Intra-industry trade and labor costs: The smooth adjustment hypothesis

We study a situation in which, owing to the exhaustion of non-renewable energy sources, conventional motor vehicles will turn out of use. We consider two scenarios: recycling or dismantling these motor vehicles. M|G|∞ queue system is used to study the process. Through it, we conclude that if the rate of dismantling and recycling of motor vehicles is greater than the rate at which they become idle, the system will tend to get balanced. The model allows also performing a brief study about the recycling or dismantling economic interest.

A consistent test of significance

This paper presents a test of significance consistent under nonparametric alternatives. Under the null hypothesis, a regressor has no effect on the regression model. Our statistic does not require to estimate the model on the alternative hypothesis, which is left unspecified. Hence, no smoothing techniques are required. The statistic is a weighted empirical process which resembles the Cram~r-von Mises. The asymptotic test is consistent under Pitman's alternatives converging to the null at arate n-1/2. A Monte-Cario experiment illustrates the performance ofthe test in small samples. We also inelude two applications involving biomedical and acid rain data

A Demand-Supply Analysis of the Spanish Education Wage Premium in the 1980s and 1990s.

We estimate the demand for education in Spain, and use the estimated demand curve to analyze whether the evolution of the education wage premium in the 1980s and 1990s can be explained by a demand-supply framework. We find that growth in the demand for education in the 1980s was very similar to growth in the 1990s. Our empirical results show that difference in the evolution of the education wage premium between the two decades can be explained by combining observed changes in labor supply with steady labor demand growth.wage premium, relative demand, relative supply

INSTITUTIONS, CONTRACTS AND REGULATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN ARGENTINA

Massive privatization in the Argentine infrastructure and public service sectors gave an opportunity to explore why we observe notorious differences in regulatory design choices and performance outcomes across sectors, under the umbrella of similar nation-specific institutional characteristics -same federal government producing reform during a short period of time (1990-95)-. Following the Levy and Spiller (1996) conceptual framework, we propose that some institutional characteristics (namely the nature of conflicts among groups affected by reform and administrative capabilities) determined a wide variety of government choices for regulatory incentives, producing different outcomes across sectors. Despite the will of the executive power to respect stable "rules of the game", episodes of government opportunism appeared in most sectors. Poor regulatory incentive design and weak agencies, on the other hand, prompted ex-post opportunistic behavior from regulated firms, which renegotiated contractual conditions to their favor.regulation; institutional economics; post-privatization; infrastructure; utilities