Women are currently the majority of U.S. college students and of those receiving a bachelor's degree, but were 39 percent of undergraduates in 1960. We use three longitudinal data sets of high school ...graduates in 1957, 1972, and 1992 to understand the narrowing of the gender gap in college and its reversal. From 1972 to 1992 high school girls narrowed the gap with boys in math and science course taking and in achievement test scores. These variables, which we term the proximate determinants, can account for 30 to 60 percent of the relative increase in women's college completion rate. Behind these changes were several others: the future work expectations of young women increased greatly between 1968 and 1979 and the age at first marriage for college graduate women rose by 2.5 years in the 1970s, allowing them to be more serious students. The reversal of the college gender gap, rather than just its elimination, was due in part to the persistence of behavioral and developmental differences between males and females.
Two channels of political control allow elected politicians to influence monetary policy. First, political threats to the status, structure, or very existence of the central bank may force central ...bankers to comply with politically motivated demands on monetary policy. Second, politicians may use their powers of appointment to ensure diat central bank appointees share their electoral and party-political goals. This paper derives the monetary policy outcomes obtained as a function of me degree of central bank independence (zero, partial, or full) and central bankers' types (partisans or technocrats). Based on a case study of the 1957 and 1992 institutional changes to the German central banking system and a regression analysis covering the period in between, the author argues that the formal independence of the system is protected by its embeddedness in the institutions of German federalism and by the federalist components of its decentralized organizational structure. The behavioral independence of the German central bank fluctuates over time with the party control of federalist veto points. The Bundesbank is staffed with nonpartisan technocrats who are partially insulated from political pressures.
This study investigates the substitutability relationships among capital, labor, and imported inputs for South Africa, utilizing the estimates obtained from an aggregate cost function. Our results ...are consistent with the hypothesis that capital is a substitute for both domestic labor and imports, but that labor and imports are complementary inputs. This latter result suggests that relaxing South African trade restrictions may have a positive impact, in both the long and the short run, on the demand for domestic labor. Other results suggest that the reduction of market impediments may also positively impact the production of investment goods and economic growth.
Recent studies have suggested that contrary to stylized business cycle `facts', prices are not predominantly procyclical and that estimates of negative price-output correlations provide substantially ...more support for `real' or supply-side interpretations than for `nominal' or demand-side interpretations of business cycles. This conclusion has already been challenged in other papers. This paper shows that methods of detrending prices used in this literature are linked to assumptions about the formation of price expectations. A plausible alternative model of the expectations mechanism reverses the finding of countercyclical prices and allows a natural reconciliation of some conflicting evidence in the literature.
The widespread belief that one can read off the public's expectations of inflation from the yield differential between indexed and conventional bonds ignores the fact that indexed bonds are held ...largely by those who expect the most inflation. However, holding indexed bonds as a hedge against inflation implies that such bonds have the advantage of being a relatively cheap source of funds.
The Offset Rule: Some Multinational Evidence L., Carter, Richard (Robin) A; Palmer, John
European journal of law and economics,
2000, 20000101, Letnik:
9, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The offset rule is a method to simplify the calculation of lump sum damage awards to compensate victims for an expected lost future flow of income. If the expected nominal rate of interest is roughly ...equal to the expected rate of growth in nominal wages (assuming the loss is due to lost labour income), then the present discounted value of the loss is shown to be easily computed as just the amount of the loss in the first year multiplied by the number of years over which the loss is expected to occur. We test the assumptions of the offset rule for eleven different countries. For each country, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the assumptions of the offset rule are satisfied. The relevant implication of this work is that the offset rule can provide a starting point for the assessment of damages. While there are undoubtedly good arguments for personalizing awards, there is no longer any good reason to debate the size of the real rate of interest, the expected rate of inflation, or average changes in labour productivity. These variables cancel each other out in the offset rule. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Singapore is promoting itself as a model for Asian development, citing its high growth rates and stable society. It contends that its approach differs dramatically from that of the West because of ...its solid value system regarding families and community. This paper examines the ways women and changing family policies have been critical components of Singapore's growth. It shows, however, that rather than having a long-term consistent view of appropriate family size and roles, the Singaporean government adopted strikingly different policies (particularly toward fertility) over the past three decades, as it attempted to affect the supply of labor in the short-run and over the longer term and thereby maintain growth rates. This sheds a different light on Singapore's claims regarding its stable approach to families, particularly since policy changes since the mid-1980s have placed intense demands on women's limited time by encouraging increased female labour force participation and increased fertility.
Re-cent studies have suggested that prices are not predominantly procyclical and that estimates of negative correlations provide substantially more support for "real" or supply-side interpretations ...than for "nominal" or demand-side interpretations of business cycles. This paper re-examines the implications of macroeconomic theory for prices and output and provides an alternative interpretation of the empirical results. The main conclusions are: (i) the correlations, when taken at face value, identify the presence of only temporary supply and demand shocks which is inconsistent with the postwar experience of sustained inflation; (ii) demand-induced business cycles can very well deliver time-varying and negative price-output correlations. /// Neuere Studien haben behauptet, daß Preise nicht vorwiegend prozyklisch sind und daß bei Schätzungen negativer Korrelationen zur Erklärung des Konjunkturzyklus die "reale" Interpretation oder Angebotsseite viel stärker wiegt als die "nominale" Interpretation oder Nachfrageseite. Der Verfasser überprüft die Bedeutung der makroökonomischen Theorie für Preise und Produktion und liefert einealternative Interpretation der empirischen Ergebnisse. Die hauptsächlichen Schlußfolgerungen sind, (i) daß die Korrelationen auf den ersten Blick das Vorhandensein von nur vorübergehenden Angebots- und Nachfrageschocks identifizieren, was nicht mit der Nachkriegserfahrung einer anhaltenden Inflation übereinstimmt, (ii) daß nachfrageinduzierte Konjunkturzyklen durchaus zeitlich variierende und negative Preis-Output-Korrelationen hervorbringen können.
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