Correspondence

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Symposium on Globalization in Perspective: An Introduction

[Symposium: Globalization in Perspective]

By Dani Rodrik

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The benefits of international economic integration come with strings attached: international markets get greater say about the way national economies are managed and their wealth is distributed. The papers in the symposium that follow address these questi...

The Global Capital Market: Benefactor or Menace?

[Symposium: Globalization in Perspective]

By Maurice Obstfeld

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

This paper reviews the theoretical functions, history, and policy problems raised by the international capital market. The goal is to offer a perspective on both the considerable advantages the market offers and on the genuine hazards it poses, as well as...

Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy

[Symposium: Globalization in Perspective]

By Robert C. Feenstra

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the production process, however, in which manufacturing or services activities do...

Globalization, Labor Markets and Policy Backlash in the Past

[Symposium: Globalization in Perspective]

By Jeffrey G. Williamson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have many things in common. Both periods recorded fast growth, convergence, and labor-market integration between OECD members. Both periods witnessed intense debate about who gained and who lost from globalizati...

The Boundaries of the Firm Revisited

[Symposium: The Firm and its Boundaries]

By Bengt Holmstrom and John Roberts

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Both transaction cost-economics and property-rights theories offer explanations of the boundaries of the firm based on ideas of ex post bargaining and holdup. These theories are quite distinct in their empirical predictions, but neither offers a satisfact...

Corporate Finance, the Theory of the Firm, and Organizations

[Symposium: The Firm and its Boundaries]

By Patrick Bolton and David S. Scharfstein

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Much of the modern research on firm boundaries, following Ronald Coase (1937), assumes that firms are run by owner-managers. This contrasts with the agency literature, following Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means (1932), that emphasizes the problems that ari...

Incentives in Organizations

[Symposium: The Firm and its Boundaries]

By Robert Gibbons

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

In this paper, the author summarizes four new strands in agency theory that help him think about incentives in real organizations. As a point of departure, The author begins with a quick sketch of the classic agency model. He then discusses static models ...

State versus Private Ownership

[Symposium: The Firm and its Boundaries]

By Andrei Shleifer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Private ownership should generally be preferred to public ownership when the incentives to innovate and to contain costs must be strong. In essence, this is the case for capitalism over socialism, explaining the 'dynamic vitality' of free enterprise. The ...

The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto

By George R. Boyer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

This paper attempts to place the economic analysis of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto in historical perspective. The author begins by summarizing the analysis of capitalist economic development in the Manifesto, and showing how it was...

CSWEP: 25 Years at a Time

By Robin L. Bartlett

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The history and achievements of the American Economic Association's (AEA) Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) over the past twenty-five years are reviewed. A picture of women's standing in the economics profession in 1972 ...

Two Cheers for CSWEP?

By Barbara R. Bergmann

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The achievements (or lack thereof) of the AEA's Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) are compared to those of analogous committees in three of our sister disciplines. In psychology, sociology, and history, committees of wom...

The Reasons for CSWEP

By Carolyn Shaw Bell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Both overt and covert instances of less than equal treatment for women and men were taken for granted until the so-called 'women's movement' of the l960s, of which CSWEP was a part. 'Economics is a man's field' summarizes the environment in the profession...

A Comment on CSWEP

By Milton Friedman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Milton Friedman corresponded with Carolyn Shaw Bell about the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) in 1973. What follows is a distillation of those remarks.

Policy Watch: Government Analysis of the Benefits and Costs of Regulation

By Robert W. Hahn

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Recently, Congress has shown a greater interest in assessing the economic impact of regulation. This interest was driven in part by estimates that federal regulation costs several hundred billion dollars annually. In 1996, Congress required the director o...

Was the Monetarist Tradition Invented?

By George S. Tavlas

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

In 1969, Harry Johnson charged that Milton Friedman 'invented' a Chicago oral quantity theory tradition, the idea being that in order to launch a monetarist counter-revolution, Friedman needed to establish a linkage with pre-Keynesian orthodoxy. This pape...

Reflections on 25 Years of CSWEP

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Here, we republish the text of the resolution that created CSWEP, along with comments on the role of CSWEP in the economics profession from Robin L....

Recommendations for Further Reading

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998