A study attempts to investigate the role of the various determinants of regional Canadian unemployment rates in order to get a better picture of Canadian aggregate unemployment rate behavior
The annual data (1967-1991) is for five regions (Atlantic region, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies, and British Columbia), and four age-gender groups (female and male, adult and young). Focusing on young females, the authors find significant effects for the following variables: the regional relative minimum wage rate (minimum wages divided by average hourly earnings), the regional share of youth in the labor force, the regional share of adult females in the labor force, United States activity shocks (deviations of United States GDP from trend), an indicator of the degree of monetary tightness in Canada, regional union density, and a regional index of unemployment insurance generosity. Explain why the authors only used region fixed effects. How would their specification have to change if they also employed time fixed effects?
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: Since the study used Canada-wide effects (United States activity shocks, and monetary tightness), these are identical for all regions at a point in time. Using time fixed effects in addition to these two variables would have generated perfect multicollinearity among the regressors, and hence the OLS estimator would not exist. An alternative specification would include time fixed effects, but eliminate the two variables which are constant across all regions at a given point in time.
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At a fast food restaurant, a large drink is twice as big as a small drink, but the restaurant charges 79¢ for the small drink and only 99¢ for the large drink. This situation is probably not a case of price discrimination because
a. the restaurant cannot easily prevent resale. b. people who buy large drinks order more food than people who buy small drinks. c. the cost of serving a large drink is not twice the cost of serving a small drink. d. the fast food restaurant has no monopoly power.
Derivatives
A. can be used to reduce risk. B. can be a source of risk. C. made the financial crisis of 2007–2009 worse than it otherwise would have been. D. All of these responses are correct.
Angelo is a wholesale meatball distributor. He sells his meatballs to all the finest Italian restaurants in town. Nobody can make meatballs like Angelo. As a result, his is the only business in town that sells meatballs to restaurants. Assuming that Angelo is maximizing his profit, which of the following statements is true?
a. Meatball prices will be less than marginal cost. b. Meatball prices will equal marginal cost. c. Meatball prices will exceed marginal cost. d. Meatball prices will be a function of supply and demand and will therefore oscillate around marginal costs.
Suppose somebody made the following statement: "There will never be a substitute for Howard Stern, the radio shock-jock." According to the economic way of thinking, the above statement
A) is essentially true. B) is misleading because cloning already exists and it is a matter of time before people will be cloned. C) is incorrect because many people choose to listen to other programs as the perceived costs of listening to Howard Stern change. D) is essentially false because Howard Stern provides nothing of value to society.