SPATIAL COMPETITION AND STRATEGIC FIRM RELOCATION

Firms compete spatially for customers who have some degree of brand loyalty. The number and attractiveness of the alternatives available to these customers dictates the level of competition facing firms. In this study, data on ticket pricing in four professional sports leagues are used to empirically examine the existence of spatial competition in sports, and the impact of space on team relocations. Results, allowing for structural breaks over time while using spatial autoregressive techniques, suggest that sports franchises spatially compete when pricing their tickets, and that spatial characteristics, including the level of spatial competition, have influenced the relocation of teams. (JEL D40, L11, R30, L83)     

Falling behind: The income of lone-mother families, 1970–1985

Cette communication analyse la situation économique des familles monoparentales dont le chef est une femme à partir de données des recensements canadiens de 1971, 1981 et 1986 disponibles sur microfiches à accès public. L'analyse révèle qu'en dépit d'une augmentation sensible du revenu réel des familles à mère sans coqjoint, l'écart entre le revenu de celles-ci et le revenu des familles biparentales s'est creusé de manière importante au cow de la période étudiée de 15 ans. Bien que l'augmentation des salaires aient été lente autant pour hommes mariée que pour les mères sans conjoint, une forte hausse du taux de participation des femmes mariées à la population active a permis aux familles biparentales d'augmenter de façon appréciable leur revenu familial total. Du cté des familles à mère sans conjoint, par contre, divers changements démographiques ont limité l'augmentation des gains totaux et ralentit l'accroissement du revenu familial.
This paper examines the economic fortunes of lone-mother families using the public use microfiles of the 1971 and 1986 Canadian censuses. The analysis shows that despite a 16 per cent increase in the real income of lone-mother families, the income gap between lone-mother and two-parent families widened appreciably over the 15-year period. Although real wages for both husbands and lone mothers rose slowly, a sharp increase in the labour force participation rate of married women allowed two-parent families to increase their total family income significantly. By contrast, demographic changes among lone-mother families served to limit the increase in total family earnings and slowed the rise of family income.     

HABIT PERSISTENCE AND THE NOMINAL TERM PREMIUM PUZZLE: A PARTIAL RESOLUTION

The assumption of habit formation in preferences induces two effects on time series of agents' marginal utility of consumption: greater volatility relative to standard time-separable preferences and negative serial correlation. This paper examines whether the second property can help explain the behavior of the nominal term premium. A cash-in-advance model of interest rates is appended with a model of habit persistence and calibrated to U.S. data. Using yields on three- and six-month U.S. Treasury Bills for comparison, we find the model can indeed duplicate the observed average term premium, but cannot account for the term premium's volatility.     

BEHAVIORAL FOUNDATIONS OF RECIPROCITY: EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Laboratory experiments have generally supported the theorem that, in classical property rights environments, noncooperative behavior in markets yields efficient social outcomes. Experiments, however, regularly fail to support the game theoretic prediction of noncooperative behavior in small-group strategic interaction and in large-group public good environments. In these two types of experiments subjects frequently achieve more efficient social outcomes–they collect more money from the experimenter–than noncooperative game theory predicts. Many subjects in these experiments exhibit reciprocity even in single-play games. Evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that humans have evolved mental algorithms for identifying and punishing cheaters in social exchange. ( JEL A11, A12, B41, C70, C72, C92)     

Comparison of Conflict of Interest Policies and Reported Practices in Academic Medical Centers in the United States

The authors reviewed the conflict of interest policies of 9 academic medical centers in the United States and interviewed members of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Conflict of Interest Committees (COICs) at those institutions. They found that many institutions used processes for reporting and managing conflicts of interest that were more decentralized than the processes described in their policies. Also, most institutions had no clear and comprehensive policy to guide investigators regarding disclosure of conflicts of interest to potential research participants. Considerable differences in understanding of conflict of interest policies were observed between IRB and COIC officials.     

WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MAKING MONETARY POLICY?

During their meetings, the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) make monetary policy, but they also make each other laugh. This article studies the amount of laughter elicited by members of the FOMC during their meetings. The study finds that a member elicits more laughter if he or she expects higher inflation, other things being equal. This finding suggests that members may use humor to cope with the threat of inflation. (JEL E52, E58, C23)     

Taking a Position: A Reinterpretation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

This paper examines methodological issues associated with the theory of planned behaviour and explains that an alternative account of data used to support this theory can be provided by positioning theory. A case is presented that shows tests of the theory of planned behaviour fail to eliminate the possibility of alternative explanations for co-variation in its data. An agency or person-centered alternative shows how a causal interpretation can be reinterpreted as evidence of the actions of a person. Unlike the conceptualisation of the individual as behaving in keeping with postulated underlying cognitive laws or rules we assume that the person has, through socialisation, acquired the skills necessary to initiate and manage their own actions. Unlike the interest in TPB data as a causal explanation of action we draw attention to the interpretation of patterns in these data as an aggregate of each person using a common mode of explanation to justify and explain their intentions.     

HETEROGENEITY UNDER COMPETITION

A standard prediction of neoclassical microeconomics is that with perfect competition, free entry, and atomistic firms producing a homogeneous product, equilibrium finds all firms employing that technology which has minimum average cost. That competition drives out inefficient producers and reduces heterogeneity within industries is, consequently, a commonplace rule of thumb in economic thinking. This paper demonstrates that demand uncertainty is sufficient to produce heterogeneity in the equilibrium employment of production technologies and to permit the coexistence of producers exhibiting different minimum average costs. This heterogeneity is ubiquitous because the conditions for its presence are not stringent.