Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

A classroom experiment on exchange rate determination with purchasing power parity

Publication Date
2007-February-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

We develop a classroom experiment on exchange rate determination appropriate for undergraduate courses in macroeconomics and international economics. Students represent citizens from different countries and need to obtain currency to purchase goods. By participating in a sealed bid auction to...

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A general-equilibrium analysis of public policy for pharmaceutical prices

Publication Date
2005-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Retail sales of prescription drugs totaled $154.5 billion in 2001. The National Institute for Health Care Management estimates annual sales will exceed $400 billion by the year 2010. This paper analyzes the welfare and distributional effects of two policy families...

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An Islamic perspective on inequality in Pakistan

Publication Date
1991-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This paper examines the distribution of income in Pakistan, and in each of its four provinces, from an explicit and formal Islamic perspective. A cardinally significant Atkinson-Kolm-Sen relative index of inequality reflecting that perspective is proposed and computed from the...

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Do fringe benefits cause layoffs?

Publication Date
1990-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

It is commonly believed that firms prefer layoffs to worksharing, in part, because layoffs economize on fringe benefit costs. We find that when labor markets are characterized by optimal implicit contracts, layoffs will never occur in equilibrium, regardless of the...

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Inequality in Pakistan, 1984-85 to 1987-88: A social welfare approach

Publication Date
1991-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This paper presents new results on income distribution in Pakistan from an analysis of the full HIES data tapes for 1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87, and 1987-88. An explicit social welfare methodology is adopted to measure changes in inequality at the national...

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Intergenerational strategic behavior and crowding out in a general equilibrium model

Publication Date
2005-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The return of large government budget deficits should encourage us to resume analysis of their effects. Two topics deserving further attention are the importance of correctly modeling the form of intergenerational relationships and clarification of the extent to which deficits...

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On the geometry of constant returns

Publication Date
2000-August-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Constant returns to scale, always a simplifying assumption, is often also much more: many important results depend critically on the very special properties of this class of production function. This paper provides a unified set of simple proofs for most...

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Optimal implicit contracts and the choice between layoffs and work sharing

Publication Date
1989-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Implicit contract models of labor market equilibrium under work sharing and layoffs are constructed to examine several common explanations for the observed market bias in favor of layoffs. We first establish the optimality of work sharing in the absence of...

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Ricardian equivalence survives strategic behavior

Publication Date
2004-October-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Robert Barro (1974) showed government debt has no real effects when generations are linked by altruistically motivated intergenerational transfers, a result now known widely as the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem.
An important condition for debt neutrality is believed to be the...

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Using NAICS to identify national industry cluster templates for applied regional analysis

Publication Date
2006-December-16
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Whereas FESER and BERGMAN, 2000, developed the concept of national-level cluster templates and introduced a systematic methodology to identify such clusters, their technique and results were based on the now-outdated Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system for categorizing industries. We update...

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Zakat and inequality: Some evidence from Pakistan

Publication Date
1993-November-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This paper presents empirical evidence on the extent to which zakat - a form of religiously-mandated charity under Islam - achieves its intended objective in Pakistan. Detailed income and expenditure data from Pakistan's Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 1987-88...

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