William Hallagan

Self-selection by contractual choice and the theory of sharecropping

There are definite patterns for the organization of production on agricultural land. Production of some crops tends to be organized via wage contracts, while land sown to other crops tends to be rented, and still other crops are frequently sharecropped. One popular explanation is that contractual choice in agriculture is related to the riskiness of production. Sharecropping, according to this argument, is used with the most risky crops to facilitate risk spreading in a world with incomplete insurance markets.

Polymorphic Equilibrium in Advertising

This article is concerned with the possibility that natural selection can lead to an evolutionarily stable equilibrium where otherwise identical profit maximizing firms follow distinctly different strategies. In biology such occurrences are called polymorphic equilibrium. We develop a model of nonprice competition and from this model two classes of polymorphic equilibria arise. In the first class, advertising by expanding market demand can create a niche large enough to sustain entry by nonadvertising firms. Thus, otherwise identical firms following advertising and no advertising strategies can coexist with equal profits in a polymorphic equilibrium The second class of polymorphic equilibria includes the case where advertising does not expand market demand and instead only affects market shares. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications that polymorphism has for empirical work in economics.

Share contracting for California Gold

Although the use of sharecropping has long attracted the attention of historians and economists, very little research has focused on the use of share contracting in areas other than agriculture. This paper reports on 150 share and rent contracts which were used to lease gold claims in Placer County, California over the period 1870-1900. Part I describes the wide variety of leases used and the setting in which they were used. It was found that the choice of contract terms was related to the mining technology to be used on the leased property. In particular, quartz and drift claims requiring substantial claim-specific investment by the tenant were leased by share contracts. Simpler rent contracts were used to lease exposed placers and tailings which required very little claim-specific prospecting and development. In part II findings are discussed with specific reference to theories developed in the sharecropping literature.

The ideological component of Senate voting: Different principles or different principals?

Evidence exists on both sides of the question of whether or not legislator-specific, ideologically-driven shirking of constituent interest occurs. In this paper, we use a well-known model of such shirking by senators as our point of departure and add measures of inter-state constituent interests, the role of campaign contributions and, hence, the importance of whether or not senators are up for reelection. We find some evidence that the model provides a stronger explanation for senators up for reelection than for those who are not and that campaign contributions help determine voting decisions by these legislators. Finally, accounting for inter-state constituent interests, shirking is not a significant variable in the voting decisions of senators facing reelection. Thus, it appears that the reelection interests of some senators have been mistaken for ideologically-driven shirking.

Labor Contracting in Turn-of-the-Century California Agriculture

During the course of U.S. economic development, the institutions used to organize agricultural labor have undergone interesting and sometimes puzzling transformations. The transitions from wage contracting to tenancy observed in the post-bellum South and in nineteenth-century Iowa have been studied extensively.2 This paper evaluates the relatively neglected transition from wage labor to tenancy that occurred in the California fruit orchards during the period 1900–1910.3 Before 1903 Chinese and Japanese orchard workers were organized via the padrone system of wage labor, but in an abrupt series of events there ensued a shift into tenancy so dramatic that by 1909 contemporary observers noted that virtually all orchards were under tenant control. The fact that the new tenants were recent Japanese immigrants prompted investigations by the Immigration Commission as well as other agencies so that this particular shift into tenancy is documented in greater detail than those occurring in the South and in Iowa.

Polymorphism in competitive strategies: Trading stamps

Abstract This paper uses the example of trading stamps to examine a model of competitive nonprice marketing strategies. A concept borrowed from ethology, polymorphic equilibrium, is developed and used to explain salient features of trading stamp use by retail firms. The results contribute to an understanding of why virtually identical firms may optimally choose quite different competitive strategies. The paper also demonstrates the possibility of cyclical movements in the proportion of firms that adopt nonprice strategies such as the use of trading stamps.

An Integrated Modular Approach to Teaching Introductory Economics.

The authors describe the design and administration of a large two-semester course in principles of economics that permits both students and faculty some choice of both subject matter and meeting times during the semester. Students complete a standardized nine-week core and are then allowed to select topical modules. Advantages and disadvantages are discussed.