Toward a “constitution” for behavioral policy-making

Behavioral policy interventions aimed at redirecting individuals’ behavior toward optimal choices are characterized by an important issue which is often overlooked: the lack of an instrument to define what “optimal” means. If agents are subject to behavioral biases leading them to make “wrong” choices, the policy-maker can no longer rely on the revealed preferences approach (e.g., what people choose is what people prefer) for defining a welfare criterion. In this article, we reiterate the argument put forward by some scholars that choosing a suitable welfare criterion once the link between observed choices and individuals’ preferences is broken becomes a problematic task. We review the state of the art in the literature and the possible approaches proposed to overcome the problem, concluding that a solution has not yet been reached. Moreover, we argue that the lack of an established welfare criterion characterizing behavioral policy-making could pave the way to government wanting to restrict individual freedom. In the absence of any legislative constraint for the executive, stating that what individuals choose is not what they prefer in principle justifies any freedom-reducing government intervention, since choices can be arbitrarily labeled “sub-optimal” or “welfare-reducing.” To avoid this risk without turning down the potential of behavioral policy-making, we propose that an independent committee establishes ex ante procedural rules and domains where behavioral policy-making can be implemented. The article suggests some possible examples of normative provisions characterizing this constitution-type document, such as the selective identification of the only sectors where behavioral policies could be effectively applied, the periodic evaluation of policy effects, and the use of sunset clauses.     

Second-Best Pigouvian Taxation: A Clarification

This paper argues that the search for a “purely environmental” component of a tax on goods or factors of production that impact the environment—separate from its redistributive and distortive effects—is fraught with difficulties. The quest is often impossible because of the interconnectedness between labor supply, consumption decisions and the environmental quality. The paper differentiates between two conceptualization for “the Pigouvian tax” that have been employed in the literature and argues that each has tried to isolate the environmental component in its own way. One conceptualization, due to Cremer et al. (J Public Econ 70:343–364, 1998) does so by ruling out direct feedback from changes in environmental quality on the incentive effect of the tax. In the second conceptualization, due to Bovenberg and Ploeg’s (J Public Econ 55:349–390, 1994), incentive effects are ruled out by making consumers’ valuation of environmental quality independent of the labor supply. This is achieved by assuming separability between labor supply and other goods (including environmental equality). To convey its message, the paper studies the properties of optimal polluting and non-polluting non-labor input taxes in a Mirrleesian model with endogenously determined wages.     

Identifying the “financialization” of the nonfinancial corporation in the U.S. economy: A decomposition of firm-level balance sheets

This paper develops the concept of the “financialization” of the nonfinancial corporation (NFC) by laying out the key stylized facts describing NFC financial behavior between 1950 and 2014 via a detailed decomposition of firm-level balance sheets. In the existing literature, the concept of the “financialization of the nonfinancial corporation” remains ambiguous; as such, clarification of the trends that have occurred in NFC financial behavior is an important prerequisite for analyses of why NFC behavior has changed and with what consequences. By systematically delineating the evidence for the “financialization” of NFCs, this paper contributes to the literature by establishing precisely how NFC financial behavior has changed in the post-1980 U.S. economy. The growing “financialization” of nonfinancial corporations is summarized by an increased share of financial assets in NFC portfolios, increasing indebtedness and equity repurchases among large firms, and deleveraging among smaller firms. The paper concludes by introducing the behavioral insights gained by approaching these stylized facts from a conceptual standpoint emphasizing the interdependence of portfolio and financing decisions and, thus, the links between the changes in financial behavior across NFC balance sheets.     

Behavioral Factors Affecting the Home Bias Phenomenon: Experimental Tests

Although international portfolio theory states that an optimal portfolio should be well diversified, in practice, investors tend to invest excessively in domestic assets. This tendency, which is commonly referred to in the finance literature as “home bias” (HB), has puzzled economists for many decades. This research develops and presents experiments designed to test the behavioral factors related to HB discussed in the literature. In particular, these experiments test whether the factors of “familiarity” and “fluency” (ease of pronunciation) affect HB. In addition, using a method of controlled experiments, we examine the willingness to take risk as a basic source of HB. We also examine HB under three different market conditions (normal, bear and bull markets). Results indicate that subjects tended to take less risk with foreign, unfamiliar and nonfluent (difficult to pronounce) assets compared with local, familiar and fluent assets. This tendency increased significantly when the three factors were present together (foreign, unfamiliar and nonfluent assets) compared with when only one of the three factors was present. The results also revealed that HB increased during bear market periods.     

Input Intensity: A Missing Link between Production,Trade Patterns,and Environmental Standards

Trade and production implications of a change in environmental policy using the 2 × 2 Heckscher–Ohlin framework are identified. For otherwise identical economies a difference of environmental policy standards generates two effects: the “effective‐endowment effect” where the abatement activity uses up some resources of the economy leaving less for the production of the final goods and the “factor‐price effect” where changes in the abatement requirement affects factor prices that in turn affect production. The direction and relative strengths of these two effects determine whether production and trade patterns are consistent with or opposite to the pollution haven expectation.     

Institutionalism and the “Common Man” Through the Lens of Philip Klein: Business Cycles,the Public Sector,and Keynes’s Economics

This article reviews and assesses Philip Klein’s work on business cycles and macroeconomics, the public sector, and the economics of John Maynard Keynes. The article makes several findings. First, Klein built on the pioneering efforts of Wesley Mitchell to advance the development of cycle indicators and to outline an eclectic theory of cycles that remains useful for synthesizing a broad literature. Second, Klein’s essays on macroeconomics contain enduring discussions of the malleability of the “natural” rate of unemployment and the value of a behavioral approach to expectations. Third, he refocused the institutionalist attention on the public sector by introducing “higher efficiency” and other concepts to help explain how government policy plays a role in economic life. Fourth, Klein emphasized the role of fiscal policy in moderating business cycles. Fifth, his work points in the direction of today’s post-Keynesian institutionalism, both by stressing that Keynes was “profoundly institutionalist” in his approach and by arguing that conjoining Keynes and institutionalism would provide a stronger foundation for macroeconomic theory and policy.     

工业产业集聚对经济高质量发展的影响——以环境规制为调节变量的研究

基于外部性理论,利用2009—2017年中国省际面板数据并运用空间杜宾模型,从全样本和区域分样本两方面探讨了工业产业专业化集聚与相关多样性对经济高质量发展的影响。研究发现:中国省际经济高质量发展指数呈不断上升趋势,且存在空间相关性和空间溢出性,分别呈现出“一损俱损”“荣辱与共”“一荣俱荣”的城市群特征;工业产业专业化集聚和相关多样性对经济高质量发展都有影响,且环境规制在其中起到了调节作用,但对于不同的研究样本,作用效果存在差异;对于处在“一损俱损”“荣辱与共”阶段的城市群,应聚焦主要问题,通过发展主要方面,促进经济高质量发展并向“一荣俱荣”城市群转变。     

Edgar Allan Poe's riddle: Framing effects in repeated matching pennies games

Framing effects have a significant influence on the finitely repeated matching pennies game. The combination of being labelled “a guesser,” and having the objective of matching the opponent's action, appears to be advantageous. We find that being a player who aims to match the opponent's action is advantageous irrespective of whether the player moves first or second. We examine alternative explanations for our results and relate them to Edgar Allan Poe's “The Purloined Letter.” We propose a behavioral model which generates the observed asymmetry in the players' performance.     

On the economic impacts of COVID-19: A text mining literature analysis

The COVID-19 outbreak has affected everyday lives worldwide. As governments started to implement confinement and business closure measures, the economic impact was felt by entire societies immediately. The urgency of such a theme has led researchers to study the phenomenon. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to provide the state of the art on relevant dimensions and hot topics of research to understand the economic impacts of COVID-19. In this survey, we conduct a text mining analysis of 301 articles published during 2020 which analyzed such economic impacts. By defining a set of relevant dimensions grounded on existing literature, we were able to extract a set of coherent topics that aggregate the collected articles, characterized by the predominance of a few sets of dimensions. We found that the impact on “financial markets” was widely studied, especially in relation to Asia. Next, we found a more diverse range of themes analyzed in Europe, from “government measures” to “macroeconomic variables.” We also discovered that America has not received the same degree of attention, and “institutions,” “Africa,” or “other pandemics” were studied less. We anticipate that future research will proliferate focusing on several themes, from environmental issues to the effectiveness of government measures.     

Transaction costs and environmental policy design

This article synthesizes the growing empirical literature on transaction costs to identify pragmatic design recommendations for environmental and natural resource policies. The New Institutional Economics literature recognizes that appropriate policy choice and design will be a function of the specific characteristics of the problem. The physical and institutional determinants of both transaction costs and abatement costs should be considered in the policy design process due to potential interactions between them. Analysts also need to incorporate the extent to which the technologies, institutional environment, governance structures, or policy designs can be changed; some factors can only be adjusted to or “designed around” while others can be designed differently. This framework highlights the importance of property rights since transaction costs will be incurred to obtain or retain property rights and since the rights assignment may affect both the magnitudes and distribution of costs. Another implication is that education and extension programs or use of behavioral economics concepts to affect choices can be cost-effective in some circumstances. Policy design should take advantage of economies of scale and foster technical change. Appropriate sequencing of policy instruments may decrease transaction costs, particularly if there is potential for technical change.     

Fair is foul,and foul is fair: experimental evolutionary studies of mismatch

We describe two types of experimental evolution studies of “mismatch” that are relevant to economics. “Evolutionary mismatch” is the concept that an organism can be importantly “out of sync” with its environment. In such cases, an organism may choose an option that is inferior to a feasible alternative. Mainstream and behavioral economics do not address the notion of evolutionary mismatch. We argue for an empirical program on mismatch utilizing the methodology of experimental evolution.     

Economic Determinants of Free Trade Agreements Revisited: Distinguishing Sources of Interdependence

One of the most notable international economic events since 1990 has been the enormous increase in the number of free trade agreements (FTAs). While Baier and Bergstrand were the first to show empirically the impact of a country‐pair's economic characteristics on the likelihood of the pair having an FTA, the literature has been extended to demonstrate the importance empirically of FTA “interdependence”—the effect of other FTAs on the probability of a pair having an FTA. In the context of the Baier–Bergstrand framework, this paper delves deeper into the sources of interdependence—an “own‐FTA” effect and a “cross‐FTA” effect. The authors argue that the own‐FTA effect (the impact on the net welfare gains of an FTA between two countries owing to either already having other FTAs) likely dwarfs the cross‐FTA effect (the impact on the net welfare gains of an FTA between the pair owing to other FTAs existing in the rest of the world, or ROW). Augmenting a parsimonious logit model with simple “multilateral FTA” and “ROW FTA” terms to differentiate the own and cross effects empirically, it is shown that the marginal impact on the probability of a country‐pair having an agreement of either country having one more FTA with a third country is 50 times that of one more FTA between another pair in ROW. The results suggest that “domino (own‐FTA) effects” have far exceeded “competitive liberalization (cross‐FTA) effects” in the proliferation of FTAs.     

A DYNAMIC MODEL OF CLEANUP: ESTIMATING SUNK COSTS IN OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION

The environmental remediation required to permanently decommission most industrial projects is an expensive, irreversible investment. Real options literature shows that temporary closure has value under uncertainty. However, even if there is no intention to restart operations, there is an incentive to label a closure as “temporary” to avoid having to remediate ongoing or future environmental externalities. I estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of closure under price and quantity uncertainty to evaluate the likelihood of reactivation. The model reveals that the option to temporarily close is being widely used to avoid environmental remediation of oil and gas wells in Canada.     

开放式创新对节能环保企业创新绩效的影响

节能环保企业是节能环保技术创新的重要主体,通过构建理论模型,以上海89家企业数据为基础,就开放式创新对节能环保企业创新绩效的影响进行实证分析。研究发现,节能环保企业对开放式创新具有较强的依赖性,但开放式创新对节能环保企业创新同时具有促进效应和替代效应,外部知识互动提升了节能环保企业创新绩效,也可能导致外部技术依赖;开放式创新在技术开发和创新成果转化上的影响存在差异,节能环保企业应结合不同创新阶段和企业自身特征有效开展外部创新合作;开放式创新需建立在企业内部创新投入的基础之上,节能环保企业应重视内部创新投入与外部技术消化吸收,实现内外部创新要素叠加。     

The measurement and decomposition of nonuse values: A critical review

We critically review the literature that claims that existence values, or nonuse values in general, are a large and measurable component of total value for certain environmental resources. Our concern is not with the question “do nonuse values exist?” For some individuals they surely do. Rather, our concern is with two interrelated questions: are there operationally meaningful theorems which might lead to the specific measurement of nonuse values, and do we in fact have a body of credible evidence which shows that nonuse values, particularly components of any nonuse value, are “large”? We find nothing in the way of operationally meaningful hypotheses which would permit the estimation of values attributable to specific motives of individuals. We find no credible basis for claims related to either the measurement of existence and other motive-related values or claims for the “large” relative size of such values. In short, we question the conventional wisdom that such values are measurable and that they are significant as a component of total value.     

Socially responsible investment in an environmental overlapping generations model

One of the problems associated with the conservation of the environment is that short-lived individuals fail to account for the long-term effects of pollution, which implies that future generations bear the costs imposed by the current generation. Such inter-generational externalities are usually tackled by (Pigovian) taxes, fiscal policy or environmental regulation. Alternatively, we propose that socially responsible investment funds create a role for the stock market to deal with intergenerational environmental externalities. We analyze the role of the stock market in an environmental overlapping generations model of the Diamond-type, in which agents choose between investing in “clean” government bonds or “polluting” firm equity. We show that although socially responsible investors are short-lived, the forward-looking nature of stock prices can help to resolve the conflict between current and future generations.     

企业经营绩效、媒体关注与环境信息披露

督促企业披露有“含金量”的环境信息,对构建绿色金融体系、助力生态文明建设意义重大。基于我国化工行业上市公司2013-2017年的数据,本文从经营不善的视角探讨企业披露环境信息的动机,将环境信息分为“财务类环境信息”和“非财务类环境信息”两类,分析其披露倾向,并讨论媒体关注对上述披露行为的治理作用。研究发现:企业在经营绩效不佳时提升了环境信息披露水平,媒体关注对此起到正向调节作用。值得注意的是,企业原本倾向于披露非财务类环境信息,但在媒体关注的治理作用下,企业更侧重于披露财务类环境信息。所有权异质性分析发现,相比于非国有企业,国有企业更乐于在经营不善时披露环境信息,特别是非财务类环境信息;媒体关注能强化非国有企业经营不善时披露环境信息的动机,促使其增加财务类环境信息的披露,而对国有企业不存在显著影响。本文研究结论有助于投资者更理性地认识企业环境信息披露行为,并为督促各类企业披露有“含金量”的环境信息提供了思路。     

Developing Country Second‐Mover Advantage in Competition Over Environmental Standards and Taxes

We show that, in competition between a developed country and a developing country over environmental standards and taxes, the developing country may have a “second‐mover advantage.” In our model, firms do not unanimously prefer lower environmental standard levels. We introduce this feature to an otherwise familiar model of fiscal competition. Four distinct outcomes can be characterized by varying the marginal cost to firms of an environmental externality: (1) the outcome may be efficient; (2) the developing country may be a “pollution haven”—a place to escape excessively high environmental standards in the developed country; (3) the developing country may “undercut” the developed country and attract all firms; (4) the developed country may be a pollution haven.     

THE ENDOWMENT EFFECT AS BLESSING

We study the idea that seemingly unrelated behavioral biases can coevolve if they jointly compensate for the errors that any one of them would give rise to in isolation. We suggest that the “endowment effect” and the “winner's curse” could have jointly survived natural selection together. We develop a new family of “hybrid‐replicator” dynamics. Under such dynamics, biases survive in the population for a long period of time even if they only partially compensate for each other and despite the fact that the rational type's payoff is strictly larger than the payoffs of all other types.     

BUYING LOCALLY

‘‘Buy local” arrangements encourage members of a community or group to patronize one another instead of the external economy. They range from formal mechanisms such as local currencies to informal “I'll buy from you if you buy from me” arrangements and are often championed on social or environmental grounds. We show that in a monopolistically competitive economy, buy local arrangements can have salutary effects even for selfish agents immune to social or environmental considerations. Buy local arrangements effectively allow firms to exploit the equilibrium price–cost gap to profitably expand their sales at the going price.