Browsing by Author "Hibbs, Jr., Douglas A."

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    Geography, Biogeography and Why Some Countries are Rich and Others Poor
    (2004) Olsson, Ola; Hibbs, Jr., Douglas A.; Department of Economics
    The most important event in human economic history before the Industrial Revolution was the Neolithic transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture, beginning about 10,000 years ago. The transition made possible the human population explosion, the rise of non-foodproducing specialists, and the acceleration of technological progress that led eventually to the Industrial Revolution. But the transition occurred at different times in different regions of the world, with big consequences for the present-day economic conditions of populations indigenous to each region. In this paper we show that differences in biogeographic initial conditions and in geography largely account for the different timings of the Neolithic transition, and thereby ultimately help account for the 100-fold differences among the prosperity of nations today. The effects of biogeography and geography on the wealth of nations are partly mediated by the quality of presentday institutions, but are also partly independent of institutional quality.
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    Labor market regimes and the effects of monetary policy
    (2006) Hibbs, Jr., Douglas A.; Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni; Acocella, Nicola; Department of Economics
    In this paper we use a standard multi-union, monopolistic competition model to evaluate analytically and numerically the effects of monetary policy on inflation and unemployment under different institutional arrangements in the labor market that are defined by the rigidity of nominal wages. We show that the effects of monetary policy on the real economy depend critically on the wage formation regime, and on the ways in which the restrictiveness of policy interacts with product price competition, wage setting centralization and the utility weight unions place on real wage premiums as compared to unemployment. Our interpretation of the results emphasizes how the posture of monetary policy toward inflation influences the strategic calculations driving unions’ wage setting behavior in different institutional environments.
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    Voting and the Macroeconomy
    (2006) Hibbs, Jr., Douglas A.; Department of Economics
    Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy Barry R. Weingast and Donald Wittman,eds. Oxford University Press,2006