http://hdl.handle.net/1803/5 Mon, 13 May 2013 20:35:27 GMT 2013-05-13T20:35:27Z http://hdl.handle.net/1803/31 Title: A Dynamic Factor Approach to Nonlinear Stability Analysis Authors: Shintani, Mototsugu Abstract: A method of principal components is employed to investigate nonlinear dynamic factor structure using a large panel data. The evidence suggests the possibility of nonlinearity in the U.S. while it excludes the class of nonlinearity that can generate endogenous fluctuation or chaos. Sun, 01 Aug 2004 05:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1803/31 2004-08-01T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1803/30 Title: Competition and Confidentiality: Signaling Quality in a Duopoly when there is Universal Private Information Authors: Reinganum, Jennifer F.; Daughety, Andrew F. Abstract: How does the need to signal quality through price affect equilibrium pricing and profits, when a firm faces a similarly-situated rival? In this paper, we provide a model of non-cooperative signaling by two firms that compete over a continuum of consumers. We assume "universal incomplete information;" that is, each market participant has some private information: each consumer has private information about the intensity of her preferences for the firms' respective products and each firm has private information about its own product's quality. We characterize a symmetric separating equilibrium in which each firm's price reveals its respective product quality. We focus mainly on a model in which the quality attribute is safety (so that the legal system is brought into play) and quality is unobservable due to the use of confidential settlements; a particular specification of parameters yields a common model from the industrial organization literature in which quality is interpreted as the probability that a consumer will find the good satisfactory. We show that the equilibrium prices, the difference between those prices, the associated outputs, and profits are all increasing functions of the ex ante probability of high safety. When quality is interpreted as consumer satisfaction, unobservable quality causes all prices to be distorted upward, and lowers average quality and ex ante expected social welfare, but increases ex ante expected firm profits (when either the probability of high quality or the extent of horizontal product differentiation is sufficiently high). When quality is interpreted as product safety, the foregoing results are modified in that for some parameter values ex ante expected social welfare is higher under confidentiality because such legal secrecy lowers expected litigation costs. Thu, 01 Jul 2004 05:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1803/30 2004-07-01T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1803/29 Title: The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s Authors: Bailey, Martha J.; Collins, William J. Abstract: The weekly wage gap between black and white female workers narrowed by 15 percentage points during the 1940s. We employ a semi-parametric technique to decompose changes in the distribution of wages. We find that changes in worker characteristics (such as education, occupation and industry, and region of residence) can account for a significant portion of wage convergence between black and white women, but that changes in the wage structure, including large black-specific gains within regions, occupations, industries, and educational groups, made the largest contributions. The single most important contributing factor to the observed convergence was a sharp increase in the relative wages of service workers (where black workers were heavily concentrated) even as black women moved out of domestic service jobs. Tue, 01 Jun 2004 05:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1803/29 2004-06-01T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1803/28 Title: Public Good Provision and the Comparative Statics of Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxation Authors: Brett, Craig; Weymark, John A. Abstract: Comparative static properties of the solution to an optimal nonlinear income tax problem are provided for a model in which the government both designs an income tax schedule for redistributive purposes and provides a public good optimally. There are two types of individuals, distinguished by their skill levels, who have the same quasilinear preferences for labour supply and the consumption of a private and a public good. The parameters for which comparative statics are obtained are the weights in a weighted utilitarian social welfare function, the prices of the private and public goods, a taste parameter that measures the onerousness of working, and the individual skill levels. Tue, 01 Jun 2004 05:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1803/28 2004-06-01T05:00:00Z