Exchange Rate Asymmetry and Flexible Exchange Rates under Inflation Targeting Regimes: Evidence from Four East and Southeast Asian Countries

While many have underscored the role of a flexible exchange rate policy under an inflation targeting (IT) regime, very few studies have examined what actually happens to exchange rate policy once the emerging market announces that it will adopt inflation targeting. The central contention of this paper is that while the adoption of an inflation targeting (IT) policy may lead to more flexible exchange rate movements, for various reasons it is possible that the degree of flexibility will be significantly higher on one side of the market. In this study, we demonstrate that four Asian economies—namely, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand—whom were among the first group of emerging markets to embrace the inflation targeting framework of monetary policy, tend to adopt a form of asymmetrical exchange rate behavior, wherein appreciation pressures are restrained more substantially than depreciation pressures.     

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF PRODUCTIVITY IN SELECTED SERVICE INDUSTRIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1939–1963

This paper examines differentials in output, employment and productivity across seventeen service industries in the United States from 1939 to 1963. Included are 9 retail trades and 8 services mostly from the personal service group. The industries chosen were those for which it was possible to obtain from available data reasonably comparable measures of output and input for selected years since 1939. Also, they are industries for which it is possible to calculate a measure of real output that is not based on labor input.
Sixteen of the industries show positive rates of change of real output per man. Thus there appears to be no basis for assuming that productivity cannot or does not increase in industries providing services. However, the rate of increase for the group as a whole was not as rapid as in manufacturing or in goods production as a whole.
The data for the seventeen industries give strong support to the hypothesis of a positive correlation between industry rates of growth and rates of change of productivity. The correlations are of the same order of magnitude as those found by other investigators in studies of manufacturing industries.
The coefficient of correlation between growth of output per man and growth of output is .93; between growth of output per man and growth of employment it is .54 for 1939–1963. The comparable coefficients for the 1948–1963 period are .70 and .13.
The results also parallel those reported for manufacturing in one other respect, namely, the absence of any correlation between changes in output per man and changes in compensation per man.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the problems encountered in measuring changes in real output in these industries and presents some alternative estimates based on different concepts and different sources.     

David Dubinsky,the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Limits of Social Democratic Trade Unionism

Unlike Parmet’s (2005) well-written and thoroughly researched biography and many other generally admiring books and articles on David Dubinsky, the former International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) president from 1932 to 1966, this essay contends that even though Dubinsky initiated important developments within the ILGWU and fought heroically against Nazism and Fascism, his right-wing social democratic worldview was ultimately divisive to the achievement of national and international working class unity. Dubinsky’s political positions become evident through his vigorous anti-Communism which he engaged in with regards to his dealings with Communists in the ILGWU, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the American Labor Party. Moreover, the exporting of his anti-Communism abroad via the American Federation of Labor’s Free Trade Union Committee and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions damaged international working class unity through the sabotaging of radical trade unionism not only in Western Europe but in nations around the globe. Understanding Dubinsky’s anti-Communism is the key for ultimately comprehending the garment union leader’s politics.     

Efficiency and Technological Change in the U.S. Brewing Industry

This study demonstrates that the measurement of technological change and economic efficiency are tightly linked. Efficiency measures may depend on carefully controlling for technological change, while tests of technological change may be sensitive to empirical model specifications. Moreover, the study underlines Solow's (1994) and Romer's (1994) admonition that econometricians should pay attention to industry and institutional evidence in building models of technological change. The empirical results presented here suggest that there has been substantial technological change in the U.S. brewing industry from 1950 to 1992. This occurred in the form of a dramatic shift in technology beginning with the introduction of super breweries in about 1972. There has also been a substantial increase in scale economies, which undoubtedly caused many inefficiently small firms to exit the industry during the 1960s and 1970s. Further results suggest that a more complete specification of technological change and the stochastic nature of the frontier production function leads to higher and more tenable estimates of efficiency.