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Working Paper No. 39Poverty and Household Composition
This paper has investigated the relationship between poverty and family type, as reflected in the marital status and gender of the head of the family number of factors have been identified as important determinants of poverty for all family types: education and work experience of family members, race, disability, and unemployment of the family head, […] -
Working Paper No. 38
The Mathematics of Economic Growth
Traditionally, economists have considered that mathematics acts as a universal language that lends clarity to theoretical statements. This paper proposes that mathematics does not function as a mere language. Rather, the advocacy of particular theoretical views and the choice of mathematical formalisms go hand-in-hand. The paper explores this issue by investigating the role of mathematics […] -
Working Paper No. 37
What Happened to the Corporate Profit Tax?
The radical reorientation of the federal budget during the 1980s provided generously for military expansion at the expense of pressing social needs. In the wake of such dramatic upheavals, the federal government will eventually be compelled to seek out new sources of revenue in order to compensate for the decade of neglect. But where will […] -
Working Paper No. 36
The Microeconomics of Monopoly Power
The purpose of this paper is to outline a consistent microeconomic theory of the firm based on the concept of monopoly power. It builds on the heritage of Post Keynesian authors, Robinson, Kaldor, and Kalecki, but literally extends the theory in several directions. First, monopoly power is defined formally in terms of substitution. In this […] -
Working Paper No. 35
Industrial De-diversification and Its Consequences for Productivity
Due in large part to intense takeover activity during the 1980s, the extent of American firms’ industrial diversification declined significantly during the second half of the decade. The mean number of industries in which firms operated declined 14 percent, and the fraction of single-industry firms increased 54 percent. Firms that were "born" during the period […] -
Working Paper No. 34
The Determinants of US Foreign Production
Based on an analysis of industry by region data the author finds little evidence that U.S. unions have been a significant factor in the decision of U.S. firms to produce abroad. Additional evidence suggests that U.S. foreign production may have had a negligible effect on the domestic unionization rate. Corresponding with previous research, the results […] -
Working Paper No. 33
What Remains of the Growth Controversy?
This essay contrasts the production function approach to Kaldor’s model of increasing returns which are demand-determined. In particular, the essay analyzes Kaldor’s three major empirical "laws", which were adopted by later economists, and the criticisms of these three "laws" by economists who used the Cobb-Douglas production function as a basis of analysis. In conclusion, the […] -
Working Paper No. 32
The Effects of Mergers on Prices, Costs, and Capacity Utilization in the US Air Transportation Industry, 1970–84
We analyze the effect of mergers on various aspects of airline performance during the period 1970-84, using a panel data set constructed by Caves et al. Estimates derived from a simple "matched pairs" statistical model indicate that these mergers were associated with reductions in unit cost. The average annual rate of unit cost growth of […] -
Working Paper No. 31
The Changing Role of Debt in Bankruptcy
The changing economic environment of the late 1980s has been dominated by the financial I innovations brought about by the growing demand for credit by U.S. corporations. When looking at this phenomena from a very long perspective of 50 to 60 years as some researchers have done [Taggart, 1985; Ciccolo and Baum, 1985], he rise […] -
Working Paper No. 30
Growth Cycles in a Discrete, Nonlinear Model
This paper develops a discrete, nonlinear growth cycle model for a macroeconomy. The nonlinearities, which correspond to empirical relationships between profitability and capacity utilization in the postwar U.S. economy, can produce stable, periodic and chaotic behavior. These behaviors are established analytically, and further investigated through simulation. Data from the simulations are used to show that […] -
Working Paper No. 29
Unionization and the Incidence of Performance-based Compensation in Canada
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Working Paper No. 28
The Covariance Transformation and the Instrumental Variables Estimator of the Fixed Effects Model
The covariance transformation is a useful and often necessary procedure to estimate the fixed effects model. When some explanatory variables are contemporaneously correlated with the disturbance term, the covariance transformation can be used in conjunction with an instrumental variables procedure to obtain a consistent estimator. This paper describes how to correctly compute the IV estimator […]