Labor Standards: Where Do They Belong on the International Trade Agenda?

[Symposium: Trade, Labor and the Environment]

By Drusilla K. Brown

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

During the past decade, universal labor standards have become the focus of intense debate. Advocates argue from humanitarian concerns and the interests of industrialized-country labor, seeking enforcement with WTO sanctions. Opponents regard labor regulat...

Bridging the Trade-Environment Divide

[Symposium: Trade, Labor and the Environment]

By Daniel C. Esty

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

Perceived conflict between trade liberalization and environmental protection can be traced to a number of issues. Some tensions relate to the environmental Kuznets curve and whether economic growth yields environmental benefits. Other concerns arise from ...

Wheat from Chaff: Meta-analysis as Quantitative Literature Review

By T. D. Stanley

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

This paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research, meta-regression analysis or MRA. Economics is theory-driven. Yet, we must learn empirically if economics is to advance. MRA offers a more obj...

International Productivity Comparisons Built from the Firm Level

By Martin Neil Baily and Robert M. Solow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

International productivity comparisons can be built up with micro and macro data. Studies of firms or groups of firms producing similar outputs reveal the deeper causes of differences in productivity across countries. The studies find that such difference...

Institutional Economics: Then and Now

By Malcolm Rutherford

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

This article gives a history of American institutionalism, and a brief comparison with the more recent "new" institutional economics. Institutionalism was a significant element in American economics between the Wars, but declined rapidly thereafter. The a...

Economic Education in U.S. High Schools

By William B. Walstad

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

The teaching of economics at the high school level is vital for increasing basic economic literacy. This assessment of high school economics in the United States covers seven topics: enrollments in courses; course content; the testing of students; achieve...

An Interview with William J. Baumol

By Alan B. Krueger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

The Early Development of Intellectual Property Institutions in the United States

By B. Zorina Khan and Kenneth L. Sokoloff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

The U.S. was a pioneer in establishing the world's first modern intellectual property system. That system was distinguished by the provision of broad access to, and strict enforcement of, property rights in new inventions, coupled with the requirement of ...

Comments

By Duncan K. Foley, Robert J. Gordon, and Thomas R. Michl

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

Symposium on Econometric Tools

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Alan B. Krueger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

Nonparametric Density and Regression Estimation

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By John DiNardo and Justin L. Tobias

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

We provide a nontechnical review of recent nonparametric methods for estimating density and regression functions. The methods we describe make it possible for a researcher to estimate a regression function or density without having to specify in advance a...

Semiparametric Censored Regression Models

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Kenneth Y. Chay and James L. Powell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

When data are censored, ordinary least squares regression can provide biased coefficient estimates. Maximum likelihood approaches to this problem are valid only if the error distribution is correctly specified, which can be problematic in practice. We rev...

Binary Response Models: Logits, Probits and Semiparametrics

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Joel L. Horowitz and N. E. Savin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

A binary-response model is a mean-regression model in which the dependent variable takes only the values zero and one. This paper describes and illustrates the estimation of logit and probit binary-response models. The linear probability model is also dis...

Mismeasured Variables in Econometric Analysis: Problems from the Right and Problems from the Left

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Jerry Hausman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

The effect of mismeasured variables in the most straightforward regression analysis with a single regressor variable leads to a least squares estimate that is downward biased in magnitude toward zero. I begin by reviewing classical issues involving mismea...

Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Joshua D. Angrist and Alan B. Krueger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

Instrumental variables was first used in the 1920s to estimate supply and demand elasticities and later to correct for measurement error in single equation models. Recently, instrumental variables have been widely used to reduce bias from omitted variable...

Applications of Generalized Method of Moments Estimation

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

I describe how the method of moments approach to estimation, including the more recent generalized method of moments (GMM) theory, can be applied to problems using cross section, time series, and panel data. Method of moments estimators can be attractive ...

Vector Autoregressions

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By James H. Stock and Mark W. Watson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

This paper critically reviews the use of vector autoregressions (VARs) for four tasks: data description, forecasting, structural inference, and policy analysis. The paper begins with a review of VAR analysis, highlighting the differences between reduced-f...