Internal Promotion Competitions in Firms

[Excerpt] Using a sample of skilled workers from a cross section of establishments in four metropolitan areas of the United States, I present evidence suggesting that promotions are determined by relative worker performance. I then estimate a structural model of promotion tournaments (treating as endogenous promotions, worker performance, and the wage spread from promotion) that simultaneously accounts for worker and firm behavior and how the interaction of these behaviors gives rise to promotions. The results are consistent with the predictions of tournament theory that employers set wage spreads to induce optimal performance levels, and that workers are motivated by larger spreads

The Empirical Implications of Privacy-Aware Choice

This paper initiates the study of the testable implications of choice data in settings where agents have privacy preferences. We adapt the standard conceptualization of consumer choice theory to a situation where the consumer is aware of, and has preferences over, the information revealed by her choices. The main message of the paper is that little can be inferred about consumers' preferences once we introduce the possibility that the consumer has concerns about privacy. This holds even when consumers' privacy preferences are assumed to be monotonic and separable. This motivates the consideration of stronger assumptions and, to that end, we introduce an additive model for privacy preferences that does have testable implications

Unexploited Connections Between Intra- and Inter-temporal Allocation

This paper shows that a power utility specification of preferences over total expenditure (ie. CRRA preferences) implies that intratemporal demands are in the PIGL/PIGLOG class. This class generates (at most) rank two demand systems and we can test the validity of power utility on cross-section data. Further, if we maintain the assumption of power utility, and within period preferences are not homothetic, then the intertemporal preference parameter is identified by the curvature of Engel curves. Under the power utility assumption, neither Euler equation estimation nor structural consumption function estimation is necessary to identify the power parameter. In our empirical work, we use demand data to estimate the power utility parameter and to test the assumption of the power utility representation. We .nd estimates of the power parameter larger than obtained from Euler equation estimation, but we reject the power specification of within period utility

Modelling economies in transition: an introduction

This paper considers the implications of structural breaks, such as have occurred in many transition economies, for econometric modelling based on the multivariate cointegration paradigm. It outlines recent developments on the identification of linear cointegrated systems, discusses some practical problems, and presents an extension to non-linear systems. This is followed by a discussion of the impact of structural breaks on the identification and estimation of such systems. Finally, it relates these issues to the other papers in this volume.

The Structural Estimation of Principal-Agent Models by Least Squares: Evidence from Land Tenancy in Madagascar

We develop a method to structurally estimate principal-agent models by ordinary least squares (OLS). We set up a general principal-agent model which explicitly incorporates the wealth levels of each party and the opportunity cost to the agent of entering the contract. This yields an optimal contract that is linearized by way of an Nth order Taylor approximation. This in turn imposes N(3N-1)/2 restrictions on the parameters and yields an empirical test of the canonical principal-agent model. In the application, we consider the case where N = 2 and apply our method to a sample of land tenancy contracts in rural Madagascar. Empirical tests lead to consistent failure to reject the hypotheses derived from our structural model, which lends support to our structural method as well as to the canonical principal-agent model.Principal-Agent Models, Contract Theory, Structural Estimations, Risk and Uncertainty, C12, C13, D86, O12, Q12,

The Welfare State, Thresholds, and Economic Growth

Can a growing welfare state induce a regime switch in the growth rate of an econ-omy? This paper constructs a dynamic political economy model of economic growth and the welfare state in which both variables are non-linearly related and jointly en-dogenous. Using a Markov switching framework over the period 1950-2001, we find that the structural decline in growth rates that several welfare state economies expe-rienced during 1970-1975 are preceded by movements to a high welfare state regime. This suggests that expanding welfare state regimes are associated with low economic growth regimes, while contracting welfare state regimes are associated with high growth regimes. However, we also find that the structural decline in growth rates leads to a downward structural break in the welfare state for many welfare state economies. This suggests that declining growth regimes are associated with contracting welfare state regimes, as lower growth forces politicians to cut the size of the welfare state. We also report strong evidence that both expansion and contractions in the welfare state affects growth non-linearly. These results are able to characterize a predictable and general pattern of welfare state-growth evolution.Welfare state; Structural change; Regime switching models; Positive political economy; Endogenous growth

Global Identifiability Under Uncorrelated Residuals

Suppose in each equation, not counting covariance restrictions, we need one more restriction to meet the order condition. If we now add to each equation a restriction that its structural residual is uncorrelated with the residual of some other equation, is the parameter of the new model identifiable globally? That is the question. In general the answer is no. The parameter could remain either not identifiable or is locally identifiable, possibly globally under additional inequality restrictions. In this paper we find families of models for which the answer to the question is yes without the help of inequalities. The families share common characteristics. First, the sufficient condition for local identifiability must hold. Secondly, the string of zero correlations between residuals contains a closed cycle of length at least four. Thirdly, with the variables, equations and residuals all numbered as they are in the cycle, the odd numbered variables must satisfy a kinship relationship and lastly, the structural residuals can not all be uncorrelated. There are also differences in families, but these come from the difference in the required kinship relationship. When there are four or more equations containing external variables, the variety of models with uniquely identifiable parameter under a string of uncorrelated residuals is considerable. In particular, when correlated inverse demand shocks are uncorrelated with correlated supply shocks, our results show that many flexible inverse demand and supply equations reproducing exactly the observed price and quantity moments are members of the above families.

Cointegration implications of linear rational expectation models

This paper derives the cointegration spaces that are implied by linear rational expectations models when data are I(1). The cointegration implications are easy to calculate and can be readily applied to test if the models are consistent with the long-run properties of the data. However, the restrictions on cointegration only form a subset of all the cross-equation restrictions that the models place on data. The approach is particularly useful in separating potentially data-consistent models from the remaining models within a large model family. Moreover, the approach provides useful information on the empirical shock structure of the data.rational expectations; cointegration

Indirect Utility Maximization under Risk: A Heterogeneous Panel Application

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price uncertainty by Saha and Shumway (1998), are extended in this article to the more general case of both price and quantity uncertainty and result in an important theoretical finding. Using recently developed techniques for testing unit root and cointegration in heterogeneous panels, we develop a model of U.S. agricultural production based on the time series properties of a panel of state-level data and contrast test implications with those resulting from a traditional model that presumes stationarity in all variables. Although differing in specific outcomes, the empirical tests of the refutable hypotheses render the same conclusions for both models: we fail to reject most refutable hypotheses under output price and output quantity risk, symmetry conditions implied by a twice-continuously-differentiable indirect utility function are rejected, two restrictive risk preference hypotheses are also rejected, and, at individual observations, data are generally consistent with most (but not all) of the hypotheses implied by individual states acting as though they were expected utility-maximizing firms.Risk and Uncertainty,