#1999-013A "Income Inequality and Minimum Consumption: Implications for Growth"
by Donald S. Allen, and Leonce Ndikumana


We propose a model that recognizes hierarchical goods and income inequality among households. The model demonstrates that growth is impacted not by inequality per se, but "absolute" income distribution or the level of poverty underlying the income distribution. More...

#1999-012B "Government Mandated Private Pensions: A Dependable and Equitable Foundation for Retirement Security?"
by Rowena A. Pecchenino, and Patricia S. Pollard

Revised August 2001

We develop a model of an overlapping generations economy characterized by private pensions where risk averse agents face both longevity and investment risks. The government mitigates the effects of longevity risk by mandating that individuals purchase annuities. More...

#1999-011A "Feeding the National Accounts"
by Joseph Ritter
August 1999

Modern market economies are probably the most complex institutions ever devised by human beings. In the United States, by far the most complex of these tracking systems is the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). This article's objective is to survey the main data sources currently used in the NIPA. More...

PUBLISHED: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, March/April 2000, 82(2), pp. 11-20

#1999-010E "Controlling for Heterogeneity in Gravity Models of Trade and Integration"
by I-Hui Cheng, and Howard J. Wall

Revised July 2004

This paper compares various specifications of the gravity model of trade as nested versions of a general specification that uses bilateral country-pair fixed effects to control for heterogeneity. For each specification, we show that the atheoretical restrictions to obtain them from the general model are not supported statistically. More...

PUBLISHED: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, January/February 2005, 87(1), pp. 49-64

#1999-009A "What Makes a Region Entrepreneurial? Evidence from Britain"
by Yannis Georgellis, and Howard J. Wall
June 1999

There is a great deal of variation in the levels of entrepreneurship, or rates of self-employment, across the regions of Britain. Over the period 1983-95, average self-employment in the North, Scotland, and the West Midlands was respectively 25%, 15%, and 15% lower than the national average, whereas in the South West, East Anglia, and Wales it was respectively 28%, 23%, and 21% higher. More...

PUBLISHED: Annals of Regional Science, August 2000, 34(3), pp. 385-403

#1999-008C "Gender Differences in Self-Employment"
by Yannis Georgellis, and Howard J. Wall

Revised March 2004

This paper examines the factors that influence the transition into self-employment in the German labor market, paying particular attention to gender differences. More...

PUBLISHED: International Review of Applied Economics, July 2005, 19(3), pp. 321-42

#1999-007A "Measuring Relative Quality of Life from a Cross-Migration Regression, With an Application to Canadian Provinces"
by Stratford Douglas, and Howard J. Wall
February 1999

We discuss specification of regression models for using migration data to infer the living standards of different regions, and for observing how much of the standard of living is determined by economic opportunities versus non-pecuniary amenities. More...

PUBLISHED: Research in Labor Economics, 2000, 19, pp. 191-214

#1999-006A "Voting with Your Feet in the United Kingdom: Using Cross-Migration Rates to Estimate Relative Living Standards."
by Howard J. Wall


This paper reexamines and extends the literature on the use of migration rates to estimate compensating differentials as measures of regional quality of life. I estimate an interregional migration regression for the UK and use the results to measure regional quality of life and standard of living. More...

PUBLISHED: Papers in Regional Science, January 2001, 80(1), pp. 1-23

#1999-005A "Low-Powered Incentives"
by Joseph Ritter, and Lowell J. Taylor
May 1999

We study low-powered incentives in a model that captures important features of workplaces in which incentive-pay approaches are minimally relevant. Our motivation is that incentive pay, while not rare, is clearly far less common than are agency problems; many firms with agency problems nonetheless pay fixed compensation and offer continued employment to all but those workers judged "unsatisfactory" according to largely subjective criteria. More...

#1999-004A "Seasonal Production Smoothing"
by Donald S. Allen


Empirical tests of the production-smoothing hypothesis have yielded mixed results. In this paper, Donald Allen looks for, and finds evidence of, seasonal production smoothing in 15 out of 25 manufacturing series and 8 out of 10 retail series, using detrended seasonally unadjusted data. More...

PUBLISHED: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, September/October 1999, 81(5), pp. 21-40