FIRM MARKET SHARE, PRICE FLEXIBILITY, AND IMPERFECT INFORMATION

This paper argues that firms with larger market shares will be relatively better informed about demand conditions. The main implications are 1) more rapid price adjustments in concentrated industries, 2) price leadership in industries with dominant firms, and 3) price setting behavior by the concentrated side of the market.     

INFLATION AND GOVERNMENT DEFICITS

There is a pronounced positive correlation of inflation and government deficits in the United States since World War II. The purpose of this paper is to test the three leading explanations of this correlation. These three explanations are: (a) a deficit increases prices through a wealth effect; (b) a deficit results in the Federal Reserve purchasing debt, thus increasing the money supply and prices; and (c) expected inflation increases the deficit (which is the change in the nominal value of bonds). No support is found for either of the first two hypotheses. The results indicate that expected government deficits have no significance for future inflation.     

Measuring racial disparity in child welfare

Overrepresentation of certain racial/ethnic groups in the foster care system is one of the most troubling and challenging issues in child welfare today. In response, many states have started reporting outcomes by race and ethnicity to identify disproportionately high rates of system contact. The identification of disproportional representation is the first step in developing targeted strategies to address disproportionality--highlighting where resources should be directed and guiding future research. However, present and future efforts to address disproportionality must be accompanied by statistically sound and meaningful methods of measurement. In this article, we argue for the adoption of a relative rate measure of representation--a "Disparity Index"--as the primary instrument for assessing racial disparity in child welfare.     

DELIBERATION AND LEARNING IN MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEES

We use records from Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings to investigate the importance of deliberation and learning in monetary policy decision making in the period from 1970 to 1978 when Arthur Burns served as Chairman. We first propose a model of Bayesian learning in which FOMC members learn from each other as they sequentially reveal their policy preferences in a committee meeting. Then, as an alternative, we investigate a model in which members defer to an emerging consensus. Neither model is supported by the data, suggesting that within‐meeting deliberation might have had little effect on the quality of monetary policy decisions in the Burns era. (JEL E520, E580)     

TWO TO TANGO? GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE DECISIONS TO PUBLISH AND COAUTHOR

The existence of old boy networks has long been postulated as a possible explanation for the presence of gender differences in market outcomes but with little empirical support because of the difficulty of measuring network access. This article exploits the unique attributes of academic labor markets and detailed data on individuals and jobs for PhD economists over nearly four decades. The results suggest that networks impact the joint decision to publish and coauthor, that these network effects differ by gender, and that gender differences in network access change over time as women become more well represented in a profession. (JEL J44 , J77 , J24 )