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Book Review: A Technique for Evaluating Interviewer Performance

The author's purpose is to develop, within a neoclassical framework, a microeconomic theory of the size distribution of income and wealth among individuals. In so doing he gives insights into the determinants of income distribution. Blinder treats the family as the basic maximizing unit. The initial theory chapters develop equations which indicate how an exogenous set of taste parameters, skill endowments, capital endowments, and conditions of the economic environment generate lifetime discounted earnings. The equations then are used as a basis for simulating the distribution of lifetime incomes among individuals (families). The simulation model is validated by a comparison with actual U.S. income distribution data. The results give information on values of taste parameters, endowments, and economic conditions that would generate the income distribution in existence in the U.S. in the 1960s. The equations in the simulation allow the author to emphasize some of the causes and cures for an unequal distribution of income. Results of this nature are useful in settling a controversy in the area of income distribution. Income distribution and its inequality have been stressed in the writings of the radical economists of the new left. They argue that the top of the American system is occupied by inherited wealth. Concerning the lower end, i.e. the Black and the poor, they come out in favor of income guarantees. Traditional economists argue for market performance as a means of distributing income and the concept of Pareto optimum, which takes the income distribution as a given, i.e. no redistribution. Conclusions reached with Blinder's simulation have a direct bearing on this controversy. First, inheritance does not account for a large part of unequal income distribution as the radical economist might lead us to believe. Second, an income guarantee in the form of a negative income tax does little to redistribute income toward greater equality. Finally, it appears that a large part of income inequality is due to the wide disparity in wage rates. For policy, this means that programs leading to wage subsidies and less discrimination will tend toward greater equality in the distribution of income. There are additional reasons for recommending the monograph. The text is a study in the usefulness of the simulation technique in economic theory. Simulation has not received the wide acceptance in economics that one finds in business disciplines. Monte-Carlo studies in economics are connected with simulating properties of estimating methods in econometrics. Blinder's simulation is evidence that the technique shows more promise in economics than has been recognized. One additional point could be made that is of interest to marketing researchers. Blinder simulates income 207