The Reform of Federal Deposit Insurance

[Symposium: Federal Deposit Insurance]

By Lawrence J. White

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In early 1989, the system of deposit insurance in the United States was in crisis. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), the U.S. government agency that provided deposit insurance for savings and loan (thrift) institutions, had susta...

The High Cost of Incompletely Funding the FSLIC Shortage of Explicit Capital

[Symposium: Federal Deposit Insurance]

By Edward J. Kane

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

A useful parallel can be drawn between the Alaskan oil spill of 1989 and the flood of red ink spilled in recent years by U.S. thrift institutions (savings and loan associations and savings banks). In each case, initial damage from the spill was severely c...

Seniority, Wages and Productivity: A Turbulent Decade

[Symposium: Seniority and Wages]

By Robert M. Hutchens

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Why does a worker's wage tend to grow with seniority in the firm, and what does this have to do with productivity? Two decades ago, neoclassical labor economists thought that the theory of human capital provided a good answer to this question. The last de...

Self-Enforcing Contracts, Shirking, and Life Cycle Incentives

[Symposium: Seniority and Wages]

By H. Lorne Carmichael

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

The labor market is a rich and complicated place. When a worker takes a job he expects to earn a wage, but will also care about rates of wage growth, fringe benefits, levels of risk, retirement practices, pensions, promotion and layoff rules, seniority ri...

Spontaneous Order

[Symposium: Social Norms]

By Robert Sugden

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, there used to be an unwritten rule about the gathering of driftwood after a storm. Whoever was first onto a stretch of the shore after high tide was allowed to take whatever he wished without interference from ...

Social Norms and Economic Theory

[Symposium: Social Norms]

By Jon Elster

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

One of the most persistent cleavages in the social sciences is the opposition between two lines of thought conveniently associated with Adam Smith and Emile Durkheim, between homo economicus and homo sociologicus. Of these, the former is supposed to be gu...

The Political Economy of Trade Policy

By Robert E. Baldwin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

International trade seems to be a subject where the advice of economists is routinely disregarded. Economists are nearly unanimous in their general opposition to protectionism, but the increase in U.S. protection in recent years in such sectors as automob...

Research on the Economics Profession

By David Colander

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In this article, I survey some recent contributions to research on the profession, both to bring nonspecialists up to date on what is being done and to inform specialists of other researchers who are doing similar work. The economics profession is interes...

On the Demise of the Long Run

By Roy B. Helfgott

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

John Maynard Keynes observed that, "In the long run we are all dead," but in terms of economic analysis, the long run also may be dead. The culprit is new technology that is wiping out many of the distinctions between the long and short run. As pointed ou...

Implications of the U.S. Current Account Deficit

By David H. Howard

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In 1988, the United States recorded a deficit of about $135 billion on the current account of its balance of payments with the rest of the world. This paper presents an analytical framework for thinking about the current account deficit, explores causes o...

An Accountant among Economists: Conservations with Sir John R. Hicks

By Arjo Klamer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Sir John Hicks (1904-1989) has left an indelible impression on modern economic discourse. His Value and Capital (1939) stood as a model for neoclassical microeconomics as economists know it today. His condensation of Keynes's General Theory in the form o...

Anomalies: Intertemporal Choice

By George Loewenstein and Richard H. Thaler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

We examine a number of situations in which people do not appear to discount money flows at the market rate of interest or any other single discount rate. Discount rates observed in both laboratory and field decision-making environments are shown to depend...

Retrospectives: Adam Smith's Invisible Hands

By Joseph Persky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

After more than two centuries, Adam Smith's famous simile comparing the market system to an invisible hand continues to convey the essential message of Anglo-American political economy. In fact, Smith's buoyant optimism in the efficacy of his system of "n...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Correspondence

By Hans Werner Holub

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Correspondence regarding: Theory versus Empiricism in Academic Economics: Update and Comparison

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Index to Volume 3

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

Symposium on New Institutions for Developing Country Debt

[Symposium: New Institutions for Developing Country Debt]

By Kenneth Rogoff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

Kenneth Rogoff provides a brief synopsis of the developing country debt problem.

Organizing Debt Relief: The Need for a New Institution

[Symposium: New Institutions for Developing Country Debt]

By Peter B. Kenen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

In March 1989, the new U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Nicholas Brady, endorsed a change in strategy for dealing with developing country debt, calling for a three-year waiver of clauses in existing loan agreements that stand in the way of debt reduction "...