INVESTMENT AND THE NOMINAL INTEREST RATE: THE VARIABLE VELOCITY CASE

Models treating money either as a consumer good or as a producer good are encompassed by a model in which both households and firms use money as a buffer between receipts and expenditures. A rise in nominal interest rates increases resources devoted to intermediation, while discouraging purchases financed from accumulated cash. If investment is financed from contemporaneous earnings, there is a tendency to substitute out of consumption and into investment when interest rates are high. Greater resources devoted to intermediation generate a negative wealth effect. The net impact on investment is ambiguous.     

The Use of TGroups in Training Social Workers

Summary It is suggested that T groups might be of value in Social Worktraining as a means of encouraging Social Workers to make greateruse of group techniques. T groups have been criticized on ethicalgrounds and for their tendency to produce psychological disturbancein predisposed individuals. In he context of Social Work trainingT groups have a dual function, promoting self awareness in theparticipants and increasing their knowledge of group dynamics.A procedure is described which emphasizes the necessity of focusingon group behaviour as opposed to individual psychopathology.It is believed that by doing so the psychological hazards arereduced. A brief outline is given of the manner in which materialproduced in the group sessions may illustrate theoretical materialintroduced elsewhere on the course     

FURTHER EVIDENCE ON THE MONTE CARLO CYCLE IN BUSINESS ACTIVITY

This paper tests the null hypothesis that "cycles" in business activity are merely Monte Carlo cycles. It compares the actual distribution of expansionary and contractionary phase duration times with those which would be expected under the null hypothesis. If the probability of a phase turning point is constant during a small interval of time, rather than increasing, the duration times of upswings and downswings should be exponentially distributed. Goodness of fit statistics were calculated for each phase for the post World War II time series of: five coincident indicators, inverted unemployment rate, and production index. The evidence found here supports the Monte Carlo thesis.     

The Deceptively Simple Economics of Workplace Diversity

Legal, scholarly, and public discussion of work force diversity has proceeded largely without benefit of microeconomic theory. Existing analysis relies on incomplete information to explain why firms might have "unrepresentative" work forces. I build a model in which work force composition matters even given full information. My analysis both explains current labor-market trends and raises questions about the use by courts and government agencies of statistical evidence to test for employment discrimination.     

A Study of Those Who Cease to Foster

Summary The Portsmouth Fostering Study was the first project undertakenby the Portsmouth Social Services Research and IntelligenceUnit which was set up in August 1972 under the joint auspicesof Portsmouth Polytechnic and Portsmouth Social Services Department. This article summarizes the report of the Study, the main focusof which was on the experiences of ex-foster parents and theproblems they had encountered. The study concludes that therole of the foster parent is not always made clear, and thatthe foster parent is placed in the position of being half client/halfcolleague     

THE SHORT-RUN "TOBIN EFFECT" IN A MONETARY OPTIMIZING MODEL

In an economy in which households face a cash-in-advance constraint, the nominal interest rate acts like a tax on consumption. To the extent that investment is financed from current earnings and so escapes the interest rate tax, households will defer their consumption when the nominal interest rate is high. A short-run Tobin effect results: capital accumulates most rapidly when the interest rate is thought to be high relative to its past and future values.