Measuring External Shocks to the City Economy: An Index of Export Prices and Terms of Trade

This paper details the construction of an index of export goods prices (the Export Price Index or "EPI") for a panel of 196 metropolitan areas from 1977 to 1992. The "EPI" is an indicator of external demand shocks to the city economy which does not suffer from the causal ambiguity of the endogenous indicators such as income, employment or output. The creation of an index of aggregate export prices, the "EPI", for the panel of areas provides both academicians and policy analysts with a new exogenous indicator that identifies demand price innovations and the terms of trade shocks to cities. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Tax Compliance and Rank Dependent Expected Utility

Formulating the classic Allingham and Sandmo [1972] tax compliance problem under Rank Dependent Expected Utility (RDEU) provides a simple explanation for the “excess” level of full compliance observed in empirical studies, which standard Expected Utility (EU) theory is unable to explain. RDEU provides a compelling answer to this puzzle, without the need for the moral sentiments or stigma arguments that have recently been advanced in the literature. Formally, we show that the threshold audit probability or penalty rate at which full compliance becomes optimal for the decisionmaker are significantly lower under RDEU axiomatics than in the EU case, and that the optimal level of underreporting is lower under RDEU. Numerical simulations using various parameterizations of the probability weighting function illustrate the large quantitative differences between the two models, while a simulation of underreporting rates in the US over the past 50 years shows how RDEU can go some way towards explaining the tax-compliance puzzle. Copyright The Geneva Association 2005rank-dependent expected utility, tax-compliance,

IMPACTS OF THE FARM FINANCIAL CRISIS OF THE 1980s ON RESOURCES AND POVERTY IN AGRICULTURALLY DEPENDENT COUNTIES IN THE UNITED STATES

The farm financial crisis of the 1980s has had a major effect on agriculturally dependent areas in the United States. The crisis has resulted in a large proportion of producers leaving agriculture, in a substantial decline in the number of rural businesses, and in the support for rural service bases. Although extensively analyzed, the crisis' impacts on resources and poverty have not been adequately evaluated. Copyright 1988 by The Policy Studies Organization.