Eastern Economic Journal 

About: Eastern Economic Journal is an academic journal published by Palgrave Macmillan. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Wage & Unemployment. It has an ISSN identifier of 0094-5056. Over the lifetime, 1683 publications have been published receiving 21612 citations. The journal is also known as: EEJ.

A Proposal for International Monetary Reform

Abstract: a system of pegged parities that relied on the debts in reserve currencies, mostly dollars, to meet growing needs for official reserves. Trif fin and his followers saw the remedy as the internationalization of reserves and reserve assets; their ultimate solution was a world central bank. Others diagnosed the problem less in terms of liquidity than in the inadequa cies of balance of payments adjustment mech anisms in the modern world. The inadequa cies were especially evident under the fixed parity gold-exchange standard when, as in the 1960s, the reserve currency center was struc turally in chronic deficit. These analysts sought better and more symmetrical "rules of the game" for adjustments by surplus and deficit countries, usually including more flexi bility in the setting of exchange parities, crawling pegs, and the like. Many economists, of whom Milton Friedman was an eloquent and persuasive spokesman, had all along advocated floating exchange rates, deter mined in private markets without official interventions. By the early 1970s the third view was the dominant one in the economics profession, though not among central bankers and private financiers. And all of a sudden, thanks to Nixon and Connally, we got our wish. Or at least we got as much of it as anyone could reasonably have hoped, since it could never have been expected that governments would eschew all intervention in exchange markets. Now after five to seven years?depending how one counts?of unclean floating there are many second thoughts. Some economists share the nostalgia of men of affairs for the gold standard or its equivalent, for a fixed anchor for the world's money, for stability of official parities. Some economists, those who emphasize the rationality of expectations and the flexibility of prices in all markets, doubt that it makes much difference whether exchange rates are fixed or flexible, provided only that government policies are predictable. Clearly, flexible rates have not been the pana-, cea which their more extravagant advocates had hoped; international monetary problems have not disappeared from headlines or from the agenda of anxieties of central banks and governments. I believe that the basic problem today is not the exchange rate regime, whether fixed or floating. Debate on the regime evades and obscures the essential problem. That is the excessive international?or better, inter currency?mobility of private financial capi tal. The biggest thing that happened in the world monetary system since the 1950s was "This paper is Prof. Tobin's presidential address at the 1978 conference of the Eastern Economic Association, Wash. D C.

Economic Growth and Social Capital in Italy

Abstract: We find strong convergence of per capita incomes among the Italian regions during the 1960s and 1970s. Convergence is faster, and equilibrium income levels higher, in regions with more social capital, using any of three measures: an index of civic community, the effectiveness of regional government, and citizen satisfaction with regional government. Our evidence also supports the idea that the post-1983 increases in regional dispersion of per capita GDP are due to the increased autonomy of regional governments being used more effectively in regions with higher levels of social capital. Both results confirm Putnam's view that social institutions matter, while also supporting a version of conditional convergence that makes catching-up a function of the size of the productivity gap between the richer and poorer regions.

Occupational Segregation, Wages and Profits When Employers Discriminate by Race or Sex

Abstract: tomary to analyze the occupational and wage aspects of discrimination as if they were logically separate and their effects additive.1 In this paper the two aspects are treated in a unified way, through the development of a model which marries the wage differential approach of Becker [1] to the approach emphasizing the "crowding" effects of occupational segregation originally noticed by Edgeworth[3] and developed by Bergmann [2]. The result allows a clearer view of the distri-

Pass-Through of Exchange Rates and Import Prices to Domestic Inflation in Some Industrialized Economies

Abstract: В работе проверяется степень влияния валютного курса и цен импорта на колебания индекса цен потребителей и производителей (CPI и PPI) в некоторых развитых экономиках. Для оценки используется VAR-модель. Результат анализа показал, что в период после краха Бреттон-Вудской системы наблюдалось достаточно скромное влияние валютных курсов на уровень инфляции, в то время как цены импорта оказывали существенное воздействие на этот показатель. Кроме того, влияние курса на цены было сильнее в тех странах, в которых доля импорта больше. В период 1996-1998 гг. валютный курс и цены импорта играли важную роль в процессе дефляции во многих странах, чего, однако, нельзя сказать об экономике США.

Education and Social Capital

Abstract: Education is one of the most important predictors—usually, in fact, the most important predictor—of many forms of political and social engagement—from voting to chairing a local committee to hosting a dinner party to trusting others. Over the last half century (and more) educational levels in the United States have risen sharply. In 1960 only 41 percent of American adults had graduated from high school; in 1998 82 percent had. In 1960 only 8 percent of American adults had a college degree; in 1998 24 percent had. Yet levels of political and social participation have not risen pari passu with this dramatic increase in education, and by some accounts [Putnam, 1995a; 1995b; 2000] have even fallen. For at least two decades, political scientists have mused about this paradoxical “puzzle” [Brody, 1978]. Recently, however, Norman Nie, Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry [1996, hereafter NJS-B] have offered an elegant and potentially powerful resolution to this paradox, beginning with a crucial distinction between the “relative” and “absolute” effects of education. If more people now have a college degree, they argue, perhaps the sociological signifi cance of the credential has been devalued. Social status is, for example, associated with education, but we would not assume that just because more Americans are educated than ever before, America has a greater volume of social status than ever before. To the extent that education is merely about sorting people, not about adding to their skills and knowledge and civic values, then no puzzle remains to be explained. In fact, NJS-B conclude, participation is affected primarily by relative educational levels, and thus has not been (and should not have been expected to be) rising with aggregate educational levels. The distinction that NJS-B have introduced is important. Education has external effects, as well as internal ones. In principle, my behavior can be affected not only by my education, but also by that of others around me. The core issue is whether (holding constant my own education), I am more likely or less likely to participate politically and socially if those around me become more educated. Besides its academic inter