metropolitan areas in response to urban crime.     

Is there evidence of creative destruction in the Turkish manufacturing sector? Lessons from a cross-industry analysis of aggregate productivity growth

This paper examines the Schumpeterian creative destruction process by decomposing and analysing aggregate industry-level productivity growth in three Turkish manufacturing industries. The results are somewhat supportive of the Schumpeterian hypothesis given that the productivity effects within plants contributed the most to the aggregate level productivity growth. However, the results generally contradict the insight that plants entering the market have higher productivity than plants that exit the market. This supports Caballero and Hammour's (NBER Working Paper No. 7720, 2000) arguments that institutional and market constraints may interfere with the proper functioning of Schumpeter's creative destruction process.