Research Database

This study attempts to determine whether entry regulation is more restrictive in unit or branch banking states.

A model is developed in which entry, defined as the formation of a new bank or branch, is explained as being a response to the general economic climate plus regulation. Using time series data and dating the onset of effective entry regulation with the passage of the banking Act of 1935, it is ascertained that effective entry regulation has caused the aggregate rate of entry into commercial banking to fall by about sixty percent. This analysis included adjustments for changes in economic conditions. The effect of entry regulation, however, has not been uniform. Entry rates in unit banking states is estimated to be seventy percent lower than it would have been in the absence of regulation, while limited branching and statewide branching states have experienced fifty and forty percent declines, respectively.

This analysis suggests that entry in unit banking states has been more restricted than in branch banking states. Two reasons are cited that may account for this differential impact of regulation. First, regulators may tend to be more pessimistic than potential entrants regarding the profitability of a new banking office. This pessimism may not have a significant effect upon entry when other factors indicate a high probability of success, but may be important in marginal cases. Thus, because branch banking states tend to be more prevalent in the west, and because this has been the area of greatest economic growth in the past forty years, the pessimism of regulators would tend to be less apparent in branch banking areas. Second, regulators apparently prefer to issue charters for new branches rather than for new banks because they have more information on which to base their decisions. In addition, if the market demand is misjudged, a branch bank has retained earnings and other branches from which to carry short-term losses.

No abstract available.

This paper presents a simple counterexample to the belief that international policy cooperation is desirable. It also explains circumstances under which such a counterexample is possible.

Innovation and the adoption of new ideas are fundamental to economic progress. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function with and without government intervention. From a normative perspective, we examine the pitfalls of existing institutions, and how they might be improved. We highlight recent research by ourselves and others challenging the notion that government awards of monopoly through patents and copyright are “the way” to provide appropriate incentives for innovation.

Our study examines whether there is a systematic relationship between the monetary standard under which a country operates and the rate of inflation it experiences. It also explores whether there are other properties of inflation, money, and output that differ between economies operating under a commodity standard and economies operating under a fiat standard. The basis for our study is price, money, and output data for 15 countries that have operated under both types of monetary standards. For each of these countries the data cover 80 years, and for most the data cover more than 100 years. With these data we are able to establish several facts about the differences in inflation, money growth, and output growth between economies operating under commodity standards and those operating under fiat standards. Specifically, we find that the following facts emerge when comparing commodity standards to fiat standards: inflation, money growth, and output growth are all lower; growth rates of monetary aggregates are less highly correlated with each other; growth rates of monetary aggregates are less highly correlated with inflation; and growth rates of monetary aggregates are more highly correlated with output growth.

International relative prices across industrialized countries show large and systematic deviations from relative purchasing power parity. We embed a model of imperfect competition and variable markups in a quantitative model of international trade. We find that when our model is parameterized to match salient features of the data on international trade and market structure in the US, it can reproduce deviations from relative purchasing power parity similar to those observed in the data because firms choose to price-to-market. We then examine how pricing-to-market depends on the presence of international trade costs and various features of market structure.

Employment and hours appear far more cyclical than dictated by the behavior of productivity and consumption. This puzzle has been called “the labor wedge” — a cyclical intratemporal wedge between the marginal product of labor and the marginal rate of substitution of consumption for leisure. The intratemporal wedge can be broken into a product market wedge (price markup) and a labor market wedge (wage markup). Based on the wages of employees, the literature has attributed the intratemporal wedge almost entirely to labor market distortions. Because employee wages may be smoothed versions of the true cyclical price of labor, we instead examine the self-employed and intermediate inputs, respectively. Looking at the past quarter century in the United States, we find that price markup movements are at least as important as wage markup movements — including during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Thus, sticky prices and other forms of countercyclical markups deserve a central place in business cycle research, alongside sticky wages and matching frictions.

We show that occupational licensing has significant negative effects on labor market fluidity defined as cross-occupation mobility. Using a balanced panel of workers constructed from the CPS and SIPP data, we analyze the link between occupational licensing and labor market outcomes. We find that workers with a government-issued occupational license experience churn rates significantly lower than those of non-licensed workers. Specifically, licensed workers are 24% less likely to switch occupations and 3% less likely to become unemployed in the following year. Moreover, occupational licensing represents barriers to entry for both non-employed workers and employed ones. The effect is more prominent for employed workers relative to those entering from non-employment, because the opportunity cost of acquiring a license is much higher for employed individuals. Lastly, we find that average wage growth is higher for licensed workers than non-licensed workers, whether they stay in the same occupation in the next year or switch occupations. We find significant heterogeneity in the licensing effect across different occupation groups. These results hold across various data sources, time spans, and indicators of being licensed. Overall, licensing could account for almost 8% of the total decline in monthly occupational mobility over the past two decades

We use unique price data to study how retailers react to underlying cost changes. Temporary sales account for 95% of price changes in our data. Simple models would, therefore, suggest that temporary sales play a central role in price responses to cost shocks. We find, however, that, in response to a wholesale cost increase, the entire increase in retail prices comes through regular price increases. Sales actually respond temporarily in the opposite direction from regular prices, as though to conceal the price hike. Additional evidence from responses to commodity cost and local unemployment shocks, as well as broader evidence from BLS data reinforces these findings. We present institutional evidence that sales are complex contingent contracts, determined substantially in advance. We show theoretically that these institutional practices leave little money “on the table”: in a price-discrimination model of sales, dynamically adjusting the size of sales yields only a tiny increase in profits.

This paper considers model worlds in which there is a continuum of individuals who form finite-sized associations to undertake joint activities. We show how, through a suitable choice of commodity space, restrictions on the composition of feasible groups can be incorporated into the specification of the consumption and production sets of the economy. We also show that if there are a finite number of types, then the classical results from the competitive analysis of convex finite-agent economies can be reinterpreted to apply.