Reviews

My Uncle Napoleon, Iraj Pezeshkzad, trans. Dick Davis, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1996, 512 pp., $29.95.

Les textes vieil‐avestiques, vol. I: Introduction, text et traduction, Jean Kellens and Eric Pirart, Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1988, 195 pp.

Reading Nasta^cliq: Persian and Urdu Hands from 1500 to the Present, William L. Hanaway and Brian Spooner, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1995, 278 pp.

Az Nima ta Ruzagar‐e Ma: Tarikh‐e Adab‐e Farsi‐ye Mo^caser (From Nima to Our Time: History of Contemporary Persian Letters), Yahya Arianpur, Tehran: Zavvar, 1374 (1995), 638 pp. + 48 pp. of photographs, title‐page reprints, etc.

The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz, trans. Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., with an Introduction by Daryush Shayegan, Ashland, Ore.: White Cloud Press, 1995, x + 170 pp.

The Hafez Poems of Gertrude Bell, with the original Persian on the facing page, Bethesda, Md.: Iranbooks, 1995, 176 pp.

Iran und Turfan: Beiträge Berliner Wissenschaftler, Werner Sunder‐mann zum 60. Geburtstaggewidmet, ed. Christiane Reck and Peter Zieme, Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1995, viii + 296 pp., photographs.

The History of al‐Tabari, vol. XXXIII: Storm and Stress Along the Northern Frontiers of the ^cAbbasid Caliphate, trans. and annot. C. E. Bosworth, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies and Bibliotheca Persica, State University of New York Press, 1991.

Tales of Two Cities, Abbas Milani, Washington, D.C.: Mage, 1996, 263 pp., $24.95.

Avicenna and I: The Journey of Spirits, Manouchehr Parvin, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1996, 284 pp., $26.95 (cloth).

In A Voice of Their Own: A Collection of Stories by Iranian Women Written since the Revolution of 1979, trans. Franklin Lewis and Farzin Yazdanfar, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1996, 153 pp.     

STEADY-STATE LABOR TURNOVER AS OPTIMAL HOUSEHOLD BEHAVIOR*

ABSTRACT. Models of the firm with costly labor turnover and models of migration with location-specific consumption amenities are two standard explanations of the co-existence of persistent wage differentials with extensive labor mobility. Labor turnover models postulate a worker quit function where the quit rate is inversely related to the regional wage differential in the steady state. We use amenity-consumption models of migration to show conditions under which this postulate is consistent with household utility maximization. Our model extends standard amenity-consumption analysis by making the value of amenities contingent on the “state” of the household. These household states are defined in terms of demographic, education, and health characteristics and are assumed to follow a Markov process.     

ON THE PLAUSIBILITY OF THE SUPPLY—DRIVEN INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL: A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR INPUT-COEFFICIENT CHANGE*

ABSTRACT. Oosterhaven (1988) labels the supply-driven input-output model “theoretically implausible” and criticizes the straightforward use of the model for impact studies. This comment extends and corrects some of the issues addressed by Oosterhaven. We derive the characteristics which industry production relations must possess to be consistent with the implied changes in industry inputs and outputs when supply-side input-output models are employed for impact analysis. First, it is shown that an implicit assumption is the characteristic of perfect substitutability among all inputs in each industry production function. This is the polar opposite of the Leontief assumption of zero elasticity of factor substitution among all inputs, and is very unrealistic for large changes from the initially observed solution since it implies that all inputs are non-essential in the production process and that any input can be substituted for all others simultaneously. Second, it is shown that the model may still be reasonable for approximating the effect of small changes since the implied production relation may be interpreted as a cost minimizing choice for a standard constant-returns-to-scale production function linearized around the initial solution under the assumption that relative prices are unchanged. Under this alternative interpretation, the supply-side model may be expected to provide a reasonable approximation, useful for analyzing changes in the neighborhood of the initial solution, but would appear to be inappropriate for analyzing large changes.