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Seminar Series Copies may be downloaded by clicking on the title of the paper. For more information you may contact Stratford Douglas, the Seminar Series Coordinator. Spring 2006 If you do not have Acrobat Reader for your browser, you can download it freely from Adobe's Web site. Download Adobe Acrobat Reader |
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All seminars are |
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Benjamin Powell, Department of Economics,
San Jose State University, will be presenting: "An Experimental
Investigation of Hobbesian Jungles" ABSTRACT: Hobbes’s state of nature serves as the analytical stating point for much of what economists have written on anarchy and the formation of government. Unfortunately little historical evidence exists about how men behaved in a “state of nature”, if such a situation ever even existed. We conducted a laboratory experiment to create a Hobbesian state of nature and observe the level of economics efficiency subjects achieve. We also investigate Buchanan’s conjecture that people would unanimously agree to a social contract against theft. |
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Bharati Basu,
Central Michigan University, will be presenting: “Unemployment and Enclave Led Growth” ABSTRACT: Foreign firms sometimes move to the enclave to use unemployed unskilled labor resources as well as to take advantage of low wages of the hinterland. Unemployment results from efficiency wage distortion in hinterland unskilled labor market. Low wage unskilled workers of the hinterland are used with the advanced technology and the skilled workers that foreign firms bring with them to produce commodities in the enclave for exports. The unskilled workers possess a hidden skill which, if revealed, is useful only for the enclave production activities. The hidden skill is revealed only after unskilled workers work with foreign skilled workers for a while. The local skilled workers then start replacing foreign skilled workers and earn their wage until all foreign workers are replaced. The interactions between the enclave and the hinterland affect the structure of hinterland wages, skill composition of the hinterland, and reduce unemployment. The total world production increases using both the hidden skill and unused resources. However, the volume of trade may not increase. The effects are shown to be more varied than what can be seen if the hinterland has unemployment caused by exogenous wage distortion or if hinterland enjoys full employment. Although foreign firms expect a profit higher than what can be earned with full employment, the use of unemployed resources actually reduces profits of the foreign firms. |
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Fred Joutz, George
Washington University, will be presenting: “Oil Prices, Fiscal Policy,
and Venezuela’s Economic Growth” The dependency of the Venezuelan economy on world oil prices has deepened since the second half of the 1990s at the expense of shrinking non-oil industrial and agricultural sectors. The share of the oil sector in GDP has risen from about 21% in 1990 to almost 26% in the late 1990’s. The average share of oil exports in total exports has been around 85% for the period 1950-2001. The average contribution of the oil sector in government revenues has been kept around 65% during the same period. However, after steadily growing since the 1950s, government revenues’ growth came to a halt in the 1980’s and started declining during the 1990’s. We examine the issues relating to world oil prices,
government revenues, economic growth, consumption, and investment. There appear to be two long-run relations
relating: 1) the government budget constraint between government revenues and
government consumption and 2) oil, prices, economic growth, and investment in
a neoclassical framework. We find
there are oil price volatility effects and asymmetry effects in the
short-run, but not the long-run. There
is an indirect relationship between the government budget constraint and
economic growth through investment.
The later is positively related to improvements in the country’s
fiscal position. |
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William A. Fischel,
Dartmouth College, will be presenting:
TBA |
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SPRING BREAK! ENJOY!!! |
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Chris Coyne,
Hampden-Sydney College, will be presenting:
“Can
Liberal Democracy be Exported at Gunpoint” |
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Stephen Holland, University
of North Carolina-Greensboro, will be presenting: “Modeling
Peak Oil” ABSTRACT: “Peak oil”
refers to the potential future decline in world-wide production of crude oil
and its potentially calamitous effects.
The vast majority of the literature on peak oil is non-economic and
ignores price effects even when analyzing policies. Unfortunately, most of the economic models
of depletable resources do not generate production peaks
and thus are not applicable. I present
four models which generate production peaks in equilibrium. Production increases in the models are
driven by: demand increases, cost reductions through advancing technology,
cost reductions through reserve additions, and production capacity increases
through site development. Production
decreases are driven by scarcity. The
models do not rely on market failures and thus indicates that a peak in
production may well arise from efficient intertemporal optimizations. Since the models do not address make
failure, they are not suitable for normative analysis. Positive analysis indicates that an energy
tax can delay the peak, delay exhaustion, and reduce production volatility. However, an energy tax can have unintended
consequences. Depending on whether or
not it is anticipated and/or phased in, an energy tax can hasten the peak,
hasten exhaustion, and/or increase production volatility. |
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April 7, 2006 |
Nancy Chau, Cornell
University, will be presenting: “A Theory of
Employment Guarantees” ABSTRACT:
Both raw intuition and the past experience suggest that the
success of an employment guarantee scheme (EGS) in safeguarding the welfare
of the poor depends on both the wage it promises, and the ease with which any
worker can gain access. Yet,
transaction cost considerations alone can easily prevent such a fully
specified contract to ever be written.
An EGS is thus at once a wage guarantee and a rationing device, legitimized
in effect by incomplete contracting.
We chart the positive and normative limits of such an EGS as an
efficiency improving and poverty allevating policy reform in a canonical
labor market setting. At its core, an
EGS provides an aggregate, not just EGS, employment target. Given the target, the EGS wage and access
can be fine-tuned to deliver outcomes ranging from a contestable labor market
to a simple universal employment benefit.
The credibility of any such target, however, is shown to be triggered
endogenously by a host of factors including the poverty aversion of the
planner, private sector productivity the prevalence of market power and the
need for public works. |
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April 13, 2006 |
Santiago Pinto,
Department of Economics, West Virginia University College of Business and
Economics, will be presenting: TBA |
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April 14, 2006 |
SPRING
HOLIDAY…..(Good Friday) |
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April 21, 2006 |
Michael Greenwood,
University of Colorado, will be presenting:
TBA |
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April 28, 2006 |
LAST DAY OF
CLASSES!!! |
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