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.

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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How budget deficits cause trade deficits: The simple analytics

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

The traditional classroom presentation of international macroeconomic issues obscures the link between budget deficits, exchange rates, and the trade deficit. The article offers a simple supply and demand framework to clarify the role of budget deficits in creating trade deficits...

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Inflation, growth, and import bottlenecks in the Turkish manufacturing sector

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

This paper argues that, in economies heavily dependent on imported inputs, the responsiveness of price and output to cost and demand factors are altered by foreign exchange bottlenecks if the government resorts to nonmarket allocation of import licenses. A model...

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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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The income redistribution impact of financing higher education in Pakistan

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

This study examines the income redistributional consequences of the public financing of higher education in Pakistan. The results show that the tax incidence and the subsidy to higher education entail a redistribution from the middle and upper to the lower...

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Unproductive expenditure in manufacturing

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

A behavioral model is developed to explain the magnitude of surplus and the division of surplus into unproductive and profit for oligopoly firms in the manufacturing sector of advanced capitalist economies. Particular attention is focused upon the determinants of interfirm...

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