Why Financial Structure Matters

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

[This is a comment on "The Modigliani-Miller Propositions after Thirty Years" by Merton H. Miller in this same issue.] The 1958 paper by Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller has been justly hailed as a landmark in the modern theory of finance. What has not...

Comment on the Modigliani-Miller Propositions

By Stephen A. Ross

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

[This is a comment on "The Modigliani-Miller Propositions after Thirty Years" by Merton H. Miller in this same issue.] What a treat it is to have the opportunity to read Merton Miller's ruminations on the MM Propositions. A comment on Miller and Modiglian...

Corporate Finance and the Legacy of Miller and Modigliani

By Sudipto Bhattacharya

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

[This is a comment on "The Modigliani-Miller Propositions after Thirty Years" by Merton H. Miller in this same issue.] The influence of the Modigliani-Miller (1958) propositions on capital structure and the Miller-Modigliani (1961) theses on dividend poli...

MM--Past, Present, Future

By Franco Modigliani

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

[This is a comment on "The Modigliani-Miller Propositions after Thirty Years" by Merton H. Miller in this same issue.] Before getting serious about the MM theorem's past and future, I would like to say a few words about its more personal history, includin...

Theory versus Empiricism in Academic Economics: Update and Comparisons

By Theodore Morgan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

Six years ago, Wassily Leontief, a past president of the American Economic Association and Nobel Laureate, analyzed the kinds of articles published in the American Economic Review. He focused on the proportion of articles devoted to theory as compared to ...

On James Buchanan's Contributions to Public Economics

By Thomas Romer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

The 1986 Nobel Prize in economic science was awarded to James Buchanan. What the Nobel committee recognized in making its award was Buchanan's central role in the gradual transformation of the way economists and political scientists study governments and ...

Puzzles: Blockades, Carrier Missions, Secret Intelligence, and More

By Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

As usual, this feature begins with several speed puzzles; answers can be found at the end of the problems. Following is one longer puzzle for which readers are challenged to submit their own answer. The puzzles in this issue focus on everything from diver...

Anomalies: The Ultimatum Game

By Richard H. Thaler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

This paper discusses simple ultimatum games, two-stage bargaining ultimatum games, and multistage ultimatum games. Finally, I discuss ultimatums in the market. Any time a monopolist (or monopsonist) sets a price (or wage), it has the quality of an ultimat...

Correspondence

By John Komlos

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

Correspondence regarding: Is Free Trade Passe? The Making of an Economist

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1988

Women in the Labor Market and in the Family

[Symposium: Women in the Labor Market]

By James P. Smith and Michael Ward

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

There are two themes in this paper. First, we argue that the conventional wisdom of an absence of any substantial labor market progress for women is mistaken. Instead, throughout this century, women's wages have been steadily rising relative to those of m...

Women's Quest for Economic Equality

[Symposium: Women in the Labor Market]

By Victor R. Fuchs

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

The persistence of substantial gender inequality a quarter-century after the passage of major antidiscrimination legislation and several decades of massive social change poses a major problem for economic analysis and policy. Why are women at an economic ...

Does the Market for Women's Labor Need Fixing?

[Symposium: Women in the Labor Market]

By Barbara R. Bergmann

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

I will start by reviewing the evidence that discrimination against women is currently serious and has important consequences for their pay and status. Some of this evidence is of a variety that economists do not commonly examine or take account of. On the...

Women and Affirmative Action

[Symposium: Women in the Labor Market]

By Jonathan S. Leonard

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

This paper reviews evidence indicating that, as it has been enforced so far, affirmative action has contributed negligibly to women's progress in the workplace. Affirmative action can be modeled as a tax on employers whose female employment growth falls b...

Chaos: Significance, Mechanism, and Economic Applications

By William J. Baumol and Jess Benhabib

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

Chaos has become a subject of great interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Besides economics, it has entered the literature of geometry, physics, ecology and meteorology. This article seeks to describe what it is, how it works, and what it mean...

Business Ascendancy and Economic Impasse: A Structural Retrospective on Conservative Economics, 1979-87

By Samuel Bowles, David M. Gordon, and Thomas E. Weisskopf

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

Conservatives have been waging economic revolution since the late Carter years. Have they succeeded? Ronald Reagan and the early architects sought their place in the history books as institutional innovators, not economic tinkerers. Viewed in this perspec...

A Conversation with Amartya Sen

By Arjo Klamer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

Arjo Kalmer interviews Amayrtya Sen in December 1985. After some biographical and academic background, the discussion moves to welfare economics, rationality, and Adam Smith. In a postscript, Sen discusses the connection between his critique of the ration...

Theory, Experiment and Economics

By Vernon L. Smith

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

It is now over thirty years since research was initiated in the laboratory experimental study of market behavior and performance. This essay provides my interpretation of what the implications of this type of work are for the study of economics.

Puzzles: The Other Person's Envelope Is Always Greener

By Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

The Puzzles feature in this issue is devoted to answering a puzzle that appeared in the Spring 1988 issue: "The Other Person's Envelope is Always Greener." The response to this puzzle was overwhelming. Below, I recap the problem and then discuss the myria...