Of Hype and Hyperbolas: Introducing the New Economic Geography

By J.Peter Neary

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

Reviewing The Spatial Economy by Fujita, Krugman, and Venables, this paper argues that the key contribution of the new economic geography is a framework in which standard building blocks of mainstream economics (especially rational decision making and sim...

A Review of Monetary Policy Rules

By Christopher A. Sims

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

This article reviews Monetary Policy Rules, edited by John Taylor. The book evaluates the Taylor rule, a policy rule that specifies changes in the central bank's interest rate according to what is happening to two variables, real output and infla...

Perfect Competition and the Creativity of the Market

By Louis Makowski and Joseph M. Ostroy

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

From the perspective of the Walrasian general equilibrium model, entrepreneurial and opportunistic behavior seems foreign. Can the model be refashioned so that it can accommodate such behavior? Many would say no, but we argue the contrary. Indeed, we pres...

Silver Signals: Twenty-Five Years of Screening and Signaling

By John G. Riley

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

The theory of market signaling and screening is a cornerstone of the new economics of information. The last two and a half decades have not only witnessed a series of remarkable theoretical developments but also a wide range of applications. This essay ex...

Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function

By Barbara Petrongolo and Christopher A. Pissarides

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

This paper surveys the microfoundations, empirical evidence, and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. There is no consensus yet on microfoundations but one is emerging on estimation. An aggregate, constant returns, Cobb-Douglas ma...

From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization

By William L. Megginson and Jeffry M. Netter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

This study surveys the literature examining the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) We review the history of privatization, the theoretical and empirical evidence on the relative performance of state owned and privately owned firms, the types ...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

Fitness and Age: Review of Carroll and Hannan's Demography of Corporations and Industries

By Boyan Jovanovic

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

The Demography of Corporations and Industries (2000) by Glenn R. Carroll and T. Michael Hannan is a welcome addition to a body of empirical analysis of firms and industries that studies the effects of technological change and other changes that o...

Review of Meritocracy and Economic Inequality Edited by Kenneth Arrow, Sameul Bowles, and Steven Durlaf

By Charles Brown

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

The twelve essays in this volume deal with the definition of meritocracy and equality of opportunity, the causes and consequences of intelligence, schooling and inequality, and equal-opportunity policy options. They emphasize the importance of education a...

The School-to-Work Transition: A Cross-National Perspective

By Paul Ryan

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

School-to-work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies (France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position ...

Economics Online

By Drucilla Ekwurzel and John McMillan

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

The internet is bringing profound changes in scholarly publishing. The American Economic Association maintains a web site (www.AEAweb.org) containing the three AEA journals, bibliographic information, links to various economics information, and various se...

The Biological Basis of Economic Behavior

By Arthur J. Robson

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

This paper first considers the implications of biological evolution for economic preferences. It analyzes why utility functions evolved, considers evidence that utility is both hedonic and adaptive, and suggests why such adaptation might have evolved. Tim...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2000

A Review of O'Rourke and Williamson's Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth Century Atlantic Economy

By C. Knick Harley

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2000

Much of the comparative economic history of the nineteenth century focuses on the spread of the Industrial Revolution from Britain. Incomes converged, in this view, as the transfer of superior technology raised incomes in the periphery. In Globalizati...

The "New Political Economy": Recent Books by Allen Drazen and by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini

By Gilles Saint-Paul

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2000

The last fifteen years have seen an explosion of contributions in the field of political economy. Two new books, Political Economy in Macroeconomics by Allan Drazen and Political Economy: Explaining Economic Policy by Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, ...

Renewable Natural Resource Management and Use without Markets

By Gardner M. Brown

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2000

Natural resources, by their nature, are not readily bent to the status of private property. Efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities, public goods, non-use values, and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of res...

Natural "Natural Experiments" in Economics

By Mark R. Rosenzweig and Kenneth I. Wolpin

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2000

The recent literature exploiting natural events as "natural experiment" instruments is reviewed to assess to what extent it has advanced empirical knowledge. A weakness of the studies that adopt this approach is that the necessary set of behavioral, marke...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2000

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2000