The stable roommates problem with ties

We study the variant of the well-known stable roommates problem in which participants are permitted to express ties in their preference lists. In this setting, more than one definition of stability is possible. Here we consider two of these stability criteria, so-called super-stability and weak stability. We present a linear–time algorithm for finding a super-stable matching if one exists, given a stable roommates instance with ties. This contrasts with the known NP-hardness of the analogous problem under weak stability. We also extend our algorithm to cope with preference lists that are incomplete and/or partially ordered. On the other hand, for a given stable roommates instance with ties and incomplete lists, we show that the weakly stable matchings may be of different sizes and the problem of finding a maximum cardinality weakly stable matching is NP-hard, though approximable within a factor of 2

The Competitive Position of U.S. Manufacturing Firms

This paper distinguishes between the competitive position of U.S. firms and that of the U.S. and other countries as geographical locations for production. While the share of the U.S. in world exports of manufactures fellmore than 40 per cent between 1957 and 1977, the share of all U.S. firms from all locations declined much less and the share of U.S. multinational enterprises increased.The comparative advantage of U.S. multinational firms, as measured by the industry distribution of their exports from all locations, changed very little between 1966 and 1977. At the same time, there were large shifts in the comparative advantage of the parent firms in the U.S., their overseas affiliates, and foreign firms. The changes for the U.S. parents and their affiliates reflected differences among industries in the extent to which export production shares moved from the U.S. to the affiliates' host countries. The shift took place in all the industry groups but was largest for metals and chemicals and smallest for transport equipment. The rise in the share of world exports accounted for by U.S.multinational firms and the decline in the share of the U.S. as a geographical location suggests that the search for causes of the changed position of the U.S. should be directed not to deficiencies in American industrial or technological leadership but to other price and cost determining influences, such as productivity, wage setting, taxation, domestic inflation, and exchange rates.

Price Behavior in the Light of Balance of Payments Theories

The purpose of this paper is to describe the behavior of that subset of prices and price indexes that is relevant to the theory of balance of payments adjustment. The theoretical writings on the balance of payments may be viewed at this juncture as falling into two main groups -- the "standard" theories and the more recent monetary theories. Each of these is examined to determine the assumptions and predictions made about particular kinds of prices, and the empirical evidence regarding these prices is then set out. Although some assessment of the theories -- solely from the price aspect -- is offered, the emphasis is on the price structure and price behavior that ought to be captured in a satisfactory theory of the mechanisms of international adjustment. For pragmatic reasons, attention is placed mainly on the theory relating to exchange rate changes rather than on the explanation of adjustment with fixed exchange rates.

The Effect of Multinational Firms' Operations on Their Domestic Employment

Given the level of its production in the U.S., a firm that produces more abroad tends to have fewer employees in the U.S. and to pay slightly higher salaries and wages to them. The most likely explanation seems to be that the larger a firm's foreign production, the greater its ability to allocate the more labor-intensive and less skill-intensive portions of its activity to locations outside the United States. This relationship is stronger among manufacturing firms than among service industry firms, probably because services are less tradable than manufactured goods or components, and service industries may therefore be less able to break up the production process to take advantage of differences in factor prices.