This paper examines the impact of unbalanced (skill-biased) technical change on the labor market and economic growth. It argues that when the gap between the technology of skilled and unskilled workers increases, it becomes harder to acquire the skills required to work as a skilled worker;...

In this paper we study the theoretical plausibility of the conjecture that inflation arises because imperfectly competitive markets (ICM in the sequel) translate cost pushes in large price increases. We define two different measures of inflation transmission. We compared these measures in...

We propose a social welfare function to evaluate a profile of income streams and compare the welfare gain of the actual profile relative to the income profile where the individual receives his first period income in each period. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the welfare...

Tests for identification through heteroskedasticity in structural vector autoregressive analysis are developed for models with two volatility states where the time point of volatility change is known. The tests are Wald type tests for which only the unrestricted model including the covariance...

We provide a model of endogenous plea bargaining in which a prosecutor has discretion over her choice of plea bargains in response to a level of exoneree compensation mandated by the state. It is shown that an increase of the compensation may invite a sentence-maximizing prosecutor to offer a...

This paper provides a Bayesian test of parameter nonstationarity and an estimation procedure for the detection of change points in the time series of stock returns. The empirical results indicate that this procedure can identify the change points in the data without prior knowledge and provide...

There is a clear causal negative influence from margin requirements to market participation in futures markets. As margin requirements increase, market participants leave the metal futures market affected by the margin increase and apparently move into similar metal markets unaffected by the...

This paper evaluates the ability of the empirical model of asset pricing of Campbell(1993a,b) to explain the time-series and cross-sectional variation of expected returns ofportfolios of stocks. In Campbell's model, an alternative risk-return relationship is derivedby substituting consumption...

Meritocratic systems are commonly understood as those that assign tasks to individuals who can best perform them. But future performance cannot be known prior to assignment, and must be inferred from other traits. We consider a model in which performance depends on two attributes --- ability and...