WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT DETERMINATION WHEN EMPLOYMENT ADJUSTMENT IS COSTLY*

The paper introduces employment adjustment costs into two widely used models of the trade union, and contrasts the resulting equilibrium wage and employment levels with those which result if employment can be costlessly adjusted.     

ESTIMATING RETURNS ON FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS — DETERMINISTIC ANALYSIS

The present paper addresses the problem of estimating returns on financial instruments when there is incomplete information about the instrument's cash flows. The problem is shown to resolve itself as an exercise in numerical analysis. In theory, the true return is obtained as the solution of an integral equation, but since the required functions are incompletely specified, numerical estimating techniques must be applied. Alternative numerical methods are examined, each of which make different assumptions about the time series properties of the financial instrument's cash flows. It is shown that the estimated returns are highly sensitive to these assumptions and thus to the numerical technique used.     

Accounting and economic rates of return: Additional Australian evidence

The key issue addressed in my paper is whether accounting rate of return (ARR) performs as an effective monitoring surrogate for internal rate of return (IRR). Financial information derived from a sample of 44 Australian corporations between 1968 and 1990 was utilized to accomplish this objective. The Kelly-Tippett (1991) technique was employed to analyze the data set. Results confirm earlier work in the area in that the ARR was found to be an unreliable substitute for the IRR.     

A generalized economic-uneconomic boundary for short run product and cost curves

Conclusions It has been found that for any production function homogeneous of degreem, the tangency point between theLRAPL curve and theSRAPL curve will provide a demarcation between those points that are economic, and hence relevant, and those that are uneconomic and hence irrelevant. As a special case, for a linear homogeneous function, the intersection ofSRAPL withSRMPL also coincides with this boundary.     

Effects of Child Health on Sources of Public Support

We estimate the effects of having a child in poor health on the mother's receipt of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and public support in the form of food (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children [WIC] or food stamps), health insurance (Medicaid), and housing. We find that mothers with unhealthy children are between 2 and 8 percentage points (8-33%) more likely to rely on TANF than those with healthy children. There are stronger effects for mothers with older children than for those having first births. Mothers of children in poor health are also more likely than those with healthy children to receive SSI, Medicaid, and housing assistance but not WIC or food stamps. Given the restrictive new welfare environment, mothers who rely on TANF to cope with the burden of caring for unhealthy infants may soon encounter difficulties making ends meet and have insufficient resources to invest in their children's health.     

Consumer knowledge of the world wide web: Conceptualization and measurement

User‐directed technologies such as the Web are becoming more prevalent. To understand the usage of these technologies the characteristics of users need to be studied. The focus here is on one user characteristic: consumer knowledge content. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, four scales are developed to measure common declarative, common procedural, specialized declarative, and specialized procedural knowledge content of the Web. In addition, an illustration is provided to show how these scales might be used for segmenting consumers. The procedures used may be of value in a wide range of studies where the focus is on investigating users of user‐directed electronic technologies. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ricardian Consumers With Non-Keynesian (And Possibly Ricardian) Propensities

Barsky, Mankiw and Zeldes (1986) have argued that uncertainty about future income can generate strong ‘Keynesian’ responses to tax changes by consumers who have far‐sighted ‘Ricardian’ preferences. The paper argues that this conclusion relies on an inappropriate treatment of future tax policies. Using a more appropriate framework generates behaviour which may instead be approximately Ricardian, and which, if it deviates from the Ricardian benchmark, usually does so in an anti‐Keynesian direction. If Keynesian behaviour is observed, therefore, it requires a different explanation.     

Social Partnership Agreements in Britain: Labor Cooperation and Compliance

This article reviews evidence on the outcomes of British social partnership agreements using matched comparisons. It concludes that in industries marked by employment decline, partnership firms often have shed jobs at a faster rate than nonpartnership firms. However, in expanding sectors, partnership firms have created jobs at a faster rate than nonpartnership rivals. There is no discernible impact of partnership on either wage settlements or union density. It is argued that we need evidence on information sharing, trust, and power and suggested that partnership agreements are unlikely to contribute significantly to union revitalization.