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Economists
Kinds of Economists Selected AbstractsDUAL ECONOMY MODELS: A PRIMER FOR GROWTH ECONOMISTSTHE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 4 2005JONATHAN TEMPLE This paper argues that dual economy models deserve a central place in the analysis of growth in developing countries. The paper shows how these models can be used to analyse the output losses associated with factor misallocation, aggregate growth in the presence of factor market distortions, international differences in sectoral productivity and the potential role of increasing returns to scale. Above all, small-scale general equilibrium models can be used to investigate the interactions between growth and labour markets, to shed new light on the origins of pro-poor and labour-intensive growth, and to explore the role of the informal sector. [source] INCENTIVE REGULATION AND THE ROLE OF CONVEXITY IN BENCHMARKING ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION: ECONOMISTS VERSUS ENGINEERSANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2008Emili GRIFELL-TATJÉ ABSTRACT,:,This note illustrates the potential impact of the specification of a convex production technology on establishing minimal costs compared to the use of a non-convex technology when benchmarking electricity distributors. This methodological reflection is mainly motivated by recent engineering literature providing evidence for non-convexities in electricity distribution. An empirical illustration using non-parametric specifications of technology illustrates this main point using a sample of Spanish electricity distribution firms earlier analysed in Grifell-Tatjé and Lovell (2003). [source] NIEMEYER, SCULLIN AND THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMISTSAUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Alex Millmow This article revisits the Niemeyer mission to Australia in 1930 and shows how it facilitated the entry of local economists into the art of policy making. Until then the Scullin government had little regard for the worth of academic economists, a view shared by bankers and central bankers alike. With Niemeyer's dogmatic advice considered too draconian by a vacillating government, Australian economists, led by L. F. Giblin and D. B. Copland, were galvanised into providing a more palatable alternative. This advice eventually transformed into the Premiers' Plan which complemented the devaluation and wage cut, both of which had been implemented in January 1931. While the Plan in its entirety was deflationary it was a more equitable and imaginative blueprint than Niemeyer's. [source] RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY OF AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIC ECONOMISTS: HUMAN-CAPITAL AND FIXED EFFECTS,AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 1 2007JOAN R. RODGERS This study investigates why some economics departments in Australian universities are more research productive than others. The hypothesis is simple: research productivity depends upon the human capital of department members and the department-specific conditions under which they work. A Tobit model is used to estimate the magnitude of the two effects. Both are found to be important. Our results help explain why a small number of departments consistently outperform the others in studies that rank Australian economics departments according to research output. [source] Rethinking Social Security in Latin AmericaINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2-3 2005Indermit Gill In the past decade, many Latin American governments have radically restructured their old age income security systems, following the lead of Chile, which undertook its major pension reform in 1981. The defining characteristic of the reforms has been a shift in the basis of public pensions from social to individual responsibility: instead of the widely used system that "collectivized" or pooled the risk of being without the capacity to earn while aged, numerous countries in the region have adopted a system that relies on individual savings accounts. The reforms have maintained a role for a modified version of public pooling; this combination of individual and social savings to finance pensions is known as the "multipillar" approach. This article is based on a report prepared for the Office of the Chief Economist of the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank (Gill, Packard and Yermo, 2004).1 The report recognizes that the system of individual accounts, the essential aspect of the reform, has been a necessary and positive development, and one that is consistent with the economics of insurance and social welfare objectives. Beyond this recognition, however, the results of reform are much more complex. Each country has implemented its own version of the multipillar system. The article therefore draws on country evidence in order to determine: How has the new approach to public pensions in Latin America fared? In particular, have the changes left workers and their families in reform countries better off? The first section provides a brief description of the reforms. The second discusses the main macroeconomic concerns and effects. The third describes the impact on coverage levels, and other social welfare implications. The fourth evaluates the stagnation of coverage levels and presents various possible explanations. The fifth makes specific proposals to improve the multipillar pension system in Latin America. The last section concludes. [source] The Making of a Global European EconomistKYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 2 2008David Colander SUMMARY This paper provides results of a survey of European graduate programs that are designing their programs to be similar to top US programs and compares those results to an earlier study done by the author of US schools. The study (1) provides a profile of European graduate economics students; (2) considers the degree to which European training at these schools differs from U.S. training, (3) offers some insights into the differences that exist among some top European programs in economics, and (4) provides a glimpse of the views that the students have of economics and of the training they are receiving. It finds that these global European programs are similar in many ways to US programs and that the students are satisfied with the programs. However, because of the different job markets in the US and Europe, it is not clear that the training is appropriate for the majority of European students. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the concerns that should be kept in mind by other programs as they consider adapting their programs to become a ,global' program. These concerns include the argument that the traditional European system did a number of things right; the European academic economics institutional structure is quite different from the U.S. institutional structure; and the U.S. system has its own set of problems. [source] Beauty and the Economist: The Role of Aesthetics in Economic TheoryKYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2005Cassey Lee SUMMARY The importance of aesthetic considerations is widely acknowledged in mathematics and the natural sciences. Beauty motivates mathematical and scientific discoveries and serves as a criterion for their acceptance by the scientific community. In contrast, there is little attention to beauty in the models, theorems and other objects of economic theory. This holds even though mathematics is an important tool of economic analysis. The pure theory of international trade provides useful examples to discuss the role of aesthetics in economic theory. The central feature of the discipline of economics which distinguishes it from the natural sciences and appears to explain the paucity of beauty in economics is that economic models lack generality. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die Bedeutung ästhetischer Überlegungen ist in der Mathematik und den Naturwissenschaften aner-kannt. Schönheit motiviert mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Entdeckungen und dient als Kriterium für deren Akzeptanz in der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft. In den Modellen, Theore-men und anderen Fragestellungen der ökonomischen Theorie wird hingegen kaum auf Schönheit ge-achtet; dies, obwohl Mathematik ein wichtiges Instrument der ökonomischen Analyse ist. Die reine Theorie des internationalen Handels bietet brauchbare Beispiele, um die Rolle der Ästhetik in der ökonomischen Theorie zu diskutieren. Was die Wirtschaftswissenschaften am deutlichsten von den Naturwissenschaften unterscheidet und den Mangel an Schönheit zu erklären scheint ist die Tatsache, dass ökonomische Modelle nicht allgemeingültig sind. [source] 4 Marshall: A Professional Economist Guards the Purity of His DisciplineAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 5 2003Robert F. H´bert First page of article [source] Sir Hans Singer: The Life and Work of a Development Economist.THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 491 2003John Thoburn No abstract is available for this article. [source] Surfing Economics: Essays for the Inquiring EconomistTHE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 483 2002Paul Lewis No abstract is available for this article. [source] What Can a Young Labour Economist (or Any Economist) Learn from Bob Gregory?,THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 257 2006JEFF BORLAND ,Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so. If you learn how to look at data in the right way, you can explain riddles that otherwise might have seemed impossible.' (Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner 2005, Freakonomics, William Morrow, p. 14) [source] Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist , By Peter Coleman, Selwyn Cornish and Peter Drake with Bettina ArndtAUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2008Brian EastonArticle first published online: 6 OCT 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design EconomicsECONOMETRICA, Issue 4 2002Alvin E. Roth Economists have lately been called upon not only to analyze markets, but to design them. Market design involves a responsibility for detail, a need to deal with all of a market's complications, not just its principle features. Designers therefore cannot work only with the simple conceptual models used for theoretical insights into the general working of markets. Instead, market design calls for an engineering approach. Drawing primarily on the design of the entry level labor market for American doctors (the National Resident Matching Program), and of the auctions of radio spectrum conducted by the Federal Communications Commission, this paper makes the case that experimental and computational economics are natural complements to game theory in the work of design. The paper also argues that some of the challenges facing both markets involve dealing with related kinds of complementarities, and that this suggests an agenda for future theoretical research. [source] Contrasting Entrepreneurial Economic Development in Emerging Latin American Economies: Applications and Extensions of Resource-Based TheoryENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 1 2008G. Page West III Emerging economies face daunting economic development challenges. Economists and management consultants have generally suggested global solutions that typically focus solely on foreign direct investment. Yet a resource-based theory approach offers an alternative view of economic development in which a foundation of resources within a region gestates entrepreneurial activity. While theoretically appealing, it is unclear in application how such resources can be developed or which types of resources are most important to develop. This paper extends the application of resource-based theory to entrepreneurial economic development in subsistence economies. A qualitative study of contrasting entrepreneurial activity in Chiapas (Mexico) and Atenas (Costa Rica) highlights the primacy of intangible resources,and especially entrepreneurial orientation resources,in the gestation of entrepreneurial activity. [source] Consumer ,sovereignty' and policy issues in the development of product ecolabelsENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2001Alain Nadaï Quality labels are increasingly focused on products' characteristics, requiring heavy scientific expertise to be assessed. Economists approach these labels as market mechanisms , i.e. signalling, reputation, or market differentiation , and ignore their institutional dimension. We contend that, by doing so, they do not address key problems faced by the regulators when developing these labels. The first part fleshes out this idea by examining the institutional dimension of the European ecolabel. We present the negotiation of the paints and varnishes ecolabelling criteria, a success story. The second part discusses three theoretical approaches to product labelling and proposes directions for further research on the subject. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Contrasting approaches to statistical regression in ecology and economicsJOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2009P. R. Armsworth Summary 1Conservation and natural resource management challenges are as much social problems as biological ones. In recognition of this fact, ecologists and economists work increasingly closely together. We discuss one barrier to effective integration of the two disciplines: put simply, many ecologists and economists approach statistical regression differently. 2Regression techniques provide the most commonly used approach for empirical analyses of land management decisions. Researchers from each discipline attribute differing importance to a range of possibly conflicting design criteria when formulating regression analyses. 3Ecologists commonly attribute greater importance to spatial autocorrelation and parsimony than do economists when designing regressions. Economists often attribute greater importance than ecologists to concerns about endogeneity and conformance with a priori theoretical expectations. 4Synthesis and applications. The differing importance attributed to different design characteristics may reflect a process of cultural drift within each discipline. Greater interdisciplinary collaboration can counteract this process by stimulating the flow of ideas and techniques across disciplinary boundaries. [source] Heterogeneity in informal sector mitigation of micro-enterprise credit rationingJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2007David W. Mushinski Abstract Economists have observed that informal credit markets may mitigate micro-entrepreneurial rationing in formal credit markets. While informal credit markets may have that effect, the uniformity and magnitude of the mitigation is not apparent. We analyse micro-enterprise credit rationing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the United States. We find that micro-entrepreneurs have virtually no access to formal credit markets and that informal credit markets have differential impacts on micro-entrepreneurs' rationing in formal credit markets. Informal markets appear to ease credit rationing the most for the mid-size micro-enterprises in our sample, with the smallest and largest micro-enterprises still facing severe rationing constraints. We also find that micro-enterprises of all sizes face a positive probability of credit rationing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Assigning priority to environmental policy interventions in a heterogeneous worldJOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2003Paul J. Ferraro Failure to consider costs as well as benefits is common in many policy initiatives and analyses, particularly in the environmental arena. Economists and other policy scientists have demonstrated that integrating both cost and benefit information explicitly into the policy process can be vital to ensuring that scarce funds go as far as they can toward achieving policy objectives. The costs of acquiring and analyzing such information, however, can be substantial. The objective of this paper is to help policy analysts and practitioners identify the conditions under which integrating cost and benefit information is likely to be vital to effective decisionmaking, and the conditions under which failing to use both cost and benefit data would result in little, if any, loss in efficiency. These points are illustrated through a conceptual discussion and an empirical analysis of a conservation initiative in the United States. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [source] Welfare Economics with Intransitive Revealed Preferences: A Theory of the Endowment EffectJOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 2 2006H. LORNE CARMICHAEL Economists use the standard rational model to predict behavior after a policy change and to determine the policy's welfare implications. Recent experimental observations are casting doubt on the predictive accuracy of the standard model, but the more realistic behavioral alternatives often provide a poor basis for making normative evaluations. This paper suggests that we can still predict behavior and measure welfare within the same model. We show that optimizing agents with standard preferences will in some cases behave as if they are subject to an endowment effect. Even so, we may still be able to uncover information about their preferences. [source] The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st CenturyAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000Frederick L. Pryor This essay presents the results of a survey of AEA members on how they expect the U.S. economy to evolve in the next 50 years. More specifically, respondents were asked about changes in a variety of macroeconomic variables and whether such changes would lead to major changes in the economic system or important economic institutions. For the next quarter century, for instance, the respondents foresee the greatest deviation from current trends occurring with regard to growth of per capita GDP, volatility of the financial system, and globalization. They also predict that changes in the economic system will most likely come about from the impact of increasing globalization, increasing inequality of income, and increasing financial instability. [source] Futurology as Further Ideology: Reflections on Pryor's Millennium Survey of EconomistsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000Patrick McGuire This comment is in response to Frederic L. Pryor (2000). "The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century."The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 59 (January), pp. 3-33. [source] "Roll Back Malaria, Roll in Development"?POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Reassessing the Economic Burden of Malaria Recent efforts to mobilize support for malaria control have highlighted the economic burden of malaria and the value of malaria control for generating economic development. These claims have a long history. Beginning in the early twentieth century, they became the primary justification for malaria-control programs in the American South and in other parts of the globe, including British India. Economists conducted none of these studies. Following World War II and the development of new anti-malarial drugs and pesticides, including DDT, malaria control and eradication were increasingly presented as instruments for eliminating economic underdevelopment. By the 1960s, however, economists and demographers began to raise serious substantive and methodological questions about the basis of these claims. Of particular concern was the role of rapid population growth, resulting in part from the decline of malaria mortality, in undermining the short-term economic gains achieved through malaria control. Despite these concerns, malaria continues to be presented as an economic problem in the work of Jeffrey Sachs and others, justifying massive investments in malaria control. The methodological basis of these claims is examined. The paper concludes that while malaria takes a dreadful toll in human lives and causes significant economic losses for individuals, families, and some industries, the evidence linking malaria control to national economic growth remains unconvincing. In addition, the evidence suggests that there are potential costs to justifying malaria-eradication campaigns on macroeconomic grounds. [source] Optimization and its discontents in regulatory design: Bank regulation as an exampleREGULATION & GOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2010William H. Simon Abstract Economists and lawyers trained in economics tend to speak about regulation from a perspective organized around the basic norm of optimization. In contrast, an important managerial literature espouses a perspective organized around the basic norm of reliability. The perspectives are not logically inconsistent, but the economist's view sometimes leads in practice to a preoccupation with decisional simplicity and cost minimization at the expense of complex judgment and learning. Drawing on a literature often ignored by economists and lawyers, I elaborate the contrast between the optimization and reliability perspectives. I then show how the contrast illuminates current discussions of the reform of bank regulation. [source] Tests for a change in persistence against the null of difference-stationarityTHE ECONOMETRICS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2003Stephen Leybourne Economists have recognized the possibility that a time series may change structure from trend-stationarity to difference-stationarity, or vice versa. Taking difference-stationarity as the null hypothesis, we develop tests for this possibility, where neither the location nor direction of any possible change under the alternative hypothesis need be specified. [source] Australian Conference of Economists 2007 (ACE07) Best Student Paper Prize Sponsored by Blackwell-Wiley and the Tasmanian Branch of the Economic Society of AustraliaTHE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 2008Article first published online: 28 AUG 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] Jonson's Joyless Economy: Theorizing Motivation and Pleasure in VolponeENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 1 2008Oliver Hennessey Departing from a tradition of expedient, often pious, interpretations of Volpone as a straightforward fable of avarice, miserliness, and material misappropriation, this essay takes a fresh look at old Volp's actions in the light of radical reconsiderations of consumer motivation by the contemporary economist, Tibor Scitovsky. Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy broke with conventional economic doxa by asking whether modern consumer behavior was in fact irrational, and, further, whether Americans are encouraged to pursue styles of life that foster ennui. Applying the Scitovskian paradigm to another commodity culture, Volpone's seventeenth-century Venice, forces us to confront an aspect of the play most usually finessed: the joy of gulling. Volpone, and early modern city comedy more generally, offers us a chance to examine the multi-faceted response of individuals in the early Seventeenth Century coming to terms with Europe's expanding commercial scene and the commodity culture to which the playhouse responded, and within which it was implicated. [source] Interview with a Quality Leader,Karen Davis, Executive Director of The Commonwealth FundJOURNAL FOR HEALTHCARE QUALITY, Issue 2 2009Lecia A. Albright Dr. Davis is a nationally recognized economist, with a distinguished career in public policy and research. Before joining the Fund, she served as chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she also held an appointment as professor of economics. She served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services from 1977 to 1980, and was the first woman to head a U.S. Public Health Service agency. Before her government career, Ms. Davis was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC; a visiting lecturer at Harvard University; and an assistant professor of economics at Rice University. A native of Oklahoma, she received her PhD in economics from Rice University, which recognized her achievements with a Distinguished Alumna Award in 1991. Ms. Davis is the recipient of the 2000 Baxter-Allegiance Foundation Prize for Health Services Research. In the spring of 2001, Ms. Davis received an honorary doctorate in human letters from John Hopkins University. In 2006, she was selected for the Academy Health Distinguished Investigator Award for significant and lasting contributions to the field of health services research in addition to the Picker Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient Centered Care. Ms. Davis has published a number of significant books, monographs, and articles on health and social policy issues, including the landmark books HealthCare Cost Containment, Medicare Policy, National Health Insurance: Benefits, Costs, and Consequences, and Health and the War on Poverty. She serves on the Board of Visitors of Columbia University, School of Nursing, and is on the Board of Directors of the Geisinger Health System. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1975; has served two terms on the IOM governing Council (1986,90 and 1997,2000); was a member of the IOM Committee on Redesigning Health Insurance Benefits, Payment and Performance Improvement Programs; and was awarded the Adam Yarmolinsky medal in 2007 for her contributions to the mission of the Institute of Medicine. She is a past president of the Academy Health (formerly AHSRHP) and an Academy Health distinguished fellow, a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, and a former member of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research National Advisory Committee. She also serves on the Panel of Health Advisors for the Congressional Budget Office. [source] Public Action, Agrarian Change and the Standard of Living of Agricultural Workers: A Study of a Village in KeralaJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 3 2006R. RAMAKUMAR This article describes and analyses the ways in which public action in the State of Kerala in India helped to transform the standard of living of hired workers in agriculture. Specifically, the article analyses the extent of land and asset ownership, access to credit, access to social security schemes and food distribution systems and the conditions of housing and sanitation of households participating in agricultural wage work. The article is based as a case study of Morazha desam in the Malabar region of Kerala, which had one of the most oppressive agrarian systems in India before 1956,57. In 1955, another economist had studied Morazha desam; this study was conducted before one of the most important interventions through public action , land reform , took place in Malabar. The 1955 study had characterized the conditions of life of agricultural workers as ,wretched in the extreme'. The present article documents the significant transformation in the quality of life that took place in Morazha after 1955, through a weakening of the factors that led to ,wretched' conditions of life in the earlier period. The destruction of traditional agrarian power by the state through land reform was the most critical step in this process. [source] RELU Special Issue: Editorial ReflectionsJOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2006David R. Harvey Abstract This special issue is special in two major dimensions: the papers range intentionally over a much wider spectrum of social and natural science approaches and disciplines than is normal for the Journal of Agricultural Economics; and, the articles relate to ongoing research rather than completed work. These reflections, perhaps peculiar to a practicing applied economist and policy analyst, concentrate on the lessons to be learned and messages to be heard from the RELU programme, both by those engaged on the programme's research portfolio, and by other researchers. [source] The Future of Private EquityJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2009Steve Kaplan A distinguished University of Chicago financial economist and longtime observer of private equity markets responds to questions like the following: ,With a track record that now stretches in some cases almost 30 years, what have private equity firms accomplished? What effects have they had on the performance of the companies they invest in, and have they been good for the economy? ,How will highly leveraged PE portfolio companies fare during the current downturn, especially with over $400 billion of loans coming due in the next three to five years? ,With PE firms now sitting on an estimated $500 billion in capital and leveraged loan markets shut down, are the firms now contemplating new kinds of investment that require less debt? ,If and when the industry makes a comeback, do you expect any major changes that might allow us to avoid another boom-and-bust cycle? Have the PE firms or their investors made any obvious mistakes that contribute to such cycles, and are they now showing any signs of having learned from those mistakes? Despite the current problems, the operating capabilities of the best PE firms, together with their ability to manage high leverage and the increased receptiveness of public company CEOs and boards to PE investments, have all helped establish private equity as "a permanent asset class." Although many of the deals done in 2006 and 2007 were probably overpriced, the "cov-lite" deal structures, deferred repayments of principal, and larger coverage ratios have afforded more room for reworking troubled deals. As a result of that flexibility, and of the kinds of companies that get taken private in leveraged deals in the first place, most troubled PE portfolio companies should end up being restructured efficiently, thereby limiting the damage to the overall economy. Part of the restructuring process involves the use of the PE industry's huge stockpile of capital to purchase distressed debt and inject new equity into troubled deals (in many cases, their own). At the same time the PE firms have been working hard to rescue their own deals, some have been taking significant minority positions in public companies, while gaining some measure of control. Finally, to limit overpriced and overlev-eraged deals in the future, and so avoid the boom-and-bust cycle that appears to have become a predictable part of the industry, the discussion explores the possibility that the limited partners and debt providers that supply most of the capital for PE investments will insist on larger commitments of equity by sponsors to their own funds and individual deals. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||