GMM estimation of a maximum entropy distribution with interval data

We develop a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator for the distribution of a variable where summary statistics are available only for intervals of the random variable. Without individual data, one cannot calculate the weighting matrix for the GMM estimator. Instead, we propose a simulated weighting matrix based on a first-step consistent estimate. When the functional form of the underlying distribution is unknown, we estimate it using a simple yet flexible maximum entropy density. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed maximum entropy density is able to approximate various distributions extremely well. The two-step GMM estimator with a simulated weighting matrix improves the efficiency of the one-step GMM considerably. We use this method to estimate the U.S. income distribution and compare these results with those based on the underlying raw income data.     

Trade diversion from tomato suspension agreements

Abstract .  Trade barriers can cause output to be diverted to other countries and into other products. We study the effect of a voluntary price restraint (VPR) on Mexican tomatoes entering the United States. The diversion caused by the VPR is statistically and economically significant – representing over four-fifths of the direct effects of the trade barrier. When the VPR was binding, Mexico exported more tomatoes to Canada, the United States cut back on exports while Canada increased their exports to the United States. The VPR also diverted fresh tomatoes in Mexico into paste production, which was then exported to the United States.     

Price Dispersion on the Internet: Good Firms and Bad Firms

Internet firms charge a wide range of prices for homogeneous products, and high-priced firms remain high-priced and low-priced firms remain low-priced over long periods. One explanation is that high-price firms are charging a premium for superior service. An alternative, price-dispersion explanation is that firms vary the prices for informed and uniformed consumers (Salop and Stiglitz, 1977) or serious shoppers and others (Wilde and Schwartz, 1979). The pricing pattern for a digital camera and a flatbed scanner is consistent with the price-dispersion model and inconsistent with the service-premium hypothesis.     

Effects of the Private–Label Invasion in Food Industries

Using supermarket scanner data, we test a variety of hypotheses from trade journals about the invasion of private–label food products. According to conventional industry wisdom, name–brand firms defended their brands against new private–label products by lowering their prices, engaging in additional promotional activities, and increasingly differentiating their products. Our empirical evidence is inconsistent with these beliefs.     

The Effects of Pay and Work Conditions on Farmworker Retention

Whether a seasonal farmworker returns to an employer in the following year depends on decisions by both the worker and the employer. Employers are more likely to rehire prime age, experienced, foreign-born workers. An employer increases the probability that a worker returns by spending the last dollar of compensation on benefits or improving working conditions rather than on higher wages.     

EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON URBAN AND RURAL INCOME INEQUALITY

We use three conventional inequality indices—the Gini, the coefficient of variation of income, and the relative mean deviation of income—and the Atkinson index to examine the effect of income tax rates, the minimum wage, and all the major government welfare and transfer programs on the evolution of income inequality for rural and urban areas by state from 1981 to 1997. We find that these programs have qualitatively similar but quantitatively different effects on urban and rural areas. Most importantly, taxes are more effective in redistributing income in urban than in rural areas, while welfare and other government transfer programs play a larger role in rural areas.     

The dynamic annihilation of a rational competitive fringe by a low-cost dominant firm

A low-cost dominant firm will drive all competitive fringe firms out of the market if all firms have rational expectations; however, the dominant firm will not predate (price below marginal cost). Since a dominant firm will not drive out fringe firms if they have myopic expectations, it may be in the dominant firm's best interests to inform the fringe. The effects of governmental intervention on the optimal path and welfare are presented.     

Industrial Policy As an Alternative to Trade Policy: Helping By Hurting*

Abstract Industrial policies that are essentially nonlinear taxes or subsidies on adjustment costs of domestic firms affect those firms' market power in oligopolistic international markets. These adjustment policies often can achieve a strategic purpose at lower cost to the government than linear trade or investment subsidies and are less likely to result in retaliation by other governments. Many governments, however, use adjustment policies for nonstrategic purposes without recognizing that they are reducing their firms' market power by subsidizing adjustment costs rather than taxing them.     

Turnover in U.S. Agricultural Labor Markets

Agricultural workers move in and out of agriculture frequently. Migration between types of jobs takes relatively little time. Legal female workers tend to stay out of the U.S. labor market longer once they stop being employed and their access to jobs outside of agriculture is more limited than that of their male counterparts. Predictions made when the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed that granting people amnesty would induce most of them to leave agriculture were incorrect.     

Efficiency Wages, Deferred Payments, and Direct Incentives in Agriculture

Empirical evidence from agricultural labor markets is consistent with efficiency–wage theory and inconsistent with several alternative explanations. According to this theory, the higher wage or deferred payment (benefits) that direct–hire growers pay relative to that of farm labor contractors is an efficiency wage. Growers use this extra compensation to lower their monitoring expenses and reduce shirking by workers.