In his History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter (Schumpeter 1954a) dismissed Adam Smith’s Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1976) in a blunt and ad hominem manner. We argue that Schumpeter’s assessment resulted from his failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Smith’s masterpiece, a failure largely due to Schumpeter not having access to student notes of Smith’s lectures on rhetoric that surfaced only after Schumpeter’s death.
{"title":"Schumpeter's Assessment of Adam Smith and 'The Wealth of Nations': Why He Got It Wrong","authors":"A. Ortmann, David Baranowski, Benoît Walraevens","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2714146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2714146","url":null,"abstract":"In his History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter (Schumpeter 1954a) dismissed Adam Smith’s Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1976) in a blunt and ad hominem manner. We argue that Schumpeter’s assessment resulted from his failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Smith’s masterpiece, a failure largely due to Schumpeter not having access to student notes of Smith’s lectures on rhetoric that surfaced only after Schumpeter’s death.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"221 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121465453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper focuses on an unexamined area of trade, the behaviour of heterogeneous intermediate suppliers facing final producers of different ability and pursuing different strategies. We develop a theoretical model to analyse the choice of an intermediate supplier between selling to domestic producers, selling to multinational producers and/or exporting to foreign producers. The model’s predictions are: (i) sufficiently productive firms self-select into supplying to multinationals or exporting, while the most productive firms pursue both strategies, and (ii) the order of preferred strategies between supplying to multinationals and exporting depends on foreign direct investment inflows and export set-up costs. The paper tests these theoretical predictions using firm-level data from 29 European and Central Asian countries in 2002 and 2005. The empirical analysis confirms our model’s predictions. Moreover, it suggests that multinational suppliers are more likely to have higher required levels of ex-ante labour productivity than exporters, implying that exporting is easier and a more popular choice for firms.
{"title":"Multinational Suppliers: Are They Different from Exporters?","authors":"V. Pham, M. Caselli, A. Woodland","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3151225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3151225","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on an unexamined area of trade, the behaviour of heterogeneous intermediate suppliers facing final producers of different ability and pursuing different strategies. We develop a theoretical model to analyse the choice of an intermediate supplier between selling to domestic producers, selling to multinational producers and/or exporting to foreign producers. The model’s predictions are: (i) sufficiently productive firms self-select into supplying to multinationals or exporting, while the most productive firms pursue both strategies, and (ii) the order of preferred strategies between supplying to multinationals and exporting depends on foreign direct investment inflows and export set-up costs. The paper tests these theoretical predictions using firm-level data from 29 European and Central Asian countries in 2002 and 2005. The empirical analysis confirms our model’s predictions. Moreover, it suggests that multinational suppliers are more likely to have higher required levels of ex-ante labour productivity than exporters, implying that exporting is easier and a more popular choice for firms.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124372794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India has a high level of out-of-pocket (OOP) health care spending, and lacks well developed health insurance markets. As a result, official measures of poverty and inequality that treat medical spending symmetrically with consumption goods can be misleading. We argue that OOP medical costs should be treated as necessary expenses for the treatment of illness, not as part of consumption. Adopting this perspective, we construct poverty and inequality measures for India that account for impoverishment induced by OOP medical costs. For 2011/12 we estimate that 4.1% of the population, or 50 million people, are in a state of “hidden poverty” due to medical expenses. Furthermore, while poverty in India fell substantially from 1999/00 to 2011/12, the fraction of the remaining poverty that is due to medical costs has risen substantially. Economic growth appears less “pro-poor” if one accounts for OOP medical costs, especially since 2004/05, and especially in rural areas.
{"title":"Health Care Spending and Hidden Poverty in India","authors":"Michael P. Keane, R. Thakur","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3118615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3118615","url":null,"abstract":"India has a high level of out-of-pocket (OOP) health care spending, and lacks well developed health insurance markets. As a result, official measures of poverty and inequality that treat medical spending symmetrically with consumption goods can be misleading. We argue that OOP medical costs should be treated as necessary expenses for the treatment of illness, not as part of consumption. Adopting this perspective, we construct poverty and inequality measures for India that account for impoverishment induced by OOP medical costs. For 2011/12 we estimate that 4.1% of the population, or 50 million people, are in a state of “hidden poverty” due to medical expenses. Furthermore, while poverty in India fell substantially from 1999/00 to 2011/12, the fraction of the remaining poverty that is due to medical costs has risen substantially. Economic growth appears less “pro-poor” if one accounts for OOP medical costs, especially since 2004/05, and especially in rural areas.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127977307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using the new Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts as well as other BEA data, we construct productivity accounts for two key sectors of the US economy: the Corporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 1) and the Noncorporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 2). Calculating user costs of capital based on, alternatively, ex post and predicted asset price inflation rates, we provide alternative estimates for capital services and Total Factor Productivity growth for the two sectors. Rates of return on assets employed are also reported for both sectors. In addition, we compare rates of return on assets employed and TFP growth rates when the land and inventory components are withdrawn from the asset base. Finally, implications for labour and capital shares from using alternative income concepts are explored.
{"title":"Alternative User Costs, Productivity and Inequality in US Business Sectors","authors":"W. Diewert, Kevin J. Fox","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2978451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2978451","url":null,"abstract":"Using the new Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts as well as other BEA data, we construct productivity accounts for two key sectors of the US economy: the Corporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 1) and the Noncorporate Nonfinancial Sector (Sector 2). Calculating user costs of capital based on, alternatively, ex post and predicted asset price inflation rates, we provide alternative estimates for capital services and Total Factor Productivity growth for the two sectors. Rates of return on assets employed are also reported for both sectors. In addition, we compare rates of return on assets employed and TFP growth rates when the land and inventory components are withdrawn from the asset base. Finally, implications for labour and capital shares from using alternative income concepts are explored.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125657670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We construct rent-price ratios for houses and units in 82 local government areas in the Sydney and Melbourne markets for the period 1985/86-2015. Using this annual data we employ long-horizon regression techniques and find that rent-price ratios (i.e. rental yields) have predictive content for both future real housing returns and future growth rates of real rents. However rents and returns have greater predictability in Sydney than in Melbourne. Using a variance decomposition for the rent-price ratio implied by the present-value model, we find that variation in rental yields of units in Sydney is almost fully accounted for by expected changes in future rent growth and returns. There appears to be no role for rational bubbles in influencing the prices of Sydney units. In contrast – on average – lesser portions of the variance in rental yields on houses in Sydney (two thirds) and Melbourne (one third) and units in Melbourne (60 percent) is explained by expected future returns and rents. Evidently there is scope for (stochastic) rational bubbles to have affected these markets. Our results point to an important difference between the behaviour of residential housing markets and stock markets. In the stock market, current changes in dividend-price ratios do not appear to reflect important variations in future dividend growth. Our results for Sydney and Melbourne suggest that current changes in rent-price ratios do signal future changes in rent growth.
{"title":"How Predictable? Rent Growth and Returns in Sydney and Melbourne Housing Markets","authors":"G. Otto, Nigel Stapledon","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2910110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2910110","url":null,"abstract":"We construct rent-price ratios for houses and units in 82 local government areas in the Sydney and Melbourne markets for the period 1985/86-2015. Using this annual data we employ long-horizon regression techniques and find that rent-price ratios (i.e. rental yields) have predictive content for both future real housing returns and future growth rates of real rents. However rents and returns have greater predictability in Sydney than in Melbourne. Using a variance decomposition for the rent-price ratio implied by the present-value model, we find that variation in rental yields of units in Sydney is almost fully accounted for by expected changes in future rent growth and returns. There appears to be no role for rational bubbles in influencing the prices of Sydney units. In contrast – on average – lesser portions of the variance in rental yields on houses in Sydney (two thirds) and Melbourne (one third) and units in Melbourne (60 percent) is explained by expected future returns and rents. Evidently there is scope for (stochastic) rational bubbles to have affected these markets. Our results point to an important difference between the behaviour of residential housing markets and stock markets. In the stock market, current changes in dividend-price ratios do not appear to reflect important variations in future dividend growth. Our results for Sydney and Melbourne suggest that current changes in rent-price ratios do signal future changes in rent growth.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124816928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we examine how men and women in mixed-gender unions change their allocation of time to housework in response to promotions and terminations in the labour market. Operating much like raises, such events have the potential to alter power dynamics within the household, as well as labour force commitments. Using Australian panel data on married and cohabiting couples, we first show evidence that promotions and terminations are plausibly exogenous to housework time allocations, then estimate gender and couple-specific fixed effects models of housework time as a function of both own and partner’s labour market events. Of the four types of labour market events we examine – male and female promotion, and male and female termination – female promotion is the strongest predictor of housework time allocation adjustments. These adjustments are in part due to concurrent changes in paid work time, but gender power relations also appear to play a role. Further results indicate that although large gender gaps in housework time exist regardless of labour market activity, households holding more liberal gender role attitudes, and those that are less time-constrained, are those most likely to adjust their housework time allocations after female promotion events. Power dynamics cannot, however, explain all the results. Supporting the sociological theory that partners may ‘do gender’ ( i.e., try to compensate behaviourally for phenomena that run contrary to gender stereotypes), we find that in households with more traditional gender role attitudes that experience a male termination event, his housework time falls while hers rises.
{"title":"Do Significant Labour Market Events Change Who Does the Laundry? Work, Chore Allocation, and Power in Australian Households","authors":"Gigi Foster, Leslie S. Stratton","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2926739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2926739","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we examine how men and women in mixed-gender unions change their allocation of time to housework in response to promotions and terminations in the labour market. Operating much like raises, such events have the potential to alter power dynamics within the household, as well as labour force commitments. Using Australian panel data on married and cohabiting couples, we first show evidence that promotions and terminations are plausibly exogenous to housework time allocations, then estimate gender and couple-specific fixed effects models of housework time as a function of both own and partner’s labour market events. Of the four types of labour market events we examine – male and female promotion, and male and female termination – female promotion is the strongest predictor of housework time allocation adjustments. These adjustments are in part due to concurrent changes in paid work time, but gender power relations also appear to play a role. Further results indicate that although large gender gaps in housework time exist regardless of labour market activity, households holding more liberal gender role attitudes, and those that are less time-constrained, are those most likely to adjust their housework time allocations after female promotion events. Power dynamics cannot, however, explain all the results. Supporting the sociological theory that partners may ‘do gender’ ( i.e., try to compensate behaviourally for phenomena that run contrary to gender stereotypes), we find that in households with more traditional gender role attitudes that experience a male termination event, his housework time falls while hers rises.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122895310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Keynes originally published his Essays in Biography in 1933. After his death, Rupert Hart-Davies reprinted the volume, adding, with the help of Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Keynes’s brother), “three of the more important of Keynes’s later writings – the essays on … Jevons and Newton and his charming biography of Mary Marshall” (xv). The editors of the Collected Writings re-published the essays in 1972 as volume X, adding two previously unpublished but extremely important essays: “Melchior: a defeated enemy” and “My early beliefs”.
{"title":"Reflections on Keynes's Essays in Biography","authors":"G. Harcourt","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2843327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2843327","url":null,"abstract":"Keynes originally published his Essays in Biography in 1933. After his death, Rupert Hart-Davies reprinted the volume, adding, with the help of Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Keynes’s brother), “three of the more important of Keynes’s later writings – the essays on … Jevons and Newton and his charming biography of Mary Marshall” (xv). The editors of the Collected Writings re-published the essays in 1972 as volume X, adding two previously unpublished but extremely important essays: “Melchior: a defeated enemy” and “My early beliefs”.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"212 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131502104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consumers are very responsive to sales, yet statistical agency practice typically under-weights sale prices in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Evidence is lacking on the impact on the representativeness of prices included in the CPI and on estimates of inflation. We use high-frequency scanner data from US supermarkets to explore if there is any systematic directional impact. The key finding is that the exclusion of sales prices introduces a systematic effect. We also find that even when sales prices are included they are systematically under-weighted, but the under-weighting remains fairly stable over time so that inflation measurement is not significantly affected. In addition, we find evidence that the typical practice of using data from an incomplete period in constructing unit values can lead to an upward bias in the resulting price index.
{"title":"Price Discounts and the Measurement of Inflation: Further Results","authors":"Kevin J. Fox, I. Syed","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2775505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2775505","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers are very responsive to sales, yet statistical agency practice typically under-weights sale prices in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Evidence is lacking on the impact on the representativeness of prices included in the CPI and on estimates of inflation. We use high-frequency scanner data from US supermarkets to explore if there is any systematic directional impact. The key finding is that the exclusion of sales prices introduces a systematic effect. We also find that even when sales prices are included they are systematically under-weighted, but the under-weighting remains fairly stable over time so that inflation measurement is not significantly affected. In addition, we find evidence that the typical practice of using data from an incomplete period in constructing unit values can lead to an upward bias in the resulting price index.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"329 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122835294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Allais Paradox, or Common Consequence Effect to be precise, is one of the most wellknown behavioral regularities in individual decision making under risk. A common perception in the literature, which motivated the development of numerous generalized non‐expected utility theories, is that the Allais Paradox is a robust empirical finding. We argue that such a perception does not accurately reflect the experimental evidence on the Allais Paradox and show how specific choices of parameters can make it appear, disappear, or reverse. For example, our results suggest that the Allais Paradox is likely to disappear when lotteries involve relatively small outcomes under real financial incentives and probability distributions are described as compound lotteries or in a frequency format (rather than as reduced‐form simple lotteries). We also find that the Allais Paradox is likely to get reversed when lotteries are designed with an even division of the probability mass between the lowest and the highest outcomes.
{"title":"Now You See It, Now You Don’t: How to Make the Allais Paradox Appear, Disappear, or Reverse","authors":"P. Blavatskyy, A. Ortmann, V. Panchenko","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2621917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2621917","url":null,"abstract":"The Allais Paradox, or Common Consequence Effect to be precise, is one of the most wellknown behavioral regularities in individual decision making under risk. A common perception in the literature, which motivated the development of numerous generalized non‐expected utility theories, is that the Allais Paradox is a robust empirical finding. We argue that such a perception does not accurately reflect the experimental evidence on the Allais Paradox and show how specific choices of parameters can make it appear, disappear, or reverse. For example, our results suggest that the Allais Paradox is likely to disappear when lotteries involve relatively small outcomes under real financial incentives and probability distributions are described as compound lotteries or in a frequency format (rather than as reduced‐form simple lotteries). We also find that the Allais Paradox is likely to get reversed when lotteries are designed with an even division of the probability mass between the lowest and the highest outcomes.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133185706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper develops a New Keynesian model with search frictions in which generated frictional unemployment is consistent with the time series of involuntary unemployment collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus, it can shed light on the relevant impact of labor market frictions and policy interventions on the observed unemployment about which policy makers and the public are concerned. The data-consistent unemployment is achieved in the model via introduction of partial consumption insurance and an endogenous labor force participation channel. In particular, I find that allowing for endogenous labor force participation greatly improves the model fit for U.S. data. It appears that the price markup shock and matching efficiency shock are the two key driving forces of unemployment fluctuations. Monetary policy that stabilizes the participation gap can be welfare improving.
{"title":"Endogenous Labor Force Participation, Involuntary Unemployment and Monetary Policy","authors":"Yuelin Liu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2546625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2546625","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a New Keynesian model with search frictions in which generated frictional unemployment is consistent with the time series of involuntary unemployment collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus, it can shed light on the relevant impact of labor market frictions and policy interventions on the observed unemployment about which policy makers and the public are concerned. The data-consistent unemployment is achieved in the model via introduction of partial consumption insurance and an endogenous labor force participation channel. In particular, I find that allowing for endogenous labor force participation greatly improves the model fit for U.S. data. It appears that the price markup shock and matching efficiency shock are the two key driving forces of unemployment fluctuations. Monetary policy that stabilizes the participation gap can be welfare improving.","PeriodicalId":180753,"journal":{"name":"UNSW: Economics (Topic)","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123395347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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