Variations in Economic Analysis
MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE CENTER STAFF J. Richard Aronson Director Robert J. Thornton Associate Director Judith A. McDonald Associate Director Todd A. Watkins Robert Kuchta Associate Director Assistant Director of Marketing Paul Brown Dean, College of Business & Economics The Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise was established in 1980 with a gift from alumnus Harry Martindale and his wife Elizabeth Fairchild Martindale. Formed as an interdisciplinary resource in the College of Business and Economics, the Center contributes through scholarship to improved understanding of the American economic system.
J. Richard Aronson Harriet L. Parmet Robert J. Thornton Editors Variations in Economic Analysis Essays in Honor of Eli Schwartz 123 Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise College of Business and Economics
Editors J. Richard Aronson Department of Economics 621 Taylor Street Bethlehem PA 18015 USA jra1@lehigh.edu Harriet L. Parmet Department of Modern Languages and Literature 9 W. Packer Avenue Bethlehem PA 18015 USA hlp1@lehigh.edu Robert J. Thornton Department of Economics 621 Taylor Street Bethlehem PA 18015 USA rjt1@lehigh.edu ISBN 978-1-4419-1181-0 e-isbn 978-1-4419-1182-7 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1182-7 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2009936724 Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise,, 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Contents Introduction... 1 My Favorite Two Corporate Finance Puzzles... 5 Harold Bierman The Solvency of Federal Welfare Entitlement Programs: Social Security and Medicare... 13 George H. Borts The Corporate Sector as a Net Exporter of Funds: Additional Evidence 31 John B. Guerard, Jr. Piscal Folicy 101 Economic Policy Meets Partisan Politics... 51 John Hilley A Taxonomy of Utility Functions... 61 Benjamin J. Gillen and Harry M. Markowitz Equilibrium and Disequilibrium Growth: a Comment on a Comment... 71 Robert Solow Reputational Risk and Conflicts of Interest in Banking and Finance: The Evidence So Far... 75 Ingo Walter Seeking Common Ground on Globalization... 99 Murray Weidenbaum Tax Reform Then and Now... 109 J. Richard Aronson Joseph A. Schumpeter: Not Guilty of Plagiarism but of Infelicities of Attribution... 115 Nicholas W. Balabkins Economics and the Tanakh the Hebrew Bible... 127 Harriet L. Parmet v
vi Contents Muted Signals in Academe: Letters of Recommendation and Grade Inflation... 139 Robert J. Thornton A Biography of Eli Schwartz... 153 Contributors... 157