American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Editor's Note Roger H.Gordon 958 958 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=1&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362050 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market: A Survey RichardRogerson RobertShimer RandallWright 959 988 We survey the literature on search-theoretic models of the labor market. We show how this approach addresses many issues, including the following: Why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed? What determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells? How can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies? What determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies? How can homogeneous workers earn different wages? What are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages? How do wages and turnover interact? What determines efficient turnover? We discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process, including recent models of directed search. http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=2&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362014 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Economic Growth: Lessons from Two Centuries of American Agriculture YairMundlak 989 1024 This paper reviews the growth experience of U.S. agriculture over the past two centuries in consonance with the view that growth is determined by the economic environment, which consists of the available technology, incentives, constraints, and institutions. Within this framework, the implemented technology is determined jointly with the resource allocation. The review covers the role played by resource endowment, resource flow, technical change and its factor bias, and product demand. It highlights the importance of the income elasticity of demand and the labor augmentation of the technical change. The total factor productivity (TFP) was almost nil at the beginning of the nineteenth century, increasing gradually to the point where it exhausted output growth in the latter part of the twentieth century. This pattern is consistent with the postulate emerging from this framework, where the TFP is endogenous and determined jointly with growth rather than determining it. The more recent performance of U.S. agriculture is placed within a global perspective in order to generalize the discussion. http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=3&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362005 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Constitutions, Politics, and Economics: A Review Essay on Persson and Tabellini's The Economic Effects of Constitutions DaronAcemoglu 1025 1048 In this essay, I review the new book by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions, which investigates the policy and economic consequences of different forms of government and electoral rules. I also take advantage of this opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a number of popular empirical strategies in the newly emerging field of comparative political economy. http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=4&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362069 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Are We Collapsing? A Review of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Scott E.Page 1049 1062 Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking Penguin, 2005), tells the dramatic decline of past civilizations—the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi in the Southwestern United States, the Mayans in Central America, the Norse Vinland settlement in Greenland. These civilizations did not slowly fall apart; they suffered drastic reductions in population and productivity. In Diamond's account, their collapses result from mismanaged resources, lost friends, gained enemies, climate changes, and most tellingly, their cultures and beliefs. Diamond provides captivating histories and an engaging explanation of the sciences required to piece those histories together, but his logic and his prescriptions would benefit from greater familiarity with some basic principles of economics and a richer understanding of human nature. http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=5&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362032 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Book Reviews 1063 1086 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=6&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362023 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Annotated Listing of New Books 1087 1176 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=7&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362078 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article JEL Classification System 1177 1189 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=8&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775362041 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 0022-8282 Journal of Economic Literature http://www.aeaweb.org/journal.html 43 4 December 2005 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/issue_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&issue_date=December 2005 Journal Article Doctoral Dissertations in Economics One-Hundred-Second Annual List 1190 1218 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles/article_detail.php?journal=JEL&volume=43&issue=4&article=9&issue_date=December 2005 10.1257/002205105775361998