Comments on A Political Ecology of Water and Enslavement: Water Ways in Eighteenth-Century Caribbean Plantations by MW Hauser

2018-04-0

Major John Bradford Homestead archaeological collections report

This report describes a collections management project undertaken on archaeological finds excavated at the Major John Bradford Homestead in 1972 and 1973. One of the chief goals of the project were to clean all artifacts that had not been processed after sorting the materials that had been processed and labeled and to reunite them with their provenience groups. The next goal was to catalogue all of the finds and to re-bag and re-box all of the materials in archivally appropriate bags and acid-free boxes and to provide a box inventory keyed to the catalogue so that future researchers or exhibit designers could readily locate objects of interest. A further goal was to provide a narrative about the excavations and to make suggestions about how to interpret the archaeological evidence and to suggest potential future research. All of these goals were met and are detailed in this report

TAXES AND EMPLOYMENT SUBSIDIES IN OPTIMAL REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAMS

This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. In contrast to much of the optimal income taxation literature, we show that optimal redistribution in this environment involves distorting market employment upwards for low net-income individuals through phased-out wage-contingent employment subsidies, and distorting employment downward for high net-income individuals through positive and increasing marginal income tax rate. We also show that workfare may also be used as part of an optimal redistribution program.Taxation ; Redistribution ; Wage Subsidies Screening

Managerial Skill Acquisition and the Theory of Economic Development

Micro level studies in developing countries suggest managerial skills play a key role in the adoption of modern technologies. The human resources literature suggests that managerial skills are difficult to codify and learn formally, but instead tend to be learned on the job. In this paper we present a model of the interactive process between on-the-job managerial skill acquisition and the adoption of modern technology. The environment considered is one where all learning possibilities are internalized in the market, and where managers are complementary inputs to non-managerial workers. The paper illustrates why some countries may adopt modern technologies while others stay backwards. The paper also explains why managers may not want to migrate from rich countries to poor countries as would be needed to generate income convergence.

Stock Prices, News and Economic Fluctuations

In this paper we show that the joint behavior of stock prices and TFP favors a view of business cycles driven largely by a shock that does not affect productivity in the short run -- and therefore does not look like a standard technology shock -- but affects productivity with substantial delay -- and therefore does not look like a monetary shock. One structural interpretation we suggest for this shock is that it represents news about future technological opportunities which is first captured in stock prices. We show that this shock causes a boom in consumption, investment and hours worked that precede productivity growth by a few years. Moreover, we show that this shock explains about 50\% of business cycle fluctuations.