Endogenous Labor Supply, Rigid Factor Prices And A Second Best Solution

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1975-06-01
Authors
Lapan, Harvey
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Lapan, Harvey
University Professor Emeritus
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Economics

The Department of Economic Science was founded in 1898 to teach economic theory as a truth of industrial life, and was very much concerned with applying economics to business and industry, particularly agriculture. Between 1910 and 1967 it showed the growing influence of other social studies, such as sociology, history, and political science. Today it encompasses the majors of Agricultural Business (preparing for agricultural finance and management), Business Economics, and Economics (for advanced studies in business or economics or for careers in financing, management, insurance, etc).

History
The Department of Economic Science was founded in 1898 under the Division of Industrial Science (later College of Liberal Arts and Sciences); it became co-directed by the Division of Agriculture in 1919. In 1910 it became the Department of Economics and Political Science. In 1913 it became the Department of Applied Economics and Social Science; in 1924 it became the Department of Economics, History, and Sociology; in 1931 it became the Department of Economics and Sociology. In 1967 it became the Department of Economics, and in 2007 it became co-directed by the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Business.

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1898–present

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  • Department of Economic Science (1898–1910)
  • Department of Economics and Political Science (1910-1913)
  • Department of Applied Economics and Social Science (1913–1924)
  • Department of Economics, History and Sociology (1924–1931)
  • Department of Economics and Sociology (1931–1967)

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Economics
Abstract

The conventional wisdom asserts that distortions due to factor price rigidities should be eliminated by subsidies. However, we argue that the success of this policy rests upon the fact that the return to the factor is a pure rent. If factor supply is endogenous, then subsidies to employers and taxes on factor owners are needed to support the optimal solution. Since we believe this policy combination works only by assuming away the problem, we then devise a model to study the optimal policies in a second best world. Our results show that, in general, both factor subsidies (or taxes) and export subsidies (or taxes) are needed to achieve this constrained optimum.

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